HOW TO WIN A QUIZ NIGHT WITH STYLE

So…. we are a competitive bunch, it seems. A few weeks ago it was announced that the next school quiz night would be on St Patrick’s Day. First item on the agenda for our merry team of 10 people was the name. Many were floated, few were deemed acceptable. Of the list of rejected team names the following ranked highly; The Dirty Protests, The Real PTA, The H-Block Massive and my personal favourite, The Kneecaps. The collective plumped for 'The Feckin Eejiots'.



Saturday was, as with many others I am sure, a whir of Mother’s Day gift preparation. In our house we had been rehearsing the Muppets song ‘The Happy Song' all week to be performed at the highest possible decibel to a possibly hung-over mother in bed, some old picture frames needed rubbing down and repainted and new pictures of Ginger and Blondie riding their bikes – both WITHOUT stabilisers – needed printing and insertion, the house had to be cleaned from top to bottom, washing done, along with the hamsters *spits* to ensure no domestic duties were required on Sunday and Mrs M got to enjoy the day in the peace serenity that she deserves. Preparation for the Mother’s Day lunch started with the labour intensive creation of a pea soup that requires two hours of flipping sieving to get it as smooth and tasty as possible – a quick bike ride with Ginger to buy some daffodils that were supposed to be hidden till Sunday morning, but instead were presented the second we got back from the shops in a fit of lovely exuberance and then the start of the Gaelic feast to be taken with us to the quiz.



What is there to hate about a potato?
Nothing. But I didn't use them for my feast
that would have been obvious.


I decided to make my only dish that I can produce that doesn’t involve mince, pizzas. Obviously pizza isn’t a renowned Irish dish. However, in a recent conversation with my cousin we did recognise that Northern Ireland benefited from the hapless Italian Diaspora (hapless as we have assumed that they got off the boat by mistake before it headed over to the US as swapping sun drenched poverty for just drenched poverty in post 1860 Ulster might not have been their aim) – I digress, what have the Italians ever done for us? Well, bringing with them many of our favourite culinary treats such as The Fish Supper, fish with chips; a 'poke', ice cream in a cone; and 'sliders', a slab of ice cream between two wafers, are pretty much top of any ‘great things’ list. As a child (and an adult) I am still amazed that my uncle(s) had actual accounts at ice cream parlours in Belfast where they could pull up the car, get the frozen ambrosia, get back in the car, drive away and not have to pay until the invoice hits the mat. So I made pizza, Irish pizza that looks a lot like..... pizza.



This Irish Chocolate Pizza seems to be
the entire rainbow of wrong.


We assembled in our living room, ten eager adults all up for the sheer joy of quizzing, certain team members being banned from writing the answers after the last debacle of the ‘we lost by 3 points all because XX didn’t write the answer we gave him/her’, possible rounds were carved up between us (important to note here that I was not allocated a round), a few beverages were consumed and off we went to the school laden with fizz, stout, ale and wine to lubricate the mind and a Bacchus-like buffet to graze through in-between questions. Our neighbours and fellow teammates had created dim-sum, spiced bread things, Parmesan fingers, a manchego and olive platter… the list goes on.



We sat down. We set out our food, XX was not given the pen and answer sheets. We began. Rounds one and two were good rounds, Irish people in the picture round (we failed to spot Iris Murdoch but this was counterbalanced by picking out Michael Collins). To be completely honest, yes there was a buzz, a tangible fizz about us that thought we could win, but this was tempered greatly by the need to just enjoy the evening, roll with each punch, and, at one end of the table, doodle the most offensive doodles imaginable on the answer sheets. The balaclava, raised fist and slogan ‘We Know Where You Live’ aimed at the quiz master was a delightful touch.



I am pretty sure that the 'Troubles' wouldn't have been
the same if certain people had worn this kind of balaclava.


The first two rounds put us within one point of the leading team and, I believe, set the rest of the teams adrift by around five points. There were 20 teams in the room with 10 people per team that is 190 people who were not on our side. It got just a little bit more serious. We had two great rounds, Irish literature was stormed, Irish general knowledge was general but knowledgeable - in one of these we accomplished the full 10 points the other 10 points plus a bonus, due to a Steward's Enquiry on one of the answers this bonus was also awarded to the entire quizzing fraternity/sorority. This bonus point will become important later on.



This is a bonus point. It is also an extra free parking space.


Picture round - on Irish things, Comedy round - Irish of course, more Irish general knowledge and Irish Music - by Irish-ish bands threw up some some surprises on our team. Debs (a relative newcomer) pulled some significant answers from the ether and this was coupled with Sarah’s deal-breaking knowledge of some quite frankly obscure answers. We were getting more and more sober and focused. This was a team effort in the truest sense, no answer was deemed a bad one (unless it was) there was democracy at work as we all separately scribbled our answers on our paper and they were handed to Red Headed Vicky to decide whether they were good enough or not to be submitted.

As the final scores were being ‘Excelled’ we were treated to the best of the worst raffle by our sublime MC and wife (a quiz pairing of unparallelled wit and warmth), including a half drunk bottle of Jameson’s and a stick-on moustache (rumour has it these prizes alone raised £1K for the school). The scores were ready. We had to sit through 18 team names before the words 'The Feckin Eejiots' drifted balefully across a room inhabited by slightly perspiring and inebriated parents. This was it. There was a tie for first place. In most other quizzes a tie is settled by a sudden death question, or a best of three, five, seven (keep going, odd numbers are best for this). But this is Essex. When a room fills with parents that have an average age of somewhere between 35 and 45 there is only one way to decide a winner. Ooh, remember that bonus point that everybody got due to the Steward's Enquiry? Yeah, us too.

A DANCE-OFF.

And with this, I was able to contribute to the team.

The rules were simple. House of Pain’s Jump Around was to be played, in keeping with the Irish theme (them being from California, which we all know is a suburb of Cork). The nominated members of the two teams (me and a guy from theirs) were to take to the floor and dance, when the chorus struck the dancer who generated the most air in the pursuit of lyrical and dance literality was to be declared the winner. The 198 strong crowd were to vote with their lungs, much like Take Me Out but without the studio, lights, contestants or Paddy.


Things I may have done in this dance-off:

• Attempted to intimidate my fellow contestant by dancing round him at groin level
• Attempted to intimidate my fellow contestant by chest bumping him during my jumps
• Considered pulling a back-spin into headstand but deciding I was 15 years too late for that shiz
• Lapped up the baying from the crowd like Robbie Williams in the late 90s
• Put my back out
• Won

This.....

And possibly this as well.......

(NB: I didn't actually place my foot on the wall, it just looks like I did)

Yes. That is correct. It was a dance-off, of course I won. As a caveat to this win, I should point out two major facts. My fellow contestant said he was from Leeds, he was never going to beat the home team on its own turf, but he gets my salute for being and absolute star for going for it and throwing his all into what was a magnificent show of men of a certain age dancing. The second point is that 'The Feckin Eejiots' won because of our team effort, every one of us played our part with dignity and style, and some would even escalate that style to panache.

Remember, there is no ‘i' in Team, in fact there is no ‘b’, ‘c’, ‘d’, ‘f’, ‘g’, ‘h’, ‘j’, ‘k’, ‘l’, ‘n’, ‘o’, ‘p’, ‘q’, ‘r’, ‘s’, ‘u’, ‘v’, ‘w’, ‘x’, ‘y’ or ‘z’ either.

THE SEASIDE THROUGH THE EYES OF A CHILD

Not sure how my six year old can spell 'features' and not 'shells' but hey. These are important reasons for living by the seaside encapsulated in a poem.

Is there a child Poet Laureate position available?

RHETORIC…. IS IT USEFUL? (THAT ISN’T RHETORICAL)

So…. @BBCQT is broadcast to our TV. This is the normal viewing process in our house: we sit and marvel at Dimbleby’s tie, we gaze at the Edwardian floral cornicing that has lovingly been preserved in the regional venue of choice or, equally we could, sit mouths gaping like basking sharks at the late 90’s faux utilitarian municipal meeting space thinking, ‘who on earth got paid to design that?’. We wonder who is going to be sat in the ‘Right Wing Reactionary Chair’ also known under a number of more adjectival terms, we wonder who the excitable child is that we have never heard of because we don’t read that newspaper or political agenda publications. We play guess the location based purely on the accents of the audience because we missed Dimbleby’s intro (sometimes this is harder than it sounds, stick a QT on national border and allsorts turn up to question the panel. Posh sounding audiences are also tricky; it took me 30 mins to decide that Carlisle was a person last night and not the venue). Sometimes, even when we know where the programme is being broadcast from we play guess the location, Sorry Dewsbury, I am sure you are an incredibly important town but until last night our lives had not crossed paths. We look forward to the one nonsense topical question about something ridiculous to break the tension of the serious work of debate that has preceded. We hunger for controversial figures to permit us to turn our valves and release our own vitriol and hate of their hate onto the internet. And deep deep down we long for everyone on the panel to say what they think and not take up a posture of polar opposition while not saying anything of any worth to anyone.

David Starkey never fully recovered from the
Harry Potter casting rejection.

Last night was a yet another example of this programme offering the panellists a platform for political vagueness and that holy of holy things, rhetoric. I like a bit of rhetoric, and sure on a programme called BBC Rhetoric Time it would be fine. Pontificating politicians attempting to woo us with beautifully crafted speeches where they pretend to understand what is like to be a citizen of this country battered around the head daily by pretend policies that are cooked up to divert attention from very real policies designed to either absolve the government of any responsibility or create an economically based society where only things that are able to be measured in wealth are of any worth.

The extent of Cameron's Big Society was
to introduce a no taller than 5' 7" policy
for the Cabinet.

However, Dimbleby does not host BBC Rhetoric Time, he hosts BBC Question Time, a programme where the public are allowed to ask a question of a politician and expect and answer. I know I am being a little simplistic about this, but it isn’t such a hard thing to do is it?

Let us look at the NHS and how the panel responded last night to questioning. They all pretty much swatted away the issue with yet another mantra on their party’s stance. Where are politicians who give their own opinions? They way it is headed, they may as well just send statements in and sit poor old Dimbleby amongst at stack of papers, each to be read out in response to any question asked, prefaced with ‘I hear what you are saying, but the real issue here is…..’

This is Nick Clegg's policy statement.
Well he has written down all his own
policies that have survived the Coalition

On the subject of the NHS reforms, whether you agree with the proposed changes in the NHS Bill or not, we have all been sold a common enemy – the NHS Manager. A feature of just about everyone’s rhetoric last night. Nurse good, Doctors (except GPs if you except Starkey’s view) good, Managers bad. And by using this triumvirate as the only model for the NHS in all their per-prepared posturing we fail to address any questions. The NHS is not just Doctors and Nurses sharing a basket with the bad apple of ‘manager’. This is of course utter rubbish and some kind of Toy Town view of the world that politicians are too scared confront should it highlight any lack of knowledge on their part and that the media are too cliché to acknowledge. Who actually wants a Doctor or a Nurse who has been given medical training having to be the carer of admin and management? Managers can do that job and can do it very effectively. Managers are not bad, bad managers are bad in the same sense that bad doctors are bad, bad parents are bad, bad politicians are bad – nobody is advocating that we get rid of the latter three though.

See if you can spot the Michael Jackson of the apple world.

Back to BBC Rhetoric Time. The olds skool politicians, Heseltine, Prescott et al, they all have the strength of their convictions and will happily opine on them, but for now, the greasy, uninformed ragtag bunch that keep being tested out on the public through this programme need to be pressed harder by Dimbleby to actually answer a question.

Important note here is that the producers are currently messing with out heads as they have started to mix it up a bit more these days with their seating plan – the left is on the right, the right is on the left, the comedy celebrity panellist is anywhere and the Lib Dems are as always nowhere in particular. I think I quite like this.

David and his ties. Rarrggh!

And where does Dimbleby get his ties from? We love his ties.