Craving that big brass mug? Here’s how to become the next Hard Quiz champion

It’s the ultimate Australian dinner party question: What would be your Hard Quiz topic? Everyone has an answer, or at least has given the matter serious thought. I was a contestant on the ABC’s comedy quiz show this week, so I’m here to tell you how to make sure you go home with that big brass mug.

Applying is pretty easy

If you’ve never seen the show before, it works like this: four contestants each nominate an expert subject. They are asked questions on their pet topic, as well as some general knowledge questions, over four rounds. After each round, a contestant is eliminated. Along the way, the show’s creator and host, comedian Tom Gleeson, roasts each contestant thoroughly.

Cassidy Knowlton takes home the big brass mug on ABC’s Hard Quiz.

Sound fun? You can apply online, and there’s a list of previous topics so make sure your choice is unique. Recent examples include Blade Runner, Geoffrey Chaucer, Nicki Minaj, the platypus, Joseph Stalin and colonoscopies.

If the production team likes your idea, they’ll interview you to sound out how well you know your topic and how well you’ll stand up to the pressure of Gleeson’s unrelenting wit.

Choose your topic carefully

To prepare for the show, I watched a lot of Hard Quiz, and there are some patterns. Obviously you need to choose a topic you know a lot about – and preferably one other people know nothing about. Contestants can steal answers, so if your topic is popular, it’s more likely you’ll have points stolen.

Cassidy Knowlton’s specialty topic was the Broadway musical Rent.

During my show, the topics were Beyonce, Sea Change, Australian finches and my topic – the 1996 Broadway musical Rent. In case you weren’t a Broadway-obsessed teenager in the mid-1990s, Rent follows a group of twenty-somethings in New York’s East Village who refuse to pay rent, because getting jobs and exchanging money for housing would be anathematic to their bohemian aesthetic. It was a global phenomenon, running for 12 years on Broadway. Natalie Bassingthwaighte got her start in a Sydney production of Rent in 1998.

Why Rent? It’s a musical I know by heart, as I was a teenager with delusions of bohemia in the mid-90s. It’s also a small, self-contained topic – its writer only wrote two other shows, and he died before Rent premiered.

Do your research

There are contestants who admit to simply reading the Wikipedia page of their topic and winging it, but I trained for my appearance. My partner hosted multiple Hard Quiz parties, where each of the guests selected an expert subject, and he’d run the night as Tom Gleeson. We bought toy buzzers so I could practise being first. I did every Rent quiz on the internet I could find. I watched the 2005 movie (with and without director’s commentary) and the final 2008 Broadway performance on Amazon Prime over and over. I watched reunions and documentaries, and I listened to podcasts and interviews.

And yes, there’s absolutely no money in winning Hard Quiz, just a clunky, pretty useless paperweight. But we’re in it to win it regardless.

Don’t expect any help from Tom Gleeson

If you were hoping for a nerve-calming word from the Gold Logie winner, you won’t get it. He speaks to contestants for the first time when the cameras are rolling. If you want to get a few digs in yourself, have a think about what you might say before you get on the stage, because once the lights come up, it might be hard to come up with quips on the fly.

While we’re on the subject, think about what you’d say if you don’t make it through. Gleeson always asks departing contestants “What happened?” Those who have self-deprecating, funny or quirky answers are always audience favourites.

TV is scary

The show is pretty much filmed as it appears on TV, with a few breaks for camera set-ups and between rounds. Takes are long and if you mess something up, you’ll have to recover and hope the editing gods take pity on you.

Before the show, I asked one of the producers, “Has anyone ever thrown up or passed out from nerves?” She laughed and assured me it had never happened. I pressed her on it. What would happen if it all suddenly became too much? She said if we needed anything, we could raise a hand and take a break. I nearly did it, too, when the adrenaline of being in front of a camera escalated into fight-or-flight panic and my hands and feet went pins and needles, then numb.

My vision started to tunnel and I wondered what would be worse: putting up my hand to stop filming, or face-planting into my podium. But with some calming breaths and subtle stamping to get the blood back in my toes, I managed to stay standing. The crew are both professional and kind, so if you do run into trouble, they’ll have your back. But for all my preparation, it was the stress of live TV that nearly undid me.

Don’t jump the gun

Having your answer stolen is a very real risk, and your instinct will be to pounce on the buzzer the second you think you know where a question is going. It was my instinct, and it cost me. I pounced on a question and ended up answering incorrectly, allowing my points to be stolen. The safer bet is to let Gleeson finish before you show off your smarty-pants knowledge.

You don’t actually take home the big brass mug

The mug on the show is a prop, so you don’t get to take that one home. If you win – like me! – you’ll get one engraved with your name posted to you. But the smug glory of showing off your nerdy knowledge on national TV, well, that’s something you get to take with you everywhere.

As for what I’m planning to do with the mug, I’ll use it as a champagne bucket so everyone at my house can be retold the story of that one time I was on TV.

Cassidy Knowlton is deputy editor of the Saturday Age.

The Opinion newsletter is a weekly wrap of views that will challenge, champion and inform your own. Sign up here.