It was SDC and EDC's turn to be the hosts with the most this week and they didn't let us down. They bagsied the Halloween quiz a few weeks ago which meant we haven't had them as host for moons, it was good to have them back at the reigns.
We were under strict instruction to dress up in a Halloween outfit. This message was heeded by some of us - most noticeably RH & RG and AM & HE who properly went for it, the hosts, as expected, were dressed to impress but some of us couldn't find their skeleton mask that went with their 'Day Of The Dead' outfit so sat there in a skeleton T-shirt they had bought especially for the night looking a bit half-arsed to be honest. I tried.
The first round was all about Halloween and general spooky shit! Out of the many questions asked, one that stood out when the answers came through was "where do Vampire Bats come from" - the resounding answer from the group was 'a cave', the hosts were actually looking for a continent! EDC tried to steer us in the right direction but his efforts were in vain...
Proceedings were brought to a brief halt when one of AM's little humans ventured into the living room just as he was in a mid-foul-mouthed rant about having a terrible birthday ("...my birthday is the gooch of the year, between the fanny of Christmas and the arsehole of New Year..." - beautiful sentiment, I'm sure you will all agree?). He double-downed by shouting "you know where the cats are, go away" at his little un - me and Ms L were genuinely laughing out loud at the whole episode. Never change AM, never change!
As mentioned many times before, the hosts try and bring something new to the table, this week SDC and EDC brought segs on the eyeballs of everyone playing as they introduced the very first 'Where's Wally' round. Cue a screen filled with close-ups of squinting middle-aged idiots all desperately trying to find a stripey jumper wearing little bastard and, in a Halloween twist, his little wizard friend! It is no coincidence that DB and JB (the youngest in the group after the hosts) won this round, they are the only ones who don't need to reach for 'readers' every 5 minutes.
There was a spooky anagram round which properly hurt my head if I'm being honest. I'm crap at Countdown and struggled with this, if it were not for Ms L I'd still be sat there now trying to decipher RNAUDCOL. One letter from each question then made another anagram to solve. My head was officially kettled by this point.
In a break between rounds, we discussed the lack of kids at the door Trick or Treating as we were on lockdown. Around here, kindly souls filled sandwich bags with sweets and hung them on gates and fences for any hardy kids to pick up on their way past. In a disturbing insight into his mind, RH said that people should just put used dog-chod bags out - complete with Rover's parked Winalot - to emphasise the 'trick' part of the night. Okaaay...
Hot on the heels of the 'Where's Wally' round came the second innovation of the night, the first-ever Duck Apple game (it was Halloween after all). As it was our group, the round was called 'Bobbing For Your Nonce'. A bowl was brought in with 6 apples floating in the water, on each apple was written a number, EDC bobbed and picked an apple at random then the number on the apple was recorded for part two of the round. This was repeated until every player had an apple that had been bobbed.
Back at the presentation, the number randomly selected had either a nonce worth 5 points behind it, a lucky nonce with 10 points behind it or no nonce at all worth zero. In normal, polite society, shouting "oh for fuck sake, no nonce!" and having a titty lip on would raise eyebrows, shouting "YES LUCKY NONCE" would result in some serious questions being asked. In our world, we all agreed that it was a great round...
Then there was the welcome return of 'Porn or Polish' the round where suggestive titles were announced and we needed to guess if it was the name of a porn film or a nail polish.
It is much, much more difficult than you would think...I wouldn't let my kids go out to buy a bottle of 'Jizz' for the nails for example. As traditional by now, we asked DE which bluey he was watching from the list!!!
Next up it was Halloween Number 1s, like Christmas Number 1's but, erm, at Halloween. One of the songs that topped the charts was 'Golddigger' by Kanye West which I happened to mention was one of the very, very few rap songs I can tolerate. This set AM off on one and I kinda remember trying to do a freestyle, Halloween rap to the track - you can imaging how badly that went...
The questions about number 1s went all the way to this week so obviously, no one in the quiz had a clue, we needed a child around to let us know what passes for music these days. Turns out that DB and JB had children about in the form of their youngest, A and his girlfriend E but neither of them could help, that is how bad music is right now.
As it was Halloween, SDC and EDC came up with a cracking idea to do an 'Observation Round' using a clip of a spooky movie - genius! We watched the clip, answered the questions and then all hell broke loose over the colour of cushions on the couch (I shit you not!). Apparently, the cushions were navy blue, but on some screens, they were black - cue foaming at the mouth over hues!
EDC tried to smooth the waters by saying that if we had put stripey and dark cushions then the point was yours, this did not placate AM who, buoyed by many, many drinks exploded into a rant about not being able to see the exact same colour. This was met by EDC shouting "If you had have listened instead of moaning you would have heard that it was a point for stripes!" then an expletive of some sort I think. The joys of Quiz Night, I absolutely love it!!!
Now, my notes start to go west here as I have a scribble which says "in the morning you will wake up to a video called 'Noncey Spoons'" - that could read 'Noncey Scones' to be honest, either way, it is disturbing...and a lie, I haven't received anything!!!
And that was the end of the Halloween quiz, it was fabulous from start to finish, blending straightforward question rounds with a smattering of new stuff including the new 'Hall Of Famer' 'Bobbing For Your Nonce'. The only downside was that it was over by 11:15 PM which is the middle of the afternoon for us lot!
The scores were tallied up and we had a first-time winner in RH & RG - well-done guys! But as I say every week, it isn't about who comes first, it is about the company, getting the old brain cells working and having a laugh with your mates. SDC and EDC created a quiz which allowed all that, nice one you two!!!
I then heard a sentence I never imagine would ever be uttered; "We might need to have an emergency Brookside quiz"! As it turns out, the Brooky quiz couldn't be found (but AM and HE did find where the kids have been hiding all their rubbish instead of putting it away properly - oops!) so we did an 80 TV quiz which I thoroughly enjoyed.
After that, I hosted an overly long and way too difficult Trivial Pursuit round, in hindsight, we should have finished after 80's TV but I enjoy Quiz Night so much I wanted to squeeze the last drops out of it. I'm going to do a few random rounds for the next time we finish a little early...
The drinking continued into the wee small hours, I helped/hindered DB by making suggestions for his first quiz next week. It will be interesting to see what he comes up with, no pressure mate!!!