“Can we have another cloth, please!!!”
The Chipper Barman throws a wettish rag in our direction, knowing full well that Big A has spilt his pint again.
“And another pint of ASBO, I guess.”
I have never known anybody that spills as many pints as he does. He drops them, knocks them with his elbow, sends them flying with wild hand gesticulations or puts them down and misses the table. I point this out in a reasonable yet exasperated fashion, as I sit there like Paul McCartney’s son-in-law at the climax of a dirty weekend in a North Wales caravan park, dripping in Stella.
Idly, I wonder whether I can get some form of laboured and contrived joke out of this.
I leave my lager-sodden chair and have a quick chat to a couple of the other quiz teams. I sympathise with the lot who came second place to us, as it is important to show magnanimity in victory. The pathetic losers. I talk them through exactly which questions that we got right that they got wrong, as it is important that they learn for next time.
There are more good-natured comments about the fact that we have won it again and should be banned, etc. I take these in the spirit in which they are intended.
We leave the bar just after closing time. I am singing the song ‘We Are The Champions’ by the pop group Queen. The LTLP tells me not to be such an idiot.