Another "I am NOT a Ringer" Quiz Evening

Mike makes a triumphant fist-salute. For getting a single question right.

Our table number

The pig that was stripped bare and consumed by participants


Last night I had the "pleasure" of attending one of those PR-driven digital-something quiz nights, which are basically all about free booze, piles of free food, meeja people everywhere, quiz questions and a comedy QM, in this case the surprisingly tall Sean Lock, who make predictable jokes about The Sun and The Independent, and TV reviewers being fantastic audiences for people who host TV shows and try to make people laugh via the medium of television. You know, the quiz nights that make ordinary quizzers really jealous.

It was held in a garage. A big one. No, actually it was the Classic Car Club on Old Street. The whole point of the evening was the relaunch of UKTV G2 as a channel called Dave (because we all know someone called Dave and he's always apparently the "home of witty banter" and loves having stuffed bears and giraffes lying around his wood panelled home). I should have known that every round would be based around the programmes it was going to repeat in an endless cycle of insanity for all eternity: QI, Have I Got News for You, Top Gear, Never Mind the Buzzcocks (channel staff acted out the intros - in the case of Sir Duke very very badly), and so on, but NO, I decided to wing it. Ignored the schedule I did. A tragic mistake. Unfortunately, what totally screwed us was the Catherine Tate/Little Britain round. It was the only double points round (ten rather than 20 points were required) and it required full names and their catchphrases. Inside Soap got 20 and we got 12. We knew then, just like at the Garden, that it wasn't going to be our night. The prophecy was fulfilled. That's what killed us in the end. And all because we don't spend hours watching BBC cash cow, character-driven comedy. No wait, most of my team do, being TV listings peeps, but the remembrance of names and exactitude is a talent few are blessed with; the few being the geekiest of the geeky. Bloody geeks. Who work at Inside Soap.

Generally, it was the little things that also contributed towards our sixth place/four points off the top situation. Not identifying the richest dog in the world (Gunther the IV?!), being too bloody clever with the 1938 Time Person of the Year (we put Haile not Hitler), waiting too late to put "Can't Smeg Won't Smeg" for a Red Dwarf question .... I could go on ... ok, I will ... not spotting the cheerleader connection between Cameron Diaz, Teri Hatcher and George W Bush. Going for the wrong choice in the £60m/£30m Anne Robinson divorce newspaper headline. Ok, I'll cease the recitation of fatal errors. But it all adds up. ADDS UP ... *GRRRowl of desperation echoing round my room.*

And, you know, it is the little things that add up to an annoying, teeth-clenching whole that contribute towards your downfall. Always. It's like constantly nicking yourself with a penknife the morning after, while cradling a hangover of foggy and annoyingly dull proportions. And I do it again and again. Just look back on previous reports on quiz nights and matches. One litany of pain after another. Except for when we win the league and I go "meh". And writing the previous few sentences will not stop me from doing so again and again until this blog dies as all blogs do in the end.

However, I did learn that the armadillo is the only other animal apart from the human to suffer from leprosy and that there are three golf balls on the moon. At least I got a half for Perodua (a Top Gear inspired Behemoth question, but one that sadly omitted the Kelisa detail for half a point ... the booze-addled brain couldn't quite reach for that detail; it coming out as Persil for some mysterious reason). Oh well. You lose some, don't get the iTouch (I SO wanted one of those: an iPhone without the hassle of the phoney-contract bit) and then you try to get hideously drunk on the free bar whilst having arguments with pissed-as-a-fart Radio Times staff members who proclaim that Bob Dylan is THE greatest living musician and possibly the greatest human being of all time and that Thomas Pynchon is the greatest living novelist because he writes about 'EVERYTHING!' (to which I said what about Philip Roth? And he said "Garsh-geee-gooo-aaccck" and I went off on one about Gravity's Rainbow being his entire raison d'etre for such a profound statement and The Crying of Lot 49 being the most difficult to read novella I have ever had the sweet, slightly rewarding yet stultifying pain to come across. At least that's how I remember it, possibly in a Homer Simpson discussing Wittgenstein whilst wearing a top hat way). Then you wake up wondering for about ten minutes what you did the night before (Seriously. That's what I did this afternoon).

Heat magazine, led by none other than Boyd Hilton - the man who wrote a bleeding book on Little Britain and whose name features in one of their sketches, won by a miniscule margin (do you smell something piscine and fishmonger-ish therein?). They looked as if they hadn't been let out in the sun for about a year. Good hog roast though. Even if there was a disappointing lack of apple sauce, gravy and stuffing to go with it (should have brought my own. On second thought, maybe not). Just as disappointing as losing the quiz, though there was the consolation of coming out as top newspaper. Actually that is complete rubbish. I really did want that iTouch. Cue Chris Langham jokes from Sean Lock (I was going to ask him about his utterly disastrous gig at The Fighting Cocks in Kingston - where I saw Dara "My God I Have Sweaty Tits When I'm Performing" O'Briain on Monday night - but I didn't and lacked the temerity to say "My mate Paul said you were about as hilarious as having a truckload of ultra-viscous cow dung dumped on the audience's heads!". He smokes you know. He nadged a fag off one of me team-mates. How totally un-shocking!)