IF you’re sat in the pub tonight spare a thought for the chap who used to know it all.

You know the sort. The king of the facts, the person you always want on a pub quiz team because they have an unbelievable ability to remember stuff – not always useful stuff, but stuff nevertheless.

Facts about sport, 1980s pop, the original names of far-off African nations, dates and statistics.

They could usually be found silently sipping their pint at the bar, waiting for their moment to shine.

That moment came, when in the course of a conversation someone would stumble upon a question that no normally-minded person would know the answer to.

As those around them wracked their brains for the answer, they would bide their time before quietly – and with minimum fanfare – they would provide the answer.

Their encyclopaedic brains firing out the answer in a nano-second before disguising a slightly smug smile they would return to their pint, their mission complete.

But sadly their sorts aren’t needed anymore because nowadays we all carry around smart phones, with instant access to the world wide web – and in particular google.

No sooner has someone posed a question than someone has whipped out their phone and googled the answer.

I suppose in theory we should all be geniuses by now, but I suspect we’re not.

Probably because most of us can’t remember the answer from one pint to the next.

And it’s not just the know-it-alls who have suffered.

Apparently pubs are having to go to more and more extreme measures to protect the integrity of their quizzes.

When once it was tricky to say the least to smuggle in an encylopedia stuffed up your jumper, now there’s no need.

I read recently of pubs turning off the wi-fi, inventing cheat-free questions and even demanding people hand over their phones before the weekly quiz gets going.

I wonder if Larry Page and Sergey Brin realise what they have unleashed.... try googling it!