”Unfortunately that was not sufficient experience to qualify me for either Oxford or Cambridge.

So I went to a lefty Polytechnic instead to study class war...”

You’d have fitted in fine at my local rowing club, pfr - all very ‘working-class”, not a university student or posh bloke among us, we were engineering shop-floor workers, electricians, car-mechanics, fire-fighters, office-clerks, A&E nurses, bus-drivers, you name it...

The idea that rowing is for public-school kids and Oxbridge students is very much out-dated and, quite simply, wrong-headed.