Sweet Charity

The annual charity quiz night. For Thames Reach Bondway. On Tuesday. At the New Connaught Rooms. Ten rounds of eight questions read at a brisk, verging on the martial, pace. By BBC News 24 presenter Chris Lowe (he likes a beer and a sandwich apparently). Broken Hearts can only muster two players and so we start with a ten point lead (non-league quiz teams started with 16). We do okay. At half way we are top of the Quiz League of London teams but this lead is soon eaten up with mistakes. Peter Deakin’s questions are good but they are not quite suited to the likes of me or people who can name members of the Roll Deep crew. Questions on canal sideponds, pets in The Archers, the contents of a Tommy’s knapsack, Lake District peaks, catchphrases from characters on the radio show ITMA, Jules Stein songs and the meaning of the northern dialect word cludgie are beyond me and beyond even Sean. Not quite his generation either. A cludgie is apparently a toilet. If we are going to do slang words, why stay away from the modern playground? According to my 13-year-old sister I am a stig – which comes from which popular children’s book later adapted into a TV series and so on. Try and use that. And there’s always the Urban Dictionary website. Although the quality control is frankly rubbish. They’ve even invented words to rhyme with orange.

We finish eighth out of 50 teams with 64 points. We score full points on the name the year in the decade round, but so do all the serious contenders by the sound of satisfaction sweeping the front tables as the answers are read. Two or three other devastating rounds producing scores of four and three do for any serious contending. We are four points off the runner-up spot; but, as ever, it might as well be a chasm rather than a corridor. Some people give the pair of us cheeky looks as if we have purposely decimated our teams to get the head start, but, yes, come to think of it, it could be a worthy tactic, if you actually knew enough. But we don’t. At least not yet.
But you know we always learn things at nights like these: 10-9 means “repeat message”, Prokofiev’s Opus 60 was named after Lieutenant Kije, the 1966 Franks Commission report centred on Oxford University, Henry Dean was famous for publishing rag books, the first medal awarded to all ranks in 1816 was the Waterloo Medal, a ‘knave-girl’ referred to a boy or youth, and the popliteal vein and artery are in the knee. However, we should have got the Frankish ruler Clovis introducing Salic Law – that’s what I call universal knowledge. I can’t say I’m too disappointed as a result and it always makes a nice change, especially at the end of the league season. There weren’t too many errors that made me punch myself in the face or bite down on random objects for not getting them. It’s always better to feel resignation rather than regret after a quiz.

Well done on Stuart for winning a raffle prize and congrats to Priory Nomads and Rising Sons for their runners’ up and winning spots. To be honest I doubt we would have done much better if we had a full team out (yeah, that’s a challenge). The canals! The canals! One part of this nation's neglected transport infrastructure that is never igrnored by quiz-setters.

And what exactly is Bayley doing in the picture in the Team Times? Is he walking an invisible dog?