I Was a (Slightly Older Than) Teenage Eggheads Challenger!

Nathan Lyon! Nathan bloody Lyon!

It turns out he's an off-spin bowler and not a wicket keeper at all and what could be a more embarrassing scenario to get that wrong but appearing live on the teatime TV quiz show Eggheads while representing a team named The Seamers due to our supposed love of cricket. Ouch!

Despite this and, SPOILER ALERT, failing to beat the Eggheads I had loads of fun and I think and hope the rest of my team did too. We'd have only won £1,000 anyway and between the six of us (there's always a reserve on hand) that wouldn't have gone far. In fact the train to Glasgow, the hotel, and the meal (a pizza, nothing fancy, we had to pay for our own beer) would probably have cost more than all that anyway.

So what happened and how did it come to happen?

My ex-work colleague Sharon was the first person to mention the idea of it to me (that's her in the green jumper looming large over the rest of our team). Me and her had discussed the idea of going on Pointless before and we're both keen quizzers. Her friend Colin was getting a 'rainbow nation' of a team together to apply to go on Eggheads and she wondered if I wanted in!

Of course I did. We signed up a couple of others (who both dropped out before the day) and had a little rehearsal around Colin's place in Tooting as well as filming a brief introduction to ourselves. I'd met Colin once before when I interviewed him for a radio show I used to present on Resonance FM about soca music. That was more than ten years ago.

When our place was confirmed (and those that shall remain nameless dropped out) we were sent long forms to fill in and told to be in Euston station to catch the train to Glasgow on a Friday in January 2018. Alex (one of my most cherished friends, that's her on the right in the photo above) came along as reserve and then one of the team didn't show up. Alex was nervous but we weren't letting her back down now. Cherstyn (she's the one in the light red top) got her daughter Yves, who lived in Scotland anyway, in as an emergency reserve and we all jumped on the train.

As we got further north, and into Scotland especially, the mild southern weather gave way to beautiful snow covered hills and glorious sunsets. By the time we reached Glasgow it was dark so we checked into our hotel, a grand and impersonal (but perfectly pleasant and comfortable) affair right by the station. Sharon, Alex, and I had a little explore and, later on, the whole team went out for pizza and to discuss what our strategy was and who would answer questions on what. Come the day that plan didn't really help us.

I was in bed in my hotel room by about 9.30pm (in a strange city on a weekend night, most irregular) but it did mean I was up by about 6am and eating breakfast with my fellow team members in a mostly empty hotel breakfast bar. We jumped in a cab to the studio, we had to be there early as we were the first challengers to be filmed that day, and were introduced to various agency staff (mostly being let go of soon so they were all pretty relaxed) and told to show them what tops we'd bought to wear.

There was quite a strict rule. No black, no white, no stripes, no logos, and no blue (clashes with the Eggheads set) which ruled out almost everything I had. Plus, we had to bring four tops. Wardrobe folks chose one for me (and they had a dressing up box for people who fail to comply) and it was what an old friend of mine would have called a "dad's party shirt". I'm sure there was a ketchup stain on it too. Hey, if you're gonna be on TV you need to make an effort, right?

Next up was make up. That was fun. I could get used to people making me up. I knew I was made for TV and for being pampered. I certainly can't do it myself.

Back in the green room (just a room really) the agency staff told us a story about one team who turned up a member short. The missing member had got on the piss in Glasgow the night before and turned up with about ten minutes to go, stinking of booze with various receipts for bars and even a strip club he thought the BBC could settle, drank a cup of coffee in a vain attempt to sober up, then went on the show, took on Kevin (notoriously the toughest opponent) and knocked him out. Was my early night in vain?

I was getting quite nervous by now. Nervous but excited too. Jeremy Vine was the consummate pro, waving his selfie stick around (he took a lot of these snaps) and introducing us to the Eggheads themselves who were all friendly. Steve was particularly friendly and Kevin too. Chris, Judith, and Pat were all perfectly polite but Steve and Kevin went that extra mile to put us at ease.

Then, all of a sudden, we're on. We're introducing ourselves. Shit, as they say, is getting real. Captain Colin up first, Sharon next, then me (introducing myself as a blogger like the fucking pillock I am), then Cherstyn and Alex with their proper job titles.

Colin chats to Jeremy a bit and tells him how we all know each other and how much he loves cricket (he's written proper books about it) and, fair play to the captain, he goes up first against Pat on history. I was glad. I did not fancy that category. There's a lot of history out there. Everything that ever happened basically.

Pat gets a question right about prohibition, Colin gets one about the Met police correct, Pat counters with another right answer - on quite a tricky question about Enola Gay (I should have stayed home yesterday), and Colin comes unstuck with a poser about the Battle of Midway. All Pat has to do is get the next question right and we've lost our captain. We're less than seven minutes into the show and our plans are unfolding.

Turns out Pat knows his Mary Wollstonecraft so that's it, Colin's gone. Next subject is music so it's me or Sharon. I bottle it. The team keep me benched in case sport comes up. It's the worst mistake we make. Not for Sharon. She aces it. I think at this point Jeremy's got the hots for her and she tells him about a flashmob on a cruise ship where she danced to Thriller ("third zombie on the right"). Her questions are about Bjork, The Buzzcocks (cue me and Jeremy Vine sharing punk anecdotes and me looking unbearably smug when I identify The Ramones), and The Doors. All acts I love or at least like. I could get all three. But, of course, so can Sharon! She's knocked out Chris who knew his Michael Jackson but got caught out on a question about Lily Allen's first hit!

As you do! Alex does a dainty little clap but then I'm up. Nothing to clap anymore. I have to take sport so received wisdom means I choose Judith. If I lose to Judith on sport I'll never live this down. I talk about my blog about art, music, walking, cinema, and theatre - but, very very rarely, sport. We go to some giant sofa in a room round the back of the studio and they ask me a question about Jonah Lomu. I get it right and for some reason refer to my ex-girlfriend as a partner. Like a prick.

Judith knows Anthony Joshua's place of birth (Watford) and who won the Davis Cup in 2017 (France) but I, as I've already said, don't know what role Nathan Lyon plays. Neither, it turns out, do I know what the LA ice hockey team are called (Kings) so I'm out. I have three questions, just THREE, and I get two of them wrong. Not my greatest moment but I bore my defeat with good grace and people said kind things. One twat on Twitter called me a stupid prick but I can live with that.

So, there's one more round. It's Alex v Steve on Arts & Books. Tough stuff. Sharon and Cherstyn are in the final. Will Alex join them?

No, as it turns out. Alex probably reads more books than anyone I know so if she can't do it, nobody can. The first question about Raymond Briggs (Fungus the Bogeyman) is a gift to her. Steve hits back with his knowledge of Clive Cussler and then Alex is presented with a totally bizarre question about Edgar Allan Poe's Murders in the Rue Morgue which she gets right, spoiling the book for everyone who hasn't read it yet.

Steve hits it out of the park with his knowledge of Leonardo's Last Supper (fish was served, not pasta) and poor Alex gets lobbed a googly about poetry. Which poet laureate wrote about "the cunning and savagery of animal life?". It's Ted Hughes but Alex guesses Cecil Day-Lewis. All it needed was Steve to know a reasonably easy question about Marcel Proust. I was gutted for Alex but I couldn't begrudge Steve a victory, he was genuinely that nice.

The final is between Kevin, Judith, Steve, and Pat representing Eggheads and our two final members, Cherstyn and Sharon. The rest of us gurning away on a big screen behind them as is Eggheads protocol. Sharon coaxes Cherstyn out of answering a question about New York wrong. We're one up. But Kevin's not gonna get a question about the meaning of the word 'senescence' wrong.

Sharon and Cherstyn pull ahead again with a question about Mickey Spillane, Eggheads hit back with their knowledge of Micky Flanagan's time as a fishmonger, and it's all square again. Everything to play for. Unfortunately the third question undoes the Seamers as surely as one of Wasim Akram's pacy deliveries. It's about the aviatrix (great word) Amy Johnson and our team didn't know she was from England. All it needed was Eggheads to mind their wicket with the right answer about the mountain Lhotse.

They've won. We've lost. Like a rollercoaster, it'd had been a thrilling ride. I was nervous on the pull up but I loved the loops, dips, and drops so much I couldn't wait to go back on it. Nearly eighteen months later I still haven't but I've made tentative plans to do Pointless with either Alex or Sharon and I hope they one day come to something.

We headed back to Glasgow. I got the train back to London with Alex. I phoned my nephew Daniel who is sports mad to tell him about my Judith shame and then I waited for SIXTEEN months before it was televised. It finally went out on my mate Bugsy's 51st birthday. He watched it from the hospice bed he would die in three days later and, all of a sudden, a stupid fucking quiz show didn't seem that important.

But, in a way, it was. Because what is life if it's not a collection of experiences, ideally spent with good friends. It would have been nice to make money on Eggheads but it was far better to make memories. I had a wonderful weekend away in Glasgow with some really great people and hope, one day, to do something like that again

Thanks to Sharon, Alex, Colin, Cherstyn, Yves, the Eggheads, Jeremy Vine (and his selfie stick), and all the staff that work behind the scene for your teatime pleasure and for giving me a rather unique and fun experience. I wouldn't mind a crack at Family Fortunes next.