Off we go again with another 12 months of quiz compiling, travelling all over the UK and hosting big corporate events…and maybe I’ll have some new jokes too! I absolutely love my job as a quiz master – I get to meet thousands of people each year, in some gorgeous venues up and down the country…and I get paid for the privilege! Back in 2024, I travelled to places such as Liverpool, Leeds, Portsmouth, The Cotswolds, Bromsgrove and Cambridge from my home base in Essex. My previous clients read like an FT Top 100 Companies list!

For those still in doubt whether a quiz event would work for their corporate day out, here’s how I do it;

• We start with general knowledge questions on a variety of subjects. The questions are always relevant and I try to leave no-one behind, varying the difficulty. You can even select the subjects you would like in the general knowledge section. And the most important thing? You won’t find my quizzes anywhere else. They are all proudly written and researched by me personally and not gleaned from a quiz subscription site or copied en bloc from the internet.
• I’ll follow the general knowledge questions with table-top picture and puzzle rounds, designed to challenge and entertain in equal measure! Quite often media-based, there’ll be celebrity photos or movie stills to ponder, along with another thought-provoking task to grip your teams!
• In my 20+ years as a quiz master, the final round has always been an audio pop music round. It genuinely does end the event in style! Usually a ‘Bits of Hits’ round…snippets of famous songs for the teams to identify, all different genres and eras, and always the most engaging part of the night.
• We live in a world of non-stop technology at our immediate disposal, but my quiz shows are based solely on the collective team knowledge with no outside interference! I DO NOT HOST SPEED QUIZZING EVENTS, I DO NOT ASK TEAMS TO UTILISE ANYTHING MORE TECHNICAL THAN A PEN AND PAPER! Speed-Quizzing is simply not conducive to a team game; answers are required immediately, giving no time for team discussion…and speed quizzing questions are always multi-choice, which means you have a 25/33% chance of getting the correct answer with a blind guess! Corporate events are designed for team-building, for team interaction with colleagues…and that’s why the only technology at my events are the systems that I use to present the shows!

The diary for 2025 is now open and awaiting your call!

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Why should I hire a professional for my charity quiz event?

• Presentation: Your main aim is to receive as many donations/ticket sales as possible for your cause and this is achieved initially by great first impressions. An amateur (or friend) sitting at a pub table reading out questions over a dodgy mic system doesn’t inspire confidence! Poorly printed answer sheets, lack of pens, lack of personality are just some of the scenarios we’ve seen.
• Quiz Content: This is massively important if you wish to keep your teams onside for the duration of the quiz. A professional quiz host will know exactly how to judge the topics and the difficulty levels so that no-one feels alienated. There’s no substitute for experience and a top quiz master will ensure that the teams remain engaged throughout.
• Personality: Your guests will be much more inclined to make extra donations if your quiz host is genial, funny and warm in their approach. This only comes with years of experience (and a few well-timed fund-raising interactive games!) No-one hands money over to people they don’t like (except maybe the tax man or the DVLA!) so the benefit of having a professional host can easily generate more income than usual, enough to cover their fee and then some! There are even hosts (like me) who can conduct a charity auction during the break to bolster funds.
• The Next One: If you’ve hired a top professional quiz master to host your charity event, the next one will be even bigger. Word gets about very quickly to those who missed out, so a good quiz host will generate larger and larger audiences each time, and you could raise ticket prices too.

You should definitely consider employing a professional quiz master & host for your next charity event. If you are concerned that their fee cuts into your fundraising, it’s quite often a possibility to find a local business (or your own bosses) who would be willing to pay for the host on the night. That way, all your ticket money, raffle money and even auction proceeds go straight to the worthy cause.

And finally, here’s a young lady handing over the winner’s trophy at a very local (to me!) charity event that I hosted on Saturday.

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Recently, with the advent of new AI music technology, I created a quiz round called ‘Drum & Bass.’ The mere thought of that frenetic dance genre sent shivers down the spines of most of the teams on the night, until I explained to them that I’d removed everything from ten popular songs except the drums and bass! So no vocals, no melody…just drums & bass. Their job was to identify the song…although I had clearly overestimated their deeper music knowledge, so the scores were low at best. However, I’m not one to waste a good idea, so now I have used the same technology to remove vocals from popular hits and I ask the teams to give me the missing lines. The only downside to that is the cacophony of tuneless singing whilst they try to get to the answer!

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This Autumn sees a new regular monthly quiz show, in addition to the Olde Dog Inn quiz in Brentwood. I’ll be appearing at the superb David Lloyd Fitness Centre in Cambridge on the first Thursday of every month. And there might be more to come as other David Lloyd centres are also interested!

October & November also sees a spike in corporate events, as well as the traditional Christmas parties. There’s definitely a trend in companies looking for an alternative Christmas celebratory event, rather than just a drunken night in a local ‘disco’ pub! My Festive Quiz Show is a great way to bring your colleagues together for a fun (and competitive) evening.

Finally, I’m still looking to add some individual gaming rounds to my popular shows, whereby each team nominates their cleverest member to play! Once I’ve commissioned some custom quiz buzzers, I’ll put up more details on the site.

Have a cosy and safe Winter!

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Here at QuizHire HQ (i.e. my office), I’ve been putting some plans in place for the coming months and of course continuing to create all-new quiz shows. There’s always the temptation to change the format of my shows, and I’ll be adding in some new challenges in 2023, along with some sparkly new technical equipment hopefully being built in the Spring.

There are already a couple of big quiz show events in the diary; two retro-themed 1980s/90s shows in March & November, my monthly Pub Quiz Shows in Brentwood, Essex (the only public events I currently perform) and a scattering of corporate shows throughout the year. As the ‘working-from-home’ ethic slowly decreases and we see more employees heading back to the workplace, I’m hoping that very soon I’ll return to a diary bursting with gigs just as it was in 2019!

I hope that 2023 brings you all the happiness you’d wish for yourself. And also a place on the winning team at one of my great quiz shows!

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At the beginning of November, I was very pleased to be asked to compile and co-host with the one and only Graham Norton, a charity quiz event to raise money for The Drinks Trust with 60 key retail buyers and influencers from the wine industry in attendance. Whilst Graham Norton and Jancis Robinson asked the questions, I played the ‘Richard Osman role’ of verifying the answers and keeping score. I think this was the very first time I’d been asked to write for another host…and I thoroughly enjoyed it! Needless to say, with the wine flowing freely and Graham’s inimitable style, the audience loved it and very few left the building unaided!

Photo courtesy of Matt Crossick/PA Wire

Photo courtesy of Matt Crossick/PA Wire

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Over the past few months, I’ve made some rough notes of the scores achieved in all the different subjects (hardly scientific, but it’s just for personal research!) and there were some surprising results. Below is the list of most popular (i.e. highest % of most correct answers per subject) down to the least-favoured questions…

1. Food & Drink
2. Geography
3. Movies
4. Pop Music
5. Science/Nature
6. Logo Game (picture quiz)
7. Bits of Hits (audio music round)
8. Potluck
9. Sport
10.  Art/Literature

(There are many other subjects, but these are the rounds that appear most regular)

What did we learn? Well, not really a surprise that Food & Drink tops the charts, as it’s a pastime that everyone gets involved in! To see Geography coming second is a bit of a shock, as that (along with Art & Literature) is usually greeted with groans! Brand awareness is clearly a thing in the UK as the Logo Game nearly always scores quite highly. Sport is a tricky one…anything outside of football, cricket and tennis leaves some teams floundering! And at the bottom is Art & Literature, the cultured subject! To be fair, literature is usually popular but once I add in some arty questions, it all goes awry!

Without doubt though, the most well-received subject is the ‘Bits of Hits’ audio pop music round. It’s something I’ve done from the very start of my quizmaster career, and only on a very small handful of occasions have the clients asked to drop it from the line-up.

So…what’s your specialist subject?

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When I originally took on a pub quiz as a stand-in back in 2004, I never envisaged travelling further than the local pub to ply my trade. Oh wow, how things have escalated!

Below is a list (by no means comprehensive!) of some the wonderful places I’ve hosted my exclusive Pub Quiz Shows, from major historical buildings to beloved football clubs;

• National Railway Museum, York
• MK Dons Stadium
• Canterbury Cathedral
• New Zealand House, Pall Mall
• KPMG, Canary Wharf
• Hotel Bristol, Lake Maggiore, Italy
• West Bromwich Albion, Hawthorns Stadium
• Leeds Castle, Kent
• Hoar Cross Hotel, Derbyshire
• Colchester Utd Stadium
• Orsett Hall Hotel, Essex
• Jaguar-Land Rover HQ, Warwickshire
• 1 Leicester Square, London
• Victorian Chop House, Manchester
• Down Hall Hotel, Bishops Stortford
• Ice Bar, Mayfair
• Millwall FC Stadium
• National Conference Centre, Birmingham
• Legoland, Windsor
• Carnage Hall Hotel, Cheshire

As you can see, I’m not a stranger to the UK’s motorways! Here’s a picture from last week’s event at Millwall Football Club, where I received a very warm welcome and a superb cup of tea!

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But sadly, there are some quiz hosts out there whose idea of research begins and ends with copy and paste! They spot a swathe of quiz questions online and simply use them with no checking or validation at all. Surely the funniest ones though are the ambiguous questions…the ones where you are pretty sure there’s no definitive answer, but the amateur host still insists their answer is correct….such as; Which creature kills the most humans each year? Well, there’s an argument for both the humble mosquito and mankind itself. And strictly speaking, the mosquito causes minuscule harm to human life on its own, but the diseases it carries….whilst only homicide figures are counted in the man v man total, ignoring war and terrorism. So you can see why I spend long geeky hours making sure (as best as I can) that every question is not only interesting, but correct!

Have a look at some of the common ‘non-facts’ often used in quizzes around the country:

• The Great Wall Of China is the only man-made structure visible from space – Nope. Unless you’re viewing through a magnification device, at which point lots of man-made things will appear visible!
• A Polar Bear’s fur is white (or yellow) – Nope again. Their fur is actually translucent, the white is the light reflecting back/passing through. Their skin is actually black.
• Mount Everest is the tallest mountain in the World – Wrong! It is the highest peak on the planet (above sea level), but Mauna Kea is definitely taller when measured from base to tip.
• Bulls are enraged by the colour red – highly unlikely, as they can only see blues and yellow. It’s the annoying waving of the cape that pisses them off!
• Dropping a penny from the top of the Empire State Building will kill somebody at the bottom – Well, first of all you’ve gotta hit someone and those odds are pretty high. Secondly, with the penny weighing around 1 or 2 grams, its terminal velocity as it spins and falls doesn’t increase nearly as much as you’d think, so an annoying bump on the head is the most you can wish for.
• Nails and hair continue to grow after you die – Or….the grown-up explanation is that skin recedes thus giving the appearance of growth.
• The forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden was an apple – Actually, in the Book of Genesis, there’s no mention of what type of fruit it was at all. My guess is a fig, as they wore fig leaves to cover their modesty…if you believe that kind of thing.

And finally…..here’s a photo of my cat moments before I began this blog and moments after exploring a very dusty shed.

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So, speaking from the heart together with my vast experience, here’s a few pointers to help guarantee a really successful quiz night with your colleagues…

• Book a private room at a venue where food and drink is easily available! Table service is a bonus too, especially as the teams will be seated for up to an hour at a time.
• Ensure all the teams have a clear view of the quiz master (even if they’re not using visuals such as screens) – I’ve performed in some odd-shaped places and not addressing the teams face to face is quite difficult!
• If you’re looking for a team-building evening with lots of social interaction amongst your colleagues, don’t book a speed quizzing event! They tend to be conducted using tablets or mobile phones, with multi-choice answers and a short time limit to submit your team answer…this pretty much gives no time for team discussion and invariably whoever’s nearest to the keypad presses first! You can’t revisit your answers either. My investment in this tech was a bit of a mistake, but luckily I got most of my money back!
• When arranging the teams, try to keep to 4-8 team members as the ideal size. Many quizzes where some teams have 12 heads and others just five or six invariably leads to protests from the smaller teams!
• Even though we’re part of this brave new gender neutral world, it’s still good to have an even mix of female/male team members, because despite what they say, I still get a chorus of female boos when I announce the Sport category and male groans when Rom-coms come up! And never underestimate the value of a much-older team member!
• In my experience, the ideal duration time for a corporate quiz night is two hours. That is what I base every one of my events upon. Longer than two hours does tend to strain the attention span of the teams. It should be fast-moving, and delivered with wit and sincerity. And a nice break in the middle for comfort or food, etc.
• Prizes…I’m always asked this question! If it’s just for a fun evening of getting staff together socially or after a seminar or conference, then wine and chocolates are always very gratefully received by the winners. It’s nice to add runners-up prizes too if you can. And why not throw in a prize for the team coming last? To surprise them, make it a decent one and not a collection of wooden spoons! I once hosted an event and the client gave the last-placed team a box of 48 Cadbury’s Creme Eggs…the winners later tried to negotiate a swap for their prize!
• Last but definitely not least…only host the event yourself as quizmaster if you are prepared to research your questions thoroughly beforehand (you WILL be contradicted at some point during proceedings!), if you are quick-witted and imaginative, and most of all if you are keen and brave enough to face your colleagues! I have seen many amateur quiz masters, and whilst they have made  sterling efforts, there’s no substitute for the real thing!

I hope that I have given you a little insight into the world of arranging a very popular quiz night out!

The post QuizHire’s Tips for a top Corporate Quiz Night! appeared first on Quiz Hire.