I have no idea why people think I would be a useful member of a quiz team. Perhaps it is because I am so intelligent and witty and knowledgeable about the topics I am willing to discuss.
It doesn’t seem to occur to people that top notch quizzers aren’t very much like me at all – or rather the selection of topics that top notch quizzers are knowledgeable about don’t overlap much with my topics of interest.
Anyway, every so often I get asked…
…once…
…but on the occasions I have said yes, I cannot recall ever being asked back…
…and very often I say no. In fact, unless the event or companionship pleases me, I say no.
On this occasion, Jasmine Birtles asked me to join her, Brian Jordan, John Random and others. I have known those three since the early 1990s, through NewsRevue – here’s but one write up of a fairly recent regathering, including a picture of Jasmine and John.
Brian Jordan I hadn’t seen for a very long time. While John Random was the first NewsRevue director to use my material:
…Brian Jordan was the first performer to take my material to Edinburgh, in his gloriously-named show : Whoops Vicar is That Your Dick? (Sadly, you couldn’t get away with that title today):
Anyway, my point is, I was keen to meet up with this charming crowd as long as Jasmine recognised that I am not the quizzer she might have been hoping for. So when she asked me to join her MoneyMagpie team, I replied:
How could I possibly say no to that? But surely we have better general knowledge quizzers than me in our orbit?
Still, it would be lovely to join you and your team if I’m as good as it gets.
Hence, I ended up in De Hems Dutch Cafe Bar in Soho on a cold February evening as a guest of Marcus: By Goldman Sachs via MoneyMagpie.
In fact, I arrived in Soho a little early, so took a stroll down Chinatown memory lane at New Year time for a few minutes before entering De Hems.
It was great to see Brian Jordan again after all these years and it is always a treat to spend time with John and Jasmine. Also on our team were Susan and Annie, who were also delightful company, as was Annie’s son (who works for Marcus) and Tony Elliott who was our Marcus host on our table.
As usual, nothing that I really know about came up. No theatre, no early music, no sixties and seventies popular music, no cricket, no real tennis…
…what’s the matter with these quizzes?
On the few occasions I could answer a question with authority, at least one other person if not several others on the team knew the answer.
So I opted for the role of team cheerleader, to try and maintain the concentration and positive energy of my teammates. I also acted as the runner to take our answer sheets in – a role I tried to perform with as much gusto as my aching body could muster.
In the former matter, I (and indeed the team) was only moderately successful – we came fourth out of seven teams.
Somewhere on my bookshelves is a so-called humorous book from the 1980s called The Mackeson Book Of Averages – which was an alternative, stout antidote to the Guinness Book Of World Records. It is a very ordinary book. But if there is ever an update to the Mackeson Book Of Averages, perhaps The MonyMagpies team result in this pub quiz should be recorded in that book. That would enable me, Brian, Jasmine and John to add to our stupendous Guinness World Record via NewsRevue, plus my other Guinness World Record via Goodenough College.
But I digress.
In the matter of my role as team runner, I was awarded an MVP award (MVP normally means most valuable player, but in my case it was presumably most volatile player) – in the form of a bottle of Prosecco, which I proudly displayed in my trophy cabinet for about 2 minutes (long enough to photograph it):
…before handing it over to Janie for a more suitable purpose (drinking).
I think that Janie thinks that I won the bottle of bubbly for quizzing, so please, readers, do not disabuse her of that belief.
And talking of abuse, Jasmine reminded me that she wrote The Little Book Of Abuse some years ago, which is a bit of a coincidence because I had spent the preceding Tuesday evening with Rohan Candappa and others, also doing silly things in a room above a pub:
…and of course Rohan is the author of The Little Book Of Stress. I think Janie’s waiting area needs copies of both of those books…
…while the surgery itself is of course, in book terms, dedicated to The Price Of Fish.
On that final subject, I did a very clever deal with Tony Elliott of Goldman Sachs, who offered to buy a copy of The Price Of Fish if I, in turn, shovelled thousands of poundsworth of savings towards Marcus by Goldman Sachs. Good deal makers, these Goldman Sachs people – who knew?
Anyway, I shall not be using “mother’s maiden name?” as one of my security questions.
In short, the food, the wine, the company and the event were all top notch and most enjoyable. Our team’s quizzing though? Very average.