The game was on. Half a dozen teams of keen keen quiz freaks with eyes down were ready to go. Those who had a pencil chewed on it vigorously; others abused their fingernails instead. Yes, it was going to be serious stuff, and one thing I didn't need was a repetitive urge to go to the toilet.
But there it was: a bad problem to have at the best of times, but during a pub quiz? Dangerous. Yes, I'd sunk a beer beforehand, and I was having another one now. But I didn't normally need to keep going to let it all out again. A bug? Nerves? The onset of a terminal disease? No idea . . . but I needed to go. And it was only the third question of Round One. Could I really leave my longsuffering friend and team mate on her own to cope with the early questions? Or any questions, come to that. Our record at such events, admittedly with just the two of us making up a team, was unimpressive. In fact, if we had been allowed to be in a league we would have been relegation material with no hope of applying for re-election. We were the Accrington Stanley of the quiz scene; the Bill and Ben of The Big Night Out.
Standing up to go to the gents, I immediately hit a problem. We were squeezed in a corner and I had to get past the 'spreading for England' legs of a nasty-looking guy from a neighbouring but not neighbourly team. Five in their squad, yet they still felt it necessary to field a hard-man in defence to block the opposition breaking through for a Jimmy Riddle.
He moved his knee and let me through . . .this time. When the urge to empty the blighted bladder struck again six questions later his attitude changed. The knee stayed put, eye contact was avoided. My polite but hesitant 'excuse me' went unheeded, and a different sort of game was on. My need to go forced a sudden surge of courage through the system. I decided to knock his leg out of the way and worry about it on the way back. As I stood at the urinal, with the feedback from the quizmaster's equipment whistling in under the door and in and out of the hand-drier, I seriously considered sacrificing a cosy but faltering relationship with my female friend by making a solo dash for the exit. But no: she had got the car keys.
A deft sidestep and a snake-like wriggle saw me back into my seat unharmed. Had I missed anything? Yes, we both had - for the answer sheet remained blank except for a ludicrous stab in the dark from my pal, which was clearly wrong and misspelled to boot.
It was toilet time again within minutes. And this time the irresistible force was met full on by the immovable object. He wasn't budging. Old ladder-legs of the Awkward Squad was holding fast. I sat back down with the awful truth dawning upon me: he thought I was cheating. Yes, there was no other explanation for me being kept prisoner in my seat. The suspicion had arisen among this team of deadly serious dunderheads that I was going out to get the answers from somewhere by using my mobile phone.
'They think I'm cheating', I whispered.
'I know', she said.
'But I wouldn't do that!' was my angry but hushed reply.
'Pity', came the disappointing but unsurprising response. The pairing, for quiz purposes or indeed any other, had always been a dubious one.
Half-time came and the bolt for the boys' room was not graceful. It looked bad, for sure. The same suspicions would have crossed most quizzers' minds, for one reason if no other: Quiz Nights had become a war zone. Of late, wherever the venue, there always seemed to be a public argument over at least one question per round. Always grunts and groans, always a sad air of edgy competition without the sportsmanship. Backstabbing was becoming a discipline more skilfully applied than that of knowing the answers. And the greater the cash prize, the more childish and begrudging was the attitude.
Sadly, some people do actually go outside during a break to get a bit of help. And for those too idle to shift themselves from the spotlight of shame to carry out the skulduggery, a bit of sneaky texting under the table does the trick. Blatant, deplorable but quite common. No wonder the need to answer the call of nature can be readily misconstrued as the need to go and make a call to a knowledgeable phone-a friend.
The final straw came for me on another, later occasion, when a vicious argument broke out between the female captain of a team and the quizmaster, also a woman. A Coronation Street-style confrontation was upon us. The bone of contention was this: was Penfold of the children's TV programme 'Danger Mouse' a hamster or a gerbil? Blows were nearly exchanged. The disgruntled, red-faced team leader was still insisting as she led her troops out at the end that 'He was a GERBIL'. Oh no he wasn't, missus. Not according to the quizmaster, who quite rightly stood her ground. Shamefully ignorant of the answer myself, I was delighted to learn when I got home and checked out the answer on the computer that the quizmaster was correct. Hooray for hamsters! Hooray for the rule of law!
Pub Quizzes are good, really good, for the trade and the customers when and if they are both run and observed correctly. But time and again they are scrubbed from the 'What's On Tonite' board. The beleaguered quizmasters, destined to be forever subjected to Indoor Entertainment's equivalent of 'The Referee's a Bastard', try their level best and in return get little thanks and much criticism for their efforts. It shouldn't be like that. Is the 'win at all costs' syndrome that has burrowed its way so deep into life going to ruin such a worthwhile pastime? Hopefully not, providing there are still a few pubs left standing in this sceptered isle. But in the end it comes down to Joe Public. Does he care enough to play the game, and in the right spirit? Only he has got the answer to that one.
