FROM outside, The Angel pub in Glemsford looks pretty much like any other village watering hole. But unlike most pubs if you put a question to one of its regulars, there's a good chance they'd know the answer.

FROM outside, The Angel pub in Glemsford looks pretty much like any other village watering hole.

But unlike most pubs if you put a question to one of its regulars, there's a good chance they'd know the answer.

For three weeks running, its 20-strong pub quiz team have trumped hundreds of others around the UK to win the National Quiz, making The Angel's one of the nation's cleverest pubs.

Its success has astounded landlady Paula L'Estrange, who served the drinks and cleared the tables while The Angel's combined mass of grey matter went into battle.

She said the pub holds its own quiz nights but its regulars wanted to pit their wits against wider opposition.

Mrs L'Estrange puts the success of the pub's team down to the range of knowledge it held.

“We had a good spread of people of all ages with across the board knowledge. The team is drawn mostly from the village and we know everybody on the team. We will play it again.”

In its most recent victory, the Angel's team won £1,800 in prize money and helped raise £6,000 for charity and scored 73 points out of 80.

Mrs L'Estrange's husband Kevin said: “We run a village pub here in a quiet village in Suffolk and with the recent smoking ban now taking its toll on the colder nights, the quiz has really helped fill our pub on a Sunday night.”

National Quiz director Edwin Hamilton said: “They are a bit brainy down there. They are a particularly good pub and it is an excellent example of how the quiz works to encourage people back into pubs after the smoking ban and so on because the whole pub plays.

“The key to the Angel's success is they've got young and old so they've got a really balanced team.”

Mr Hamilton, who lives in Sudbury but whose business is based on Lancashire, told of his surprise at learning one of the top quiz teams was so close to his home town.

“I couldn't believe it when I heard a pub from Glemsford had won. I thought, 'hang on, that's where I live',” he said.

Although the game, which now attracts hundreds of pubs nationwide, is played over the internet, cheating is virtually impossible.

Not only are response times for answers to be submitted monitored but many of the questions set are designed to be difficult to research online. This means players would struggle to use the internet to research answers before submitting them.

The average response time for the Angel's team is between four and five seconds per question.

The pub's next National Quiz night is on December 9.

Fancy having a go? Here are some sample questions:

Which Snooker player has the nickname 'The Pocket Dynamo'?

Which league side was Alan Ball playing for at the time of the 1966 World Cup?

In which month is Royal Ascot?

Ted Danson and Tom Selleck were two of the 'Three Men and a Baby', who was the third?

Graham Dott, Blackpool, June, Steve Guttenberg