Having successfully dodged the Parent Staff Association 1980s-themed disco, there was no way I was going to escape the quiz. The tickets were bought, the requirement that I attend was communicated, and quicker than you can say “stop being a misanthropic git” I was there, perched at a primary school dining-hall table on a stool the size of a side plate.

A PSA quiz, it turns out is just like a pub quiz, but with more booze and brutal competitiveness.

I have never been a big quiz man. I find the experience draining. You know what happens. There is a question about, let us say, music. And one person says that the answer, to take an example at random, is Arctic Monkeys. The rest of his team disagree and put something else. Then it turns out that the answer is indeed Arctic Monkeys. He has a right to be a tiny bit miffed, but he doesn't need to go on and on about it all evening. That is very boring.

I admit that I am not the sort you want on your quiz team. Like most journalists, I know a tiny bit about quite a lot of things. That's not what the quizerati are looking for: they want at least one person on the team who knows an awful lot about everything, and then specialists who can be guaranteed to answer anything about sport, or science or Arctic Monkeys (but let's not go on about that).

Only once have I applied to be on a quiz team, and that was just to be annoying. Every year The Times enters a media quiz competition. The big brains on the paper get roped in, but the whole thing is a bit of a scam because all the teams bring in ringers who are semi-professional quiz experts (whoops! did I let the cat out of the bag?). This year a key member of the team dropped out at the last minute. I offered my services to the captain, catching him off guard. “Oh, er, that's very kind but I think we'll be OK, y'know ...”

I was intrigued to witness a quiz at our school because I had heard that last year's event had been highly controversial, with recounts and claims of missing votes that made the current uproar in Zimbabwe look like a model of careful tallying. This year security was tight. I was in the process of replying to a friend who had texted to offer his googling skills to ensure that a mutual friend on another team was defeated (I was going to respond negatively, of course) when I was spotted by the quiz mistress and told to switch off my phone.

I came roaring out of the starting blocks and mopped up in the first round: first lines from literature. This is because I am a journalist, and all journalists start out adapting famous first lines into their own writing in what they imagine is a very clever and original way. So while my team mates heard “It is a truth universally acknowledged ...” and said “Ooh, is that Jane Austen?” I knew full well it was Pride and Prejudice. I created numerous versions of that line to kick off my own articles until an editor took me aside one day and told me to stop trotting out such hackneyed rubbish.

After that round my contributions were limited until we got to identifying clips of music. We had a music specialist so pretty much left it up to him. My only contribution (but let's not go on about that) was to suggest that one little blast was by Arctic Monkeys. The specialist shook his head.

What is more pathetic? That as a table we failed to identify one of Britain's leading bands? Or that I am seen as such a square that it was impossible for my team-mates to believe I was right?

“THAT'S WHAT I SAID! THAT'S WHAT I SAID,” I yelled when the answer was read out. And then I hardly mentioned it at all for the rest of the evening, except when anyone disputed my answers or when we got any other questions wrong or when there was a gap in the conversation of more than half a second that it would have been embarrassing not to fill.

I wouldn't normally do this, but it is worth noting what a difference that Arctic Monkeys question would have made. If they had just listened to me, we would have got that extra point and transformed the result and the whole evening. With that extra point we would have moved from, well, joint eighth to eighth in our own right. But let's not go on about that.
damian.whitworth@thetimes.co.uk

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