Prince Philip, in the tunnel, with the white Fiat
Ah, but it’s one of Evil Patrick’s quizzes. We won one of them once, but that was an unusual Patrick quiz because it wasn’t dominated by poetry and classics, and the sort of cerebral, cultural questions that young folk like us struggle with. Tonight’s is, but despite mostly guessing in the first round, we find ourselves second. Pete arrives incredibly late but just in time to tell us that the radio station that stopped transmitting on 30 September 1967 was not Radio Luxembourg but the BBC Home Service. How does someone in his mid-20s know such things?
We had thought that if we did really badly in the first round we might actually improve in subsequent rounds, but having come in second we know it’s all downhill. We’re asked which company, ‘appropriately’, Helen Sharman was working for before she became the UK’s first astronaut. I say Mars, my team-mates say Comet. I’m sure it’s Mars but I decline an invitation to veto comet, saying I’ll be happy just to be insufferable if Mars is the right answer. It is, and Comet is not just wrong but so wrong the quizmaster singles us out for specific ridicule. As people laugh almost hysterically at us, I don’t have a single word to say.
By the fourth round we need to make up six points even to get back into third place. It looks like an impossible task, and it proves to be just that. I try to save the day by claiming that the definition of callipygean is fat-arsed. Unfortunately it actually means ‘nice-arsed’ and Patrick says that anything derogatory about arses doesn’t get any points. We finish fifth again.
A snowball pot of over a grand and a half drives people to madness, and Stu goes over the edge with a five ticket purchase. It doesn’t help him - the first question is answered wrongly but the second question finally sees some money taken out of the pot. The question is which were the two states before Alaska and Hawaii to be admitted to the US, and the man whose ticket was drawn whips out a pen and paper and starts drawing crazy doodles to help him remember them. I’m sure this is outside the rules but he scribbles uninterrupted and eventually goes for Arizona and New Mexico. It’s the right answer and he’s £500 richer. There will still be £1000 or more in the pot next week.
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