QuizList

Let’s just consider quizmasters and -mistresses for a while.  There are many good ones (and speaking of which, I hear Pat who used to do the Oxford Arms in Camden Town has a new quiz, but my informant neglected to memorise the location…) but there are some who are drunk on their own little bit of power and influence and who have broken many a quiz and quiz-player’s will.

Here are, from my point of view, is the countdown of the top five crap quizmasters and their comments.

5.    Only at 5, largely because I didn’t witness it, was the female QM who berated a good team for ‘taking money from my boys’ (ie students who sometimes attended the quiz).  However, I did witness her refusing to give out prize money because the person who went up to claim a winning score  was not the person who had purchased the quiz sheet. Good riddance to that quiz.

4.    At 4 is the QM’s uncle (apparently), who was doing the scoring (badly), and when I queried his addition on our sheet he said ‘If I’ve scored you wrong I’ve scored everyone wrong, so get lost’.

3.    At 3, higher because he was usually terrible and I encountered No 4 only once, is the QM who, again when we queried our score, said ‘You’ve been given a score for the round and that’s it’.

2.    At 2, and  it would have been top just for the sheer awfulness of No 1, is the QM who offered a joker on all rounds but then decided to add an extra question to Round 3, given teams who had picked that round in advance a distinct advantage. When I objected he said ‘Who cares – you’re not going to win anyway’.

1.    And yes – nothing can beat number 1.  The scene was described in a post a couple of weeks ago – when the drunks won the quiz.  A mild debate broke out about a football question (why is sport so controversial?) and the QM said ‘Well, even if I had marked you right on that, you still wouldn’t have won’.  That opened the doors and I made a comment about the ‘winning’ team who seemed to have obtained their answers from the cosmos somewhere.  Thing is, if it had just been that night, it might have passed by and been chalked down to experience, but we went back a few weeks later and were screwed even worse;  that was described in a very recent post though I made no connection between the two nights.  I’m not quite sure which of his comments is the worst, but possibly his saying ‘Welcome back’ when we returned for the second time is the most insincere – the ones listed above were just stupid semi-bullying comments, basically.

So that’s quizzing’s rich tapestry, nothing new this week and check whether Sunday is football-affected this week…