’ assailed me with a welter of abusive chatter from a rotting tree stump, egged on by its wife and two, whip-tailed infant horrors. I chattered back at the family of green monkeys. The 23rd Psalm had no effect whatsoever, but the weather report for UK

, “Sorry mate, you’re going to do this, like it or not.” Result: 20 years on, any arthritic octogenarian in a hippopotamus suit can run the course backwards. If we listened to our bodies, we’d all end up like the Royle Family. Only given a sufficient

can’t resist boring friends, family and colleagues for months about my forthcoming escapades. Like Mister Toad, you’ll find me leaning against the bar in some smoky hostelry, my burgeoning belly straining the buttons on my (metaphorical) canary

-shirts: the Eel Pie Island Ultra (“520 laps in the middle of the historic River Thames”), the Angola Minefield Meander and the 1986 Basra to Baghdad Family Fun Run – all dispatched to the Mencap shop. My God. It really is the end of an era.