Tonight’s quiz has a world cup theme. It’s been heavily promoted and the pub is absolutely rammed, but that’s fair enough because the setters did the same thing four years ago and it was a fantastic quiz. The deal is that all the answers are the name of a country competing in the world cup. [...]

We’ve been on a remarkable run of form at the Prince of Wales this year, taking five wins, seven seconds and a third, as well as winning the beer round three times (and I won the snowball as well). Tonight only Oli and I can make it, though. Can we keep up the run of [...]

Oli and I set the quiz tonight. Among those experiencing our questions is none other than Steve Punt. I’m impressed, but later shocked that quite a few of my friends have not actually heard of him. Can our run of form continue? Oli and I, in league with Chris and Evil Patrick, managed to win [...]

We have won the quiz four times already this year, a run of form that is beyond any rational explanation. Tonight we decide to make things more difficult for ourselves. Only Stu and I can make it, and I am disastrously late due to a clashing engagement. I arrive just as round two is ending. [...]

Pete, Stu and Ivan are setting the quiz tonight. I’m supposed to be in the Netherlands, not at the Prince of Wales, so they gave me a preview of some of their questions. But due to a back injury I have had to stay in the UK, and have made my way slowly and painfully [...]

Our form in 2009 was abysmal. We didn’t win the quiz even once, and most of our outings ended in anger and recrimination. This year, things have definitely changed. We’ve taken three wins already, and one week when Stu turned up to find none of the rest of us around, he joined another team and [...]

Two weeks ago I won the snowball. Since then I have already spent a fair chunk of the money on a spontaneous trip to Iceland, to see the volcano erupting. I’m happy, then, that I arrive at the pub tonight just in time for a question asking how to spell Eyjafjallajökull. We get it right, [...]

I arrive strangely early at the pub this evening. Stu and Oli are already there but still, it’s not even 9pm. Is it because I sense good things in the offing tonight, or is it just an accident? Who knows? Either way, the quiz starts well and we’re in second place after round one. We [...]

This month I am ridiculously busy, preparing a paper on some of the first results from the Herschel Space Observatory. But I escape from the office for a brief couple of hours to make it to the quiz. I am horrendously late even by my own standards, and arrive at the start of round 3. [...]

Tonight only Ivan and I can make it. I’m in training for some endurance mountain bike races, and I’m running late so I decide to cycle up Highgate Hill straight to the pub, instead of up Archway Road to my house and then to the pub. I took on Highgate Hill once before, slightly too [...]

We start this evening on blazing form. Prince of Wales quizzes often have a “nice easy one to start”, but tonight’s is about Icelandic corporate raiders. Despite this, we work out why Baugar named their offshoots Kcaj and Arev. They must be fans of Coronation Street, which I never watch and know nothing about, except [...]

There are only seven teams in the house tonight. It’s the quietest night in years, so we have to fancy our chances of getting into the money. The quiz is pretty easy tonight, by Prince of Wales standards, even including a question asking for the capital of Australia. Such straightforward questions are manna from heaven [...]

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 [...]

I am very late; so late that I’m almost sacked from team. They’re doing OK, but I know that Wilbert Vere were the first two names of Awdry and they don’t, so I am allowed to stay on, until round two anyway. They have everything else covered, and we find ourselves high up the table. [...]

There are 19 teams in the house tonight, the biggest field ever seen. The Prince of Wales is not a big pub and it’s like the Black Hole of Calcutta on evenings like this. The quizmaster faces a daunting task of marking furiously between rounds. He doesn’t do himself any favours by starting the quiz [...]

2009 was a poor year for us at the Prince of Wales. We didn’t win the quiz, nor the beer round, nor (obviously) the snowball. Would 2010 be any better? We start the quiz on blazing form. We know everything in round one, except for one question – what was the first oscar-winning film to [...]

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 [...]

I’m late to the quiz this evening, as so often. Luckily Ivan and Oli arrive in time to cover round one and most of round two, and they get us into a respectable position. The beer round involves paintings. Back in the day we used to win the beer round with impressive regularity, but inexplicably [...]

Perhaps tonight I am not on the best form for quizzing. I went clubbing last night, got home at 9am, then had to give a two hour lecture at 6pm. By the time I arrive at the pub, extremely late, to meet Ivan, I’m so exhausted I can hardly remember my own name, let alone [...]

Throughout most of this year our team has consisted of only two or three of us. Normally if there’s two of us, humiliation results. With three, we almost inevitably finish fourth. If there are four of us, we can compete for the money. But for a while now we’ve been wondering what has happened to [...]

It’s late September, the time of year when I start complaining about my nice relaxing university being full of bloody students. I have to teach some of them, on Tuesday evenings, and for the next three months I’m going to be arriving at the pub even later than usual. By the time I get there [...]

I arrive very late this evening but I’m just in time to tell the team which African country Ali Bongo is the president of. Sadly I tell them the wrong answer as I unaccountably confuse Gabon with Equatorial Guinea. Luckily I do manage to correctly say that the Netherlands is the country immediately east of [...]

Oli and I are the team for most of the first round tonight. We’re doing OK but we have no idea which tube station might have been inspired by the Moscow Metro. Luckily, Stu turns up seconds before the end of the round to tell us it’s Gants Hill. With this inspired bit of obscure [...]

This is the 18th time we’ve set a Prince of Wales quiz, but tonight we’ve made a drastic change to the arrangements. Instead of the usual mix of questions from all of us, It’s just me and Oli setting it, and Stu and Ivan are here to compete. Next time out, they’ll set it, and [...]

The team is Stu, Oli and me. This is the first time in weeks that there have been more than two of us, so we may yet escape ignominy. We start well with a question about a hill in Nepal that was recently renamed after someone. Stu reckons it’s Joanna Lumley, which is an answer [...]

Me and Stu make the trek up to Highgate for the quiz tonight. There are a staggering number of teams in the house tonight, and we do very badly. In the end, we finish about 15th out of 17, just ahead of a team of jokers who weren’t taking it seriously and a team who [...]

I went to pub quiz in Highgate last week that wasn’t the Prince of Wales. One of the other teams at this heretical quiz had an amusing name, which we steal shamelessly. Fortunately they aren’t here and we get away with this blatant thievery. The quiz starts off with a nice easy one. What’s the [...]

Normal order is resumed tonight, as I arrive much later than everyone else. Stu looks a bit under the weather and it turns out he’s joined in the pandemic fun that’s sweeping the world and had swine flu. He reckons the infectious phase is over. The quiz seems pretty tough tonight. Keith and Anne are [...]

Tonight, once more, the responsibility of ensuring that the trivia-obsessed denizens of Highgate have a fun Tuesday evening is ours. The quiz goes OK, perhaps a little bit on the hard side or perhaps the quizzers are saving up their knowledge in case they get called up for the snowball. I certainly am. I’m distraught, [...]

It’s almost dark when I arrive at the pub half way through round one. This disturbs me; I’ve just arrived back in the UK after three weeks in Greenland and Iceland and I’ve got used to 24 hour daylight. There was a question about Greenland in the quiz the week before I left, and we [...]

For something like the third time in a row, I am at the pub first. I’m not used to this and it freaks me out. Stu rolls up at about ten past nine and the quiz gets under way shortly afterwards. It’s an Evil Patrick quiz tonight, but despite that we start off in fine [...]

Oli and I make a last-minute decision to turn up tonight. It’s actually later than last-minute – I get there half way through round one, and Oli makes it just before round two. Probably as a result, we find ourselves mired in the mid-table. The only bright spot is the beer round. Once upon a [...]

We’ve been coming to the Prince of Wales for almost five years now, and in all that time I think I’ve been the first to arrive no more than once. I still owe Oli dinner for losing a misguided bet that I could arrive by 8.30pm if I wanted to. Tonight, the tables are turned, [...]

We like our team name tonight. It’s great. Now that is scientific fact – there’s no real evidence for it – but it is scientific fact. Unfortunately no-one else in the pub tonight is a fan of Brass Eye, it seems, and no-one else finds it particularly amusing. It’s St. Patrick’s day outside the pub, [...]

We’re back in the hotseat for our first quiz of 2009. The number of people who come to the pub each week varies according to factors that no man understands, and this week it’s absolutely rammed. We mark furiously between rounds and somehow manage to avoid over-running as much as we usually do. Here’s our [...]

Pub quizzers are a tragic bunch really – everyone who goes to the Prince of Wales has been gripped by the finale of this year’s university challenge and almost every team name tonight somehow relates to it. We are the same. We’re always upset to see Corpus Christi winning, but on the other hand, Manchester [...]

It’s an evening of near misses tonight. We used to frequently win the beer round, but it’s been years since we last claimed the 15 pounds. Tonight we almost do it, correctly answering five questions, but slipping up on the tiebreak. Demoralised by this, we finish fourth in the quiz, the legendary “just outside the [...]

Tonight’s quiz setters are Keith and Anne, and their quizzes normally include at least one question about motor racing, which I like, and one which is some kind of pun, which I don’t so much because I’m rubbish at getting them. Example: what kind of alcohol can a child buy if ice is added to [...]

Our quiz setters tonight prudishly neuter our team name, After the first round we think they may have just misread our handwriting, so we write very carefully on the round two answer sheet. They still render it as ‘twit’. We suspect they are also prudishly neutering our scores, because once again we find ourselves mired [...]

During 2008 we went to the Prince of Wales 24 times, and took six victories. We finished second twice, didn’t finish third at all but finished fourth four times. Clearly this must mean that every time we’re in third before the last round we crack under the pressure. 2009 starts with an evening of fearsome [...]

It’s been weeks since we last competed, but finally there are enough of us around to form a sensible team and we return to the Prince of Wales. It’s packed, and we are forced to stand next to one of the roaring fires. Heatstroke threatens, but luckily Chris knows how to turn it off. Evil [...]

After a long break we’re back in the hotseat tonight. Each of the groups who set the Prince of Wales quiz regularly bring something unique and recognisable to it, and one of the things we feel that we do well is to give the evening a slight sense of shambolic disorganisation. We excel this evening, [...]

Ivan’s here this week, for the first time in ages. He has not lost his ability to answer uncannily obscure cricket questions, but neither has he lost his tendency to say the answers to questions just a little bit too loudly. Lionel Richie, Oasis, the Jam and Lisa Stansfield all released songs called what? I [...]

I used to arrive at the Prince of Wales half way through the first round, but these days I’m getting less punctual and I usually arrive just after it’s finished. This week I miss a question asking for the second to sixth largest countries in the world, which is a shame, because I know Brazil [...]

I’m early this week – the first round is not even over when I leap off the bus and into the pub at 9.20pm. I’m just in time to tell the team which Ealing comedy which took its name from a Tennyson poem. And I also tell them the answer to a question asking which [...]

Stu’s team name is very prescient – I’ve just bought Music Is My Sanctuary by Gary Bartz, and it’s fantastic. But it turns out he hasn’t guessed that I’ve been buying 1970s funk records, he’s just noting the fact that I’m even less punctual than normal this evening. Working at a university was bound to [...]

The team is just Stu and I tonight. The only time I’ve done well in a team of two here at the Prince of Wales was when Oli and I cheated, so I fear a challenging evening. Things start badly in the first round when we are asked whether it’s crickets, grasshoppers or both that [...]

My friend Quinn is here tonight. I met her in Albania, she’s from Australia, and she makes me realise what a horribly anglocentric thing a pub quiz can be. There are endless questions about cricket, counties and television programmes that no-one from beyond these shores would ever care about. That said, I am pretty shocked [...]

Our team name tonight is Stu’s idea. We like it a lot but feel that Stu should have the honour of writing it out on our team sheet. By the end of the night he’s just writing “Greetings!” and the quiz setters have long since stopped reading it all out anyway. We are six this [...]

After last week’s horrific placing we’re hoping for better this week. Things look good for the first two rounds, but then we collapse spectacularly, scoring just five points in total over rounds two and three. Once again, all our hopes are pinned on the snowball. There is 600 pounds in the pot. The owner of [...]

Tonight the team is me, Oli and my friend Eldrik, who knows lots about tennis and mountain bikes. In all the time I’ve been coming to the Prince of Wales I think there have been two questions about tennis, and none about mountain bikes, but never mind. We start off by correctly guessing that Bernard [...]

I’ve been off travelling around the Balkans for the last few weeks, so I’m hoping for questions like “What is the newest country in the world?”, “What is the second-newest country in the world?”, and “Is Podgorica the most boring capital city in the world?”, the answers to which are of course Kosovo, Montenegro and [...]

Ivan is back in London after a few months away in Scottish parts, and Pete, Oli and Stu are around as well. I am around, but forever delayed, and I turn up half way through round one. My main contribution is to guess that the answer to a question involving divorce is Wallis Simpson, and [...]

It’s a return to the Prince of Wales after a long absence for me, Stu and Oli tonight, and surely the omens are good as it’s just over four years since we first turned up here, and just under four years since we filmed our first round of University Challenge. As always, I turn up [...]

Tonight we return to the hotseat for the second time in 2008. Here’s the questions I set: Round One Between which two islands would you find the Denmark Strait? Between which two seas would you pass through the Kattegat and the Skaggerak? Which European capital cities contain the following metro stations: a) Stortinget, Gronland and [...]

The only thing I recall from tonight’s quiz is a question about Jorge Luis Borges. Dave (formerly known as Annoying Dave, but he hasn’t won the snowball in quite a while and thus can lose the insulting prefix, for now) is setting the quiz tonight, and asked us last week if we happened to know [...]

As predicted, we haven’t turned up for weeks, because two wins in two outings means we’re dead certs for a disaster. And so it proves. A challenging evening ends with us in fifth place. There are only eight teams in the pub. Perhaps the cause of our downfall is that we are doing two pub [...]

This year so far we have roughly alternated between winning, and losing spectacularly. It seems to be an unbreakable law of quizzing that it’s impossible to win two weeks in a row. Tonight, we lack both Ivan and Pete’s dad from the winning team of two weeks ago, so we feel sure it’s going to [...]

Two thirds of the Dream Team is here tonight – Stu says Tuesdays are conspiring against him and is at work, and Ivan is in Scotland, but the rest of us are here to see if we can make it three wins out of five appearances in 2008. I am writing this three months late, [...]

We all know that after a dominant win comes a humiliating defeat. This is why, since our last outing three weeks ago, everyone’s been coming up with bad excuses and avoiding the quiz. Oli and I eventually decide to turn up and take one for the team. Chris is setting the quiz, and he’s a [...]

We’ve assembled a Dream Team this week – Pete’s dad is around for the first time in ages, as is Ivan. We should be in with a good chance of a second victory in four weeks, and if there are any cricket questions we’ll be laughing. Well, I’ll be groaning but Ivan will be laughing. [...]

We’re back in the hotseat. When I say we, at first it looks horribly like it might just be me as my co-setters are nowhere to be seen at 9.05pm. I am frantically trying to think of twenty more questions when Oli turns up. Now we just need ten more, but luckily Pete appears just [...]

Buoyed by last week’s victory, we’re all keen for tonight’s quizzing action. Oli and Stu are fed up with me being late every week, so I tell them I will buy them both dinner if I get there even a second after 8.45pm. I arrive at 8.50, but luckily they are both later and I [...]

Having finished 2007 in ignominy, Oli, Stu and I are looking for a better start to 2008. My punctuality has slightly improved and I’m there by five past nine, but for some reason the quizmasters got the thing under way at bang on 9. I redeem myself by knowing that Amity Bay was the scene [...]

It’s the last quiz of 2008, and only Oli and I have made it up here for Patrick’s Christmas special. If the quiz is anything like the normal Patrick fare of poetry and classics we could be in for a grim evening. Oli says he’ll leave before the beer round if we don’t look like [...]

Oli has managed to get to the pub long before I turn up, which is no surprise but he seems angrier than usual this week. Stu turns up quite some time after even me, and I join Oli in slating his slack attitude to punctuality. Oli names our team in homage to Hugo Chávez moving [...]

Just three days after our last outing, we’re back at the Prince of Wales for a one-off charity quiz. It’s strange being in the PoW on something other than a Tuesday night, and the quiz is also a little bit different to the strictly-followed PoW format of two rounds, then a beer round, then two [...]

To everyone’s astonishment I arrive first this evening. I bag a spot by the fireplace and give evils to two people sat at a nearby table, hoping they’ll be leaving before the quiz. But it turns out they are two friends of Pete’s so all is well. We start reasonably well, especially when the first [...]

It’s us in the hotseat again. Due to a series of miscommunications between us in the previous few days, we turn up to find we’ve got 70 questions between us instead of the required 40, and we have some whittling to do before things get under way. In the best tradition of quiz setting, about [...]

The team tonight is me, Stu and Pete. We agree that it’s been a while and it’s definitely time we won, or at least got some money out of our evening. We start with a good first round, correctly identifying Jools Holland as the author of Barefaced Lies and Boogie-woogie Boasts, and Eric Gill as [...]

The team tonight is me, Pete, Stu and Stu’s new flatmate Ian. In their youth, Stu and Ian appeared on an Irish schools quiz television programme, losing in the first round but apparently in the most exciting round ever seen, in which they clawed back a 17 point deficit to take the lead with seconds [...]

I am an astronomer. Astronomers need to use telescopes. Telescope application deadlines come twice a year, every year, at the same time of year, without fail. Somehow I have never quite got to grips with this system, and this year I decided to go on holiday to far-flung parts of Eastern Europe just before the [...]

I am writing this entry weeks and weeks after the quiz. Can I still maintain the use of the present tense to give readers the sense that all the action is happening right now? Probably not. I can’t remember anything about the quiz – I think I’ve given up remembering stuff about evenings at the [...]

I arrive late again, and Stu has already taken care of a team name, which commemorates the recent thirtieth anniversary of Elvis’s unfortunate demise and gets an impressive reception when it’s read out. There are a ridiculous 19 teams in the house tonight, and during round one we’re standing by the fireplace, which we agree [...]

The team this week consists of me, Stu and Oli, and although I arrive catastrophically late, Stu and Oli have got round one pretty much covered, and all I need to do is help think of a team name. Stu’s suggestions are all quite amusing, but tasteless to the extent that we’d probably have to [...]

The pub is quieter tonight than it has been for ages. While it’s always nice to have a full house for a quiz, it is also nice to only mark 10 team sheets at the end of each round. It’s slightly surprising that there are not so many people in, because the snowball prize is [...]

Evil Patrick is setting the quiz tonight, and the one time we stormed to victory in one of his quizzes has made us all forget the numerous other times we’ve floundered in them. All five of us are going to be here this week, and we think the odds on us making it two victories [...]

After two ethically questionable outings, it’s time for a return to the straight and narrow this week. We stick to the team number limit and sit well away from the question master. In the first round we have to name the two European countries whose anthems have no words. We all know that Spain is [...]

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. [...]

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 [...]

The pub is having one of its Black Hole of Calcutta weeks this week, and there is barely even enough space for me, Pete and Oli to stand by the bar. Marcus accuses me of papering the house but there’s only three people I know here. I think the huge turnout must be because of [...]

Evil Patrick is setting the quiz this week, and last time we were here for one of his we won it, so we feel confident. This feeling soon disappears. We don’t do so badly on the first round – Patrick asks who was associated with Approaching Menace until he died earlier this year, and we [...]

The pub is heaving this week, and I want to call our team “Who the hell over-publicized this place anyway?”, seeing as Marcus, who over-publicized the place with a book about it, is setting the quiz. Stu over-rules me, saying it “won’t do us any favours”, and so we have a dig at the landlord [...]

I am in a blissed-out jetlagged haze this week, having just got back from China, and presumably because I’m still thinking in a time zone seven hours ahead of here, I make a startling break with precedent and arrive before everyone else. The quiz is being set by a first-timer tonight, and it’s certainly challenging. [...]

We are undone this week by a picture round. It’s just a bonus fun thing, really, in addition to the normal four rounds and a beer round. But when we look at it we’re completely stumped. Not a single one of the 15 or so faces on the page look at all familiar. One, Stu [...]

All change at the PoW this week.  The quiz master is sat at the bar, not at the quizmasters table; he wants us to think of team names before we start the quiz; he says teams will be marking each other’s questions instead of him frantically doing it between rounds; and the entire theme of [...]

I am more late than normal tonight, so Stu and Oli have to choose a team name and answer all of round one without me.  To my chagrin, the team name gets loud approval when it is read out – there is almost a round of applause – and we’re in joint second place.  And [...]

After a month off from quizzing we return to the Prince of Wales feeling like we are going to win.  The normal practice is for me to to turn up half an hour later than agreed and the others to curse me, but this time we all turn up at more or less the same [...]

It’s our turn to set it again this week. My friends who had what is known as a ‘challenging’ time last time have given this one a miss, but the pub is no less busy than normal. Most of it goes very smoothly, although my beer round in which teams have to identify what kinds [...]

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 [...]

It’s the last quiz of the year.  Ivan is back from Paris, and has been looking forward to nothing so much as a good quiz.  He says living abroad is making him feel more English than ever, which is strange because he’s half-Spanish and half-Croat.  Judging by the evening, living abroad is actually making him [...]

The pub is absolutely rammed this week. With about 70 people crammed in and the fire roaring it feels like the Black Hole of Calcutta, and I feel sure people will start fainting before too long. It’s probably because of the book, even though it specifically requests that readers do not come to the pub [...]

It’s our turn in the hotseat again. I’ve persuaded some of my friends from college to come along and give it a go, and have promised them that it’s not so much that the questions are hard here as that the regulars are some of the die-hardest pub quizzers there are. I am not sure [...]

After a few weeks away from the quiz, me and Stu and Oli are back and ready to take it by storm. We feel good after round 1, in a comfortable fifth place from which a strike at the lead seems eminently possible. We know which seas you can find Trabzon, Archangelsk, Qingdao and Eilat [...]

I suppose we are doomed from the start tonight.  We name our team because we are under the impression that Barcelona have beaten Chelsea 2-1 in the Champions’ League.  Unfortunately we haven’t realised that the Bastards scored a late equaliser, and we look ridiculous.  Suffice to say we do not trouble the money this evening.

Despite the Telegraph’s publicity, the pub is not too much busier than usual. Maybe it’s because Highgate is more of a muesli-eating Guardian-reading sort of place. Or maybe it’s because the article exhorted readers not to come because the pub is too small even to fit the regulars in. Maybe next week will be busier [...]

Ivan emigrated to France two weeks ago, but to everyone’s surprise he’s back. He’s off again on Thursday though. I am late, and the first round is almost over by the time I get there, but Ivan seems to be on form. I hardly contribute anything to our answers but we’re in a healthy upper [...]

I’m shattered. I’ve spent the last five days in Spain enthusiastically adopting the ridiculous Spanish habit of not eating until 11pm, going out for drinks after that and then thinking about possibly going to club at around 5am, although they won’t get really busy until nearer 6am. But Ivan’s emigrating to France shortly, to spend [...]

Tonight it’s a story of bitterness and recrimination. We have a team of five – as well as the usual Pete, Ivan and me, my friend John is here because we’re going to Santiago de Compostela in the morning, and Pete’s girlfriend is here as well. Presumably she’s the reason Pete arrived only a little [...]

Getting there on time was a disaster last time, so I decide to arrive after the first round had already been completed. Luckily Pete and Ivan were there on time and we’re off to a respectable start. My most useful contribution in round two is knowing what was unusual about the Tyrell P34 formula one [...]

My lesson learned from two weeks ago, I arrive on time. Ivan turns up as the first round is being re-capped. It’s not too bad a start and we think we might do alright this week, but things soon unravel. The luck goes utterly against us, and we’re both on pretty poor form as well. [...]

It’s only me and Ivan around this week.  As we are both habitually late, we miss almost all of the first round and have to answer all the questions as the quizmasters recap them.  Our score is modest.  Subsequent rounds see us scoring well, and if we’d been on time we might have been in [...]

It’s our turn in the hotseat again. The main problem we face is that the Prince of Wales’ always unreliable microphone gives out entirely after the first round, and no amount of pulling the wire around can get it to make noises again. We are forced to shout the questions. Unaccustomed to the exertion, we [...]

Pete has qualified as a doctor.  So now we have two doctors on the team, one medical and one proper doctor.  Does it help us to win?  No it does not.

Ivan has some lame excuse for not turning up this week, something about preparing for a talk which could make or break his PhD. In his place, though, we’ve got Stu, the fifth man on our University Challenge team, who is over from Ireland trying to get jobs as a filthy bloodsucking lawyer. And Pete’s [...]

With a team named in homage to Trinidad and Tobago’s Jason Scotland (he plays for St. Johnstone) and with the world cup just days away, what could go wrong? Every single answer in this week’s quiz is related to a world cup country, but unfortunately I arrive badly late, missing all of the first round, [...]

Pete’s dad is not around this week. Sadly it seems he’s vital to a successful pub quiz as we struggle this time to match our blistering form of a couple of weeks ago. We are fourth more or less throughout, and in the end we miss out on the money by a scant point. It’s [...]

We arrive at the pub at 8.30 and take our places at the quizmaster’s table, for tonight we are setting the questions, and in our hands is the task of making everyone’s Tuesday evening a fun one. “here for the quiz?” asks the barman, thinking he might have to move us on from the table. [...]

It’s me, Ivan, Pete and Pete’s dad tonight. Pete and Ivan are both avoiding doing any work – Pete for his finals, Ivan for his PhD. I don’t have any work to avoid. Pete’s dad has done his work. Round one starts very promisingly. I know that George Bush Intercontinental Airport in in Houston because [...]