Street: Ok Let's begin. So how long have you been a quizmaster?
Ronan Gill: Too Long. Um, about 3 years.
Street: And how did you get into the biz?
RG: I've been playing quiz for about 10 years at Fergy's Pub and there are 8 of us that all play together every tues night and the guy that invented quiz, his name is Pat Hines, he's the quizmaster there, and Pat and I have been friends for years and what happened was, on a Monday Night, Pat called me and said the guy that normally does quiz can't do it anymore and didn't give him any notice and he had nobody to cover the quiz and he said, you know how the format of the quiz goes, can you go and do the quiz? And that was 2 or 3 years ago and I came here with the expectation of covering it one or two Monday nights and kept doing it.
Street: SO do you like it?
RG: I enjoy it! It's a lot of fun. I have to tell you, it's fun, it's intellectually stimulating, it's a night out, and you know, you get paid to do it.
Street: And you enjoy the power?
RG: No, I uh, don't think there is any power, I really don't, uh what I really enjoy is I enjoy when I get answer sheets back and I look at what people were thinking. you know the correct answers are great but even the incorrect answers.. it's fun to see people taking a shot, or a guess at something, it's like Oh I see where people were going with that question, and there's no such thing as a stupid answer.
Street: Ah, that's too politically correct.
RG: No! There really isn't any such thing as a stupid answer, you're really just taking a shot at it and you're not afraid to write something down and a lot of teams, I think people that have a team problem won't put any answer down rather than a wrong one . People are confident. Just take a stab at it. I know it's wrong but it's something in the spot. You know I have more respect for people who will take a stab, a guess, anything you know, but I don't think there is a power thing to it.
Street: Do you ever have to deal with disgruntled, rowdy, sometimes drunk players who think they should have won?
RG: Yes, all the time, all the time. [They'll say], "I'm a med student and I know for a fact that's not the right answer. "
Street: So they come up to you like during the day after quizo?
RG: yeah! And I say, it's the right answer for tonight.
Street: That's good, standing your ground.
RG: If you show that you'll change your answer, for one person, everybody's gonna ask. Now there's exception to the rule, you know we're not infallible and sometimes very rarely, we've got it wrong. And I can tell we've got it wrong when 80% of the group in the bar playing will come up and say that's wrong and in that case, I'll do some digging, I'll call somebody that I know is at home to you know check an answer.
Street: Like calling your life-line?
RG: Yeah I'll call if I know I've gotten it wrong and I'll give everybody the point back but I had one person come up and in fact tonight while I was in the middle of scoring and he said I take exception to one of your answers and I said, but that's the answer for tonight.
Street: You're in charge.
RG: Yeah, and he said don't you even want to know what the question was? And I said no, not really. Because I didn't! I'm not going to change it. Nobody questioned it tonight, so the likelihood is he was thinking of something else, or you know he didn't properly hear me. If you engage everybody, you'll never get home, you know, we'll be here till 4 o'clock in the morning
Street: So do you liken yourself to a gameshow host?
RG: I suppose, I mean I never thought about it that way. In a way.
Street: Like Alex Trebec?
RG: No not him. I don't wear lipstick.
Street: Do you have a role model?
RG: I do. I have a business role model, I'm a business owner so I think Bill Gates is a role model for me. But uh, in terms of a.
Street: A game show role model?
RG: No, not really.
Street: So you're an independent man?
RG: I'm an independent man and to be honest with you, before I did quizo I don't think I ever watched any game shows.
Street: Really?
RG: No, Other than the news and Seinfeld I don't watch that much TV at all.
Street: So this is your own personal take on quiz shows.
RG: Well I was born and raised in Ireland. I moved to the US in 1990 so and I worked in New York and when I lived in New York I didn't have any TV at all there so I don't have a lot of cultural reference for a lot of the game shows. I've seen bits and pieces of them. I've seen jeopardy obviously which is probably one of the most popular ones but if I'm in the bar and the TV's on Jeopardy's on and I'm at happy hour I tend to gravitate to the question by the answers that I say and I try to come up with the questions but other than that I couldn't be bothered with it. Tuesday night is my night out to answer questions.
Street: So you play quizo?
RG: Yeah!
Street: So how do you do?
RG: I would guess.. there are about 8 of us that play and I would guess that we win probably twice a month.. We do ok. Only when we have.
Street: Isn't that unfair, a quizmaster playing quizo?
RG: Well that's how I got into it.. You know people come up to me and they say those questions were pretty hard but the key to quizo is build a team with people that have a.. a diverse group of people who have interests in every area. You know you want your pop culture, you want your history, you want your politics, you want your geography, and in that way you build your team and we're built that way. So if you build your team that way, everyone has something to offer and more often than not, the nights that we don't win at Fergy's is the night that all of our team mates haven't shown up. So you know there are some strategies to playing quizo you know there's a competitiveness to it and there are other teams that play against us and they are the same way. And it's a healthy challenge every time we show up and if we're short a few people you know, they kind of give us a ribbing and say you know, you're not going to make it and they're generally right. The nights we don't have everyone are the nights we don't make it.
Street: How do you decide which team has the best name? The winner for the night.
RG: I think, if it makes me laugh. I mean if it makes me laugh and it's appropriate. Team names here tend to be more crude than most bars.
Street: Do you feel awkward having to say them?
RG: No, I don't feel awkward about that part at all but I'm limited to what I'm prepared to read out on the mic so I won' use profanity and a lot of people put profanity.
Street: Oh really? So you censor it?
RG: Absolutely. Well you can't say it because the owners of the bar don't wanna have profanity kind of over the mic and if I really think it's distasteful like if it's disparaging remarks about minorities or people with sexual preferences that are different to others, I have to censor that and I've been told before that I ought not to do that but it's only right and I think that some people are selfish and you can't lose sight of the fact that quizo's a game and really it's about having fun and if you win great! And I play Tues nights and it's about the game, it's more about us meeting up, the 8 of us and talking about our week and what happens in our week and that kind of thing. IT's all about comradery and then we get to play quiz and we get into that but it's more of a social kind of thing than it is an occupation. And I think that if you sully that image with horrible remarks or you know, profanity, or screaming at the quiz guy and telling him that he's wrong.. and I see that and I've seen Pat Hines, the guy that created quizo, Pat Hines is the first person to have an organized quiz in Pennsylvania.
Street: Where was it?
RG: Right here at New Deck Tavern. It was the first ever organized quiz and his wife is Irish so he got the idea from Ireland, you know they have table quizzes in Ireland and generally speaking they're not in bars, they're in community centers, you know young adults or people with children, parents who can get out one night a week and generally there's no alcohol involved. Kind of coffee and tea and you know sandwiches and stuff and it's normally whatever you pay to some charity. We have more fundraisers than anything else but he came up with the idea of quizo and his wife works days and he works nights and you know they started a family and
Street: Wow, so it just spread throughout Philadelphia from there?
RG: Yeah he has 9 quizzes a week happening and he organizes them and gets them going and he's got guys that does the quizzes for him and he does special events for a lot of the schools, you know Penn, Villanova, Temple, St. Joe's. you know like 2 or three times a year he does special events for them where he does quizo.
Street: Is there ever tournaments for quizo? Or has there ever been?
RG: There has been, Guinness has organized on more than one occasion, where you sign up by bar, and you're assigned to a bar and the bar picks a bunch of players to play for them and there's some real money, 4 or 5 thousand dollars for 1st place.
Street: Wow that's a lot of money, we should probably get into that.
RG: These are some really smart people.
Street: So you must be really good at math. Like, you know have to add a million numbers and pretty quickly.. How many numbers do you think you add in a day?
RG: It's absolutely helps to be good at math. If you love the quiz. I happen to be brilliant in math
Street: Ah, I bet you have a calculator in there somewhere.
RG: NO, I have a real ability. I can tell in a supermarket, taxable and non taxable items to the person who's checking me out the subtotal and total to a nickel. I can add it up quicker than they can.
Street: So you have something 2.95+ 1.64...
RG: Oh you're going to test me?
Street: Well we have to see if you're telling the truth.
.....
RG: I mean if you really want me to do it I'll do it but shouldn't this interview be about quiz?
Street: I noticed you call it quiz not quizo
RG: It is quizo.
Street: I mean you call it different thing, two zz's or one z
RG: I mean I call it quiz, Pat came up with the name quizo and every bar in Philadelphia calls it quizo but really he just came up with the name.
Street: Is it one z or two z's? I think everyone wants to know.There's a lot of speculation.
RG: Either
Street: But it has to be one! Should we ask Pat?
RG: You should ask Pat. I mean the reality is, he would like to say that one z is the real quizo and other people put two z's in but you know, there are probably 5 or 6 well known people who organize quizzes in Philadelphia and they are all great people and I know two of them personally and they are great guys. You know it's a big city and any given night I can name 4 or 5 bars doing quizo. It's pretty remarkable. Except Sat. Fri and Sat night is more ..
Street: So do people ever try to bribe you? Like qwhat's the craziest bribe you've been offered?
RG: I don't think anyone.. I mean certainly nobody's ever bribed me but I have had women come and say you know, what's the answer to this question and do you want to have a drink after quizo? And I think it's all in jest
Street: So does it work?
RG: No
Street: So we shouldn't ask if, I mean, do you want to have a drink?
RG: No, well I already have a beer! [points to full glass]
Street: But like another one?
.....
RG: I mean, other than flirting, I don't think anyone has ever come up and said, what can you do to help us out? I can tell you that if a team is doing horribly, and they only got one point, I almost never give them 1 point, I usually give them two or three. So.
Street: Does that happen often?
RG: Not very often but sometimes it's just Europeans like myserlf and they just have no cultural reference to some of these questions, I mean they just have no clue!And rather than just completely embarrass them when you read out their scores, as long as it won't affect the outcome of the game, I don't mind being a bit more liberal in scoring but when it comes down to it, a point is a point and as it happens some people call me on the scoring and they'll say, you know, we got 9 but you only scored an 8 and I have the answers sheets that I have folded and marked per round so that I can go back and 9 times out of 10 when someone comes up to me and say they got 9 and i only gave them 8, they're usually right. It's also some people's handwriting and if you saw some of the pictures some people draw all over the sheets, and the messages they write you..
Street: Oh yeah, what kind of messages do they write you???
RG: Just you know, you're the greatest quizmaster, and em,
Street: Graphic pictures I'm sure...
RG: yeah graphic pictures.. some people that are just unhappy that they're not doing well so you know they'll write uh, you know pretty insulting things, and when that happens I usually address it so when someone makes disparaging remarks about you know me or a family member, I'll generally go see them and ask them if it was just towards me or if ...
Street: If they would like to step outside?
RG: No! I generally ask them if they would like to erase it or would they just like to forfeit the round and broadly speaking they erase it and apologize.. You know they'll go around the table and point fingers, you know, he did it, he did it, you know this is the only bar in the city where quizo is, people are so offended if they don't do so well.
Street: Yeah, They're pretty competitive
RG: very much so. Because the person is usually a student, I find that they are just experts in everything and I'm just not right with this answer or with that answer you know, so
Street: So you gotta stay on your toes.
RG: Yah, In my opinion you can't just roll over and say, "You're right"...
