Ivan’s here this week, for the first time in ages. He has not lost his ability to answer uncannily obscure cricket questions, but neither has he lost his tendency to say the answers to questions just a little bit too loudly. Lionel Richie, Oasis, the Jam and Lisa Stansfield all released songs called what? I say “All Around The World”, quietly. Ivan says “Hello”, much more loudly, attracting the attention of several nearby teams. He then says “Hola! Guten Tag!” even more loudly, in a not altogether successful attempt to divert attention away from us. Stu and Ivan seem very certain about “Hello”, but the answer is All Around The World. They both then accuse me of not even having suggested All Around The World.

The beer round used to be our forte, but we never win it these days. This week’s tie break question asks us how many items does the world’s largest collection of airline sick bags contain. We had this question once before, and I know the answer is somewhere around 5500. We average our guesses as usual, but I tell the others that their guesses have to be close to 5500. We end up just 80 bags out from the correct answer of 5468. I think that actually knowing the size of the world’s largest airline sick bag collection may be even more tragic than owning it.

The final round also contains a question we’ve had before. Hitchcock said that the length of a film should be directly related to the endurance of the human what? I know this because I set the same question a while back. It’s no surprise that the same questions sometimes come up more than once and at least it’s not a question related to Bjørge Lillelien. The Ian Woan Memorial Team are setting the quiz tonight, and they were the first people I remember asking a question about the Norwegian’s legendary 1981 “Can you hear me Margaret Thatcher?” speech. At least three times since then, people have asked us to name all the British figures that Lillelien shouted about, and they always say with amazement “and one team got them all right!”, as the Woans chuckle away in a corner.

Last week Oli ripped some hair out and thumped the table in anguish when he knew the answer to a snowball question but didn’t have the ticket, and this week Ivan does exactly the same. The question is which author, best known for crime fiction, was said to be much more proud of her translations of Dante’s ‘Divine Comedy’. Hair is torn and tables punched. It’s Ivan’s birthday today, and at his great age he would be well advised not to tear too much of his remaining hair out. Luckily the question is incorrectly answered, and Ivan can show off a bit by telling us it’s Dorothy L Sayers.