Quiz Kids

Did a quiz at a school in Hounslow yesterday afternoon - I think it's the third we've done for this particular place, so clearly they're liking our work. We don't do quizzes at schools that often - at least, we do a fair few for parents and teachers, but not that many for children, but enough to have a reasonable stock of suitable questions.
I guess teachers, of all people, see themselves as natural QuizMasters and wouldn't see the need to bring in someone from outside - at least that's my recollection from school, where several teachers seemed to enjoy their end-of-term funfunfun quiz a lot more than the pupils - who can forget Dr Rodgers' Chemical Blockbusters? 'Is it Protactinium, Sir?' 'No, boy, Praseodymium'....brilliant.
But, our quizzes are of course not quizzes in the American sense ie tests but something a little different and when I do go into schools to run quizzes the reaction is fantastic. You can see they enjoy being let off the leash, they enjoy the fact that they can show knowledge of things they're actually interested in (Music, film,TV, Sport etc) and the standard is often surprising.
Yesterday, it was extremely high, some teams hardly getting a single question wrong, which shows that I was choosing appropriate questions, but I guess underestimated how much they all knew - (I mean, what do i know about the teenagers of today? Have they seen ET? Yes, it seems. Do they know The Killers? Yes. Dan Dare? Erm...who - though to fair, they're not from the 50s, are they?)
It was good fun, then, very chaotic, i set up in the hall while the badminton class was going on (a reminder of just how smelly teenagers doing exercise are) and then as soon as I'd finished, rather than all sitting round and gradually dispersing to the bar while one or two come up and try to give a 'shout out' on the microphone, as happens at most adult quizzes, they'd cleared the area in about 10 seconds flat.
I've another quiz in Soho tonight, back to the norm, really and so it continues for the next few weeks. But, let me tell you, be not so fearful, ye Daily Mail raiders, ye phoners in to Nicky Campbell in the morning, not all the kids are hanging round on street corners wearing knives and brandishing hoodies, some of them are naming the 5 countries in the world that end with the letter L, and that can't be a bad thing, can it?