In the back room of a pub in Norwich, a small group of people are excitedly shouting things like: “Buffy Summers! 390 points!” “Virgil!” “The one from Devil May Cry?” “No, from Dante’s Inferno!” “210 points!” This is Draft Day at the Cookie Cup, a fantasy football league with an emphasis on the fantasy.I’ve never been a follower of the old foot-to-ball, but the Cookie Cup gives it an appealingly nerdy hook: what if the teams were made up of your favourite fictional characters? The result is a sort of Premier League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.As each name gets shouted out, they’re added to that person’s team on the draft board, to the soundtrack of curses from anyone hoping to grab that player for themselves. This is how bitter rivalries form between people who’ve never met before.Take Patrick, assembling a sci-fi-themed squad. He methodically works his way through Star Wars characters, then Star Trek…until a competitor snatches Spock out from under him. He turns with gritted teeth and a red biro to the print-out stuck to the beery tabletop, looking for another USS Enterprise crew member to plug the gaping hole in his defence. Over in one corner, Cookie Cup Commissioner…