I’ve now been a maths teacher for over 20 years, and I’ve been a UKMT volunteer for even longer; indeed UKMT has been – and still is – quite a big part of my life. Even before UKMT as such existed, I participated in maths competitions as a school student by first entering one of the multiple choice challenges when I was in Year 10. I attended Olympiad training camps when in the sixth form, which had a profound influence on me. I got close to making it onto a UK team, and as an adult I have taken UK student teams to Olympiad competitions abroad a few times, which has been fascinating for me.

However, it’s clearly of more interest to most of the students I teach at my school that I was once on the TV quiz show University Challenge. And just a couple of months ago I was on TV again on Christmas University Challenge; I’ll say more about that later.

I had an interest in numbers from before I started school and as a student I very much enjoyed doing maths, and its logical and objective nature. But by the middle of my time in secondary school I expected to go on to study physics at University.

Doing well in (what’s now called) the SMC, I was being inspired by the beauty of the maths related to some Olympiad problems, and being challenged by pushing myself to my mathematical limits when attempting these problems. This persuaded me that there was more to the subject than I had imagined, and convinced me to study maths at university (something which I’ve never regretted). Number theory, which I’d first seen at Olympiad camps when the charismatic number theorist Peter Shiu had told me about the Riemann zeta function, ended up being my area of specialisation when I started on mathematical research myself.

When I was a research student some close friends of mine persuaded me to get back into Olympiad activity, so I started helping out along with them at training camps and also at a summer school (which wasn’t so directly Olympiad linked). And I’m still going – this year I will be at my 25th consecutive Easter training camp.

I also went to 18 summer schools, I mentored for 9 years, and I’ve marked JMO, IMOK and MOG, and BMO1 and BMO2 many times. Occasionally a question I’ve written has made it onto the actual paper for BMO1 or BMO2, which has been very exciting. The last 3 times the UK has hosted the International Maths Olympiad I’ve been one of the markers, which was a real pleasure (if rather exhausting at times!).

I’d say my biggest UKMT highlight though, was being a Leader/Deputy Leader of some UK teams to International competitions; I’ve been to Romania (twice), Greece, Serbia and Cyprus, for the Balkan Olympiad and the Romanian Masters. But I’m also particularly remembered by some in UKMT for my general knowledge quizzes, given on one of the evenings at each Easter camp – these quizzes have happened every non-Covid year for more than 20 years now – and for the comedy prizes that the students receive at the end.

General knowledge/trivia was something my dad in particular thought was important, and I remember watching University Challenge with him when I was eleven or twelve, though I knew hardly any of the answers. When I was a second year undergraduate at Trinity College, Cambridge, posters went up advertising the return of the show after a seven year absence from TV: Trinity were holding a selection quiz.

I went along and was picked for the Trinity team, which would then try to get onto the show. There was an interview and a selection test with the producers, and we did well enough to make it to the televised stages. It was extremely exciting to be on TV, though quite nerve-wracking at first. It wasn’t that Jeremy Paxman was intimidating – off air he was very nice – but it was basically the fear of a low score and possible embarrassment. Thankfully we had a well balanced and capable team, and after a slow start we sped up on our buzzing and just about made it through our first round match, which was filmed at Granada Studios (in the July following my second year).

We returned to Manchester in November feeling more confident, and had two clear wins before a very tough battle with Aberdeen in the semi-final; Erik pulled us level right at the end and Sean won the nail-biting tiebreak to put us into the final, where Kwasi – who’d sworn in one of our matches, which got mentioned on Page 3 of The Sun (years before he became even more famous as Liz Truss’s Chancellor) – had a great match, and we had a big win. What a moment that was, and what a feeling!

In 2011 the Christmas University Challenge started, and I was surprised to be asked to be on that too, with three new team-mates who were all ‘celebrities’/distinguished people. Again I was on the winning team, thankful to get a set of questions in the final that suited my team more than the very impressive Warwick team whom we faced.

And recently, right at the end of 2025 there was a special series featuring one good team from each previous series of the Christmas University Challenge. I was delighted to be on the show yet again. Things went very well in the first round; then we lost a close match to Durham in the semi-finals.

I have been told it seems that there are only 4 people (who were first on the show together in the 1970s) who have been on more episodes of University Challenge than I have, in all the years it aired. So I feel very lucky: certainly there have been very many better quizzers than me on the programme (I’ve had excellent team mates, and have been in the right place at the right time).

I am not, though, the only UKMT related person to have made it onto the show. It might not be obvious that maths problem solving and having a mind in which academic trivia sticks should be related traits. But of the last 8 teams which have represented Trinity College, Cambridge on the student version of University Challenge, 7 have had at least one team member who had made it as far in maths as the UKMT Easter Olympiad training camp when they were at school!

Furthermore, 4 students who were in the UK maths teams of which I was the Leader, went on to appear on University Challenge and in 2 cases they were part of teams which actually won the whole series – Richard Freeland and Linus Luu.

Coming back to my volunteering, it has been a delight to work with so many great students over the years: capable, enthusiastic and very grateful for the help that volunteers can provide. Quite a number of them have become professional mathematicians, creating new maths for the world; I’m sure that UKMT has helped inspire them, and I am really proud about that. It’s also been amazing to work with so many wonderful volunteers who have become good friends over time, and whom I look forward to meeting up with again at marking weekends, etc.

Tony Gardiner inspired me to see the beauty of maths when I was still a school student, and he worked well into the 2020s for UKMT; I miss him today. Geoff Smith has brought on the training of teams over the past 25 years with his tremendous passion and energy. There have been so many other inspiring characters and friends.

Things turned full circle after many years – when I was Leader at the 2007 Balkan Olympiad in Rhodes. Dominic Yeo was in the team; now he is the Leader every year of the UK team for the IMO. And the Deputy Leader in Rhodes was Vesna Kadelburg; now she and I each have sons of the same age who are themselves entering UKMT competitions through their respective schools. Another generation is enjoying the beautiful and challenging maths that UKMT provides; maths that genuinely has made such a difference to my own life.

You can watch the Christmas 2025 episode of University Challenge in which Robin features, through the BBC iPlayer.