SPW beat the mighty Chunky-conquering Bards of Didsbury down at the Griffin - Kieran writes in:

"Very enjoyable evening, attended by all the Charas and QMd excellently and fairly by Roisin - at least up until her beloved Liverpool were finally outclassed by the juggernaut that is Reading.

Very close up to half time but the second half clearly suited us more. We particularly liked the themed police shows round. Answer of the week, and maybe the season, goes to Martin who, getting no help from the rest of us, identified Lewis Bergerac as the MP for Chesterfield. Surprisingly wrongly."

History Men came out just ahead of Albert at the Red

Ethel Rodin lost at home to TMTCH - Hangman Dave comments:

Positive comments from the Albert Club, the Griffin and the Red but down at the Stadium of Murk James and Ethel were none too chuffed about the balance.  James comments:

"Question 1 - Were any limbs broken in the process of staggering to and from tonight's venues? As an A&E doctor, I can testify from our current workload that it seems statistically likely!

Question 2 - Did any other team who went 'second first' in tonight's quiz feel that the balance of questions was just a little awry? We have no problems with losing - TMTCH came out with some cracking answers and totally deserved the win.  However, on the sour grapes front, we couldn't help feeling that the whole affair would have been very much closer if the questions had been the other way around.  When neither team gets points for the first of a pair, but the second of the pair (having been well signposted), turns out to be much easier, it can be a little disheartening. I don't want this to seem over critical of the Charabancs, as the point can be made about most setters.  Maybe I'm being unfair, as this has played to our advantage in the past;  I remember a maps round a few weeks ago, where we had discussed and correctly predicted three of our 'second' questions in advance.

So, Question 3 - How to set quizzes that are reasonably fair to both teams?  I'm quite new to all of this, and might be accused of taking things too seriously, but I don't think I'm in an exclusive club of one.  When I set rounds I do my utmost to balance questions fairly.  Often I get what I think is a superb first question, and then can't find a pair for it.  If so the question gets ditched.  Worse still, a themed round where I have three or four really decent questions, but then scrape around and end up padding the round with 4/5 duds.  So, I try and put my rounds together over a long period and test them out on friends and colleagues.  If I can't get 8 pretty good questions, I keep back my good questions for another day.

Next time we set, I'm sorely tempted to submit bingo rounds, so chance might even things out.  And by the way, there won't be any feckin' questions about the Irish!!"

Ivor on the other hand writes:

"So long since we last had a game it felt like going back to school after the summer holidays.  Paper went down very well here but we know what to expect from the Charas and they didn’t disappoint with their usual (or rather unusual) Irishiana (is that a word?) and monarchiarchal (possibly not a word) curios."

Complete this West Ham chant used between 1999 and 2003 whenever they played Merseyside opposition: "We've got Di Canio but you've got......

You know, Christmas is not just the day before you queue up to buy a cheap sofa.  Nor is it all about watchin' Rambo on the telly with a magnum of Asti Spumante and an industrial sized jar of pickled onions.  No, it is also, by a happy coincidence, the birthday of the Baby Jesus and a time for forgiveness.  I kicked off by forgivin' Father Megson.  He's not a bad oul sod really and would probably be a saint if it wasn't for the cross dressin' and all his other disgustin' vices.  I told him he can bask in the warm glow of me bosom until the feast of the Epiphany and then the gloves will be off again.  Then me and Mr Dusty polished off another bottle of Merrydown, said a joyful decade and finished off with a prayer for the poor benighted Sassenachs and all our other enemies, too numerous to mention.

As you know there isn't a more Christian woman in the league than me but it fair stuck in me craw havin' to say "and God bless and keep safe them hoors in the Griffin".  Did youse hear, by the way, about poor wee Kieran makin' an eejit of himself on the night before Christmas?   His social worker was tellin' me that he stuck a note up the chimney askin' Santa to make City win a trophy this season.  He got a very curt note thrown back down sayin'  "catch yerself on, wee boy, the name's Santa Claus, not the fcekin Holy Ghost.  I'll bring you a tree house instead".

Most years it's just me and Mr Dusty cosying up for Christmas dinner.  Mr Dusty can be an incurable romantic betimes but mostly he can't be arsed.  The team is nearly sensible enough to go out on their own now so we give them some money and pack them off to stand outside the off-licence on Christmas Eve and we hardly ever see them again until the Epiphany.  This means a lot less cookin' for me.  We don't bother with a turkey - they're fierce ugly  beasts and I'd be awful  frightened to have one of them runnin' round the kitchen gobble-gobblin' at me - so we get a nice bit of Colonel Saunders chicken in instead.  As it's the Baby Jesus's birthday we don't just have it with boiled spuds.  We have two other veg as well.  Last year we had sprouts and baked beans which were finger-lickin' good but not to be recommended if you like a quiet Christmas.

This year was a bit more exotic as Mr Dusty invited Big Dave for dinner.  He's been meanin'  to invite Dave around ever since we saw him win Blankety Blank on the telly.  I wanted to put it off for another year but Mr Dusty said that if we put it off any longer he would have all the money spent and then there wouldn't be any fcekin' point invitin' him.  Then he told me to buy him another pint and fcek off to the shops or we'd never be ready for Christmas.