Quiz #2: The Cock Tavern, Hackney

It started with a Tweet. I received a message from noted beer scholar and London blogger @londondear, drawing my attention to this:

Fragrant internet glove duly slapped across my face, we made arrangements to attend. MEET LONDON’S RUDEST QUIZ MASTER isn’t an offer to be turned down lightly. It’s many a pub that has claimed its quiz night master of ceremonies to be ruder than all other [1]. This isn’t surprising. The best quizmasters know instinctively that theirs are theatrical roles. Once they enter the magic space bestowed on them by the microphone, they are able to get away with the kind of behaviour that would get them sacked if they were a milkman.

It was my first visit to the Cock Tavern since its recent refurbishment and reopening. Stuffed with a spectacular array of craft beers and ales [2], it exists to serve the professional crowd with a trendy liking for fancy brews (people like me, in fact), rather than the rambling old Irishmen supping endless afternoon pints of Guinness that once defined the area [3]. Rob Newman’s song about gentrification comes immediately to mind, of course, but the new look pub seems to have a range of ages and backgrounds represented, and is clearly run with love, so I won’t mention the guy by the bar rocking the hipster Captain Birdseye look. [4]

I arrived late to the pub, and the table round was already underway. My teammates pored over a photocopied sheet of headshots. I had little idea who any of them were, though one of them might have been Spike Milligan. Fortunately @londondear had brought along one of those people who know lots of things – useful for a pub quiz – and as they seemed to be doing nicely I went to the bar and bought myself a lovely stout.

The pub was around half full, though it wasn’t clear to me at this stage how many of the throng were participating in the quiz. Eventually, the first round began, in a flurry of SHOUTING from the dapper gentleman by the bar. Here was our man. He had no microphone, so he BELLOWED the questions at the pub in the manner of an Englishman attempting to make himself understood in a country where the locals are, antagonisingly,  speaking foreign.

And the questions were pretty good. It was solid, interesting quiz fare, with a decent smattering of anagrams, urban myths, and trivia. At the end of the first round, I approached the quizmaster to compliment him on a good job. I find out it’s the first time he’s done it, though presumably he meant at the Cock Tavern, as he was too skilled a practitioner to be a debutant. I tell him he’s very good at shouting out the questions.

”I’m good at shouting in pubs. I’ve been doing it for thirty years, man and boy.”

The quiz continued, and the questions flowed like a shouty river. What was the theme tune to the Harlem Globetrotters? Where did turkeys originate? What was the original name for Bangladesh? Only one of these questions inspired an outbreak of whistling.

There was no music round, which is, I think, a missed opportunity for some hot A capella action.

As the quiz came to an end, I belatedly realised that most of the punters weren’t taking part. In fact, there were only three teams participating. So the INEVITABLE VICTORY of our team was only rewarded by ten pounds, siphoned into my hands from a beer glass collection of the smattering of entrance fees. We also won best team name, for Pussy Riot, and for this we received a bit of paper telling me I can have a tenner’s worth of free beer.

But what of the RUDEST QUIZMASTER? Far from being a villain, he actually came across as rather polite and charming, and the loud reminders not to use mobile phones[5] were much appreciated.

So what is to be done? I have a suggestion, if the quizmaster happens to be reading this. You were wearing a nice suit, lending you due authority. But next time why not get into character with a top hat, a cane, twirlable moustache, and a young woman tied to some nearby railway tracks?[6] 

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USEFUL INFORMATION

The quiz is every Wednesday at 8:30pm. Bring someone with good hearing.

Check out the pub’s Twitter feed for beer and quiz updates. And also if you want to know where it is. It also has a website, which is fairly minimalist at present.

OTHER STUFF WORTH KNOWING

Pub: Lovely, pared back space, huge number of beers. Staff friendly and know their stuff. Pies and scotch eggs are also rumoured, but the perspex pie box on the bar was mockingly empty on our visit.
Pub clientele: Young beer fiends, middle aged beard fiends, beards, hipsters on their nights off.
Question of the night: “Where do turkeys originate?”

PHOTO

RAMBLING FOOTNOTES

1. A pub in Cromer, Norfolk, claimed that its weekly quiz was WORLD FAMOUS due to its mean quizmaster. WORLD FAMOUS is a phrase bandied about too often these days, even ironically.

Also worthy of note is Wong Kei in London’s Soho, a Chinese restaurant known for years for the rudeness of its waiting staff. But the restaurant found out, and now they play up to this reputation, with a camp faux-rudeness that sadly betrays their original contempt for anything approaching customer service.

2. and with its own micro-brewery in the basement.

3. To get some idea of what the pub was like before its reinvention, I refer you to this comment from beerintheevening.com left in 2009:

“I went there with my sister and we quickly attracted the attention of the boys on the pool table as we were anxiously looking over at it hoping we might get a game but not sure how to go about it because it was free. They quickly welcomed us into their group and we had a few games and they were impressed by our skills. I got chatting to one very nice boy and was suprised to hear he had a tag on his leg from some sort of misunderstanding leaving another pub in the area and the kerfuffle that followed, and had to be home by 9pm or he’d start beeping. My sis made friends with another guy who took us off with his mate to a party at his friend’s cafe bar, and we got in a bit of trouble on the bus on the way home that resulted in our new friends being thrown off the bus by London transport police but it was all really friendly. Tag leg called me a few times afterwards but i didn’t answer.”

4. Or the fancy fixie bikes being brought into the pub lest they be pilfered by the less socially fortunate local youths, destined to be exiled to the outskirts by the current government’s ideologically belligerent housing policies.

5. “IF YOU USE YOUR MOBILE PHONE, IT LOOKS LIKE CHEATING.” A pause. “REPEATED USE OF YOUR MOBILE PHONES STILL LOOKS LIKE CHEATING.”

6. Hackney Central, on London’s Overground network, is only a few minutes away, and the line enjoys a long history of maidens being tied to its rails by moustache-twirling villains.