Dave Marsh in Saturday's Guardian wrote of his appearance on University Challenge. And also of his appearance at the Retro Bar Pop Quiz:

A few days earlier, I'm sitting on the floor of a crowded gay bar in the West End of London on a hot summer night, squashed between three young women barely older than my own sons. We're trying to concentrate on ear-shattering extracts from Richard Cheese's Lounge Against The Machine, but not having much success identifying his camp versions of punk classics - although we do get a point for recognising his ironic take on the Dead Kennedys' Holiday In Cambodia. A bucket of lager and countless Marlboro Lights later, we've scored 10 out of 20. A team of regulars scores 20.

We were that team of regulars. We think. Actually, a trawl through my archives reveals that we didn't win that night, but - hey - it should have been us.

Just as it should have been us at last night's quiz. 'Us' being me, Jonathan, Ian and Darren. Another team was formed by Scally and Davo and friends. Last night's theme was 'Through The Decades', taking us from the forties through to the noughties. Oddly enough, we proved to be far better at the forties, fifties and sixties than at the seventies, eighties, nineties and beyond.

Forties: The three Glen Miller songs were easy: Moonlight Serenade, In The Mood and Chatanooga Choo Choo.

Fifties: We managed to tell the three Eddie Cochrane intros apart, even though they sounded virtually identical: C'mon Everybody, Summertime Blues and Three Steps To Heaven.

Sixties: After a great deal of debate about whether it was "you", "you'll" or "you'd" and whether it was "I", "I'll" or "I'd", we managed to correctly write down the first 28 words of Sandie Shaw's Puppet On A String. Can you? We also got a bonus point for knowing the year it won the Eurovision Song Contest.

Seventies: I've always considered David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars one of the most over-rated albums of our time, so it was no surprise that we failed to recognise a track called Lady Stardust. We did, however, get Starman and - in an inspired bit of guessing - Moonage Daydream.

Eighties: Stevie Wonder's I Just Called To Say I Love You, Blondie with Call Me and Fun Boy Three with The Telephone Always Rings. Easy. And the connection: they're all to do with telephone calls.

Nineties: This was the round that caused us the most trouble, and we did amazingly well to get two of the three songs right. First was that song that goes "my love has got no money, he's got his strong beliefs. My love has got no power, he's got his strong beliefs," and we actually remembered who that was by. Then came a song called Where Do You Go, but we couldn't for the life of us remember the band responsible for it. After shouting "KRS! Culture Beat! Captain Something Project! Clivilles And Cole! Haddaway!" we settled for KRS. It was none of the above. The third nineties crap dance song was something with a woman shrieking "Stay!" over a trancey keyboard riff. This led to much shouting again: "Enigma! Robert Miles! Dario G!" Then someone said the magic word, and we all went, "Ah, of course!"

Noughties: The current releases were easy: Chain Reaction by Steps, Side by Travis and Andrognyny by Garbage. The final question was to name the band covering Mott The Hoople's All The Young Dudes. We guessed Noel Gallagher. Incorrectly.

So... a final score of 19 out of 22. Not enough, I'm afraid, as the winners got an incredible twenty-one-and-a-half, dropping just half a point for getting one word of Puppet On A String wrong. They deserved to win. There's no bitterness at all when I say they truly deserved their Michael Jackson calendar!