Stephen Fry is set to star in a new BBC radio documentary, guiding two of the nation’s newest beloved brainiacs in their quest to find out whether general knowledge has any practical application.

The show, Monkman and Seagull’s Polymathic Adventure, will also be produced by David Edmonds, a senior research associate at Oxford University’s Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics and a JC columnist.

The stars of the new show, Eric Monkman and Bobby Seagull, were catapulted into the limelight after their run as rival captains in this year’s University Challenge.

After vanquishing Mr Seagull’s Emmanuel College, Cambridge, team in the semi-finals, Mr Monkman and his team from Wolfson College, Cambridge, ultimately lost to Oxford’s Balliol College.

Monkman and Seagull’s Polymathic Adventure will see the pair investigate whether their encyclopaedic store of general knowledge is actually useful in the real world.

Mr Fry, a career polymath, will star in the Radio 4 documentary, in a supporting role to the unlikely heart-throbs. 

Mr Edmonds has produced radio shows including the popular podcast series Philosophy Bites, which has been downloaded more than 33 million times, and has authored philosophical books Would You Kill the Fat Man? and Wittgenstein’s Poker.