I have been going to the gym on and off – more on, I have to say – for the last 15 years or so. I remember summer 2004, at the age of 28, contracting chicken pox for the very first time and lying in a bath of bicarbonate of soda, peering down at the small, but insistent dome of my belly, thinking, “here we go, then, the middle aged spread I have heard so much about”. Incredible, really, how ready you are to consign yourself to the knackers’ yard...

In 2011, two weeks before Christmas, my last surviving grandparent died, my paternal grandmother. It is an odd feeling to realise you are a generation up. I have posted many times on Twitter about the huge impression both my grandmothers made upon me, for very different reasons, when I was growing up. They were both very different but massive influences on me and I think if you asked my parents they would tell you they can see both of them in my personality. I don't think it is a spoiler...