We’ve spent the last few weeks being busy with other things but feeling that having ended 2006 on a high, we’ll be invincible when we return to Highgate.  Ivan’s gone back to France but the rest of us are all here, and when there are four of us we usually find ourselves contending for the cash.  In round one, after a bit of a struggle, we work out that Scaramanga was the only Bond villain to have been played by a relative of Ian Fleming’s, and we find ourselves in second place.  Round two sees us slip into third place; even with two Scots on the team we don’t know enough about snooker to name the four Scottish world champions.  Ally McCoist is not one of them, apparently.

The beer round is not our friend today.  We don’t get the connection between the answers at all, even once we’ve got three of the five answers, and Stu is reduced to hysterical laughter by my suggestion for one of the answers, saying it’s as preposterously wrong as Ally McCoist was.  We buy our own drinks before round three gets underway.

In the third round a question asks in a roundabout sort of way who wrote ”Atrocity Exhibition”.  I insist it’s J.G. Ballard because it sounds like the kind of thing he’d write.  Pete says it was the title of a song by Joy Division, which confuses things, but we put Ballard and it’s right.  I’ve never read any J.G. Ballard.  Despite this, we’re dropping points like Watford in the Premiership, and we’re a seemingly insurmountable 15 points off the lead when the scores are read out.

We fight valiantly in round four.  One of the questions is who was the star of ”When the Whistle Blows”.  “You have to be very precise with the answer”, says the quizmaster.  I think that sounds a bit like pub quizzing code for “I enjoyed writing this question a lot more than you’ll enjoy answering it”, but we work out what he means when we realise it’s Andy Millman from ”Extras”.  But despite this fine effort we’ve only struggled back as far as fourth place.

Snowball?  Evil Patrick’s number is preposterously drawn yet again.  We are incandescent with rage.  The question is about an obscure American actor; what part was he the first to play?  With an demonic laugh Evil Patrick gives the correct answer.  Clearly, the hand that draws the tickets is guided to Patrick’s numbers by forces that no man can comprehend.  We flounce out of the pub and would surely not ever return again, if it were not for the fact that we’re setting the quiz next week.