I still bear the scars of a conkerrelated incident

facilities, the extensive manicured playing fields, I was bound to change my mind, they reasoned.

We were given a guided tour of Oundle by a house master and a prefect, who seemed to me to be about 35. If they thought this was going to convince me, they couldn’t have been more misguided. Oundle was worse than I’d imagined.

Established in 1465, it was a dead ringer for Tom Brown’s Rugby. I saw Flashman lurking round every corner. In a final, desperate roll of the dice, I was taken to meet the boy who had won the scholarship to Oundle the previous year.

They obviously figured that once I’d heard what fantastic fun he was having as a boarder, my resistance would melt. Things didn’t quite work out like that.

We were shown into the parlour of a large house in one of the more exclusive roads in town, where the boy and his parents were waiting

for us with tea and petits four. His name was David Beaney, he was wearing his school uniform and a pair of circular spectacles. I vaguely remembered Beaney as a notorious swot from the year above me.

He looked like Harry Potter, or a schoolboy version of The Guardian’s piano-playing editor, Alan Rusbridger. Pleasantries were exchanged, and Mr and Mrs Beaney extolled the virtues of Oundle.

I remained unmoved. Did we know, for instance, that the school was famous for its music facilities, its one-on-one tuition?

If this was supposed to impress me, it was a mistake. My musical horizons extened to playing the first few bars of Telstar, by the Tornadoes, on the recorder and shaking the maracas to Not Fade Away. In the middle of the room there was a highly polished grand piano. David stepped up to the Joanna, lifted the lid over the keyboard and carefully placed his sheet music in his eyeline.

Somehow, I didn’t think he was going to play Roll Over Beethoven. A pregnant hush settled on the room, as David announced he was going to perform Mendelssohn’s dreary Hebrides Overture, also known as Fingal’s Cave, which generally lasts anywhere between ten and 12 minutes, depending on how long you allow for the silences between the ‘cacophonous sounds of the waves’ and the ‘stiller waters’.

David Beaney treated us to the full half-hour. Somewhere between the ‘cacophonous sounds of the waves’ and the ‘stiller waters’, the scales fell from my old man’s eyes.

We drove home in silence. When we got into the house, my dad poured himself a large gin and tonic and said to my mum: ‘Right, that settles it. I’m not having my son turn out like that little ponce.’

The next day, we went out and bought my Deacon’s grammar school uniform.