Quiz Report

So Nige and I steered the Literary Review team - known as The Outsiders -  to a clear victory at last night's PEN Quiz. Technically we came seventh, but the six teams above us had all engaged in bribery, coercion and unnatural practices. Ed Balls was not the answer to any question and neither, to general disappointment, was Alistair Darling. We weren't asked which three countries in the world didn't contain any of the letters in 'mackerel', which is a pity because, thanks to Ed Caesar, we knew they were Fiji, Djibouti and Togo. We also weren't asked which tube station has either five or eight - my memory plays tricks - consonants in a row, which is also a pity because Nige knew the answer, though he forgot to tell us what it was. The Mail on Sunday won because, I was told, they pay a man to spend the whole year learning everything. So full is his memory that he has forgotten how to speak and delivers his answers through a complex system not unlike Morse Code. Oliver St John Gogarty was the model for James Joyce's Buck Mulligan and Frederick the Great played the flute. The pea was delicious.