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HE early bird catches the worm. Early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise. How about we meet at 8am? Ugh. These are some of my most deplored sentences in the English language.

As a lifelong night owl I’ve countless times been subject to the tacit peer/family disapproval associated with getting out of bed at 11am. When you walk into the kitchen at 11.30 and make yourself an innocent bowl of cereal, there’s that thing the smug early-riser will do where they look at the nearest clock and say something annoying like, “Geez, half the day is already gone.” And then they proceed to tell you all about their achievements that morning. “Well, I went for a run. Then I checked my emails. Then I read War & Peace. Then I did some grocery shopping. And now I have the rest of the day to relax. Ahhh…”

What you, as a night owl, would like to say is, “Yeah, but you went to bed at, like, 10 o’clock. I was up until three, doing all kinds of shit.”

But no, you don’t (say this), because you’ve tried it before and when you’re 37 years old and you tell the self-satisfied early-riser that you still go to bed at 3am on a weekday they look at you as if (a) it’s about time you accepted being “an adult”, (b) you’re lazy, (c) you’re sleeping your life away, or (d) all of the above.

This has always been the night owl’s lot — to be seen as ill-disciplined, sluggish, disorganised and inefficient. A man/woman out of sync with the rhythms of the productive world, a non-contributive entity that’s still asleep and dreaming while the rest of the population are already at their desks, making money. And the silly thing is, even though you know they’re wrong about you — you know you’re really hardworking and dedicated and diligent — you still have this weird sense of guilt about sleeping late, especially when you work from home, like me, and have a partner who’s up at 6.30 every morning, showered and out the door barely four hours after you went to bed. Hell, there have been times when my wife has woken particularly early for some ghastly meeting or flight only to be met with the vision of me at my desk, having not even gone to bed yet.

But now, fellow night owls, you can