Quizzing and The Coronavirus

Dara Kiernan CEO

During the lockdown, it was clear very quickly that stand-up comedy didn’t work virtually. And also very quickly, people were getting tired of the same old family and work quiz. Something was missing in both stand-up comedy, and quizzing, and the answer was right there….we needed to combine them to get the best of both worlds. So my brother, an IT Whizz-kid (despite his actual age) and I (a comedian and comedy club promoter) started to develop an idea that could bring the quiz into the comedy club.  Together we brought a concept into being, and created a comedy quiz “performance”. A fully interactive, live performance delivered to any location across the globe with instand leaderboards, and live “queckling“!! Yes, I said it….queckling!! Queckling is not in the Oxford dictionary (yet),but it means heckling a Quizmaster…yes, now it makes sense, doesn’t it? To replicate a comedy club, the audience need to be able to heckle, so now they can, and they can do it virtually via our 360 degree communication.

We view each quiz as an entertainment production, rather than just a quiz. Combining technology with interactive communication (or queckling, as we like to call it), we engage directly with the participants to ensure they feel involved. This is the closest we have been able to get to recreating a live performance in these times. 

The difference is comedy, investment and production. To really do this properly we invested in hardware and software. We fully customise the event we are holding. We script it, we rehearse it and we adapt it. I don’t want to give away too much, but the Friends Quiz we did in November 2020 and our Back to 2020 Quiz in January this year used 4 computers, 8 screens, 2 Streamdecks, Chroma Key technology, some wizardry and a bit of internet magic. We spend a lot of time putting together the questions so that they’re not too difficult, but still challenging. There has to be a flow to a quiz similar to a comedy performance, and that’s why every question is tested to ensure it’s challenging, not too hard, entertaining, and fits into the production in the right place.  It takes us about three weeks to prepare a quiz and the end result is the difference. Yes, you can do it quicker….but, it’s the result that matters!!

We are currently streaming our quizzes around the globe, and regularly have participants joining us from the UK, USA, Canada and Australia, as well as in Ireland. Location is never an issue for us!!

The feedback has been fantastic and we look forward to the lifting of lockdown so we can take the idea forward. We are always looking to improve our delivery and work hard at making the next quiz better than the last. The best thing is that it’s free and it always will be… That’s our secret!!”