Brunch with Ann Gav

 I recently caught up with Ann Gavaghan who made TOTM in August for USA Regions. She plays for the Philly Jawns in that league as well as The Motley Crew in OQL USA. We met up at The Tasty, a vegan diner in South Philly for a yummy breakfast where I also interviewed her on trivia and other topics.

Tim: Please tell me about your TOTM Regionals performance in August. What seat were you and what stood out?

Ann: I was seat 3B, and thanks to my captain for putting me there. The new Regions structure of pairing certain categories was a help this month, because I lucked out with two categories that happened to fall in my wheelhouse of pop culture. Trivia is about knowing many things, but a lot of quizzing is about getting the right questions at the right time. 

Tim: How did you first get into trivia as a hobby? What are your first memories of it?

Ann: I did Academic Decathlon in high school, although that combined straight trivia alongside things like public speaking and interview. It was a lot of fun, because we went to the state championships and got a send-off at a pep rally and honest-to-goodness “letters” for letter jackets. I had the whole experience of being a jock without actually having to be good at any sports. It wasn’t until I moved to London, though, that I really got into trivia as a more hardcore hobby.

Tim: When did you first get into OQL? What team did you join and what has the experience been like?

Ann: I joined OQL during the pandemic rush of online quizzing, when I started with the OQL team PE^2, made up of people that I knew from the quizzing scene around London. I’ve since played OQL USA with the Motley Crew, OQL Regions with the Philly Jawns, and done some OQL Connections as well. 

Tim: Have you ever been on a game show? Are you currently trying out for one?

Ann: I’ve been on five different game shows - two in the United States and three in the UK. 

Tim: Do you play live quiz at any bars in London? What is the scene there like?

Ann: For the past decade, I’ve been playing live trivia on Tuesday nights with the Quiz League of London, which is a format like OQL. We play in private rooms of pubs, so I’ve gotten to know a bunch of drinking establishments around the city. The quizzes I do outside of league play tend to be specialist quizzes. I miss the British Film Institute's monthly film quiz at the IMAX, where I once won a year’s subscription to the Sight and Sound magazine, and I’ve enjoyed others run by the London Transport Museum.

Pub quizzes can be hit or miss in London - it depends on finding one run by a good company. I tend to find them a lot harder than OQL quizzes because the knowledge base is different, requiring things that you just sort of pick up from being here, like old television commercials, or football grounds, or songs that were popular in the UK but never ever made it to the United States. 

Tim: Did you attend SporcleCon the past three years? If so, what was it like? If not, what big live events in the UK or Europe have you attended?

Ann: Long story - I was planning to attend SporcleCon the first year it happened, but my purse got stolen and I couldn’t leave the UK until I had my replacement green card, so I had to cancel. I hope to make it at some point! 

I haven’t gone to many of the big live events in the UK or Europe like the Quiz Olympiad or the British Quiz Weekender, but that’s because I save a lot of my travel for Eurovision season.

Tim: What are your top five trivia/quiz highlights both as an individual and as part of a team?

Ann:

1. Pushing for gender diversity

One of my highlights in quiz - at least in London - is being someone who is known for pushing for increased diversity in the quiz canon. After getting annoyed by the lack of questions about women, I started writing friendlies for QLL where all the questions or answers were about women. It’s still not perfect, but our quizzes now have more questions about women. That’s one reason I’m really enjoying OQL USA and OQL Pop Solos. 

2. University Challenge

University Challenge is a British television quiz institution. During the pandemic, I did a graduate degree in Art History at the Open University, in a course that was fully online. I tried out for the University Challenge team on a whim, and made the team as captain. My teammates and I didn’t meet each other in person until the audition, and yet we still managed to work together and make the quarterfinals of the competition - the best performance for Open University since 1999. (I was also really proud as a middle-aged American to hold my own on the buzzer against younger people with quicker reflexes.)

3. Only Connect

The first time I, as an American, saw Only Connect, I thought it was a fiendishly difficult quiz show and I had no idea how anyone could parse the questions. Ten years later, I found myself on the show and actually getting questions correct. 

4. Jeopardy!

I was on Jeopardy! That’s the dream of every American quizzer! And I won a game! All of this happened in 2007, before I really knew there was a trivia scene. I was just practicing in my apartment after work by studying an almanac and clicking a pen, and after I was on, I thought that was going to be it for my game shows, and then I moved to the UK and discovered this whole other scene.

5. Remember This!

No one remembers Remember This!, Al Roker’s first foray into game show hosting. MSNBC was looking to fill airtime, so they came up with the great idea to run a history game show based on news clips from the NBC archives. 32 colleges within driving distance of New York - including my undergraduate institution, Villanova - were recruited to put up teams of professors and students. I was the student on my team. I don’t remember much about actually playing the game, but as someone who spent a lot of time as a kid watching the news (or reading about the news) it was a very, very good fit for a game show. Villanova won the tournament with a nailbiter on the final question, and we remain the undefeated Remember This! champions (because MSNBC did not pick up the show for a second season.) All that’s left is grainy footage of one episode on YouTube.

 

Tim: What friendlies have you written for OQL USA and UK?

Ann: I’ve written an art-themed friendly for OQL USA, and a bunch of friendlies for the Quiz League of London. I also edit friendlies for them. 

Tim: Besides trivia, what are your other hobbies and interests?

Ann: I play in OQL UK, OQL USA, OQL Regions, QLL, KFL, FLQL, and Learned League so I’m spending a lot of my time doing trivia each week.

From December through May, I’ll be spending most of my weekends following Eurovision and its many lead-up competitions, and will be traveling to other European countries to watch some of those live.

I work in public transport, and I love trains, so every year, I try to take one or two new train journeys in Europe - last year, I did sleeper train journeys from London to Zagreb and Paris to Warsaw.

Tim: If you could have dinner and play trivia with any five guests in history, who would you choose?

Ann:

1. Victoria Groce - Not only excellent at trivia, but kind, and I want to see what she’d wear

2. Jujubee - Look, I don’t know if Jujubee, the perpetual runner-up to many RuPaul’s Drag Race seasons, would be any good at trivia. However, we do know that Jujubee is absolutely charming in game situations, whether it’s Snatch Game or Dungeons and Dragons, so they’d probably be a lot of fun here. 

3. Katalin Kariko - Science is one of my weakest subjects, so it’s probably good to have a Nobel prize winning biochemist on the team

4. Tony Leung - I don’t think Tony Leung, the star of films like In The Mood for Love, is good at trivia. But I think Tony Leung and a cigarette and a thousand-yard stare would immediately make any trivia night more atmospheric. 

5. Jesus Christ - If all else fails, it helps to have an omniscient being on the team. Plus, he can change water into wine, so if the entree is no good, I bet he’d be able to make the pub fries crispier (at least)

Tim: What musicals have you seen on the West End and Broadway and which are your favorites?

Ann: My favorite musical of all time, due to repeated viewings of the film as a child, is 1776, so I was thrilled to see the 2022 revival featuring women and non-binary actors in all the roles on Broadway. 

On the West End, I really enjoyed Operation Mincemeat, which will be having a transfer to Broadway shortly. It has about six people playing everyone in the cast, and the quick changes are amazing. 

Tim: What is your favorite food and beverage? What is the dining scene like where you live? Have you eaten at any three star Michelin restaurants?

Ann: I am a vegetarian, and a picky eater (with a lot of autism sensory things). The British food scene has gotten a lot better since I’ve been here, but there’s certain foods that are beloved here that I just don’t want to find in my food - like peas, or sliced beets. There are a couple of fantastic vegetarian restaurants here in London, like Mildred’s, that I’ll go to, and a lot of good pop-up Chinese noodle restaurants. 

My favorite beverage is Coke Zero, and I drink about four cans a day. When I’m not drinking that, I’m drinking coffee. I also love Crodino, a non-alcoholic aperitif. 

I’ve never eaten at a three-star Michelin restaurant, although I did used to regularly eat at the original Din Tai Fung in Taipei.

Tim: I drink Coke Zero a lot and you should try the new Oreo flavor. A new Din Tai Fung recently opened in NYC.

Tim: What are the top international destinations you would choose to visit?

Ann: I’ve been to 40 countries but would like to travel more. I still haven’t made it to Australia or South America. If there’s a good night train service, it’s on my itinerary. 

Tim: What kind of music do you listen to and what are your favorite bands?

Ann: My favorite band of all time hands down is Fugazi, but half of my year is spent listening to Eurovision music. When it’s not Eurovision season, I listen to a lot of hyperpop and classic house and Italodisco and old school hardcore - and a bunch of podcasts. 

Tim: Please tell us about your experience living in Philadelphia and your favorite and least favorite things about the city.

Ann: I grew up in the Philadelphia suburbs and went to college in the Philadelphia suburbs and then moved halfway around the world to Taipei because if I didn’t leave then, I knew I’d never leave Philadelphia because it’s such a great place to be. The core of the city is compact and walkable, the vegan food scene is fantastic, Wawas and plentiful coffee abound, the desserts are amazing, and the music scene is wonderful. Most of all, there’s an undercurrent of weirdness that manifests itself in unexpected ways. 

I have so many favorite things about the city - the Mutter Museum, the Old Dutch Eating Place in Reading Terminal Market, the Wanamaker organ recitals, the DIY shows at the First Unitarian Church, the Duchamp collection at the Art Museum, half the restaurants in Chinatown - it’s just such an unpretentious gem of a place to live. 

My least favorite thing about it is that it’s so far away from where I live now.

Tim: Thank you for sharing and good luck in the Quizzes to come.