Abigail Radnor: The word of a year where lies trump truth

I love a quiz. I'm not especially good at them. If I try to recall any moments when my general knowledge triumphed I can only think of that time I managed to list all five ingredients of a mojito without hesitating (and yes, my mum is proud). But my inability to succeed in quizzes never stops me enjoying them. Because I love learning. For every answer I do not know, I learn something new. And that is just brilliant. I am a fully fledged geek who loves a tall glass of knowledge topped with a good dollop of cold hard facts (just as refreshing as a mojito).

If you think I was a class swot growing up then you are right. I thought knowing the answer and sharing that answer with the class was EVERYTHING. I vividly recall walking out of shul at the end of the service one Kol Nidrei with my parents and a primary school classmate, with a wicked sense of humour, running up to us and impersonating me.

It involved shooting his hand up the air, urgently jumping as though nature was calling and shouting "ooh ooh pick me, Miss, I know, I know" before running off. My parents found this hysterical. I was unperturbed. The impression was pretty much spot on and I saw nothing wrong with being that person. The most crushing moments of my school days were the times I put up my hand, desperate for attention and got the answer so wrong it was positively stupid. There was an incident with a whale’s blowhole once, when I was nine, that still fills me with shame.

People who really know their stuff get me positively giddy. I am lucky in that I have a job where I can sit in a meeting and hear experts debate the stories of the day. Their opinions of places and people in the news are especially interesting because they have often lived in those places and met those people. I also have friends who dazzle me with their smarts — one who launched her own company at 28, another who is part of the White House press corps and another who recently made the front pages standing outside the High Court defending this country’s constitution. To me, they are rock stars.