A TRIBUNE triumph at the annual Press Gallery quiz night last week as the staff’s joint intellectual prowess quashed the ranks of the likes of The Times, Telegraph, Mirror, Hansard and teams from Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Tories to take top place. Well, almost. In what some members of the press corps are describing as a “controversial” result, Tribune was pipped to the outright winner’s position in a tie-breaker with our natural political bedfellows, the Daily Mail, with whom we tied for first place in the competition. In the interests of impartiality, we’ll let Guardian political blogger Bill Blanko take up the story. He accuses the Mail team of engaging a “ringer” in the form of Jane Merrick, the former Mail correspondent, now political editor of the Independent on Sunday. A competitive sort, Jane once boasted in a column of how, at the age of 12, she beat Paula Radcliffe in a cross-country race. Blanko goes on to observe that it was just “coincidence” that the questions were set by the Mail’s deputy political editor and that it was Jane who was selected to answer the tie-breaker. Moreover, Tribune’s score-keeper would like to know what happened to the discretionary half-point we were awarded during the competition but which mysteriously disappeared from the final scores. Could Tribune have been the outright winners? Were we robbed? Nevertheless, we beat the Labour Party team – which included Cabinet Office minister Tom Watson, Number 10 staffer Michael Dugher and former Downing Street spinner Damian McBride – who were beaten by the Lib Dems. The Tories came 14th in the field of 18. Since the ITV team played their joker – doubling their score – in the “Money, Money, Money” round thinking the questions were all about Abba, it’s not surprising they came last. And another thing. The tie-breaker went to the team which got closest to Barack Obama’s vote in the American presidential election. Since the final count, another million-odd votes have been allotted to the Democratic contender’s tally, making Tribune closer. Bad losers? Never! Forget the economy, this is serious.
