Mick's Music Quiz began in March 2005 at the Speckled Hen Public House in Hatfield Road, St. Albans......With the lack of a  professionally and fairly run music quiz in St Albans, Mick's Music Quiz soon established itself as the county's top music quiz growing from 6 teams in our first week to between 20 and 32 teams each Thursday, making us not only the biggest pub music quiz in Hertfordshire, but one of the biggest music quizzes in the country, pulling in up to 4 times the number of teams than other outdated music quizzes in the area....we recently celebrated our 4th birthday with 32 teams and over 100 music quizzers....

At just £1 to enter and a genuine chance of winning one of 4 great prizes each week, the quiz not only caters for anyone who likes popular music from the last 50 years, but anyone who enjoys a fun night out, and the unique format means it's not just the music boffins who can win the top prizes each week.....come and join our regular and ever increasing new teams to experience Hertfordshire's top music quiz......

Any questions not answered here, feel free to email......

Q: How come your jackpots are much bigger than other quizzes, yet you charge less to enter?

A: With by far the best attended music quiz in the area, we only need to charge a pound and can still collect in up to £100 in a single week, whereas other less popular quizzes are charging more but giving away far less in prize money.....in the last year we have given away nearly £5000 in prize money alone.....

Q: Does all the money go into the jackpot or do you take cash out for prizes etc.?

A: ALL THE MONEY COLLECTED GOES INTO THE CASH JACKPOT.......the pub supply the meal prizes and I supply the wine and mystery prizes....the cash jackpot never leaves the pub until it is won.....it is YOUR money, not ours!  It is locked away in the pub safe after the quiz.....

Q: How much money can we win at the quiz?

A: It all depends what is in our cash pot at the time.......it could be anything from £25 to £500. Some quizzes advertise large cash jackpots, but don't be fooled....this is because nobody has won for months on end.....and then one team scoops the lot. We give away MORE money, MORE regularly than other quizzes, thus ensuring a fairer spread of the cash amongst our participating teams.

Our jackpot question is always a 50/50  type music trivia question, which means even if you don't know the answer, you still have a FAIR chance of winning....

Don't forget, we also have 3 other great prizes apart from our cash prize including a £20 meal voucher, which you can spend on the excellent pub grub in the Speckled Hen, a bottle of wine and a mystery prize....not bad considering it's still only £1 to enter....

Q: I'm okay on recent music, but rubbish on anything before 1980........ is it worth me entering?

A: Yes. Our format means that it's not only the quiz winners which are guaranteed to take part in our prize draw......3 randomly placed teams will also take part, so it is actually possible to finish last and win the cash jackpot, which has happened several times........at other quizzes it's the same 3 or 4 teams that win all the time which means the other teams eventually stop coming... 

Q: What sort of music is played in the quiz?

A: Anything and everything...........primarily we play 'hits' from the UK singles chart which dates from 1952 to the present day, but we also feature album tracks, TV and film themes, mystery voices etc etc....We try and make the quizzes as varied as possible, so no 2 quizzes are the same.....

Q: How many people can we have in our team?

A: Unlike most quizzes which limit the number of people per team, you can have as many people as you like.........of course, if you were to win a prize, then you would have more people to split it between. Having 2 teams of 5 would give you a better chance of winning a prize than one team of 10.

Q: Do you run any other quizzes?

A: At present, it's just the Thursday night at the Speckled Hen, but due to popular demand, a new Monday night quiz will be kicking off in April 2009 in a great venue in Hertford....

Q: What kind of ages are the teams....is it all old people?

A: The teams have all ages ranging from 18 to 80........one team member recently celebrated his 80th birthday at the quiz, and another week we had a joint birthday celebration....21 and 59 years young respectively....( you know who you are ). The music covers the 1950's to the present day, so there's something for all age groups.

Q: Is it a serious quiz?

A:You can take it as seriously as you want.......it's up to you........we have some teams of a very high standard, but fortunately they enter into the fun spirit of the quiz, because they know that even if they win, they may not take home the top prize.......I've been to some quizzes where teams have been told not to sing along in case they give an answer away.....we actually encourage people to join in and sing along, even if they may inadvertantly give away an answer....it's all part of the fun of the quiz....

Q: Is the quiz staying in the Speckled Hen?

A: Yes, we're now in our 5th year in the same venue.....hopefully we've contributed to the huge success of the Speckled Hen which has become Greene King's most successful pub in the area... 

Hi Pop-Pickers.......... hope you like the site.....If, like me, you're mad about music then hopefully you may find something of interest on the following pages.

Check out the  weekly quiz question which you can access by clicking on the 'Online Quiz' link on the menu........I will set a new question each Saturday.....you can also check out all the previous questions in the 'ARCHIVE' section......

Mick

"MUSIC WAS MY FIRST LOVE, AND IT WILL BE MY LAST.

MUSIC OF THE FUTURE, AND MUSIC OF THE PAST"

Greetings Pop-Pickers, My name is Mick Page and to quote an old O'Jays song...."I love Music, any kind of Music"(except modern jazz). My wonderful wife is Carrie, and fortunately, she shares my passion for  music. We have three wonderful sons, Kristian, Dale and Marc and we live in  Welwyn Garden City. We all have a wide range of music tastes and at any one time you may hear the sounds of The Beatles, Psychedelic Furs, Muse, Avril Lavigne and Britney Spears coming from various rooms in the house.....

My main passion is popular music. In my case, this means collecting records, cassettes, CD's, music videos, music books, taking part in and setting music quizzes, and D.J'ing  to name but a few......... I also compile and host the county's top weekly pub music quiz .... click on 'Mick's Music Quiz' link for details....In early 2006 I also got involved in music research.......

FIRST RECORD

I bought my first record in 1973, aged 8 from Woolco in Hatfield. I would love to tell you that it was 'Blockbuster' by The Sweet (my favourite band as I was growing up in the early seventies) , but that came later.......Unfortunately, my first was either Gary Glitter's 'Hello Hello, I'm Back Again' or Cliff's Eurovision offering 'Power to all our Friends'.....I can't remember which I bought first, but they both still have the original 49p Woolco sticker on the sleeve. Thirty years later, and I'm still buying naff singles for 49p ( or less!), only now mainly from Car Boot Sales and Charity Shops........and Woolco is now Asda.

MUSIC QUIZZES

My other interest is MUSIC QUIZZES.....I can remember putting clips of music on a TDK c90 cassette for school friends in the late 70's and have continued setting quizzes since then..... I have staged music quizzes in various pubs in the Hertfordshire area and due to the success of these, I am now running a weekly music quiz in the SPECKLED HEN pub in St. Albans which has quickly become the best attended music quiz in the area.(click on the 'Mick's Music Quiz' link on the menu for details).

 I have also appeared on many radio quizzes and phone in competitions including the D.L.T show on Radio One, Mike Sweeney's Drive Time show on Capital Gold ( I managed to win a 35 Cd Box set), Dr Fox's show on Capital and regularly on Robbie Owen's Jukebox Drive-In show on my local station Hertbeat FM. I recently managed to win an Ipod Nano on Steve Folland's show on Hertbeat FM and in June 2006, I was 'live' on Stuart Maconie's Saturday show on Radio 2, winning the '6 Degrees of Separation' competition.

However, my 15 minutes of fame (and it was almost exactly 15 minutes) came in 2002 when I was lucky enough to appear three times on the POPMASTER quiz on Ken Bruce's Radio 2 show. I first appeared in February, and managed to score enough points to appear again in December in the Champions League, which is all the high scores from earlier in the year.  A previous contestant had already scored 63 points out of a possible 66, which meant I had to get all 10 questions correct to draw level with him. I managed to get a maximum which put me on 63 points as well and into the Final the following week. The other contestant in the final was a guy called Dean from Peterborough and he went first in the final, scoring 22 points which put him on a total of 85. It was a good score because the questions had definitely been harder in the final. I then had a bum clenching wait of 45 minutes before my set of questions......... I managed to score 9 out of 10 which put me on 93 points and gave me the title of 'Popmaster Champion 2002'! Out of the 30 questions I had in total on the Popmaster the one I got wrong was "On the Spice girls double A side number one single, 'Holler' was on one side........what was the song on the other ?  See below for answer.....

It was a great experience taking part and obviously nice to win. I would definitely recommend having a go.  Even if you don't make it into the Champions League, you can still win a digital radio. Give Ken a ring (or Bruce, as my opponent in the final kept calling him!) and you too could one day hold the crown of Popmaster champion!

If you want to practice before going live on air, then try the online quiz by clicking "PLAY NOW" on the icon above.........

Test your pop knowledge by having a go at the weekly music quiz question, by clicking on the 'Online Quiz' link on the menu....new question set each Saturday.....good luck!  

Cheers,

Mick

Other side of the Spice Girl's 'Holler' was the classic 'Let Love Lead the Way'. I don't mind admitting that  track had completely passed me by......

You can post any questions or comments on the 'Guestbook'. Just click on 'Guestbook'  on the menu.

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