Quizmasters
The pub is quieter tonight than it has been for ages. While it’s always nice to have a full house for a quiz, it is also nice to only mark 10 team sheets at the end of each round. It’s slightly surprising that there are not so many people in, because the snowball prize is massive, and I feel throughout the quiz that people are seeing it as just a slightly annoying distraction before we get on to the serious money. Actually it’s probably just me that’s seeing it like that. The quiz is fairly successful although some people dispute an answer involving Harrison Ford. All I can say is, I got the fact involved from an article in The Guardian, and they are not known as the Grauniad for nothing.
Once the tiresome business of the main quiz is out of the way, we’re onto the snowball. My number is 250, a nice round number, and not only that but the bar woman wrote down the amount in the pot for us to announce on the back of my ticket, so all possible omens are with me. And yes, my number is drawn, for only the third time in three years. Normally when a quiz setter’s ticket is drawn I feel deeply suspicious, but tonight I think anyone harbouring such thoughts is being incredibly uncharitable. I hurry up to the front of the pub, insofar as it’s possible to hurry half a metre, and pick my envelope. I feel good and I’m hardly hyperventilating at all at the thought of going home £650 richer.
“Clem Hemingway was the real name of which character from a popular British sitcom?“, says Marcus.
So I won’t be going home £650 richer tonight then. I can’t even offer a guess, and I’m then disgusted to find that the sitcom in question was the answer to one of my questions in round four. Luckily, no-one else in the pub knows the answer either.
Because the pot is so huge, up to three tickets are drawn each week these days, with the second and third tickets being worth a potential £250 and £125 respectively. The second ticket drawn belongs to a team who are trying to circumvent the “five tickets per person” rule by pooling their tickets, but Marcus is having none of it and ensures that the person who bought the ticket answers the question. The person they wanted to answer the question looks visibly pained as his team-mate gets it wrong. His misery is then compounded when the third ticket drawn belongs to the same person. “Please, please can’t I answer this one?” he pleads, just before his friend gets it wrong again. I’m delighted - if I can’t win the snowball I don’t want anyone else to either.
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