In truth, like most physicists of the early eighties, I used my two years of compulsory university maths to enable me to become dual-qualified at teacher training college. It soon became apparent that I had no real talent for putting my second subject across. I was definitely a “here’s the theory, here’s an example on the board, now do the next 200 from the book” sort of maths teacher.

“Is there any other kind?” I hear some of you ask. Of course there is. I have met some myself. They know the anecdotes, the number tricks and the topological stunts that brighten up their subject. Some even wear mathematical clothing. My old Moray House maths lecturer was an example. He habitually sported a black and yellow tie patterned with circles, squares and triangles. He once explained the design in terms of reflection and colour reversal, before threatening to show us his socks.Heaven knows what horrors of rotation and dilatation of innocent polygons were depicted thereon.

A PT on one of my teaching practices knew a neat demo involving a folded fiver and two paper-clips which linked when the bill was straightened. I rewarded him for showing me this by sneezing while holding a coffee cup. I think the fact that I remained dry while he didn’t made things worse.

It was at that school that my reports for physics and maths were most markedly different. In one I was something of a guru, in the other, a nit-picking, poker-faced git. I paraphrase, but only just. What was going on?

I’d like to think I was making physics interesting for the pupils and was failing to do so with maths. Perhaps, though, it was physics that was making me interesting. More probably, I simply felt at home among heaps of trolleys and oscilloscopes and was better able to pull off the confidence trick that teaching often reduces to.

In maths I was boring and, therefore, defensive. So don’t tell Marj Adams about my other qualification and don’t tell anyone else about it either.

Gregor Steele is also qualified to bore the erses off weans in computing.