You’ll have to excuse me if I seem a little distracted this morning but, supported by over twenty expert surgeon colleagues from Holby City working in teams, I am in the middle of a delicate multi-hour operation to separate the Siamese twins born to a refugee North Korean couple several months ago.

I can assure you that your sense of surprise at this news is no greater than mine. Having taken up my position on the sofa in front of television with my preferred pint of gin & tonic and tub of Ben & Jerry’s peanut-and-tomato-flavoured ice cream, I was stunned to hear the continuity announcer introduce last night’s episode with “And now strap yourselves in for the first of a two-part special from Holby City that will conclude tomorrow night …”, not least because I shall now have to come up with an excuse that will allow me to withdraw with a degree of dignity from tonight’s previous commitment to give an illustrated lecture entitled And Now For Something Completely Different – Aspects of Forty Years In Language Education to the Hanworth & Feltham branch of the Womens Institute. The strains & stresses of being a leading-edge surgeon are bad enough without having to deal with sudden scheduling changes such as this.

In the world of professional sport developments often move just as fast. Yesterday no sooner had I returned to the flat from taking my car in for its service [£832 since you ask …] than the media was full of the news that Danny Cipriani of Wasps & England, who will be one of my main rivals for the fly half spot in the Autumn internationals, is to make his comeback against Bath tonight, some six weeks earlier than anticipated. All of us in rugby will be wishing him well – nobody who saw those horrendous pictures of his dislocated ankle in May will forget them in a hurry. Then it was only as I was slowly reaching consciousness this morning that I heard on the radio that poor injury-prone Jonny Wilkinson is in the wars once again, having picked up suspected knee ligament damage in last night’s Newcastle game against Gloucester.

The message of course is that in Life you just have to keep plugging away because Fate could take a hand at any moment. In the afternoon I went up to the gym for the first time in several weeks in anticipation of a late call-up to the 32-man England training squad – I would be letting both myself and the country down if I wasn’t in the peak of physical condition should this happen.