I get to ask the questions around here–sodoyou know the answers?

HERMIONE was flicking the other day. Flicking? No, not tossing her tresses. No, not thumbing through a magazine. Hermione does her flicking with the TV remote. At the end of a demanding day, the loved one likes to slump on the sofa in the sitting room at The Manor and then flick from channel to channel.

She spends five minutes with a movie which turns out not to be quite the romance she was hoping for. Flick. She spends four minutes watching ‘Friends’ before realising that she has already seen this episode. Flick. She spends at least three seconds on Japanese baseball – her reflexes must be slowing. Flick.

I happened to join her just as she was lingering, finger poised, over ‘Who Wants To Be a Millionaire’. She reserved judgement while a contestant wrestled with a question about carborundum. She held fire with the remote long enough for me to notice that the person asking the question was Jeremy Clarkson.

Well, fancy that, Jeremy Clarkson! I had thought vaguely that Jeremy perished without trace on a road trip through the Atacama Desert. Or were there not news reports circulating that he had disappeared for good up the Amazon? But here he was, large as life, exploring the phone-a-friend option with a woman dithering over her final answer.

Hermione’s restless digit flicked the screen on from the bloke to a documentary detailing the sex lives of teenagers in Cabra. Far too much detailing, thought I with a shudder, retreating to the bedroom and the comforts of a good murder mystery.

I was distracted from my reading by the thought that, if Jeremy Clarkson can be a quiz show host, then why not me? I would even be happy to devise my own material. It may be necessary to undergo an apprenticeship, perhaps learning the trade on the local pub quiz circuit. So here we go, with a round of questions under the heading ‘poisons and plagues’.

1. The list of allergens published by the European Union includes ingredients such as peanuts and shellfish which are well known to cause immediate dangers to the health of those who are sensitive. The line-up also includes a five-letter plant famous for its flower and for a ‘Monty Python’ sketch in which John Cleese played a highwayman. Name the plant.

2. Which usually fatal condition is named after a river which flows through northern Democratic Republic of Congo? Apparently the disease was not first identified on the bank of the river but some 60 kilometres away.

3. Which disease that killed millions and disfigured many others was officially declared eliminated by the World Health Organisation in 1980.

4. Which disease did the Roman Emperor Claudius and the United States President Franklin D Roosevelt have in common? The emperor was played by actor Derek Jacobi with a limp, while the real life president spent much of his life in a wheelchair.

5. What do the initials AIDS stand for?

6. What is the condition which appears most frequently on Irish death certificates? This is the opportunistic killer which comes to get us in the end after the other diseases and distresses have first softened us up.

7. What is the most common symptom of cholera, apart from the vomiting and the dehydration? You get a bonus mark if you spell the answer correctly.

8. The MMR vaccine is intended to stave off which three diseases of childhood?

9. The stem of the rhubarb plant is the most delicious food known to mankind since the invention of sugar. But the leaves contain a poisonous concentration of which acid?

10. Egyptian ruler Cleopatra is reported to have died in the year 30 BC as a result of a snake bite. Which type of snake – three letters only – is generally held to have been responsible?

I am open to offers.

(Answers: 1 – lupin; 2 – the Ebola virus; 3 – small pox; 4 – polio; 5 acquired immune deficiency syndrome; 6 – pneumonia; 7 – diarrhoea; 8 - measles, mumps, rubella; 9 – oxalic acid; 10 – asp.)