Bobby Seagull became a cult star as a contestant on University Challenge in 2017. He is now an obsessive quiz enthusiast, secondary school maths teacher, a doctorate student researching maths anxiety at Cambridge University and a long-suffering West Ham fan. On University Challenge, he met Eric Monkman, with whom he presented the Radio 4 programme Monkman & Seagull’s Polymathic Adventure and the four-part BBC 2 series Monkman & Seagull’s Genius Guide to Britain. They have just been re-commissioned for another BBC 2 series out in the autumn, Monkman & Seagull’s Genius Guide to the Age of Invention.

He is the co-author of The Monkman & Seagull Quiz Book and co-presents the Maths Appeal podcast series. He is also author of The Life-Changing Magic of Numbers. You can often hear Bobby’s puzzles on Radio 4’s Today programme as well as read his columns in the Financial Times.

Maths is everywhere in the world around us and this makes us all mathematicians. For Bobby, maths was instrumental in unlocking the secrets of everyday life from the randomness of football results, to organising his time and his choice of music. Using stories from his own life, Bobby brings his infectious enthusiasm to everything from the right number of friends to have to the power of prime numbers controlling everything from credit card numbers to cicada hibernation habits. You’ll never look at your maths lessons in school the same way again!