Brains of Britain

The British Quiz Championships started a little late this year – a few contestants got onto the wrong coach. There they were, able to explain the workings of the internal combustion engine, but unable to get on a coach that said ‘Chesterfield’ in big letters on the front. “I’ve been in a car with some of them,” says CJ de Mooi – one of the contestants who managed to arrive on time – “and I had to show them how to use their seat belts. Frightening.”

For this year’s Championships, in the down-at-heel Harley’s Bar, there is no money at stake. Just points – and, for once, points don’t make prizes. They make up the UK rankings. And those rankings are very keenly contested. In the corner of Harley’s, de Mooi is looking over some dates. “What year did Henry IV die?” he asks, in a slight panic. As one of the organisers says, “It’s so nice to come to a place where that kind of thing really matters”.

De Mooi is that rarity in the world of competitive quizzing – a handsome man. So handsome, in fact, that he decided to change his name (de Mooi means ‘pretty one’ in Dutch) by deed poll. Now he wishes he hadn’t. When he was given a place on Eggheads, the BBC quiz show, some people said it was only because of his looks. And it didn’t help that, when he competed in his first ever quiz Grand Prix, he came last. For de Mooi, the 2008 Championships are all about pride.

For the last six weeks, he has been watching a selection of factual DVDs while walking on his treadmill. If he comes across anything useful, he gets off his treadmill, types it out, and records it onto a CD. “The best way for me to learn a question” says de Mooi, “is to hear it asked.” The technique appears to be working – de Mooi is confident that, in this year’s Championships, he will bury the ‘pretty one’ thing once and for all.

Mark Labett is the next to arrive. He has driven all the way from Wales, in his red MG-ZT. Like every other car he’s ever owned, he won it in a quiz. “Quizzes for me are a self-financing hobby” says Labbett. “Basically, I can go out every night of the week and come back with more money than I started out with. I try not to, because it pisses people off. But the fact is that some quizzes in Cardiff are winner takes all. And, if it’s £100 a time, it’s worth putting my coat on..”

Everyone wants to know where Kevin Ashman is. This year, apparently, Ashman hasn’t bothered with a revision timetable – like he says, what’s the point when you need to revise everything? Ashman has, in his time, been the World Quiz Champion and the British Quiz Champion. He is the 15 to 1 Champion of Champions, and the highest scoring Mastermind Champion ever. If ever anyone could afford to be a little bit relaxed about revision, it’s Ashman.

He has done some work on capitals and currencies. But not a lot. “There’s not much point” says Ashman. “A lot of the contestants now are IT guys with systems of information capture. They analyse questions from past competitions to work out what’s going to be asked in the future.” You won’t catch him ‘capturing’ anything on computer. He’s a one-finger typist who likes to read books. Ashman, as they say, is strictly old school.

He arrives with Olav Bjortomt, and the contestants who got on the wrong coach. Bjortomt is known as The Rock 'n' Roll Quizzer. But, as Bjortomt is the first to admit, all things in the quiz world are relative. It means he’s young – well, under 50. And he’s got a bit of haircut. But Bjortomt is a quiz ‘professional’, and actually earns his living from quizzing. As he sits down with the other contestants, however, and starts on the 240 questions, money is the last thing on his mind.

The questions range from science (“what is the family name given to substances based on the hydrocarbon benzene C6H6?”) to sport (“what is the predominant colour of Chesterfield FC’s away shirt?”). Bjortomt is frustrated that there is too much trivia – he wanted more on the history of thought. But then Bjortomt writes questions for University Challenge, and was told that his bonus set on 17th century Spanish artists was too hard. Maybe he’s not the right one to ask.

As I look down the paper, I remember the experts’ tips. “If in doubt, always go with your first answer,” Bjortomt had told me. That assumes, of course, that you HAVE a first answer. Labett advised me that, if it’s a quote, and it sounds British, put down Oscar Wilde. If it sounds American, put down Mark Twaine. And if it asks who first coined such and such a word, put Shakespeare. Even an expert quizzer isn’t beyond an educated guess.

Will Self criticised quiz show contestants – and their desire to show off trivia. “If we have shows like that”, he said, “then why don't we have shows about masturbation? They could call it I Can Knock One Off.” Ironic really – from a man who ended up as a quiz team captain on Shooting Stars. A show where Ardal O'Hanlon had to karate chop a bread stick, while Jarvis Cocker had to throw mini Babybels at blow-up Judy Finnigan. Maybe Self’s contempt of trivia came a little too early in his career.

These days, there is big money in quizzes – especially now that they have been discovered by television. Someone's Going To Be A Millionaire, a quiz segment run on TFI Friday, created the first game-show millionaire on 24 December 1999. But the highest prize remains the £2 million venture capital awarded by The e-millionaire Show on 16 July 2000. With prize money like that, it’s no surprise that we have become a country of game-show hopefuls.

And I’m one of them. I’ve got the Who Wants To Be A Millionaire contestant number on speed-dial. I've rung 18 times. Nothing. I’ve correctly answered questions about everything from Shirley Temple films to the numerical layout of the dart-board. Still nothing. But I won’t be giving up anytime soon. While I’m waiting on my call-back, I’ve been going on other quizzes. But I won’t rest until I’ve made it on to Millionaire. And yes, that is my final answer.

I started with Runway, a daytime show on ITV. It wasn’t exactly Mastermind, and I figured they wouldn’t pick me if I was a smart Alec. So I got a few questions wrong on the application form, and said I read the Daily Mail. I went on to win a travel iron and hairdryer. And a set of luggage with wheels. I really wanted to go on Family Fortunes because it had the stupidest contestants. ‘Name something red?’ ‘My cardigan’. That sort of thing. But for Family Fortunes I needed a family, and mine flatly refused.

The 50 hopefuls at the London auditions for Raise the Roof all seemed to know each other – there was clearly a contestant circuit. The first part of the audition was a written quiz. Those with more than 50% went on to the next round. Those with less than 50% shouldn’t have been allowed to make their own way home. Then we had to talk for two minutes. The subject didn’t matter. My talk about sausages must have wowed them because I was one of three chosen. We weren't the brightest, but we talked the most.

I met my fellow Raise The Roof competitors on the day of filming. We were from all of the ITV regions. Like a snapshot of British life – except that we were all painfully, painfully jolly. When asked if the Niagara Falls were on the River Niagara, I said ‘No’. I should have said ‘Yes’. So I missed out on the thatched cottage, overlooking the Devon village where DH Lawrence lived. The cottage would have changed my life. But, professional to the last, I kept smiling.

Then came my wilderness years. I went on Sale Of The Century. Not Sale Of The Century in its heyday – this certainly wasn’t the quiz of the week. It wasn’t even from Norwich. It was on Sky. And hosted by a retired linkman from Thames Television. I came away with nothing. Actually, I came away with a set of Polish crystal glasses and a train set. I took to doing daytime quizzes again. By now, production companies had learnt I could be relied upon to smile, and approached me directly.

Then came the big one – Wheel Of Fortune. A single mother from Liverpool was better than me at the game. But once the cameras started rolling, she panicked. And I’m talking about that rabbit-in-the-headlights kind of panic. My focus just kicked in, and I forgot to be nervous. My revision in the garden didn’t do any good, but I had worked out where the wheel would stop if it was spun in a relatively uniform way. I had developed, for want of a better word, a system.

Along the way, I won spot prizes of a doll’s house and a set of Italian bar stools. Not terribly handy for a bachelor without a bar. But I was told I could exchange the prizes after the show for a £400 cash alternative. I beat the two other contestants, and went on to play for the star prize – either a Suzuki Vitara or £20,000. I jumped for joy when I chose the envelope that said £20,000. And I jumped for joy again when I won. I can still remember that big cheque. So big it could have hurt someone.

That should have been the end of my addiction. But I couldn’t help myself. I wanted to come out of retirement, and talked my girlfriend into appearing on The Other Half with Dale Winton. My girlfriend is a classy woman. A film producer, no less. So volunteering to humiliate herself on a show like The Other Half (with a round that involves snogging complete strangers) was an act of such generosity that I asked her to marry me. When we turned up at BBC TV Centre – to be honest – I thought we would stroll it.

And we would have done. If we hadn’t had a row. The show is all about relationships, and my girlfriend dragged sulkily up the stairs five minutes after I did. The co-ordinators asked if I had any funny habits. My girlfriend said ‘His filthy temper’. Which isn’t actually a very funny habit. We then had to sing a song. My girlfriend did Bad by Michael Jackson. It was more like Michael Crawford. I did Sunrise by Rolf Harris. But nobody knew who Rolf Harris was. We didn’t make the shortlist.

My wife says that it rates as one of the most embarrasing moments in her life. But it’s one hell of a memory. And we still laugh about it – through gritted teeth. Which is why I’m so desperate to get on Millionaire. Not for the money, you understand. Although I’m not so much of a purist that I would go on Mastermind. All that effort for an engraved fruitbowl? I just want another memory to keep alongside the others. Although a new travel iron and hairdryer would be nice.

When Labbett wanted to get on Millionaire, he approached it systematically. He and fellow quizzer Richie Parnell staked £1,000 each to pay for phone calls. “It was like buying a lottery ticket” says Labbett. “We were backing ourselves to not do too badly. In the end, I won £32,000. And Richie won £120,000. Not a bad return. People used to ask Richie, ‘Why do you bother learning this stuff?’ But no-one has asked him that since he won on Millionaire.”

Bjortomt, who won the World Quizzing Championships in 2003, has got his own system. “If you phone at 2am on a Friday night” he says, “you are more likely to have a call back than you are if you phone the minute after the show has finished. Loads of people phone then.” But, even though he has people who are prepared to fund his entry (“It’s a bit dodgy… I can’t really talk about it”), Bjortomt is still waiting for his call-back.

These days, it’s women that the production companies want. But, when www.quizzing.co.uk, the UK’s largest quiz organisation, did a survey of its members, 70% of the women who replied said they weren’t interested. Of those, 97% said it was because they were worried about how they would look on screen. “You’ll find the women at these Championships get phone calls from Mastermind” says Labbett. “But not the men. It’s just not fair.”

The quiz world is very male. But that’s because it was born out of the pub quiz. “In pub quiz leagues” says Jenny Ryan, “you don’t confer. If you know an answer, you give a signal to the team. The signal is usually a clenched fist, across the table, in the face of your opponents. That’s an aggressive gesture. And most quizzes are written by middle-aged men. So they write about battles, cars, and beer. Maybe if they asked ‘Who became the face of Estee lauder in 2005’, it might be a bit fairer.”

There are 40 men at the 2008 Championships. But only six women. “Three of whom are single, and under the age of 40” says Ryan. “There should be fights over us. But, after a bit of alcohol, a lot of eigible bachelors make themselves ineligible. One of the top-ranked quizzers, when I went out to pick up my order-of-merit certificate last year, shouted ‘Get your tits out’.” So Ryan isn’t expecting great things from tonight’s disco. “Are you kidding? Last year somebody sat by the dance floor and pulled out a quiz book.”

According to Labett, there is a good reason for that. “I suspect that most of us would at least tick the boxes for autism” says Labett. “I have certainly seen one or two who would have ticked the boxes for aspergers. We like to be certain. The capital of Estonia is Tallin. Certain. 7 x 6 is 42. Certain. Ask us the capital of Estonia and we’re fine. But ask us ‘What does it mean if that girl over there is smiling at you?’ and we’ve got no idea.”

Labett was the first to finish the questions this year. “Part of the mystique” he smiles. But he might have done better to stay seated a bit longer. He finished 16th. Ashman was 3rd. Bjortomt was 4th. And De Mooi was 18th. “A personal best” he says. The winner was Sean Carey from London. With a wife, two children and a dog to look after, he claims he didn’t have time to revise. But, on the day, he sparkled. And, who knows, he might even manage to catch the right coach home……