The team is just Stu and I tonight. The only time I’ve done well in a team of two here at the Prince of Wales was when Oli and I cheated, so I fear a challenging evening. Things start badly in the first round when we are asked whether it’s crickets, grasshoppers or both that have ears in their knees. Neither of us really know, but Stu’s guess turns out to be the wrong one, so of course I slate him for his abysmal knowledge of insect-type things.

Things get better though. From some grotesque examples of fawning journalism about them, we identify Paul Gascoigne and David Beckham, and Stu knows that Tom Fanducci, Fred Dietrich, Frank DiGiorgio and Chico Gonzalez have been among the many partners of ‘Dirty’ Harry Callahan. Then we have a round in which all the answers begin with Z, though it takes us until about half way through to realise this. Even when I know the connection, I still struggle to work out who is the only person to have won olympic golds in the 5,000m, 10,000m and the marathon. Emil Zatopek, I think, and then I wonder “but is it really?”. Of course it bloody is. What other long distance runner ever had a surname starting with Z?

The final question in the Z-round is about Chicago. Who played Roxie Hart in the 2002 film? I don’t know anything about the film, except that Catherine Zeta Jones is in it, so that must surely be the answer. But Stu doesn’t know much about the film, except that Renee Zellweger is in it. It’s a pub quiz nightmare – 50:50 question, only two people on the team. After much argument we decide to go for Zellweger. When the answers are read out, half the teams cheer wildly, while the other half descend into bitterness and recrimination. We are in the first group.

At the end of the quiz, we’re in a disappointing joint seventh. But seeing as teams were tied for first, third and fifth, we prefer to say we’ve got the fourth highest score. With the snowball dangerously large, we’ve got three chances for our numbers to come up. But they don’t come up: Evil Patrick’s does. Luckily, he doesn’t know that the city at the other end of the Appian Way from Rome was Brindisi, and the money rolls over yet again.