QUESTIONS

1First of all, one you’ll have to guess. Celebrating their birthdays this week are two Hollywood legends: Harvey Keitel and George Lucas. Which is older?

2Some geography questions now. Three names of current ceremonial counties of the UK start with the word ‘North’. Name them.

3If you travelled the 6,400 miles from Dar es Salaam to Seoul, which countries would you be travelling between? The answers rhyme.

4A native of Glasgow is a Glaswegian. What’s a native of Dundee called?

5The roles in the stage musical Hamilton include which British monarch?

6‘He is afraid. He is totally alone. He is three million light years from home’ is the tagline to which film of 1982?

7Which incredibly successful British sitcom courted controversy by giving its male lead the surname Shipman and one female character the surname Sutcliffe (both surnames of notorious British serial killers)?

8Next up, sports and games. Opened by a performance from Whitney Houston in 1997, which stadium in New York is named after the winner of the first championship of the US Open Tennis Era?

9The 2018 Winter Olympics featured five sports with names beginning with the letter S. Name THREE. (The word ‘skiing’ is not enough by itself.)

10An image of which sportsman provided the backdrop for Dexys Midnight Runners’ performance of Jackie Wilson Said on Top Of

The Pops?

11Which board game started life in 1903 as an attempt to criticise what its creator called ‘the present system of land grabbing’?

12Now, some questions about books. The creator of Jack Reacher, Lee Child, chose his pen name so that his books would appear between which two other crime writers on shelves which have been arranged alphabetically?

13In the original run of Roger Hargreaves’ Mr Men books, THREE of the title characters are red. Which three?

14The following lines are the first appearance in print of which fictional character? ‘How are you?’ he said cordially, gripping my hand with a strength for which I should hardly have given him credit. ‘You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive.’

15Who is this former pop icon (right), pictured in her youth?

16A variety of what vegetable emerged in 1966 from the Plant Breeding Institute, situated at Maris Lane, Trumpington?

17The 2018 Christmas number one was We Built This City On Sausage Rolls, a reworking of a hit by Starship. The follow-up, I Love Sausage Rolls, was a reworking of a hit by WHO?

18In 2010, Mary Bale of Coventry was fined £250 after she was caught on CCTV ‘causing unnecessary suffering’. What did she do?

19Next, music. The following phrases are anagrams of the titles of songs by Kate Bush. Which ones? Bob Has Oak; Big Nuts Could; The Rushing Weight

20If you add the numbers in the first three album titles by Adele (main picture, above), what’s the total?

21Some questions of a topical nature as we approach the end of the quiz. What series of monologues by Alan Bennett is being revived by the BBC as programming which can be made during a lockdown?

22During his stint as ‘the nation’s PE teacher’, fitness coach Joe Wicks has been dealing with an injury to which part of his body?

23Princess Charlotte (left) celebrated which birthday by delivering care packages in Norfolk?

24A Florida lawyer has protested against the re-opening of the state’s beaches by visiting them dressed as what?

25Finally, what connects Vijay Singh’s sport, the deadly insect in The Mummy movie and the sport Prince Charles retired from in 2005?