Throwback Thursday - February 1983

In the early 80s I was part of the Rothwell Parish Church Youth club and an enthusiastic member of the Quiz Team (films were my speciality).  In early 1983, we travelled to the YMCA centre in Northampton and competed with loads of other teams from the Midlands and East Anglia in a grand Quiz Championship.

We got to the final.  I was excited.  Our opponents were generally much older than us (we ranged from 13 - that'd be me - up to about 15) and I thought we'd had it.  A sport round, we did okay but didn't win.  A books round, we did better and won.  The rounds were going to them, to us, we were fairly evenly matched.

The last round was films.  If this was a movie of my life, there'd be a montage here but the question-master cleared his throat, picked up his sheaf of questions and looked at us.  We looked back at him.  My team-mates looked at me.  I tried not to look worried.

There were ten questions in the round, as I recall.  I don't remember what seven of them were about but the last three were based on "E.T."  Out of everyone in the room, I was the only person who'd seen it.

We won the cup and I was absolutely thrilled.

Me, my much loved ZX81, a TV you had to tune to the stations and the cup.  Those were the days...

If you look closely, you can see that I've programmed the ZX81 to display "Mark wins the cup!"