Well, (as dear old Peter Jones used to begin many of his Just a Minute monologues despite always being pulled up by some mean-spirited pedant - hesitation, I suppose, from the denied trinity which included repetition and deviation) I struggled my way towards a score of 139 in the BBC IQ test - one short of Madonna. But I'm pretty happy about this: Marilyn Monroe, after all, famously outscored Einstein in a similar test. And anyway, I've always been terrible at imaginative logic and matters numeric, particularly so if I am denied the use of pen and paper. I find doing sums in my head pretty tough anyway, which although frustrating is helped by the fact that most of the people I know who are good with figures and can remember countless numerical combinations: telephone numbers, dates,statistics and so on, often seem to be touched with a little helpful idiot savant(ism). And most of them, not great at social interaction - capable, but flawed; their judgement always seemingly slightly awry, and in a twist of irony,also their sense of timing.

Not so very long ago I did one of those IQ tests you get from books with titles like "Test Your IQ" often seen languishing on tables in badly stacked columns in those cheap and tawdry bookshops no serious book lover would ever go near. And if memory serves I managed only a shameful 90 odd on that occasion which is probably closer to my true ability in this area of raw thinking. I suppose I'm a right brainer - random and intuitive as opposed to the typical left brainer - logical and sequential. And if that is the case, I don't suppose IQ tests,such as they are, test my abilities at all and only focus on what I already know I can't do - Well ( as Peter Jones was apt to begin his sentences).