Saturday 15th November 2025 evening saw Sunnyside and friends meeting in Church for the Tearfund Big Quiz Night 2025. Katie RS was Quizmaster for a seventh year and it was another brilliant event with a great buzz in Church!
There were 10 teams this year, totalling 74 people made up of the congregation with their families and friends, house groups, and folks coming together with fellow neighbours on their roads. There were some great team names! (The return of the headless chickens, ‘Evans Above, Head for the hill, Super 8, Magnificent Seven, Octopus, Snappy Seniors, Where’s My Parcel? (Hip Hip), Nameless, and The Second Opinions). There were eight rounds – It’s a family act, Not so cheesy-peasy, Waters of the world, A monumental round, Nature’s champions: fish or fowl?, Literature: is it Austen or ABBA?, The winning formula, and World festivals – with six questions per round.
There was already a range showing after just two rounds, with pole position changing a number of times over the rounds – for a while The Second Opinions were top, then later The return of the headless chickens were joint top before having some tough rounds, Super 8 did well consistently but just couldn’t edge into top spot. Finishing scores were spread out from 36 to 43.5 (out of a possible 48 points) – interestingly last year’s winners got 37 and the year before got 43. This year the clear winners with 43.5, and proving that you don’t need a massive team to win, were ‘Where’s My Parcel? (Hip Hip) (our vicar Rebecca Fardell, Sam, Steve, Alasdair and Anne), who were awarded a sweet cone each. Super 8 (Samson, Su, Pat, Justine, Duncan, Karen, Steve and Hannah) had some sweets to share for coming second place just a point behind (42.5). Last year two teams finished joint top so a tie-break was needed. This year two teams finished bottom so a tie-break was needed to determine who would be the ultimate loser! In answer to how tall is The Shard in metres (310m according to Google), Magnificent Seven (Jackie, Stuart, Peter B, Jo, Louise, Kate and Howard) guessed 410m and Octopus (Judith, James, Richard, Maty, Ian C, Pat C, Peter A and Ian F) were further out with a guess of 500m and so were awarded the wooden spoon – not sure who went home with it!
We also had a fun game of Heads and Tails – Stuart secured the victory and took home a tub of Heroes. Thanks to Katie’s mum Diane for donating the sweets and the chocolates we used as prizes!
At least 185 churches and approximately 7,000 other quizzers took part this year contributing to a Tearfund total of almost £37,186 and climbing.
Also many thanks to all those who had baked for Community Café and allowed us to raise extra funds for Tearfund in the evening, Neil for helping Katie set the church up ready the day before, Tim for tech support in advance and Stephen for tech support on the night, Samson for putting out the answer sheets and collecting Heads and Tails monies, to everyone working together at the end to get church back ready for the morning – particularly Rachel H’s great job in the kitchen, and to Stephen and Sarah for hanging around to count monies and lock up!
We’ve once again had our best year yet for raising money!! The current total (including gift aid) stands at £1150, which is just incredible!! There’s still time to donate if you were unable to attend and want to support the cause: https://www.justgiving.com/page/katie-randall-stratton-8 Many thanks to you all for your generosity!! Amazingly we’ve now raised nearly £5,500 for Tearfund since 2019 through the quizzes.
For now please pop Saturday 21st November 2026 in your diaries as a placeholder (the third Saturday of November) and we’ll let you know when we confirm the date!
Katie RS
