Round the Bend Trivia Quiz

Answer: Gretel Killeen

'My Life is a Toilet!' is the first book in the 'Fleur Trotter' series. It is about Fleur and her family going to visit her grandma, having an accident on the way, and ending up having to stay in a caravan park called Paradise Island while their car gets fixed. The Trotters befriend the Pipe family whose son, Dwayne, becomes friends with Fleur and appears in later books in the series.

Answer: Blackadder Goes Forth

The Red Baron (Adrian Edmondson) says this in the episode 'Private Plane' of 'Blackadder Goes Forth', the final series of 'Blackadder', which is set during the First World War. Blackadder and Baldrick have been captured by the Red Baron, and he wants to learn about British humour.

He threatens to make them teach Home Economics at a girls' school outside Heidelberg, although Blackadder is secretly happy about this.

Answer: Rat

'Flushed Away' is about Roddy (Hugh Jackman), a pet rat who gets flushed down a toilet by Sid (Shane Richie), and finds an underground city in the sewers called Ratropolis. He meets Rita (Kate Winslet), a scavenger who is escaping the Toad (Ian McKellen), a toad who despises rodents.

He plots to flood Ratropolis with sewage by opening its gates during the half-time period of the England and Germany World Cup match, as humans will be using their toilets then.

Answer: The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band

'The Strain' is the first track on the Bonzos' fifth album 'Let's Make Up and Be Friendly', and was written by Vivian Stanshall. It was the last album featuring the original line-up until 2007, when they released 'Pour l'Amour des Chiens'.

A sample lyric:

'Hey, hey, human, gonna do the Strain,
I'm gonna grip the seat, I'm gonna pull your chain,
Barbed wire bum, baby, be like me,
We're gonna do the Strain on the lavatory.'

Answer: Micro Machines 2: Turbo Tournament

I used to have this game, and the toilet seat was a nightmare to race on, because of the narrowness of the track and it being all too easy to get knocked off the edge! The 'Micro Machines' games were based on the toys of the same name, and involved races in tiny cars on all sorts of weird and wonderful racecourses, from tabletops covered in food to snooker tables and gardens. 'Turbo Tournament' also had two ports on the cartridge for extra players to join in, and tournaments could enable up to eight players if players shared a pad each.

Answer: Tony Ross

Tony Ross also illustrates Francesca Simon's 'Horrid Henry' books. 'I Want My Potty!' was published in 1986, and ended up becoming part of a series; later books about the Little Princess included 'I Want My Tooth' and 'I Want a Friend'. A TV series, 'Little Princess', is based on the books.

Answer: Thunderpants

Admittedly, this is a bit obscure. 'Thunderpants' was a parody of 'Thundercats'. There was also 'Clarence the Clank Engine' ('Thomas the Tank Engine'), 'Old Age Useless Nitwit Tortoises' ('Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles'), and 'Poopert the Bear' (a parody of 'Rupert the Bear', with a brown bear).

There was also a musical feature with a singing toilet called Elton the John, and singing manure puppets called Michael Jackdung, Kylie Manure and Jason Dungovan, who would sing parodies of pop songs. The show was presented by Doc Croc and his rat friends. (A parody news segment did feature a deaf leopard, but I made the other answers up.)

Answer: Harvard

'The Women's Room' was published in 1977, and has been cited as an influential novel in the second wave of feminism. Mira Ward, the heroine, goes to Harvard University as a mature student to study English Literature, after divorcing her husband, and the first chapter sees her feeling out of place in her formal three-piece suit and sprayed hair.

She hides in a toilet and reads the political graffiti on the walls. The novel chronicles Mira's life in detail, with her entrance to Harvard happening in the middle of the book; she makes several friends, all of whom are postgrad women students.

The women's toilets are also portrayed as a symbol of the Harvard establishment having to make way for women students, and the new generation pushing back against the old guard.

Answer: trainspotting

'Trainspotting' is about a group of Edinburgh heroin addicts. In the scene in question, Mark Renton, the film's protagonist, takes opium suppositories as a substitute for heroin. He gets diarrhoea, due to going cold turkey (as Renton explains, heroin makes users constipated), falls into the toilet while trying to get the suppositories out of the bowl, and enters an underwater world. Disgusting though the scene is, director Danny Boyle actually used chocolate to resemble faeces, stating that, "The set smelled really sweet - delicious, really, kind of like a confectionery. 
You could have licked the chocolate right off the bowl."

Answer: The Most Popular Girls in School

'The Most Popular Girls in School' starts with a pair of cheerleaders at the fictional Overland Park High School in Kansas encountering a new girl, Deandra, who turns out to suffer from a nasty case of irritable bowel syndrome. Mackenzie Zales, the head cheerleader, owns the toilets and is not happy about a new girl being in there (another cheerleader, Ashley Katchadourian, was supposed to be watching the door, but was at Pearl Harbour).

She befriends both the cheerleaders and their rivals, the rich Van Buren sisters, and this leads to both groups fighting over her and ripping her arms off.

She later gets them replaced - one artificial metal arm, which gives her superhuman strength, and one real one. The second series also starts in the girls' toilets with Desmond, the Jamaican cleaner, finding a pregnancy test, which everyone thinks belongs to Brittney Matthews, another cheerleader.

It turns out to belong to Saison Marguerite, a dim French transfer student.