RSQ - Blondepoker's Got Tal Entertainment

Yes, it’s me. I have been invited by TightEnd to play Ringmaster of the RSQ Circus and, because I like red jackets and rrrrrolling my Rs for effect, I thought it would be rude to say No. Tighty knew it would be hard to follow Ian Gascoigne Thinks, so wisely sent a rookie up to the plate.

I have realised that I haven’t completed a Blonde Profile and, as a few people have asked who I am (whether because I’ve come across favourably or because they’d quite like to give me a slap if they see me at DTD), I thought what better way than a warts-and-all set of questions about my favourite subject: me.

As a handful of those who frequent these pages have met me and only a few of those have any sort of knowledge about me, I thought we could do things a little differently. I will provide the answers. All you need to do is choose the one that the fewest other people will choose. So, it’s a bog standard RSQ in format, but with frightfully revealing content.

The rules are simple:

I will give you 11 answers (I love prime numbers – lesson one: Tal is weird. This info will serve you well) to 11 categories.

You will choose one from each category.

You will get a score for each question that is the number of people who selected that answer.

The most popular answer is the sheep

If you’re bonkers enough to get one wrong, you get the sheep score plus 5 points

Lowest score wins

Use Google, social media, the guy who pushes the trolleys in Tesco’s car park (his name’s Malcolm), whatever you want.

You don’t have to know what the answer you give means, why it differs from the others or even agree with why I include it in the list; you just have to pick one.

No passes.

In the event of a tie, the player with the most aces wins, then the most twos and so on.

PM your answers to me by 7pm Sunday 18th November 2012. The reveal will be the following night at 8pm.

None of these lists are necessarily my 11 favourites, as I’ve tried to use the breadth of my ranges so that there might be at least one in each you at least don’t vehemently object to. They all will give you an idea of what kind of monster has filled your minds with nonsense over 2,000 times. They will inevitably prompt debate on this thread, abuse and, equally, shunning of the highest magnitude. My aim is to avoid expulsion, which I could easily do by being more cautious but – he says, rising from his chair – I came to gamble.

Good good. Further adolessly, let’s get down to business.

Question 1: The Dinner Party
I am having a theoretical dinner party and have invited 11 guests. In no particular order, they are:

1. Stephen Fry
2. Stephen Hawking
3. Kate Moss
4. Sir Ranulph Fiennes
5. Capt. Robert Falcon Scott
6. Danny Baker
7. Ben Jonson (the dramatist, not the sprinter!)
8. Lord Denning
9. Garry Kasparov
10. Benjamin Franklin
11. Phil Hellmuth

You’re right. Mikhail Tal didn’t make the party. My Russian is terrible.

Question 2: The MP3 Five Star Shuffle
I went my top-rated songs on my generic mp3 player and went shuffle-happy. Eleven of the songs that came up were:

1.   My First Song by Jay-Z
2.   Soul Man by Sam and Dave
3.   Morning Glory by Oasis
4.   Raspberry Beret by Prince
5.   Let You Go by Chase and Status
6.   Get Outa My Way by Kylie
7.   F.E.A.R. by Ian Brown
8.   Flight of the Icarus by Iron Maiden
9.   Fuel My Fire by Prodigy
10.   I Can See Through You by The Horrors
11.   This Charming Man by The Smiths

Question 3: The Brag
Achievements are all relative, so some of the things we’re proud of we keep secret because we know full well that other people find that sort of thing easy. Other things we do are proper, bona fide rooftop-shouters. I jotted down a mixture for your entertainment, with a bit of context thrown in for free:

1.   Getting an A in GCSE Design and Technology (despite being truly, truly woeful at it – I can barely identify which end of the hammer to use)
2.   Completing the Times cryptic crossword (once and it took me a week)
3.   Writing a play (satirizing Big Brother and written in iambic pentameter)
4.   Getting a poem published in an anthology (a light-hearted 16 liner about Britain)
5.   Becoming an International Poker Champion (I won a 50 person bowl comp in a small casino in Dublin about 5 years ago, but that does mean I’ve won comps in more than one country. Quod erat demonstrandum)
6.   Making cheese on toast on my own (fine if I weren’t 28 at the time)
7.   Getting a HerbieMob Flag (150 Six Max at DTD)
8.   Player of the Season for a football team (Pembroke College 3rds and I also won Dirtiest Tackle of the Season – write your own jokes)
9.   Captained the victorious Varsity Chess Team (underdogs as well)
10.   Defeating M Bison for the first time to complete Street Fighter 2 in about 1995 (with Ryu, if you’re interested)
11.   Finishing as runner-up in the Universities Singles Plate Competition in Pool (didn’t get into the main event that year)

Question 4: Verbosity, darling
I love a good word, me. Not a long one; a good one. Eleven of my favourite are:

1.   Shark
2.   Paracetamol (because it alternates consonants and vowels)
3.   Asymptote
4.   Tmesis
5.   Squelch
6.   Marvellous
7.   Abstemious (one of two words to have AEIOU in that order)
8.   Growl
9.   Erstwhile
10.   Mellifluous
11.   Free (who doesn’t love that word?!)

I am aware that taramasalata is a longer word that alternates consonants and vowels and that monopolises is the same length, but I prefer paracetamol.

Question 5: Fame

I’ve met a few characters and some unabated miseries. At least eleven of them are known to others:

1.   HRH The Duke of Kent
2.   Darren “sicknote” Anderton
3.   TV’s Tony Kendall
4.   Jimmy Greaves
5.   Eric Bristow
6.   Baron Mustill
7.   Jimmy White
8.   Wayne “Hawaii 501” Mardle
9.   Stephen Hawking
10.   Rory McGrath
11.   D J Fabio

Question 6: Stuff What I Read

I’ve read a few things some other people have written. I used to read a lot when I was younger and hadn’t taken up handing money over to Mr Betfair and his friends. I still love English and would like one day to study it beyond A-Level (I read law at Uni, incase you were wondering). Eleven of my favourite books, plays and poems are:

1.   Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
2.   Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare
3.   Things Snowball by Rich Hall
4.   If by Rudyard Kipling
5.   Dr Faustus by Christopher Marlowe
6.   The Code of the Woosters by P.G. Wodehouse
7.   Volpone by Ben Jonson
8.   Modern English Usage by H. E. Fowler
9.   Lord of the Flies by William Golding
10.   A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
11.   Sir Gawain and the Green Knight by Anon.

Yes, I have put a reference book on grammar in this list. Again, the clues are there as to what you’re dealing with.

Question 7: Adverts

What? Adverts?! Yep. Most adverts are rubbish and are what Sky+ x30 was invented for. However, when it is done well, they get stuck in my impressionable head and these are some of the ones I’ve never been able to shake out:

1.   EDF flame in the birdbath
2.   Bud Lite anteater
3.   Papa/Nicole with Vic and Bob
4.   Nike parklife
5.   Carling Black Label – squirrel doing Mission Impossible
6.   Peter Kay – ‘Ave It!
7.   Pimm’s Rave (Prince Charming)
8.   Kia – A dream car for real life
9.   Honda – The cog
10.   Nike – Brazil at the airport
11.   Dime Bar – armadillos.

My advice would be to youtube any you can’t remember.

Question 8: Chess

I’ve played chess since I was 9. I had a family holiday in Tunisia and, as is the way, we found the other English people. Two were lads my age playing chess, which I had never played before. By the end of the holiday, I was beating them both and 18 months later, I was playing for the England Under 11 B team. I was a decent standard junior player and still play as a keen amateur, but was never destined to be anything special.

Eleven of my favourite players of all time are:

1.   Alexander Alekhine
2.   Akira Rubenstein
3.   Mikhail Tal (ofc)
4.   Bobby Fischer
5.   Garry Kasparov
6.   Aaron Nimzowitsch
7.   Paul Keres
8.   Joseph Blackburne
9.   Magnus Carlsen
10.   Mikhail Botvinnik
11.   Vassily Smyslov

If you don’t follow the Chess Thread, you might want to wiki these people and see who you’re dealing with. There’s a fairly wide range of characters here.

Question 9: Things that Rocked My World

OK, maybe a bit extreme, but these are moments that opened my eyes a little bit further and have stuck with me. Eleven of them are:

1.   Fred Astaire dancing in Top Hat
2.   Peeling a banana like a monkey
3.   Stewart Lee: Stand-up comedian
4.   Gazza’s Euro 96 goal against Scotland
5.   The Shield
6.   Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace
7.   The Thick of It
8.   Tal v Panno (1958)
9.   First of the Year by Skrillex
10.   Kill Bill
11.   The apple corer and peeler

Some of these might not be known to you and, if that is the case, you might well have a fabulous moment to come, with the aid of Google/Youtube. Admittedly, if you don’t know how to play chess, number 8 won’t mean anything to you, but this quiz isn’t about you, is it?

Question 10: The all time Spurs XI

I yap on enough about being a Spurs fan. Here is my XI:

1.   Pat Jennings
2.   Steve Perryman
3.   Gary Mabbutt
4.   Ledley King
5.   Gareth Bale
6.   Glenn Hoddle
7.   Danny Blanchflower
8.   Dave Mackay
9.   Paul Gascoigne
10.   Jimmy Greaves
11.   Jurgen Klinsmann

Plenty of controversy there, but I picked an 11 that would just about fit together.

Question 11: Minor Simpsons Characters

My favourite TV show of all time is The Simpsons. There was a point when I could quote just about the entire Stonecutters episode (Homer the Great) and had collected all sorts of trivia in my head. “Release the Stone of Shame!” “Woohoo!” “Attach the Stone of Triumph” “Owwww”

Eleven of my favourite minor characters are:

1.   Akira (the waiter come karate expert)
2.   Duffman
3.   Johnny Tightlips
4.   Dr. Nick Riviera
5.   Hans Moleman
6.   Leopold (Supt. Chalmers’s assistant)
7.   Mr Costington
8.   Lucius Sweet (He’s exactly as rich and famous as Don King…and he looks just like him, too!)
9.   Uter
10.   Artie Ziff
11.   Handsome Pete

So, pick one from each category, PM me your list and post any comments you feel helpful, apposite or incendiary on this thread between now and reveal time.

Good luck.

Oh and, if we meet, feel free to call me Simon.