The question on everyone's lips is not how I did in the London Marathon, but how I did compared to all the minor league soap stars, TV chefs, footballers' girlfriends and so on who occupy nearly twenty pages of the event's Media Guide( pdf).
The answer is not terribly well. Gordon Ramsay and Michel Roux were way in front of me, as was Ronan Keating and most of the cast of Emmerdale. I did beat John Altman (aka Nick Cottton) and Floella Benjamin. Howard Stoate MP beat me hollow, though I was faster than Martin Linton, the MP for Battersea, in whose constituency I now work.
But my chief boast is that I beat Brian Paddick, ex-policeman and LibDem candidate for London mayor; even at my age, I can still outrun the pigs.
