Happy Birthday Robson Hound (tomorrow)

Let me set the scene for you:

The events depicted here took place on the eve of Thursday 1st February 2018 in the saloon bar of The Purley Arms. In the week Bruno Mars had cleaned up, Formula one grid girls had gone for a burton and Capita looked like joining Carillion in going belly up.

All the chaps were present in order to celebrate the impending birthday of Robin which at the time of writing was yesterday but which he was keen to point out to well wishers was, at the time, actually tomorrow. I trust this makes sense

Referring to my notes (more sparse than copious) I can see that the first point of discussion was

Robson’s ‘degenerate knee’. Apparently, due to wear and tear, it is now shouting out rude names to passers by - extraordinary stuff I bet you agree.

Next up were, ‘The big 6’ and ‘The Caterham 7’. I have a vague inkling that the 6 refers to some sort of equestrian pursuit and I’m sure one of the chaps can elucidate further upon request. I’m on firmer terrain when it comes to the Caterham 7 which is the proposed venue for this year’s Hound Maundy Thursday jaunt which falls on Thursday 29th March. Pencil in the date, reserve the day off work and get your drinking trousers dry cleaned.

Now the quiz. This started with a picture round, as it ends to do, and this week was herbs and spices with spices taking up most of the work. This played right into our collective ands with only number 7 troubling the little grey cells for a while.

Round 2 followed the normal route for such things and was based on current affairs. One that foxed us was to name the person who had deleted his Twitter account when it was revealed that he was paying people to ‘follow’ him. After the tirade of abuse for Twitter had died down Kevster suggested ‘that Blue Peter rapey person’.  We were none the wiser but after some groping around in the dark we stumbled upon John Leslie. It wasn’t him but it was a Scouse git, so we were on the right lines. All in all I don’t think we covered ourselves in G’ in this round.

Round 3 was intriguingly titled ‘Little’. We soon got to grips with the concept and Robson threw his Little Bighorn onto the table for our consideration. Fairly easy round this and I believe it safe to say we scored highly.

Was there a round 4? I’ll be blessed if I can remember. I think my January of abstinence was fully behind me by this point and things become even more sketchy from here on in. Bear with.

Got it, Connections!!   - Name the author of the 2010 book , an elephant to Hollywood (second time Hollywood has come up now! I Wonder where Siobhan wants to go on holiday). Described on Amazon as “charming, engaging and surprisingly forthright”. This was the only one we got wrong having plumped for John Hurt (I am not an elephant, I am not an animal, I am a human being! - the same thought often crosses my mind upon waking). We correctly divined that the connection was Pseudonyms

Ten pointers and unfortunately the young of a Koala has the appellation of Joey rather than cub so we made a bit of a mess with that. Halving discussed this with the other teams over half time libations we realised we were up against it. Never mind the paddle boys, we hadn’t even got a canoe. We’d have to come out fighting in the second half.

Round 5 chainletters threw up the startling fact that Robson had his hair cut with Steven Hawking. Pete misheard this and  thought he’d said that he’d had his hair cut by Hawking, which would be plausible and it seemed a shame to disabuse him of this notion. Anyway, all answers safely gathered in so confidence was high going into the Jeopardy round with Steve detailed to watch for Bear traps.

Iscariot and glasses came out without smelling ursine but then we came unstuck with “what event comes second in the men”s decathlon?” We pontificated over this one for a while but couldn’t find a consensus.

Then, the coup de grace. “How many prime numbers are there between 1 and 100?” This set our Actuarial bods into a flurry of action with Steve, Robson and Graham furiously number crunching. Unfortunately even these colossal minds were defeated by missing the number 5. 

And so onto the music round, for which I have only written ‘Peaches’ and ‘Goody two shoes’. I don’t know if this is significant.

Anyway, when all was said and done and in the fullness of time we were not surprised that we didn’t win having blown the Jeopardy and missed a ten pointer. Still! Not a bad effort and the  night ended with a rousing chorus of “ Happy Birthday Robson” to which he responded “it’s tomorrow” but no one seemed to bothered about that.

P.S.

The spice was Mace

The Twitter fella was Paul Hollywood 

The Elephant chap was Maurice Miicklewhite

Long Jump comes second

25 prime numbers if you include 5