REVIEW: MARSDEN INN

THE PUB: MARSDEN INN, SOUTH SHIELDS (0191 456 1812)


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Hi everybody! I'm Janette, the NET part of DAVNET.

Well up to now my favourite pub quiz has been the Marsden Inn quiz, which was held regularly on a Friday at 9pm.

The quiz was based on pop music and there were three categories of questions, but each catergory connected in some way with the questions in the other categories.

The main section involved playing a CD over the pub's speaker system, which would play a short intro and you would need to guess the song/artist or movie.
Some songs would be reversed to add to the difficulty and there was also a picture round, in which you had to name the famous musician or band.
The third style of question involved a cryptic clue which would point you towards the name of a group or artist. Example: "Raincoats in the cemetary" would be Max Bygraves (but don't be mislead by the inclusion of that old crooner, the quiz covered artists from all eras).

The QuizMaster (whose name escapes me) had a good rapport with the participants and took on the job of scoring each answer sheet himself. At the end of the night he would play each track again and give the answers.

The prizes were beer tokens but one thing I liked about this quiz was that there were prizes for first, second and third (and not just first place, like some other quizzes) so even if you were'nt the best in the room you still had a chance of winning something.

To top off all this quizzing loveliness, there was always some good food on offer. Which usually consisted of chicken curry and rice but if we were very lucky we sometimes could find ourselves with chilli, chips or even a sausage casserole! By the way did I mention all this was FREE! Including entry to the quiz itself! Amazing!

Sadly, although the Marsden Inn does still offer a different type of quiz on a Wednesday, the Friday Music Quiz is no more. On one ill-fated night a fire broke out of the upstairs floor (the lady at the bar later told us it was caused by a faulty clothes drier). Not long after this the proprieter moved to another pub and the quiz seemed to slowly dimish and once towards the end they ran the quiz with only two teams - the quiz ended soon after!

I have yet to find another quiz quite as good as this one. Can anyone suggest one? Please leave a comment below if any suggestions?
 

OVERALL SCORE: 9.5 out of 10

 

REVIEW: Lord Nelson, Jarrow

Well this is the first review in our South Shields quiz blog and guess what, the first one reviewed ends up not being in South Shields at all! Oh, well you've gotta be willing to bend the rules some times I guess - we might even end up reviewing some quizzes in Sunderland!

Anyway On with the Review:

THE PUB: THE LORD NELSON, JARROW (0191 489 7231)


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TIME OF QUIZ: Sunday's at 9PM

PRIZE(S): Beer Tokens

REVIEW:

The Lord Nelson pub itself was quite a surprise as in a very nice neighbourhood and the pub itself is very pleasant.
Myself and my partner, Janette arrived at 20.30 for the quiz and were glad we arrived the half hour early as the pub was surprisingly busy.

Never-the-less we found our selves a seat and drinking in the vaguely nautical atmosphere (think ship's wheels and portholes) we waited for the quiz to start.

The quiz master was a nice fellow called Ian who I've heard has been doing the quiz for over 25 years! Hey, it's Nice work if you can get it I suppose!

The quiz itself took the format of a 3 page document with questions on music, sport, general knowlege and a picture round.

The quality of the questions overall was very good but was a bit disappointed that the quiz didn't have much interaction and basically consisted of getting your question sheet, working through it and then handing it in.

The quiz master seemed like a nice guy with good mic skills so think it would have given the quiz a better sense of occasion if he had read out the questions, rather than us just having to work through a question sheet.

On the plus side the standard of questions was pretty good with the exception of the picture round (which we thought was a bit easy - although since it was all 80's pop stars younger quizzers may have struggled). Also was not a big fan of the sports round but suppose that's a matter of personal preference (Me and Janette are not sports fans at all!) 

However, most of my misgivings I had about the occasion were soon forgotten when Ian announced that the bar had put on a lovely spread of food for the hungry quizzers. The delicious pizza, sarnies and sausage rolls going a long way towards improving my overall feelings about the night ;)

DAVNET's Performance:  Well, lets just say we didn't win but didn't come last either. There were 11+ teams and we came 3rd last. Ah well, onwards and upwards :)

OVERALL SCORE: 7 out of 10

DAVNET LOGO!

Have created a new logo for Davnet. The DAV bit is in a quite masculine text to represent the male part of our team and the NET part it more feminine to represent the female part of the team :)
The bubbles and sparkles represent the fun of a pub quiz! LOL
Well it's no Google Doodle but I think it's none too shabby for a first attempt.  

HELLO SOUTH SHIELDS!

Hi all. This is our first blog post (very exciting!) on our South Shields Pub Quiz Blog.

The purpose of this blog is to document our adventure's around the South Shields area as we attempt to experience every pub quiz that this fair town has to offer.

There's no timescale to this endeavour but hopefully we haven't bitten off more than we can chew and can finish it within the next hundred years or so! :)

Will post soon with more details about our (small) quiz team and some reviews of past quizzes we've done. Feel free to comment below with any suggestions for good quizzes that we could try in the South Shields area.