Stick it up me bum and set fire to it.

The lad’s growing up. Bound to happen when you think about it – in fact it would be weird if he didn’t. This is my excuse for sometimes forgetting myself and saying things in front of him that I shouldn’t. The lad in question is my oldest grandson Ollie, and what brought this home to me was when, as we were watching Pointless together, Alexander asked ‘What are you going to do with the money if you win?” and Ollie, putting himself in the place of the contestants replied, “Stick it up me bum and set fire to it.” Which is entirely my fault because it’s what I often say whenever this banal question is asked on this or a number of shows.

I’ve come clean about my misanthropic tendencies before now, and this is just another example because small talk on a quiz show is just something I don’t enjoy. In particular, ‘What are you going to spend the money on?’ is a question that really irritates me. It’s probably because I often feel like I’m being manipulated. Contestants, so it seems to me, are obliged to sing for their supper. It’s not enough that you have the chance of winning some wedge, you have to justify why you should have it. Hence the cliched trotting out of anniversaries, family holidays etc. etc. Worthy things like treating a deserving member of the family or achieving a long held dream. You just know that none of them is ever going to say “I’m going to spend it on three things – Alcohol, prostitutes and carpet cleaner (in that order).’ Quite right too – one should never mention carpet cleaner before the watershed. But the misanthropic schoolboy in me, who is never that far from the surface, still harbours a wish that a contestant would say, in response to the question, “Stick it up me bum and set fire to it.” Or something equally facetious. Incidentally, in my Mastermind semi final I made a fairly decent crack in the inter-round chat. Remember them? Now that’s one thing I don’t want to see being brought back to Mastermind. My semi final subject was the Prince Regent, later King George IV, and in response to one of John Humphrys’ questions I said “Yes, it’s true, George did spend a huge amount on wine, women and song, but then he did waste an enormous amount as well.” Huge laugh from the studio audience. Cut out in the edit. Honestly.

Coming back to misanthropy, this coming week in the club there is the last quiz before Christmas. Which means a themed quiz. Okay, now I am not a great lover of themed quizzes. Not only that, the setters don’t do more than a very few quizzes in a year, and . . . oh look, you know what a miserable sod I am so I might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb. . .  they’re really not very good at it. They make very avoidable mistakes and wouldn’t know an interesting question if it bit them on the behind. And while I’m getting a little better at holding my tongue at some of the obvious howlers that get perpetrated in the quiz from time to time, it’s still very frustrating. I can give you an example. This week was Dai Norwich’s turn. . . (so called because a) his name is David and – oh, I’ve told you that before have I? Fair enough) He asked “How many players are there in a lacrosse team?” I think you might guess what’s coming next. “Men’s or women’s?” I asked. He looked at me blankly. ”You see there’s different numbers in both.” I added helpfully.

“I dunno.” He replied. “It’s the one I’ve got written down here.”

You know how it goes, I’m sure. Now, yes, there’s no reason why Dai should know that there’s a different number – well, other than the fact I’ve asked a version of the question myself which mentions the different numbers several times in my quizzes over the last 20 years or so. But come on. If you’re asking a  question where you know nothing about the subject yourself, verify the answer that you have, especially if you’ve got the question out of ‘My First Quizbook’ or the equivalent.

I hope I’m wrong. But I dunno, I can just see us being confronted by things like “What does Bethlehem actually mean?” Because without a little bit more to the question, that’s actually unanswerable. I’m guessing that if they did ask this, then the answer would be ‘House of Bread’ – the Hebrew meaning. However in Arabic it also means ‘House of Meat’. If they ask, then there would be absolutely no point in asking for clarification. . . they wouldn’t know.

It's not just the quiz itself, though. I have a problem with the forced jollity of their Christmas quizzes. Last year they gave each of us some chocolate coins, and in one round we could gain an extra point by ‘bribing the judges with chocolate coins.’ They also left elf hats on each table and you could get a point by sending them a selfie with an elf hat on. In one way it’s really sweet that they go to all of that effort. . . only . . . well, that’s not quizzing. Not to a grumpy old sod like me, anyway. Christmas quizzes? Pah, humbug!

And the thing is, the last time they did a quiz was when the quiz was moved to a Tuesday evening. Honestly, I couldn’t do a Tuesday evening at the moment even if I wanted to. So we gave that one a miss. The thing is though that having missed that one, if I gave this one a miss it would be obvious. And I wouldn’t want to give them the metaphorical slap in the face that deliberately avoiding their quiz would represent. Now that really would be misanthropic. So, Rudolf noses, Santa hats and forced grins all round, and try to keep the sarky comments to a minimum, David.