The following is a question I’ve long waited to see answered on University Challenge. So fingers on the buzzer and no conferring...

An individual stands in a bus queue. He/she has been waiting 20 minutes and the number of people waiting has multiplied 20-fold.

There is nothing to alleviate their boredom, the temperature lurks icily beneath zero, and none in the queue attempts to connect verbally with those around them.

Indeed, time drags like a teenage smoker.

Yet, when a bus does appear, the torture is prolonged by every passenger waiting until the last possible moment to search for their fare.

Ferreting in their handbag, man bag, shopping bag or backpack, they dig, frisk, excavate and ultimately jettison every item of humdrum minutiae until, at last, they chance upon their smartcard or loose change.

And then, and only then, can the queue move forward...

Hell, I shower with my Oxford Bus Company Keycard and even stay up late the night before solely to ensure I have the correct change should I need it.

But then buses are my lifeline.

I have always taken them and over the years have become highly sensitised about just what a good passenger should be – polite, appreciative and ALWAYS armed with the precise fare.

Once, many years ago in Bristol, I will admit to proffering a £20 note for a £1.60 ride, but I’ve paid my debt to society by living in Swindon.

But buses, I realise, have also charted my growth from nervy teenage geek to confident, suave 50-something in a rite of passage that has remained unchanged since the first school bus rolled out of its depot.

You see, I now sit at the back of the bus.

When I was young, I sat at the front, where all the nerdies congregated like frightened lemmings.

Not surprising since, as everyone over the age of five has always known, the rear two or three aisles were, are, and always will be, the sole property of the Bad Boys and Cool Girls. At least up until the age of 18.

And it’s stayed that way for many years. Yet since losing my hair and any interest I have shown toward personal hygiene, I too have now discovered that the back can belong to me as well. And, my God, is it liberating?

For a start, there’s so much more legroom, more ‘space’ that it gives one an insight into why flying ‘Business’ is worth killing for. But, more importantly, is the sense of absolute peace it brings.

Suddenly, you ARE no longer afraid, no longer haunted by memories of tugged ties and stamped on school books, of execution by catapult. You are... free.

Weird isn’t it how something as functional and mundane as a bus ride can actually prove cathartic? But try it, back seat, upstairs, it works.