Hamish Champ: Learning about the joys of the pub quiz
I don't usually do pub quizzes. There's something about them that's never quite gelled with me. I feel the same way when it comes to watching snooker or Mastermind on TV. It all feels just a bit…meaningless.
However I do realise I am probably in a minority. I walk past pubs advertising quizzes all the time and by all accounts many are a raging success. A friend of mine's pub in North London even went as far as taking out Sky TV and replacing it with a quiz on a Monday night; his takings have rocketed.
But generally I avoid them. Until last week, that is. I was invited by a friend whose firm does public relations for the Family Holiday Association to get a Publican team together to take part in the World's Biggest Pub Quiz, which was raising funds for the FHA.
Even though it was in aid of a good cause I approached the evening with the sort of enthusiasm I generally reserve for visits to the over-40s men's health clinic; you don't think there's anything to worry about, but there's the nagging doubt that you'll go along and be asked questions to which you don't know the answers.
Still, it was for charadeeeee after all and so there we were, one of eight teams of people crowded around rickety, candle-lit tables in the upstairs room of a pub just off of London's Oxford Street.
Battle finally commenced and then the strangest thing happened: as the first questions were out of the way I felt a sensation begin to course through my being which I normally associate with being in the workplace or visits to Stamford Bridge. It was competitiveness.
After two rounds answer sheets were swapped between teams and that feeling only intensified. We could see from what others had set down that give or take a few hiccups we were likely to be in contention. Such glimmers of hope became blue-tinged flames of belief licking at the legs of people sitting around us. As we scored 100 per cent in a few more rounds our team of five's desire and ambition to win was fuelled still further.
On and on we went, much like those horsey blokes charging towards the cannons at Sebastopol. Such was the feeling of potential victory running throughout our team that some of us - OK, it was me - even got into disputes with neighbouring teams over the accuracy of some of the answers being read out by the quiz's host (it was DisneyLand that opened in 1955 when the fountains ran dry and the tarmac melted, you losers, not DisneyWorld).
Sadly it was our tactics that finally let us down. We played our 'joker' in the 'sport' round and only scored seven out of eight answers correctly, while virtually every other team 'jokered' on 'entertainment' and cleaned up. Chalk up it up as a lesson in the strategy of doing pub quizzes, old boy.
As it turned out we came a respectable second behind two teams tying for first place (that means you came third. Ed), yet as far as I was concerned the charity was the real winner, briskly followed by the fun we'd all had together, with the recognition on my part that quizzes can be great fun. And that the best place to hold them is in the pub.
