It’s a Monday night at a Surry Hills pub and Sydneysiders are twerking to pounding pop music in front of bemused bartenders.
Behind them, a man dressed as an eggplant claps gleefully. Disco lights scatter bright flecks across the packed venue.
This isn’t a club night or a cabaret. It’s a trivia evening.
Here, the youthful crowd drink rounds of margaritas and raucously banter with the host. At 9pm when trivia wraps up, karaoke begins.
If you ask James Breko, the host dressed as an eggplant, trivia is having a moment.
“Ten years ago, trivia in pubs could be quite dry and technical, just someone on a clipboard,” he says.
“But the industry has just exploded. We’re in an early period of something special.”
‘It’s like putting on a TV show’
Breko, a former law student, got into trivia via the entertainment industry eight years ago. It was tough – he was selling barbecues and outdoor furniture by day and doing a radio show on Oxford Street by night.
“Trivia wasn’t on my radar in my 20s – not really my vibe, I actually thought it was kind of uncool,” he says. “But I got addicted to it and loved it.”
It started as many good ideas do – over dinner at the pub. The host at Sydney’s Eveleigh Hotel announced it was her last night. Breko told the owner: “I’ll try next week – give me dinner and $100.”
Over time the crowds grew, and today he typically hosts five nights a week, across Sydney’s inner west, east and CBD.
“I have a sixth sense now on what works,” he says. “It was worth a free dinner when I started but now it’s like putting on a TV show – you’ve got to hold the audience there the whole time.”
Breko’s trivia nights go far beyond questions, including everything from dance challenges, elaborate costume changes, singalongs and conga lines.
“I get nervous every night but after the first five minutes you’re in and going,” he says. “It’s amazing the power you have. And if a joke falls flat, we just move on to question eight.”
‘It’s a game – games are meant to be fun’
Janet McLeod – also known as Planet Janet, Trivia Doyen, Professional Dickhead or the Fairy Godmother of Melbourne Comedy (as termed by the late Cal Wilson) – has been in the game for more than two decades.
“Zooming in to you from Melbourne, Australia,” she calls dramatically, wearing rainbow eyeshadow and bedazzled headphones. “It’s time for … me!”
Before the pandemic, McLeod had only ever been on two Zoom meetings. But during lockdowns, online trivia events became her main source of income and eventually she was running a dozen shows a week.
“I’ve had an overwhelming amount of people come up to me since the pandemic being so sincere and profuse saying – ‘Thanks, you got us through’,” she says.
“It was their main punctuation for their week. I would be in their lounge rooms. I got to know their pets.”
McLeod sets three rules at the beginning: spelling is not important, don’t cheat and don’t argue with her – it’s an occupational health and safety issue.
Many hosts have contracts with companies such as Quiz Meisters that provide questions in bulk, but McLeod writes her own content and is always on the lookout for facts she can work into her show.
The sweet spot, she says, is for your average crowd to know about 70% of the answers – “getable, but not insulting”.
“Sometimes it’s looking at a piece of information,” she says philosophically, “and then finding the way to ask it.”
“Can emus swim?” is one of her favourites (answer: yes, they look like the Loch Ness monster). She also likes a curly one on the long tail of the French revolution.
“France abolished the use of the guillotine as a form of capital punishment in the same year as the release of one of these songs: A) Put Your Head on my Shoulder, 1958; B) The First Cut Is the Deepest, 1967; or C) Shaddap You Face, 1981.”
In her words, it’s easier to find a bad trivia host than a good one – the “old badger in the corner” who has poor mic technique and fails to ask the question twice.
“It’s a game – games are meant to be fun,” she says. “You’re not playing for Lamborghinis, you’re playing for a drinks voucher.”
The sense of fun is how McLeod has kept her regular show at St Kilda’s The Local Taphouse running for almost 22 years. She’s seen children grow up and return with their mates when they are of age.
Before the Taphouse, she co-hosted Quiz International in the 1990s at the International Lounge, which later became the popular Ding Dong Lounge in Melbourne’s Market Lane.
It was a raucous time. She and her friend Toby would dress as an airline attendant and a pilot and take passengers on a sonic journey to different destinations each week, accompanied by a DJ and opening credits.
“Funnily enough, a lot of the people from that trivia night have stuck. Pre [ABC music show] Spicks and Specks, Myf Warhurst and Alan Brough were regulars.
“Once Rove McManus filled in for me, before he had a chat show. It was pretty wild stuff.”
‘I’ve become like family to them’
Neil Lithgow has always been a trivia buff. As a 12-year-old, he was given a book of amazing facts for Christmas – which he fondly describes as his bible.
Then life happened – in his case, a career in finance.
But about 10 years ago, he thought idly, “I wonder how you would look to host a trivia night.” So he googled it and found an ad on Gumtree to do a weeknight at the Balmain hotel in Sydney.
It started as a side hustle and it’s now become his life.
“My other full-time work was not as fulfilling as it should have been,” he says. “Trivia is way more fun and way less stress – less money, but the other two outweigh that after 25 years in the banking industry.”
Years into perfecting his craft, Lithgow now has a “secret formula” for his questions.
He likes questions that anyone can take a stab at – “Where did Tim Tams get their name?” (answer: a racehorse) and “In which hand does the Statue of Liberty hold her torch?” (answer: right).
“Ones that promote table discussion,” Lithgow says. “If you’ve got no idea – my first question is always a 50/50, so you’ve got half a chance.”
It’s the community, though, that ends up drawing hosts in. Trivia is ephemeral – you can have the best question in the world, but once it’s been asked, it has to be retired.
The patrons are the ones who keep coming back, week after week, decade after decade.
“You see the same faces every week,” Lithgow says. “I’ve been doing it 10 years and there are tables that have come for seven or eight.
“One of them recently told me they were at the dog park and realised there were four different tables represented, and one of the bar staff.”
Some couples first met at Breko’s trivia nights. Others have become lifelong friends.
“I become like family to them, or the couch in their living room,” he says.
“Some people treat it like a job to do and get done. The best hosts love it.”
