Trivia with Tubridy

Here is the mp3 file of my appearance on the Tubridy radio show. Just click the play button to listen at your leisure.

I’m putting this here just in case the podcast link on the RTÉ site becomes defunct some day.

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Latest from the news room

Good afternoon all.  Firstly, I’ll be posting the answers to yesterday’s questions later on today.  But first I’m going to fill you in on how my day has been.

This morning started off with a disappointment as I received an email which told me that the article in the Irish Independent had been put back until “early next week”. Sad, true, but what can one do? When I hear any more about it I’ll let you know.

Not being a big fan of driving in the early morning, I had travelled up to Dublin last night and stayed with my friends Bob, Keith and Maurice, who very kindly gave me a bed and a parking space. Thanks lads.  I had been asked to present myself at the RTÉ Radio Centre at 10am, with my appearance on-air scheduled for 10.15.

I was quite surprised to find that, after kicking up my heels in a waiting room, I was basically brought straight into the studio when the call came.  I had presumed I’d meet the team beforehand, perhaps during the 10am news.  I was introduced to Ryan Tubridy during an ad break, so obviously our preliminaries were quite rushed. I wonder if all radio presenters have Tubridy’s ability to engage in banter while keeping an eye on a clock counting down? I hadn’t even noticed he was doing it until, just at the end of a sentence (in our private chat), he pushed up a fader and, almost in the same cadence, announced “And we’re back …” into the microphone!

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Coming soon to a media outlet near you

Trivia hits our TV screens on Thursday night at 10.15pm. This site’s own little contribution to the build-up to the show has certainly succeeded in getting the blog’s name out into the world at large.

Tablequiz.net and yours truly will feature in an article in this Thursday’s Irish Independent. I’ve known about that for almost a week now and was interviewed for it on Friday last.

However, I got a huge surprise this afternoon when I was contacted by a researcher on Ryan Tubridy’s radio show on 2FM, asking me to appear on the show on Thursday morning. I don’t know the exact time I’ll be on air, with the researcher only being able to estimate it’ll be between 9.30 and 10.30am.  If you’d like to hear what I have to say (or even what I sound like), tune in to 2FM or else via the station’s website, www.2fm.ie

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Just a minute with Larry Gogan

For some time now I’ve been trying to come up with an idea for a quiz. A quiz that no-one else has thought of. A quiz that will be entertaining, easy to grasp and challenging at the same time. A quiz that, once it’s initially successful, will not fade in the public’s affections and will run for years and years.

A quiz, basically, that does everything the ‘Just a Minute Quiz’ on Larry Gogan‘s radio show does.

I’ll be turning 33 this month and, as far back as I can remember, there’s never been a time when the JAMQ did not exist.  It is, by accident or design, a perfect nugget of quiz – quizzing distilled, if you will. The 60 second time limit puts pressure on the contestants, prevents cheating and ensures that the round is over before the listener’s attention wanes.

It was quite a thrill this week when, in honour of this blog’s 100th post, Larry Gogan himself spoke to me about the JAMQ.

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