Withington Pub Quiz League - Quizbiz 17/10/07

The Girls march on but both of their closest rivals from last season (the History Men and the Charabancs of Fire) lose

The Results

Albert notched up a fairly convincing home win at the Fletcher Moss against Snoopy's Friends

Charabancs of Fire slipped up at the White Swan to Albert Park, who thus made it a hat-trick of victories on the night for the Albert Club teams.

Opsimaths beat the History Men at the Albert Club in a match of jollity, exasperation, triumph and much raucousness - in fact everything a good quiz evening out should be. Prize moment came in the themed composers round when Ivor (yes, Ivor!!) blurted out Stephanie Beacham as the answer to the "Who played Jonathon Hart?" question. I think it'll be a few weeks before his fellow historians allow him to forget that!

Napier Girls scored an emphatic home victory at the Griffin against X-Pats.

The Men TCH lost out to the Electric Pigs to a set of questions that proved pretty tough for both sides.

The Paper

Ethel Rodin set this week. "Tough but fair" was the verdict from Albert Park (see Fr M's comments below). "Like pulling teeth" was the comment from the Griffin. The aggregate scores were on the low side but not rock bottom so it was not an impossible quiz. I think the problem most people had was the amount of time it took to get through the paper. Most questions had plenty of scope for debate - and many of the answers too! At the Club Jitka struggled with small sized font, complex grammatical constructions and lengthy questions. Round 5 Question 1 was a case in point. An excellent puzzler about Attlee succeeding and preceding Churchill as Prime Minister - but the wording left us perplexed and led to much debate. To be fair, Roddy owned up to the wording for this question being faulty in his email attaching the question paper. Being a Londoner manqué I really liked the one about the tube stations that had changed their names but it provoked cries of "southern ponce" from the rest of the room. Who said Mancunians were parochial?

Question of the Week

This week the Pigs' vote goes to Round 8 Question 3:

What links avocados and orchids etymologically?

- though at the Parrs Wood Hotel, it seems, the answer (in a somewhat more basic form) could be said to apply to all the questions.

Click here to see the answers to this and the rest of the week's questions and answers.

Fr Megson

Tahini Sunset

A Chairde,

     7:15 of a Thursday morning and still no Fr Megson at the breakfast trough. Gretchen, his recently de-nazified housekeeper, felt her pert yet ample bosom heave with relief and anxiety in equal measure. She could live with the thought that the miserable old bugger had popped his clogs in the middle of the night. But for him to do so with her weekly pay cheque lying as yet unsigned on the kitchen table was cruel beyond belief.

     Lighting her pipe and slipping on her best deerstalker she surveyed the house for clues. The trail of discarded underwear and beer-sodden clerical garb from the front door to his bedroom told her that he had indeed made it home from the quiz in Ladybarn. Why though was the kitchen in such a state of disarray? Why should anyone ransack her condiments cupboard and spill jars of her famed homemade tahini paste over such a wide area? Why should any sane person feel compelled to use the ensuing goo to smear across the walls the single word FECK in crude disjointed lettering? Gretchen shuddered. She had been in the presence of a psychopath overnight and he had not even bothered to visit her room!

     By now in urgent need of some sustenance Gretchen raced to the laundry basket and groped. Deeper and deeper she groped. Her heart sank further as it became apparent that she groped in vain. Her two bottles marked HOLY WATER - NON POTABLE had disappeared. These bottles had been more dear to her than life. They had been given to her by a wise blind farmer on Carrauntoohil shortly after she had parachuted into Ireland from Duisburg. He had said that they contained a magic elixir called poitin which his family had been distilling since before the coming of the Sassenach. It was sacred to the Irish and was traditionally drunk before funerals. It varied from drinker to drinker but, generally speaking, the funeral would be required about three days after drinking it.

Gretchen was overcome by grief. The woman who had single-handedly fought her way out of Stalingrad now found that she could not live without her poitin. She swooned to the floor and wallowed miserably in self-pity and tahini paste......

As indeed did the author when he blew last night's quiz on the final question. An excellent quiz against excellent opposition. Both sides contested every point with a ferocious dalliance that increasingly tested our QM's endurance until he was reduced to a Basil Fawltyesque moment at about 11 pm when he politely beseeched each team to "Just answer the bloody question!!!!"

........and then it was just me and the QM, eyeball to eyeball on the final question. The bar about to close. One point needed for a very honourable draw. Two points and I would be more famous than Jonny Wilkinson was in 2003. All my team looking smug and signalling with at least 30 fingers in the air. Mark and his Parkers looking resigned to a very unjust defeat.......

If ever there was a moment not to say CHICK PEAS, that was it........................Who says it's only a bloody game?

Fr M