I’m tipping Manchester to win. I know a lot has been written about about Corpus Christi’s captain, Gail Trimble, and she’s certainly very bright, but I think Manchester has a better team overall. Trimble has dragged her team through the previous four rounds – without her, I doubt they’d have made the second round – whereas all four of Manchester’s team members contribute a great deal (also, the Manchester captain is doing a PhD on “the history of the book” – awesome).

Team Durham, two years ago, did rather well (if I say so myself) because we were able to rely on each other, rather than having one person answering all the questions. Kudos to Trimble, though – she’s a general knowledge machine. I’d love to see her on Mastermind. Heck, she could easily have been the sixth Egghead. I really can’t work out what angle this article in the Sun is going for – are they suggesting that she’s out of touch, elitist, or that it’s good that she doesn’t bother with such trivia? Knowing the Sun, I’d say the latter, but the tone of the article suggests the former. Curiouser and curiouser…

I’m annoyed.

Like, seriously pissed off.

Tonight was the semi-finals and final of the Inter-Collegiate Challenge, previous rounds of which I have already blogged about.

The eagle-eyed amongst you will have spotted that I mentioned that we were missing a member of the team in the last round.

This time, there were two of us. The captain had already given his apologies – he is involved with the Taming of the Shrew, so, fair enough, he couldn’t make it. But the fact that two other members of the team – half the team – couldn’t be bothered to walk 5 minutes to DSU really annoys me.

Yes, it may be the last formal of the year. But it is, quite frankly, embarrasing that these people were happy to leave the two of us sitting like lemons in front of an audience, representing Castle. How does it reflect on Castle when half the team doesn’t turn up?

One of the absent people is a member of the college Boat Club – somehow I doubt very much that he would leave one of his rowing fours in the lurch like that.

Hmmph.

Oh – suffice to say we lost. Not by a huge amount, though – I have absolutely no doubt that if we’d had a full complement we would have thrashed Grey.

Now, normally we enter as a big team, but last night a lot of people had either gone home or gone to the Big Band gig at Castle.

Normally, we don’t do particularly well. Not abysmally, but not brilliantly, either. As at most pub quizzes, I think, there is one team that has been doing the quiz for years and always wins. It is their right.

Well, we won. And not by a little bit – we got 45 out of 60, while those in second place could only manage 39.

We rock.

The prize? £7.50 to split three ways. That’ll pay for the quiz for the next five weeks, then…