1 Week, Two Quizzes and Fred Housego - RIP Jimmy Greaves

 I cannot honestly remember the last time that I played in two quizzes in the same week. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it was back when I gave up on Sunday evening quizzes, which was some time before the pandemic struck. A week ago on Thursday the newest members of our quiz team made their debut in the rugby club quiz, and they mentioned that there was a themed James Bond movie quiz in the Gwyn Hall in Neath on Wednesday 15^th. There’s a movie quiz on different themes there once a month. Well, it’s quite a long time since I watched a James Bond film for pleasure, but they’re a pretty recurrent theme for general quiz questions, so while I couldn’t offer anything on films from Skyfall onwards, I thought I might help out with some of the older stuff. Long story short, we won on a tie break. Not my doing. Skipper Adam did all of the heavy lifting (and truth be told, nearly all of the light lifting as well.) 

The second quiz was of course the Rugby club quiz on Thursday. Not a bad quiz at all, either. I particularly liked a question on which we scored only 1 of the 2 points. It went some like this – of the original Wombles on the TV series based on the novels of Elisabeth Beresford, which of the Wombles are northernmost and southernmost according to their names. Southernmost is simple – Wellington. For northernmost though, which one would you go for – Tobermory or Tomsk? We went for Tomsk, but the answer given was Tobermory. When I asked the question master about it he said that there is virtually nothing to choose between them, with the former being a tad further north than the latter, and I’ve no reason to doubt that. Time was I would have googled that when I got home. Maybe I’m growing up a little.

 I’ve already made 10 posts since restarting the blog at the end of August. Nothing can be guaranteed, but you never know, it looks like this just might not be another false dawn. I did spend a little bit of time thinking about the sort of posts I’d like to be making, all being well. Obviously the TV reviews have to continue. Certainly for the time being I’m not planning on expanding on the range of shows. Mastermind and University Challenge are enough to cope with for the time being, and ironically, they were the two shows I started reviewing way back in 2008 when I first started the blog. But I made a mental wish list, and in order to fill it in, one of the questions I asked was – if I could interview someone for the blog, who would I most like to interview? Now, don’t misunderstand me, if anyone with something interesting to say on quizzing wanted to step forward, I’d be only too delighted to interview them. But I think my number one – and this is purely my personal choice – would be Fred Housego. 

If you’ve been with the blog for a long time, and you have a great memory, you may remember that I’ve written about this before. I am being totally sincere when I say that I would absolutely love to meet Fred Housego. Now, okay, 1980, when Fred won Mastermind, was 41 years ago, so maybe his name doesn’t have the resonance it once did. But I was 16 back then, and I was one of the unwashed millions who marveled at the London cabbie winning the title which had previously been the exclusive right of academics, educators, civil servants and a retired ambassador. He was my first quiz hero. Fred didn’t participate in the 2010 Champion of Champions series – I can only imagine that he was busy or couldn’t do it for some other reasons, since the thought that he might not have been invited is surely ridiculous. It's the only thing I regret about that excellent series, which was huge fun to be involved in. So, Fred, I have no idea if you have ever read the blog, or if you, or anyone else who knows you well enough to mention it will ever read this post, but I have to make the offer. I would absolutely love to meet you, or, if that doesn’t work for you, I’d love to send you some questions, and if you’d like to answer, well, then you’d make me very happy. Over to you.

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I must pay my respects to another hero whom I never met, Jimmy Greaves, who has passed away aged 81. I'm too young to remember him much as a great footballer and goalscoring hero, although he was one of Tottenham Hotspur's greatest ever players (which in itself is enough to endear him to me) , but also for his good humour, his quick wit, and his honesty over his battles with alcoholism. Having grown up with an alcoholic myself, I have nothing but admiration for the way he met his demons head on, and continually won the daily battle for sobriety and sanity. 

Have a good week.