Homage to Richie lightens grilling

Anyone fortunate enough to have been up at 7.25am (Surely that should be "unfortunate"? '“ Ed) and tuned to BBC Southern Counties Radio would have been eased into the day by my dulcet tones.

I joined breakfast show host Neil Pringle for a brief chat about things, before being left to prepare for the West Sussex versus East Sussex quiz, against Argus news editor Frankie Taggart.

My opponent scored an admirable five out of six with his questions, which included having to name the river which runs through the Grand Canyon '“ it's the Rio Grande, if anyone was wondering ... I'm sorry, I meant the Colorado. Bing! Correct.

And so the time came for my turn. How could we lose?

A cunning plan had been hatched, whereby people would listen to the show across the office, and then relay any answers I didn't know to me.

A faultless plan, I'm sure you'll agree. And it would have been, had we taken the radio time delay into account.

There I am, struggling '“ and ultimately failing '“ to correctly guess the location of last year's Winter Olympics (and I'll never forget it was Turin, not now), with sub-editor Tony Mustard shouting, "Marbles, marbles!" at me, in answer to a question I had answered, also incorrectly, what seemed like hours before.

I should note that having answered the Olympics question "Toronto", I did then beg for an extra half-point for getting the first letter right.

Come on, who begs for a meaningless half-point? I'm actually ashamed.

And so it ended. Argus five, Herald four (and a half).

My brief stint on the radio had ended almost as soon as it had started, and in abject disappointment.

The only saving grace of the whole sorry affair was my rising to the task set by London-dwelling Herald reader James Mitchell, who challenged me to get in a cricket reference.

So there they were, the first words spoken "on air" by me, a homage to legendary commentator Richie Benaud.

"Good morning, Neil, good morning, everyone," I proudly chirped.

It was all worth it, just for that moment.