Laurence Inman exposes his alter ego and some strange habits of his younger days.

I have something very important in common with Mark E Smith. We have both founded groups which have been going for decades and of which we are now the only surviving original members.

His was a musical group, The Fall. Mine was a quiz team, Dim As A Glow-Worm’s Armpit. (You see what I did there, with the word ‘group’ ?)

I put the Dims together in the early eighties. We did very well for a few years, eventually being crowned Moseley Masterminds. After that it was the usual story: drink, drugs, musical differences. I tried a solo career for a bit – No Win No Fee, The Weakest Link, Take Your Pick – but it just wasn’t the same.

I track down one of the originals every so often, usually in some shabby drinking-hole. ‘I need a fourth for Armpit. Football expert. I know you’re a Blues fan, but I’m desperate. There’ll probably be a bottle of undrinkable sherry in it for you. And maybe a fiver.’

Now I’ve got the vicar’s wife asking me to put the gang together again for a gig at the church hall next month. I told her: ‘Look, I’ll try, but do you really want this ? We won last year. We always win. It’s not fair on the others.’

All this has set me a-brooding about a rather strange quiz-related episode from my distant past.

It was 1982 or so. I had got into the habit of staying up on Fridays, listening to the late show on BRMB. The bloke who hosted it – I can’t remember his name – had a quiz spot. Anybody who answered five questions correctly won two LPs. And they were so easy! What was the date of the murder of Thomas A Becket ? (Not just the year, the day and month.) Give a brief outline of Cartesian Dualism. Schoolboy stuff.

I phoned in and won. When they asked my name I said Ted Kent. For some reason I didn’t want the other Dims to know I’d been doing a foreigner. Why Ted Kent ? I have no idea.

I won the following week, and the week after that, and for many weeks after that. Each time I gave a different name, but always with the initials TK. I was Terry Knowles, Tom Kavanagh, Tony Kennedy, Theodore Kapadopolous. (I had got the idea that they didn’t like the same person winning every week.) This meant giving a different weekly address as well, so aunts and cousins I hadn’t seen in decades were surprised to receive square packages for strange people they’d never heard of: Tim Kray, Trevor Knatchbull, Tyrone Kingsley.

The LPs were a disappointment. I always asked for obscure early albums by long-forgotten blues bands. They sent me worn-out MOR crap from their library.

It all came to an end one Friday in 1983. Or 1984.

‘What’s your name mate ?’

‘Tenzing Koa.’

‘Mmm. I think we’ve spoken before, haven’t we Tenzing ? Or is it Thierry ? Or….’