Stu’s team name is very prescient – I’ve just bought Music Is My Sanctuary by Gary Bartz, and it’s fantastic. But it turns out he hasn’t guessed that I’ve been buying 1970s funk records, he’s just noting the fact that I’m even less punctual than normal this evening. Working at a university was bound to end up with me doing some teaching eventually, and I’ve been roped into doing a lecture course that happens on Tuesday evenings. For the next term I’m going to be exceeding even my own high standards of outrageous lateness.

I’ve missed round one, but luckily round two starts with a science question. What are the five elements with only four letters in their names? This is my chance to redeem myself, but before I can even reach for the pen, Stu’s taken the wind out of my sails and written down iron, gold, neon and zinc. Luckily he pauses, and I manage to think of lead before he does.

The beer round is an embarrassment. We struggle to a lame score, only to find that the answers are all squares in Bloomsbury. We both went to university in Bloomsbury. I work there even now. I’ve been studying or working there for more than a decade. We are ashamed.

Our morale shattered, we plunge down the order, and by round four we’ve completely given up. Who presents the Top 40 on Radio 1? Stu, filled with rage, says ‘Probably Fearne Fucking Cotton or someone’, so I write down exactly that. What was the third biggest port in England in 1900 (this question is ridiculous obscure even by pub quizzing standards)? We guess ‘Fucking Skegness or something’. And what county’s motto is ‘unconquered’? I write down ‘Fucking Kent or something’. And amazingly, two out of these three are right. The port is Fucking Manchester, but we’ve managed to get the highest score of anyone in this round. Sadly this only elevates us as far as Fucking Fourth, yet again.