The time has come for me to make a statement regarding something I’ve never discussed before in public.

Some time around 1982, I was on a afternoon trip with my family to Formby pine woods. I was armed at the time with a pistol-grip, narrow-calibre spud gun and a potato which I believe to have been a Maris Piper. Coming round a bend in the path, I spotted ahead of me what I believed at the time to be a quail, although it has later been suggested to me that it was in fact a red squirrel. I raised my weapon, took aim and fired. Tragically, at this very moment, my brother Simon appeared in my sights and took the full force of the blast. By a huge coincidence the round lodged right in his ear, from where it later had to be removed by my father in a delicate procedure involving a fish hook. To this day, Simon still suffers from potato-related hearing difficulties on the left side. For instance, if you were to say to him from the passenger seat of his car, “Watch out, there’s a speed camera down here somewhere,” he might reply, “£1.30 a kilo those, darling, lovely for roasting.”

You can talk about all the other conditions that existed at the time, but that’s the bottom line. I’m the guy who pulled the trigger. Simon, however, is the guy who went flapping his ears about in my line of fire, the daft pillock. It is all his fault.

I have nothing more to say on the matter.