Now that I live right next to the Carlton, for some weeks now sphyg has been trying to persuade me to come and help her form a pub quiz team on Wednesday nights. Last night I finally succumbed to this, and won a free drink because our team came joint first.

I had largely been resisting because I didn't reckon I knew nearly enough about anything pub-quiz relevant; and in fact I contributed a grand total of one correct answer (out of 50 questions) to the team which they wouldn't have got right without me. However, without that one correct answer we'd have come second rather than joint first, so perhaps every little really does help…

(My moment of glory was ‘which country did the Romans call Hibernia?’, which I was able to answer only because of my encyclopedic knowledge of Asterix, in one book of which a minor character tells a joke about ‘a Briton, a Hibernian and a Caledonian’. Which I suppose goes to prove that you can educate yourself from nothing but Asterix and Pratchett if you really try at it :-)