The music video for the 1999 Comic Relief single featured Saracen from Gladiators and Mystic Meg

We're back from our UK travels, so this week (and possibly a few more) will feature questions from the British side of pub quizzes. Sorry the blog has been a bit erratic while we've been away - there likely won't be an update next week but after that things should be back to normal!

Your targets this week:

1+ out of 8: Well done, you beat us and we'd have won with you on our team!

The attendees
1) The statistician
2) The doctor
3) The historian
4) The gardener
5) The astronomer

The ones that got away
1) Who sings the opening line of the original (1984) Band Aid single Do They Know It's Christmas?
2) How is the musician Graham McPherson better known?
3) What was Blondie's first UK number one single?
4) Which comedy duo performed the 1991 Comic Relief single The Stonk?
5) Taking place at Candlestick Park in San Francisco, in what year was the Beatles' final live concert?
6) Which 1980 comedy film features the character Ted Striker?
7) Which product used the slogan 'Splash It All Over'?
8) Give the first names of the four main characters from The Young Ones. You need all four for the point.

The answers

1) Paul Young
2) Suggs
3) Heart of Glass
4) Hale and Pace
5) 1966
6) Airplane!
7) Brut
8) Mike, Neil, Rick, Vyvyan

Our excuses

1) Ah, barely back in the country five minutes and we were getting questions wrong about Band Aid. The only line 'famously' sung that we could think of was Bono's "thank God it's them instead of you", and while it seemed unlikely he'd do that and the opening, it seemed a better guess than a blind pick of another name on the single.
2) One of the pleasures of living abroad is not having to remember every British celebrity's stage name (admittedly, there are North American equivalents, but they seem somewhat rarer). Bono (real name Paul Hewson, obviously) was once again our go-to guess.
3) This seems a case of "pick a famous Blondie song and hope for the best", especially when Hanging on the Telephone was an earlier single but 'only' got to number 5. Our guess of One Way or Another both came out after Heart of Glass and wasn't even released as a single (although it did reach the giddy heights of 98 via downloads of a 2013 cover/mash-up of the song by One Direction).
4) Possibly my favourite question to ask our regular teammates here in Canada. French and Saunders seemed a reasonable stab for a question I'm unashamedly playing the 'before our time' card on.
5) Using the age-old tactic of averaging the guesses of each team member, we landed on 1969, so not particularly close. (Although we can claim a moral victory as that happens to be the year they made their unannounced rooftop appearance, which was their final public performance, if not a 'concert' in the eyes of the quizmaster.)
6) Not recognizing the name, we picked The Naked Gun as the only 80s comedy film we could think of (as it turns out, we were off by some way, with the first of the series released in 1988). At least Airplane also featured Leslie Nielsen.
7) A tossup, with Old Spice or Brut the obvious(ish) options. Curses.
8) I think this question really amounts to "do you remember Mike?". As someone who is firmly a Michael, and not a Mike, I naturally didn't.

How did you do? Would you have beaten us (1 or more correct)? Would you have helped us win (3 or more correct)? Let the world know with the poll below, then read on for my alternative questions (loosely) inspired by this week's Ones That Got Away!


My alternative questions
1) In November 2014 Do They Know It's Christmas was re-recorded (again), but with a number of changes to the lyrics. The line "thank God it's them instead of you" seemed particularly inappropriate, as the single was in aid of which crisis?
2) After years spent searching for information about his estranged father, Suggs claims he only learned of his 1975 death after reading what online?
3) What word links a 1980 number one single for Blondie and the girl group who took a cover of The Tide Is High to number one themselves in 2002?
4) Bringing things moderately more up to date, which author wrote two books - one about fictional creatures, the other about a fictional sport - to help support Comic Relief in 2001?
5) At the time of their last performance, Candlestick Park was home to which Major League Baseball team? The team would subsequently move to what is now known as AT&T Park, and have won (as of August 2015) three of the last five World Series.
6) Which 2001 Baz Luhrman musical film, like Airplane!, contains an exclamation mark in its title?
7) What is the German spelling of the city of Cologne?
8) When The Young Ones featured Scumbag College taking on Footlights College in an episode of University Challenge, one question asked "Who said 'Lawks-a-lordy, my bottom's on fire'?". While Kendal Mintcake (Ben Elton) was given the points for 'Lenin', which 15th Century martyr was the answer on the card?

The answers

1) The Ebola crisis
2) His own Wikipedia page ('Wikipedia' is good enough for the point)
3) Atomic (the band being Atomic Kitten)
4) J. K. Rowling
5) The San Francisco Giants
6) Moulin Rouge!
7) Köln (and because I'm feeling nice, I'll accept Koln)
8) Joan of Arc

How did you do on my alternative questions? Have another poll!