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Years in League: 1990-91 to date
Division 1: 1990-1 to 1992-3, 1995-6, 1997-8, 2001-2
Division 2 1993-4 to 1994-5, 1996-7, 1998-9 to 2000-1, 2002-3 to 2010-11, 2012-13, 2014-15
Division 3: 2011-12, 2013-14, 2015-16 to date
Titles: All-London Cup 2005, Supporters Plate (2) 1993-4, 2008-9
Former names: JHC (1990-1 to 2001-2), Jay H Seedy (2002-3 to 2003-4), Accrington Cylindricals (2004-5 to 2008-9)
The Accies were founder members of the South London Quiz League (as QLL was then known) under the name of Jimmy Hill Club.
Besides winning the All-London Cup and the Supporters Plate twice, another dubious claim to fame appeared in an article in the Evening Standard, on their Pub Quiz Challenge page on Thursday 5th March 1998. In an interview with Donald Yule it states he was '… also the repository of the finest piece of pub quiz trivia: "It is believed," he said, "that the record for a quiz team's thirst is held by the JH Club from the Royal Oak in Tabard Street, SEl, who one night consumed 11 gallons of Brakspear's bitter."' Donald was alluding to a heroic session at the Manor Arms when we played his team, and a brewery were doing a special promotion, though none of our seven heavy drinking squad members who were there, can confirm what exactly happened.
Questions over the years have been asked about all our name changes, so here is the story. Our original name came from a mutual friend of Dave Gee and James Collenette (Doc), who in the opinion of Dave looked like the famed football presenter, on the flimsy pretext that he had a big chin and sported a goatee beard, who liked going to singles clubs frequented by women of a certain age, hence Jimmy Hill Club or JHC. They thought JHC would be a good name (they had originally tried out BMC for Beaten Men's Club but thought this was not abstruse enough). With the demise of the Cyberdrinkers, two of their members Matt Bowden and Bryan Lea joined us and so we decided to change our name to reflect their origins. As the Cyberdrinkers shortened name was CD it would be easy enough to add this to JHC to make JHCD. However over a few pints the alternative name Jay H Seedy was thought more appropriate. We felt the call for another name change when we hit rock bottom of the League ending up bottom of the second division. As the team had evolved from one of the four founder members of the Quiz League, we could see parallels in our predicament similar to that of the great Accrington Stanley in football. As a mark of respect, we felt our name should reflect this fact and we should call ourselves Accrington Seedy. But hey that wouldn’t be too perplexing for the average quizzer to work out. So, fuelled by pints of Harvey’s Pale Ale, going back to the original version of Seedy we get CD, which are modern, so we toyed with Accrington LP and Accrington Vinyl until the even earlier forefather of CD was hit upon, the Cylinder and then it was just a touch of cosmetics to come up with the name Accrington Cylindricals. Then having to write it out each week got too much, so we shortened it to the Accies.
Dave Gee (who was our first Captain and Secretary), Roger Jacobson (Jake), Bill Wadley (sadly no longer with us), Colin Donald and John O’Connor were all founder members of the league and hence were playing in the autumn and winter of 1990. Doc, being a "Johnny come lately" commenced his QLL career in January 1991. Mick Bateman (Mecca Mick) started playing in that year if we were short. Ron Kirkman started making the odd appearance for the main quiz in 1993 and continued to 2010, but played in friendlies for a couple more years after that. Sadly, he became housebound and had to hang up his quizzing boots, and died in 2016. John McDonnell joined in the 2007-8 season, after the Bread and Roses team folded. Martin James came on board in December 2010, following the demise of the Belly team, taking Ron's place in the squad. Tony Sherwood joined us in January 2012 and a few months later Matt Bowden moved to the Isle of Wight for family reasons, so had to drop out.
Venues
Rose and Crown, Blackfriars (1990–5)
Market Porter, Borough Market (1995-6)
Wheatsheaf, Borough Market (1996-7)
Royal Oak, Borough (from 1997)
TV Appearances
Mick Bateman: 1994 Sale of the Century
James Collenette: 2011 Mastermind (losing semi finalist)
Dave Gee: 1988 Fifteen to One; 1995 Bullseye (last recording with Jim Bowen)
John McDonnell: 2003 Brain of Britain (made it to the last round)
John O’Connor: 1999 15-1; 2001 Number 1 (came number 2 behind Robert Willer); 2002 People Verses; 2003 No Win No Fee (finalist)
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