Early in the year I had called Hugh up excitedly. ‘I’ve just bought a Macintosh. Cost me a thousand pounds.’ ‘What?’ Hugh enjoyed about a week of relaying the news of my fantastic expenditure on something as absurd and unworthy of outlay as a raincoat before he discovered that this Macintosh was a new type of computer.

I dare say we do live in a cheap age, an age where the things that should have value are little prized and things that are empty of worth are too highly rated. But who on earth could think for a second that this is new to our race? Anyone familiar with Aristophanes, Martial, Catullus, Shakespeare, Jonson, Dryden, Johnson, Pope, Swift … You get the point.

It has always been the case, since humans could first record their thoughts, that the ‘wrong people’ have been seen to have arrived at the highest positions.

The emperors, kings, aristocrats, ruling classes and gentry, the arrivistes, parvenus and nouveaux riches, the financiers, merchant princes and industrialists, the artists, designers, literati and cultural elite, the actors, sportsmen, television stars, pop singers and presenters, they have all been unfairly elevated to positions they do not deserve.

‘In a just and properly ordered world,’ the angry ones wail, ‘I should be up there too, but I am too proud to say so, so I shall carp and snipe and rant with indignation and show my contempt for the whole boiling. But deep inside I want to be recognized. I just want to count.’

I feel like my whole life consists of trying to determine whether Stephen Fry or Hugh Laurie is the most amazing person ever.

My opinion on that changes rather a lot.

At the moment it’s Hugh because I’ve been listening to Let Them Talk lots and lots but I know it could be back to Stephen next week.

Which is good.

I think the day I finally figure it out my life will hold no purpose any more.

So, foraging through the headmaster’s desk one afternoon I had happened upon a list which called itself Eleven Plus results, listing Intelligence Quotient Results or some such guff. I noticed it because my name was at the top with an asterisk typed next to it and the words ‘Approaching genius’ added in brackets.
Gromie, the headmaster had underlined it in his blue-black ink and scrawled, ‘Well that bloody explains everything…’