ANNUAL QUIZ EVENING

RCCH ANNUAL QUIZ NIGHT AND FISH & CHIPS SUPPER

31 JANUARY 2025

Chichester Rugby Club was the venue for the annual RCCH fundraising ‘Quiz Night and Fish & Chips Supper’ on Friday 31 January 2025.  A sell-out crowd of 138 enthusiastic quizzers turned up for what was in equal measure an entertaining and suitably challenging evening.  Participants had to answer questions in seven categories, which included three picture rounds: ‘RIP 2024’, in which quizzers had to identify 20 famous people who had died during the previous year; a ‘Dingbats’ round (a Marmite round that people either love or hate in equal measure); and the rather testing ‘BBC Anniversaries’ round, which required teams to try to guess the date (+/– 3 years) when well-known TV programmes first aired between 1924–2005.  A new round for this year’s quiz was a ‘Jeopardy’ round comprising 10 questions for which teams were awarded double points for all correct answers but scored zero points for the round if they had any incorrect answers (consequently this was definitely not a round for speculative guesses…!).

The evening attracted not only RCCH members and their partners and friends, but also several teams representing other local Rotary Clubs in Chichester, Bognor Regis and Midhurst & Petworth, plus Inner Wheel and CETA. The atmosphere in the room was competitive but friendly, and fortunately there were not too many contentious answers, nor was a tiebreak question required on this occasion.

By the halfway stage, everyone had worked up an appetite and enthusiastically tucked into the tasty fish & chips (or halloumi for the vegetarians) that were collected by team captains in their fetching fezzes.

Graeme Loten was responsible for overseeing the ever-popular Tombola stall, tickets for which sold out long before the end of the evening as people tried their luck at winning one (or more) of the 50 or so prizes that had been generously donated by RCCH members, which included (as is typically the case!) copious bottles of alcohol, boxes of chocolates and other desirable items.

Master of Ceremonies (MC) for the evening was Peter Evans, who managed to keep everyone in order and the proceedings on time – no mean feat!  During the meal, £1 coins were collected from quizzers for their participation in a quick-fire round of ‘Heads or Tails’ which was won by Sue Mason, who very generously donated her £25.00 cash prize to the evening’s fundraising total.

The 18 teams were asked to come up with a team name, some examples of which were “The Friends of the Bewildered”, “The ‘Udder’ Side”, “We are the BBC” (the team members’ surnames being BBC), “The Riddle Effect” and “Double Jeopardy”.  The prize for the best name –a large tin of ‘Heroes’ chocolates – was awarded to “Maximus Scorius”, although this team unfortunately didn’t quite manage to live up to their prodigious name on the night…

Despite some (light-hearted?!) protests that the quiz was very difficult, the final scores were all creditable, with only a few points separating the top three teams.  The eventual winners were ‘The Riddle Effect’, with a highly commendable score of 131/160 possible marks.  The team with the lowest score, the “Tannery Tinkers”, collected their prize of an assortment of wooden spoons in good humour.  Indeed, there was friendly rivalry between the two lowest scoring teams, who both appeared keen to win this coveted prize.

The event raised £1137 for the International Committee’s chosen charities, the main beneficiary being ‘The Ripple Effect’ (formerly ‘Send A Cow’) (https://rippleeffect.org/), a charity that empowers families in rural Africa to learn more, grow more and sell more, transforming their lives while protecting their environment.

Credit for the planning and smooth running of the evening goes to members of RCCH’s International Committee, who want to thank everyone for supporting what was not only a successful and enjoyable social event, but one that also raised an impressive sum of money for a very deserving charity.

Janie Foote (Quiz Mistress)