Martin Pither runs a thriving Thursday-night pub quiz at the Barley Mow on Watersplash Road that routinely fills the room, and it's become proper community glue. I went down to meet Martin and hear how he builds those rounds from scratch, juggles brutal feedback, and even turned the whole year into a book called 'A Year in the Life of a Pub Quiz', complete with 60+ photos so you actually know the people behind the team names. He keeps things inclusive (no bookings, first-come-first-served), varies 14 different rounds so it never gets stale, and splits prizes into picture, music and general-knowledge categories so more folks have a shot at victory. It’s not all laughs though: Martin talks about the lonely nights when one disputed question turns 70 people against you, the careful referencing he uses (and yes, he treads carefully with AI-sourced answers), and the months of feedback from friends, retired teachers and even tax inspectors that sharpen each quiz. What really struck me was how this simple weekly fixture binds families, gives shy regulars a place to belong, and even reaches expats online. People tell him they look forward to Thursday like it’s a small holiday.

Takeaways:

• We learn how a pub quiz can glue a community together, creating weekly rituals and friendships.
• We discover the practical side of running quizzes: question vetting, multiple references, and feedback loops to avoid embarrassing mistakes.
• Themed nights, picture rounds and music clips keep things fresh and fair for everyone.
• Prizes and prize-splitting increase participation, giving more teams a shot at winning and celebrating together at the bar.
• The importance of inclusivity: first-come seating, welcoming new players, and tailoring rounds so different ages and interests feel included.
• Quirky outcomes, like worldwide fans of the picture rounds and a book with answers at the bottom, perfect for campsite or family quizzes.

• Buy Martin's book

Produced by Gareth Davies at The Sound Boutique

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One of my favourite rounds has been all about strawberries.

Here's a question about strawberries.

Hello and welcome to the Sheppartonian.

The answer to that question, by the way, will come at the end of this episode.

I'm Gareth and this is the local podcast bringing you stories, voices and events from in and around Shepparton.

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Now.

Water Splash Road, Shepperton.

A Thursday afternoon and the Barley Mow is doing what pubs do on a Thursday afternoon.

By 8 o' clock, there'll be 70 people in here and not a spare chair in the building.

I went to meet Martin Pither, who's run the quiz here for five years.

I didn't expect it to last, so part of our ritual, some close friends of ours, we used to come every Thursday and sadly the previous quiz master, Brian, was unwell and he had a bad back so he couldn't continue.

And we mentioned it to John how much we missed the quiz.

And because I was involved with reviews of work to do with quizzes in my technical job as a British Airways trainer, I said, I'll take it on and he was really grateful and it all went from there.

And that was five years ago.

The scene is we have the regulars in before they had their evening meal and people start to arrive.

The pub has a no booking policy, so it's very inclusive, first come, first served.

So we have a capacity around about 70 people.

So people come from places like Egham and Sumbro and meet family and friends.

And I'm actually checking the questions.

There's a number of challenges with certain questions.

So at 7 o' clock, I'm in the next road, Squires Bridge Road.

Check in to make sure future quizzes are okay.

I've never done a quiz without at least two or three people checking.

I have my father in law in Devon who's retired chemistry graduate and he thoroughly enjoys it and he's very direct with his feedback.

I provide references through AI, but you've got to be careful with AI.

So as many references I can.

I have another school teacher who lives in Leyland, so I meet with her monthly and she gives me some feedback about making it short and snappy, not too complicated.

Then I have two tax inspectors who live locally who have revised every single question and they're not really into music as such and they're quite brilliant, brutal with the feedback, if it's not good quality.

So the atmosphere builds and then I come in at 8 o' clock and it all starts from there.

Basically.

The door goes and goes again.

Coats over the backs of chairs, sheets down on tables, and at the top of every sheet a name that somebody thought was funny in the car on the way over.

I've been very clear, I will not have rude names.

And I check with people, are you okay?

And if I've ever mentioned one, they ask me not to say it.

So we, we have things like Mangel Wurzels, we have people that are called like the Brain Foggers, Wallace and Gromit, the Joneses over a favorite TV program.

But yeah, 71 teams all with different names.

Last year I kept stats and I couldn't believe we had over 440 people attend.

Can you imagine if they all tended up for one night and that was nearly 70 teams.

Some people would be here one week, wouldn't see them again or they were doing the Thames Path and just come in occasionally.

We have a very open door policy, so we've got a few people.

We've got a guy who won 125,000 millionaire.

He was on his own, but he found a team very quickly.

As you can imagine, there's other people that attend other nights like Jazz night or the music rounds are looking for an evening.

I try and get people to go to other teams if at all possible.

Don't anyone to feel lonely.

I always say hello, I always ask, everyone's here, are you attending the quiz?

No pressure.

If not, there's a few teams that are very welcome for new players, which is lovely.

Eight o', clock, pens down the table, phones face down and out of sight.

And a room full of people who came here to be told they are cleverer than the table next to them.

I do different rounds.

I'm not a branded corporate, so they are different rounds which I create myself based on interest.

So we've got 14 rounds we choose from and they're all different and that spreads over the months.

We'll pick a country like tonight we do Armenia or we do a county or we do A true or false, there's variations, it's never the same and I quite enjoy producing those because it makes us a little bit unique.

We've made a change where we have three separate prizes.

We do that separately as a prize.

If we do music clips, which we do twice a month, we do that as a separate prize and then we have a separate prize for general knowledge.

And now what we're finding a lot more people have a chance of winning.

There's people like Big Dave, as we call him, and Nikki and Sam, they're tremendous on the music.

They really enjoyed having diverse rounds.

So you can't please everyone, but I try and tap into what people are interested in.

Halfway the sheets come in, the numbers go up and the room does the arithmetic.

It's been quietly doing all night.

Somewhere in here, a table is two points down and has decided that it's somebody's fault.

But you have got people from 18 to 84 here with all different interests.

And I find that with music, we one team, they're all heavy metal people that never watch tv.

So if I do a TV question, they're totally against me straight away and they.

When I say a music round, they say, when's the music round?

After I've done it, because they're expecting heavy rock.

Obviously, the pub puts a quiz on.

So the prices has worked really well because I can give out the cash prizes quite early.

And obviously we're hoping that people will celebrate their win with a drink behind the bar.

You know, it is a commercial organization.

Some people forget that.

So I do have the customer to worry about in the pub, so.

So we try and do some drink prizes as well.

And by spreading the prizes, people have got some cash and then hopefully celebrate their success.

Every quiz has one.

The answer the room will not have.

It doesn't matter how carefully you wrote it or how many people checked it before you read it out, there's always one.

And there is only ever one person standing at the front.

There's been some terrible nights, all recorded in the book.

The worst one I had.

I thought I was being close.

Clever.

I did a theme round on the TV quiz show Bullseye that had 20 million people.

But in the pub, only a few people had ever seen it.

And some people said you downgraded the quiz, focusing on darts.

How dare you.

And the feedback on Facebook was brutal.

And it was a very lonely night that, because I thoroughly enjoyed.

It's one of my favorite programs.

I thoroughly enjoyed producing it, but went down like a lead balloon.

Absolutely shocking.

People don't really like change and I have introduced a lot of changes and they're very vocal if they don't like the changes.

And I've just got to take it on the chin.

But I've got to remember they're the customers and they're the ones that we need to keep coming back.

There's been some terrible questions.

I'll never forget Labrador and Retriever.

Is there a difference?

Someone thought they knew the answer.

We haven't seen the 80 since because I went against her answer and she was very upset.

And there's been other ones.

Picture rounds on the Internet are wrong, particularly motorbikes tend to be a bit dodgy on the Internet and we've got a guy who sells them for a living and he's been very vocal about me getting that wrong.

Everyone's got their own speciality.

I don't know everything in good faith, I try and take things so once it's all agreed, I'm quite happy.

And I always come with references.

And the guys down here get a bit frustrated because I said I've got a screenshot with the answer.

But unless David Attenborough says it's true, everyone has a different opinion.

Because what people say, they don't want to be embarrassed, they want to come up with an answer and they're embarrassed in front of their family and friends and that can happen.

And I'm normally the bad guy.

And if you read the book, you see, I don't always get it right.

I'm human like the rest of them.

But what's amazing is people go away.

And especially a few years ago I used to get emails.

Three in the morning, someone's put up an answer, they've got it wrong, they come second or they came third and they've gone away.

And my ex father in law set questions on Mastermind and his brief was because he was a saxophone and clarinet paper player.

People will check to their dying days that they were right.

So you had to provide so many different references.

And that's what I try and do.

I try and have a reference in.

In good faith.

Yeah.

And when I go around and collect the scores, I just show them what my reference is.

Final round and whatever else is going on in this room, the man reading the questions is doing it on his own.

70 People, one microphone, nowhere to look.

When they do a bad round.

And in the book I've got all the scores of the team.

It's always My fault.

So I always say, sorry, it's my fault.

Yeah, maybe next time.

And then I was fascinated by the behavior, people arguing, people walking out, the emails I used to receive.

I've upset absolutely everyone, I can assure you, because I've got at least one question wrong that they believe to be right.

And it was quite lonely and I felt people need to know all the effort that goes into it.

It can be quite lonely when you get it wrong.

There's 60, 70 people against you and you've got nowhere to go.

And this is even my wife, who's probably on the worst bit People.

And I get a lecture from her when I get home.

Half 11 chairs go up on the tables, the last coats come off the back of the chairs, and by the morning, this is a pub again.

It really hit home to me when I stopped doing the picture rounds.

On the Facebook page, where we have 2,100 followers, I had emails from Ireland, Australia, France, and we do them, expats do them, and I don't know how.

And then people put feedback saying, this is what our families do together.

There's a lot of brothers and sisters that come along, there's mothers and sons, there's fathers and daughters as well.

It's a real family feel and it really does bind the community.

And I thought, there's a story here to be told.

It's a year in life of a pub quiz and I recorded everything and I spoke to everyone and I decided to take a picture of the teams as well.

I got their permission.

There was a couple of people said it wasn't really appropriate to have our pick to take them for whatever reason, but I wanted to capture the community spirit, the love of winning and how it was so diverse, people together just enjoying their Thursday nights.

So the book contains over 60 pictures of all the participants and that's something I'm really proud about.

And the feedback so far on Amazon, people really enjoyed that part because it makes it come alive.

These are real people.

I was insistent the answers were at the bottom.

So if you're doing it in a family, if you're doing on a campsite, which people have been doing, doing at Christmas, the person who's posing questions has the answers underneath.

Only one person was 84 and I played tendency to have a problem with that.

The rest of the people have appreciated it.

Where you have the answers in front of you don't have to search upside down on the next page or two pages on or halfway through the book or the back.

That's one thing that really irritates me with quiz books and crosswords, trying to find the answer.

Locally, it's available at Shepperton Post Office and thank you if you bought it because we sold seven there, which is lovely.

It's down at the Ferry Caf in Shepparton.

It's also hopefully going to be in knock cuts in the next couple of weeks in Lelham.

Just checking.

Today it's available in about 50 countries through social media, places like Taiwan and Romania, and that's quite fascinating to see how that works.

But really the power of community is quite incredible.

And one.

One lady said to me, Hassan doesn't really like to go out, but he's really good at quizzes.

This is one place he does go and they go quite quickly.

He doesn't really like crowds, apparently, but they're really good and they can be in the top three if they work really hard.

And people say to me, it's a great night.

And when I've seen people say, I really look forward to that Thursday for the loyalty to have on average 40, 50 people coming for the last couple of years for other people, pubs have struggled to attract customers.

I'm very grateful and I think it's the whole ambience of the pub that helps, though it is a very traditional pub, a very friendly pub.

That was Martin Pither, quiz master at the Bali Mow on Watersplash Road where the quiz runs every Thursday at 8 o'.

Clock.

There's no booking, first come, first serve and the room holds about 70.

His book is A Year in the Life of a Pub Quiz.

Locally, you'll find it at Shepparton Park Post Office and the Ferry Coffee Shop.

And it's online too.

71 Teams and 440 people through one door in a year.

The thing about a weekly fixture is that nobody counts it until it stops.

Shepperton has one and it's on this Thursday.

Thanks again to the businesses supporting the Sheppartonian through the business Club.

Their support keeps this podcast rooted in the community.

I'm Gareth.

This has been the Sheppartonian.

Until next time.

I'll see you around.

Oh, and the garden.

Strawberry.

It was Brittany in France, right?

Oh,.