Coronavirus: Thousands join Jay Flynn's virtual pub quiz

At least 300,000 people are thought to have taken part in a virtual pub quiz broadcast online by a former landlord.

Jay Flynn, from Darwen, Lancashire, ran the quiz through Facebook and YouTube on Thursday night, hoping to “lift a few local people’s spirits”.

But he admitted things “went a little crazy” with people from as far afield as New Zealand and the US taking part.

“I thought I would get 30-40 people from Darwen playing,” he said.

He said the total number of views so far – either live or on replay – was about 340,000.

Mr Flynn, 37, a car salesman who lives with wife Sarah and son Jack, used to put on quiz nights at the pub he ran.

For the virtual quiz, he set 50 questions with people “playing for fun at home with pen and paper”, and admitted to being “petrified” before his 90-minute live broadcast.

“The big ‘mistake’ I made was making the event public,” he said.

“I wasn’t expecting it. It was just for a few people to keep spirits up locally, but the lockdown changed everything.

“At some point it went viral – on Monday morning, around 500 people were interested on Facebook but by Monday night that had grown to 10,000.

“The live viewing figures peaked at 300,000 and when I got up on Friday morning there were more than 2,000 people watching it back on YouTube."

He said he had received thousands of messages and would try to get through them all over the next 24 hours, as well as post the answers on his Facebook page.

Mr Flynn plans to run the quiz every week on YouTube. “The demand seems to be there – and I have a lot of time on my hands,” he added.

When asked if Thursday's viewing figures could be record-breaking, Mr Flynn said he would need to submit the attempt to Guinness World Records to see if it met the criteria, which could take 12 weeks.

You can still take the quiz on Jay’s YouTube channel.