What began as a hobby eventually became a profession but it was not a smooth ride to the top for Derek O'Brien.

"Everyone scares you when you want to do something passionately," says the quizmaster, now the host of the knowledge game show on television, "The Cadbury Bournvita Quiz Contest" and the corporate knowledge quiz, "The Brand Equity Quiz".

"Your biggest well-wishers are the ones that scare you the most. `Do it, but don't tell anyone,' they tell you. `Do it as a hobby,' they tell you. But I said, `This is my job.' Quizzing was a whole new category waiting to be discovered."

That was back in 1992 and O'Brien was reliving the old days, a cup of coffee cooling on the table before him in the conference room of The Residency.

He was in Coimbatore to host `Intellect-06'- a corporate quiz organised by PSG Institute of Management.

"In school, I was not so good in maths and science. I had to do well in all subjects, my mother said. But I was either in the top three or in the last three in my class. In Class VIII I wanted to be in communication, and in college, I did English," he says.

For a year, he was a journalist with Sportsworld, and then he took a job as copywriter in the advertising agency Ogilvy and Mather.

"I was in advertising for nine years. That's a long time. I think something was wrong with my DNA. I did quizzing as a hobby and I loved it," he recalls.

On January 5, 1992, he resigned his post as Creative Head of Ogilvy in Kolkata and began a new career in the dining room of his home. For Christmas, O'Brien designed a card saying that he would "Mind his Ps and Qs", which meant he would be involved in publishing and quizzing.

He knew he could launch a quiz show only once. If he failed the first time, there would be no second time. "I thought, `Let's do something for a good, social cause. Don't make money, but do a credible job and get written about in the media,'" he says. In 1992, he became the Chief Executive Officer of his own company, Derek O'Brien and Associates.

Sunil Dutt, a photographer friend, had been taking photographs of Mother Teresa and the quizmaster wanted to bring out a book of photographs featuring her work with the destitute.

"Everyone knows about my work," was Mother Teresa's first reaction when he told her about the project, but he was still keen to continue.

He was determined to go by the principle, "Do business with the top three people or don't do business at all."

At that time, the `top three' meant ITC, Tata Steel and Shaw Wallace, but none of them wanted to sponsor the project.

On the train back home from a quiz show in Patna, O'Brien met a fellow passenger who was employed at ITC and who lent him a sympathetic ear about the book project.

Just as they were settling down for the night, his co-passenger said he had an idea about who might be interested in the project and O'Brien switched on the light and listened.

"Who is the No. 1 space leader? Neil Armstrong. Who is the No. 1 woman political leader? Margaret Thatcher. And who is the No. 1 spiritual leader? Mother Teresa!" his co-passenger said, and added that Citibank had selected the first two for their programmes and might be interested in financing the book project: Mother Teresa - Down memory lane.

After that came the Bournvita Quiz Contest stage shows for schools and then the programmes on television, followed by the corporate quiz shows. "The easiest thing in the world is to get new business and the most difficult is to sustain existing business. You may have the best education and the best everything, but if you are not at the right place at the right time, you do not get anywhere," he says.

"I found that if we could set up a new category, we could be leaders. The category was knowledge. We don't outsource questions. We make knowledge interesting to let people/ brands grow. Separate the brand from the person otherwise you'll become a megalomaniac about what you do," O'Brien notes.

On doing business, he has a few strong opinions: "You need to find a niche to do business. Learn from mistakes when someone else is paying. Communication makes knowledge interesting. Fifty-one per cent of the emphasis should be on content and 49 per cent on presentation. You have to understand your audience. When looking at life and business, change the parameters."

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