Perish the pub quiz, though, which is too tricky and where we're languishing in the bottom quarter after the first two rounds. If I've got no hope of winning, then what's the point in doing it at all? Then I essentially just 'get a face on' and go all mopey and, like, sure, you can put Clare Grogan down if you like, but it's not right. I go totally teenage. I don't really know why I'm such a freak about pub quizzes, but I'd guess that having been awful at all sport at school, and never having a hope of being picked for a team, never mind winning anything, that 'knowing stuff' was the only way I was ever going to win a prize. Especially as one of my key skills seems to be collecting the most random bits of information and retaining them. I couldn't tell you who the current Foreign Secretary is, but I've been able to correctly name a proboscis monkey, based on a really grainy black and white, stamp-sized photo in a pub quiz. (Thanks mainly to a lifetime of watching David Attenborough documentaries. Truly the best teacher I've ever had.)
So it came to pass that a friend emailed the other day asking if I wanted to go to a Literary Quiz. Ooh, tricky one, this. Because of course, working in publishing, everyone thinks you're going to ace the Literary Quiz. But the last LQ I went to was part of a literary festival in Battersea and was so alarmingly intellectual even Jeremy Paxman might have suggested throwing in 'a few easier ones'. All the questions seemed to be about historical novels from the 1780s written by politicians of the time under pseudonyms. We were a whole team of publishing types, including an actual man (very rare in publishing circles) and so we thought we were in with a shot. Turned out everyone else taking part appeared to be over 70 and had spent all their working lives in a library nearby. I think the most recent book there was a question on was published in 1996. I essentially offered up the answer 'Disraeli?' to about 40% of the questions and a massive, huffy shrug for the rest. It was very dispiriting.
But this one looked more my bag. For a start, it was being hosted by Grazia! Wasn't likely to be that dauntingly clever, even if it was to promote the Baileys Prize shortlist. Ooh, now, this is sounding like my perfect evening - likely to get a goody bag with a free mag (nothing I like more than hate-reading Grazia when I haven't actually paid for it myself); some free Baileys (don't judge me, but I ruddy love Baileys. Have you tried the chocolate one? It's like blancmange. Ace); possibly a free book. I didn't anticipate any questions on pseudonymous historical novels from centuries ago. I was in. I was very much in.
We turned up at the venue (another clue as to the likely standards of the questions: All Bar One on New Oxford Street) half an hour before the alloted time. We tried to force our way upstairs, past a guy giving out wristbands who didn't seem to know what was going on. We darted past him up the stairs, to be met by a gaggle of alarmed-looking Grazia staffers. I think they mistook our, 'we don't want to miss out on any of the canapes' faces for 'we want to start answering literary questions immediately' faces. We were hastily ushered back downstairs whilst they carried on plonking branded pencils and answer sheets onto the tables and taking thousands of photographs of different drinks featuring Baileys for their Twitter feed.
We grouched around downstairs, being rude about this week's issue of Stylist, which apparently seems to think that 'Why thoughtful women are falling back in love with make-up' is a statement that makes any sense, and sees fit to put it on the cover featuring a woman's face covered in mad disco holographic eyeshadow and shiny red lipgloss. Finding content every week for a women's magazine must be a trying business, is all I can say. Sometimes, you must just be in an editorial meeting and find yourself muttering, 'how can we fuse FEMINISM and MAKE-UP? We know that our readers are interested in both, there must be a way of bringing these two elements together in one article.' 'Why thoughtful women are saying it's fine to love make-up?' 'YES! Sarah, you are a genius. Call Sali Hughes and ask her for 1,000 words, and call in some of that Mac "Simone de Beauvoir" lipgloss.'
Anyway, we were eventually granted access to the Quizzatorium. We bagged a table and one of our number was despatched to the bar to pick up free drinks. (On our first foray upstairs, one of the Grazia Gals had, on seeing we'd bought a drink, told us not to buy any more, as it was all free. God, d'you know what you're letting yourself in for here? A load of bookish geeks being offered free booze all night? Could get messy, even if it is a Tuesday.)
I, obviously, started to noodle my way through the 'pull-out' section of the quiz, which had tempting amuse-bouche questions (anagrams of book titles; book jackets with the titles and the authors blocked out; riddles. The riddles had the authors' names in them, which seemed to be kind of cheating. The book jackets were of the level of We Need to Talk about Kevin and To Kill a Mockingbird. We fell down on a Joan Didion. Haven't we all?)
There was much discussion of a team name (get more than two women together, and coming up with a team name becomes very fraught.) We spent quite a lot of time trying to cobble something together based on our mutual love for Jilly Cooper (man, we're highbrow). Eventually I suggested 'Donna's Tartts' (literary but still a bit smutty) and we were off. The prize for the best name of the evening might have to go to the three girls who called themselves, 'Well Read & Good in Bed'.
Baileys and Grazia had done the sensible thing of ploughing most of the money for the evening into food, in an attempt to stop us all getting blind drunk within the first hour. I've never seen so many canapes in my entire life. We had quite the picnic table going on. Especially when one of the waitresses, seeing just how bloody awesome we thought halloumi on a stick was, offered to leave an entire plateful with us. We accepted with alacrity.
Having spotted a photobooth in the corner, and thought, 'Oh God, really?', there was a break in the proceedings when of course we had to have a 'team photo'. Everyone immediately regresses to being four years old, then shrieks when shown the result. 'Oh my God, I look like a sweaty ghost!' howled one of my team-mates, who'd drawn the short straw of being nearest to the camera and the flash, and is a natural ginger and thus quite pale. We spent about fifteen minutes going, 'just one more go!', trying to get an arrangement of four people where we all looked sane, if not necessarily 100% attractive.
But, back to the nail-biting excitement of the quiz, I hear you cry! Round one - we were up near the top. Round two - we were leading, but by a solitary point. This could go either way. I was nearly gnawing the table I was feeling so adrenaline-fuelled. (Well, that, plus the Baileys cocktail and two glasses of red. And the excitement of a branded canvas bag and a free copy of Grazia with 30% off at Gap this week). Damn! Why do I not know George Eliot's real name, despite having done an English degree? Thankfully, I knew the answer to a multiple choice question on which was the longest of three books, because a friend had helpfully emailed the day before to say he was still ploughing through the 1,000-page belter that is Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged after about six months.
The results table was being announced. Crikey, this was more exciting than Election Night! (I presume; I didn't stay up for any of that, and so was genuinely flummoxed when I turned on the radio the next morning to find that the Tories had had a landslide win. What the hell went wrong with all those polls, then?) We were in the top two. There were two points separating us. We tried out a variety of 'f*cking hell, we've lost by two points' sore loser faces (this seemed like fun - there were a lot of men wielding film cameras and cameras with proper-looking lenses - where on earth was this stuff going to end up?) Only to find that, yes, WE HAD WON. Donna's Tartts had beaten a load of other geeks in glasses - particularly the bunch at the table next to us, who we were determined to take down. They kept objecting to stuff, and one of them failed a 'spot prize' question on the correct order of the Harry Potter books, despite looking really, really confident about it. I neglected to flag to anyone that we hadn't managed to get the actual Donna Tartt question right, which was a bit of a low.
We were summoned to the bar to collect our winnings (bottle of Baileys each, another free cocktail - this time decorated with pansies - flashy - and a huge stack of the Baileys shortlist. I'd assumed we'd be splitting the six books, [typical publisher - 'You want to give away HOW many?'] but no, it was all of them, for each of us). And many, many photos. I finally worked out why Caitlin Moran gurns like she's been on a 3-day bender every time someone points a camera at her. Having your photo taken for a mag/Twitter feed is mortifying. Especially when you haven't had time to put on any lipstick and have been doing a lot of 'ironic' fist-pumping when it was announced that you'd won. Hadn't really factored that in, when I'd been hell-bent on winning. I looked like some mad child that had overdosed on Haribo, then been given a load of hefty hardbacks to hold, to try to stop them bouncing off the walls.
Anyway, it was all really good fun, my only disappointment being how many questions there were about JK Rowling. Don't get me wrong, I'm a massive fan of hers (both as an author and as a person). It just seemed a shame that over 6 rounds, there seemed to be so few female authors or books that the question-setters assumed we'd have (mostly) all heard of and could answer questions on. (Gone with the Wind featured quite heavily too.) But then I'm inclined to believe that the two points we won by were afforded by:
- Knowing the name of Nancy Drew's boyfriend
- Me being old enough to recognise a clip of The Cure's 'Charlotte Sometimes'
Can't all be intellectual giants...
