A holiday weekend of ups and downs.

Leaving Fakenham Races £116 richer due to a succession of well-picked horses was a particular highlight. Definitely an ‘up’.

Leaving Fakenham Races minus my trousers, shoes and socks due to an Unfortunate Incident was less good. Bit of a ‘down’ there.

The highlight, however, had to be Oxford winning ‘University Challenge’, tragically my favourite TV programme.

Normally, I would cheer for the oiks, so an all-Oxbridge final would present me with a bit of a dilemma.

However, this series the Cambridge team has been captained by a chap called ‘Wallace’. Wallace, perhaps unfairly and for whatever reason, has made me want to commit some small act of random violence every time his ugly, smug, self-satisfied face has leered out of my TV screen. With all due respect.

So Oxford it was.

It’s always been my ambition to appear on ‘University Challenge’. Admittedly, as ambitions go it’s not up there with walking on the moon or finding a solution to the Arab-Israeli problem. But a man’s got to dream.

I blew my first chance when I failed my A-levels. And I think it unlikely that the ‘Professionals’ spin-off, in which they invite teams representative of different trades, will consider ‘people that sit around at home all day, occasionally doing a bit of this and that’.

However – inspiration! Perhaps they would accept a Bloggers’ team. They could pitch us against another profession that churn out shit on a regular basis – journalists from ‘Take a Break’ magazine, perhaps.

I would be able to cover questions on UK stand-up comedy, the novels of Peter Ackroyd and British confectionery (1975-present day). So all we’d need would be a particle physicist, a brain surgeon and a doctor of classics and theology and we’d be home and dry.

Any volunteers?