One Country, Fifteen Categories Quiz

Answer: Adder

While the adder is a venomous snake, and you should seek medical attention if one bites you, it's nowhere near as dangerous to humans as the other three choices! It's one of three snake species that are native to England, and the only venomous one; the other two are the relatively harmless smooth snake and barred grass snake. Fans of Colin Dann's 'The Animals of Farthing Wood' books may remember that there was an adder in the original party of animals (who was male in the books and female in the TV series).

Answer: Newcastle

Ant and Dec - or Ant McPartlin and Declan Donnelly, to give them their full names - are a duo of TV presenters who presented the reality show 'I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here!'. They previously had a music career as PJ & Duncan AKA (named after the characters they played in 'Byker Grove', a drama about a youth club in Newcastle), before deciding to use their real names. They performed one of their songs, 'Tonight I'm Free', on the show.

Gordon 'Sting' Sumner was the lead singer and bassist of the Police, and also has had a successful solo career. He is from the shipbuilding area of Wallsend, and the local industry has inspired several of his songs, as well as a musical, 'The Last Ship'.

'Viz' is a comic aimed at adults, known for its toilet humour and joke tips. Its characters include Billy the Fish, Sid the Sexist and Student Grant. It was started in Newcastle by Chris Donald, his brother Simon and Jim Brownlow, and started its life as a fanzine for Anti-Pop Records, a local record label.

Answer: Malory Towers

The original 'Malory Towers' series, written by Enid Blyton between 1946 and 1951, begins with 'First Term at Malory Towers' and ends with 'Last Term at Malory Towers', and follows the school careers of Darrell Rivers and her friends. Pamela Cox wrote several fill-ins following Blyton's death, mainly focusing on Darrell's little sister Felicity. A TV series based on the books was made in 2019. Blyton also wrote the 'St Clare's' series, another boarding school series, in the early to mid 1940s.

The 'Marlows' books, some of which were set at Kingscote School, were written by Antonia Forest, the 'Chalet School' books by Elinor M Brent-Dyer, and the 'Trebizon' books by Anne Digby.

Answer: Dog

If you've read Arthur Conan Doyle's 'The Hound of the Baskervilles', the Barghest might sound familiar: it's an enormous black dog with large teeth and claws, mainly associated with North Yorkshire, and could cause wounds that would never heal. It is said to wander the streets of York and pray on lone travellers; another variant in Darlington was said to be a shapeshifter that could also change into a headless woman, a white cat or a rabbit. The Barghest is also associated with death; when a notable person in its territory is dying, it will howl and bark, and other local dogs will follow it in a funeral procession. The mobile game 'Fate/Grand Order' features a Barghest, and depicts it as a monstrous horned hellhound that also takes the form of a buxom blonde woman calling herself 'Fairy Knight Gawain'.

The Barghest's southern counterpart is Black Shuck, which haunts the Fens, Essex and East Anglia, and is sometimes depicted as having one red eye in the middle of its forehead.

Answer: Isle of Wight

The Needles are three chalk stacks off the coast of the Isle of Wight, and get their name from a fourth pillar known as 'Lot's Wife', a tall, sharp-looking chalk stack that was destroyed in a storm in 1764. Despite the other stacks being shorter, broader and not remotely needle-like, the name stuck. Today, the Needles are a popular tourist attraction and tourists can take boat trips out from Alum Bay to see them.

The Needles Lighthouse is on the outermost stack and was staffed until 1994, when it became automated.

Answer: Queen Elizabeth II

Queen Elizabeth II was a literal embodiment of the line 'long to reign over us', as she was on the throne from 1952 to 2022 and celebrated her Silver, Gold, Diamond and Platinum Jubilees during that time, making her the UK's longest-reigning monarch to date.

Her coronation, on 2nd June 1953, was the first coronation to be televised in the UK. She died at Balmoral Castle in Scotland, a year and a half after her husband Prince Philip, aged 96. Thousands of visitors, both from the UK and abroad, queued to see her coffin.

She was succeeded by Charles III, formerly the Prince of Wales, who was crowned King on 6th May 2023.

Answer: They are all English cheeses.

All of the above foods are English cheeses made with cows' milk. Stilton, a semi-soft cheese that comes in blue and white varieties, is probably the most famous English cheese; although it has many imitators, it has a Protected Designation of Origin, meaning that it has to be produced in Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire or Leicestershire to be considered real Stilton. (The actual village of Stilton is in Cambridgeshire.) The blue-veined variety is the more well-known of the two.

Hereford Hop is a hard cheese that gets its name from the toasted hops in which it is rolled. The hops give it a slight yeasty taste, and also help it to maintain its creamy texture.

Cornish Yarg is a semi-hard cheese that is traditionally wrapped in nettles, which give it a greenish-black rind. It is named after the Gray family ('Yarg' being 'Gray' backwards), who found an old recipe for nettled-wrapped cheese from 1615 in their attic, although the recipe is thought to date back to the 14th century.

Red Leicester - which, incidentally, is one of my favourite cheeses - is a hard cheese that is orange in colour. It was originally made with leftover milk on Leicestershire farms, which had been left over from Stilton manufacturing processes. Carrot or beetroot juice was originally used to give it its colouring but today, manufacturers use annatto, a dye made from the seeds of the achiote tree.

Answer: 'Oliver!', 'My Fair Lady' and 'Blood Brothers'

'Oliver!' and 'My Fair Lady' are both set in London, and 'Blood Brothers' is set in Liverpool.

'Oliver!' is based on Charles Dickens' 'Oliver Twist', about an orphan boy who joins a gang of pickpockets. A film adaptation was made in 1968 and featured Mark Lester as Oliver, Ron Moody as Fagin, Oliver Reed as Bill Sikes and Harry Secombe of 'Goons' fame as Mr Bumble.

'My Fair Lady' is based on George Bernard Shaw's play 'Pygmalion' and is about linguistics professor Henry Higgins' attempt to turn Eliza Doolittle, a Cockney flower seller, into a lady by teaching her to speak 'properly'. A 1964 film adaptation starring Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison was made.

Willy Russell's 'Blood Brothers' is about two Liverpool families, the middle-class Lyons and the working-class Johnstones, and a pair of twins who are separated at birth when one of them, Edward, is given to the Lyons family as their mother cannot afford to raise them both. Edward later meets his twin Mickey and the two become friends, but later grow apart. Barbara Dickson played Mrs Johnstone in the original West End production in 1983; Kiki Dee, Petula Clark and Melanie C of the Spice Girls have also played the role.

As for the other answers, 'Les Miserables' is set in France; 'Evita' in Argentina; 'South Pacific' on an unnamed Pacific island; 'The King and I' in Thailand; and 'Sister Act', 'Sunset Boulevard', 'Gypsy', 'Flower Drum Song' and 'Rent' are all set in the US.

Answer: Johnny

The late, great Terry Pratchett died in 2015, with his final 'Discworld' novel, 'The Shepherd's Crown', being published five months later. 'The Shepherd's Crown' was part of the 'Tiffany Aching' series, starring the young witch of the same name and based in the world of 'Discworld', but aimed at children. The 'Johnny' books were also aimed at children and featured the adventures of Johnny Maxwell and his misfit friends Wobbler, Bigmac and Yo-Less.

In 'Only You Can Save Mankind', Johnny gets dragged into a computer game and forced to fight in an alien war, while in 'Johnny and the Dead', he meets the ghosts of people buried in the local cemetery and in 'Johnny and the Bomb', he and his friends travel back in time to the Second World War. They are joined by Kirsty, a teenage prodigy who Johnny met in 'Only You Can Save Mankind'.

Pratchett also wrote the 'Bromeliad', a trilogy of books about a race of tiny people called Nomes; one of the books, 'Truckers', was adapted as a stop-motion animation series in 1992.

Answer: Peter O'Toole

Although Peter O'Toole was nominated for the 1963 Best Actor Oscar for 'Lawrence of Arabia', in which he starred as T. E. Lawrence, he did not win it; however, he did win a BAFTA, and the Golden Globe Awards for Most Promising Newcomer - Male and Best Actor - Motion Picture Drama that same year. His other notable roles included King Henry II in both 'Becket' and 'The Lion in Winter', Arthur 'Chips' Chipping in 'Goodbye, Mr Chips', Don Quixote in 'Man of La Mancha', and Maurice Russell in 'Venus'. He was presented with an Honorary Academy Award in 2002.

Outside acting, O'Toole was a supporter of Sunderland AFC, a rugby and cricket fan, and campaigned against the Vietnam War. He knew all 154 of William Shakespeare's sonnets and claimed to read them daily (and recited Sonnet 18 in 'Venus'). He died of stomach cancer in 2013, aged 81.

Answer: Shoegaze

Shoegaze, or shoegazing, is a type of indie/rock music characterised by distorted guitars, large amounts of feedback and effects, and obscured, sometimes androgynous vocals (particularly in the case of My Bloody Valentine, whose album 'Loveless' is one of the most famous albums of the genre). The term 'shoegaze' was coined due to the musicians' habit of looking down at their feet, presumably because their effects pedals were also down there. Although My Bloody Valentine were based in Ireland and had two Irish members, several bands associated with shoegaze - Reading's Slowdive and Chapterhouse, Oxford's Ride (whose singer Andy Bell would go on to join Hurricane #1 and later, Oasis), and London's Lush and Moose - were from the Thames Valley area.

Several of the bands were friends with each other and would attend each other's gigs, which caused shoegaze to be dubbed 'the scene that celebrates itself'. Although Lush were initially part of the shoegaze scene (and singer Miki Berenyi later formed Piroshka with Moose McKillop of Moose), they went in a more poppy direction with their 1996 album 'Lovelife' as they wanted to prove they could write pop songs. However, this was viewed by the press as them jumping on the Britpop bandwagon, although both Berenyi and guitarist Emma Anderson vehemently denied this.

Answer: Bouncing bomb

Barnes Wallis invented the bouncing bomb, so called because it was designed to bounce across water while avoiding nets and other obstacles. Once it struck its target, it would sink under the water and explode. The bouncing bomb was first used in Operation Chastise - otherwise known as the Dambusters Raid - in 1943, when the Allies blew up the Möhne and Edersee dams and flooded the Ruhr Valley. The bomb used for dams was known as the Upkeep, while the Highball variant was used for ships.

All the other weapons, incidentally, are real bombs that were suggested in the Second World War, but turned out to be useless. The sticky bomb was a bomb used by the British that was supposed to stick to the sides of tanks, but ended up being stuck to the thrower's hand instead. The lunge bomb was a Japanese bomb that was attached to a pole and had to be rammed into the side of a tank, but the safety pin had to be removed first, giving the wielder little time to run away. Finally, the Russians came up with the idea of attaching mines to dogs and training them to run under tanks, only for the dogs to come running back to the Russian tanks because they associated them with food.

Answer: Germany

Thirty years of hurt may have never stopped the England men's team from dreaming, but there was heartbreak at Euro '96 when England went out to Germany in the semi-final, thanks to Gareth Southgate (who would go on to manage them many years later) missing a penalty. Sixteen years later, England hosted the women's Euro 2022 and England faced Germany in the final.

This time, England won 2-1, with goals from Ella Toone and Chloe Kelly in extra time. England had previously reached the final at Euro 2009, but lost 6-2 to Germany; veteran Jill Scott was the only remaining member of that squad.

Answer: The Young Ones

'The Young Ones' was set in a student flatshare and featured a core cast of annoying political activist Rick (Rik Mayall), hippy Neil (Nigel Planer), violent medical student and punk Vyvyan (Adrian Edmondson), and straight man Mike Thecoolperson (Christopher Ryan). Alexei Sayle also appeared as landlord Jerzei Balowski and various members of his family. The series' humour was very surreal and anarchic, with Vyvyan constantly destroying things or bullying Rick and Neil, and bands such as Motörhead and Madness would guest on the show.

Mayall, Planer and Edmondson subsequently appeared in 'Filthy Rich & Catflap', a spiritual successor to 'The Young Ones', and Mayall and Edmondson also starred in 'Bottom'. Their characters Eddie Hitler and Richie Richard are '90s counterparts to Vyvyan and Rick.

Answer: Bentley

Bentley is the English brand here - all the others are American. It was founded in London in 1919 by the engineer W.O. Bentley, and was acquired by the Volkswagen Group in 1998. Its main factory is in Crewe, Cheshire, and it specialises in luxury and sports utility vehicles, such as the Bentayga, the Continental and the Flying Spur.

In 2002, the company presented Queen Elizabeth II with a pair of State Limousines in honour of her Golden Jubilee. In 2020, the company pledged that all its vehicles would be electric by 2030.