7pm – The Argyle Bar (Upstairs). Jackpot £30. Cheat: Peter Howson in one of the pic round answers.
9pm – The Newsroom. Jackpot £150. Cheat: The music round includes the theme from Mork & Mindy, see vid below
I never used to particularly enjoy Mork And Mindy. I think I had a problem with Robin Williams being so hairy like an apparently-grown-man but then fucking around like a three-year-old.
I get that he was supposed to be a jester, a fool, bringing the colour and wisdom of childhood back to the grey adults, but the whole man-child thing doesn’t appeal. Never has.
I also didn’t like the way they cut about in a jeep with no roof. Being from Scotland makes this kind of behaviour seem reckless. Do they not have rain in Boulder, Colorado?
I also never liked the name ‘Mork’. To me it sounded like a simpleton attempting to pronounce ‘Mark’. And Mindy was rubbish, she did nowt.
Hey. It’s my birthday. To you this is utterly immaterial. You just want to hear about tonight’s quiz:
7pm – The Joker & The Thief. Jackpot: £90. Cheat news: The music round contains John Leyton. – see video below to see the genius.
This was number one in 1961. I love the sound of it, so dramatic. That’s the Joe Meek sound. Joe Meek was the producer and you can see him in the video, winding bits of tape and what not. No apps in them days.
Joe Meek recorded hundreds of artists and produced loads of pop bangers, arguably becoming the first producer-as-a-star. He didn’t play an instrument himself but he was the pioneer of the field where you don’t have to ‘know’ music to make music.
Meek was clearly a genius but was a bit unhinged. A wee read of his Wikipedia page will take you through the madness, repressed sexuality, paranoia, court cases and anger issues which led him to the 3rd February 1967 when took a shotgun, killed his landlady and then himself.
9pm Safari Lounge. Jackpot £30. Cheat: One of the music round answers is Limahl, performing the greatest song ever written. See the vid:
Every single woman in Britain fancied Limahl in 1984. It’s just the way it was back them. There were fewer options.
Women had seen Harrison Ford but they knew he lived in America. Limahl represented hope, something achievable.
Limahl’s real name was Christopher Hamill but he was a clever wee cunt and anagramised his last name, dropping the first to create Limahl, a name heavy with mystique and sex.
He joined Kajagoogoo. They had a hit. I have a specific memory of watching Hearts v East Fife at Tynecastle in the Scottish Cup with the Kajagoogoo hit playing at half-time. It was midwinter, absolutely freezing and I had a heavy cold. I wasn’t a fan of either team.
The only warm thing I can remember from that day was Kajagoogoo and therefore Limahl and his name like a balm.
I survived an operation last week. They literally cut me open and put me back together again like play doh, meccano, lego and origami. If you’ve never had one under GA, I’ll tell you this: it’s weird.
Anyway – back to work tonight.
7pm – The Joker & The Thief. Jackpot £30. Cheat: The music round includes ‘Regina’ by The Sugarcubes. It’s Bjork, but old. Watch the video to hear the song:
9pm – Monkey – there is no quiz at the Monkey on Drummond Street for the duration of August, mainly due to festival wanks, etc.
I once met Bjork. She was part of a pub quiz team called “Flange Trumpet”, this was at the Cul de Sac in Glasgow in 1999 and she was on a world tour or something and was due to play the SECC the next night.
She knew people in Glasgow and they happened to come to my quiz, so she came too. She knew nothing at all apart from an obscure fact about the invention of clockwork which allowed her team to finish third.
Owing to the format I used at the time, third place gave you a good chance of winding up in a dance off, which she did, against evil doctor Gam.
Gam was a legend of the dance off and bust every move he could, Bjork just stood there trying to be cute/inscrutable, a technique which had served her well in terms of album sales, but could it win a dance off.
But Bjork’s no dummy, she quickly realised that as Gam was doing the running-man, the funky worm and the boom that she couldn’t just win this thing by looking cute: she needed to pull something out.
That’s when she blew the speakers. There were four in the room and she turned on the spot and made a kind of whale noise directly at each one, blowing the speakers in turn, until there was silence. Gam stopped dancing.
All eyes were on Bjork and then she did a single pirouette and then another whale noise, although after a few seconds it was clear she was singing ‘Flower of Scotland’. The room exploded, Bjork got the case of beer and afterwards she slapped down fifty grand on the counter and said ‘that’s for the sound syster’.
We weren’t cunts about it, we fixed the sound system the next day and wired her the change (i.e. most of it – minus a drink or two).
It remains the only time in history that Gam (R.I.P.) ever lost a dance-off in his entire life.
And that was the time Bjork won the dance off at the quiz.*
Angela Lansbury
Barry Chuckle
Bernie Sanders
Billy Connolly
Billy Connolly
Billy Connolly
Billy Connolly
Billy Ray Cyrus
Brian Blessed
Brian Wilson
Bruce Forsyth
Bruce Forsyth
Bruce Forsyth
Bruce Forsyth
Bruce Forsyth
Burt Reynolds
Charles Manson
Charlie Sheen
Cher
Christopher Tolkein
Clive James
David Attenborough
David Attenborough
David Attenborough
Diana Ross
Donald Trump
Donald Trump
Donald Trump
Elton John
Fred Durst
George Bush Sr.
Ian McKellen
Jack Nicholson
Jerry Lee Lewis
Jim Davidson
Jim Davidson
Joni Mitchell
Judi Dench
Katy Perry
Kirk Douglas
Kris Jenner
Michael Heseltine
Michael Schumacher
Michel Roux Senior
Mick Jagger
Mikhail Gorbachev
Muhammad Ali
Murray Walker
Nigel Farage
Pete Docherty
Pete Docherty
Phil Collins
Prince Philip
Prince Philip
Prince Philip
Prince Philip
Prince Philip
Prince Philip
Prince Philip
Prince Philip
Prince Philip
Prince Philip
Prince Philip
Prince Philip
Prince Philip
Prince Philip
Prince Philip
Prince Philip
Prince Philip
Prince Philip
Prince Philip
Prince Philip
Prince Philip
Prince Philip
Prince Philip
Prince Philip
Prince Philip
Prince Philip
Rolf Harris
Rutger Hauer
Sean Connery
Sean Connery
Sean Connery
Shane McGowan
Stefan Karl Stefansson
The Queen
The Queen
Theresa May
Theresa May
Theresa May
Theresa May
Thom Yorke
Van Morrison
William Shatner
Willie Nelson
Check the amount of pure PHIL in that list. Twenty six of the ninety-five entries were for the Queen’s add-on.
(that’s the Wikipedia way of spelling it, so I’m trusting it) is a “supernatural realm of everlasting youth, beauty, health, abundance and joy.“
It’s Irish Gaelic and it comes from an Irish story where a human man (Oisin) falls in love with a woman from Ti Na Nog (Niamh) and travels with her to the land on a magic horse that can fly across water.
After three years he becomes homesick and asks to go back to Ireland, but when he gets back to Ireland he finds that 300 years have passed, falls off his horse becomes very old as soon as he touches the soil and dies, but not before meeting Saint Patrick and rejecting Christianity.
The music video is kinda meaningless and the tune is forgettable but there is some decent dancing in there. Almost worth a watch on its own but not quite. The only reason to click would be to get a heads up on one of tonight’s music round selects.
We had some septics in at the Newsroom last week and one of them claimed that although Dr Paul was cool, it wasn’t as cool his name: “Johnny Fever”.
He said he was from Cincinnati, Ohio and worked for a radio station there. He gave me the call sign (a jumble of letters) and I was immediately reminded of the old sitcom WKRP in Cincinnati.
So, I just looked up his name on the internet to see if I had met a local celebrity from Ohio and lo and behold, there was a character with this name on that very show.
So I’m guessing this guy at the Newsroom was a delusional. Or sick. Or maybe even right. I don’t know. Everyone’s such a liar these days.
The actor is called Howard Hesseman and even though it’s thirty five years later, I still don’t think my guy looked like the sitcom guy.
