Can I have a P, please, Bob, etc ad inf

Referring back to what I said last week about people being occasionally too jolly at the start of a quiz, I was at a conference at a hotel in Warwickshire this week running a quiz over dinner and, suffice to say, by the end of the night my throat was dry and my wits had been severely tested.
We'd run a quiz for this company before in a similar format and it had been a relatively quiet, well-mannered affair. There can be a variety of factors which dictate the atmosphere of the evening - things like whether teams know each other, how closely packed tables are, how much they are looking to unwind after hard day, how many women there are present to provide a civilising factor - but it goes without saying that quantity and speed of alcohol intake are the largest element, and that on this occasion there had been plenty of hours in the hotel bar beforehand.
Also important at these over-dinner conference quizzes is that the sound and vision is to some extent out of my hands, as their are professionals at the back of the room in charge. This is fine but can mean you don't control your own mike volume, music etc, so can make me a bit more nervous.
Anyway, as soon as i started I could tell there was a lot of silliness in the air, a lot of shouting out , heckling etc, which is fine with me, because if you rise to it and keep them involved you feel a real sense of having entertained rather than just facilitated the enjoyment. I was pleased with some of my put-downs and responses (tho not so pleased that i'd repeat them here or think they held any genuine comic weight) and the atmosphere was thoroughly convivial and the quiz well-contested. I think the main worry is that there are a lot of bosses and organisers there and they hired a quiz and not a comedian, and they will have had expectations of how the quiz would be which were a bit more restrained.
However, being able to respond to the mood of the crowd is an important part of what we do, and so I came out of the evening feeling pleased enough with it, and pretty sure that people had had fun. I always look at the teams at the back, as they'll be the most likely to drift off if it's not working. As it happened, the two teams at the back were the top two teams, so that was gratifying.
But money well-earned, that's for sure.