fringe preview: Patrick Monahan's pub quiz for kids

ArE you as smart as your kids? That is the question Patrick Monahan would like you to ponder this Fringe. Apt, as this month you'll find the stand-up at the Gilded Balloon, hosting Pub Quiz for Kids, a show for quiz connoisseurs five years old and upwards.By the end of the show, audiences may not learn very much general knowledge but will definitely find out a thing or two about the people sitting near them '“ and maybe about themselves. Be prepared for fierce competition, lots of laughs but very few prizes.Over to Monahan...
Patrick Monahan - Are you as smart as your kidsPatrick Monahan - Are you as smart as your kids
Patrick Monahan - Are you as smart as your kids

“ONLY a fool would think that an adult could out-smart a kid. No matter how much experience an adult has it’s no match against today’s kids who have technology at their fingertips.

I remember when we were kids we would do various tricks with a yoyo, simply making the head spin around while the string would be masterfully controlled around our small grubby fingers. The adult population would struggle to even roll up a yoyo!

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Nowadays kids are developing life-changing multi-million pound apps, while adults are struggling to even find the on/off button on their mobile phones and struggling to remember a password that they created to upgrade their software.

We used to read the Beano and the Dandy and find out about tiny facts scattered in letters pages and semi-educational cartoons, whereas kids today surf through millions of gigabytes of data and thousands of pages on line.

The biggest proof that kids today are much smarter than adults is the simple fact that if you wanted to rob a bank, in the old days you’d contact some old bank robber in retirement on the tax haven coast line.

Today if you wanted to rob a bank you’d contact a spotty teenage kid locked away in their bedroom with a high power computer and hacking equipment, who could empty bank accounts in seconds and could even bring developed countries’ security systems to their knees in minutes.

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A recent example of this is when a 15-year-old boy hacked into blue chip company Talk Talk just for a laugh, exposing 1.2 million of its customers’ privately hidden details.

The Hatton Garden robbers were a dozen retired men who drilled and dug tunnels for a whole bank holiday just to steal a few safes. A kid with a lap top would have stolen the same amount of money in less time than it takes a retired person to boil the kettle, make a cuppa and open a pack of biscuits.

Gone are the days when a generation of young kids where easily stimulated by a yoyo or a game of knock & run.

The kids of today may be more intelligent and cunning than many adults, but I would still rather be a kid from the past playing simple games without having to chase an imaginary computer generated Pokemon in the virtual reality world.

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Give me a game of low brain- powered headers and volleys any day of the week.

I’ve typed this out by hand, a kid today would have dictated it to their computer or phone to type out via Siri or some app they’d just created that morning.

Pub Quiz for Kids with Patrick Monahan, Gilded Balloon, Billiard Room, until 28 August, 2.30pm, £9-£10, 0131-226 0000

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