I am so good it hurts

The headline is tongue-in-cheek and lashed in irony and peppered with flippancy. And obviously, I will do my best to make sure you really do think that I am so good it gives me agonising pains in my abdomen just from thinking about the bulging fact-sacks crammed in my cranium in the next few paragraphs. Perhaps, I am trying to confuse you.

Anyway, last week I did go through with the onanistic exercise that I promised to do a few months ago.

I played myself on the buzzer against both teams on UC to see just how I would do, minus the factor of studio light pressures and choking-chokingness.

Get this: when I slapped a cushion, i.e. the buzzer, and screamed out the answer before they did (man, I sound silly) that meant I got the starter and therefore the chance to answer the bonuses that followed. When they got a starter before me I obviously didn't try and score with their bonuses. BECAUSE THAT'S NOT HOW THE GAME WORKS. My special game; my futile, pointless exercise. La-dee-dah.

So how did I do? Well, I won *fist pumping and air guitar solos going everywhere*.

I scored 260 to their (Trinity College and SOAS) 155.

I got 14 starters to their 11, and 120 bonus points to their 45.

Of course, what I propose is that you get solo-quizzers play against university teams in some weird version of Blockbusters but with academic questions and the like.

And, of course, this will never ever happen. I slap myself across the face for thinking of it. Even if the spectacle is both amusing and interesting.

Now, why don't you try it? Go on, pretty please. You know, sometimes, you just have to know how comparatively good you are, and have the brutal, beautiful statistics to back you up in your priggish, self-righteous triumph.

The Regrets Burn Like Embers
The Trinity College, Cambridge, team are an impressive quartet, but then they do have three PhD students. And mature students are often the crucial factor in teams winning UC.

Many of my quiz league team-mates were undergraduates when we failed to win the show (and after doing so well) and when we see mature students hog the glory, it pains the heart in a somewhat regretful way.

I was only 20! I scream in the night when the bad dreams have left me sweating and punching the bedstead, with "I coulda been contender" murmurs winding down in volume until my lips were merely mouthing the act of chewing hot pizza. If I had a bedstead that is.

But fair do's. After graduating, we should have waited until our life was drifting aimlessly and decided to do an art history or English PhD (er, yes, I did consider it once ... a few years ago) before applying to the show. Then we would have crushed all that stood before us and I would have spent an inordinate cackling like Mumm-Ra or Skeletor or some other evil cartoon figure I have just dredged up from my infant memory. Wait. Yep, I'd go with a Megatron cackle actually, with a bit of a Galvatron lilt on occasion.

Hey, I jest. I'm a jester. With bells on.

Don't take a word of this seriously. Please. It's all fun (he says before going back to reading the Chambers Sports Factfinder).