46.And then it comes to me, with a terrible clarity, the realisation that the applause was ironic.

The Student Union building is an ostentatiously ugly rain streaked concrete hulk, marooned in the middle of terraces of neat Georgian house like a bad tooth. This morning they're pouring in and out the swing doors, singly and in tight little groups with their day-old best friends, because it's the last day of Freshers Week, and there are no lectures till Monday. Instead today is our opportunity to join Socs.

I join FrenchSoc, FilmSoc, LitSoc, PoetrySoc, and the writing staff of all three student magazines; the literary-minded Scribbler, the irreverent, salacious Tattle, and the earnest, campaigning, left-wing By Lines. I sign up for Darkroom Soc ('Join us and see what develops!') even though I don't have a camera, and then contemplate joining the FeministSoc, but whilst queuing at their trestle table I get glared at confrontationally by a Gertrude Stein look-alike and start to wonder if maybe joining FeministSoc might be trying just a bit too hard. I made this mistake once before, on a school trip to the Victoria and Albert Museum, when I followed a sign marked 'Women', thinking it was an exhibition on the changing role of women in society, and actually ended up standing in the ladies' toilets. In the end I decide to give FeministSoc a miss, because while I firmly support the women's liberation movement, I'm not entirely confident that I'm not just joining as a way to meet girls.

I hurry past the fresh-faced, pastel-coloured sweaters of BadmintonSoc, just in case someone calls my bluff, then wave to Josh who's surrounded by pals in the queue for BeefyToffSoc, or whatever it is, something to do with ski-ing and drinking and hara.s.sing women and extreme right-wing views.

I also decide not to join TheatreSoc. Like FeministSoc, it's a pretty good way of spending time with girls, but the down-side is that it's usually just a ruse to trick you into putting on a play. This term TheatreSoc will be producing 47.Charley's Aunt, Sophocles' Antigone and Equus, and I just know I'd get cast either as a member of the Greek chorus, all shouting simultaneously through papier-mache masks in ruined bed-sheets, or one of those poor saps in Equus who spends the whole evening in a leotard wearing a horse's head made out of coat hangers. Well, TheatreSoc, thanks but no thanks. Besides, I'll have you know that in my last year at school I played Jesus in G.o.dspell, and once you've been whipped and crucified in front of the whole school, there isn't really anywhere to go performance-wise. Tone and Spencer laughed all the way through of course, and shouted 'More! More!' during the forty lashes, but everyone else said it was a very affecting performance.

When I think I've had enough Socs, I wander the room looking for the mystery girl from last night, though G.o.d knows what I'll do if I see her. Certainly not dance. I do two circuits of the sports hall, but there's no sign of her, so I head upstairs to the room where The Challenge heats are taking place, just to make sure I've got the right room and the right time. Sure enough, the poster's on the door; Your Starter For Ten. Only the finest minds need apply. 'Fancy your chances?' she'd said last night. 'Maybe see you there?' she'd said. Was she serious? And if so, where is she? I am an hour early though, so I decide to go back to the sports hall, to have another look round.

Walking back downstairs, I pa.s.s the dark-haired Jewish girl from last night on the stairwell; Jessica, was it? She's standing with a bunch of skinny, pale men in Harringtons and tight black jeans, handing out leaflets for the Socialist Workers Party and all looking f.u.c.kingangryactually, so in a spirit of solidarity, I approach and say, 'Greetings, comrade!'

'Morning twinkle-toes,' she drawls, glancing at my clenched fist, unamused, and quite right too, because it's not funny. She goes back to handing out the leaflets. 'I think DanceSoc's through there somewhere.'

'Oh G.o.d, was it really awful?'

48.'Let's just say I was all for putting a pencil between your teeth, stop you biting your tongue off.'

I laugh self-deprecatingly, and shake my head, in an I'm mad-me kind of way, but she doesn't smile so I say, 'You know, life's taught me two things; Number One is don't dance when you're drunk!!!' . . . silence . . . 'Actually, I wondered if I could take a leaflet?'

She looks at me quizzically, intrigued by my hidden depths.

'You're sure I wouldn't just be wasting paper?'

'Absolutely not.'

'So are you already a member of any political parties?'

'Oh, you know. CND!'

'That's not a political party.'

'So you don't think defence policy is a political issue?' I say, enjoying how it sounds.

'Politics is economics, pure and simple. Single-issue groups, pressure groups like CND or Greenpeace, have an important and valid role to play, but saying that whales are big and nice, or a nuclear holocaust is nasty, is not a political stance, it's a truism. Besides, in a true socialist state the military would be disenfranchised automatically . . .'

'Like it is in Russia?' I say.

A-ha!

'Russia isn't truly socialist.'

Oh...

'Or Cuba?' I say.

Touche!

'Yes, if you like. Like in Cuba.'

Urn...

'Oh, so I suppose Cuba doesn't have an army then?' I say.

Nice recovery.

'Not really, none to speak of, not in terms of Gross National Product. Six per cent of tax is spent on defence in Cuba, compared to forty per cent in the USA.' She must be making this stuff up. Not even Castro knows this stuff. 'If it wasn't 49.under constant threat from the USA it wouldn't even need to spend the six per cent. Or do you lie awake at night and worry about being invaded by Cuba?'

It seems a bit too school-playground to accuse her of making stuff up, so I just say, 'So do I get a leaflet or what?' and grudgingly she hands me one.

'If it's too outspoken for you, the Labour Party's over there. Or you could just go the whole hog and join the Tories.'

She says it like a slap, and it takes me a moment to take it in, and then while I'm thinking of what to say, she turns her back on me, just turns around and carries on handing out leaflets. I want to put my hand on her shoulder, spin her round and say 'Don't turn your back on me, you prissy, bigoted, self-righteous little cow, because my dad's job actually killed him, more or less, so don't lecture me about Cuba, because I've got a better sense of f.u.c.king social injustice in my little finger than you and your whole gang of bourgeois, art-school boyfriends have got in your whole complacent, smug self-satisfied bodies.' And I almost say it, I really do, but in the end what I choose to say is, 'Of course you do realise that if you shortened your name, you could just become SocSoc!'

She turns to me, quite slowly, narrows her eyes and says 'Look. If you're really committed and pa.s.sionate about opposing what Thatcher's doing to the country, then you should come along. If on the other hand you're just interested in making a whole load of sixth-form jokes and ba.n.a.l comments, then I think we can probably manage without you, thanks very much.'

She's right, of course. Why do I always sound facetious and unconvincing when I talk about politics? I don't feel ironic about it. I think about trying to convey this to her, just by having a proper intelligent adult conversation, but a skirmish has broken out between one of the skinny boys in black denim and someone from Cla.s.s War, so I think better of it, and move on.

so QUESTION: Devised by the German psychologist William Stern, what controversial measurement was originally defined as the ratio of a person's mental age to his physical age, multiplied by 100?

ANSWER: IQ.

I walk back upstairs to Meeting Room 6, where a tall, fair man is setting out tables and chairs in exam formation, thirty or so, with an air of bureaucratic officiousness. He's clearly a lot older than me, twenty-one or twenty-two or something, tall and fit in an official burgundy university sweatshirt, tanned and blandly handsome with very neat, short reddish-blond hair, the kind of hair that looks as if it's been moulded from a single piece of plastic. I watch him for a while through the gla.s.s door. He looks like an astronaut, if Britain had astronauts, or a non-threatening Action Man. What's troubling about him is that I seem to remember him from somewhere . . .

He catches sight of me, so politely I stick my head around the door and say, 'Excuse me, is this the room for the University chai ...r 'Fingers on the buzzers, your first starter question - can you read the sign?' 'Yes.'

'What does it say?' 'Meeting Room 6, one o'clock.' 'What time is it now?' 'Twelve forty-five.'

51.'So I presume that answers your question?'

'I suppose so.'

So I sit down outside the door and limber up by running through some lists in my head; the Kings and Queens of England, the Periodic Table, the American Presidents, the Laws of Thermodynamics, the planets of the solar system, just in case; basic exam technique. I check that I've got a pencil and pen, a tissue, a box of Tic-Tacs, and wait for the other contestants to turn up. After ten minutes I'm still the only one here, so I sit and peer at the guy sitting at his teacher's desk, as he solemnly sorts out and staples question papers. I a.s.sume he must be something pretty high up in the University Challenge selection committee, and is giddy on the sheer intoxicating power of it all, but I must keep on his good side, so at 12.58 precisely, and no earlier, I get up and enter the room.

'Okay now?'

'Fine. You can come in. How many others out there with you?' he says, without looking up.

'Um - none?'

'Really?' He looks past me, because I clearly can't be trusted. 'Oh b.u.g.g.e.r! It's nineteen eighty-three all over again.' He tuts and sighs, and perches on the edge of the desk, and picks up a clipboard, then looks me up and down appraisingly, and glances at my face, before settling on a point twelve inches to the side of my face, which he seems to prefer. He sighs mournfully again. 'Oh well, I'm Patrick. What's your name?'

'Brian Jackson.'

'Year?'

'First year! Just arrived yesterday!'

Tut and sigh. 'Specialist subject?'

'You mean what am I reading?'

'If you like.'

'English Literature.'

52.'Christ, another one! Well, at least you're not completely wasting three years of your life.'

'I'm sorry, I . . .'

'Whatever happened to all the mathematicians, that's what I want to know. All the bio-chemists? All the mechanical engineers? No wonder the economy's going to the dogs; everyone knows what a metaphor is, no one can build a power station.'

I laugh, then check to see if he's joking, but he isn't. 'I have science A-levels!' I say, defensively.

'Really? What in?'

'Physics and Chemistry.'

'Well there you go then! A Renaissance Man! What's Newton's Third Law of Motion?'

Oh, my friend, you're going to have to try a lot harder than that . . .

'Reaction is equal and opposite to action,' I say.

Patrick's reaction is pretty equal and opposite too; a brief, begrudging raising of the eyebrows, before he goes back to his notepad.

'School?'

'Pardon?'

'I said "school"? Big building, made of bricks, teachers in it . . .'

'I understood the question, I just wondered why you wanted to know?'

'Alright then, Trotsky, you've made your point. You've got a pen? Good. Here's your paper, and I'll be with you in a minute.' I take a seat near the back of the room as two more people arrive behind me. 'Ah, the cavalry!' says Patrick.

The first potential team-mate, a Chinese girl, causes a bit of a stir, because she seems to have a panda bear clinging to her back. Closer scrutiny reveals this not to be a real-life panda, but an ingeniously designed rucksack! It shows a quirky sense of humour I suppose, but doesn't bode well for her chances on 53.a serious, advanced general knowledge qui/. Anyway, from her conversation with Patrick I hear that she's called Lucy Chang, that she's a second year, reading Medicine, and so may possibly have an edge on me with some of those science questions. Her English seems pretty fluent, though she speaks incredibly quietly, with a slight American accent. What do the rules say about foreign nationals?

The next contestant is a big, loud-voiced Mancunian, dressed in olive-green army surplus, big heavy boots and with a little blue RAF knapsack at his hip with, somewhat inconsistently, a CND sign magic-markered onto it. Patrick interviews him with a kind of begrudging civility, NCO to corporal, and it transpires that he's a third-year Politics student from Rochdale called Colin Pagett. He glances round the room, nods, and then we wait in silence and fiddle with our pens, all sitting as far away from each other as the laws of geometry will allow, waiting ten, fifteen minutes, until it's absolutely clear that no one else is going to turn up. Where is she? She said she'd be here. What if something's happened to her?

Finally Patrick the Astronaut sighs, stands up behind his desk and says, 'Right, well let's begin shall we? My name's Patrick Watts from Ashton-Under-Lyme, reading Economics, and I'm the captain of this year's University Challenge team' . . . hang on, who says? . . . 'Regular viewers of the show may recognise me from last year's tournament.'

That's it, that's where I know him from. I remember watching the episode extra carefully because I'd been filling out my UCCA form, and I'd wanted to know what the standard was like. I remember thinking then that they were a pretty poor team, and this Patrick obviously still carries the emotional scars with him, because he looks at the floor, shame-faced, at the mention of it. 'Obviously, it wasn't a flawless performance' - they were knocked out in the first round if I remember rightly, against soft opponents too - 'but we're very hopeful 54.about our chances this year, especially with so much . . . promising . . . raw material.'

The three of us look around the room, at each other, and at the rows of empty desks.

'Right! Well, without further ado, let's get cracking on the test. It's in written form, forty questions, and covers a diverse range of subjects, similar to those we'll be facing on the programme. Last year we were particularly weak in the science area' - he glances at me - 'and I want to make sure we're not too arts-orientated this time . . .'

'And it's a four-person team, yeah?' the Mancunian pipes up.

'That is correct.'

'Well if that's the case, then surely ... we are the team.'

'Well, yes, but we need to make sure we're up to an appropriate standard.'

But Colin's not letting go. 'Why?'

'Well, because if we're not . . . we'll lose again.'

'And?'

'Well, if we lose again ... if we lose again . . .' and Patrick's mouth is working wordlessly now, opening and closing like a dying mackerel. It's the same face he had on national television last year, trying and failing to answer a perfectly simple question on the East African lakes: the same haunted look, with every single member of the audience knowing the answer, willing it to him; Lake Tanganyika, Tanganyika, you idiot.

Then he's distracted by a noise at the door - a cl.u.s.ter of grinning female faces briefly pressed against the gla.s.s, a m.u.f.fled burst of laughter, a scuffle, and she's shoved into the room by unseen hands, and just stands there, giggling, trying to regain her composure, looking round the room at the four of us.

I swear, for a moment I think everyone's going to stand up.

'Whoops! Sorry, everyone!'

55.She's slurring a bit, and seems a little unsteady on her feet. She's not thinking of taking an exam p.i.s.sed, is she?

'I'm sorry, am I too late?'

Patrick runs his hands over his astronaut's hair, licks his lips, and says, 'Not at all. Glad to have you on board . . . urn . . . ?'

'Alice. Alice Harbinson.'

Alice. Alice. Of course, she's an Alice. What else could she be?

'Okay, Alice. Please - take a seat. . .' And she looks around, smiles at me, and comes over and sits at the desk directly behind mine.

The first few questions are pretty easy; basic geometry and some stuff about the Plantagenets, just there to soften us up really, but it's hard to concentrate because Alice is making this snuffling noise over my shoulder. I turn and glance at her, and sure enough she's hunched forwards over her exam paper red-faced, shaking with suppressed laughter. I go back to the test paper.

Question 4. What was ancient Istanbul known as, before it was called Constantinople?

Easy. Byzantium.

Question 5. Helium, neon, argon and xenon make up four of the so-called 'n.o.ble gases'. What are the other two?

No idea. Krypton and hydrogen maybe? Krypton and hydrogen.

Question 6. What is the precise composition of the aroma emanating from Alice Harbinson, and why is it so delightful?

Something expensive, flowery but light. Is it perhaps Chanel No 5? Mixed with a tiny hint of Pears soap, and Silk Cut, and lager . . .

That's enough now. Concentrate.