I was a pain, really.

My god, I was an argumentative git in my late teens. As I was devouring up to half a dozen books a day, on everything from astrophysics to mediaeval constitutional law, then I had as much knowledge as I had opinion. Which is a lot!

And so I argued. Endlessly. And I argued to win. It was an amazing intellectual exercise. And, in fairness, it could make me 'hard work'.

I recall a game of Trivial Pursuit in which the winning question was connected to the damage done by a particular size of nuclear weapon. I made my answer, only for the cards to declare me Wrong. Surely not?? So I made everyone sit whilst I went off to grab my calculator and copy of Glastone and Dolan's Effects of Nuclear Weapons, and they gnashed their teeth as I worked out the correct answer by hand from the physics. I was right. But I wasn't popular!

This argumentativeness led to one man standing in front of me and declaring that "you would argue the toss over the time of day!" With a straight face, I asked him, "do you meant GMT, solar time, sidereal time, Universal Time...?" I could see both his jaw and his fist clench as he struggled. Then stormed off.

My reputation in this period was salvaged by an astonishing stroke of luck. Sitting in a classroom in the early evening, we heard a gaggle of military jets pass overhead. I declared that these were F-lllF's on their way to bomb Libya. I could tell the make of jet by the engine noise. All utter tripe, a throwaway remark.

Turning on the radio the next morning...American F-lllF's from RAF Fairford had led an attack on Libya. For quite a while after that, I was afforded some reverence. Which I accepted without a blush!