his home in order to expose Sarah as utterly excrutiating. A mission that actually had its origins - if I may extend my theory without sounding too much of a freak obsessed with the state of the Nicolson/Raven union, although I must confess I have been on to them for a while and the whole Sissinghurst thing only goes to show how consistent people can be – that had its origins in Nicolson's 2005 brilliant but bewildering book Seamanship.

This is a non-fiction account of how he sailed from Falmouth to the Faroes having a mid-life crisis in which he praised his beloved wife to the skies (the book is ostensibly a kind of poem to her) while simultaneously detailing how hard a time she had given him for going away and how frequently she let him know what a disappointment he had been to her and how he had let the children down too, but how wonderful and admirable and amazing she was and how bad she made him feel, how spineless, a person who would fall straight out of the car if it weren't for his seatbelt.

Oh Sarah without you I'm nothing, a git who would spend his money on Spanish honey and cigarettes. Oh Sarah, Sarah please let me crawl back and lie in your gutter, oh please let me make amends my darling Sarah why are you such a perfect wife, and bitch? I closed the book thinking Man, that marriage is tense.

And then on Saturday on Radio 4's Loose Ends Clive Anderson was interviewing Nicolson and mistakenly referred to Sarah as Simon (does Clive know something? He is a barrister.) Adam hit the roof, clearly scared out of his wits and what Sarah/Simon would have to say about such a slight. Not this broad again, I thought...

Et voila. The woman shall never plait garlic in this town again, and we're only on episode three. I should add that other characters in the series include a site manager who makes plate holders out of coat hangers and a mucho saphically-garmented Head Gardener called Alexis who murders magnolia trees without so much as a by your leave while wearing a Che Guevara beret - who cares if Vita liked the tree, what good was it doing just sitting there anyway?

The whole thing is intensely Poirot. Check it out and let me know what you think these people are on. (I could ask Jeremy Kyle, the psychologist, but what does he know? People do weird things. We don't know why. Test on Wednesday.)

PS Re: the girl who won University Challenge. She's not a student she is a 26-year-old teacher! Why don't they just let a Fellow from All Souls head up the team next time and be done with it?