Anyone for Tennis Trivia Quiz

Answer: drawing room comedy

"Misalliance", subtitled "A Debate in One Sitting", premiered in 1910. The action takes place during a Sunday afternoon in the conservatory of a large country house owned by Johnny Tarleton. An aircraft crashing through the roof of the conservatory closes the end of the first act, and introduces the pilot and his female passenger, who really set things going. All together, we see eight marriage proposals during the course of the afternoon!

Answer: George Bernard Shaw

"Misalliance" offers typical Shavian irony in its examination of the mating rituals of a group of people spending the weekend at a large country house in Surrey. It contains a number of themes familiar from his earlier works, including socialism, the need for women to escape Victorian constraints, and conventions surrounding marriage. As one of the characters observes, "If marriages were made by putting all the men's names into one sack and the women's names into another, and having them taken out by a blind-folded child like lottery numbers, there would be just as high a percentage of happy marriages as we have now."

Oscar Wilde died in 1900, Samuel Beckett was only 4 years old when the play opened, and Brendan Behan was not even born until 1923.

Answer: Johnny Tarleton

Johnny Tarleton, the owner of the country house in which the play is set, delivers this line which (with some variants) has come to be used to typify both the genre of drawing room comedy and the upper-class stereotypes so often seen there. Johnny, who made his fortune in the underwear business, and his daughter Hypatia are entertaining for the weekend, with invited guests that include her fiance Bentley Summerhays and his father Lord Summerhays (who also proposes to Hypatia). Uninvited guests include Joey Percival, the pilot whose plane crashes into the conservatory at the end of Act 1; his passenger Lina Szczepanowska, a female circus acrobat who attracts all the men like the proverbial moths to a flame; and Gunner, an unhappy cashier who blames Tarleton for ruining everything by having had an affair with Gunner's mother.

Answer: Michael Palin

Eric Idle, in the character of a BBC film critic, introduced the skit, which was a double-barreled parody of drawing room comedy and ultra-violent films. Young, clearly upper-class, adults are frolicking around a piano in the garden, enjoying themselves in a genteel fashion. Things start to go awry after Michael Palin ("Lionel") delivers his line, then gets hit in the face by the ball - he throws his racquet away in pain, and it embeds itself in a girl's stomach; she faints, ripping off Eric Idle's arm; he, in turn, falls on the piano lid, making it close so as to sever John Cleese's hands; Graham Chapman is then impaled by the piano keyboard. It's all downhill from there. As Eric Idle comments in the closing, "Strong meat from Peckinpah!"

This skit was initially aired immediately after the classic Cheese Shop skit.

Answer: Salad Days

"The Wild Bunch" (1969) was the film that established Peckinpah as a director. He became known for his explicit portrayal of action and violence, in films which explored the conflict between values and ideals, as well as the ways in which violence in society corrupts all members of that society. "Salad Days" was a 1950s musical, which Peckinpah never filmed. No cucumber sandwiches in his work!

Answer: Oliver!

The original production of "Oliver!" ran for 2618 performances, edging out "Salad Days" at 2283. In 1955, "Salad Days" won an Evening Standards Award for Most Enjoyable Show, although losing out to "The Pajama Game" for Best Musical. Its lighthearted plot revolves around a young couple with a mobile piano which gives everyone who hears its music an irresistible urge to dance. "Oliver!" is, for the most part, set in a social milieu far removed from the 'Tennis, anyone?' crowd - the orphans would have been happy to get a second serving of gruel.

Answer: William Shakespeare

The title comes from the line 'My salad days, When I was green in judgment, cold in blood, To say as I said then!', from Shakespeare's "Antony and Cleopatra". It is part of the speech which Cleopatra delivers to end the first act of the play, in response to the receipt of a pearl as a gift from Mark Antony.

Answer: youth and inexperience

The phrase 'salad days' has been used for several hundred years to refer to a time of youthful inexperience when one is full of energy, idealism, innocence and, frequently, indiscretion. The metaphor rests on the link between 'salad' and 'green', a term used to refer to inexperience.

More recently, especially in the USA, the phrase has been used to refer to the time of a person's greatest prowess or success.

Answer: Montgomery Burns

In the episode 'Simpson and Delilah', Homer exploits the nuclear power plant's medical scheme to obtain Dimoxinil, a miracle cure for baldness. Of course, it all goes horribly wrong, and things end up as they were by the end of the show. It is after Homer has once again reverted to baldness that he has an interview with Mr. Burns during which Burns reminisces about the days of his youth when he had a head full of blond curls, and the girls flocked around him. Harry Shearer was the voice of Charles Montgomery Burns.

Answer: Men At Work

These are all great Aussie bands, but Men at Work are the ones who released the instrumental "Anyone For Tennis?" in 1981. "Who Can It Be, Now?" was on their first album, "Business As Usual" (1982), which also included the iconic "Down Under", the song you couldn't escape in the days following Australia II's victory in the America's Cup in 1983.

This could be considered a 'salad days' song, with its references to roaming the world and enigmatic encounters - "She just smiled and gave me a Vegemite sandwich".