On Oxford Street I was referred to as the Jew’ since when is this okay?

GIVEN this job evokes a hefty dose of stress, steals too much sleep and facilitates a rather irregular diet - my weekly butter intake must be, what, three blocks? And let's not get into the booze lately, I've been skittish about my health. I'm 34, but my biological age? It must be vampiric.

One upshot is that I've taken to doing a few of those 'how-fit-are-you-really?' tests can I balance for more than a minute, run a mile without collapse, resist chaining the entire pack of fags, that sort of thing. Which goes some way to explain how last week I found myself on Oxford Street in the waning sunlight of late afternoon, in front of a sizeable crowd, handing over a tenner to a canny hustler. Hang from a bar for 100 seconds, he said, win £100. The catch-the bar is not static but rolls-renders a relative doddle in the gym a near impossibility, as I discovered fairly sharpish.

But not that sharpish. And not so sharpish that the crowd didn't murmur a little. Bravo, Ellis. Forty-five seconds in and a boy, late teens, turned to his mate. "The Jew is doing well," he said. I was the only one to flinch.