Could you make £60k a year from pub quiz machines?

Christian Drummond, a 40-year-old from Brighton, is in the headlines today after claiming to make up to £60,000 a year playing pub quiz machines. His incredible knowledge of trivia means that as he trawls over 10,000 pubs and nightclubs he can make up to £60 an hour.

So can we follow his example?

Good money

Drummond told his story in the Daily Mail today. It's an enviable income. He has made a small fortune from the machines, which put him through an English Literature degree at Sussex University, paid for his wedding, and sent him on holidays. It is currently his full-time job.

Over the months he has developed techniques. He has a favourite game: The Colour of Money, and he goes from pub to pub - moving on after a pay-out. He travels to a new city once a fortnight and plays until he has exhausted all the pubs in that location.

So far he has stayed out of trouble, although he has been escorted from one pub, and had another landlord turn the machines off.

Downside

However, he admits there are downsides. He has to keep on the move, and he plays the games for ten hours a day. After staring at a screen for that long - and using your brain - the whole things starts to feel like work.

He said: "It was very exciting at first, but now it has become work, but not just that it has become drudge work. It is not what I studied for, so now enough is enough and I want to get a normal job."

Can you win?

Of course, for the rest of us, the real stumbling block is that this only worked for Drummond because of his exhaustive capacity to retain trivia. He told the newspaper, for example, that he can name all 500 Dickens characters, the number of sets in every Wimbledon final, and the populations of every African city.

Without this kind of brain, its a recipe to feed a small fortune into quiz machines around the country: to gamble and lose.

Tips

Gambling is never a sure thing - and for most of us it's a sure way to lose. However, for those who are happy losing their money this way, he revealed his top tips for playing the machines to the Mail.

1) If the question has a numerical answer, 80% of the time it's the middle one of the three given. On dates, it's almost always the earliest.
2) If you want to gauge how generous the game is, play one which gives you a numerical target before it pays out. That way you can see fairly quickly how many answers you need to get right in order to be paid.
3) Always play the same game, and get to know the common answers. There are also bizarre questions the machine will use if it is set not to let you win. Once you get asked something truly odd it's time to move on.
4) Don't gamble if you are given the option.
5) Aim for lots of small payouts rather than one big win.

Warnings

For many people, giving these tips a whirl is a harmless bit of fun. However, GamCare says that there are a number of warning signs you need to watch for - which indicate it's time to stop.
1) Spending more time and money on gambling than you can afford
2) Finding it hard to stop
3) Having arguments about gambling - or lying to avoid them
4) Losing interest in other things
5) Gambling until your money is gone - and chasing losses