Pub Quiz is Life

Richard Bean

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781840029598
• eBook ISBN: 9781849431897
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: British Drama
• Index: Literature

Lee, a soldier returning to Hull from two tours of Afghanistan, joins a losing pub quiz team. The team is: Lee, specialist subject - "how to kill a man with your bare hands"; Woody, specialist subject - "hallucinogenic drugs"; and Bunny, specialist subject - "the containerisation of Hull docks"! What they need is a bit of class, a bit of history of art, a bit of literature, a bit of posh totty. Melissa has come to Hull to regenerate the city. Maybe she can be a shot of viagra for a particular East Hull pub quiz team.
A murderous black comedy, set in Hull's black economy, with too many questions and all the wrong answers.

Week Two

SCENE ONE (LATER THAT WEEK, FRIDAY LUNCHTIME)

A food menu on the blackboard. LEE, BUNNY, WOODY (with plaster over the eye) and MELISSA at a table. On the table are empty plates from lunch, maybe the odd chip. BUNNY and LEE can still be eating if needed. On WOODY’s plate is an uneaten battered fish skin and the odd chip.

WOODY: (To MELISSA.) Are you vegetarian?

MELISSA: No, but I only eat happy chickens.

WOODY: I think organic farming’s cruel. If the animals are happy, yeah, killing ’em must be wrong. Factory farming’s much better, cos at least when you kill ’em you’re putting them out their misery.

LEE: (Beat.) Is that the joke you’ve written?

WOODY: Yeah.

MELISSA: It’s funny, but it’s rubbish. (She spots MABEL.) Mabel! Could you possibly do me a receipt for lunch please?

MABEL: You want all four of them on one ticket?

MELISSA: That’d be perfect.

LEE has clocked this example of exploitative expenses. MABEL moves off.

Why do you want to do stand-up?

WOODY: I want a change of career.

MELISSA: But you seem to me to be very successful. That Lexus in the car park, that’s yours isn’t it?

WOODY: No, I borrowed it off the enemy.

LEE: His wife.

WOODY: It’s a good car that Lexus. Goes like taramasalata off a shovel.

MELISSA: What’s your line of business?

WOODY: Buying, selling, distribution.

MELISSA: Because it’s useful for me to know which sectors of the economy are flourishing in Hull. Are you involved in manufacturing?

WOODY: No. That’s all overseas.

MELISSA: What kind of products?

WOODY: Alternative lifestyle solutions, pyramid selling, yeah.

MELISSA: That’s my card. Next week I’m running an ‘investors in youth forum’ at Bridlington Spa. Do you know Bridlington Spa?

WOODY: Brid Spa, yeah, that’s where I started.

LEE: He was in a band. Bass.

MELISSA: Cool.

WOODY: Cool? No we weren’t cool, no. We were shit.

MELISSA: Hull Advance want to see successful entrepreneurs going into the schools, talking to the kids.

WOODY: I already have people doing that.

MELISSA: The danger is that for the kids on the big estates the only person they see driving a Lexus is the local drug dealer.

WOODY: Normally I drive a Range Rover. And I live in South Cave.

MELISSA: Where is South Cave?

WOODY: It’s south of North Cave.

MABEL comes over to take the dishes.

MABEL: There’s your receipt, love.

MELISSA: Thank you.

WOODY: Lovely haddock that Mabe.

MABEL: I wouldn’t know. I haven’t eaten fish since I signed on to that Estonian cruise ship fully intending to present my own particular brand of tasteless erotica. But they forced me to do a cabaret act as a female impersonator.

MELISSA: But you are a woman.

MABEL: And in fact, unlike some people I could name, I always have been. The ship turned out to be a floating brothel for the Russian fishing fleet. That’s where I met me first husband, Leff. He was a winch operator from Murmansk who had webbed feet that he could tuck behind the back of his head. I hope that image hasn’t ruined your lunch. I nursed him for ten months as he slowly died from passive smoking, like Roy Castle.

MABEL is genuinely moved, hanky, sniffs.

WOODY: Count your blessings Mabel, at least he never played the bugle.

MABEL moves off.

So why am I here on a Friday lunch, Lee Bunting?

LEE: I want to win the league. It’s an injustice that the teachers always win.

WOODY: Pub quiz and injustice, you can’t have one without the other. I was in Spain, at the villa last year, and the local had a quiz, one of the questions was ‘where in England would you find the Land of Green Ginger’.

BUNNY: ’ull!

WOODY: Of course. But they wouldn’t give me a point.

LEE: What had you put?

WOODY: Bottom o’ Whitefri’gate.

LEE: There is a lesson there. OK. First off guys, thanks for coming in –

WOODY: – you sound like an officer.

LEE: We can win this quiz. But it does need focus.

WOODY: Prince Harry in Afghanistan! The Taliban are here, here, here and here!

MELISSA: We’ve all agreed to this meeting.

WOODY: You can’t do homework for pub quiz!

LEE: Setting the questions for pub quiz is a form of self-expression. What are Mabel’s obsessions? What is the wallpaper of Mabel’s life?

WOODY: Wood chip.

MELISSA: She’s going to Crete for her holidays.

LEE: Brilliant. Melissa, can you swat up on Minoan Culture.

WOODY: Fucking hell!

LEE: Woody, you’re our music man. What is the soundtrack to Mabel’s life?

WOODY: Glen Campbell, Neil Diamond, Glen Campbell, Gary Glitter and Glen Campbell.

LEE: Get all their lyrics, all their stories, go on the internet –

WOODY...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Dedication and Acknowledgements
• Characters
• Set
• Contents
• Week One
• Week Two
• Week Three
• Week Four
• Week Five
• Endnote