Some say he does his weekly food shop wearing nothing but a fez and that he once, after a drunken binge of Crème de menthe, successfully completed Pac-Man's "Final Level" - all we know is, he's called Winbar.

To shatter this air of mystery surrounding epic.LAN's Event Manager, I opened the forum for questions from the community and put them to him. What follows is an in-sight into the world of Winbar.

How're things in the company going (financially wise)? Judging by your post the other day about epic.4 numbers, are we looking at a possibility of no more epics?

There’s obviously a limit to what we can discuss financially, epic.FOUR numbers are quite down on where they need to be to breakeven to the point where the management team may have to subsidise this one to ensure it goes ahead, but we don’t give up. There have been a lot of events in the last few weeks and it is a finically tough time for people to spend money on a luxury like a LAN party, but our numbers are quite a bit higher than other LANs in the same size range at the moment. We’re already working on epic.FIVE, but we need everybody’s support to make sure it goes ahead by spreading the word.

Why are you called Winbar?

It originated from when I first joined a chat room. Back at school, we discovered an RE teacher used to sit in the computer labs in a chatroom, so two of us decided to taunt him under a fake alias, we merged our surnames to come up with a nick and it kind of stuck with me.

Do you ever get tired of looking like Rimmer?

4,691 irradiated haggis.

What does Jon do for a job when he's not thinking about Epic and (to him and the Epic Management Team), how much time do you put into Epic a week?

The day job is a Marketing Manager for a large local authority’s health & wellbeing department, which was an accidental career move, but something I’m quite enjoying. I’m also an independent trainer for things like first aid and lifeguarding.

The amount of time varies within the team and around the proximity to the events. In many of our cases we have to at least book the full week off for the events for preparation and packdown. In weeks leading up to and following on from events, it’s pretty much like a part-time job with some of us finishing our day jobs and coming straight back to work on epic.LAN tasks.

Are there any plans (that can be made public) to try and increase the attendance figures?

There are some things that are already public from our community workshops at epic.THREE, some of these include better online tools such as a loyalty scheme which will give points for various things such as referring new people, taking part in games nights etc which can be ‘cashed in’ against LAN tickets.

We’re hoping to release a new version of the website and forums in the next 6 months or so which we hope will build our online activities.

Then there’s tournaments which we’ll pick up again in a later question.

Do you, and I guess the whole team, find the time to enjoy yourselves at the Epic events?

Of course we do, we don’t get anything back financially for the events, so our motivation is the enjoyment and although it sounds a bit cliché, it’s seeing everybody else enjoy themselves too. We get involved in the games, have a few drinks and try our best to get around to meet people, that’s what it’s all about for us.

Given that the Universe is infinite, and that God is infinite. Would you like any toast?

No, but some crumpets would be good.

In your opinion, what is the greatest item of headwear that has ever existed?

It’s a fez, fezzes are cool.

In order to maintain air speed velocity, how many times per second must an African Swallow beat its wings?

Over 9000

Could an African Swallow carry a coconut?

Yes, but it would have to flap harder.

Why do you still allow Nivek to live?

Because I’ve run out of soda lime.

What aspect of Epic Lans do you enjoy the most ?

Answered earlier to some extent with seeing everybody enjoy themselves, but personally my favourite bit is the pub quiz, especially the epic.THREE one, we feel it was the best one so far and now need to beat that.

The social trips are quite a good part of it too, Silverstone last weekend was excellent.

How difficult was it to start all over again under the Epic Brand compared to your previous brand.

Well we did try to recover the old brand but eventually we decided that a clean sheet would be good for us to try some new things. Other than the obvious financial issues with restarting, thanks to the support of the community epic grew very quickly.

What are your plans on Tournaments in relation to future lan events?
(These may help get additional players but may detract from the atmosphere...)

We’ve said from day 1 of epic that tournaments will feature at our events, but from past experience of both events we’ve run and attended, it has to be done right. I still think that the way to do it will be almost having 2 separate events running concurrently would be the best way, where there is one competitive hall and another social hall (the epic.LANs you know now) and a dedicated team looking after the needs of each hall. Hosting the events together gives the economies of scale and allows either ‘side’ to take part in the opposite activities, e.g. everyone joining in the pub quiz to relax.

I think setting out our expectations with tournaments very clearly from the outset, particularly in relation to the games, prizes and clan behaviour will also be key. Unfortunately a small number of incidents do give the competitive element a bad name, but I know plenty of decent competitive gamers who don’t cause trouble and would love an event like ours.

We have run a mixed competitive/fun event before the various CLUK issues and it was recognised to be one of the best events out of the 21 we ran as part of that organisation, so it definitely is possible.

Who killed your partner in crime, Branflake?

Bran is still around, but he has some sort of real life to deal with nowadays and a mini Branflake due in the near future!

Where do you see yourself and epic.lan in 5 years time?

I’d like to see epic.LAN as being a great successful alternative LAN party in the UK, and by alternative (before anybody suggests it), I’m not saying competition to other LAN events. There is plenty of room in the country for a few more larger events catering for different audiences, and providing LAN gaming doesn’t die off in that time, which we hope it doesn’t, then we’d like to see the events and community grow and become even more epic.

If Epic.Lan was a woman.. who would she be!?

I think there is only one answer to that question, the legend that is Haden’s mum!