The year in question

In loving memory

1. Who faced the final curtain?

2. Who hung up his blue suede shoes?

3. Who felt the ice break?

4. Who lived and let die?

5. Who scored a last own goal?

6. Who was d.i.v.o.r.c.e.d from life?

7. Whose bluff was finally called?

8. Who paid a last dear bill?

9. Who went bang! bang! on a ski-slope?

10. Whom has death now parted from us?

Morsels

1. Who said, "I'm not sure I could eat peacock, dog, snake and steaming bowls of cockerels' testicles every day, but I only seriously dislike sea slug"?

2. For which item on his menu did a Parisian restaurateur face prosecution?

3. Who objected to paying in full the pounds 36,000 bill for the organising of a party for a then-fiance at Le Manoir aux Quat' Saisons?

4. Which order did fledgling restaurateur Damien Hirst initially resist?

5. Which government minister said, "I have a French mother and was taught that food comes first and health comes second"?

6. Which food chain had no sooner put out a fire at Heathrow than it faced one at Waterloo?

7. Who celebrated his 67th birthday with cabbage pie?

8. Whose spirit endorsed margarine?

9. Where were over a million chickens slaughtered for fear of them spreading influenza?

10. From what food did Tom Monaghan make a fortune, and then give all the proceeds away because "I realised how bad a person I really am"?

Melting moments

1. Who won the Bad Sex Prize?

2. Who told President Clinton "to hold on to the sides of the boat until the morning cometh"?

3. By what nickname will Lieutenant Commander David Bellingham be forever better known?

4. For what work did Rabbi Shmuley Boteach receive $200,000 from Playboy?

5. "The point about spanking is that it is known as the English vice, and that's why I chose to explore it." Who said this in reply to tough questioning?

6. Who is of the view that "I don't know anybody that ever understands a woman completely"?

7. Who, on the eve of his abandoned wedding, asserted that women are "alien creatures"?

8. Who said that "living together can be a very healthy and good thing to do before marriage"?

9. Which town was depicted as a hot-bed of bondage and lesbianism in a Channel 4 film?

10. Who thought it prudent that Buddy should be castrated in March?

Won't get fooled again

1. Which novelist created Nat Tate?

2. Which musician then persuaded Manhattan that Tate existed?

3. What did Mike and Diane promise to do in full view of the world?

4. What did 19-year-old Victoria Greetham and 29-year-old Stuart Smith pretend?

5. With which rap singer did AN Wilson record a duet?

6. Which resort did a group of grant-spending Leeds students pass off as Spain?

7. Which class of degree were they awarded?

8. What did artist Angela Marshall falsely promise for pounds 75 in her Bermondsey studio? What could those with only pounds 5 to spare have apparently bought?

9. Who said that her father had played his best joke posthumously?

10. Where did Richard Ray pass himself off as a philosophy don for several months?

Ironic interlude

1. Who said in April that "the burden of history can at long last be lifted from our shoulders"?

2. What was heard outside J D Kell's drapers shop four months later?

Political miscellany

1. Who was called "a boot licker" by the Workers' Party in Brazil?

2. Who was prevailed upon to pledge his troth at an airport?

3. Who said that "the future of Rover lies in its own hands"?

4. Who thought that the Haunted House and Space Mountain were "a benchmark" for the Millennium Dome?

5. Who objected to there being any "Northern, horny-handed, dirty-overall people" in the Labour Party?

6. To whom did Stephen Bayley attribute a penchant for "voodoo sacrifice in Brixton"?

7. Who said that modification of food "takes mankind into realms that belong to God and to God alone"?

8. Who would be happy to eat pizza which contained genetically engineered tomato?

9. Whom did Terry Jones think so "comical looking, weird" that he would have been a potential Python?

10. Who claimed to be "much misunderstood"?

Philosophical interlude

Who said, "it depends upon what the meaning of the word `is' means. If `is' means `is, and never has been', that's one thing. If it means `there is none', that was a completely true statement"?

Crassitudes

1. Who was "absolutely pissed off with trying to make this thing work, and those who have no interest in making it work seize upon two men being killed to exploit it and bring this process down"?

2. Who denied ever having said, "honey, I ain't got no sideways"?

3. Who thought the sale of arms to Sierra Leone, flouting UN rules, a mere "hoo-ha"?

4. Who bade farewell to the Army with the words "my soldier's heart stirs and murmurs from deep within. Thank you, thank you, my homeland"?

5. Whose manuscript was said to be "too boring" to publish?

6. Whom does William Hague fear is at the mercy of "feather-bedding, pocket-lining, money-grubbing cronies"?

7. Whom does William Hague think "a sad figure locked in the past"?

8. Who thought that the Millennium is "not an event that has very much to do with Christianity"?

9. Upon whom did William Hague confer an Earldom in Rio?

10. Who accused John Redwood of a "breathtaking insult" to Chancellor Kohl?

In the money

1. Who is willing to pay pounds 624m to watch football?

2. Who was revealed to have spent $9,000 on a Park Avenue nose-job?

3. Who made a presentation of a glossy, 115-page annual report which had cost pounds 95,000 of taxpayers' money?

4. Which one-time revolutionaries postponed performances owing to a change in the tax laws?

5. What did the Italian government consider selling off in order to reduce the national debt?

6. Who received pounds 50,000 for supplying first-hand details of murder?

7. Where did people hand in gold worth pounds 500m to boost their country's reserves?

8. Who overlooked, among other sources, the matter of a pounds 13m trust fund of which he was a beneficiary?

9. Who thought that pounds 9,000 of legal fees had been free, "I really did"?

10. Which organisation received pounds 76,000 compensation for items lost, damaged or confiscated in the Maze?

Parents and children

1. Who said, "when a child does wrong, I believe it to be the duty of a parent to act promptly"?

2. Which hamster enthusiast was in court accused of slapping his 18-year-old son?

3. Who had a child with Melanie Cable-Alexander?

4. Who is said to be having a child with Luciana Morad?

5. Who was "glad it was a little boy because that's just what I wanted", adding, "I didn't want it to be a girl, because girls are annoying"?

6. Which Hollywood actor's daughter was sentenced to community service in Suffolk for theft?

7. Which singer/songwriter found the daughter whom she put up for adoption in 1964?

8. Which guitarist's song "My Father's Eyes" led to the discovery of his long-lost sister?

9. Whose wife was not invited to their daughter's wedding; their son was later charged with assaulting a girlfriend, charges subsequently dropped?

10. Of what was Diane Blood finally able to partake in April?

Top of the form

Match the school to the incident:

1. At which school did 40 pupils have sex with a local woman who was suffering from hepatitis?

2. At which school did a 14-year-old girl fall from a roof to her death after drinking vodka on her birthday?

3. Which school invited the British National Party to speak?

4. Which school's heads of chemistry and sociology were jailed for drunkenly assaulting a policeman?

5. At which school was it admitted that sexual abuse had thrived for three decades?

6. At which school was the Chaplain charged with importing and distributing pornography?

7. Where was a pupil found with pounds 500-worth of heroin?

8. Which school threw out much 19th-century fiction from its library to make way for graphic novels?

9. Where did pupils go on strike in protest at the plan by one pupil's father, Jack Straw, to demolish it and sell off a quarter of the site for luxury flats?

10. At which school has Madonna put down her daughter Lourdes's name?

11. To which school does Michael Jackson wish to send his son, Prince?

12. Which school emerged unscathed from 1998?

Boswells School, Chelmsford

Pimlico School

Dulwich College

Tonbridge School

Roedean

Paignton Community College

Lewis Boys' School, Mid-Glamorgan

Craighton Primary School, Glasgow

Millfield

Stowe

Bangor Grammar School, County Down

Cheltenham Ladies' College

Legal corner

1. Who, hanged for murder in Cardiff in 1952, had the conviction overturned in February?

2. Over whose hopeless fate are Michael Howard and Jack Straw in firm agreement?

3. Of which metaphorical expression did Mr Justice Popplewell confess ignorance?

4. For which diarist - "a larger-than-life character unconstrained by normal standards" - did Mr Justice Lightman find?

5. What precedent was set by Judge Richard Gee?

6. What grievance did Andrew and Josie Smith have against the people who sold them a cottage in Derbyshire?

7. What decision, with a bearing upon one in five of the population, was the responsibility of Abergavenny magistrates?

8. Who, having won a case on artistic grounds to prevent the release of 19 of his early songs, promptly released a four-CD set of unissued material?

9. Who wishes to up the ante of a pounds 1.8m divorce settlement by taking another pounds 1.6m from her grieving husband?

10. Who not only went to court to deny that he is homosexual but also later insisted that he has never been into a Hertfordshire branch of Blockbuster?

Far and wide

1. Which 11 destinations have now been reached by David Hempleman-Adams?

2. Worthing achieved what distinction this year?

3. Who had been where when he said, "I didn't feel too hot when I got off yesterday"?

4. The full extent of what was only revealed in medical textbooks this year?

5. What was the Russian Victor Yazyhov doing when he e-mailed for help to a Boston doctor, "I have been sitting on the bloody cabin floor almost completely naked, watching as my life drop-by-drop leaves me"?

6. Ousted English politicians go to the country and write their memoirs. Where did Yeltsin's ex-national security adviser retreat?

7. By what means, and taking 50 per cent longer, did Brian Milton emulate Phileas Fogg?

8. What did 12 travellers pay pounds 19,500 each to go two-and-a-half miles to see - and feel like intruders when they got there?

9. Which county links Sir Noel Coward and Mrs June Wilson, and why?

10. Which artist's work, mistakenly featured onboard in the movie Titanic, was a victim of the Swissair disaster? ANSWERS

1. Frank Sinatra

2. Carl Perkins

3. Sir Michael Tippett

4. Linda McCartney

5. Justin Fashanu

6. Tammy Wynette

7. Frank Muir

8. John Wells

9. Sonny Bono

10. Johnny Speight

Morsels

1. Chris Patten

2. Viagra and fig sauce

3. Ivana Trump

4. To change the name of his restaurant Pharmacy

5. Lord Sainsbury, Minister for Science

6. Burger King

7. President Yeltsin

8. Diana, Princess of Wales

9. Hong Kong

10. Pizza

Melting moments

1. Sebastian Faulks

2. Rev Jesse Jackson

3. Officer Underpants

4. Kosher Sex

5. Jeremy Paxman

6. Edward Heath

7. Will Carling

8. William Hague

9. Clevedon, in The Big Swap

10. President Clinton

Won't get fooled again

1. William Boyd

2. David Bowie

3. To lose their virginity on the Internet

4. To be daughter and father in a Channel 4 documentary

5. This is a hoax question. A N Wilson prefers madrigals

6. Scarborough

7. A First

8. Sex. Spectator position

9. Petronella Wyatt, referring to revelations in her father Woodrow Wyatt's diaries

10. Worcester College, Oxford

Ironic interlude

1. Tony Blair

2. The shop is in Omagh; the bomb exploded outside it.

Political miscellany

1. Peter Mandelson

2. Robin Cook

3. Peter Mandelson

4. Peter Mandelson

5. Peter Mandelson

6. Peter Mandelson

7. President Clinton

8. Peter Mandelson

9. Peter Mandelson

10. Peter Mandelson

Philosophical interlude

President Clinton

Crassitudes

1. Gerry Adams

2. Jessye Norman

3. Tony Blair

4. General Pinochet

5. Chris Patten's

6. Tony Blair

7. Edward Heath

8. Sir Terence Conran

9. Peter Mandelson

10. William Hague

In the money

1. Rupert Murdoch

2. Paula Jones

3. Tony Blair

4. The Rolling Stones

5. The Colosseum

6. Mary Bell

7. South Korea

8. Geoffrey Robinson

9. Martin Bell

10. The IRA

Parents and children

1. Jack Straw

2. Freddie Starr

3. Lord Snowdon

4. Mick Jagger

5. An unnamed, under-age father

6. Dustin Hoffman's

7. Joni Mitchell

8. Eric Clapton

9. Lord Lucan's

10. Her dead husband's sperm

Top of the form

1. Paignton Community College

2. Millfield

3. Dulwich College

4. Boswells School, Chelmsford

5. Bangor Grammar School, Co Down

6. Tonbridge School

7. Craighton Primary School, Glasgow

8. Lewis Boys' School, Mid-Glamorgan

9. Pimlico School

10. Cheltenham Ladies' College

11. Stowe

12. Roedean

Legal corner

1. Mahmood Hussein Matton

2. Myra Hindley's

3. Linford's lunchbox

4. Alan Clark

5. Charges of a pounds 1m mortgage fraud against him were dropped as he felt suicidal

6. They were not told that it was haunted

7. Whether cellphones should bear a radiation warning

8. Bruce Springsteen

9. Countess Spencer

10. Tom Cruise

Far and wide

1. He has now reached the North, South and two magnetic Poles and climbed the highest summits in each seven continents: Everest; Kilimanjaro; Mount McKinley; Elbrus; Vinson; Aconcagua; Cartensz Pyramid

2. It is England's most prosperous town

3. John Glenn, outer space (again)

4. The clitoris

5. Saling alone around the world

6. Mir space station

7. Microlight

8. The Titanic

9. Norfolk. He called it "very flat" in Private Lives and she received threats for calling Norfolk "very boring" in the local newspaper.

10. Picasso