Bear with me, you might find this quite a tortured analogy but, running a pub quiz night and running for office are remarkably similar.
I’ve been attending pub quizzes since I was 18 (possibly a bit earlier!). Whilst at University, a friend and I ran a quiz each week at each of the two Students’ Union bars. Since then I have written and delivered many charity, Labour Party and other quizzes, as well as, since lockdown, fun quizzes for friends and family.
I know what is successful, and what isn’t.
A friend of mine, Toby, who used to run the quizzes at my local once, very wisely, said:
“Nobody comes to a quiz night to be told how stupid they are.”
This is of course true, and the reverse is true. Even players and teams who don’t do well, love to come away from a quiz boasting of that one question they got, which hardly anyone else did. Or the one that got away, where they knew the right answer but were outvoted by the rest of their team. People like to show off their extraordinary knowledge and be told that they are clever, on some things at least. From a good quiz, everyone, win or lose, should come away having enjoyed it and felt good about taking part. Not feeling guilty or inadequate about not being good enough. If that is the case, they won’t come back.
Knowing your audience is an important part of setting a good quiz. Asking questions about things they are likely to have heard of or know about. I aim for a quiz as a whole to be easy enough that everyone gets at least half of the questions right, and challenging enough so that the final result isn’t everyone tied having got every single question right. I wouldn’t ask a young-ish crowd at a quiz lots of questions about films of the 1950s, nor an older crowd, questions about the latest tiktok influencers. I set a range of questions, including on things I may dislike, or have no interest in, but which many of the audience do follow and know about.
I also never assume that the audience is ‘low-brow’. For instance, in a working class local or PTA quiz, I don’t just ask about soaps, football and the ‘usual’ subjects. I am never surprised to find that many people at those quizzes can for instance, name the play a Shakespeare quote is from, tell me which composer wrote a particular opera, or name the woman politician who championed the equal pay act in the late 60s. As well as knowing who won the Cup and the Derby last year and who is currently married to whom in Corrie.
These are the communities I grew up in and with, and the varied cultural life I had as a child and in my youth, which didn’t depend on how much money we had or if our parents had been to university. I hope my quizzes never talk down to my audience in this way, or make stereotypical assumptions about the kinds of things they are interested in or know about.
Also, I don’t write quizzes solely about my personal interests or obsessions. If I wrote a quiz entirely about Labour party politics, the Jurassic Park films, Arsenal football club and the cities and regions of Italy. Most people would hate it, or most of it. I cannot, and should not expect that the things that are important to me, are important to everyone else.
Then there’s accuracy. If you are going to ask, for instance, “Which are the only two ‘double landlocked’ countries in the world?”* You had better be certain that there are in fact only two, and you know for certain which ones they are. If your questions are badly, or ambiguously worded, or your answers are wrong; if you ask your audience to disbelieve the evidence of their own eyes and experience, people will hate your quiz.
This is why I always avoid those ‘know-it-all’ questions like “How many lakes are there in the Lake District?”. The only purpose of which are for the quiz setter, and some other know-it-all’s in the audience to show off. And everyone else be made to feel stupid.
There is a market for quiz nights. You may run a quiz night, and if it is popular and brings people into the pub, or to the charity event, to make money or raise money; you will be invited back.
If your quiz is bad, treats the audience as if they are stupid, concentrates on your obsessions, is factually wrong, has a very narrow appeal, or exists only to bolster your own ego, it will fail. People will go elsewhere, and you will not be invited back.
The alternative to that is to keep on running bad quizzes, losing money and finding that hardly anyone attends; while the pub down the road is packed with people enjoying a much better quiz which actually appeals to them.
Finally, taking my own advice not to treat my audience like idiots, I’m not going to explain the parallels between this and running for office or running a political party. You are all perfectly capable of answering that for yourselves, and drawing you own conclusions.
Thanks for taking part.
*Double landlocked is where a country has no coastline, and neither do any of the countries it borders. There are two, Liechtenstein and Uzbekistan.