How Benji Duke went from playing Black Sabbath for cows to dominating Victoria’s quiz-show scene
Photo courtesy of Benji Duke.
Whistle Buoy Brewery is dimly lit and alive with chatter when my friend and I sit down at the bar. Tables are almost full and the windows are fogged with condensation. A February wind blows the front door open wide as more people arrive and sit with their teammates. We are lucky to scoop up the last two tickets.
In the back corner stands a man in a ball cap and slim fit button-down shirt. His tall frame bends slightly over a sound board and an open laptop that illuminates his face. He is Quiz Master Benji Duke. And over the last 15 years, his pub quizzes have become something of a Victoria staple — even an institution to a select few.
At exactly 7:30 p.m., armed with glasses of hazy beer, an answer sheet, and our own questionable acuity, our team, “Wrong Answers Only,” begins its inaugural Benji’s Pub Quiz.
But the more interesting story is Duke’s own — how a man from York, England became Victoria’s favorite quiz master.
For anyone who’s been at Benji’s Pub Quiz, it’s obvious that he is a performer, and comfortable in front of an audience. But what most don’t know is that Duke’s first audience were cows.
A typical Saturday for young Duke in the early 80s looked a little like this: His mother would drive him through the North Yorkshire countryside to his best friend Paul’s house. A drum set clattered in the back of the family’s blue Renault hatchback, drums he bought for himself for 200 pounds after picking zucchinis for a summer. With Paul’s parents out for errands, the two 15-year-olds would open the double doors of the old farmhouse, set up Duke’s drums and crank up Paul’s Marshall amp as loud as it would go. For hours, the two boys blasted waves of Black Sabbath and acid jazz influenced sounds to the cows and open acres of rolling hills before them. Life was simple.
That is, until Paul moved to Canada, and Duke remained in the UK to study finance at university. Duke worked diligently in the investment industry for seven years. Maybe at the expense of his “inner creative.”
“I stopped playing drums for a few years.… I wasn’t really doing too much creative stuff.” And after seven years in finance, an age-old question began to fester: “Is this it?”
However, Duke hadn’t lost touch with his childhood friend Paul, who by then had settled in Victoria, and had already immersed himself in the local music scene. When Duke came to visit Paul in Victoria during holidays, he was struck with how, as he put it, “laid back” the city — and Paul’s new music community — felt. Eventually, the temptation for change was too great to resist.
“I’ve always been a little bit reckless, so it wasn’t that hard of a decision for me just to pack my career and move over here,” Duke said.
What started as something interim — hanging on the balance of a one-year work visa — eventually turned into full Canadian citizenship.
“It took a long time to go through the whole process…. I basically put all my effort into establishing community and supporting the arts. That was pretty much my strategy to fit in.”
Enter Duke’s first Canadian undertaking: The Fort Street Cafe.
At the tail end of his one-year visa, Duke purchased the lunch spot in 2007 with a business partner. Under this new ownership, however, the cafe was never going to settle for just tea and sandwiches. First a stage, then a liquor license and a bar. Soon, the walls of the Fort Street Cafe reverberated nightly with live music. Duke had officially arrived.
The cafe was all-consuming, and Duke loved it. From running the venue and bookings to manning the bar and doing the sound, his new life in Canada was a complete diversion from the career in finance he’d left only months earlier.
“We were young, full of energy. It wasn’t a big money maker, but it was an explosion of creativity,” Duke said of the cafe’s early days.
However, there was still a performer inside Duke who wasn’t satisfied with simply managing behind-the-scenes. He wondered what he could do at the cafe that was “a bit outrageous and unique that I can repeat.”
With that, the first iteration of Duke’s quiz show was born.
“There wasn’t really anything like it” at the time in Victoria, said Duke. The music for the show was written and performed live on stage by himself and Paul. The show took a regular spot on Friday nights, and was zany enough to catch the city’s attention.
“We’d have a few beers, get a little bit wild [Duke mimics smoking a joint], and we just had these mad nights down there. Within six months, we’d have queues down the street every Friday — it was wild.”
But, as is the fate for many small music venues in Victoria, the Fort Street Cafe eventually closed its doors. Duke’s quiz show, however, was just getting started.
He experimented with its format, hosting a monthly quiz show at the Copper Owl with a larger stage set and more audience participation, as well as regular slots at Spinnakers Brew Pub and the Fernwood Inn. Then in 2014, Duke opened Northern Quarter, an 85-seat restaurant on Douglas Street, with local chef Torin Egan. Clear sight lines from every seat to the custom-built stage and a professional-level JBL sound system ready to immerse audiences made the room “perfect for quizzing.”
Duke began incorporating pre-recorded blends of sampled and original music into his show. This freed him up to be more dynamic as a host, instead of relying on playing the music live with others.
He also developed immersive visuals and graphics, which he displayed and managed in real time from a large projector. The quiz was evolving into something uniquely Benji that he could pick up, take anywhere, and deliver as a one-man show.
But once again, Duke was thrown a curveball. COVID-19 hit in 2020, and Northern Quarter closed shortly after. Forced to pivot, Duke wrote and hosted one season of a pandemic-friendly quiz show on CHEK TV called Mind Your Neighbours, where two or more sets of contestants competing against each other were quizzed in their respective backyards.
The show was fun and made sense at the time, but it wasn’t Duke’s own.
Wanting to push his reach further, Duke developed an online quiz show for companies and corporations looking for unique team-building experiences. With a Victoria-based creative tech agency The Number, Duke developed an online platform over the course of two years that supports up to 1 000 people playing together at once. Breakout rooms allow teams to discuss questions among themselves before submitting answers, the results of which are displayed on a rolling leaderboard on a green screen behind Duke.
But Benji’s Pub Quiz in its purest form is still the live, original version. Today, his show is stronger and more established than ever. Along with the virtual version, Duke hosts weekly shows at Whistle Buoy and the Fernwood Inn, and monthly shows at several other venues across the city — all of which typically sell out well in advance.
But why has Victoria been so receptive to his show? Is there a secret to its longevity?
According to Duke, part of that answer lies in the distinction between “quiz” and “trivia.”
Duke argued that his quizzes — which include questions with multiple answers, word play, codes, visual recognition, and, above all, team collaboration — involve much more creative thinking than trivia does.
“The problem with trivia is it’s too specific,” said Duke. “‘Who’s the third queen of Belgium?’ Well, I don’t know, I can’t guess, and I don’t care…. It’s about having a conversation.”
Duke wants for people to think, play, and be competitive during his show without fear of losing or humiliation.
“There’s no stakes,” said Duke, who added that he’s learned how to use his presence, energy, and words to set people at ease. “If you’re getting stuck, I’ll come and play with you directly and help you along,” he added. “Play. Be wrong. Be right. It doesn’t matter.”
Duke also prides himself on the quizzes’ equality, and the fact that no single team shows up each week and regularly wins.
“No one dominates. That’s one of my biggest guiding things,” said Duke. Anyone can win on any night, as long as they’re playing “in the moment” with one another.
Above all, Benji’s Pub Quiz is about eliciting communication — something he takes quite seriously when developing shows. In fact, it’s downright hard work. A new show takes about ten hours to create, including the research, writing, and slide designs. It’s also labor intensive; Duke spends about 12 hours a week writing new material.
To be clear, though, there are free pub trivia nights around the city, unlike Duke’s show, which typically costs $12 per person. However, given the hours and resources he puts into developing the show — and the demand and attention it’s garnered — it’s easy to see why his show is pay-to-play.
Even so, he’s not one to twist someone’s arm. When asked why UVic students should spend money to come to his quiz, when free pub trivia is plentiful elsewhere, his answer is casual and confident: “They want to do something a little bit different. And if they come, they come. If they don’t, they don’t — that’s okay. But I always get everyone once in the end.”
Our first Benji’s Pub Quiz comes to an end just before 10 p.m.
“Wrong Answers Only” gave it their best shot, but a team of six people called “Big Quiz for a Big Buoy” won the night, along with bragging rights and a $60 gift card to Whistle Buoy. Not a bad prize.
But Benji, did you really have to announce our team’s last place score to the whole room?
