A piece of whimsy that began life in the first month of my MA and remains a personal favourite.

‘Spoons!’ enthuses Alexander Armstrong, introducing the Head-to-Head round on today’s episode of ‘Pointless’.

‘Yes. Five facts to do with spoons,’ says his towering partner in crime, Richard. ‘Finally!’

The kitchen community can’t believe it. The cutlery tray is in uproar. Who would have thought that a subset of their shining canteen would be a subject on the nation’s favourite teatime quiz show? The eponymous utensils are too stunned to speak. The teaspoons, lined up in metal-on-metal intimacy, hug each friend lying to his front with even tighter, thrilled excitement. They are literally beside themselves. The dessert spoons grin the breadth of their oval curvature – this is better than making music! – and the soup spoons puff themselves out proudly like the rounded stomachs they usually help to fill. The forks and the knives, affronted, try to think of something really pointed or cutting to say. But for once their natural sharpness is blunted.

In the nearby jar, the wooden spoons stand upright, typically stoical, stiff and silent. In contrast, displayed on the wall, the love spoon blushes: she has always had a soft spot for the charming Zander, imagining his delicate hands caressing the smooth curves of her intricate carving.

In the sink, the greasy spoon is the first to find his voice, declaring that he couldn’t give a salad toss for the programme. Nor its poxy presenters. A smart Alec and clever Dick as likely to eat an honest full English as they are to choose full fat cow’s milk over that rancid oat piss. The silver spoon, reclining, somewhat apart, in her bowl, shudders at this coarseness but is too refined to respond. Or to show her feelings like her embarrassing cousins, the riffraff in the top drawer (giving them ideas above their station), suppressing her delight in a barely perceptible shiver of the snowy particles piled adoringly around her. After all, few are born as privileged as she and there are standards to maintain.

The tablespoon is the first to recover his composure; calls for order, conscious of his seniority (and size) and the burden of leadership which, he frequently tells the others, he wishes he could share. But never does. The serving spoons are bigger, as are the ladles, but none of them possess his precision and popularity for measurement, and their laughable Brobdingnagian proportions are no challenge to his optimally sized authority.

He commands everyone pay attention to Mr Osman giving the answers. Some burnish as their names are mentioned. Even the foul-mouthed inverted snob lying in the sink can’t resist a tingle of pleasure when he hears his. But, unfamiliar with poetry, they are puzzled by runcible, and Uri Geller draws gasps. The apostle spoons, symbols of that famous last meal, cross themselves against the name of that metal-bending devil with whom one would sup at a very safe distance.

Afterwards, everyone (apart from the hybrid sporks and sporfs) agrees that the programme has a lovely name to which one can really relate.