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Tuesday, May 23, 2006

It's a team, Jim, but not as we know it.If you can name this football team, you could already have won a major prize. Unfortunately for our ragtag band of quizzing no-hopers at the Devil's Dyke last night, we couldn't. Which goes some way to explaining why we only came 4th out of five teams. We even failed to win the bottle of wine for best team name. But hey, that's what happens when you allow yourself to be persuaded that (a) 'Can't Buy Me Love' is a cool name for a quiz team, and (b) that everyone will get the satirical reference to Paul & Heather McCartney. Needless to say it wasn't and they didn't.

Personally though, I've always believed it's the taking part that counts. Although that was before I found out they were offering free ice cream for the winners of the picture round, at which point taking part went out the window, and winning became everything. So it was slightly galling when they proceeded to hand us twenty pictures of international football teams (the one above was number 11) and expected us to be able to name them. Naturally we went for all the obvious ones - England, Germany, France... unfortunately the compiler of the quiz chose Costa Rica, Paraguay & Iran. I know ice cream needs to be worked for, but frankly it was ridiculous. Although not as ridiculous as one of the neighbouring teams, who managed to get 20 out of 20. I'm sorry, but anyone who can regognise the Serbia & Montenegro national side without access to the internet is clearly cheating in my book. The country hasn't even existed since Sunday.

But anyhoo, despite our obvious failings, a good time was had by all. Lisa knew the name of Dannii Minogue's character in 'Home & Away', her mother knew that pilchards are a member of the herring family, and our friend L impressed us all by knowing that the dish Belle Helene contains pears. That was just before telling us about his latest adventures on Gaydar ("What you want, when you want it") (although if what you want isn't gay men, you could be disappointed). So he's an expert on more than one type of fruit.

My own personal highlight was the question "Cork comes from which tree?". We all looked blank, so I dived in and suggested the rubber tree. Which was greeted with a certain amount of laughter and derision. I immediately defended myself with the words "Well it's got to be some kind of light wood. It's not going to be oak, or anything like that". Sometimes I really should keep my mouth shut.

But in my defence, I did know the name of the second Carry On film, Steptoe & Son's horse, and that Peter Cook played Richard III in Blackadder, so I think I earned my place.

Anyhoo, we may have failed to win £100, a bottle of wine, and as much ice cream as we could eat, but we have pinpointed the recipe for future success: The winning team had seven members, 2nd had six, 3rd & 4th had four, and the last placed team had two. So next time we're booking a coach.

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