It’s been weeks since we last competed, but finally there are enough of us around to form a sensible team and we return to the Prince of Wales. It’s packed, and we are forced to stand next to one of the roaring fires. Heatstroke threatens, but luckily Chris knows how to turn it off.

Evil Patrick is setting the quiz. When this happens, there is a small chance that we’ll do well (we won one of his quizzes, once), but a much larger chance that we’ll do horrifically badly (we dropped from joint first to seventh in the space of one round in another of his quizzes). Luckily, the first round is quite easy. Helped by knowing all eight Tottenham managers from the last twelve years, and also perhaps our team name, we score full marks and we’re in the lead. Round two is a little bit more difficult, but we only drop a couple of points, and not only do we not lose the lead, we actually stretch it a bit.

The cash machine outside the pub is offering every conceivable financial option except for withdrawing money. We’re all down to pennies and we’re very thirsty, so we concentrate hard on the beer round. It’s to no avail. We get that the link is about a Shakespeare play, but we don’t know which one so we can’t answer question 5 – who was the constable? As far as Shakespeare goes, if the answer is not Hamlet, Macbeth or Julius Caesar then I’m not much use. I head outside to try the cashpoint again.

Our habit here has always been to start well and then slide towards humiliation as the evening goes on, but round three sees us continuing to buck the trend as we hold on to the lead. We’re four points in front, and already cracking under the pressure. Round four is much harder, and we begin to struggle. There are two astronomy questions, but it turns out that Tycho Brahe’s nose was not made of any old metal but was gold, and Patrick is not giving points for anything less. Luckily there is a question about the Solar system – what’s its eighth-largest body (excluding the Sun)? I turn out to be the only person in the pub who knows that it’s Ganymede, Jupiter’s largest moon, so I think it’s an excellent question. We still feel sure we’ll have managed to drop into fourth place, but we haven’t – we’ve held on for a win.

Onto the snowball. The cash situation outside means that I had to borrow a pound off Stu to enter, but luckily I pay him back with the quiz winnings before the draw, and so I’ll be under no obligation to share the money I’m planning on getting my hands on. Sadly it’s not my number that comes up but Oli’s. Who was Daphne Du Maurier’s husband? No-one knows it, but Oli’s happy at least that it wasn’t a football question.