At long last, short men like me have a reason to walk tall

Finally, some good news for those of us on the short side. An international team of researchers, including experts from the University of Manchester and the Open University, have concluded that people over six foot are twice as likely to catch Covid-19. It’s something to do with aerosols being carried upwards by air currents. Gives a new meaning to the phrase “head in the clouds”.

This comes as something of a relief, because I’ve always been a bit chippy about my height.

For years, whenever anyone asked me how tall I was, I would say, “Five foot eight-and-a-half,” and then stare at them defensively, daring them to contradict me. But I realised eventually that adding “and a half ” wasn’t doing me any favours. It was just advertising the fact that I had an inferiority complex. So now I say, “Five foot nine” and try not to look away too quickly.

Believe it or not, five foot nine is the average height for a fully grown British male – and being below that, even if it’s only half an inch, is still a source of resentment. Without quite being aware of it, most people treat height as a proxy for social status, a form of “unconscious bias” that’s unlikely to be addressed by any diversity training programme.

People don’t exactly stop me as I’m on my way back from the lavatory in restaurants and ask me to bring them the bill, but I can still detect a hint of patrician disdain whenever I’m introduced to a tall, upper-class man. If I stand next to Jacob Rees-mogg at a party, for example, I feel like one of the grinning street urchins in that famous photograph of the three Etonian schoolboys towering over the local working-class lads.

Unfortunately, I sometimes feel that way standing next to my wife, too. Caroline is five foot seven-and-a-half, but in her high heels she looms over me.

I worry that predatory single men, seeing this tall beauty with her dwarfish husband, will think she’s easy prey. I’m pretty pugnacious at the best of times, but when a six-footer approaches Caroline I’m liable to do an impression of Joe Pesci in Goodfellas. They look at me with amused contempt, like a German Shepherd confronted with a yappy Yorkshire Terrier.

Of course, being on the short side has its benefits. We tend to stand our ground – if you’re below average height, you can’t afford to give an inch. And having something to prove means we try that little bit harder.

I’m competitive to a fault, which is a curse in some situations – when a tall man tries to overtake me on the motorway, for instance – but a blessing in most. To the astonishment of my children, I once won the “dads’ race” at their primary school, my little legs pumping like pistons.

Sadly, however, I cannot claim to have benefited from my diminutive stature when it comes to Covid. I caught it back in March and was laid up in bed for a week.

Caroline was convinced it was “man flu” and told me to “grow up” – not the most tactful thing you can say to a man with my psychological issues. But I suppose I should be grateful that she didn’t think I was genuinely ill, since a lack of evolutionary fitness is another shortcoming that people have traditionally associated with small men.

Perhaps this new research will, at long last, address that prejudice.

follow Toby Young on Twitter @toadmeister; read more at telegraph.co.uk/opinion