Academic geriatnclans are always looking for an improved objective, quantifiable measure of biological ageing in humans to replace that unphysiological and arbitrary scale 'years survived'. The MCQ may be the nearest we have come yet to achieving this Holy Grail. An individual's facility with the setting and answering of MCQs separates the medical genera- tions more surely than years. I am only grateful I was educated in a less rigorous but perhaps...