The Barking Dog quiz cheating: BBC visits pub

Every week, locals flocked to The Barking Dog to gather around their tables and take part in a pub quiz, but something was off.

The same team went on to win the £30 pub jackpot prize, leaving regulars scratching their heads and some stopping coming in protest.

Then a twist. Patrons of the pub in Urmston, Greater Manchester, said they received an anonymous tip and caught up with the team.“cheating red-handed” Players were seen whispering to their smartwatches to get answers.

They revealed the interesting developments in an Instagram post last week, which quickly went viral, attracting the attention of people around the world.

On a damp and dark Wednesday night at the Barking Dog this week, BBC News turned up to witness the first edition of the quiz since the scandal emerged.

And the regulars made a packed return with 17 teams taking part, but the almost Traitor-like tale of alleged cheating looms large.

The suspected team, whose names administrators refused to name, have been banned from taking the test – although they can still attend the pub – but some regulars say the outrage has left them too “scared” to wear their smartwatches.

One of the teams, consisting of Grace, Beth, Olivia, Ellie and Jack, has been taking the exam for nearly three years.

They say they are glad the cheating team has finally disbanded because other teams have stopped showing up. “It brought people back and it was nice to see familiar faces in the pub again,” says Grace.

Olivia says the final test had an exciting atmosphere, while Beth says the “drama” caused by the alleged cheating saga was “crazy”, with their teammate Ellie’s sister even talking about it in Australia.

They say they’ve known the cheating team was up to no good “for years.”

“It was obvious,” Grace says, adding that on the music tour, the crew had all the answers and knew who was featured on every track played in every genre, from 90s Hip Hop to Rock n Roll.

“At first we thought they were incredibly smart,” he tells us.

But it soon became clear, he says, that “they were not as forward-thinking as we thought.”

Jack is taking extra precautions tonight. “I didn’t wear my smartwatch because I didn’t want my work to be done,” he admits.

Try five questions from Barking Dog’s pub quizzes in recent weeks.

At another table, Nia, who is taking part in the quiz with her friends Callum and Anastasia, says the recent media attention on local pub quizzes has been “crazy”.

He also says he’s been seeing people “on their phones and smartphones” lately, but he doesn’t know for sure if they’re cheating.

Rather than feeling like he had been robbed of his prize money when he learned of the scandal, Callum says he found it “pretty funny”.

Nia adds: “We never do enough to get into the top three that we get angry enough.”

As well as attracting regulars back, these shenanigans also put new sets to the test, such as first-time attendees John and Carole Kelly.

Carole says she and John were desperate “to find out who he was, like everyone else.”

He says they had a great night, but they didn’t even dare to look at the time on their mobile phones.

“I won’t even take my phone out of my bag,” Carole admits.

Rob Hardie, co-director of Barking Dog, says the cheating team often gets “almost 100% correct” answers and no one else has done that, so that’s an indication something is wrong.

He said managers received an anonymous tip from a customer that the same team was continuing to win with near-perfect scores, which led to an investigation.

So how were the scammers finally silenced by bar staff?

Bobby Bruen, assistant principal and exam administrator, says he designed some questions for the musical tour so that there was no chance of anyone answering them all correctly.

He said the team were scolded when Mr Hardie went outside and saw through the window that players were looking up answers on their smartwatches, using the Shazam app to identify songs.

Mr Hardie left the table at which the cheating team sat to his mother Lynda and sister Lydia.

Lydia says the revelation is “funny”, but her mum thinks it’s “a shame people would resort to this in a local pub quiz”.

“It was awful for everyone, all the regulars stopped coming.”

Mr Bruen says he has been interviewed about the “huge whodunit” on radio stations as far away as New Zealand and Canada.

As the night draws to a close at the bar here, the losers of the final quiz, a team called Short, Bark and Sides, receive a pack of Jammie Dodgers cookies.

Winners of the £30 pub prize have a fitting name: Agatha Quiztie.