Question 1: Which animal has the longest tail? No peeking.
Question 2: Which country-pop star was originally named Eilleen Regina Edwards?
Question 3: When is Justin Trudeau’s birthday?
The answers:
The giraffe. Shania Twain. And December 25 1971.
Many of us love trivia. The not-so-serious stuff that clutters up our brains. Trivia is fun. An escape. Sometimes frustrating. But never boring. There’s a reason Jeopardy continues to be one of the most successful shows on television. And why Trivial Pursuit is still a staple in many homes and cabins.
All those three questions above were in a pub quiz I went to a couple of years ago with friends. Our team was on a roll and leading the entire pub with just a few minutes to go (I even knew the giraffe answer, thanks to one of my granddaughter’s picture books).
But the final category was sports. When they started asking for Superbowl champions two decades ago or who won a triple crown, we were dead in the water. Another team, which was smart enough to bring along a jock, but not smart enough to know the ancient capital of Turkey, won hands-down. Their insufferable fist-pumping and high-fiving made me want to throw an iambic-pentameter at them.
This Saturday, you’ll get a chance to take part in our version of a pub quiz: Mind Your Neighbours: The Take-Home Pub Quiz. It’s on at 6.30 p.m. on CHEK, and we’ll be running it for the next few weeks as a pilot.
Since there are no real pub quizzes happening these days we thought it would be fun to do one on television during the partial lockdown of our lives. We’ve asked Benji Duke, the cool British quizmaster who is a regular on the Victoria pub circuit, to host the show for us. And he’s going to make it fun.
The shows are produced and edited by Lindsay Nielsen, a creative producer at CHEK, along with Benji and yours truly. They’re a joy to make.
You’re going to be an expert at the inky-dinky by the end of the series. An inky-dinky is a two-word answer, each word with two syllables, that rhyme. Like inky and dinky.
So if Benji asks, what is: A scruffy monster from Scotland. The answer is Messy Nessy.
Because we’re not in a pub or shooting in a studio, we’re employing a novel format with perfect social distancing. Benji records the questions at home, and the contestants answer the questions in their back yards, or front steps, or wherever. There’s audience participation too. You get to answer a few questions at home.
The big prize? A Mind Your Neighbours mug and restaurant coupons, as we support local restaurants as they get back on their feet.
And don’t worry … even the sports questions aren’t too tough. Do you know, for instance, the official sport of The Vatican? Tune in Saturday night and find out!
Ian Haysom’s coronavirus diary will appear here regularly.
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Ian Haysom
