PURGATORY. It’s our big quiz showdown with Team Gove’s think tank later today. We discover that for the past hour stupid, stupid Sandra - who was made captain after a marathon session of Scissors Paper Stone - has been testing us from a book called 1,000 Exam Howlers. Now we have to purge that “knowledge” from our heads.
REHEARSAL. Arrive at BBC TV Centre. It’s just like Dr Who’s Tardis, much bigger inside than it looks. Get lost in timespace, arriving late at the Eggheads studio as Blue Sky Nemesis (boo) are having a very informal run-through - Dermot Murnaghan’s still in his tracksuit bottoms. Oh, how bloody poised they look, team captain Bryony Stamp and her smarmy Tory thinketeers. They get all their questions right and the Eggheads applaud. Our turn. Obviously all the easy ones have been used up and we do quite poorly by comparison, though as Dermot says, comfortingly, we can’t possibly be worse than that in the real quiz later can we?
FOOD AND DRINK. The green room. God, THIS is where our licence fee’s going, never mind Jonathan Ross. Loads of nibbles and a free bar. We mingle uneasily with Bryony’s lot, who self-righteously eschew the nibbles and drink only carbonated water. Idiots. They may be clever but they clearly know nothing about carbs and brain power, or alcohol calming the nerves. Then we watch their performance, guzzling in disbelief as one by one they win their head-to-head rounds. In the final heat Egghead Kevin is so off-balance that OH MY GOD he accidentally says Ban Ki-Moon’s a graffiti artist! Intoxicated horror turns to rage and envy when Dermot tells Blue Sky Nemesis they’ve won Pounds 32,000. We fortify ourselves with a few stiff ones.
POLITICS. BBC bias at its worst. The production team are all over Nemesis, who get a standing ovation, the smug bastards. Yet when we stumble on set there’s a very cool atmosphere. So what, so Owen threw up a bit over their precious monitor and Caz knocked over Egghead Daphne. 1, it’s only vomit. 2, she’s got another hip, OK? We settle into our seats - Max on his second attempt - and the light goes on: RECORDING. Dermot does his usual “humorous” intro: we’re representing state education, hope we haven’t run out of ideas ha ha etc.
GENERAL KNOWLEDGE. Summary: Caz, Max and I get some ridiculously tough questions and crash out of the competition, quite quickly. One of Owen’s answers is just a burp. Then Sandra, who has to fight the last round on her own, makes Eggheads history by playing the General Knowledge round unconscious. The future, like our spatial awareness, now seems very uncertain ... Inchworm.
