I am late again. By the time I arrive, I’ve missed most of the first round, and the team name has unfortunately been chosen. But I’m just in time for a Formula One question so I should be able to redeem myself. It’s a question about three time world champions, and I inexplicably fail to remember that Niki Lauda was one of them. The next question is about Buzkashi, a national game involving a goat corpse. Which country’s national game is it? I’m sure it’s Afghanistan. The others want to put Mongolia. I’m sure it’s Afghanistan but I’m chastened by my earlier failure and so I keep quiet. It’s Afghanistan.

By the time of the beer round it’s clear we’re not going to be troubling the money, so we concentrate hard in the hope of salvaging something from our evening. It’s an excellent beer round – the quiz master showed his small children some classic album covers and noted down their descriptions of them, and now we have to name the classic album from the descriptions. We get Led Zeppelin IV, Velvet Underground + Nico, Parklife by Blur, Screamadelica by Primal Scream, and Autobahn by Kraftwerk despite me trying to convince the others that it might have been Man-Machine. The description mentions cars, so why would it be anything by Autobahn? Luckily the others don’t listen to me.

We put down the wrong Blondie album for question six and end up with 11/12. But we are mismarked, given 12 and proclaimed the winners by a point. Moral debate ensues. We eventually decide to be honest. Stu goes to fess up, and we find ourselves needing the tiebreak if we want some drinks. But then the other team on 11 makes an appeal, saying their handwriting was misread. They actually got full marks, and the beer money is theirs. We are left merely with a round of applause for our honesty.

Being honest losers is no fun. Our morale is shattered and we finish in the mid-table.