Today's guest is the London-based school teacher Bobby Seagull.

Bobby's known to many people in the UK for a star turn on the quiz show, University Challenge.

This is their captain.

Hello, my name is Bobby Seagull. I'm from East Ham, the London Bar of Newham.

His initial moment in the spotlight has led to a part-time career in the media,

fronting TV shows, and becoming something of a mathematics cheerleader.

But there's much more to Bobby's story,

which includes all sorts of fascinating twists and turns.

Music which includes all sorts of fascinating twists and turns. It's not uncommon when I do these podcasts for the person I'm interviewing

to send me a few kind of little briefing notes and a few things to look at just to help with my research.

You sent me six pages of bullet points totaling

2,392 words. What does this say about you? What can I learn from you from this fact alone?

I think I'm someone that likes to be prepared. Again, I'm a school math teacher. I always tell my

students, do your homework, do your research.

But actually, partly I've had some negative experiences on podcasts and interviews where I've turned out for an interview, but they literally didn't know who I was. They're like, who are you? You're a Bobby Seagull? Oh, we're going to talk about what? Physics, is it? No, no, maths. So obviously that's completely different. but I've got into sort of the habit of for, this is a podcast, or there's a TV interview, giving them some notes about that might help them sort of assess my interest and background.

The only thing that this was, it was meant to be like a few bullet points, maybe 10 bullet points, but I got carried away.

And it's actually quite nostalgic for me because during the process of writing ever, I started asking my dad, oh, where's the old stamp collection? Where's the old magic set? I try to find my brothers and I, we used to create a fantasy football prediction league in the mid-90s. So actually it was a road trip for me. So I'm sorry that you sort of saw my brain splurge on paper.

I found it fascinating though, reading all about you. And like we can't possibly cover all these

points you've got here. But it was almost like a chance for me to reflect on my life. It was

like, you know, lockdown is there with sort of a, you know, term is approaching in a couple of

weeks, normal school term,

and there's a chance for me to take a step back and go, oh, why do I really love maths?

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