For something like the third time in a row, I am at the pub first. I’m not used to this and it freaks me out. Stu rolls up at about ten past nine and the quiz gets under way shortly afterwards. It’s an Evil Patrick quiz tonight, but despite that we start off in fine form, lying a surprise second after round one, though we slip back to fourth in round two.

Oli and I came close to winning the beer round two weeks ago. We come even closer tonight. A question about a Czech author starts us off. There may be Czech authors who are not Milan Kundera but I don’t know who they would be. We anticipate ‘Milan’ being the key to the connection and so it proves. A question about an actress – Sienna Miller. First recipient of some award or other in 1907 – Florence Nightingale. And then a fantastically lucky guess – the name of a flag on a ship is requested, and out of total ignorance we write down ‘Genoa’, which turns out to be the right answer.

So, the tie-break. How many individuals won gold medals for Great Britain at the Olympics? I guess 65, Stu guesses 50, so we average the two and put down 57.5. Only one team put a lower number – they put 57. The actual answer is 27, and we’re denied by half a point.

Our morale is shattered, and we plummet down the order to a disappointing 6th. The snowball prize is 1000 pounds, as it has been for a long time now, and we continue to dream. My number doesn’t come up, and it’s more disappointing than usual – the question is which European language has dialects called Gheg and Tosk? After travelling in the Balkans last year, I know it’s Albanian. The ticket holder doesn’t know it, so we get another question. What happened in the Audubon ballroom in Manhattan, on 21 February 1965? Again the ticket holder doesn’t know. This time Stu’s the only person in the pub who knows that Malcolm X was assassinated there. A third question: who did Antoinette Gardiner meet while working on the set of Lawrence of Arabia? I haven’t known the answer to any snowball questions for months, but for the second time tonight I know one – it was King Hussein of Jordan.

I knew two out of three answers. Therefore, I also know that if my number had actually come up, I’d have picked the third question. We’ve been coming here for five years, and still I hope that one day the snowball prize will be mine, but it’s an increasingly irrational and forlorn hope.