Our team is split into factions tonight. It’s me and Oli v. Stu, Pete and Ivan – they are setting the quiz, and Oli and I are hoping to put in a decent performance.

It doesn’t look like we will at first. Ivan’s round is pretty tough, and it includes a question about Rome. Who or what are the biancocelesti? We haven’t got a clue and I’m having flashbacks to a time when Ivan set a whole round about Rome in which two teams scored no points at all, and we almost got lynched. The biancocelesti are Lazio football club, as it turns out. We manage to score three points, and decide not to lynch Ivan, for now.

The beer round questions are completely beyond us, but we still end up arguing fiercely about the tie-break. It’s a list of food items, and Pete wants to know how much more the list would cost in Waitrose than in Sainsburys. Oli and I pointlessly manage to come closest to the right answer, but we didn’t get any of the questions right, which is unfortunately a prerequisite. We buy our own drinks.

Stu’s questions make a few references to places he’s just been on holiday. This should give us a slight advantage, and we get a question about Argentina easily enough. But which country did Eliza Lynch become the empress of, in the mid-19th century? Not Argentina again, surely. Brazil had emperors, we think, so we put that. But I’m forgetting, despite hearing from Stu while he was there, that he went to Paraguay on his South American travels.

By end of round 3 we are in fifth, and have a chance of making fourth. But it’s not to be, and we slip disastrously down the field to end in 7th. And so our hopes fall once again on the snowball. We would be outraged if Evil Patrick’s number were to be drawn; we’re even more outraged when it’s Stu’s number. Luckily it’s yet another impossible question, and another ticket is drawn. It’s Evil Patrick’s. Fortunately it’s too tough for him as well. A third hapless punter is called up, and they too fail to answer the question. The money rolls over again. It rolls and rolls and rolls, this snowball pot. It will yet be mine.