There are several problems with my face, not least of which is that I look so bloody miserable all the time. Honestly, I’m usually smiling inside. A nice woman stopped me in the street on Sunday to tell me that she never looked very happy either. We were kindred spirits, she said, because she, like me, had a resting not-happy face.

She turned out to be a vicar, and said that when she did manage a smile, her congregations were very relieved and pleased. Nice. While I don’t have a congregation of my own, I knew what she meant. But still I think it’s time to change my face. Not with the help of a surgeon, you understand – I just need to give my countenance a bit of a lift.

The trouble is that as soon I start thinking about what to do with my face, I find it even harder to know what to do with it. Catch-22. When I’m not thinking about it, as the vicar pointed out, my face defaults to something between neutral and unhappy. If I catch sight of myself, or someone asks me what the matter is, I try to make adjustments, but nothing sticks. And if I try too hard, I start to look a bit weird.

This was something I struggled with when I co-presented chat-type shows, perched alongside a colleague on a very brightly coloured sofa. My problem was that I never knew what to do when I was in the camera shot but not talking. Staring glumly into space didn’t look right. Occasionally, I’d see myself in a monitor, visibly start, and try to affect a correction. This never got me anywhere. I tried........

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