I’m not sure I’m gonna be able to give this pub a fair shake. I went there to check out a potential new pub quiz for myself and Nick. Back home we attended the Red Lion pub quiz damn near every Monday for a number of years, and since moving to Lon-Don this year we have talked a big game about searching out a new quiz, even going so far as to research [on the internet] where the best quizzes might be held equidistant from our respective homes.

Never got round to physically attending anything though, until this week. Our 12bTV producer, Chloe, let us in on her weekly pub trivia fix, held at The Fentiman in Kennington every Tuesday. Course we went for it, despite it being a good 20 minute walk away from Nick’s flat and a 45 minute tube journey plus the walk for me.

Inside the place it becomes immediately clear that it is not a real pub. Maybe it once was, back when old man Fentiman got the idea to sell alcohol to nearby hunter/gatherers and set up a shingle by the dirt road, but circa 2009 the place is plastered walls, neutral colours and not a fuck lot of anything else. It’s the sort of place with San Miguel on tap and a painting of a cow on a blue background hanging on the wall. Lots of neck-beards and sweaters make up the clientele. You know the kind of place. It’s clear from the offset that this place will not be our regular quiz, and this is before we even hear our first question. As it happens the first question we hear, Question Six, was a three part literacy affair in which the quiz master [some loud mouth son of a bitch in an ironic flannel shirt] screamed the first line of a “famous” novel at the crowd, and we had to answer with the title of said novel. Also his shtick was that the quiz was a primary school style test. Kept referring to us as “students” and “class” and shit such as that. Terrible.

The ‘pub’ itself is so unremarkable it goes the other way and becomes worth talking about. It’s possibly the blandest place I’ve ever been to. The beer selection is pedestrian/pretentious, as in San Miguel as formerly mentioned, Staropramen, Guinness... the standard so called up market beers you might say. I didn’t see a bar snack in the place, but several people were eating and one of the meals included a flat mushroom and some sort of hummus. Smelled good though.

I just wouldn’t bother with the place if I were you. The quiz is trying so hard to be intellectual it’s just no fun, the actual venue has less presence than Clive Owen and it’s full of the worst kind of wanker. Those who consider themselves clever and like to be seen as the same.

BEER SELECTION: Meagre and unimaginative. *

COST OF A ROUND: £7.80 odd for two drinks. *

STAFF: Actually incredibly nice, friendly and very quick. Never ignored sections of the bar. Truly excellent. ****

FOOD: Smelled pretty nice, but possibly missing any sort of charm that marks it out as Fentiman’s Food. **

SKIRT RATIO: Pretty heavily subscribed by girls, but they were all called Libby and had degrees in music. **

Overall: Apart from the staff, who were amazing, this place is a soulless shell of a pub. *

The Fentiman - Kennington - Brought to you by Gazz Wood -