Gail Trimble

Gail Christiana Trimble (born 1982), is a senior faculty member in Classics at Trinity College, Oxford.

Background
Trimble was born in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, to Mary and Michael Trimble. Her father worked as a manager for British Telecom and her mother was a magistrate at Staines Magistrates Court.

Growing up, Trimble initially attended the Ambleside Infant and Middle School before moving to the independent and girls-only Lady Eleanor Holles School in Hampton, Middlesex. While there, she gained 11 GCSE certificates followed by four A-levels at grade A: in Latin, Greek, English Literature and Maths, plus additionally one of the top five marks in the country with A-level General Studies. She was awarded a place at Corpus Christi College, Oxford in 2000. She won a declamation prize at Oxford for Latin recital in 2001 and was also reported to give recitals in her lunchtimes at college as a soprano singer, and lecture on Ovid, Hellenistic poetry and Catullus. Her research had been funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and has been awarded a Doctor of Philosophy in Latin literature at Corpus Christi, Oxford on the subject of Catullus in 2010. Trimble is a practising Anglican, and sang in the choir at the University Church of St Mary the Virgin. In March 2009, Trimble became engaged to Tom West, a trainee solicitor and boyfriend of five years.

In 2009, Trimble was elected as a junior research fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge and held the position for a year before returning to Oxford as a senior faculty member.

University Challenge 2009
While a postgraduate student of Latin literature at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, in 2009, she gained media attention by a series of exceptional performances on the BBC television quiz programme University Challenge. Trimble captained the Corpus Christi team from the second round onwards, and scored a notably high proportion of the team's points.

The final, broadcast on 23 February 2009, was watched by more than five million viewers—the television show's highest audience share since at least 2001. She is notable for having scored 125 points in the last four minutes, to lead her team to apparent victory. However, a week after the final was broadcast, her team was disqualified after an investigation revealed that her teammate, Sam Kay, finished studying at Corpus Christi while the series was being recorded.

She was described in the British press as a "TV quiz phenomenon" and the "human Google", and by a defeated contestant as a "relentless juggernaut of intellectual Blitzkrieg".

Trimble had previously sat in the audience during the recording of the University Challenge 2005-series final, which had been won by Corpus Christi College, Oxford. She won a place on the college's 2009 team after several earlier attempts had failed. Participating in the show, Trimble contributed substantially to the team's success in the earlier rounds. The Guardian noted: "'In the Oxford college's run to the final, Trimble has scored more points than her three team-mates combined. In their semi-final, Corpus Christi defeated St John's College, Cambridge, 260-150. Trimble's personal haul was 185. In the quarter-finals, Trimble racked up a record 15 starters-for-10 as Corpus Christi raced to 350 points. Opponents Exeter University limped to 15 points, the equivalent of one correct starter and bonus. It was the lowest score since 1971 and only five points more than the worst of all time.'" In the rounds before reaching the final, Trimble had provided two thirds of her team's total points: 825 out of 1,235. The final win was initially more of a team effort, with Trimble even getting the odd answer wrong—buzzing to answer "Pollyanna" when the correct answer would have been "Goody Two-Shoes". The Corpus team were behind for most of the contest until Trimble, with her team-mates, accumulated 125 points within the last four minutes. Corpus won with 275 points, beating Manchester's score of 190 points.

The final of the 2008–2009 series had been recorded in Manchester four months before it had been due to be broadcast; all those involved had had to keep quiet about the result until the programme was shown on BBC Two on 23 February 2009. The winners' trophy had been presented to Trimble by the poet Wendy Cope. Trimble revealed that she had previously had difficulty getting on to the college University Challenge team, making three or four attempts. "I've tried over the years with different teams for the college, but we never made it".

The winning Corpus team would later be retrospectively disqualified on 2 March 2009, after it was revealed that another of the team members, Sam Kay, had no longer been a student at the University for the latter part of the series' recordings. The winner's trophy was re-awarded to the runners up, Manchester University. The Daily Telegraph called on Trimble to seek a rematch, with columnist Cassandra Jardine describing her as "the Usain Bolt of general knowledge". Trimble was reported on 6 March as being "too upset to comment" on the team's disqualification.

Cultural impact and criticism
After the final was broadcast, she said she was getting used to being in the public eye. She said that she had been approached by a men's magazine to take part in a "tasteful photoshoot", revealing that Nuts magazine had already been in touch. She said, "Would you believe it, my brother received a Facebook message from Nuts yesterday morning saying 'can we have your sister's email address, we want her to do a tasteful shoot'... So of course he sent them an answer saying: 'Seriously mate, would you give your sister's contact details to Nuts?'"

She had been accused of being "smug" and "snobbish" by bloggers; however, she has been defended by University Challenge's host, Jeremy Paxman, who said of her "she's actually had rather a mean sort of press. People have accused her of sneering. Actually I think she's quite shy."

The Independent 's columnist Nicholas Lezard stated: "The intellectual powerhouse that is Gail Trimble, captain of Corpus Christi's all-conquering University Challenge team, has divided the nation like no other figure since Margaret Thatcher...Such scorn as she has suffered is really about nothing more than the man's fear of the clever woman." The Mail on Sunday compared her to the recently deceased reality TV star Jade Goody, saying of the bloggers: "'You can see how much easier it is to take Jade Goody for your role model ahead of Gail Trimble. If you know nothing, and see someone getting rich and famous precisely for that reason, you are instantly validated. You, too, could become the next poster girl for ignorance. How comforting, too, if the moment an awesomely intelligent woman does come along, you're allowed to attack her for being smug and snobbish.'" The Daily Mail's columnist Melanie Phillips wrote that "if anything demonstrates Britain's steady descent into baying brutishness, it is surely the treatment meted out to Gail Trimble."

Trimble later stated, "I'm glad that people are being nice about me rather than nasty but ... I very much think this would not be happening if I was a man".

On 1 March 2009 it was reported that Trimble had turned down a "five-figure sum" to become the face of Hyundai's new "intelligent" car. Bookmakers William Hill had offered odds of 4/1 that she would win the television quiz show Mastermind before 2015.