History Men beat Snoopy's Friends down at the Red.  With Fifth Finger losing at home, the Historians have sneaked their way up to the very top on points difference.

Ethel Rodin coasted to a comfortable victory against the Albert Park ensemble at the Old Lansdowne Road club.  The undoubted highlight of the evening apparently was Roz and Roddy tangoing in the Pool Room in what they claimed was legitimate research during the picture round.

The unthinkable met the undrinkable down at the Griffin when the shock of the season happened early.  In a nailbiter FCEK bested the Fingers.  We believe it is the Fingers first home defeat for 3 years.

X-Pats went down at home to St Caths who seem to be recovering their normal form at last.

What word links Pitkin and the third molars?

A chairde,

Much binding in the Reeks last night - and not all of it totally suitable for pre-watershed TV viewing - as FCEK returned to a hero's welcome following their epic victory against their auld Saxon foes, Finger V. Fr. Megson is feeling far too emotionally overwrought to pen anything remotely resembling a coherent column.

Y.........................i.........................pp...................................eeeeeee................................

So let's detach ourselves for the moment from the cesspit that is his stream of consciousness and put things into perspective.

Firstly, yes, it was a grand victory and, I think, a deserved one.  We kept thinking it would only be a matter of time before we managed to blow our early lead but the moment never arrived.  Not even when yours truly did his best to self-implode by dismantling Brunton Park in scenic Carlisle brick by brick and setting it down kicking and screaming in Bolton's Lowryesque backstreets of the 1950s.

Over the next few days the website and the tabloids will doubtless be full of inquests and lurid headlines of the KIERAN MUST GO variety.  But, lest we forget, Finger V's defeat is headline news purely and simply because it does not happen very often.  And it does not happen very often because they are a fiendishly good quiz team.  And the cheery spirit which they showed in accepting defeat and quaffing our free beer libations (and a burnt offering of peanuts for Martin) makes them an even better quiz team.  So remember folks, they are good but not invincible.  Believe in yourselves and feel free to add to their grief next time you play them. Let's make it an eleven horse photo finish season.

Incidentally, it was nice to note that FCEK's reward for beating the league leaders was to drop down from second to third position.  As they say in the Northern Reeks, that Ivor is a sleeked one - you couldn't trust him with your granny!

Speaking of league placings, does anybody know why this week's setters, the Opsimaths, are languishing at the foot of the table when they are in possession of so much varied and esoteric knowledge as was in evidence in their paper last night?  I suppose all of them are at an age when, whenever they hear an interesting fact on Radio 4 and decide to jot it down as "a good question", they find that - by the time they have wandered upstairs to retrieve their spectacles from the laundry basket - and then trundled back down to the downstairs loo to liberate the cat - and then find that the pencil sharpener which they seem to remember using as a bookmark that morning when they were forced to abandon reading Schott's very interesting Miscellany because the wife's constant banging on the loo door and frenzied cries of "are you dead in there or what?" became too much of a distraction - well, they find that the interesting fact has already wafted gently through the canyons of their mind and back into the ether whence it came.

They did a good job last night though.  I thought they gave a master class in the art of balancing.  Both teams were given an equal dosage of fairly straightforward questions and more devious posers that never quite stepped outside the boundaries of guessability.  The picture round wasn't my cup of tea really and I found it very difficult but I would happily give it 10 out of 10 for freshness and inventiveness.  Again, purely on a personal level, I would dispense with the "question of the week" category on this occasion and award instead a "round of the week" trophy to their excellent "cinematic colours" theme.

What's that again? you thought that round was crap?  Oh well.  That's quiz-business for you!

The final word on FCEK's epic struggle with Finger V goes to that well known Jesuit and papal pizza adviser, Pere Arsene Wenger, who observed the game on a specially erected giant screen at Old Trafford (well, when over 60,000 people turn up you have to make some attempt to entertain them!).  Pere Wenger was heard to comment:

"C'est magnifique mais c'est n'est pas la buerre".

Actually, he made this comment some years ago during a heated TV debate on the merits of STORK margarine with the late and not terribly lamented Leslie Crowther.  But what's the point of being Fr. Megson if you can't use a bit of poetic licence now and again.