I saw a lot of London running quizzes, particularly between 2006 and 2012. I've probably run 500ish in total, and the majority were in those first few years, and the majority of those were in London, and the majority of those were in central London.
I'm not sure why I've chosen HMS Belfast. I suppose it's quite a striking place to run a quiz, or you'd have thought so. I remember thinking, "ah, a quiz on HMS Belfast, that'll be cool".
In reality, it was just another, slightly dated, function room, and I recall it was not a great quiz. I remember that clearly, even though it was probably about 13 years ago, becase I think it was the last of four in quick succession, including one overseas, and the rest had all gone very well, and this was just going to be the icing on the cake. Who wouldn't love a DMcG quiz?
Well, this lot didn't. I can't remember who they were, but where recent quizzes had been met with communal enjoyment close to fervour, laughs and groans all in the right places, this one was, so it seemed to me, a damp old squib. I also remember I'd been asked to prepare a playlist and play music afterwards, so I did that with some care, but, no, they had no time for that either. They all cleared out into another function room, unimpressed by whatever solidly mainstream stuff I was playing.
It was an odd life, for a while. Travel to venue late afternoon, either with PA system or to find it couriered to venue, set up, which could either take 5 minutes or an hour, depending on what the venue had. I nearly always left loads of time just in case, so sometimes there was a lot of sitting around, building up nervous energy or being drained of it.
Venues could be pubs, clubs, function rooms, restaurants, theatres, school halls, church halls, boats, sports grounds, offices, conference rooms. Sometimes they were "plug and play", sometimes they were "2 miles of cable, hands and knees with endless duck tape, hook up three TVs with VGA splitters, wireless auxiliary speakers, two peaveys, hope you cover the space"; usually somewhere in between.
It strikes me, retrospectively, in that context, how specifically techno-savvy I needed to be. Like, I'm so far from actually techno-savvy both before and after that era, but if I knew the variables, I could problem-solve and rig things pretty damn well for a while. It also strikes me, and again this is so far from what I'm like most of the time, how front-footed and forceful I was. I had to go into all sorts of venues and say "here i am, this is what I need you to do, this is what I need to do, this is how i need it to be" and I couldn't really take no for an answer.
And I was let into a lot of places. Past security, though gates, lanyards, safety videos, sliding doors, function rooms, investment banks, law firms, lecterns, millions of pounds, and there's me, saying "nah, this won't work, i need to use my back-up peavey"
Some of those offices have the best views, the best views of London you can imagine - over the river from on high, over the parks, watching the sun set - I tried to enjoy it, though never relaxed til I was halfway home.
I didn't used to think I was nervous, now I realise I was always nervous. All day and all the way there. Usually, when you're running a quiz, it becomes fun pretty quickly, but if it doesn't, your throat gets dry and stays dry.
Sometimes you see every face and feel them doubting your ability to entertain them, sometimes it's just a big joyous mass of laughter and noise. I could overprepare or underprepare, be overconfident or underconfident, too bantery or without bantery. Usually, I will say, usually the quiz was a good quiz, and the thing was ultimately, at bare minimum, pretty good, but not even that, always.
It's not obvious who'll be the perfect hosts and who'll be the arseholes. Once, in a dark room in a dark club, music pumping in from the other rooms, can't hear myself, bunch of traders, don't feel like any of them can hear me or are listening, start the quiz thinking it's a waking nightmare, they all bring their answers up on time, lots of great scores and clever answers, loads of "great quiz, loved it". Other times, parents in fancy schools could be so rude to my helpers You really could never tell in advance.
I remember a Christmas quiz at an investment bank (I won't say which one) and all the teams performed comedy songs, and they were all so deeply inappropriate, i only remember one chorus to the tune of 'Do They Know It's Christmas Time?" them singing "greed is good, let them know it's bonus time" (post-crash) and thinking "jeez, if i took a sneaky video of this" ... but, the funny thing is, I remember that as a nice bunch of people, genuinely.
So that's how I know "the city" really, as a regular paid clown and usurper for a few years. Drank a lot of diet coke and ate a lot of goujons. Loved the journey home quite often, not just cos it was over, but you really sometimes saw the city in a certain light, Addison Lees through parliament square after midnight, the Shard rising out of the Tower of London, the surprising emptiness of certain areas at certain times when they're heaving at other times.
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