Spectator Christmas Quiz

In 1983

1) Who said:

a) 'That's the trouble with society today. People are motivated by greed and there are no moral values at all.'

b) 'I'd like to have been a truck driver.'

c) 'The committee is made up of a black, a woman, two Jews and a cripple.'

d) 'Somewhere up there, someone must like me.'

c) `No one can expect unilateralism from us.'

f) 'The Prime Minister glories in slaughter.'

g) 'I'm greatly indebted to Stephen Waldorf.'

h) 'We only got there just in time.'

i) 'I'm no butcher, but I have learned how to carve a joint.'

j) `TV-am is like Listen with Mother performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company.'

2) Why:

a) Were 25,000 election leaflets pulped, and another 25,000 identical leaflets printed?

b) Did a row over an 86p theft cost £13 million?

c) Should the Queen Mother have gone round Parliament Square twice according to one MP?

d) Did an argument over the definition of a student almost prevent a university challenge?

e) Did a star who had won nine Oscars get into trouble for going to his own premiere? 11 Did a former civil servant almost run out of ties?

g) Did an opposition leader returning home fail to lead his party?

It) Did France get New Year's greetings one day late?

i) Did an object 18 inches long bring central London to a halt?

3) Where:

a) Was Margaret Thatcher forbidden to stand in an election?

b) Were four men immediately re-arrested after being acquitted?

c) Was Michael Heseltine better red than dead?

d) Were 300 people injured in traditional British festivities?

e) Was a Cabinet minister forced to resign, after a damning official report — to be reappointed to the Cabinet within ten days?

f) Were two million coloured immigrants expelled without international protest?

g) Were dogs banned — except for human consumption?

Ii) Does a general face the death penalty for losing a war?

4) Identify:

a) Lee Bum-Suk b) 'The longest suicide note in history' c) 007 d) Mrs Eugenia Charles e) 'Tony Benn's representative on earth' 1) Licio Celli g) The winner of the Bermondsey by- election h) The Franks Report i) Raul Alfonsin j) The Free Islamic Revolutionary Movement

5) Who was:

a) Killed by his own army?

b) Sentenced to four years for fraud?

c) Not involved in a famous picture story?

d) Accused of having swum to meet a Chinese submarine?

e) What have they all in common?

6) Bons mots

Who said, of whom:

a) 'There, but for the grace of God, goes God.'

b) 'I'd rather have him inside the tent pissing out than outside the tent pissing in.'

c) 'I never knew they had such white skins.'

d) 'The right honourable gentleman's smile is like the brass fittings on a coffin.'

e) 'You are hawking your conscience round, asking to be told what to do with it.'

f) 'He is a self-made man and worships his creator.'

g) 'He may be a son of a bitch but he's our son of a bitch.'

It) 'I don't mind him always having the ace of trumps up his sleeve, but merely his belief that God put it there.'

i) 'He could never see a belt without hitting below it,' j) 'A desiccated calculating machine.'

7) Literary lines

Who announced, in which literary work:

a) 'I am parshial to ladies, if they are nice. I am not quite a gentleman, but you would hardly notice it.'

b) 'An egg boiled very soft is not unwhole- some.'

c) 'It's a remarkable circumstance, Sir, that poverty and oysters always seem to go t oget her.'

d) 'You're a poor benighted heathen but a first class fighting man.'

e) 'The good ended happily and the bad unhappily. That's what fiction means.'

f) `(with angry frown) "Let go, Sir. Down, Sir. Put it down." ' g) 'I say unto you, more than a prophetess .... an uncommon pretty woman.'

h) 'Play up, play up, and play the game.'

i) 'Spotted snakes with double tongue, thorny hedgehogs be not seen.'

j) 'That I cannot tell,' said he, 'But twas a famous victory.'

8) In Vino...

a) Who 'cannot abide ginger beer'?

b) Who is 'drunk every night with a delicious tear/Dropped thee from heaven'?

c) Who 'hardly drinks a pint of wine,/And that 1 doubt is no good sign'?

d) What drink do you get from the pastrycook plant?

e) Who claims 'I have yet room for six scotches more'?

f) Whose desire for small beer shows vilely in him?

g) Who, after drinking what, underwent 'the passing discomfort ... of having the top of the skull fly up to the ceiling and the eyes shoot out of their sockets and rebound from the opposite wall like racquet balls'?

9) Common factors

What do the following have in common?

a) Puss, Magpie, Lobster, Buff Tip, Peach Blossom.

b) Mr Flory, Mr Jones, Mr O'Brien, Mr Bowling, Mr Doring. c) Luing, Skellig Michael, Caldy, Gigha, Great Blasket.

d) Eric Heffer, Gore Vidal, Diana Quick, Enoch Powell, Alec Guinness. e) Old Uncle Harry, Apple-pie, Smother- wood, Sailors' Tobacco.

f) Peasblossom, Cobweb, Moth, Mustard- seed.

Set by Edmund Nicholas and Adam Thomas Answers on page 63

Quiz answers

1) a) Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper; b) Princess Anne; c) James Watt, US Secretary of the Interior. He later resigned over it; d) Neil Kinnock (after a crash on the M4); e) Mr Andropov; I) Denis Healey;

g) David Martin, for whom police were looking when they shot Stephen Waldorf; h) President Reagan (about Grenada); Mrs Thatcher, discussing Cabinet reshuffles; j) Lord Marsh, deputy chairman of TV-am at the time.

2) a) Peter Tatchell's original by-election address had been printed on Socialist Workers Party presses — against Labour's orders. So the leaflets were scrapped and reprinted elsewhere; b) Ford's sacked a worker at Halewood for stealing an 86p bracket — leading to a strike costing £13 million; c) Because MPs driving in to vote at a division should have had priority, according to Edward Heath; d) Oxford wanted to include Boris Rankov, a 25-year- old graduate student in their boat race team, and Cambridge objected; e) Richard Attenborough, who produced Gandhi, was attacked as racist for going to the South African premiere of the film; I) Dennis Nilsen had used them to strangle his victims, and had only a clip-on tie at the time of his arrest; g) Benign° Aquino, a Philippines opposition leader, was shot as he came down the steps of his aircraft in Manila; 11) The equipment to bounce President Mitterand's message across France was one day late; i) It was an unexploded bomb.

3)a) Finchley: the returning officer rejected a candidate who had changed his name to Margaret Thatcher; b) Zimbabwe: they were four white airforce officers accused of '1 think all men should be positively vetted.'

sabotage; c) Manchester University: a mob of students threw red paint on his clothes; d) Trafalgar Square, during New Year celebrations; e) Israel: Mr Sharon was reappointed, after the report censured him for lack of care in the Lebanese refugee camp massacre; f) Nigeria: the immigrants were sent back to Ghana; g) Peking; h) Argentina, General Galtieri.

4) a) South Korea's foreign minister, killed in a bomb explosion; b) The Labour Party manifesto; c) The South Korean airliner shot down over Russia; d) Prime Minister of Dominica, and firm backer of Reagan's invasion of Grenada; e) Michael Meacher, defeated candidate for Labour's deputy leader; 1) Banking associate of Roberto Calvi, he was sprung from a Swiss jail and then extradited to Italy; g) Simon Hughes, Liberal candidate; 11) An official inquiry into the Falklands war; i) President of Argentina; j) Group claiming responsibility for killing American and French troops in Lebanon.

5) .a) Maurice Bishop, of Grenada; b) Kakuei Tanaka, of Japan; c) Edward Heath, of Britain; d) Harold Holt, of Australia; e) They are all former prime ministers.

6) a) Winston Churchill: Stafford Cripps.

b) President Johnson: J. Edgar Hoover.

c) Lord Curzon: The working classes.

d) Benjamin Disraeli: Sir Robert Peel.

e) Ernest Sevin: George Lansbury. f) John Bright: Benjamin Disraeli. g) President Roosevelt: General Somoza. h) Sir Henry Labouchere: William Gladstone. i) Margot Asquith: Lloyd George. j) Aneurin Bevan: Hugh Gaitskell.

7)a) Mr Salteena in The Young Visiters by Daisy Ashford. b) Mr Woodhouse in Emma, c) Sam Weller in Pickwick Papers. d) Rudyard Kipling in 'The Fuzzy Wuzzy' (Barrack Room Ballads). e) Miss Prism in The Importance of Being Earnest. 1) Hilaire Belloc, Cautionary Verses, 'Jim', g) Adam Bede in Adam Bede by George Eliot. h) Sir Henry Newbolt in 'The Island Race'. i) The chorus in A MidsuMmer Night's Dream. j) Old Kaspar in 'The Battle of Blenheim' by Robert Southey.

8) a) Edward Lear, 'How pleasant to know Mr Lear'. b) The grasshopper, 'The Grasshopper' by Richard Lovelace. c) Jonathan Swift, 'Verses on the death of Dr Swift'. d) Cherry brandy in W. S. Gilbert's 'The Nightmare' (Bab Ballads), e) Scants in Antony and Cleopatra, Act IV, scene vii. tl Prince Hal in Henry IV, Part 11, Act I, scene ii, g) Bertie Wooster, after drinking one of Jeeves's patent morning revivers (The Code of the Woosters).

9) a) All are moths; b) all are characters in George Orwell's novels; c) all are islands off the coasts of Britain and Ireland; d) all have contributed articles to the Spectator in the past five years; e) all are names for the mugwort plant; f) all are fairies in A Midsummer Night's Dream.