quiz update

Despite our very good start a couple of months ago, the race to be crowned champions at The George Quiz looks like going right down to the wire. We're currently one point in front with the redoubtable Diggers on Tour just behind us and the longstanding thorns-in-our-sides Arse Pizza a point or two back from them. It all depends on next week's final, in other words.

The bad news is that we're playing without our captain, who has been transferred to a pub quiz team in Barcelona, but we're playing on in her name and have been boosted by a Henrik Larrson style late transfer; returning hero Andy came back into the fold last night and helped us finish second - not quite on top but enough to secure our overall lead. I'm getting a bit nervous, now. Needless to say all hands are required on deck so if you're a member of Captain's Natalia's team and reading this, start revising now. We're gonna need you next Sunday.

me drinking in the pub tonight

No, really.

even mindless violence seems boring today

I promised Dave that I would give a full and frank account of his contribution to the pub quiz last night, as he was miffed that I spitefully left him out of my last appraisal of our team's fortunes (still top of the league!). I am happy, therefore, to rectify matters, although any account which fails to take into account that Andrew got us to third place pretty much single-handedly, would be slightly disingenuous. Nevertheless, it was jolly nice to have Dave chipping in, as it was the other members of our unusually large team last night.

The majority of us (well, everyone except Andrew) rolled in kind of late last night, arriving after a first round which we miraculously did pretty well on (thank god it was Andrew who arrived early, rather than me), just in time to start being slightly louder and more disruptive than necessary, probably because we'd all had dinner and several bottles of wine first. Mike, who is the quizmaster, gave us stern looks and looked at his watch, pointedly.

Dave, wanting a good write up, began his quest for notoriety by, erm, pretending to fall asleep and occasionally murmuring 'oh god', but was soon livened up by me and Dan taking an interest in a copy of Socialist Worker on the table, inciting him to start crying "it's all so boring!!!", repeatedly. Suitably woken, he spent the rest of the night shouting out answers, swearing, and drawing pictures of swastikas on every bit of paper he could find. We played our traditional drawing games, where you have to draw something and the next person writes it down. After a bit, Dave just started writing 'Dan is a Nazi'.

I realise that in describing him in this way, I have made him sound almost exactly like the psychopathic Vyvyan from The Young Ones, but he is in fact a mild mannered and sensitive young man.

Actually, thinking about this, it occurs to me that I repeatedly sound, both in this blog and in real-life, like the pretentious, egotistical, pseudo-liberal saddo Rik, which is a disturbing parallel.

Damn, wish I'd never started this now.

meet the quiz team

Keen Assistant Blog readers (you never know) and real-life chums will know by now that the epicentre, the very fulcrum of my week is the George Quiz on Sunday nights at, er, The George in Brighton's North Lanes, and Brighton's best pub quiz has been spiced up recently not just by a boost in attendance and an improved speaker system but by the introduction of the 'Champions of Champions League', whereby Mike exceeds his brief of counting up each week's scores and actually plots the various teams' progress over ten weeks. Although our team name tends to vary from week to week, our one constant is that we are expertly marshalled by the redoubtable Captain Natalia, so it's that name which, two weeks in, currently tops the Champions League:

Captain Natalia - 9 points
The Disappointing Sausage Roll Team - 4 points
Arse Pizza - 6 points
The Diggers On Tour - 5 points
The League Against Alternative Medicine - 2 points
The DIY Ramblers - 2 points
Alan's Love Asylum - 1 point
It's My Birthday, And I'll Quiz If I Want To... - 1 point

Given that, for so long as we're in the top three (if we go lower I might get grumpy and stop mentioning it), I'm likely to bang on about this repeatedly, I thought a quick introduction to the team - and their specialist subjects - might be in order.

Captain Natalia, 'The Guv'nor'.
The beating heart of the team, Natalia is our undisputed leader and rules over proceedings with an iron fist. If Natalia was deposed as leader, we would probably turn on each other, resorting to cannibalism.
Specialist subject: words of Spanish origin.

Andrew, 'The Politician'.
A man with a fact always at his fingertips and a mean cartoonist to boot (usually on other teams' papers), Andrew combines the guile of a Tony Blair with the underhand cunning of a Richard Nixon. Andrew is the Machiavellian genius behind our winning streak.
Specialist subject: Politics, maths and history. Just don't ask him to play darts.

Daniel C, 'The Flagmaster'.
Legendary in Brighton's Seven Dials area for his concentration and mental alertness, the Flagmaster is the peerless master of maps, the prince of peninsulas, and the recogniser of rivers. If it's in Africa, he can tell you the co-ordinates.
Specialist subject: All matters geographical.

Jonathan, 'Brains'.
So called because, er, that's the kind of derogatory name that all slightly self-important, show-offy smart-alec kids are given at school, 'Brains' is the jack of all trades and master of none, scattering overheard answers and wild guesses to the wind in the hope that one will stick, and doing his bit for the team by sucking up to Mike and talking about Dinosaur Jr while trying to look at the answers sheet.
Specialist subject: US indie rock from 1989-1992, stuff that was in The Guardian.

Victoria, 'The Scribbler'.
A devil with a pencil and notably intelligent, The Scribbler is not just an all-rounder but also the literary critic of the team, puncturing Mike's poorly phrased questions with a keen eye and lashings of poststructuralism. Always to be found with her head in a book, the Scribbler is 'write' about everything! Geddit?
Specialist subject: Literature, news and music intros.

Morgan, 'The Coder', AKA 'The Windsurfer'
Combining a brilliance with binary code with his athletic prowess, Morgan is a master of films and computer games, frequently saving our sorry asses in a movie round which, frankly, we invariably bomb without him.
Specialist subject: Outdoor sports.

Anne-Sophie, 'The Artist'.
The Artist has loftier concerns than mere quizzing, and, keen to apply her creative powers and obsession with animals, mostly just waits for the quiz to finish so that she can start handing round paper and pens so that we can play drawing games.
Specialist subject: Alsacian beer.

Chequers, 'Safe Hands'.
When all around start losing their heads, shouting nonsense and dribbling after too many beers, Safe Hands is the man to hold things together, staying focused and calmly sticking to the matter at hand. It's only his inquisitive mind that stops the team collapsing into chaos in round four.
Specialist subject: Film.

Dr. Dustin, 'The Professor'
Casting a professorial eye over the proceedings, the good Dr brings a philosophical eye to the quiz and a profound understanding of US geography and culture. More importantly, his presence gives Mike a chance to make some jokes about Americans.
Specialist subject: The beers of California.

Andy, 'The Channel Islander'
The Channel Islander's peculiar geographical origins give him a unique perspective on all things quiz - he is able to look on with a European's cool-headed detachment, and yet he is able to drink as fast and shout as loudly as any Brit.
Specialist subject: Rock.

Sam, 'Flash Gordon'
A priceless addition to the team, Sam is a font of knowledge on the subject of science and pseudo-science, dispensing secularist non-sequiturs and swatting away muddy thinking with enlightenment élan. He also knocks over pints a lot.
Specialist subject: Richard Dawkins, Walkers crisps.

Ant, 'The Kid'
New on the scene but slotting into the formation with consummate ease, the Kid is the enigma of the team - hard to predict, armed with knowledge beyond his years but easing his way smoothly into the swing of things. Big things are expected of this mid-season transfer.
Specialist subject: Too mysterious to have a specialist subject yet.

Think you'll agree we can't fail to win the league in the long run.

The Scribbler collecting this week's prize.

pub quiz report

Is it still an achievement to win Brighton's best pub quiz when there are arguably more people on your team than in the rest of the pub combined? Hmm, perhaps not. Well, we didn't win, this week, but then there were only five of us, unlike the week before when we romped home with about twelve. I attribute this week's distasterous performance to our positioning; a surprisingly busy The George had us crammed around the side into the elbow of the pub, where we were disorientated, asked to desist from smoking, and from where we could watch, fuming, as our rivals, Arse Pizza - who are normally out of sight - kept getting ten out of ten.

We are alarmingly good at some subjects and alarmingly useless at others. We are good at questions about

Geography (specifically flags and capital cities)
Record cover art
Politics
Football (if I'm playing)
Athletics and Cricket (if Andrew is playing)
and French, Spanish, German or Italian stuff (if Anne-So, Nat, Jess or Michi are playing)
Dingbats

We are ludicrously bad at:

Films
Children's TV characters
Titles of Pink Floyd albums
Picking the odd one out
Inventing amusing team names,

Although the latter has been made easier by our electing Natalia as our team leader, and the new rule that our team name has to start with 'Captain Natalia'. Last week we were 'Captain Natalia and the Zooniverse', which is a geeky half-reference to the Mighty Boosh. This week we were, in fact, 'Captain Miss Nat and the Lifting of the Burkha', which we liked at first because we thought it sounded like the title of a Harry Potter book. Then we got worried that people - especially any Islamic Fundamentalists in the pub (unlikely I know) - might think that we were racists or Danish, so Dave drew a helpful caricature of a nasty academic, and we hoped it would be clear that it was he, rather than any modest schoolgirls, that was the object of our derision. Yeah, we worry too much.

Once the quiz was over, and Morgan had unsuccessfully looked into the possibility of changing teams for next week, we were asked to come up with suggestions for future rounds. As you might imagine from our rubbish team name, we went completely blank and suggested a load of daft ones like 'Tottenham full backs from 1987-1992', 'Composting Methods' and 'Guess the final weight of Bulimic Pop Stars'. We were particularly pleased with 'Major Disasters: Estimated cost to human life', but our normally genial host demurred. So I think in the end our most realistic suggestion was 'guess the number of jelly babies in the jar'.

So if anyone has any clever ideas for a pub quiz round, please put your suggestions in the comments box below. We'll suggest them on Sunday so if you turn up the week later you might just find yourself able to take Captain Natalia and Arse Pizza out in a single blow.