"And I've never slept with a girl whose parents earned less than £100,000 a year..."

Obviously, people move homes and jobs for all manners of reasons, but for me, it was the above claim-to-fame, so eloquently shouted out by a drunken student, that persuaded me to 'up sticks' and move here three-and-a-half years ago.

Not that it was just the boastings of this horny (but financially astute) undergrad that solely made me want to settle here.

Rather, it was two old men.

It was a wet Thursday night in November, and I had just spent the best part of a day on a reconnaisance visit to the city, sizing up whether or not to transplant my life to Iffley Road, when I wandered into the Jude the Obscure in Walton Street, Oxford.

These two guys, at least in their 70s, were arguing vehemently about who they thought the father of modern communism was. Indeed, they became physical, and just as I was judging whether or not to intervene (after all, two pensioners beating the hell out of each other always makes for great spectator sport), a group of about 10 undergraduates staggered in.

They weren't aggressive - just loud. Which is why the one student who had never kissed a girl whose parents earned minimum wage, clearly felt he had to make himself heard. And thus did so, to admirable effect.

The two men instantly stopped fighting and for a second or two you could have heard the proverbial pin drop. But nothing unnatural lasts forever, and almost immediately the two oldies returned to their wrestling and one of the under-grads rushed out the door to throw up.

I don't suppose for a moment it was like Paul on the road to Damascus, or Scrooge waking up to the ghost of Christmas past, but for me it was just as life-changing.

I realised, like capturing lightning in a bottle, that if Oxford was the kind of city where two geriatric bruisers could club each other to death over the sperm donor of communism, and one undergrad could cheer himself with his grope-and-squeeze tales, then this, as Sinatra sang, was "my kind of town".

And I should know, having lived all over this country, from Plymouth to London, to Middlesborough and Bath, and Weston-super-Mare to Swindon (in short, I was blessed). Yet despite the glamorous reputations of these individual destinations, I didn't always work as a journalist.

In Bath I worked as a sausage maker, as well as an artist's nude model (the money was good and I was naive...); in Plymouth I was an estate agent AND greengrocer, albeit part-time; in Middlesborough, well hell, I've actually tried to forget that whole unnatural episode; and in London, yes, I did write for a living, both in fashion and booze.

But you know what? Since moving here I haven't looked back. I adore Oxford - its geography, its parks, Port Meadow, Little Clarendon Street, Tesco on the Cowley Road, its theatres, the boating station below Magdalen Bridge, M&S in Summertown, the lunchtime concerts, the evening recitals, George Street on an August weekend, the Covered Market at Christmas, the bikes, the buses, Boswells, the train station, Oxford Tube, and the entirely unique melting pot of locals, students, international visitors and Oxford United supporters.

Is it any wonder that I would want to chart the pulse of this extraordinary city? No, which is why I'll be taking a closer look at the Oxford we call home.

And obviously, I'm calling it Man About Town because, well, with no actual home of my own, I have to be.