There's nothing new under the sun

- or so it would seem. Case in point. I won’t lie to you, there are times at work when I do allow myself to get sidetracked by some of the pupils at work, especially when they come up with something interesting or intriguing, which does actually happen more often than you might expect. Yesterday I was challenged by one of them to invent a new sport. Don’t ask how the topic came up, it’s a long and not very interesting story. Still, asked to invent a new sport I was, and the best I could come up with was extreme quizzing.

You must have heard of extreme ironing a few years back. In fact , as far as I know its still going strong, and you may well recall that when the M1 was closed back in April by Mill Hill a clip was posted on Facebook of a guy ironing on that stretch. If you’ve never heard of extreme ironing, well, that’s it in a nutshell basically. Taking your board, and getting yourself photographed or even better, filmed in the most unusual and preferably dangerous place you can think of. Substitute quizzing for ironing, and that’s it. Extreme quizzing.

Warming to my idea, and seeing visions of my new sport growing, and maybe even one day being a demonstration sport in the Olympics I went googling when I got home. You can imagine my chagrin when I discovered that ‘my’ new sport is not mine at all, and nor is it new. I’ve been beaten to it. Apparently there’s a whole Facebook group devoted to it. I couldn’t be bothered to check it out, but nonetheless, there we are, another dream of glory gone up in smoke.

Shame , though. I look back on my two and a bit decades of quizzing, and I can’t say that I have really lived dangerously at all. In fact, if you asked me the most unusual place I’ve ever played a quiz, the honest answer would be Pantyffynon.