Neil O’Brien, the legendary quizmaster and educationist who died in Kolkata on Friday at the age of 82, left an irreplaceable legacy for a whole generation of people who took to the mind sport.
Saranya Jayakumar, a Chennai resident who has been called the ‘Mother of Indian quizzing’ by Neil’s son Derek — a popular quizmaster himself — was a regular on the Calcutta quizzing scene by the time Neil laid down its framework. “It was between 1978 and 1985, when I was part of a team called Motley Crew, that I came into contact with people like Neil O’ Brien and Sadhan Banerjee (who did the annual North Star quizzes),” said Ms. Jayakumar, now 76.
“Neil was a legend in the Calcutta quizzing scene. Most of the time, his team DI (Dalhousie Institute Club) was unbeatable. He was also the quizmaster for the annual DI quiz. It was because of him that Calcutta was the quizzing capital of India for a long time, before Bangalore, Chennai and other cities came on the scene.”
But what set Neil apart was his charming demeanour that brought a certain classiness to his quizzes. “As a quizmaster, he was always in control — others would lose their cool and get a bit worked up if the audience was a little unruly. Nothing like that happened when Neil conducted it.”
And he always had the right mix of questions. Given his English Literature degree, there were always questions on the origins of words and phrases. “I used to like them because I too had an English Literature background,” she said. “But Neil had something from everything: religion, mythology, art, the Raj period, the history of Calcutta, and more.”
The secret of a good quiz question, she said, was that it shouldn’t be too trivial. “The sort of questions that Neil asked back then were worth asking. They were never trivial.”
