REGULARS turning up for their weekly pub quiz were amazed to find they were competing against a team led by Sir Alex Ferguson.
The former football manager's seven-man team included his wife Cathy, millionaire businessman Willie Haughey and a few relatives.
Opposing teams at the quiz on Thursday night at the Burnside Hotel near Glasgow thought they were facing a heavy defeat due to the former Manchester United supremo's reputation for being a quiz fanatic.
However, Sir Alex's team ended up coming third. He went on to jokingly brand the winning side "a bunch of cheats" before warmly congratulating them and spending time posing for photographs with regulars and other team members.
One member of the winning team said: "I've been going every Thursday night for about the last 14 years. But I couldn't believe it when I saw that Sir Alex had entered a team.
"His wife Cathy was also in it and Willie Haughey, who owns the hotel. Not surprisingly Fergie was really competitive and you could tell he was really into it.
"He kept asking for questions to be repeated. But he was also involved in banter with other tables and having a laugh and a joke."
It is understood Sir Alex and his family were staying in the hotel in preparation for the wedding of his great niece yesterday.
Former Scotland manager Craig Brown once advised people never to oppose Sir Alex in a pub quiz, describing him as highly intelligent with an extraordinary memory.
Former Manchester United striker Andy Cole also revealed how during his time at the club, Sir Alex ran fiercely contested quizzes that he "fiddled" to ensure he always won.
He said his then manager's quizzes were legendary at Old Trafford and were often incorporated into a European away trip to help pass time.
Cole said: "The thing was, the gaffer usually came up with the questions - or got someone to - and then he had all the answers.
"Then he had this amazing way of managing to get the points from a question when the other team were conferring.
"The manager is used to winning - and it was not any different with a quiz. He was the final arbiter and when we lost, we always came out gutted because we knew the manager would have fiddled things in some way to make sure he won."
The Burnside Hotel declined to comment.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article