THE “minor bit” is incontestable, the “good luck” dependent on whether you are I or not.

Essentially, I signed a contract with a TV production company to develop a sitcom pilot I have written. It’s very, very early days, and about a million things could happen to stop the development process, but it’s the first time I’ve signed a writing contract.

I wouldn’t have been in the position at all if it hadn’t have been for Twitter. Because it was through Twitter I found my agent, Kate Haldane of PBJ Management. Or, rather, she found me.

Kate follows me on Twitter, and we’d had the very occasional exchange, but nothing to trouble the press.

Then about this time last year I was doing some Christmas shopping. I say Christmas shopping… I was actually in the Apple Store in Liverpool ONE with my son playing Angry Birds on an iPad. My phone did that buzzy thing it does when my Twitter account gets an @mention.

There was a message from @katehaldane.

“@Gary_Bainbridge Are you in the Apple Store in Liverpool ONE?”

“@katehaldane Er, yes.”

Thirty seconds later, she was introducing herself to me. We had a nice chat. It turned out she was a Liverpolitan who’d moved down to London yonks ago and had just moved back to set up a satellite office for PBJ Management. She had recognised me from my avatar, which I don’t use on Twitter any more, but is in the top right of this page. I was in profile when she saw me, just like my pic.

I went home, pleased to have made a good contact, but later that evening my friend Griff Phillips, with whom I had written a radio sitcom pilot, emailed to inform me that a theatre company wanted to do a staged reading of our show, and asked us to invite anybody we knew from The Industry.

I contacted Kate, and, as a result, she took me on her books.

I read a blog post from somebody recently which said that only hard work can get you an agent. But that isn’t true. Hard work is important, crucial. But you have to get lucky. Lots of good people will never get representation, no matter how hard they work.

Because of a ludicrous series of events I ended up with one of the best agents in the business

I got lucky.

This was a blog post on my old Graham Bandage account. I have reposted it here because there is no law against it.

 

—

Who invented the names of fruit? I have often wondered.

I imagine there was a Fruit Naming Board. And here I am, imagining it…

INT. FRUIT NAMING BOARD – DAY

BOSS: 
Right, what have we got next?

LACKEY: 
There’s this one, Clive. This round, orange thing.

BOSS: 
Skin’s a bit tough.

LACKEY: 
Yeah, you peel it off. And if you squeeze it, I reckon you could sell the juice in tiny bottles in pubs for a fortune.

BOSS: 
Right. So it’s round, and it’s orange… I think a name suggests itself. We’ll call it … a round.

LACKEY: 
Won’t that cause confusion in pubs, Clive?

BOSS: 
All right, an orange, then. What’s next?

LACKEY: 
Bit of bad news on the grape front. Swindon’s already claimed it for those little round things that come in bunches.

BOSS:  
Ah, bollocks! All right, we’ll call it a yellow.

LACKEY: 
Clive, you can’t just name fruits after their colour all the time. Besides, I think Swindon’s got first dibs on that for the long curved thing they found.

BOSS: 
Oh, this is just stupid. I know! I know the very thing that will stop the confusion. We’ll call ours a grapefruit.

LACKEY: 
What? To distinguish it from the other sort of grape that’s also a fruit?

BOSS: 
Ian, who’s the boss here? Next?

LACKEY:  
We’ve got this peach. It’s sweet as nectar, but, and here’s the thing, it’s got smooth skin.

BOSS:  
What? It’s got no fur and it’s sweet as nectar, Ian? Nectar, Ian… Hmm, I know! An alo-peach-ia!

I bet that’s exactly how it happened.

WHEN I was a young boy, I lived in a lovely Victorian end-terrace house. There was a park at the end of the road, which I frequently visited, and which I mentioned in my previous blog entry. This was, of course, in the days before paedophiles were invented.

In the early days, although we had an inside toilet (it being the mid-1970s), we also had an outside toilet, which was rank but occasionally handy. In fact, I also mentioned the toilet in my previous blog entry. I am always mentioning the toilet. I should stop mentioning the toilet.

Anyway, all good things must come to an end, as, indeed, must all bad things, and my parents had the toilet removed.

Unfortunately, we did not use a qualified toilet remover, we employed some bloke with a lump hammer who knocked it down and naffed off, crucially neglecting to stop up the pipe properly.

Flash forward a few years, and the chickens came home to roost. But not real chickens, as that would be quite nice and we’d have had eggs. No, these were metaphorical chickens. THE WORST SORT.

The flagstones in the adjoining alley had collapsed into the mulchy horribleness caused by the unblocked pipe. The water board repaired the path, but the damage underground was already done.

Flash forward a couple more years and teenage GB went into the utility room just off the kitchen. They say that in the city you’re no more than 10 feet away from a rat. On this occasion, I was no more than two feet away from one. It looked me in the eye, I looked back. Then we both ran away squeaking like mice, and not brave mice, either.

The rat’s underground pad had been washed away by the toilet demolition, and since then he and his extended family had been living under our floorboards.

We called the exterminator, who dropped little red bowls of poison here and there about the house. “Don’t let the dog eat it,” he warned us. We’d guessed that. “What happens now,” we asked. “The poison makes them drowsy, so you can kill them,” he replied. We hadn’t guessed that. We’d thought he was the exterminator.

For the next week, the men of the house, aided by our trusty Jack Russell ratter, Patch, went on a killing spree. Slightly drunk rats would stagger out, to be clubbed by the end of a walking stick, or their necks would be broken by the jaws of our runty dog.

Finally there were no more rats left. I felt like George Clooney at the end of From Dusk Till Dawn (which hadn’t yet been made, just going to show that Jung was right). Rats are horrible, by the way. Not one redeeming feature.

It was two weeks later that the smell started. A sickly sweet smell whose origin could not be determined. Eventually we traced it to behind the television. We looked, our hearts in our mouths.

There was nothing there. Then I suggested that we check under the floorboards. We lifted the boards and there it was. A rat. A dead rat. A dead rat decomposing with its stomach cavity fizzing with a white substance.

“I’m not picking THAT up,” I said.

“I’m not picking THAT up,” said my uncle, Bernard.

“Woof!” said the dog.

Then I remembered THIS…

The robot hand toy I had been given years before. At last, a proper use for it. I gripped it and slowly manoeuvred it into position. I squeezed the trigger and with a certain amount of grim satisfaction I lifted the rat by its head. I gently raised it, ready to drop it into the Kwik Save bag being held open by my uncle, when . . .

SPLUP! The rat broke in two around the stomach and its hind quarters fell back into the hole. I was a bit sick in my mouth, but concentrated on the matter at robot hand. I dropped the head end into the bag, quickly went back for the other end, then emptied a bottle of bleach over the rat’s next-to-last resting place. Then I ran upstairs to be properly sick like a big vomity sicko.

I learned a valuable lesson that day. It was this: never attempt to pick up a decomposing rat with a robot hand toy without the assistance and/or advice of a qualified structural engineer.

WHEN I was six years old, I made a new friend called Matthew Small. It was an appropriate name at the time, but I expect it rankled when he was older.

I was not one of those children one hears about these days with a garden. We had a yard with an outside toilet. This is not one of those misery-lit blogs – we also had an inside toilet, but nobody was ever so desperate as to use the outside one. I used it once, but it was not the best place to be in the dark at six years old.

Anyway, let us move away from the toilet. This is the second of two consecutive blog entries which mention toilets and I do not want you to think I am an obsessive.

I was lucky that there was a park – Greenbank Park – at the bottom of my road, and when I was not reading or drawing I was there, riding my bike and attempting – and failing – to climb the easiest tree in the joint. This, of course, was in the days before they invented paedophiles.

Anyway, a few days after I befriended Matthew Small, who lived down the road, I was playing at his house, and his mother, Maureen, suggested, presumably in an attempt at damage limitation, that she take us to the park on our bikes.

She had not met my mother at that point, so she took us to my house and introduced herself, asking for permission to take me to the park. “I promise I will look after him,” she assured my mother, and they both chuckled at the very idea that I would be involved in any sort of calamity, and off we went.

To be fair to Maureen, she had not read my column at this point, owing to the fact it was 1978.

Anyway, Matthew and I had a smashing time riding around the park, fully revelling in being six-year-old boys on bikes.

Here is a picture of Greenbank Park. There is a boy standing in the middle of the picture. I do not know who he is, but he is a handy placeholder for my exact location, just before we were to leave the park, when Maureen noticed I had managed to get dog excrement on the hem of my, no doubt flared, trousers.

And this is the point at which I display the cartooning skills which I began to manifest as a six-year-old boy…

I do not know if you have ever ridden a wet bike home while covered in lichen, crisp packets and duck poo, but if not I have experienced it on your behalf.

This is what it was like in the 1970s. It wasn’t all Studio 54 and Welcome Back, Kotter.

I HAD to go to the toilet in a motorway service station. I cannot say I enjoyed the experience.

Probably this is intentional. These places are designed to process a lot of people. The proprietors don’t want chaps hanging around thinking, “Well, I have conducted the necessary business, but this urinal is exquisitely designed, with curlicues and fleur-de-lys and whatnot. Perhaps I will tarry awhile and just, y’know, really take it in,” because there would be a queue.

No, basic facilities are the order of the day in motorway service station lavatories, with, perhaps the odd vending machine which one only finds in motorway service station lavatories. I refer, of course, to the chewable toothbrush.

Who uses the chewable toothbrush? We live on a tiny island. We can drive from our north coast to the south in 12 hours. And, even so, if you don’t have the nous to take a toothbrush and paste with you on a journey so long that you need to brush your teeth you don’t deserve teeth, or a car. Or a head.

Anyway, this particular service station had wholeheartedly committed itself to the basic lavatorial aesthetic. It was an austere bog for austere times, for, while there were several urinals, there was only one sink.

This sounds worse than it is, but only marginally. Instead of a conventional sink, it was a large circular stainless steel sink with a central cylinder attached to which were plunger taps and soap dispensers. If anybody were to make a juvenile parody of Doctor Who called, for example, Doctor Loo, it would make an ideal TARDIS console.

The idea is that several gentlemen can use the Omnisink at once, increasing lavatorial turnover, while reducing the sink footprint, as the innovation was no doubt sold in a meeting somewhere.

What it does not take into account is that gentlemen generally go to great pains not to have any sort of eye contact with other gentlemen in gentlemen’s lavatories. It is a point of etiquette as iron-clad as the 1-5-3-stall urinal rule.

For those unfamiliar with the 1-5-3-stall urinal rule – women, basically – imagine a row of five urinals, or, indeed an Omniurinal the width of five men, elbows slightly akimbo. The first man to enter the lavatory takes up position 1, generally the spot furthest from the door. The second man takes up position 5, at the other end of the row or Omniurinal.

The third man to enter stands at position 3, absolutely equidistant from positions 1 and 5.

Now, where does the fourth man stand – at position 2 or position 4?

This is a trick question, of course. The answer is neither. Positions 2 and 4 are never used, as this would imply an preference for the man at position 1 or the man at position 5. Instead, the fourth man uses one of the stalls.

If a fifth man enters, and all stalls are occupied, he waits until one of the first four men is finished, then takes his place. These are the rules.

I stood at the Omnisink, along with three other men. I depressed the water plunger. Water came out for as long as I pressed it and no longer. I was able to wet one hand at a time. Washing my hands to the standard specified by the NHS was going to be nigh on impossible.

I pressed the soap dispenser. Nothing came out. No matter, I thought, I will use the dispenser of the man next to me.

However, he was in a similar predicament. And reached a similar conclusion. My right hand and his left dashed out at the same time and we touched each other’s hand.

Now, let me say immediately that I was entirely comfortable with this. I hug my male friends  – awkwardly and only if called upon so to do, admittedly, but that is because I shun human contact of all kinds.

The point is I am not a homophobe. What I am is a punchinthemouthphobe. Some might call it cowardice, but they would be offensively wrong. It is a medical condition. As it happens, I would love to get a punch in the mouth, but unfortunately I am allergic to them.

We pulled apart as if shocked by a cattle prod. Wildly I looked around, determined not to catch his eye. On the wall to my right were two temporary soap dispensers.

I went for the one on the right, knowing that he would go for the one on the left, nearest to him.

What I did not realise was that the soap dispenser on the left was actually a toilet seat cleanser dispenser. And so my hand arrived at the single soap dispenser fractionally before his.

Essentially I squirted liquid soap into the hand of a man I had never met before, a gesture so unexpectedly intimate the man actually said, “Garp.”

“Ah, this one works,” I said, unnecessarily. Wordlessly, he went back to his Omnisink station. I went back to a different one, slightly further away.

The whole experience left a sour taste. Perhaps I should have bought one of those chewable toothbrushes.

I WAS on the bus today, and there was a woman in front of me reading a book. And it wasn’t That Book.

I was astonished. I took a closer, if still surreptitious, look, and determined that it wasn’t even a smutty book as the main characters appeared to be called Hilda and Pedro, and there is no way that they would be the names of people in smutty books.

It led me to ask people on Twitter if there were any other names which they would find difficult to accept in dirty books. And it turned out there were…

@Sara Priestley Edwina

@lola_spankcheek Gertrude, Percy and Fanny

@Er0_0 Boris, Beatrice

@Organic_Mummy Bob

@1755Dictionary Marcel, Sebastian, Denzil, Belshazzar, Twyla, Hildagard.

@rodgernash Leopold

@MrSamJohnstone Wenlock and Mandeville

@Shequeen Rover

@titianred Cecil, Tony Blair, Cliff

@joolzah Winifred and Melvyn

@Scunner666 Keith

@amwii Gary

@bettybluetoyou Gary

@auriablis Graham and Doris

@CheshireCaveman Max Mosley

@CatherineLawler Kevin, Ethel, Nigel, Barbara and Gary

@The_No_Show Brian Eno

@MarkW06 Joyce

@poeticsinBeta Boris Johnson

@heideewickes Obidiah

@nick241274 Alan

@TimWallington Deidre

@m2comms Adolf

@jo_the_hat Nigel, Graham and Delia

@Badger5000 Adolf

@Thekjhandbook Eileen, Albert, Doreen, Colin

@cjhancock Fanny

@mikiewoods Albert and Norma

@ejbreezenelmes Olwen, Dewi, Blodwyn, Pwll

@Strnks Charles, Camilla

@fenelope Colin

@geejaydee Clive

@kaylawoi Gertrude, Beryl, Agnes

@SarahPinborough Brian, Enid, Nigel

@JosieTrav Marjorie, Pam

@Tactless_Claire Doreen

@Twistedlilkitty Mum and Dad

@M2comms Ethel, Wilbur

@comedyfish Gilbert

@Notorious_QRG Boris

@CherryMakes Roger

@lukeosullivan Giles

@skirdyloon Gary

@DanPeroni Muriel

 

Then I worked out which names appeared most often – I could not count Boris and Boris Johnson, and Brian and Brian Eno as joint entries – and made a chart. Here is the chart…

 

Both @twistedlilkitty and @Shequeen made me laugh. But @twistedlilkitty wins because she made me laugh first and I make the rules.

Anyway, it is official. Gary is the name that most people would find difficult to accept in one of those books. I do not know how to process that information.

ONE of the great pleasures of my day job is that I get to see the regular Caught On Camera feature in our sister paper, the Liverpool Echo, before anybody else. For those of you unfamiliar with it, it is a bit like the Tatler society pages, except instead of debs and toffs it features low-level criminals.

It also has a higher level of interactivity, in the sense that readers are invited to ring a number and identify the subjects.

Now, I do not want you to think that I am in favour of crime in any way. If anything, I think it should definitely be illegal. But the ludicrousness of some of the crimes featured amuses me on occasion.

As an example, in yesterday’s Echo, police were keen to identify a driver who filled up his tank and left the forecourt without paying for the fuel. This is a common enough crime, but the detail which struck me was the amount taken: £50.01.

I suppose it is possible that there was a £50.01-sized deficit in the driver’s tank and that he filled it up to the brim, but somehow I doubt it.

It is also possible that what we might be dealing with here is a very considerate crook, one who has thought: “In many ways, I am disappointed with the course of action I am about to take. One of the ways I can ameliorate the crime which I am about to commit is by restricting the amount of fuel I will abstract, say £50.” And then he has accidentally and regretfully gone over the target.

If only more low-level criminals paid this sort of attention to the impact of their activities, it would go some way to improving their public image. Perhaps muggers, once they have performed their distasteful business, could hand over a card with the local Victim Support telephone number.

Graffiti artists could take courses in calligraphy and grammar. The more fastidious would study the laws of libel and ensure, before committing paint to wall, that Tracy M does indeed do it for a bag of chips.

But the most likely explanation is that the miscreant was not operating with malice a-forecourt. He probably just fell into The Other Penny Trap. I have written before at length about The Penny Trap, which one falls into whenever one overpays in a shop by a penny and then has to decide whether to stick around for the change and look like a miser, or nip out of the shop before the assistant can say: “Ey, love, ‘ere’s your change.”

But The Other Penny Trap is specific to filling stations. I am sure you have experienced it if you drive. When one intends to fill a tank with £50 of fuel, one clutches the nozzle nonchalantly. Perhaps one finds oneself reading the sign on the pump advertising a special offer on rubbish yellow torches.

But as the figure hits £49.50, one stops dead. Then one risks a final spurt up to £49.96. Then time slows down. One squeezes the trigger so gently that specialist measuring equipment would be required to prove that it has moved. And the figure goes up to £49.97. One feels like a pontoon player on 18. “Hit me,” one tells the dealer, as one squeezes the trigger. An ace! £49.98. “Hit me again,” one says. Another ace! £49.99. 

Will one fold now? No, because then one would be caught in the normal Penny Trap. “Hit me,” one says. One squeezes the trigger. A two of clubs. £50.01. One then has to trudge into the kiosk to take one’s punishment.

“Pump three,” one mutters. “Fifty pounds AND ONE PENCE,” the cashier cries out. Everybody else in the kiosk looks up and thinks: “Idiot. He has fallen into The Other Penny Trap. Oh, look, a tin of Old English Travel Sweets. I don’t think I have ever seen anybody buy them.”

So, if anything, I understand the fuel thief’s bid for freedom from The Other Penny Trap humiliation. But I can’t help thinking that it is now worse for him as now everybody in Liverpool knows he messed up at the pumps. Crime does not pay. Obviously. It steals.

I VEER wildly between fancying myself as a suave James Bond-type – an image of me which regular readers will no doubt share – and accepting that I am actually the sort of man who produces a detailed drawing of a belt with a cup holder because he keeps letting mugs of tea go cold.

Delusion got the better of me last week when I bought a new suit. It was on special offer. In fact, I don’t remember the last time I bought an item of clothing that was not on special offer. I do not want you to think I am cheap, but you would not be wrong.

This new suit was part of the M&S Italian Collezione. Collezione is Italian for collection, I guess. I think I know this instinctively because I am one-16th Italian, although the only words of Italian I know for sure are “ciao” and “pizza”. In any case, it boasted the best in Italian styling, and that was good enough for me.

But when I got it home, I had to admit to myself that I had no idea what Italian styling was. I put it on the bed, next to my English-styled M&S suit, and, to be honest, I was baffled. It was like doing a spot the difference between two pictures where the puzzle compiler had forgotten to change any details on the picture on the right.

Eventually, I found an extra tiny pocket on the inside. That must be what Italian styling is. They probably use it for the keys to their Lambrettas, or to store parmesan cheese, or something. I don’t know, I am only one- 16th Italian. Nevertheless, it was enough.

And so, I wore it for work for the first time. I combined it with some brown Chelsea boots and an open-necked white shirt. And the sun was blazing, so I was wearing sunglasses. Obviously, I looked like a ponce, but I didn’t care. My latent Italianate nature had asserted itself. I felt Neapolitan, cosmopolitan even, as I strode through the city centre.

So when a group of three Mediterranean- looking tourists stopped me to ask directions, I was entirely unsurprised. They had clearly recognised me as one of them.

“Where is Mathew Street?” asked the lone woman in the group.

I could have told her. But we were about 30 metres away from the Cavern Quarter. And I had to walk through Mathew Street to get to work.

“Follow me,” I said. I will show you visitors to our city how friendly and helpful the people of Liverpool are, I thought, and it will not cost me anything.

I do not know if you have ever led a group of three people who do not speak your language terribly well, and who are determined to drink in the atmosphere of the crowded city centre you are in a hurry to get through in order to get to work, but it is not as easy as you would think.

“If you could just . . . erm, yes, this way . . . erm, no, that’s . . . ” I burbled, as I attempted to round up the tourists. I spoke to the female ringleader. “Where have you come from?”

“Spain,” she said. “My friends are fanatics of The Beatles. They do not speak English.”

Spain! Great. I know more Spanish than Italian. Specifically, I know the words for hello and goodbye.

“Oh, well, he’s come to the right place,” I said. “You’re much better off here for Beatles stuff than, say, Manchester.”

She looked blank.

“Where in Spain?” I asked.

“Murcia. You know it?”

Not really, I thought. I have no idea where Murcia is. But I refuse to feel guilty about it. You were 30 metres from Mathew Street and didn’t know where it was.

“Yes,” I said, determined to stick to the fiction that I was cosmopolitan. “Oh, here we are.” I had deposited them in Mathew Street. It was up to them now.

“Thank you,” said the woman. Her friends copied her. “Thank you.”

I was touched that they had spoken to me in my mother tongue. I decided I would say goodbye to them in theirs.

“Ciao,” I said. I turned away, and walked on to work, repeating the words “adios” and “idiot” in my head all the way.

NOW for the second part of last week’s column. For those of you thinking, “I didn’t see a ‘to be continued . . . ’ at the end of last week’s column,” to be honest I didn’t know last week that there would be a Part Two either.

For those of you who did not see last week’s column, I had French onion soup for the first time and did not like it very much. That is pretty much all of last week’s column.

Anyway, while out shopping, I found myself in a situation where I would have to choose an ice cream from a selection proffered. All the usual suspects were there: vanilla, strawberry, chocolate, double chocolate, triple chocolate, apotheosis of chocolate.

And there, on the end, was a green one. “Oh, good,” I thought. “I like mint.” But when I looked more closely, I discovered it was pistachio.

“Oh, good,” I thought again. “I have never had pistachio ice cream before. People who say their favourite ice cream is pistachio always sound sophisticated. I bet this is right up my street.”

And then I remembered what happened with French onion soup. I eyed the vanilla. It had black bits in it. You can’t go wrong with vanilla with black bits in it.

Then I thought, “There is NO WAY it could happen again.”

The ice cream seller coughed. I looked up. I think his patience over my browsing had reached breaking point. I had to make a quick decision. “Pistachio, please,” I said.

I should have seen the warning signs. While all the other tubs of ice cream looked as if they had experienced heavy shelling, the pistachio was a bowling green.

I swear I saw the ice cream seller give his colleague a sly smile as the scoop broke into the tub on the end for the first time in living memory. I am surprised that he actually charged me.

Did I enjoy my pistachio treat? Perhaps this will answer your question…

THE SMASHING ICE-CREAM COMPANY BOARDROOM – 50 YEARS AGO

MD: Figgis, bring us up to speed.

FIGGIS: Obviously we have already done vanilla, strawberry and increasing potencies of chocolate. We have even forgotten to take out the black bits from vanilla and charged twice the price, but a new flavour, sir? You are asking for the moon.

MD: Give me the moon, Figgis. Give me the moon.

FIGGIS: OK. We have come up with pistachio.

MD: What the hell is pistachio? Let me have a lick.

MD LICKS THE GREEN ICE CREAM AND SPITS IT OUT ACROSS THE BOARDROOM TABLE.

MD: That is revolting. You made an ice cream that tastes of marzipan? That yellow stuff that all right-minded people spend Christmas Night picking off their fruitcake?

FIGGIS: AND we’ve coloured it precisely the same shade of green as Kryptonite and the nuclear fuel rods that Homer accidentally leaves in Springfield at the beginning of every episode of The Simpsons. If that doesn’t tip people off . . . 

MD: What is The Simpsons?

FIGGIS: Sorry, it’s an anachronistic reference to something that won’t be created for another 30 years. I did not think it through.

MD: You’ve done well, Figgis. Put this green glop next to our normal ice cream, and it will make our normal ice cream seem as ambrosia, the mythical food of the gods, in comparison. We’ll sell a shedload of the good stuff.

All you people who say you like pistachio, it’s all a big joke, isn’t it? You’ve all tried it and said, “This is vile. Let’s see if we can mess up some poor dupe’s ice cream eating experience by ‘bigging it up’ in the Sunday supplements.”

So, you win. I have had it with things that I have never tried before. Once bitten, twice shy. Twice bitten, retreat into an impervious cocoon and never come out. That is my new motto. There will be no Part Three.

I’VE always assumed I’d be the sort of person who would like French onion soup. I like soup, generally. I’ve got a French GCSE. And if you asked me which was my favourite bulb-shaped allium, onion would be in the top two.

In fruit machine terms, that is three lemons, and I would expect a load of flavour and approval coins to spill out all over my shoes like somebody having a dream about winning big in Vegas in a sitcom.

So convinced have I been that I would like French onion soup, I had never actually had any. I mean, I am equally convinced I wouldn’t much like bungee jumping and don’t feel a pressing need to disprove my prejudice. I know how difficult it is to keep my own shoelaces tied all day, so the idea of somebody tying a knot capable of staying tied when something with the body weight of an actual body is yanking on it all the time is beyond my intelligence.

Nevertheless, I found myself in a situation last week where I could actually have French onion soup.

Moreover, the only other soup on offer was replete with cream and milk.

I don’t like cream and milk. I am not lactose intolerant, but if you tell me, “Oh, there’s only a bit of cream and milk in this thing I am giving you, you won’t even notice,” I will tell you I am lactose intolerant just to make you stop. I am not above lying to not get what I don’t want. I will notice. The only reason you don’t notice it is because YOU like it.

Essentially, I was being railroaded into finally breaking my French onion soup duck. I walked up to the till. “French onion soup, please,” I said, for the first time in my life.

“Regular or large?” asked the cashier.

“Regular,” I said. “Let’s not go mad at this stage.” She smiled at me, indulgently. Which surprised me as she had not been privy to my internal monologue. Perhaps she smiles indulgently at all her customers.

She ladled the rich broth into a polystyrene cup, bagged it up, and I was away.

I walked back to the office, genuinely excited that I was finally going to have French onion soup. I had a spring in my step and a smile on my face. People walking past me no doubt thought, “He’s smiling like that woman on the till in the sandwich shop.”

I sat down at my desk, removed the lid from the cup. “Are you having soup, Gary?” asked an observant colleague.

“Yes, I am. It’s French onion soup and it’s my first time.”

“You’re nearly 40, it’s your first time having French onion soup?”

“No, it’s the first time I’m having soup as a concept. Leave me alone.” I plunged the plastic spoon into the steaming nectar and lifted it to my lips, blowing on it slightly to cool.

It’s rubbish, isn’t it?

I was expecting something rich and sweet and mysterious. The consummate consommé. Something which explained the Gallic enigma.

What I got was weak Bovril, homeopathic oxtail soup, a beef rumour. With onions in it. Which fell off the spoon and landed in the polystyrene cup leaving a spatter pattern all over the desk which a police forensic scientist would no doubt identify as “classic French onion soup rookie spill”.

I have never been so disappointed in my life. I do not blame the shop in question.

It was probably moderate to excellent French onion soup. But I had invested so much expectation in my first experience of French onion soup, that I was setting myself up for a fall.

Not only that, but I now believe that all my preconceptions are now questionable. It was the worst thing I had ever bought, because it has proven that my judgment and my prejudices are baseless.

Apart from the bungee jump one. I am not an idiot.