I’m on stage doing the quiz I’ve been plugging relentlessly (and yet, I hope, tastefully) these past few weeks. And I’m rapidly developing a new-found respect for teachers, actors, project co-ordinator youth outreach community doo-dah types, anyone whose job involves engaging and managing an audience. Talk about stress.
Engaging is the easy part. My gags and questions have by and large been well received. So has the venue, the charming Wilton’s Music Hall in East London. But now it’s time for the answers and the participants are marking each other’s papers. It’s 9.30pm. Drink has been taken. Noise levels are rising. My job has become less about light entertainment and more about crowd control.
“When you say the answer to ‘How did Nelson get home from Trafalgar?’ is ‘In a barrel of brandy’,” query the table of very nice Times readers to my left, “would you accept just ‘a barrel’ for a full mark?” “Yes,” I say. “No,” says my wife, seated to my right.
Yes, Nicola is present; she’s written most of the quiz. And now, if I’m the Good Cop who offers a smoke and a plea bargain, Nicola has assumed the Bad Cop role, the one who stands behind the suspect and hisses into his ear about homosexual rape in prison. “Just ‘a barrel’ gets half a mark,” I announce. “What did you say?” shouts someone further back. “What about ‘barrel of rum’?” asks my daughter.
Yes, my children are there, too. It’s Rachel’s 12th birthday, by the by. Ensuring she has a good time has draped a thick extra layer of anxiety over her father, Quizmaster Very Ordinaire. But not as thick a layer as the one provided by not being able to remember whether Nelson really was brought back from Trafalgar in a barrel of brandy, or rum, or some other spirit and some other receptacle entirely. Nicola has triple-checked most of the answers. This is one of those she left to me.
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There are 120 people in front of me. Readers, friends, colleagues, relatives, all mixed together in a titanic clash of cultures reminiscent of a wedding. I’m in a suit and smart shoes. Not only are the shoes tight and uncomfortable, they are also slippery. My freedom of movement constrained by the fear I could fall on my face, I have developed a cautious stage-mince, a mince that becomes more exaggerated as I plough through four pints of lager on top of no food.
Worse, my hair, I realise, is in drastic need of a wash and a cut. Far from the swept-back distinguished man-of-letters style I am attempting, the Crampton locks have sagged, greasy and exhausted, into the sort of lank centre-parting sported by an aspirant 15-year-old heavy metallist. This gently sweating disaster looms large inside, as well as on top of, my head.
Victorian music halls were not designed for the stage to hear the stalls. Any comment or query from more than one row back – and there are many – is indecipherable.
I am semi-blinded by two large spotlights. I can sense Wilton’s staff circulating – benign, and yet moving towards an embrace of the notion that pretty damn soon might be the time for this Times joker to bring proceedings to a close.
“A ‘barrel of rum’ also gets a half-mark,” I say to Rachel. “What?” “What did he say?” “Speak up!” “That’s not fair,” shouts someone. “Why should ‘barrel of rum’ get the same as just ‘a barrel’?” “They’re both wrong, anyway,” says my wife. “They should get nothing.”
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“Exactement!” I hear a familiar voice cry from my half-right. “Nuzzink! Nuzzink! We give zem nuzzink!” It’s my friend Franck, known for reasons of nationality and eccentricity as the Crazy Frog. Crazy Frog, it turns out, has adopted a defiantly legalistic line in marking the adjacent table’s answers. This adjacent table contains the features editor of this newspaper, plus her husband, her children and a man in a green bobble hat. “We want half a mark!” shouts Green Bobble Hat. “Nur, nur, nur,” says Crazy Frog, wagging his finger in classic Gallic fashion. “Nuzzink. Zair-oh.”
“Give them half a mark, Franck,” I plead. “What did he say?” calls someone. My wife rolls her eyes. My daughter looks concerned. My son sniggers. “Epic fail,” I hear him say. Cousin Steve – yes, he’s there, too – leans over and says something to Sam. Sam sniggers again.
“Robert!” calls a voice from further back, cutting through the rolling, rising babble. I recognise the voice as belonging to a stratospherically powerful News International executive. Shielding my eyes, I can see her, surrounded by a praetorian guard of suited-and-booted marketing boys. “Er, yes?” I reply, my voice cracking. “This Nelson business,” says the exec. “What do you want to happen?”
What I want to happen, every fibre in my body is screaming at me to yell, is for everybody. To. Please. Shut. The. F***. Up.
On balance, I think it’s best I didn’t say that.