James Bond 'Geek' Wins Thunderball First Edition

Close finish in Chiswick Book Festival quiz

Marc Jones, a self-confessed spy fiction ‘geek’, has won the first prize in the Chiswick Book Festival quiz, which marked 60 years of James Bond books. The pub quiz fan got all 78 answers right – even correcting the compiler over a couple of questions!

Marc - who read about the quiz and the book festival on ChiswickW4.com - receives the first edition of Thunderball, donated by Fosters’ Bookshop. He is pictured, in true spies tradition, (below) picking up his prize from a dead letter box in Chiswick High Road.

Second prize goes to Alyson Mitchell, who dropped only one and a half marks in the quiz. She wins a stylish Chiswick Book Festival box containing a bar of Divine fairtrade chocolate. The two prize-winners finished well ahead of the next highest entrant, who dropped 15 marks.

Marc, who is 33 and works in music marketing, is living in south Wales but lived in Chiswick for several years until recently.

“I was a big fan of the local pub quizzes, in particular Quiz Master's Voice at The Copper Cow on Sundays” he says. “Andy, the quizmaster, is also a 007 fan and pops in a Bond question every now and then. I have a James Bond trivia board-game at home, but my friends won't play me, as they think I'm too much of a Bond geek.

“The quiz was quite tough in parts, but we had all the time in the world to answer the questions” he says. “I would have been stumped had there been more questions on the content of the non-Fleming novels.”

Marc says he has been a fan of Bond as long as he can remember. “Growing up, I used to watch the movies on TV with my father. I remember being devastated when I wasn't allowed to see Licence To Kill in the cinema, as I was 10 - I think it was 18-rated – it’s my worst childhood memory.”

He says it was great when he discovered – with Moonraker - that the books were often better than the movies. “The first edition of Thunderball is an absolutely fantastic prize” he says. “Thank you to the Festival and to Fosters' Bookshop!”

Stephen Foster, whose bookshop sells a wide range of first editions, including James Bond books, said: “I’m delighted the prize has gone to such a Bond fan.”

The ChiswickW4.com article that alerted Marc to the quiz was ‘First edition of Thunderball to be won as Festival celebrates sixty years of James Bond’

October 25, 2013