Ethel Rodin beat The History Men.  As James reports for the winners....

"A close run thing throughout - and tied at the end of round 7.  Eventually however Ethel squeaked home."

....and Ivor for the losers....

"We fell 6 points behind after two rounds but got it all back to 38-38 by the end of round seven.  Sadly a 'Roddy Clarke/Paddy Doyle Booker' blurt got us off to the worst possible start in round eight and 3 twos by Ethel sealed their victory in a high scoring contest."

The Charabancs of Fire lost to The Prodigals.  Damian was there and saw it all.  Readers should be aware that his report was submitted in advance of the shocking revelations concerning Fr Megson's forthcoming Charabanc team selection policy exclusively revealed below....

"In a packed and noisy Turnpike (why, oh why, are book clubs so much noisier than quiz teams?) we Charas achieved our second highest losing score of this season (so far) and yet we were still 13 points adrift of our esteemed opponents by the close of proceedings - and were always playing an increasingly futile game of catch-up.  It was typical of the ever-growing gulf that now seems to separate us from most of our fellow Withquizzers.  No matter how hard we try, we invariably come off second-best.  But we never give up trying (not yet anyway)!"

The Opsimaths beat The Electric Pigs at The Albert Club to strengthen their position at the top of the table.  Setting skipper, Mike O'Brien acted as a very able and amiable QM scrupulously blaming Eveline for any perceived deficiencies in the paper (of which there were very few I might add).  Speaking of Eveline, Mike told us that she had been keen to entitle Round 7 'Yuletime Logs' but as a responsible captain he'd had to veto this request.

As with most of our recent matches the Opsimaths ground out an early lead and just kept on going with Nick and Howell in particularly good form.

The chat afterwards centred on the Syria airstrike vote underway in the Commons (plenty of passion on this issue) and, bizarrely with just as much passion (at least from myself), on the local Didsbury to Fallowfield Wilmslow Road corridor traffic changes which seem to have been aimed at making congestion as unbearable as possible for local drivers and bus operators in favour of the lights-jumping, pavement-hopping, nighttime-unilluminated cyclists.  Poor Councillor Andrew got a bit of a browbeating from me.  Sorry!

The Bards of Didsbury beat The Men They Couldn't Hang.  A snuffly Tony reports....

"I have been below par - an absolute stinker of a cold - and so for the second week running I opted to be QM.

Our evening's quizzing at the Cricket Club was, to use a much overused cliché, convivial.  The Hangmen are always delightful company.  Steve Two scored 5 twos and I am witness to his team's delight and positive pleasure in this achievement.  I was amazed that the Bards had never enjoyed fritters - and were blind to the twinkle in my eye as I posed the questions.  Dave was very much against me pressing the Bards to answer promptly because that only seemed to force them into coming up with the right answer rather than wandering off into false speculation.  Nevertheless we finished in time for Steve to catch his bus - so a good evening all round."

This week the questions were set by Albert.

This week the Opsimaths and Ethel both opted for Round 3 Question 5:

In Alice in Wonderland, which creature is a caricature of the author - the name bearing a similarity to the way in which he introduced himself with a stammer?

"Hello there Father, I've brought you a few grapes that were goin' cheap on  the market.  The brown ones are always a bit cheaper.  Message from the Judge, Father.  He says he's sorry to hear that you  are in traction.  And Mr Dusty sends his fond regards too.  He says he won't bother visitin'  because he's not a big fan of genito-urinary matters.  Between you, me and the wall, Father, I don't think he ever got over that wee mishap we had on the honeymoon.  You're not sayin' much Father.  Is all of you dead now, Father, or is it still just the brain?"

Father Megson was hearing Dusty loud and clear but he kept his eyes closed and wished that he was back in his coma.  Generally speaking, comas got a bad press but in Fr Megson's experienced view, there were worse places you could find yourself.  There was a lot to be said for lying in bed all hours of the day and letting them young nurses (nice country girls with lovely warm hands) minister to your every whim.  If he could get his hands on a bottle of Buckfast and maybe the odd smoke or two he would be in paradise.

Things had not been so good before he went into the coma.  He shuddered at the memory.  Like Maggie Thatcher in that aul football commentary he had taken one hell of a beating.  But unlike Maggie, he had done nothing to deserve it.  It was the injustice of it all that really hurt him.  No, that was wrong - it was trying to have a pee that really hurt him.  But the injustice was almost as bad.  He had done nothing wrong.  He had merely acted in the interests of the quiz team and, like all managers, he had been made the scapegoat.

The quiz team had been in dire need of inspiration and he had taken it upon himself to don a clean cassock and spend the afternoon in the University bar down the road from Ladybarn scouting for youthful talent.  He had needed to stay sober so he  bought himself a single bottle of Buckfast, plonked himself down at a tableful of studious looking young ladies and, pretending to be engrossed in his much thumbed Delta of Venus paperback, had studiously blended in and eavesdropped in equal measure.  Within minutes he knew that he was on the right track; this place was a hot bed of youthful talent.  They were chatting away in an erudite and clued-up fashion about bands with names that even Rachael would have found outrageously avant garde; they were solving quadratic equations faster than Nick that time he tried to move in with Victoria Coren; their mastery of the finer points of jurisprudence would put Tony back in his box; you could write on the back of a matchbox what they did not know about phenomenology or Boolean logic (Fr Megson still had the matchbox to prove it) and their grasp of the Kantian Categorical Imperative would put to shame any posturings that Roddy might have on the subject.  They were, in short, the perfect quiz team.  As long as Fr Megson remembered to rest them whenever Hangman Dave was setting, they would bestride the world of quizzing for the next generation or two.

Sorted.  He would get himself another bottle or two of Buckfast at the bar and make his move.  It was difficult not to allow his mind to fast forward to the glory days ahead and the royalties that would accrue from the endless documentaries the Beeb would make on Father Megson's 'Class of  '16' - the year that quizzing finally came home to Ladybarn.  He would go down in history as the first priest ever to win anything with kids.  He would have to tell the present team of course.  He would try to let them down gently.  Maybe even allow them to pick up the paper from the Red some weeks and pretend that they were sharing in the glory.  It wasn't in his nature to be brutal.

And so, only mildly incapacitated by the Buckfast Tonic and the dizzying prospect of taproom immortality, he had leaned forward, tilted his biretta to a more rakish angle, reached for his most winsome smile and addressed the table in his grooviest version of what he felt sure must be the language of the young.....

"Yo, babes!  Call me Bamber.  I bet that there's not much that youse girls don't know.  Grab yer duffel coats, chicks, you're pulled.  What say you to a chill in my pad and then I can get youse going with a toss."

Those were, as far as he could gather, the last words that he had spoken in almost a month.  In hindsight perhaps he had been a little naive.  But then hindsight - or any sight for that matter - was a wonderful thing.  As a priest, he could hardly be expected to keep up with the constant tectonic shifts in the  the world of sexual politics.  He had only once before come across the phrase 'Women's Lib' and that had been in an article in the Guardian.  But his hunger that evening had been too great for him to pay much attention to the wrapping around his fish supper.  He would have to be more vigilant in future when, and if, he got out of hospital.  The terrorists were everywhere these days.  Duffel coats were the new balaclavas.