Why Does It Always Brain On Me?

Sooner or later this was bound to happen. In a post-Nick Hornby world where picking over the bones of largely male foibles has become a profitable publishing pastime, it was inevitable that a marriage of the confessional style of Fever Pitch and the examination of our gender's near-psychotic obsession with facts and trivia that was High Fidelity would eventually be consummated in a book about that much-derided activity: the pub quiz. Marcus Berkmann, I salute you, if for no other reason than you seem even more deranged and obsessive than myself.

Brain Men: The Insider's Guide To Quizzing (Abacus, £6.99stg) is absolutely hilarious and unerringly accurate, combining as it does a history of the quiz phenomenon throughout the century with the author's own adventures on the competitive circuit. Reading it I began to utter the phrase "Oh Jesus!" with increasing frequency and mounting volume, the entire experience reminding me of a conversation I had with a friend (a chap whose expansive store of facts and largely unflappable demeanour marks him out as an essential team member regardless of whether the quiz be pop, sport or general knowledge) around the time High Fidelity came out. "Have you read Nick Hornby's new one yet?" he asked. "No, not yet." "You mightn't like it." "Why? I thought Fever Pitch was great." "Oh the new one is brilliant alright, it's just that you're in it — we're all fuckin in it!" Well, Martin, guess what — we made the bookstores yet again!

Berkmann balances the book beautifully between telling you what subjects and questions are likely to await you in the average pub quiz and an observational overview of the personality types and in-team dramatics which kick off whenever the words "An easy one to start with" are uttered. From identifying The Bloke Who Has To Hold The Pen (guilty, your honour!) to describing the mounting paranoia regarding an opposing team's too-frequent trips to the loo, he's spot-on. His account of the fear factor when appearing on Fifteen-To-One saved me the bother of writing it down myself ("Please god please god I know I don't believe in you but for fuck s sake look after me now, just as long as I aren't knocked out in the first round, I promise to get everything wrong in the second round just as long as you give me an easy question in the first!" — in case you're wondering, I was sat on my arse after the first round and on a plane back to Dublin in just over an hour) but where things become truly spooky is when he describes the quizzers who specialise in Pop Music