Denis: On pub quizzes and what constitutes a desert

Oct 12 2009 by Denis Kilcommons

I COULD have gone to the foot of our stairs, I was so surprised. The other night, I actually won a bar quiz.

This may shock those readers to whom in the past I have confided that I can’t abide pub quizzes. They killed conversation, I proclaimed. They ruined the ambience, I ranted. And besides, I couldn’t do them.

And yet the other night, at Derek’s 80th birthday party, I was triumphant. Well, me and the rest of our team: my wife Maria and those intellectual giants Ian and Jamie, although I have to say I did not rate our chances too highly when Jamie insisted that the largest desert in the world was Antarctica.

When the answer was eventually given as the Sahara, he took some stick.

Antarctica? I ask you.

It’s the first time I’ve done a quiz at a birthday party but Derek is renowned along the length of the Holme Valley for the quality of the quizzes he devises. And it was, to be honest, a tremendous lot of fun.

I named the author of The Shawshank Redemption and Maria named the actress who played Mavis in Coronation Street and Ian knew about horse racing and Jamie said Antarctica.