Ivan is back from Paris, I am back from the Canary Islands and for possibly the first time ever, all five of us who formed the university challenge team are here. Ivan has brought his girlfriend along, and Pete’s dad is here as well, so in fact we are one over the team size limit. After last week’s dubious ethics I feel we should be getting back on the straight and narrow, but my teammates overrule me. Oli says he felt surprisingly guilt-free after last time, and seems to have discovered an unsporting side to himself that he never knew he had. So we try to look like six people, and worry about what to do if we win any money later.

Among the first round questions is one asking how you would know if a dog has been eating bones. Ivan says he’s an expert on dog shit after nine months in Paris, and correctly says that the shit will be white. But so long away from home shores has wrecked Ivan’s once-encyclopaedic knowledge of cricket and he fails to identify WG Grace as the cricketer who scored 224 not out for England, then left the match before it was over to win a quarter-mile hurdles championship. None the less, we are in a respectable mid-table position after two rounds.

The beer round involves naming films from their working titles.  We get six of them without too much trouble, and after intense debate Pete’s dad and Stu decide that ‘Not tonight Josephine‘ was the working title of ‘Some like it hot‘. We have got all seven and it’s down to the tie-break, a magnificently silly question about the number of Old Etonian bow ties found in Guy Burgess’s Moscow apartment after he died. But for once, the average theory lets us down and we vastly overestimate.

Round three contains a question about a chemical element whose symbol is apparently a joke, which has many crystalline forms, would give you lung cancer if you inhaled it, and explodes on contact with water vapour. I recall a happy moment from my school days when I set fire to quite a large area of desk by dropping water on a lump of sodium, but we do not think that sodium gives you lung cancer. I recall another happy moment from A-level chemistry when I got spectacularly high on ether, but this has no bearing on the question. After much discussion we settle on plutonium - Pete’s dad has a degree in chemistry and reckons the physical properties fit, and I am sure that giving it the symbol Pu is just the kind of thing some deeply tragic chemist would find highly amusing. And we are right - Glenn T. Seaborg is apparently the wacky guy responsible for 67 years of chemical hilarity.

We are apparently in the lead after the third round, and we are now slightly concerned about what to do if we win with seven people on the team. “We just share the winnings outside the pub - easy” says unscrupulous Oli. But luckily, our lead was due to a marking error, and the final round sees our form slump, most notably in a question asking for the South American country which shares its name with an area of London just north of the Westway. South America? Move aside, allow me. But what region of London is named after any of them? We struggle for ages. I can tell them all the countries in South America, easily, but we still don’t have a clue what the region of London is. Frustrated, we hand in the answer sheet with Colombia written in sheepishly light biro. To our outrage, the answer is Venezuela - Little Venice. We were thinking far too literally and we’ve dropped into an ethically-acceptable fourth place.

The snowball prize is building up to epic proportions, and apparently someone that no-one likes has been buying absurd numbers of tickets. Purchases are now to be capped at five. I suggest they should also permanently exclude anyone who has had their number come up more than five times. Everyone but Evil Patrick likes this idea. The snowball rolls over after a difficult question about a Hollywood actor who boxed under the name of Packy East. No-one in the pub knows it was Bob Hope, and the pub will probably be rammed next week because the prize will be more than £500.

We have hit the big time this week. I had expected that the ‘feature’ that last week’s photographer spoke of would be a tiny box on page 80, but actually it was a double page spread, mentioned on the front page, with a startlingly large photo of me used to illustrate it. It’s a lesson learned - never again will I bunk off work the day I set a pub quiz. I find it oddly disturbing being surrounded by pictures of myself on my commute home from work and I hope I won’t unexpectedly appear on the front page of London rags too often.

Only Oli and I can make it this week, and normally if only two of us are there it’s an evening of humiliation and despair. Round one lulls us into a false sense of security, though, as we find within ourselves knowledge such as the word both Sean Connery and Johnny Depp have tattooed on themselves (Forever - Scotland and Wino(na) respectively), and the European capital built on 14 islands connected by 55 bridges. As I reminisce about my travels to Stockholm the scores are read out and we are surprised to find ourselves in fourth place.

But round two brings possibly the most spectacular slump in form we’ve ever experienced. We flounder badly on our way to four correct answers out of a possible 14, and we have plummeted down the order to somewhere distressingly close to last. The beer round brings no relief - I mostly watch moderately pretentious subtitled European arthouse films so the fact that all the answers are roles John Hurt has played escapes me. Despite the fact that we only answer one question out of five, Oli and I actually spend a couple of minutes arguing about what to put for the tiebreaker.

Before round three starts we briefly consider whether to do a runner as we’re sure we’re not going to get back into the respectable scores. But we stick around, and luckily so because this round goes slightly better. One answer troubles us, about a classic whose author refuses to let it be performed in schools and dislikes it being referred to as a classic. I am sure I know it and I am staring into the middle distance pondering intensely when I suddenly realise that I’m actually staring at the answer - David the quizmaster is reading out the questions again and his question sheet has intercepted my line of sight. J.D. Salinger’s Catcher In The Rye is the answer, and seeing as we’re doing so badly we think we should accept this small piece of good fortune and decide to, for the want of a better word, cheat. To our horror, when the scores are read out we’ve actually vaulted into second place.

We spend much of round four discussing the morality and ethics of pub quizzes. I am maddened by the sudden scent of victory and I want to win at all costs. Oli is far more honest and says we will have to throw one answer. But there are some great answers and I don’t want to throw any of them - my favourite question asks for the most famous work by fictional artist Basil Hallward. I like it enormously because I work out that it is the portrait of Dorian Gray about a second and a half before we hand the sheet in, and I would have thought it was a rubbish question if I hadn’t worked it out until after that. Despite my deeply dishonest protestations, Oli insists on replacing one correct answer with a wrong one, and we end up in third place, with five pounds each that we feel is just slightly dirty money.

Evil Patrick, to everyone’s outrage, has his number come up yet again for the snowball. “Woohahaha”, he says as he reveals himself from the shadows and steps up to take the question. The question is about a poet known as the Ettrick Shephard. Despite my anger, I still find it within myself to be amused as Oli virtually collapses to the floor in agonies because he knows the answer. Patrick says he knows the answer too and offers a name. “The answer I’ve been offered is…” says Chris, pausing X-factor style. “…is…”. Oli is consumed by grief. “…not the right answer!”, says Chris and quite a few people start clapping. I may have been one of them, I can’t recall for sure. We leave the pub happy if a little bit ethically confused, and vow not to sit so near to the quizmaster next time.