Who Dares Wins.

In these cold dark days of Winter I often don't have anything worthwhile to talk about, so on days like this I thought I'd revisit stories I wrote years ago and see if I can improve them a bit. Andy Warhol once said that one day everybody would be famous for fifteen minutes. He might have been thinking of TV quiz shows. This is a story of when I appeared on one about 26 years ago.....          It all began in the early 90's when pubs began introducing quiz machines where you could win money by answering general knowledge questions. I was soon completely addicted to them because I found I could answer the questions quite easily and could have a free night down the pub whenever I liked. The local pub landlords grew to hate me as I went further and further afield in search of quiz machines to empty. One night I started in the Phipps Arms at Westbury Leigh and went on to The Hollies, The Royal Oak, The Castle, The Angel, The Horse And Groom, The White Lion, The Ludlow and The Crown. When I emptied my pockets that night I found I had about £70 in £ coins. It weighed a ton.
The Landlord of The Horse And Groom was Rod who decided to use my talent to his advantage and asked me to be captain of the pub quiz team. In our first season we won the Trowbridge and District League and my local fame grew in leaps and bounds. I felt really brainy. Then one night in the pub my mate Dave said I should go on Fifteen To One. This was a popular afternoon TV show which was a forerunner of The Weakest Link and at its peak had an audience of 4,000,000. It was very popular with pensioners, students and the unemployed. I sent off an application form and was invited to an audition in Bristol. Two weeks later I received a letter inviting me onto the show. This was going to make me famous. Everybody I met I told that I was going to be on the telly and to make sure they watched.

Our Quiz Team.

The big day arrived and I set off for London and my date with destiny. The studios were in Wandsworth and myself and the other contestants were put up in a nearby hotel as the show was to be recorded the following morning at 10.00. I began to have my first niggling doubts because the others looked really well educated and posh, and I found out that several of them almost made a career out of TV shows and had been on several other shows. I stayed in the hotel bar till 1.00 in the morning. The others went to bed. Next morning I was suffering with a really bad reality attack and all my bravado had gone out the window.  At the studio we drew lots and I was to be number 8. Then we were led into the place with the cameras and the genial host William G Stewart. I felt like I was about to be executed. The floor manager said, "One minute to recording". My right leg suddenly started shaking uncontrollably. William started asking the questions and everybody was coming up with the right answer.

Finally he got to me and he might as well have been talking Chinese. I was so nervous it sounded like this,
"Whatisthemathematicaltermforlinespointsorcurveswhichareequidistantapart?"
I stood there just looking at him. Then  realised what he was asking and I thought, "That's parallel, surely he wouldn't ask a question that easy". The buzzer went before I could blurt it out and William said, "The answer is parallel".
A couple of minutes later William returned and asked me who wrote the music for the film Brigadoon. I didn't know, but I was in such a state I didn't care who wrote the music for fecking Brigadoon. I answered "Rogers and Hammerstein", in a sort of high pitched squeak, just to say something. "The answer is Lerner and Loewe", said William, and I was out. My entire TV appearance was about 14 seconds. I hoped that nobody I knew would watch the show but of course they all did. For about a year afterwards I was known around town as Parallel Pat. People came up to me in the pub and said things like, "Sorry I didn't see you on the telly, I  blinked and missed, it", that sort of thing. Just when people were beginning to forget about it, the TV company went and repeated it the following summer and the jokes started all over again. I lost all interest in quizzes for five long years. As they say though, revenge is a meal best eaten cold and I was to get my revenge in the sweetest possible way.

Five Years Later........

Five long years had past since my disastrous TV appearance. Then in 1999 they announced that if you hadn't appeared on the show for 5 years you could apply again.
"I've gotta go back",I announced to Kim.
"Where?"
"London, I've got some unfinished business with William".
Once more I set off for London,
"Go get 'em Floyd", Said Kim, "Go kick some ass".
The stakes had never been higher, if I messed up this time I faced total humiliation, but as they say, 'Who Dares Wins'.
This time I was number 5. As William came along the line asking the questions my leg started its familiar jig, but this time I was grimly determined. Finally William got to me,
"When Britain joined the EU in 1974 which two other countries joined at the same time?"
"Ireland and er um Denmark"
"Correct"
I breathed a sigh of relief. Two minutes later William was back with my second question.
"Dancer Michael Flatley became famous in which musical show?"

 "Riverdance".
"Correct"
Brilliant! I was into round 2 and had all my lives intact. In round 2 if you got your answer right you could nominate one of your opponents to answer the next question. This is where it got dirty. I soon got nominated.
"Such is life" is reputed to be the last words of which Australian outlaw?"
"Ned Kelly"
Then I went on a killing spree. One by one my opponents were going down like skittles. I was enjoying this. After a few minutes there were 12 down 3 to go and I suddenly found myself in the final. My two rivals in the final were a lady who worked at Tesco's and a lad from Galway called Brendan who had only entered so he could visit his brother in London for free. At the beginning of Part 2 you had to smile at the camera while they told the viewers all about you. 'Pat lives in Westbury, Wiltshire, he enjoys reading and music particularly Van Morrison and he supports Peterborough United football club'. Then it was into battle. I got my first 2 questions wrong and only had one life left, so the other two kept nominating me to try and kill me off. I held my nerve, and answered 13 questions in a row correctly. The others started to get their answers wrong and I was fighting back. The Tesco lady was the first to crack and she was out. Then finally Brendan lost his last life and I had won. I scored 113 points and the 13th highest score in the series so far.
 I kept my composure until I left the studio. I was back on the street again, back on top again. Then I jumped up and punched the air YES!. Then floated on a cloud all the way back to Waterloo Station. I couldn't wait to get home and see everyone up at the pub. "I'll give them parallel Pat", I thought. I had to wait an hour for my train, so walked across Westminster bridge and went in a pub near the houses of parliament. It was frequented by politicians. "Look at them", I thought, "they think they are so  important, don't they realise that I'm the 13th most brainy person in Britain".
We had a big party in the pub to watch my glorious win and  had a cake with 15 candles and I blew out 14 of them.

A lady came from the local paper and wrote a story with the headline, 'Getting the answers off Pat'. I was invited back on the show twice more as a previous winner. It wasn't as exciting though. I didn't get the same buzz off it. When you get to the top there's no where else to go and that was the end of my TV career. You can see the second half of my appearance in the video below.

                                                                           THE END.