At school I was something of an academic underachiever. Actually, that's not entirely true. I was always very gifted at the arty subjects such as English, Literature, Art and Drama, but when it came to the boring stuff, such as Sciences and Mathematics, notsomuch.

Just under a year ago, while I was still seeing him, my psychologist suggested that I take a standard intelligence test as apparently some behavioral characteristics and traits can be associated with certain levels of intelligence. At the time I was a bit loath to do that simply because I had been such a pleb at school, at least where the "logical" subjects had been concerned and I didn't want conclusive proof of such. But in the end I agreed and I took the test.

My final score was so high that it puts me in the top 0.01 percentile. Upon further discussion my psychologist reasoned that one of the reasons that I may not have excelled at those afore mentioned subjects was due to concentration and attention. He suggested that in retrospect it is very possible that I suffered from and to some extent may still suffer from Attention Deficit Disorder. In an instance such as that a predisposition to being very distracted will naturally impact on one's ability to apply logic to and thus solve certain problems. Maths and Sciences bored me so I didn't pay attention and so I got rubbish grades. In other ways I was often times irrational and therefore other things also suffered, as a result.

While on the one hand I was delighted to have achieved so high a score, I also felt somewhat ashamed and actually kind of embarrassed. It had turned out that I could have been as capable, if not more capable, of achieving similar or far better results than some of my peers.

To this date I have only told about five people about that IQ test, but even so over the last year I have started to become more comfortable with what it means to me and has actually made me a lot more confident in myself.

About four weeks ago I went to a business meeting at MENSA, during which my colleagues and myself all took an IQ test (for fun.) Upon completion, each of our tests was scored by an invigilator and my final result was almost the same as it was when I took that test before (it was one point lower, but I attributed it to being distracted by the guy we were meeting with, who was tres handsome!) Out of the four people from my company that I went to the meeting with, I was the person who scored the highest. I know this simply because I was the only one of us to subsequently be offered admission to the society.

Aside from the fact that I was mortally embarrassed by the fact that out of all of my colleagues I was the only one to whom the offer was extended (including the owner of the company, who is generally known to be as smart a mind as there is in PR) my bashful side was all like, well, bashful and I shied away from the idea.

That was until a couple of days later. This might sound a bit strange, but I have always considered myself to be something of an outsider and the more I thought about it the more attractive the whole prospect appeared to be. For lots of silly reasons it's taken me a long time to acknowledge that I have gifts, so I thought that perhaps this was something I should really learn to love and embrace a whole lot more than I have to date. After all, I didn't have to brag about it. I could do it just for myself.

Last night I went to my first MENSA meeting at a pub in Pimlico, fully expecting to be surrounded by the most gifted and brilliant minds around. I was expecting to learn about quantum physics, discuss Nobel Prize winners and discover how mathematics, science and logical reasoning would provide the solutions to all of the world's problems.

What actually happened was that I spent the best part of two hours with three other men and three women, all of whom were over 40, discussing the merits of practically every private school in London, whether or not climate change would make the UK a profitable producer of sherry and whether or not Lulu's new album was any good.

Suffice it to say that I am not going to be attending another meeting. This afternoon I will be embracing my inner pleb, by going to see The 40 Year Old Virgin.

(If you must know what my final score was, do a Google search for Sharon Stone's IQ. Ours are the same - a small fact which, as you can probably imagine, has delighted me to no end!)