Results & Match Reports

N.B. Please note that 'home' for Ethel Rodin from here on is the White Swan

 and not the Red Lion

Ethel Rodin lost at their new (see above) home to the (almost) all conquering History Men - Ivor & co stay on top for another week 

"Albert Park Run Amok - Many Babies Bludgeoned

Babies!  Who'd have them?  Fr. Megson let his FCEC tots out on their own last night and what happens?  They go into a little dream world all of their own and walk straight under a passing juggernaut driven by the Albert Park team.  The poor things were mangled beyond all recognition.  And he had such high hopes for them this season!  How can you sleep at night Dave Rainford?  Just don't show your face in Fr. Megson's confession box again or he will have you on your knees 'til kingdom come, praying I mean."

(for more from Fr M see below)

Quiz Paper Verdict

This week the paper was set by the X-Pats.   X-Pats' quizzes have been renowned for their variability - from the heights of invention (remember the phials of dubious liquid samples) to the depths of exasperation ("How many questions about November 5th can one quiz paper take?") but they seem to have settled down to a less risky, more predictable style.  Average scores were fairly low but reaction from around the matches was pretty favourable.

There were quite a few recommendations for QOTW including Pig Hennessey going for the Scrabble letters (Round 8 Question 5) and Finger Kieran for the Ben Jonson quote (Round 8 Question 8).   Dave Blythe at St Caths thought Wolfie Smith's 'Tooting Popular Front' had to be the answer to Round 8 Question 6.  Rounds 5 & 6 came in for a bit of stick for being a bit on the tough side.  And finally the Dick Turpin reference (see QOTW below) was queried by Ivor Historyman: "Wasn't it Dennis Moore, not Dick Turpin?".

All told another good evening.

The Question of the Week

Of the various nominations this week Round 5 Question 7 wins by a short head:

According to Monty Python, what commodity did Dick Turpin steal from everyone he robbed?

Click here to see the answers to this and the rest of the week's questions and answers.

Fr Megson

Of Cabbages and Queens

A chairde,

You may recall that Fr. Megson's Teaser of the Week last Friday was "Why are the Opsimaths at the bottom of the league?".  A swollen postbag duly ensued, though not as swollen as the one received a few weeks ago pertaining to matters arising from our 6 foot 3 inch Baltic babes debate.

Unfortunately, no correct answers were received, so our star prize of a signed snapshot of Ethel Rodin playing Doctors and Nurses on the beach at New Brighton (c1962) will now be rolled over to our next competition - hard to believe that baby Tolan was still only 38 when that snap was taken all those far-off, sepia-tinted years ago!

The most ludicrously incorrect solution to our teaser came from a regular listener called Colinski, a retired child prodigy from Kiev, who writes unconvincingly:

"As you are no doubt aware, we are a very much better quiz team than most people realise.  If you examine the video footage of all our games you will quickly see that we have hardly missed a spare all season; nor have we failed to answer an opponent's question except for those tricky occasions when it has been passed over to us whilst we have been engaged in solving our crossword puzzle which, I think you will agree, is a perfectly legitimate way to while away yet another boring quiz evening.  I feel that this speaks volumes for the woeful quality of the quiz setters this season.  The amateurish inability of these so called "bright young things" to position the questions allocated to the Opsimaths in any sort of logical mayhem is killing off our chances of winning the League this season just as surely as myxomatosis did in the bad old 1950s."

He continues: 

"Far be it from me to make excuses but you would also have to agree that we have been a martyr to niggling injuries this season.  That most of them were self-inflicted is true but hardly germane to the argument.  Not to mention the blatant bias of the regular QM towards our opposition.  When was the last time we got a spare at home?  I'll tell you bloody when.  The 17th of bloody March 1954 - and only then because it was bloody St. Patrick's night and she was too bloody pissed to tell us apart from the bloody away team!  No, I have a lot of sympathy with that Gerard Houllier bloke when he said that his beloved Liverpool never deserved to lose a single game during his 6 year reign of glory at Anfield.  That they did in fact lose most of them was unfortunate, but what can you do when Lady Luck decides to treat you like un plonker de grand magnitude?"

Not a lot, Colinski and Gerard, not a lot.  Sometimes world events take a dramatic turn that overshadow even the Machiavellian world of the Withington quiz league.  Such an occasion occurred last Friday evening when one of our greatest statesmen, Robert Kilroy-Silk, was brutally ambushed on the steps of the BBC studios on Oxford Road, ironically perhaps, just a stone's throw away from the site of the Peterloo massacre in 1819.

Much to his credit, Fr. Megson was quick to show his revulsion and to condemn the perpetrator.

"It saddens and pains me greatly", he pontificated from his luxuriously padded pulpit at 9o'clock mass on Sunday, "that some mindless thug, who quite possibly hails from some decent middle-class family of this parish and who has had all the benefits of a state education, should so wantonly and so wilfully waste a perfectly good bucket of shite in this manner......"

The more charitable among you will be relieved to hear that Mr Kilroy-Silk is making a manly effort to shake off the odour of sanctity thus showered upon him.

"Only time will tell", he told an appreciative, if somewhat distant audience, "but I feel confident that my hair is big enough to bounce straight back after the 48 dousings of Jeyes Fluid it has had to endure tonight."

One beneficial result of the debacle is that Mr. Kilroy-Silk may now leave UKIP to muddle on without him.

"I have found that a bucketful of ordure in the mush concentrates the mind wonderfully", he crooned.  "Sadly I now feel that UKIP is no longer big enough to harbour a statesman of my undoubted ego.  Consequently, I now intend to launch a new, more egocentric party which, after careful thought, shall be called the KILROY-SILK - THE UNITED KINGDOM'S UNRIVALLED NATIONAL TREASURE party."

Anybody who wishes to support the new party should contact Fr. Megson in Vespers nightclub after confessions on Saturday evening when he hopes to have a small number of introductory badges and tee-shirts to give away.

Wear them with pride.

Fr. M.