History

Introduction

Our association was founded in 1990 by quiz enthusiasts who, having taken a drubbing in a north versus south challenge, felt that London could do a lot better in the way of quizzing. We must have succeeded because players from the south have rather reversed the result of those early north-south clashes!

The form of our success is an association owned and run by its member Teams - this is NOT a quiz league run to make money for its organisers! If you visit our pages you will see that we run a League Championship, currently in 2 divisions, a Knock Out Cup open to any team within the M25 ring and the "Brain of London" Individual Competition. We also sponsor the President's Cup Competition which is for representative sides from throughout the Southeast.

As for making money - well, we do! We make money for charity with our annual Charity Quiz Night in February. Click where indicated and you can find out how to join us in all this PLUS our social events such as the Annual Dinner and the Summer Quizfest Barbecue.

WE DIDN'T JUST AGONISE - WE ORGANISED!

The President of the League, Donald Yule, remembers how it all began and reflects upon what has happened since.

"Pub quizzing is bloody awful - and quiz nights in pubs are even worse!" That was my view ten years ago - and I have been given little reason to change it. But, ten years ago, that was all the fare available in the nation's capital to those of an enquiring mind and competitive team spirit. It was hard to take for someone who had arrived with a box full of trophies from the "The Oldest & Largest Independent Quiz Leagues in The World" in the Mersey Basin. However, without any good grace I fear, I put up with what Brian Evans described as "the only game in town" until an afternoon at Manor Arms proved a turning point. Our question setters in the Whitbread Pub League, a.k.a. Poste House, terror of the Merseyside Leagues, arrived to play the best players we could muster and under the "real rules" of play - not a version watered down for the benefit of the timorous or ill-informed.

London, your boys took a real hammering!

The players that day did not take kindly to this. A shell-shocked Barry Scott said: "What do we do?" Unlike others in the south whom we have met, we didn't sit and whinge or make namby-pamby excuses - what we did was get to work. The three of us held a formal meeting in August 1990 and founded a sporting association. Brian and Barry suggested that we show a bit of local pride and call ourselves the "South London Quiz League". We appointed ourselves as its pro tem officers, opened a bank account and then started the difficult bit.

We put our money where our mouths were and put an ad in the South London Press. The result was an almost deafening silence but two small voices arose, one from a cricket club called Old Grammarians and a second from a bunch who called themselves the "Jimmy Hill Club." Bless them both - they are still with us - and I thank them for their loyal support over these years.

By the autumn of 1990, by virtue of cobbling together a second side from the Manor Arms (the Manor Colts from whose ranks Roger Dickson is still playing we were up and under way with FOUR member teams. The self-same Liverpool tormentors, Janet Barker and Neville Cohen, then Ariston now Century etc gave us an "opening offer" deal and we were financially viable.

Your Handbook will tell you the rest of the story. By 1993-94 the present structure of the League and of the season was fully in place. The Manor teams had evolved into Athletic and Corinthians and the former began a remarkable domination of the League Championship that lasted for four years (Probably because we were one of the best sides I ever came across! . The Clapham combination, who remain the only team to have won every league and cup game in a calendar year (1993 , then split up. That opened the gate to Allsorts, who by dint of making their debut in Division Two in 1993, became the only team to have won all the four team trophies on offer.

Quiz teams have a finite life. On average, nationally, a quartet remains unchanged for five seasons. Thereafter there is disbandment or a change in personnel. Consequently, time, like an ever- rolling stream, has borne some of our teams away. I retain fond memories of the formidable Diggers, of The Bedford in their early days, the Troglodytes , Hope & Anchor and St Thomas' PETS. I congratulate others on their stickability, my own rugby club Rosslyn Park - first winners of the Cup-; Three Tuns who begat Beehive who begat Ovalytes; Red Lion successful converts from "pub quizzing".

We started with the aim of emulating and perhaps overtaking my old adversaries in the north. We have, I would submit, achieved that but there is still more we can do.

WE'VE STARTED BUT WE HAVEN'T FINISHED

"It is about knowledge and nerve, about memory and instant recall. It is about the ability to retrieve information swiftly and surely from that marvellous computer we all carry in our heads. It is about competitiveness and the capacity to rise to the occasion, to perform at one's best under pressure."

Thus wrote Magnus Magnusson in his foreword to Mary-Elizabeth Raw's little book about her winning Mastermind in 1989. He was, of course, talking about a TV entertainment rather than our own Mind Sport but it is a pretty good description of the demands of our game.

What it misses, however, is the larger dimension that we have as a result of being an association. Our League is more than just a half-hour contest once a week. We have a sense of community which has grown up with us, together with the sense of communal satisfaction which comes from having worked hard together to build something new and having succeeded.

So whither our game?

My greatest disappointments are not to have achieved a wider spread of the game throughout London and not to have obtained a major sponsor. I apologise to all the teams for failing on these scores. I am still on the case however, and having the chance to stand back from the day-to-day running of your competitions and events will perhaps allow me to take up cudgels on your behalf once more.

As we stride into our second decade, we have made one significant step in expansion. The President's Cup was a huge success in its first tentative season and continues to hold interest with Mastermind Club taking the honours in 2001and later proving it was no fluke by demolishing the Southport & Formby experts in the annual North v South clash.

My old brain can still fizz now and again, especially when we have a setter who is not in thrall to the proponents of popular culture. So I will probably be still the kenspeckle figure in the Number Four seat for a game or two yet.

My thanks to Barry and Brian for the lift-off and my congratulation to all the movers and shakers over the years who have helped sustain our development.

Happy Quizzing!
Donald Yule