I am the Ian Helliwell of the quiz team: old, big and
irrefutably useless. I am trundled out only when suspensions and injuries have ravaged the
first team pool. My perfunctory efforts at maintaining match fitness are confined to some
ad hoc workouts in the toilet with a Rothies Annual. Some weird play on the Portnoy
syndrome, I suppose. But it allows me to dispute the theory that I am basically an anal
retentive. Not that there isn't still a price to pay. My daughter once made the mistake of
betting me that I couldn't remember every FA Cup winner since the turn of the Century.
'Scary', was her ashen verdict, as she departed quickly to delete my name from her birth
certificate. Now this feat of memory is small beer in the 'big league'. There, it is
merely unremarkable that you should happen to know Rushden and Diamonds' record home gate.
(Incidentally, it was 5,170 against Kettering in 1997. Just in case you wanted to know,
which you shouldn't if you have any self respect.)
It is easy to gild stereotypes with caricatures when
imagining who might take part in a football quiz team. I should know. I've served my time
in the stocks, both at work and at home. The reality is usually quite different.
Most of the contestants are very good company and, from what I can dimly observe,
reasonably rounded souls. Although the spherical qualities may owe something to the ale
quotient. But I have to use the term, usually. Just prior to my first quiz contest,
I came into contact with D., one of our opponents. In a World Nerd Championship, D. would
simply bury the opposition. Preposterously, I had looked to him for re-assurance. I wanted
to know that I wasn't totally out of my depth. Did D. give me solace? Did he buggery! As
he documented the areas of core knowledge, like the various winners of the Mini-Cheddars
League, the Marmot Shield and the Hamas Cup, he punctuated every remark with a compulsive
chortle. This hermit of the photocopying room was clearly celebrating his supremacy. Here
he was king. I was just the old pretender. But I'm probably doing him an injustice. For
all I knew, he could have been a nuclear physicist or even a Primal Scream therapist. And
while I'm talking exceptions, let me mention a team from North London. For they were mega
strange. In fact, they tore up the rule book on the dimensions of strangeness. For a
start, the whole team appeared in replica kits, pulled over their work suits. Then there
was the guy with the hair. Like a refugee from Eraserhead, as if hair styled by
Lyle Lovett represented a good idea.
Of course, memory is a perverse thing. I reckon that it works
on the reverse principle to Room 101; the crappier the content, the more it sticks.
How else could I account for my abiding recollection of Doris Luke (Nora Batty in Last
of the Summer Wine. If only it was!). Doris once came to the rescue of the Crossroads
motel restaurant, after ace chef, Bernard (accent on the last syllable), had flounced
off in a pique without doing the apple sauce. You see, Doris's three Bramleys were all
that were required. Now, if you had presented Doris with five loaves and two fishes, she
would probably have been a tad overwhelmed. But give her a crowded restaurant and a
limited supply of sauce materials, then she's your gal.
So, when it comes to remembering things like pin numbers,
birthdays, anniversaries, work priorities, prescriptions and anything important, I'm
bloody useless. But when it comes to something like The Partridge Family, or
knowing every compere from The Golden Shot, we're talking posterity big-time. The
football quiz is just more of the same. With that, I shall now finish sewing the sable
pelt onto my aged Parka.
Tim Quelch
September-October 1997
