Quiz Monkey
What do you want to know?
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Quiz Monkey |
| People |
| Occupations |
| John Wilkes Booth (and his brother Edwin) |
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Actors |
| Rajiv Gandhi, Norman Tebbitt (before entering politics); Bruce Dickinson (lead singer of Iron Maiden – active 2007) |
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Airline pilot |
| Thomas Hardy |
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Architect |
| Terry Wogan (before joining RTE as a newsreader) |
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Bank clerk |
| John Major (before entering politics) |
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Banker |
| Edmund Hillary (when he wasn't climbing mountains – and before achieving overnight worldwide fame in 1953) |
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Bee keeper |
| Family business of James Joule (born in Salford on Christmas Eve 1818, died in Sale 1889) – an amateur scientist, after whom the SI unit of energy is named |
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Brewing |
| Dave Allen, Des O'Connor, Ted Rogers, Jimmy Tarbuck |
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Butlins redcoats |
Apprenticeship that Alfie Boe gave up to become a singer (in opera and musical theatre)
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Car mechanic |
| Burt Lancaster (before becoming an actor) |
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Circus acrobat |
| Joseph Grimaldi (1778–1837), Charlie Cairoli (born in Milan, 1910; died in Blackpool, 1980) |
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Clowns |
| Hitler's father (German/Austrian border); Henri Rousseau (French primitive painter) |
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Customs official |
| Doc Holliday (supported the Earp brothers at the OK Corral, 1881) |
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Dentist |
| Graeme Garden, Che Guevara, Harry Hill: all qualified as |
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Doctors |
| Rod Hull, David Jason, Eddie Large, Lech Walesa |
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Electricians |
| Robert Burns' profession (after his farm failed) |
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Excise officer |
| Gregory and Richard Brandon, Jack Ketch, Thomas Cheshire; Thomas, Henry and Albert Pierrepoint
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Executioners |
| US composer Charles Ives (1874–1954) also ran a successful |
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Insurance agency |
| Tom le Fol (to Edward I), Roland the Farter (to Henry II), Jane Foole (to Catherine Parr and Mary I), William Sommers (to Henry VIII), John Pace (to Elizabeth I), Archibald Armstrong (to James I), Jeffrey Hudson (to Queen Henrietta Maria and/or Charles I) |
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Jesters |
| George Formby (Jr.), before concentrating on acting and singing |
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Jockey |
| Paul Robeson: qualified, but couldn't find a position, in |
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Law |
| Mahatma Gandhi: qualified in London, and practised in South Africa, in | ||
| Casanova (at the time of his death); Philip Larkin (at the University of Hull) |
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Librarian |
| Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) was a |
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Maths professor (at Oxford) |
| Samuel Pepys |
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Naval administrator |
| Louisa May Alcott's day job |
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Army nurse |
| The real Cyrano de Bergerac was a |
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Playwright |
| Tom Finney (Preston North End and England); Joe Brown (climber and mountaineer) |
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Plumbers |
| Christopher Dean, Bob Harris, John Arlott, Ray Reardon, Dave Dee |
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Policemen |
| Samuel B. Morse's original profession |
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Portrait painter |
| Gerard Manley Hopkins (after converting to Catholicism aged 24) |
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Priest (Jesuit) |
| Jo Brand, before turning her hand to stand–up comedy, worked for ten years as a |
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Psychiatric nurse |
| Margaret Thatcher, after graduating from Cambridge (and before becoming a barrister) |
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Research chemist |
| Mark Twain (the occupation that gave him his pen name) |
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Riverboat pilot (Mississippi) |
| Kenneth Grahame's day job |
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Secretary of the Bank of England |
| John Prescott (before entering politics) |
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Ship's steward (Cunard) |
| Christopher Marlowe and Daniel Defoe both worked as |
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Spies |
| Paul Gauguin (1871–85 – before taking up painting full–time) |
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Stockbroker |
| Mussolini (before entering politics) |
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Teacher, journalist |
| Alexander Graham Bell |
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Teacher (of blind and deaf children) |
| Sting, Mr. T., Art Garfunkel, Stephen King, Romesh Ranganathan, Philip Serrell (TV antiques expert)
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Teaching |
| At the time of his first single release (That's All Right, July 1954) Elvis Presley was working as a
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Truck driver |
| Al Capone (according to his business card) |
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Used furniture dealer |
| Future national leader: worked as a pastry chef on the Newhaven to Dieppe ferry route in 1913 |
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Ho Chi Minh |
| Popular guidebook author and illustrator: served as Borough Treasurer in Kendal, Westmorland (Cumbria), from 1948
until retirement in 1967 (died in 1991, aged 84)
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A. Wainwright |
© Haydn Thompson 2017–20