The situation was tense for a Wednesday evening in the West Country. The weather was Cornish mild, with a tepid storm brewing. The liquid refreshment was Spingo, a drink so feral that three would leave you out for the count in a field somewhere with the wakeup call of a Friesian licking your face to jolt you from your drunken slumber.

It was the ‘Wipe Out’ round. All our good deeds through the previous hour and half could now, with one fell swoop of a Bic biro, be undone. The rule was simple: get one answer wrong, and you lose all the marks in that round. The incorrect call of ‘Peter, Paul and Mary’ relegated us to sixth place out of nine teams as we bemoaned the lack of popular culture questions with an over emphasis on fishing related quandaries. (Tip: If you write ‘Jackie Charlton’ or ‘Bob Nudd’ for every answer, you are guaranteed a point or two).

We struck up a conversation with the quiz mistress afterwards. Strangely, despite being of total clarity during show time, come one to one conversation, she was incomprehensible, although we put that down to the Spingo.

My losing streak continues. I have finished second and all positions between there and second to last on every occasion for the previous decade. The quiz name is often the most difficult part of the exercise, especially if, as a twosome, you have clubbed together with Janice and Peter at table six. It is always awkward as I generally steer clear of couples who sound like a swinging collective and never trust a man who won’t shorten his name to Pete. My suggestion of ‘John Cravens Shaven Raven’ is met with disdain so we settle on ‘The Strangers’ which is one ‘l’ away from sounding murderous.

Pub quizzes have left me enraged, none more so than one undertaken in my former local in Potters Bar. I took umbrage to such an extent that I never drank in there again. Being a bastion of fairness, we entered the quiz and performed admirably, scoring a none too shabby 32/40 to tie second. The winners, a pair of backward looking stone dwellers, scored 40/40. The aAlarm bells were ringing at the start, when I noticed the quizzes were taken off a website. Apparently, it was one a week, consecutively printed out. The issue was that the answers were also freely available and to the victor the spoils, in this case eight free pints of Carling Black Label.

My finest hour came some 15 years ago in Zante, Greece. The best nights are unplanned and, after a long relaxing day on the beach chomping on prawns and sipping cold cocktails, we turned a corner into a beer garden to be met by a couple of hundred northerners, all in family groups. We decided to jump in and have a go at their pub quiz. Now, I don’t want to cast aspersions on northern intellect, but I and the other half beat teams of 20 plus to walk off with the premier prize of a family-sized bottle of ouzo. Arrogant with youth and intellect, the barman in a nearby hostelry pulled out two shot glasses the second we walked in and I partook in a game of drinking one-upmanship. Underestimating the competition was my downfall. He looked like one of those extras from that 1980s show Chopper Squad. Long permed blond hair and a svelte physique left him looking like a surfer who you know had set foot on a surfboard as many times as I have on the moon.

Fast forward two hours and, upon arriving back from the latrines, my wife reported me missing. She found me, half a mile away, face down in one of those roadside ditches covered in sick and human waste, with the arrogance having been well and truly ouzo’ed out of me.

People say it’s not the winning that counts but the taking part. I don’t agree. Play to win, no matter what the game. One day you might, just might, have a tale to regale in a local newspaper about your moment of intellectual glory. Just make sure you do it up north and don’t underestimate the alcoholic constitution of a Greek Keanu Reeves lookalike.

- Brett Ellis is a teacher who lives in London Colney