There were 95 quizzers who ate 29 pizzas, bought 32 bottles of wine and £450 worth of raffle tickets, and – with donations – raised an amazing £3000.

Quizmaster Peter Effer certainly conjured up some conundrums for the HAB’s Halloween Quiz Night.

However, it was the Holdenistas team (pictured above) that refused to be spooked by the questions or the competition and ended the fun-filled evening in first place.

Retired school teacher Peter has run HAB quizzes for many years and said it was good to be back in person after Covid lockdowns.

He explained how he puts a quiz together: “I try to make seven or eight of the questions in each round fairly straightforward – a couple are trickier.

“The HAB quizzers are above average but I have to make everyone feel it’s possible. No-one wants to sit there being bored, listening to some esoteric nonsense.

“A few years ago I wondered how to make things a bit different from the usual rounds of history, geography, music and so on.

“I asked myself: what has everyone who is coming got in common? They all live in London. So I did a quiz called all about London. The first round was people with names the same as parts of London – David Brent for example.

“After that the quizzes were all about something – animals, say, or England.”

 

Halloween Quizmaster, Peter Effer (first image) posed some fiendishly tricky questions for this year's game quizzers

This year’s quiz was based on the famous “All the world’s a stage“ speech from Shakespeare’s play As You Like It.

The questions were – loosely – based on the seven stages mentioned in the speech, plus a final round on theatres. The rounds included questions on books, tv programmes, pop music, nursery rhymes and even plants. Do you know the other name for Old Man’s Beard? Who played Judge John Deed? And which London theatre shares its name with an element? (Answers below)

At the beginning of the evening John Bier made a short welcome speech and talked about the work that HAB is doing. He also welcomed the mayor of Barnet, Alison Moore.

And before the quizzers took off their thinking caps and headed home at the end of the evening, he thanked St Mary’s Church, Finchley for the free use of the hall, and Margaret McPeake, Marian Cohen and the fundraising team for their hard work in organising the event.

If you'd like to keep up to date with future events for you to join, be sure to follow us on facebook, instagram or sign up to our newsletter.

Answers: Clematis, Martin Shaw, London Palladium