Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Quiz Report

So Nige and I steered the Literary Review team - known as The Outsiders -  to a clear victory at last night's PEN Quiz. Technically we came seventh, but the six teams above us had all engaged in bribery, coercion and unnatural practices. Ed Balls was not the answer to any question and neither, to general disappointment, was Alistair Darling. We weren't asked which three countries in the world didn't contain any of the letters in 'mackerel', which is a pity because, thanks to Ed Caesar, we knew they were Fiji, Djibouti and Togo. We also weren't asked which tube station has either five or eight - my memory plays tricks - consonants in a row, which is also a pity because Nige knew the answer, though he forgot to tell us what it was. The Mail on Sunday won because, I was told, they pay a man to spend the whole year learning everything. So full is his memory that he has forgotten how to speak and delivers his answers through a complex system not unlike Morse Code. Oliver St John Gogarty was the model for James Joyce's Buck Mulligan and Frederick the Great played the flute. The pea was delicious.

11 comments:

  1. Tough luck, quizzers. I imagine that not only had the Mail on Sunday trained a work experience child for a year purely for this event, but that same child had also been given top secret Dacre-only access codes to Associated's Any-Question-Answered style text service.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks, Ed, but I persist in believing we won.

    ReplyDelete
  3. A famous victory indeed, Bryan (and Gerald the lobster played his part, though, for security reasons, I had to keep him out of sight). The question I posed was: Which Underground station contains 6 consonants in a row? No conferring...
    And while we're about it, to what question in 'Sparrowhawks!' the answer? (Captain B, you're barred from this one).

    ReplyDelete
  4. "And while we're about it, to what question in 'Sparrowhawks!' the answer?"

    What kind of hawks are especially fond of sparrows?

    ReplyDelete
  5. Knightsbridge. What do I win?

    ReplyDelete
  6. You win the unstinting admiration of your peers, Johnny. Who could ask for more?

    ReplyDelete
  7. Hee hee. Sounds like you boys had a blast!

    ReplyDelete
  8. We did indeed, Susan - and, Johnny, since no one's come up with a better answer/question, here's the real one:
    In 1851, the Duke of Wellington was asked how the exhibition halls of the Great Exhibition were to be kept free of sparrows. His one-word answer was 'Sparrowhawks!' He was like that.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Sparrowhawks. Good one. Was Jeffrey Archer the answer to any question yesterday? That would have been my suggestion.

    ReplyDelete