Al Murray: The Pub Landlord's

Written by Alistair Coats | 02 September 2010

The Pub Landlord is back at the Edinburgh festival, hosting his own pub quiz and offering the winning team a whole Farmfoods frozen chicken! Second place is a bag of really poor quality square sausages, but while disgusting frozen meat sits under a hot spotlight, contestants become surprisingly competitive. It’s a suitably absurd prize for a fun show that is both stand-up performance and actual pub quiz. Compete for the Meat is also a refreshingly cheap hour and a half’s entertainment setting you back just £5.

Beginning the show with audience banter, this is the perfect way to see Al Murray: hosting a genuine pub quiz while making snappy observations about his patrons and the integrity of their careers. Settling in, we are taught to chant “Thick and slow” at examples of stupidity and  then witness ‘crisp-offs’, when competitors from tie-breaking teams have to eat as many crisps as they can while the Countdown clock plays. The quiz topics and questions (which he apparently changes for each show) are mostly as you would find in a normal pub and are genuinely challenging.

The venue fits more people than can be put in teams, so only those sat at the tables near the stage compete. Impressing Murray with your knowledge may get you a spot at a table when losers are sin-binned for their ignorance, but the show is just as fun from the back and he walks around to see what people think the answers are. Between questions he shares some of his narrow-minded opinions on each topic, and the show proves just as funny as a stand-up performance, but with the added bonus of meat prizes.