The Electric Pigs fell to The Bards who managed the evening's top score with 47 points.  Ivor who was spectating tells us...

"A three man Bards secured victory in a relatively high scoring game at the Fletcher Moss.  Jim with 5 twos was in good form but not as good as Steve who had 7 straight twos and then missed out on a perfect eight when he plumped for David Trimble instead of Peter Robinson in the last round round.

Mary was QM for this match.  She was not at all fazed by the numerous Italian names in the Bicycle Thief question and read them straight through in one run like a veteran newsreader."

(Ed: Which reminds me....A few of you have suggested that at the end of this season we should have an award for the habitual QMs such as Mary, Eric and, of course, Jitka.  Think on it.)"

The Men They Couldn't Hang continued their see-saw season by falling victim to The Compulsory Meat Raffle's late resurgence - as Graham reports...

"Maybe there is something going on with the fact that the Hangers have been away from home for a while.  The yo-yo effect continues as the Meat Raffle romped away with the spoils despite the Hangers mustering a first-half lead.  Congrats to Rachael, Adam, Rich and Lizzie for lots of two pointers in their second-half comeback and congrats. too to the History Men for a great paper.  'Twas fate indeed that I should meet Ivor on the way home....'So did you beat the students then..?'"

The Charabancs of Fire just came off second best at the Turnpike against The Prodigals.  Anne-Marie tells it the way it was....

"We all really enjoyed The History Men’s quiz last night – almost as much as we enjoyed the unbelievably cheap prices at The Turnpike (2 pints of larger, 3½  pints of bitter, 1 pint of stout, 1 large vodka and diet coke, 1 whisky, 2 bags of crisps and change from £20 – awesome!).  The quiz itself was full of wit, humour  and intrigue.  It was a really well rounded general knowledge quiz, whether presented as a straight round of 8 questions or in the controversial ,bingo/PYO format. You could really tell a lot of time and effort had gone into writing this quiz.  We had our celebrity player back last night and the Egghead really showed his class, delivering six  2’s and contributing to every bout of conferring.  Shame Real Madrid are playing United next week and Mr Rainford has declared himself unavailable (I can hear the sigh of relief already coming from TMTCH).  Please can we have every game at The Turnpike?"

Queen Victoria's last-born grandchild (her 42nd) was Prince Maurice of Battenberg (son of Princess Beatrice).  What were the somewhat ironic circumstances of his death at the age of 23?

Many of you will of course know Ivor as the founder member of a successful quiz team that regularly features in the top 10 of our local quiz league.  What you may not know, and be surprised to hear, is that Ivor also has a life outside the frenetic world of the History Men.  At least two in fact.  Not only does he share an 'O' level in medicine with Dr Tim (postal correspondence course with the University of Rapid Voids, South Dakota 1979 - 1986) but he is also something big in the world of applied statistics.  In fact he is currently rated the 137th most eminent statistician ever to drink in the Red Lion.

I was reminded of this little known fact when I heard him on the wireless the other morning.  Speaking on TalkQuiz, the only wireless station in the world that talks about quizzing every fcekin minute of every fcekin day, he blurted exclusively:

"Good morning everyone and may I say how thrilled I am to be on Woman's Hour.  I am immensely proud of the dossier I have built up on all the great quizzers that Withquiz has produced over the years.  I particularly enjoyed shadowing Martin from the Griffin (shadowing is a much more friendly word than stalking, don't you think?) in an effort to scientifically determine what makes a great mind tick.

"Martin's ability to score points is quite phenomonommel.  By my reckoning he has now scored maximum points in 2.3674% of all the games he has completed.  That would make it, let's see, 46 times that he has pulled off a perfect 8 in one evening which is quite phenomemmmone... er.....good.  Hang on a minute, that can't be right.  No, sorry I see where I've gone wrong.  You see I use my trusty penknife to put a notch on the bedpost every time Martin gets a perfect 8.  But I also put a  notch on the same bedpost every time one of my patients pulls through.  Silly me, sorry about that.  So, let me just do a bit of mental maths....... right so 46 take away 9.....talk among yourselves for a wee minute....... carry one..... God, it's at times like this that I wish I'd been sent to a Catholic school......hang on, nearly there.  Yep by my reckoning that's as near as damn it 36 times that Martin has scored a perfect 8 - and obviously that is quite a phemmmomamel achievement."

Combining his medical knowledge and his statistical prowess has Ivor been able to come up with a scientific reason why Martin should be so prolific a scorer?

"Well no, I think you would probably need at least an 'A' level in medicine to determine something as complicated as that.  Or maybe to have studied Darwin which of course wasn't on the 'O' level syllabus in either Northern Ireland or South Dakota.  Extrapolating from the figures to hand I would probably say that it may  have something to do with him having a brain which is, in scientific terms, absolutely ginormous - anything  up to 12.4658 times the size of an ordinary brain.  To be honest though I've no idea where he would store such a large brain as his head looks to be much the same size as that of  everybody else who drinks in the Griffin.  Another plausible explanation might be that he's got a very clever imaginary friend who whispers all the answers to him.  Who knows?  All we can say with any certainty is that he is quite phemmmmmommmammmel."

Is there any medical downside to being so phenomenal at answering questions?

"One  downside, of course, is that he may not be with us much longer.  According to an actuary I met in a Free Presbyterian lap dancing club last week the average life expectancy for a clever person is 29 and a bit - compared to the average life expectancy of, say, a Queen Mother which is 100 and a bit (providing, of course, that reasonable care is taken with fishbones).

"You see, knowledge is a bit like a deep-fried Mars bar.  It clogs the synapses as it races up  to the brain - the knowledge, I mean, not the Mars bar.  For most people in Withquiz this isn't a problem as their synapses can go for months without ever having to cope with a shipment of knowledge.  But poor buggers like Martin have to walk home every Wednesday night with their synapses clogged up like the Mersey used to be before they dug the sewers.  It's a shame really.  He's a lovely lad,  but I'd  say that his trophy winning days are numbered."

Ivor is sponsored by Tubigrip, makers of Britain's sexiest tubular bandage.