I arrive very late this evening but I’m just in time to tell the team which African country Ali Bongo is the president of. Sadly I tell them the wrong answer as I unaccountably confuse Gabon with Equatorial Guinea. Luckily I do manage to correctly say that the Netherlands is the country immediately east of London City airport.

The team is me, Stu, Ivan for the first time in ages, and Annoying Dave whose regular team have gone AWOL. Annoying Dave’s snowball ticket is drawn outrageously often, which is why he’s annoying, but strangely, people sitting close to Dave often find their number being drawn as well. We’re hoping for this phenomenon to be observed this evening.

The quiz is a ‘challenging’ one. There is a cricket question, which makes Ivan very happy, but geography and science questions are not figuring much. My favourite question asks who was known for a while in 1992 as Steve Romana. David and I both know that it’s the guy who fraudulently appeared on 15 to 1 twice by going on in a disguise. But what’s his real name? Eventually David says “Trevor”, and I realise his surname was “Montague”. Top teamwork – right answer.

But it’s all downhill after that. We’re nowhere near the money and we end up in eighth, and then Dave’s outrageous snowball luck fails to work for any of us. My only consolation is that a bunch of my friends from UCL came, formed two teams and claimed that both would wipe the floor with my team. Fortunately, they found the quiz even more challenging that we did.