Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng may be on our screens now as he delivers his first mini budget, but it’s certainly not his first time.
Back in 1995, Kwarteng made headlines after appearing on University Challenge, where he actually swore on TV… twice.
Representing Trinity College, Cambridge, Kwarteng didn’t manage to impress audiences or Jeremy Paxman with his awkward slip-ups.
When contestants were asked ‘Who wrote the book Travels With My Donkey?’ Kwarteng seemed to go into a state of panic.
And instead of answering Tim Moore (or just staying silent), Kwarteng replied: ‘Oh f**k, I’ve forgotten,’ before then repeating: ‘Oh f**k!’
While the clip has been buried after all these years, Kwarteng commented on his outburst to student paper Varsity: ‘I knew it, I just couldn’t remember it.’
However. the future Chancellor did manage to get a few other questions right without any TV mishaps, scoring points for his team against Oxford’s New College.
Despite his awkward blunder, the then-19-year-old and his team went on to be crowned champons later that year.
Not only did he make university headlines, but national papers ran the story too.
It wasn’t his first time winning competitions though, as while at independent prep school Colet court, he won the Harrow History Prize in 1988.
He then went to Eton College where he was a King’s Scholar, and while at Cambridge, he was also a member of the University Pitt Club.
Kwarteng also attended Harvard University on a Kennedy Scholarship before returning to the University of Cambridge in 2000 to earn a PhD in economic history.
Paxman, 72, recently kicked off his final series as presenter of University Challenge.
Having first started hosting the iconic BBC quiz programme in 1994, the 72-year-old is set to pack away his question cards for the final time at the end of the new series’ run next summer, with Amol Rajan set to take over.
University Challenge was originally launched in the 1960s, when it was helmed by Bamber Gascoigne for over two decades.
This year marks its 60th anniversary, as Britain’s longest-running TV quiz show.
In 1994, it was revived by the BBC, bringing Paxman is as the new quizmaster.
In May last year, it was announced that Paxman had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, as he revealed that his symptoms were ‘mild’ and he was receiving ‘excellent treatment’.
‘I can confirm I have recently been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease,’ he said in a statement released at the time.
He added that he planned on continuing to broadcast and write ‘for as long as they’ll have me’.
Earlier this month, it was confirmed that Paxman was working on an ITV documentary about his journey with the condition, called Putting Up With Parkinson’s.
University Challenge continues next Monday at 8:30pm on BBC 2.
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