How SpeedQuizzing defeated the Google cheats

Brothers Alan and John Leach speak to Andy Martin on how they beat the smartphone hustlers

Brothers and SpeedQuizzing founders Alan and John Leach (SpeedQuizzing)

Long before Google, using just pen and paper, John and Alan Leach were always dedicated fans of the pub quiz. At the Old White Swan in York they used to compete in at least three every week: the Crazy Quiz hosted by Big Ian, Music Monday and General Knowledge on a Wednesday. Eventually Alan started standing in for Big Ian. It was the golden age of pub quizzes. Then the bubble burst. “It all went downhill,” says John, “everyone was cheating!” So they came up with SpeedQuizzing to defeat the cheats.

They both had an edge on Music Monday, being musicians. They played in a band called Shed Seven, part of the Britpop scene of the Nineties in the era of Blur and Oasis. “I’m a dropout and a drummer,” says Alan, sitting at a semi-electronic drum set that can have the volume turned down so as not to annoy the neighbours. “And I had zero qualifications.” On the other hand, he has the rare claim to fame of having done stand-up at the Edinburgh Fringe combined with quizzing.

John worked in a music store after school but then the shop shut down. His mother, who worked in a shoe shop, told him he needed to find a job, but then she found one for him. “The shoe shop want you to make a website for them.” He’d only done one for a music tech company till then, but he gave it a shot, got lots more jobs on the back of it, and set up a digital agency in Leeds at the end of the Nineties. But after a decade in the business he was “getting sick of websites: everyone wanted them cheaper and cheaper”.