Obiter’s request for oddball interview questions brought in some real horrors. Matthew Parry of Cardiff recalls being asked by ‘an esteemed London chambers’: ‘If you were to run away and join the circus, what act would you be and why?’

Possibly they had a traumatic experience with clowns as a child, he surmises. Lindsay Taylor of Ringwood in Hampshire survived being asked the animal question. ‘Thankfully, I had seen a news article a few days before about orangutans using sticks as tools. They were considered innovative and the act of making their environment work for them [thought] evolutionary.’ That got her through to the next round.

Sebastian Peattie escaped a career in wine sales when he was asked: ‘Do you have a sense of humour.’ ‘I replied (with I thought a clearly ironic sense of humour) “no”….and here I am in the legal profession.’

This week’s prize, however, goes to John Shephard in Northampton. ‘At interview for a place at Worcester College I was asked by the junior don, Bryan Gould [yes, that one]: “What do you think of bricks?”

The Obiter bottle is on its way.

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