Pub quizzers are a tragic bunch really – everyone who goes to the Prince of Wales has been gripped by the finale of this year’s university challenge and almost every team name tonight somehow relates to it. We are the same. We’re always upset to see Corpus Christi winning, but on the other hand, Manchester being overtaken in the last few minutes is a good result in our book.

Tonight’s quiz is what is known in the parlance as a ‘challenging’ one. We mostly guess the answers, relying on certain inalienable rules of quizzing: the only cricketer who existed before 1920 was WG Grace, and in the 19th century, there were but two politicians, and they were Gladstone and Disraeli.

One question we should obviously get right is about astronomy. Which planet is 30 astronomical units away from the Sun? An astronomical unit is only 150 million kilometres, and I look at things billions of times further away. I think it’s Neptune but Oli thinks it’s Uranus. I try to work it out by independently rediscovering Bode’s Law on the back of the answer sheet, and eventually decide it’s Uranus. I confused these two once before, and I’ve confused them again. We finish in the mid-table.