BasilRathbon
06-11-2007, 10:19
Whilst on a tour round town last night a couple of friends and I thought we'd go to the Red Lion on Charles St for their pub quiz. We paid our 50p took a quiz sheet and were then handed a list of 20 questions.
I was baffled; I asked one of the bar staff "Don't you read the questions out then?" and she said no, because as the pub was showing two seperate live football matches at the same time, it was too noisy.
We did the quiz, but to be honest this approach took all the fun out of it. Half the fun of the pub quiz is the way the whole pub goes quiet to hear each question, and the sound of several people all scratching their heads, conferring and scribbling, and the subsequent realisiation that either you've got a good chance of winning or no chance at all.
Half an hour later, the same woman came round to take the answers and marked each answer with either a tick or cross and told you how many you'd got. Again the sense of theatre was missing; how much more fun would it have been for them to read the answers out one by one, and for your team to have that "Well if you'd listened to me" comedy argument?
As we made to leave my mate said to me "That wasn't a quiz; it was an exam".
I understand the logic of not disturbing the football fans, but surely the pub could either have held the quiz on a different night or just shown the football in the back area by the pool table?
I was baffled; I asked one of the bar staff "Don't you read the questions out then?" and she said no, because as the pub was showing two seperate live football matches at the same time, it was too noisy.
We did the quiz, but to be honest this approach took all the fun out of it. Half the fun of the pub quiz is the way the whole pub goes quiet to hear each question, and the sound of several people all scratching their heads, conferring and scribbling, and the subsequent realisiation that either you've got a good chance of winning or no chance at all.
Half an hour later, the same woman came round to take the answers and marked each answer with either a tick or cross and told you how many you'd got. Again the sense of theatre was missing; how much more fun would it have been for them to read the answers out one by one, and for your team to have that "Well if you'd listened to me" comedy argument?
As we made to leave my mate said to me "That wasn't a quiz; it was an exam".
I understand the logic of not disturbing the football fans, but surely the pub could either have held the quiz on a different night or just shown the football in the back area by the pool table?