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The Quiz League started in November 2004 and finished its first season at the end of March 2005. It was sponsored by local organisations including Onda Cero Radio and the Round Town News newspaper.
Teams register their names centrally and can then play any six players under that team name at any of the venues spread along the coast from Oliva to Alicante. Each team's scores are recorded centrally over the twenty weeks of the season, and the best twelve weekly scores are added up to make their final total. The top twenty teams meet for a Grand Final to decide the winners for that season.
Peter and I had seen information in the paper about the setting up of the League and had made some enquiries about local venues and possible team members, but had not progressed very far. After the first week, Lorely and Glyn from the Javea Art Centre asked whether we would like to join them and their partners, Lyn and Lawrie, in the Arty Farty team, which played at Meson de Paco in Benitachell. We were very happy to join an established team, and we have done well through the season, staying in the top twenty—just!— and securing a place in the Grand Final. This was held at El Corregidor restaurant in Moraira on 5 May 2005 and we came 17th. We have been consistently about 17th throughout the season, and the reason is that the structure of the quiz relies quite heavily on music, sport and TV—there have been weeks with two rounds of both music and sport! The music is mostly pop and none of us are interested in it, and the TV is often about soaps, which we don't watch. And the only time we do well in the Sport is when it touches on Lawrie's interests of football and cricket. We do well in Geography, History and General Knowledge...usually...but there is nothing in the way of classical music, opera, literature, science... I'm not whinging, because I know that we have the option of starting to watch Top of the Pops and Eastenders...but I don't enjoy it that much!
Toby from the Meson de Paco does a grand job of running the sessions and kindly gives all the competing teams a free pizza during the course of the evening.
We have thoroughly enjoyed the season and were pleased to find that Toby is
continuing the quiz nights unofficially...so he can keep on taking our drink
money off us! He has arranged with the chap who runs the Quiz to continue
providing questions at a price, so our weekly fees cover that, and we are
keeping in practice for next season. And we shall no doubt do even better
then—because we shall all be older and know more. (But we still won't have any
idea which character from Eastenders had an affair with his mother-in-law, or
which record Fairground Attraction took to number one!)
Nov 2005: Unfortunately, for reasons which were
never published, the Quiz League did not re-appear for its second season. Maybe
it was the old problem of one person being expected to do all the work, and
nobody being prepared to help...
