What Happens When The Original "Vision" Enters and Exits "The Machine"
How One Version Mutates Into the One That Lives Forever On The Webby Beb
I did this kind of exercise before with my People's Quiz piece but having roamed through some Gmail search results, I thought it would be interesting to publish the very first draft of the feature I wrote about the 2005 World Quizzing Championships; the article that only Stainer and one of the commissioning editors at times2 had ever seen.
As you will notice, the final feature was homogenised and, to my initial horror, was further amended with stuff I had exchanged in e-mails with the aforementioned editor. In fact, I got so sulky I even considered having a bit of an Alan Smithee moment. However, now it is all in the past all is forgotten and absolutely forgiven. Who cares? It's just a bunch of words isn't it? It's certainly not the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But still at the time, I was rather peeved by the process.
Strange too, to compare the then (two and a half years ago) and the now (how our world has changed). Things move so quickly; time so fleeting. I may just shed a tear or two in remembrance (or just scream at this bloody keyboard, which is driving me batshit crazy because the space bar has become an insolent, stubborn bastard deserving of a good thrashing. Preferably, with a branch of birch. Grrrrr.)
This is the final version "I'm a Walking Encyclopaedia" (I DID NOT WRITE THAT HEADLINE. If I did, I would certainly be deserving of public pelting with rotten fruit and veg, and verbal derision of the greatest magnitude)
This is its protoype, along with the pen portraits that never made it in
(Please remember that I wrote this in June 2005 and absolutely no attempt has been made to correct the errata therein. It is as it was, and will forever be. Personal opinions may well have changed significantly in the intervening period.)
Get up at 6am. Sit in bed. Crack out the encyclopaedias. Learn and write down questions around 188 facts, including who designed the Duchess of Windsor's 1937 wedding dress? (Mainbocher). Or what music did Boozoo Chavis and Clarence Garlow pioneer? (Zydeco). Go to work with a brain further colonised by trivia.
Now, you will ask, why would you want to do that, you weirdo? I confess there is a seed of madness in me, but hardcore preparation for this week's World Quizzing Championships, run by the UK's largest trivia organisation Quizzing.co.uk, at Silverstone provides sufficient explanation.
My life as a quizzer began when I was a bored sixteen-year-old, who began watching the much-missed Channel 4 show Fifteen-to-One. By 23, I had already been its second youngest ever contestant and a series runner-up, and made the top ten in two British championships.
The method I have described has been the same since I appeared on University Challenge in 1999. By throwing as much factual mud at the walls of mind, I hope that some of it sticks. Evidently, enough of it does.
In Saul Bellow's novella Seize the Day, the conman Tamkin claims: "Facts are always sensational". I have always agreed, or at least thought that enough sensational facts exist to have kept it interesting for so long. Might I also reassure you that I only ever sink into this revision cocoon a month before the WQC. Once they are over, fiction-reading normality resumes.
People assume the best quizzers sleep in duvets knitted from their copious prize money and have poorly built catamarans lining their driveways. The truth is my TV winnings amount to £50. That is all. I have been banned from more than 30 shows because, as one producer told me, I was "too good". The belief is that if you put a person who is "too good" on then they will crush the opposition and it will make for boring television. In my case, prohibition is even more astonishing
because I am a mixed race twenty something; a demographic that shows desperately want to use.
The professional quiz player is a myth. Nobody can earn a living wage from regular and diverse quiz exploits. No such cash-rich circuits exist. The days of easy quiz machine winnings are long gone, and pub quizzes seem to offer increasingly pathetic top prizes like £20 bar tabs.
There is one exception: Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? It really is the big pay-off. The last few years have seen a surge of acquaintances appear on the show and win enough money for me to feel a succession of pin-axe stabs of crazed jealousy penetrate my heart. In truth, this sensation stems from my cowardice about making the thousands of pounds worth of phone calls that the bravest of the brave made to get on.
Rumours of a Celador blacklist, which may have stemmed from quizzers' well-founded paranoia, have put off many big names from hitting the phones. Yet only a fortnight ago Trevor Montague, a man vilified as a cheat for appearing on Fifteen-to-One more than was allowed, made it into the chair. Never mind that Trevor only won £1,000; this is the man many see as the second best quizzer in the nation and who was fined in court for his alleged subterfuge in the quiz arena. He appeared to be a double dose of poison. If they let him on, well then, could anybody – even Kevin Ashman, his Phone-A-Friend that night – get on the show?
Shall I say something about Kevin? I must. Kevin is the British, European and World individual champion. His dominance, as well as body type, age and decision to shave off his moustache, mirror almost exactly darts legend Phil Taylor. Kevin will undoubtedly win the British leg of the World Championships. I cannot say, for certain, whether he will retain his world title because of the much-increased and therefore volatile field.
But Kevin was not the first world quizzing champion. Nope, that happened to be me. I went to the very first World Quizzing Championships at Villa Park in 2003 so demoralised at my form that I arrived late hoping to miss the individuals. To my surprise, not only did the organisers delay the start for me, but my alcohol-fractured mind also yielded three more correct answers than my nearest rival Pat Gibson, who would become the fourth jackpot winner on Millionaire a year later (ouch). World champion at 24: an age so foetal-like in trivia terms that Kevin Ashman did not start quizzing until he was a year older.
What could explain it? Well, Kevin's absence may have had something to do with it. Also the fact that only 45 people took part, compared to the 500 or more in 2004 and the thousands who will compete simultaneously in 12 countries this year. I compare it to Uruguay winning the 1930 World Cup; a plucky underdog wins against limited but quality opposition.
Sadly, my 2004 title defence crumbled at Old Trafford, when my decision to travel on the train from Littlehampton, West Sussex to Manchester on the day of the championships resulted in scrambling my brain so effectively that I "burned" about 40 answers on the written 240-question quiz that I should have got (normally I waste only about ten). The result? 14th world-wise and 9th nationally. Rubbish. This year I just assume I will perform disappointingly because pessimism is the best remedy for any potential debacle.
These are interesting times for the quiz world. The non-televised circuit is still embryonic, and has far to go before it can compare with chess and Scrabble on a range of bases including rankings, regular competition, media coverage and quantity and quality of technical literature. For too long, the behemoth of TV has provided a quasi-competitive arena and enough glamour for quizzers, while strangling any potential for elite quizzing away from television screens.
But things are changing. Event attendances are growing. People are beginning to thrill to the idea that you do not have to have a camera shoved in your face or be promised cash to love competing. Microsoft's MSN Search sponsorship too marks the first time a corporation has invested money in such a tournament.
You may also wonder why the Americans have absented themselves. Elite US quizzing, and when I mean elite, I mean vastly superior to the likes of us bumpkin Brits, is based on their University Challenge-style Quiz Bowl circuit. The concept of a written quiz, currently the fairest method of measuring each competitor's knowledge, is anathema to them. Therefore, some Americans have dismissed Euro-quizzing as "bush league". Perhaps time will change their mind.
Player Pen Portraits
Kevin Ashman, 45 – Kevin has won every title going and holds the record (41) points score on Mastermind. He is also the question setter, Jorkins, for Radio 4's Brain of Britain and a member of the eponymous panel on BBC2's Eggheads. During Quiz League of London matches, I've often watched in fascination as Kevin reached back into the vast archives of his mind to pluck an obscure fact as if he was reaching into a physical filing cabinet, gnashed my knuckles in despair as he did so. Kevin, however, is a supremely nice man, whose extreme modesty does him every credit. It is rumoured that the only derogatory thing he has ever said about anyone was about Virginia Bottomley.
Position in 2004: 1st
Pat Gibson, 43 – Another lovely man (the obnoxious idiots and arrogant bastards tend to infest the mediocre or bottom levels), this Irish part-time computer programmer for the Tote has made great leaps in the last few years; an unusual feat in that nearly every quizzer's knowledge appears to stay in stasis. Once, he was quite bemused to find Daily Mail reporters hiding in his bushes, but then that is whathappens when you win a million quid on TV. A self-described "well-read scholar", he is also favourite to win this year's Mastermind, having scored 31 in his first round match taking Quentin Tarantino as his specialist subject.
2004 position: 2nd
Ian Bayley, 30 – Ian is a member of my quiz league team, the Broken Hearts, and a 2001 British champion, who built a God-like reputation at Oxford for his supernatural prowess on the buzzer. His lack of a social filter coupled with his enormous quiz abilities makes him something of a Bobby Fischer. At a pilot, I once watched him voice his utter contempt for Americans to host Rod Liddle while the audience guffawed at his chutzpah. Oddly, Ian's holds the record for losing the
most matches (three) in the Jeremy Paxman years of University Challenge. Tends to shut his eyes and caress buzzers quite suggestively.
2004 position: 5th
Nico Pattyn – Across the briny sea lies the Belguim quiz nation, perhaps the most serious and scholarly in Europe. While we British muck about in pubs, rot our brains with beer and test ourselves on the most parochial and trivial subjects, the Belgians ask each other incredibly detailed questions that actually acknowledge a world beyond their borders. Described by one top quizzer as "one of the few people who can give Ashman for his money", pony tailed European Championship runner-up Pattyn may be the best arts and culture player in the world and has a stare that, quite frankly, frightens the living bejesus out of me.
2004 position: 3rd
I did this kind of exercise before with my People's Quiz piece but having roamed through some Gmail search results, I thought it would be interesting to publish the very first draft of the feature I wrote about the 2005 World Quizzing Championships; the article that only Stainer and one of the commissioning editors at times2 had ever seen.
As you will notice, the final feature was homogenised and, to my initial horror, was further amended with stuff I had exchanged in e-mails with the aforementioned editor. In fact, I got so sulky I even considered having a bit of an Alan Smithee moment. However, now it is all in the past all is forgotten and absolutely forgiven. Who cares? It's just a bunch of words isn't it? It's certainly not the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But still at the time, I was rather peeved by the process.
Strange too, to compare the then (two and a half years ago) and the now (how our world has changed). Things move so quickly; time so fleeting. I may just shed a tear or two in remembrance (or just scream at this bloody keyboard, which is driving me batshit crazy because the space bar has become an insolent, stubborn bastard deserving of a good thrashing. Preferably, with a branch of birch. Grrrrr.)
This is the final version "I'm a Walking Encyclopaedia" (I DID NOT WRITE THAT HEADLINE. If I did, I would certainly be deserving of public pelting with rotten fruit and veg, and verbal derision of the greatest magnitude)
This is its protoype, along with the pen portraits that never made it in
(Please remember that I wrote this in June 2005 and absolutely no attempt has been made to correct the errata therein. It is as it was, and will forever be. Personal opinions may well have changed significantly in the intervening period.)
Get up at 6am. Sit in bed. Crack out the encyclopaedias. Learn and write down questions around 188 facts, including who designed the Duchess of Windsor's 1937 wedding dress? (Mainbocher). Or what music did Boozoo Chavis and Clarence Garlow pioneer? (Zydeco). Go to work with a brain further colonised by trivia.
Now, you will ask, why would you want to do that, you weirdo? I confess there is a seed of madness in me, but hardcore preparation for this week's World Quizzing Championships, run by the UK's largest trivia organisation Quizzing.co.uk, at Silverstone provides sufficient explanation.
My life as a quizzer began when I was a bored sixteen-year-old, who began watching the much-missed Channel 4 show Fifteen-to-One. By 23, I had already been its second youngest ever contestant and a series runner-up, and made the top ten in two British championships.
The method I have described has been the same since I appeared on University Challenge in 1999. By throwing as much factual mud at the walls of mind, I hope that some of it sticks. Evidently, enough of it does.
In Saul Bellow's novella Seize the Day, the conman Tamkin claims: "Facts are always sensational". I have always agreed, or at least thought that enough sensational facts exist to have kept it interesting for so long. Might I also reassure you that I only ever sink into this revision cocoon a month before the WQC. Once they are over, fiction-reading normality resumes.
People assume the best quizzers sleep in duvets knitted from their copious prize money and have poorly built catamarans lining their driveways. The truth is my TV winnings amount to £50. That is all. I have been banned from more than 30 shows because, as one producer told me, I was "too good". The belief is that if you put a person who is "too good" on then they will crush the opposition and it will make for boring television. In my case, prohibition is even more astonishing
because I am a mixed race twenty something; a demographic that shows desperately want to use.
The professional quiz player is a myth. Nobody can earn a living wage from regular and diverse quiz exploits. No such cash-rich circuits exist. The days of easy quiz machine winnings are long gone, and pub quizzes seem to offer increasingly pathetic top prizes like £20 bar tabs.
There is one exception: Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? It really is the big pay-off. The last few years have seen a surge of acquaintances appear on the show and win enough money for me to feel a succession of pin-axe stabs of crazed jealousy penetrate my heart. In truth, this sensation stems from my cowardice about making the thousands of pounds worth of phone calls that the bravest of the brave made to get on.
Rumours of a Celador blacklist, which may have stemmed from quizzers' well-founded paranoia, have put off many big names from hitting the phones. Yet only a fortnight ago Trevor Montague, a man vilified as a cheat for appearing on Fifteen-to-One more than was allowed, made it into the chair. Never mind that Trevor only won £1,000; this is the man many see as the second best quizzer in the nation and who was fined in court for his alleged subterfuge in the quiz arena. He appeared to be a double dose of poison. If they let him on, well then, could anybody – even Kevin Ashman, his Phone-A-Friend that night – get on the show?
Shall I say something about Kevin? I must. Kevin is the British, European and World individual champion. His dominance, as well as body type, age and decision to shave off his moustache, mirror almost exactly darts legend Phil Taylor. Kevin will undoubtedly win the British leg of the World Championships. I cannot say, for certain, whether he will retain his world title because of the much-increased and therefore volatile field.
But Kevin was not the first world quizzing champion. Nope, that happened to be me. I went to the very first World Quizzing Championships at Villa Park in 2003 so demoralised at my form that I arrived late hoping to miss the individuals. To my surprise, not only did the organisers delay the start for me, but my alcohol-fractured mind also yielded three more correct answers than my nearest rival Pat Gibson, who would become the fourth jackpot winner on Millionaire a year later (ouch). World champion at 24: an age so foetal-like in trivia terms that Kevin Ashman did not start quizzing until he was a year older.
What could explain it? Well, Kevin's absence may have had something to do with it. Also the fact that only 45 people took part, compared to the 500 or more in 2004 and the thousands who will compete simultaneously in 12 countries this year. I compare it to Uruguay winning the 1930 World Cup; a plucky underdog wins against limited but quality opposition.
Sadly, my 2004 title defence crumbled at Old Trafford, when my decision to travel on the train from Littlehampton, West Sussex to Manchester on the day of the championships resulted in scrambling my brain so effectively that I "burned" about 40 answers on the written 240-question quiz that I should have got (normally I waste only about ten). The result? 14th world-wise and 9th nationally. Rubbish. This year I just assume I will perform disappointingly because pessimism is the best remedy for any potential debacle.
These are interesting times for the quiz world. The non-televised circuit is still embryonic, and has far to go before it can compare with chess and Scrabble on a range of bases including rankings, regular competition, media coverage and quantity and quality of technical literature. For too long, the behemoth of TV has provided a quasi-competitive arena and enough glamour for quizzers, while strangling any potential for elite quizzing away from television screens.
But things are changing. Event attendances are growing. People are beginning to thrill to the idea that you do not have to have a camera shoved in your face or be promised cash to love competing. Microsoft's MSN Search sponsorship too marks the first time a corporation has invested money in such a tournament.
You may also wonder why the Americans have absented themselves. Elite US quizzing, and when I mean elite, I mean vastly superior to the likes of us bumpkin Brits, is based on their University Challenge-style Quiz Bowl circuit. The concept of a written quiz, currently the fairest method of measuring each competitor's knowledge, is anathema to them. Therefore, some Americans have dismissed Euro-quizzing as "bush league". Perhaps time will change their mind.
Player Pen Portraits
Kevin Ashman, 45 – Kevin has won every title going and holds the record (41) points score on Mastermind. He is also the question setter, Jorkins, for Radio 4's Brain of Britain and a member of the eponymous panel on BBC2's Eggheads. During Quiz League of London matches, I've often watched in fascination as Kevin reached back into the vast archives of his mind to pluck an obscure fact as if he was reaching into a physical filing cabinet, gnashed my knuckles in despair as he did so. Kevin, however, is a supremely nice man, whose extreme modesty does him every credit. It is rumoured that the only derogatory thing he has ever said about anyone was about Virginia Bottomley.
Position in 2004: 1st
Pat Gibson, 43 – Another lovely man (the obnoxious idiots and arrogant bastards tend to infest the mediocre or bottom levels), this Irish part-time computer programmer for the Tote has made great leaps in the last few years; an unusual feat in that nearly every quizzer's knowledge appears to stay in stasis. Once, he was quite bemused to find Daily Mail reporters hiding in his bushes, but then that is whathappens when you win a million quid on TV. A self-described "well-read scholar", he is also favourite to win this year's Mastermind, having scored 31 in his first round match taking Quentin Tarantino as his specialist subject.
2004 position: 2nd
Ian Bayley, 30 – Ian is a member of my quiz league team, the Broken Hearts, and a 2001 British champion, who built a God-like reputation at Oxford for his supernatural prowess on the buzzer. His lack of a social filter coupled with his enormous quiz abilities makes him something of a Bobby Fischer. At a pilot, I once watched him voice his utter contempt for Americans to host Rod Liddle while the audience guffawed at his chutzpah. Oddly, Ian's holds the record for losing the
most matches (three) in the Jeremy Paxman years of University Challenge. Tends to shut his eyes and caress buzzers quite suggestively.
2004 position: 5th
Nico Pattyn – Across the briny sea lies the Belguim quiz nation, perhaps the most serious and scholarly in Europe. While we British muck about in pubs, rot our brains with beer and test ourselves on the most parochial and trivial subjects, the Belgians ask each other incredibly detailed questions that actually acknowledge a world beyond their borders. Described by one top quizzer as "one of the few people who can give Ashman for his money", pony tailed European Championship runner-up Pattyn may be the best arts and culture player in the world and has a stare that, quite frankly, frightens the living bejesus out of me.
2004 position: 3rd
posted by That Quiz Guy at 8:08 AM
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