Next year, I’m almost certain, is going to be one for firm convictions

Whenever I do pundit telly, which isn’t very often, I always want to answer every question by saying, ‘How the hell should I know?’ Only once, though, have I done so.

Whenever I do pundit telly, which isn’t very often, I always want to answer every question by saying, ‘How the hell should I know?’ Only once, though, have I done so. That was on Question Time Extra, about three years ago, which may have been my first ever live TV outing.

From the start, it didn’t go well. I didn’t inadvertently call a Cabinet minister ‘Mr Shitsinabox’ or anything, like the real pros have started doing (who can wait, incidentally, until Liam Fox is next on the Today programme?) but still, I can’t pretend I excelled. The main thing I remember is the show starting, and seeing my own feet on the studio monitor, clad in one red sock and one blue one. I tried to shuffle them out of view and repeatedly failed; I think because seeing yourself on live TV is the opposite of seeing yourself in a mirror. This way and that they danced, while my upper body remained still and my head nodded sombrely at a question about troop casualties. I imagine I looked rather like a Thunderbird.

Anyway, eventually the host asked me what I’d do about something. I can’t remember what it was, only that it was something I didn’t have a clue about, and that I replied by saying, ‘Well, I’d start by not asking a gossip writer.’ This was the wrong thing to say, partly because jokes don’t work on live broadcasts, especially when you’re talking about troop casualties, but also because they plainly were asking a gossip writer (i.e.