Jeremy Clarke: How to cheat at a pub quiz without even knowing it

One evening last week, I trotted over to the caravan site’s clubhouse to use the wifi and pick up emails. One email was from a friend who reported that someone had described me, after meeting me for the first time, as an ‘intellectual’. Unsure whether to be flattered or appalled by this misjudgment, I ordered a hot panini (cheese and red onion) to save cooking dinner back at the caravan and running the battery down on the smoke detector, which was going off so often when I cooked that I’d begun using it as a timer.

As I rammed the panini into my face, an elderly man, with what was almost certainly a chapel Christian face, came and set up a table, chair and microphone in a central position. Another smaller, facetious-looking fellow came round issuing biros, clipboards and paper. ‘You’ll join us for the quiz,’ he said. My cheeks bulging with panini, I shook my head.