A view from London

1) Which British politician (past or present) charges the most for a personalised video message on Cameo (as of 4 December)?

a. Nigel Farage, Reform UK party leader
b. Ann Widdicombe, former MP for Maidstone and The Weald
c. John Bercow, former Speaker of the House of Commonsd. Jeremy Corbyn, MP for Islington North and founder of Your Party

2) English author Charles Dickens is credited with reviving interest in Christmas traditions during the Victorian period, partly due to the publication of “A Christmas Carol” in 1843. In the novella, set in the early 1840s, Scrooge’s clerk Bob Cratchit is paid 15 shillings a week. Assuming this equates to an annual salary of £39 and 6 shillings, how much would this salary in 1842 be worth today after adjusting for inflation

a. £3.87
b. £387
c. £3,879
d. £38,790

3) Which one of the following Christmas puddings came top in Which? magazine’s blind taste test this year?

a. Waitrose
b. Lidl
c. Aldi
d. Tesco

4) Which is the world’s most liveable city in 2025, according to the EIU Global Liveability Index?

a. Melbourne
b. Osaka
c. Vienna
d. Copenhagen

5) Rank the following works in order of length from shortest to longest:

a. The UK tax code
b. The Lord of the Rings
c. The complete works of Shakespeare
d. The King James Bible

6) According to the US-based National Christmas Tree Association, about 350,000 acres or 1,416 square kilometres are devoted to the cultivation of Christmas trees in the US. Should these growers decide to declare independence, which one of the following countries or territories would the new Christmas Tree Republic be most comparable to in land area?

a. Faroe Islands
b. Switzerland
c. Monaco
d. Belgium

7) UK prime minister Keir Starmer was told off by a teacher during a visit to a primary school for doing what?

a. Running in the corridors
b. Jumping the lunch queue
c. Performing the ‘6-7’ meme
d. Speaking while the teacher was talking

8) The UK’s inflation rate has been running at nearly double the Bank of England target rate of 2%. However, which individual food item in the basket of goods and services that makes up the consumer price index saw the highest price increase in the year to October?

a. Beef
b. Chocolate
c. Frozen seafood
d. Olive oil

9) Last month the government announced a new curriculum that will take effect from 2028. Can you solve this (adapted) question from a 2017 GCSE maths paper: Joseph is five years older than Mary. The innkeeper is twice as old as Joseph. The sum of their three ages is 103. Find the ratio of ages between Mary, Joseph and the innkeeper.

a. 22:27:54
b. 22:27:44
c. 24:29:58
d. 24:29:48

10) Which one of these names is not a character created by Charles Dickens?

a. Wackford Squeers
b. Mr M’Choakumchild
c. Charity Pecksniff
d. Hans Gruber

11) According to a poll by YouGov, what percentage of people have Yorkshire puddings with their Christmas lunch or dinner?

a. 23%
b. 49%
c. 67%
d. 84%

12) The following are popular Christmas films with vowels and spaces removed. For example, “The Snowman” becomes THSNWMN. Which films are shown below?

a. THGRNCH
b. THPLRXPRSS
c. DHRD
d. HMLN
e. TSWNDRFLLF
f. LF
g. THHLDY
h. NTVTY

ANSWERS:

1) Which British politician (past or present) charges the most for a personalised video message on Cameo (as of 4 December)?

a. Nigel Farage, Reform party leader
b. Ann Widdicombe, former MP for Maidstone and The Weald
c. John Bercow, former Speaker of the House of Commons
d. Jeremy Corbyn, MP for Islington North and founder of Your Party
Answer: (c) John Bercow. Mr Bercow usually charges £83 for a personalised video message, averaging five minutes in length and usually starting with his famous “or-der” exclamation. Meanwhile, Reform party leader Nigel Farage, with over 1,800 reviews of his Cameo messages, charges a slightly lower rate of £78. Prices for a short message (averaging one-minute) from Ann Widdicombe would incur a cost of £34. While Jeremy Corbyn does not have a known Cameo account, Mr Corbyn did recently star in a local pantomime, Wicked Witches, playing the Wizard of Oz-lington

2) English author Charles Dickens is credited with reviving interest in Christmas traditions during the Victorian period, partly due to the publication of “A Christmas Carol” in 1843. In the novella, set in the early 1840s, Scrooge’s clerk Bob Cratchit is paid 15 shillings a week. Assuming this equates to an annual salary of £39 and 6 shillings, how much would this salary in 1842 be worth today after adjusting for inflation?

a. £3.87
b. £387
c. £3,879
d. £38,790
Answer: (c) £3,879. Although Bob Crachit’s wage was not out of line with average earnings at the time, adjusting 15 shillings a week for inflation captures both how much Mr Cratchit was stretching his living supporting six children but also how much living standards have improved over the intervening years.

3) Which one of the following Christmas puddings came top in Which? magazine’s blind taste test this year?

a. Waitrose
b. Lidl
c. Aldi
d. Tesco
Answer: (b) Lidl. Lidl came top out of ten premium own label Christmas puddings in a blind taste test covering appearance, aroma, texture and flavour. Despite being the joint-cheapest brand tested (£1 per 100g, vs Tesco’s offering at £1.88 per 100g), Lidl’s deluxe 12-month matured Christmas pudding is said to have the “perfect balance of sweetness and spice”. Which? also reported that steaming a Christmas pudding is preferable to using a microwave to prevent it from drying out.

4) Which is the world’s most liveable city in 2025, according to the EIU Global Liveability Index?

a. Melbourne
b. Osaka
c. Vienna
d. Copenhagen
Answer: (d) Copenhagen. The Danish city has unseated Vienna for the top spot of the ranking this year, scoring top marks for stability, education and infrastructure. Vienna and Zurich ranked joint second, while Geneva was the only other European city in the top ten. All UK cities covered in the index (London, Manchester and Edinburgh) fell down the list, while the Australian cities of Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide all featured in the top ten. Damascus was again ranked as the least liveable city.

5) Rank the following works in order of length from shortest to longest:

a. The UK tax code
b. The Lord of the Rings
c. The complete works of Shakespeare
d. The King James Bible
Answer: (b), (d), (c), (a). The correct order is The Lord of the Rings (481,000 words), the King James Bible (821,000 words), the complete works of Shakespeare (950,000 words) and then the UK tax code. The code runs to at least 10m words and is thought to be the longest in the world. It now spans across 23,522 pages and has doubled in length since 2006. Notably, all the above works pale in comparison with Wikipedia, now thought to be over 5bn words in length.

6) According to the US-based National Christmas Tree Association, about 350,000 acres or 1,416 square kilometres are devoted to the cultivation of Christmas trees in the US. Should these growers decide to declare independence, which one of the following countries or territories would the new Christmas Tree Republic be most comparable to in land area?

a. Faroe Islands
b. Switzerland
c. Monaco
d. Belgium
Answer: (a) Faroe Islands. The self-governing Danish territory has a land area of 1,393 square kilometres while the other territories are substantially larger or smaller. The land devoted to the cultivation of Christmas trees in the US is minor compared to that of golf courses (at 2m acres similar in size to Puerto Rico) or the area devoted to pasture and feed crops for livestock (at 781m acres similar in size to India).

7) UK prime minister Keir Starmer was told off by a teacher during a visit to a primary school for doing what?

a. Running in the corridors
b. Jumping the lunch queue
c. Performing the ‘6-7’ meme
d. Speaking while the teacher was talking
Answer: (c) Performing the ‘6-7’ meme. While visiting a primary school last month, Mr Starmer performed the gesture accompanying the ‘6-7’ meme, which incidentally has been named Dictionary.com’s word of the year, after a pupil commented they were on pages 6 and 7 of a reading book. Following the joke, the teacher commented that children are usually told off for replicating the meme, to which Mr Stamer apologised and jokingly said “I didn’t start it, Miss!”.

8) The UK’s inflation rate has been running at nearly double the Bank of England target rate of 2%. However, which food item in the basket of goods and services that makes up the consumer price index saw the highest price increase in the year to October?

a. Beef
b. Chocolate
c. Frozen seafood
d. Olive oil
Answer: (a) Beef. Beef and veal prices rose by 24% in the year to October, the fastest-rising component of the consumer price index, according to the ONS. Sources say increased demand for beef, rising feed costs and declining herd sizes have all contributed to the price rise. Chocolate prices also increased notably this year, by 10%, due to poor weather affecting cocoa harvests in Ghana and Ivory Coast, two of the largest producers. While the price of olive oil was one of the fastest rising components of the index last year, it is now the fastest falling food item in the index, with prices having fallen 11% so far this year due to an increase in supply following improved harvests in Spain.

9) Last month the government announced a new curriculum that will take effect from 2028. Can you solve this (adapted) question from a 2017 GCSE maths paper: Joseph is five years older than Mary. The innkeeper is twice as old as Joseph. The sum of their three ages is 103. Find the ratio of ages between Mary, Joseph and the innkeeper.
a. 22:27:54
b. 22:27:44
c. 24:29:58
d. 24:29:48
Answer: (a) 22:27:54. Assigning Mary’s age as X, the age of Joseph and the innkeeper would therefore be X+5 and 2X+10, respectively. As the three ages sum to 103, solving for X would give Mary an age of 22, Joseph 27, and the innkeeper 54. Alternatively, answer (a) contains the only age combination to sum to 103.

10) Which one of these names is not a character created by Charles Dickens?

a. Wackford Squeers
b. Mr M’Choakumchild
c. Charity Pecksniff
d. Hans Gruber
Answer: (d) Hans Gruber – a baddie played by Alan Rickman from the 1988 film Die Hard, the first in this franchise and set on Christmas Eve. Wackford Squeers is a cruel headmaster of Dotheboys Hall in Dickens’ Nicholas Nickleby, Mr M’Choakumchild is a teacher in Hard Times, and Charity Pecksniff features as the eldest daughter of Seth Pecksniff in Martin Chuzzlewit.

11) According to a poll by YouGov, what percentage of people have Yorkshire puddings with their Christmas lunch or dinner?

a. 23%
b. 49%
c. 67%
d. 84%
Answer: (b) 49%. The country remains divided on the issue of whether Yorkshire puddings are an acceptable accompaniment at Christmas, with a near-equal split. The split can partially be explained by nearly a quarter of people eating beef on Christmas day, for which Yorkshire puddings are a traditional accompaniment. Those under the age of 50 are more likely than not to favour Yorkshire puddings at Christmas. Meanwhile, more than three-quarters of UK Christmas dinners this year will include roast potatoes, carrots and gravy as side-dishes.

12) The following are popular Christmas films with vowels and spaces removed. For example, “The Snowman” becomes THSNWMN. Which films are shown below?

a. THGRNCH
b. THPLRXPRSS
c. DHRD
d. HMLN
e. TSWNDRFLLF
f. LF
g. THHLDY
h. NTVTY
Answers:
a. The Grinch
b. The Polar Express
c. Die Hard
d. Home Alone
e. It’s a Wonderful Life
f. Elf
g. The Holiday
h. Nativity!