The Bards overcame the Historymen in what Tony describes as a very jolly evening at the Cricket Club.  Ivor reports from the loser's corner:

Our hopes of doing the double over the Bards were soon dashed.  They achieved a handsome margin of victory.  Sometimes a heavy defeat, however, is easier to bear as one does not ruminate over the occasional 'point that got away' since it wouldn't have made any difference to the outcome. We even did badly in the post match fun quiz (from the Orrell league) that Tony brought along (“I printed it off but didn’t look at the questions”).

Albert just squeaked home against the Prodigals.  Mary reports in:

The narrowest of wins for The Albert. Hard but entertaining was the general consensus. A three-handed Prodigals team led throughout and were 4 points ahead going into the final round. The Albert had only scored three 2s all evening but somehow came up with three more in the final round while the Prodigals failed to score at all.

Opsimaths kept their noses in front throughout to win against the Charabancs and avenge the defeat suffered earlier in the season.

Ethel Rodin in their new home surroundings at the Cricket Club found the Electric Pigs too hot to handle .

This week's paper was set by The Compulsory Meat Raffle.  Tougher than last week's paper but with plenty to interest the casual quizzer once the 'one hit wonder' indie bands had been got over (what is an indie band as opposed to, say, Oasis BTW?).

From the Cricket Club Tony was full of praise:

The Students set an extremely enjoyable quiz.  Nobody had any adverse comments to make.  Well done Rebecca and co. for an intelligently thought out paper.

....and his opposite number Ivor was happy enough in defeat:

Both teams enjoyed the CMR questions.  It was good to have a fair sprinkling of science and medical questions.  Who would ever have thought there could be film question pairs on those neuroanatomical structures the corpus callosum and the hippocampus?  The level of difficulty was well judged this time, compared to the rather harder quiz the Meat Raffle set for us earlier in the season.  Tim actually got a pop question right for the first time in ten years of quizzing.

This week Mary and the combined bands of the Pigs and the Albert vote for Round 6 Question 2:

Which novel was banned in the province of Hunan, China in 1931 for its portrayal of anthropomorphised animals acting on the same level of complexity as human beings?

A chairde,

Fr Megson is missing, presumed drunk.

There are many theories currently circulating in Withquiz and The Reeks about his whereabouts but the fact is that nobody knows where the fcek he is. Even the legendary psychic powers of Dusty, his platonic plaything and perhaps the only woman ever to truly understand him after a night in his beloved White Swan, have drawn a blank.

"I nearly had his spirit cornered in the back kitchen last night", she lamented over a diet-conscious early morning bowl of muesli and Bailey's Irish cream.  He seemed  so close I could smell the Old Spice, the turps, the brown sauce and all the wonderful aromas I will forever associate with him.  I was on the fcekin' cusp of an epiphany.  But then Mr Dusty, bad cess to him, set fire to his nostrils when he was tryin' to light his dimp on the primus stove and the fcekin' moment was lost forever."

Another theory advanced by a crack team of National Health funny farm experts is that Fr Megson is still alive but suffering from a depressive illness.  The team, headed by Withquiz's very own Dr Tim and Dr Ivor who between them have over five joyful decades experience of lunacy in the Red Lion taproom and an O level in medicine, believe that our once irrepressible curate may be suffering from an advanced form of CCBA syndrome - that's Chronic Can't Be Arsed syndrome to any of you plebs out there who dropped O level medicine in favour of doing an O level in media studies.

"Once CCBA syndrome sets in it can be a bugger to shift", opined Dr Tim as he fought his way to the bar. I myself suffered from it for over 35 years and it was hell. I lost all interest in pretending to be a doctor and my sleep patterns were disturbed.  Very often I would wake up in the late afternoon and not be able to get back to sleep until Blue Peter came on. If it had not been for the vodka chasers and the Aussie soaps I think I would have gone mad".

Dr Ivor, who likes to wear a white coat and compile interesting statistics when he is not sinking pints of his favourite dizzyade, fears that Fr Megson may come out of this latest crisis in an even more vegetative state than when he went in.  "We have to remain optimistic and hope that he will be one of the lucky ones who are still able to hold their own with a parsnip or other root vegetable in a lively and stimulating debate about the merits of Margaret Thatcher or Strictly Come Dancing.  Sadly however the likelihood is that he will be totally incapable of winning an argument with any life form higher than an Opsimath.  By the way, did I ever tell you about that night back in 1999  when I was the Historymen's Most Valuable Player?  Just lie on that wee sofa over there and I'll see if I can find the video. It's a cracker..........

Fr Megson's last public appearance was at the awards ceremony in November when the Charabancs retained the White Swan trophy awarded to the team that shows the least improvement over a 12 months period.  "He was in a very buoyant mood that evening when I waded over to admire his trophy from across a crowded urinal" recalled Colinski, an unemployed bon viveur from Skelmersdale. "He said he was riding along on the crest of a wave, though, whether he was speaking metaphorically or referring to the underfoot conditions prevailing in the boys' room at that moment, I couldn't say".

We now know that Fr Megson never left the pub that night.  He was seen haggling with Sean the barstewart over the price of renting one of the cheaper cubicles in the Stadium of Murk gents for the night . Shortly afterwards he seems to have locked himself into the cubicle with no overnight provisions other than 5 bottles of sacramental red and his well thumbed hagiography of the life of St Munchin.  St Munchin is of course the patron saint  and first martyr of the Reeks and is vividly portrayed in the Book of Kells as  "a 7th century hermit and visionary who chose to live in close communion with his herd of goats and the Holy Ghost high up on a rugged Reek  until one day he was sorely molested by 1100 Druid temptresses clad only in mistletoe and chose to suffer death by heathen fellatio rather than surrender his virginity."

"Way to go!" may well have been Fr Megson's final words as his fifth and last bottle of sacramental red rendered him oblivious to the arrival of a demolition team from Stockport and to the fury of the wrecking ball that came hurtling towards him...............the rest is silence.......