The Hound on the road - Windsor Castle 26th August

After the somewhat anti-climactic end of the marathon Jolly Farmers league, The Hound have been kicking their collective paws and doing a number of distinctly untraditional midweek activities in place of the week on week slog of quizzing.

Variously we have been on holiday, had an evening at Epsom races, drunk beer in a number of new boozers and, memorably, won the only actual other quiz we've entered. Although that suggests our victory should have been a collective highlight the quiz (at the Earl of Eldon) was such a farcical shambles that by the time the winners were announced, at way past 11pm, no-one present could actually have cared less.

Slowly but surely our collective appetite for quizzing has been returning though and a (distinctly unergetic) search has been underway for a few weeks to identify a new kennel in which The Hound can rest its quizzing head.

To which end three Hounds out of four pitched up on Thursday evening this week to The Windsor Castle in Carshalton. We were without Daren Hound who was 'celebrating' eight years of marriage (at least I think it's eight) to Mrs Bear - a fact that the remaining three of us toasted continually throughout the evening.*

The Windsor Castle promises an alternating General Knowledge quiz followed the next week by a Pop Quiz and so on. This week was a Pop Quiz. Robson Hound put himself on a leash and walked the 4 miles across country to arrive first, yours truly was dropped off outside the door and Inter-Company Peterkins Hound arrived via the gift of the 407 bus.

The first round was a picture round - traditionally a strong suit for The Hound in the same way that Seb Coe was good at putting the shot and Fatima Whitbread was unbeaten over hurdles. This challenge proved to be no exception. There were 20 photos, each one apparently depicting a 1990's pop band - all fairly straightforward you'd think. Well; we confidently guessed at Blur, Steps (!), New Kids On The Block, Shakespeare's Sister and The Chemical Brothers - punted at most of the rest and had no idea (couldn't even raise a sensible guess) about two of them.

We ended up with 10/20 correct which turned out to be not so bad - from memory that had us two behind the lead in joint second.

Second round was ten musical clips around the theme of 'Up' - point for each artist and another point for each song title - 20 on offer - 40 if we decided to play our joker and double the tally for the round. It transpired that we were good at the 'Ups' - played our joker and ended up with 38 out of 40 points. I think that put us joint top.

Third round was same again but on a 'Dreams' theme. Again we were solid - 17 or 18 out of 20.

Final round was a different kettle of early birds altogether. Good breadth of questions covering current singles and album chart through to giving us two names (which escape me now) and expecting us to identify that they were respectively the original keyboard player in Status Quo and Boston's songwriter! We weren't good - got fewer than half the available points and, of the nine competing teams, finished joint second with one other but 10 or more points behind the winners who took a £22 pot.

There was one final, 'scribble-your-answer-down-and-get-it-to-me-as-quick-as-you-can-for-the-money' question which we didn't have a clue about and was won, somewhat unsuprisingly by the team sitting within arm's reach of the question master.

At that stage we were up against it as far as return bus timetables were concerned so it was a case of rapidly supping up beer, collecting fags and heading off for our own versions of rows in Slough.

Overall an enjoyable evening. The quiz was more than competently produced and it's clear that some effort is put into it - I'd do it again. The guy asking the questions was a tad drawn out but got it finished by 11 and it does seem to be the nature of the beast. He doesn't chair the alternating General Knowledge quiz and I think it would be well worth our collective visit back there for at least one of them. There was football on the tele in the background, Robson and ICP reported that the beer was better than the Farmers - for my money the 1664 was 1664 and the bar-staff were attentive. Which was nice.


* this isn't, strictly speaking, true but he'll never know if we don't tell him...