I’m always interested about the varying standards of local pub quizzes. There are two main things at play here: the average difficulty of the questions, and the ability of the competing teams. And there are well known examples of all four of the possible outcomes from these two variables at quizzes in Cape Town.
Last night’s quiz turned out to be the easiest from this point of view: without wanting to sound rude, the standard of the teams playing wasn’t great, and the level of questions was fairly basic. I’m comparing this with other quizzes we sometimes attend where at least one of the two variables is set to “difficult” mode.
Still, it was good fun, good company and nice to win some good prizes.
What last night’s quiz did offer – aside from the winnings and the enjoyment – was the most annoying woman in quiz history.
And I’ve been doing pub quizzes for 30 years.
We all know at least one of those people who always need to be the centre of attention, even when they’re actually already it, but for all the wrong reasons.
This lady was like that, but on steroids cocaine.
Loud, shrill, squeaky – ruining everyone’s evening.
God, she was irritating.
Even her teammates were embarrassed. One of them actually left early rather than continue to sit next to her.
There were numerous warnings from the host, but he tried valiantly to keep it good-natured until, during the second half of the evening, she decided to shout out the answer to a question, at which point he (quite reasonably) snapped, looking her directly in the eye and delivering the long-overdue and much-appreciated line:
Shut the f**k up!
Delicious.
I mean, sadly it had very little effect, but it got a decent cheer from the audience, and it was genuinely a nice thing to hear.
Thankfully, all of the other good things about the evening just about outweighed the mouthy bint. And thus, we will likely be back to defend our title next time around.