Q: How can you boost a pub's trade?

ON a Wednesday evening at the Prince of Wales in Camden Road, teams begin to arrive for the weekly pub quiz.

The Treacle Tarts – all female, with a particular expertise on rugby – have a favourite table, while the Young, Gifted and Black lads prefer to line up at the bar.

Norfolk Chance are ready to go, and The Procrastinators – always the ones to ask for more time to ponder questions – are due in soon.

"Pubs have to be inventive these days, so we make sure the quiz stays varied," said landlady Sally Robbins.

"After all, there's nothing worse than a contest where the same team wins week after week.

"As well as rounds on different subjects, we do Wipeout, where one wrong answer means you lose everything, and a number guessing round where the jackpot grows each week."

With the pub quiz now more universally popular than traditional games like darts and dominoes – with the added bonus that it pulls in punters of all ages – pubs up and down the country are bagging a slice of the action.

"We do get quite busy," said Beau Nash landlady Pam Ferris, who recently rigged up loudspeakers so that summer evening drinkers could take part from the Mount Ephraim pub's garden.

"There are a lot of regulars, and at this time of year students come in too.

"Our quiz is on Tuesdays, and we sometimes get over 50 competitors. With everyone putting £1 in the pot, the winners do quite well, and we have two or three quizmasters who take turns setting questions."

Ryan Martin, who took over The Guinea Butt in Calverley Road last year, agreed that modern pubs can't afford to ignore the popularity of quizzes.

He said: "I've had a lot of requests, so I'll probably get it going on a quiet night like Tuesday or Wednesday.

"There's no point is having it from Thursday to Saturday, as those are our busiest nights."

With pubs closing at the rate of 52 a week this year and their beer sales at the lowest ebb since the Great Depression of the 1930s, the pressure is on landlords to dream up new ways of bringing in the customers.

And if that means trawling the internet for new questions, restoring order when disputes arise and making sure no-one is cheating, that's all part of the modern publican's job.

An estimated 22,445 regular pub quizzes are held every week in the UK.

According to the Guinness Book of Records, the largest pub quiz ever staged involved 1.566 players.

Pub quizzes are more popular in the UK than anywhere else in the world.

A row over a question led to the award of £5,000 to a quizmaster for defamation of character after a contestant accused him of cheating.

One landlord imposed a total ban on mobile phones in his pub on quiz nights to discourage cheating.