A musical about the legendary TV quiz show ‘University Challenge’? Really? If there was ever a concept to induce deep sleep then Starter for Ten at Bristol Old Vic would be up there.

But this is unique. Don’t miss it. Adapted from the stellar and hilarious novel by David Nicholls, this is a coming-of-age comedy feels warmly familiar, new and utterly delightful.

I was at university around 40 years ago and watched Starter For Ten with my undergraduate daughter, whose 21 and in her third year of study. She’s not keen on musicals but loved this.

The story follows gentle working class Essex lad Brian Jackson, (Adam Bregman). He watched University Challenge with his dad, who died too young, and is now off to study English literature at Bristol University, taking his dad’s jacket.

Time is magically slipped from childhood to uni and TV with a brilliant stage set.

Mum, Irene (Michelle Bishop) is trying to palm off the treasured family chip pan to her son, stuffing cash in his jacket as she waves a teary goodbye at the train station and abandoned wondering why he doesn’t call of come home. But she gets her life back.

You watch the amazing Fresher’s Week with societies galore trying to ensnare you – Christians, back-slapping rugby players, dark-room introverts and raving socialists.

My daughter laughed at the line you spend the second term trying to avoid those you met in the first. Those tender romances, essays written at the last minute, knocking back cheap cider while testing your intellectual and social muscles.

Like a funny, poignant thread lacing the story, breezes the wonderfully flamboyant Bamber Gascoigne, (Stephen Ashfield) who is University Challenge’s dapper compere, in a symphony of brutalist beige suits and coiffured hair that wouldn’t budge in a typhoon, popping out of fridges and wardrobes, winking at the audience. We loved him.

Brian is desperate to compete with the weirdos on University Challenge but gives all the right answers to sugar-sweet meringue Sloane ranger blonde beauty, Alice (Imogen Craig) so he’s only picked as a reserve.

There are so many hilarious moments, from Brian and Alice dining at Luigi’s pizza restaurant offered wine that’s less than a year old and vegetarian pizza with chips on top. When Brian visits Alice at Christmas there’s an eye-watering conversation exposing the Mariana Trench of culture in an instant.

Spencer, (Christian Maynard) is Brian’s childhood friend, who’s unemployed and comes to visit, sweeping Alice of her posh high horse and into his working-class arms that riles Brian in a flash.

Super-talented singer and actress, Asha Parker-Wallace, plays cool and feisty Glaswegian student Rebecca being a strident feminist hero who​