Sometimes the fates decree a fearful symmetry in popular culture. As the woman once dubbed the most hated in Britain prepares for an all too literal death, another contender for the title is born in the public imagination.

Jade Goody was ridiculed and humiliated for her stupidity and coarseness – her inability to identify East Anglia as part of the British Isles or to know that racism makes no one look pretty.

Gail Trimble, who in last night’s final did more than her bit to lift the University Challenge trophy for her team, Corpus Christi, Oxford, is being bullied on the web and by the redtops for her intelligence and her manners – for knowing that the common name of the tree Betula pendula is silver birch and for saying “Oh, well done” when a teammate knows the answer to a tricky question. The Daily Mail yesterday reported bloggers calling her “a hateful know-all” and a “horse-toothed snob”. The Sun caught her out with five pub quiz questions, all of which she flunked (but was nice enough to agree to answer).

For 20 minutes, it looked as if the tabloids could call their dogs off. After ten, the Oxford University team had failed to score and the Mancunians were on 70. The questions rained down from ever more obscure heights: vegetation rituals, horny sponges, unit vectors. Corpus never seemed to get their vital starter for ten. Manchester even knew that the first person singular future active of the Latin word for love was, when spelt backwards, Obama.

Jeremy Paxman, the effortlessly superior quizmaster, wanted to know the name for an annoying virtuous woman. “Gail Trimble,” half the nation, the unreconstructed half, shouted at their televisions. “Pollyanna,” piped up the woman herself, but she was wrong and five marks were deducted for her interruption. The answer was Goodie Two Shoes and Trimble looked as if she were about to sick up into hers.

Perhaps this was what logic dictated. Manchester University had, as Paxman pointed out, more than 40,000 students to draw from, Corpus fewer than 400. A gel-haired kid called Yeo looked particularly dangerous. He was so clever I did not even understand what subject he was studying. Corpus could not even seize the round on third declension Latin nouns, and Trimble is a classicist. But then something happened and the Oxford synapses started to snap, crackle and pop. Trimble knew the most repeated letter in “To be or not to be . . .” was “T” and from there she was off, playing a blinder with the asymmetry of Latin numerals. She knew her opera too, barely needing to confer on that round. The gap closed and then reversed. “The voice of Roger Tilling” rose to an excited shout. Suddenly it was so, so over for the northerners, not just a win for the little Oxford college but a decisive one, 275-190.

“You suddenly woke up and were going like a train,” Paxman said. Corpus had, in his words, “joined the immortals”. And so has Gail Trimble. The Fates would not be cheated, but then, since she is studying for a PhD in classics, she would know that.

Her starters for ten

— Which letter of the alphabet occurs most frequently in the line “To be or not to be, that is the question?” Answer: T

— The realm that according to Aristophanes was built by the birds to separate . . . [she interrupts]? Cloud Cuckoo Land

— Which of Shakespeare’s plays is the only one to be set in Vienna and concerns the city’s Duke adopting a disguise in order to observe the actions of his subjects, including his deputy Angelo? Measure for Measure

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