Distant Past

I was brought up watching TV shows like ‘University Challenge’, ‘Catchphrase’, ‘Countdown’ and ‘Fifteen-to-One’, and bedtime stories would often be replaced by a quiz. My school ran a General Knowledge competition which I won for my year group every year, apart from my last year, aged 13, when my rival young quizzer (Robert Harland) beat me by a point!

Less Distant Past

At University, I took part in various TV quiz shows, including ‘Countdown‘, ‘The Weakest Link‘, ‘Number One‘, ‘The People Versus‘, ‘Defectors’ and ‘100%’ . This was an era in which the internet was young and quiz shows were booming – which meant that anyone with an internet connection and an ability to search effectively on Ask Jeeves or primitive equivalent could end up on loads of TV quiz shows. I had a good win rate, without actually winning all that much money (although I did win a bit, including some of Jeremy Beadle’s Money).

A major influence at University was a pub quiz master called Dale Collins, who ran (and still runs) the best pub quizzes in the UK.

Past

I spent my first two years of work at Deutsche Bank, where I became involved in running their massive Charity of the Year Quiz Nights (which, 12 years later, I am still running). I quit the bank to do various things, one of which was to set up my company QuizQuizQuiz. I also found myself as the resident quiz geek on the short-lived Challenge TV show ‘Totally Top Trumps‘. (Incidentally, I’ve still never seen an episode of that show, so if anyone happens to have some or all of the episodes, please get in touch).

My TV quiz show career inevitably slowed down now I was a quiz professional, although I am proud to have been on the first ever episode of ‘Only Connect‘ (before going on to lose in the final to the legendary Crossworders team of David Stainer, Ian Bayley and Mark Grant).

Present

I entrust the day-to-day activities to others, while I keep an eye on the strategic direction of QuizQuizQuiz, looking for new opportunities for the company to develop. My other main focus is on keeping standards high at our quiz nights, ensuring that our formats, questions, multimedia and audio material stay fresh and set the standards expected for us to remain the best in the business. In practice that means sealing myself off from the world for a few days here and there to review, edit, and curate all the material that the team have been creating.

I’m also an experienced, keen and willing “go-to” man for people in the quiz world  – be it as a question writer, question editor, talking head, consultant or in some other category.

In 2013, I became one of the new breed of Senior Question Writers on ‘Only Connect’ under the stewardship of Alan Connor (David Bodycombe’s successor as question editor), with my name appearing in the credits for the first time in the first episode of series 9 in April 2014.

In 2016, I took over as Question Editor of ‘Only Connect’ with my colleague David McGaughey, looking after the questions from Series 13 onwards, as well as putting together ‘Only Connect: The Official Quiz Book’ and ‘Only Connect: The Difficult Second Quiz Book’.

Future

Try me – I’d love to help out or get involved if I can, either in a personal capacity or with the excellent team at QuizQuizQuiz.

I’m pretty good at replying to emails, so just get in touch.