Written for The Session:

I absolutely hate pub quizzes, but I think pubs should get me to write theirs.

I used to be an avid pub quizzer, they used to be fun. The questions were about normal things that a normal person would know and nobody knew all the answers. You didn’t have to cram your brain full of wild and weird factoids useful only for pub quizzes or seriously niche academia, you didn’t have to worry about whether people were using phones or not, you just rocked up, had a few pints and a laugh.

Nobody took them too seriously. Or at all serious. And nobody asked you to leave if you took up a table but weren’t taking part in the quiz, or tried to carry on your normal conversation while the Quiz Master was speaking.

But they changed. People would try and memorise more random facts than a deluxe Trivial Pursuit collection, they’d arrange their teams by who had knowledge in which areas. “We need a history expert for Thursday’s quiz, we’ll expect you there at 7:30”, yeah sod that I’ll be elsewhere having too many pints and a laugh. There would be The Group that won every week, usually made up of teachers from the local school, or some people that really needed to get out more. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love having conversations with folks who are unhealthily nerdy about topics. It’s comforting in a way knowing that they’re there to ask questions of.  But when it gets serious, then it’s lost its fun.

And then there was mobile phones, first with the quick “dash to the loo” to phone a friend, and then when smart phones came along there’d be the surreptitious tapping under the table. “Please turn off your phones ladies and gentlemen” and we see the return of the dash to the loo. I was present at one particularly tricky quiz who participants acted as though they’d all had the shrimp at the all-you-can-eat buffet next door. It was obvious they were cheating, because after a half hour of this none of the ladies came to the bar asking for the loo roll to be topped up.

So between the Quiz Experts, the cheating and the ostracization of drinkers, I really hate pub quizzes. Which is also why I’m so good at writing them – yes, I’m a straight, middle-aged white bloke, I have an ego you can see from orbit.

I used to attend annual internet community meet ups (Praise Nighthoover! (if you know you know, if you don’t be thankful!)) and ended up writing the quizzes, and they were memorable. I’ve quite a loud voice, so we didn’t ask for the background music to be turned off, or for non-participants to leave the room, we just had a laugh. I’d pick weird and random subjects for the rounds, ones no-one would be an expert in, but make the questions reasonably easy to just guess, because let’s face it, if you keep scoring nothing to low in a quiz, why would you keep taking part? But I got asked to do more sensible rounds, and this is when they went from memorable to legendary.

I started with the General Knowledge round. A sigh of relief was audible over the chatter from the bar.
“Which artist painted the famous image of General Kitchener?”
A few people could see where this was going and there were smirks.
“Which war was General Lord Raglan noted for?”
The smirks were replaced with laughs as others caught on to my idea of General Knowledge.

I’m yet to see a general knowledge quiz that actually contains general knowledge. It’s all niche factoids, so might as well run with the theme.

The second round was the music round. One table of pop buffs (they have their own radio show, it’s very good) got particularly excited about this.

“Each answer in this round is the theme tune to a Sci-Fi film or tv series, you just have to write down which film or series.”
Excited anticipation ensued, this internet community were all sci-fi geeks, with just a few worried faces from those concerned about being able to hear the music over the noise in the pub.
“And here’s your sheet music…”
The penny dropped and I was greeted with stares and glares. Especially from the pop buffs who knew so very much about music, but nothing about musical score.

So yes, I’ve a different take on pub quizzes. I don’t take them seriously. The fun has gone, even when they’re “just a bit of a laugh”, and I miss that. Now excuse me while I go outside and shout at some clouds…