Final answer

The Last Straw: The mobile phone has done to the table quiz what drugs have done to sport. I don't say this from sour grapes because my team could finish only second in an Irish Times quiz last weekend. On the contrary, we were delighted with our silver medal (as it were), like Sonia O'Sullivan in Sydney, when she was beaten fair and square by that dodgy Romanian.

It's just that we live in an era when the rewards for quiz winners have never been higher, and when easy answers are just a text message away. The effect on trust is corrosive. In terms of results, you can't believe what you see any more.

As usual, the quiz was preceded by an appeal to competitors to switch off their phones. But there was no random phone testing afterwards. And, as usual, competitors openly "went to the toilet" at regular intervals, on the flimsy pretext that they'd been drinking. This is the one area where the general knowledge discipline differs from sport. It's a radical proposal, I know. But until quiz competitors are banned from giving urine samples during competition, we will not regain trust.

Readers may remember that I once represented Dublin in something called Cross-Country Quiz. The glory era - when the entire competition was televised - had passed by then, and only the semi-finals and final were on RTÉ. Twice we reached the last eight, before tying up in the run-in. But at least we had a dream. And in those days, a young quiz buff could still believe that if he trained hard enough and kept his anorak clean, he would reach the top.

We trained hard. Obviously you had to fit this in around work: there were no grants available, even for elite anoraks. But our captain had a library of quiz books, which we would divide up and memorise. Then there were the lists. US state capitals were just a warm-up routine. After that, depending on time available, we'd do long-distance stuff (names of the popes) or sprints (Beethoven's symphonies; rivers in France). We might finish the session with weights (imperial versus metric). And we'd warm down, say, with the dates of major battles starting with 'B'.

We never made it to television; I suspect those who did were training at altitude. But the store of useless information left us well positioned for the coming of the table quiz era. And yes, we were to have our share of glory. There were many happy nights in the pub when it was round 10 and you were hitting the pain barrier, before the MC asked that old one about how long the Hundred Years' War lasted. And suddenly you had kicked clear of the pack.

Of course, cheating didn't start with the mobile phone. I remember a local fundraiser once when, surveying the field beforehand, I calculated that my team might have to miss some questions deliberately to take the bad look off our victory. The only worry was that one of the other teams was related to the quiz-master. Reassuringly, the quiz-master was a priest. Less reassuringly, he and his brothers were big GAA men: you knew they'd gut you if they had to.

Sure enough, we finished second. We couldn't prove anything, but it was a dramatic departure from known form. And when the winners attributed their performance to improved diet, the rat-like smell was overpowering.

Then the mobile phone arrived, and the standard of competition rocketed. Everywhere you went, you were up against the general knowledge equivalent of East German female shot-putters. TV's insidious "phone-a-friend" concept only encouraged it. But the arrival of texting was the EPO of table quizzes. Quiz buffs who'd been phone-free until then had a choice. You could wear protest ribbons, or you too could text. It was like the Tour de France: everybody else was doing it. You were only preserving your competitive edge.

Of course, such moral relativism is a slippery slope. And in any case, the technology keeps moving on. Thanks to things like the Blackberry, a pocket-sized device with instant e-mail, the information age threatens to make the table quiz concept obsolete. No doubt the Blackberry has already been bypassed by something even quicker and more discreet. Soon it won't be what you know that matters, just how quickly you can access the information.

In the meantime, I'm grateful for occasions like the other night, when a team I'm on can still finish second. In fact, I'd like to take this opportunity to congratulate the gallant and deserving winners. Who, incidentally, were taking a rare night off from producing The Irish Times on the web, a part of this newspaper that continues to push back the boundaries of communications technology. Well done, lads. I'm saying nothing.