4:43pm Thursday 12th August 2010
By Paul Smith
If you had to choose a quiz master to host your local’s test of brain power you’d ask Al Murray along. His new show, getting a run out here before the Edinburgh Festival, was offering a Morrison’s – “no tat here” – frozen chicken for the quiz winners; some quickly defrosting, 35%-meat sausages for the runners-up; and nothing but shame for the losers.
We were soon singing along to “Thick And Slow” for those seated at the front in teams that failed to make the grade.
Murray was at his best getting the audience involved at the outset, picking on the oldest man in the world, the teachers’ paedophile ring, and Officer Dibble. “What do you do mate,”
he asked someone from the Rose and Crown. “I’m a fruit broker” “A what! You’re a greengrocer, mate. You buy and sell fruit, you’re a greengrocer”.
Like all pub quiz’s it lost its fizz at times, as people waited for the questions to be collected and those not in a team started talking among themselves and drifting off to the bar. It was, a bit oddly, a proper quiz – who was our last Liberal Prime Minister, name the four chambers of the heart? The questions could have been quirkier and the landlord could have made more of them but he played it remarkably straight and, after posing with the winning team and their chicken, made a subdued exit. In a tight pub in Edinburgh with a well-oiled crowd it’ll probably go down a treat, but in Komedia it felt a bit flat.
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