1 week ago
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You probably saw the recent story about a publican who grew suspicious of a team that won his pub quiz every week. He and his staff set about trying to discover exactly how they were cheating. Do you fancy testing your knowledge and recall of topical news? Before you read the next paragraph, for one point name the pub, and for two points name the suburb of Manchester where it’s located.
Although I have never set foot in The Barking Dog, or Urmston, as soon as this story broke, my inbox was full of friends and strangers forwarding the link and expressing their amazement – not only because it’s a classic hero’s quest in which good wins against evil, but also because it’s a strange case of life imitating art. This autumn, I published The Killer Question, a crime fiction novel with a plot almost identical to this, albeit with a murder mystery woven in, which admittedly the Urmston case lacks.
In my version, a mysterious new team, The Shadow Knights, arrive at a weekly quiz that’s vital to an otherwise failing rural pub. They walk away with the win every week and drive the quiz master to distraction. How can any team be so spectacularly unchallenged by his carefully crafted questions? Are they really such brilliant quizzers, or simply brilliant cheats? Then a body is pulled from the nearby river and everything changes.
Yet surely, you’re wondering, with the stakes so low in your average pub quiz, how could it possibly end in bloodshed? Well, I’ve been quizzing regularly for years now with a team of six to eight friends. Take it from me, there’s something visceral about the competitive nature of quizzing that can make any dispute feel like a fight to the death. Add to this the unspoken rule that the question master’s decision is final – even if they are subsequently proved wrong – and frustration levels can soar. One week you win by a country mile, the next come last by 20 points, while losing first place by a single point will trigger seismic feelings of devastation. Standup arguments are not unheard of, fistfights always a possibility, and murder … well, it could happen.
For instance, a few years ago my team tried a new quiz at a venue further afield than usual – an intrepid decision that would end in menace. Surrounded by strangers, we were subject to the usual unspoken suspicion reserved for any outsiders in town. But we crystallised these normal levels of hostility by leading all the way and winning by a large margin. We walked out, carrying our prizes of a chocolate bar each, through a gauntlet of disgruntled muttering pitched at just the right volume for us to hear every word. We never quizzed there again.
Given a perfect storm of personalities and inebriation, that palpable resentment could easily have turned deadly and provided the spark of inspiration for The Killer Question.
Yes, there are some quizzers who are just happy to be there and don’t mind coming last. What drives them, I’ve no idea because the rest of us leave rational values at the pub door. The Urmston team were using voice-activated smartwatches to cheat for a £30 bar voucher shared between six. Financial gain does not come into it. The stakes in a pub quiz are unlike any in the outside world; they are far, far higher. If they weren’t, this tiny local story would never have made national news.
So why did the story enthral an entire country? For me, it’s about knowledge and honesty.
Knowledge is power, and power means status, respect and self-esteem.
How much we know and how thoroughly we know the subjects on which we pride ourselves, especially if we have a professional interest, are intimately entwined with our personal identity. There are few things more embarrassing and humbling than confidently answering a question on your specialist subject, only to get it spectacularly wrong. I know. With degrees in English literature and screenwriting plus a career as a journalist, playwright, screenwriter and novelist, I rarely get an arts or literature question correct. Each one keeps me awake at night. How can I know so little about Dickens, Austen and Shakespeare?
Meanwhile, how knowledgable others perceive us to be is directly reflected in our social status. Winning a quiz has the effect of raising us above our contemporaries and such status must be earned. Anyone attempting to cheat this process of fair selection can be seen as a thief, stealing the win from an honest team, and can expect scorn to be rained upon them, as well as peanuts, pork scratchings and beermats. This is a level of disdain usually reserved for sports cheats, lying politicians and disgraced celebrities, all of whom can be seen to have unfairly elevated themselves above the rest of us.
In the quiz as in life, honesty is key. After all, most of the rules (no mobile phones, no eavesdropping, no glancing at another team’s papers) must be taken on trust, and this transparency extends beyond the quiz itself. For example, in the first episode of Nathan Fielder’s sublime HBO series The Rehearsal, a quizzer lived in such morbid fear of how his teammates would react if they knew he had lied about having a master’s degree (when he only had a bachelor’s) that he sought help from the TV show to finally come clean.
Quizzing is one of the more inclusive ways to climb the social ladder because it doesn’t necessarily favour the most privileged or educated participants. In The Wizard of Oz the Scarecrow wants a brain, but gets a blank scroll – a symbol of knowledge – that says he is clever and gives him the confidence to believe in his own worth.
Some of the best quizzers are people who don’t have a degree. They never got that piece of paper that proves they know things, so they strive to prove it in the quiz. They revise key topics: Premier League results, reigns of the kings and queens, Olympic records … and treat every quiz like a crucial exam.
The Barking Dog story reminded me why I wanted to honour the passion quizzers and quiz masters feel for their hobby, the healthy (and unhealthy) competitiveness, the joy of learning new things, of spending time with friends and making new ones. Could it end in murder? That’s The Killer Question …
