Wednesday 4 October saw some of the brightest minds in the private client wealth industry take part in the inaugural Strabens Hall Charity Quiz which was, this year, hosted in aid of Age UK.

Twenty teams and approximately one hundred people battled it out to be the champion over fifteen rounds of questions. The evening eventually saw the team from Charles Russell Speechly (CRS), led by Miranda Fisher (Family Department.), take the honours by a single point from property firm Montagu Evans. Of note was an impressive display of concentration and logic, when Sarah-Jane Boon of CRS became the first person to complete the ‘Who Owns The Fish’ round, often attributed to Albert Einstein.

A team from the private client department at Rawlinson & Hunter came in third pipping Peters & Peters by one single point. Out of the possible 100 points, CRS scored an impressive 61, with many teams’ results clustered around the mean average score of 43 points and only ten points separating the top five teams.

There is no doubt that this was a tough quiz and there were no easy rounds. Some teams, having taken note of the teaser question on Clint Eastwood’s remuneration package for the film,’ The Good, the Bad and the Ugly’, were better prepared than others. Nonetheless, questions were hard throughout with no one particular round being a free pass. Over the course of the challenge it became increasingly apparent that those teams with a spread of age and experience would do well given rounds including reality TV and social media in addition to rounds on such matters as: general knowledge including spelling and geography, Latin & law, BBC salaries, Hollywood, jazz, breeds of pig, social media fails and a number of film-specific questions.

We were delighted and slightly surprised by the response which saw our events team having to double up on expected capacity and in the end turning away a number of disappointed applications for places. We might have guessed the response would exceed expectations since quizzing in the UK is a serious business.

All in all it was an extremely successful night with the winner being crowned glorious and a small but meaningful amount being raised for Age UK, our chosen charity.

Based on the feedback to date we will be organising a similar event so that CRS, as reigning champions, can defend their crown and disappointed applicants can have an opportunity for their teams to join and pit their wits against the best in the London private client world.

Finally as requested, we have detailed below, the ‘Who owns the fish’ question.
Who owns the fish?

• There are 5 houses in five different colours.
• In each house lives a person with a different nationality.
• These five owners drink a certain type of beverage, smoke a certain brand of cigar and keep a certain pet.
• No owners have the same pet, smoke the same brand of cigar or drink the same beverage.

The question is: Who owns the fish?

These are your hints:

• The Brit lives in the red house
• The Swede keeps dogs as pets
• The Dane drinks tea
• The green house is on the left of the white house
• The green house’s owner drinks coffee
• The person who smokes Pall Mall rears birds
• The owner of the yellow house smokes Dunhill
• The man living in the centre house drinks milk
• The Norwegian lives in the first house
• The man who smokes blends lives next to the one who keeps cats
• The man who keeps horses lives next to the man who smokes Dunhill
• The owner who smokes Blue Master drinks beer
• The German smokes Prince
• The Norwegian lives next to the blue house
• The man who smokes blend has a neighbour who drinks water

A big thank you from the team at Strabens Hall to all those who took part.

Alistair Peel, Director, Strabens Hall