50 for fun; Phil Brown's weekly trivia quiz.

Byline: Phil Brown

1 Which Canadian skater is returning home from the Turin Winter Olympics with five medals?

2 Which player scored twice in Manchester United's Carling Cup Final demolition of Wigan?

3 The fact-obsessed teacher Gradgrind's comment "Girl number 20 unable to define a horse" is a well-known line from which Dickens novel?

4 Of which European football club has Florentino Perez just resigned as president?

5 Which pop star issued a statement this week saying that his arrest for possession of Class C drugs was "my own stupid fault, as usual"?

6 The Laughing Cavalier and Gypsy Girl are among the best-known works of which artist?

7 What is the name of the Scotland coach who led the team to a first Calcutta Cup victory over England for six years?

8 Which hell-raising 1950s rock and roll star is the cousin of leading US televangelist Jimmy Swaggart?

9 Which legendary Australian driver won the Formula 1 championship in 1966 in a self-built car?

10 As of today, how many British men's tennis players are in the world top 50?

11 "Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more/Men were deceivers ever" - which Shakespeare play?

12 In which islands would you find the oil terminal of Sullom Voe?

13 Which scriptwriter connects cult films Dr Strangelove and Easy Rider?

George Bush senior once bizarrely had to apologise for saying: "I'm president of the United States and I'm not going to eat any more..."?

15 The US equivalent of Strictly Come Dancing was won by singer Drew Lachey on Sunday - what is the show called?

16 Duroc, Landrace and Hampshire are varieties of which farm animal?

17 In rugby league, which is the only team to have won its first three Engage Super League fixtures this season?

18 Bremerhaven and Geestemunde, now merged, were once rival towns, Geestemunde, founded by Bremen and Hanover respectively, at the mouth of which river?

19 In which 1970s smash hit science fiction film does the Devil's Tower in Wyoming play a key role in the story?

20 In which sport is the Welsh Open currently taking place in Newport?

21 What is the name for the renowned 1,100-mile annual dogsled race between Anchorage and Nome?

22 Gunsmoke and McCloud actor Dennis Weaver, who has just died aged 81, also starred as a truck driver in which Steven Spielberg film?

23 In the popular Asterix cartoon series, the Gaulish hero's dog is Dogmatix in English - but what in the original French?

24 A Which hapless golfer did Tiger Woods beat by a record-breaking 9&8 in the WGC Matchplay Championship in California?

25 Falling coconuts kill more people every year than sharks do - true or false?

26 The versatile chemical 2,4,6-trinitrophenol is a useful dye and antiseptic and was once the most important military explosive - what is its common name?

27 What event have scientists just suggested caused Europe's medieval "Little Ice Age" due to cooling caused by increased woodland on abandoned farmland?

28 Which bird, scientific name Apus apus, spends virtually its whole life - including sleep - in flight?

29 In the 1840s, Blackheath became the first modern club for which sport with an extremely ancient history?

30 Which rock group is to play its first-ever gig in China on April 8, in Shanghai?

31 Which rebel leader did Kirk Douglas play in an epic 1960 film?

32 The Return Of The Giant Hogweed is a slightly peculiar track from Nursery Cryme, an early album from which group that went on to stadium-rock stardom?

33 Which knighted actor has said it was an accident that posters for his new film Lucky Number Slevin broke with showbiz tradition by calling him Sir, instead of just using his name?

34 Hawkes Bay and Marlborough are wine-making regions of which country?

35 A leading 19th-century US actor with the given names Junius Brutus had 10 sons - the ninth, named for a radical British politician, would become infamous. Who was that son?

36 Scientists in China have unearthed a 164-million-year-old fossil similar to which modern water-dwelling mammal?

37 In 1771, the Lord Mayor of London was imprisoned in the Tower for six weeks for supporting the Evening Post's right to print what?

38 Prince Scipone Borchesi won the world's first ultra long distance car rally in 1907, starting in Beijing and finishing two months later and 7,500 miles away in which city?

39 Dry ice is a solid form of which common chemical compound?

40 With which huge work of art do you associate Gutzon Borglum?

41 In which river valley does the original mistral wind blow?

42 Which 1960s rock group got its start at LA nightclubs London Fog and the famous Whisky A Go-Go?

43 Which deep-diving creatures have been fitted with monitors to give scientists a wealth of data on conditions down to 2,000 metres in the Southern Ocean?

44Mithraism, a religion popular in the Roman army, had as its most important ritual the sacrifice of which animal?

45 Which hugely popular computer game's title was picked by its creator from Tom Cruise's reply in The Color Of Money when asked what he has in his case?

46 The town of Mocha, long renowned for exporting coffee, is in which modern country?

47 The Bull Moose party (formally the Progressive Party) got quarter of the vote in the US presidential election vote of 1912, led by which ex-President?

48 In which country would you find the Monadhliath Mountains?

49 Which popular modern drink - by coincidence - shares its name with an infamously rowdy theatre of Elizabethan London?

50 From which language do we get the phrase "to run amok"?

ANSWERS ON PAGE 4

CAPTION(S):

What's Tom Cruise got to do with a cult computer game? - See question 45