I was terrible at sport at school. I was fat, which made things slightly tougher, but it also meant that people were encouraging to the point of patronising. If I managed to complete the 100m race on sports day without asking for a biscuit, the teachers would hug me and say, “See? I knew you could do it!” I once managed to negotiate a two-metre head start with a teacher purely on the grounds of being fat. He agreed, which in itself was fairly damaging, but not as damaging as the fact that I still came last. It was like a greyhound race where the greyhounds overtake the hare instantly, and then the fat hare cries to his parents so they take him to Happy Eater for pancakes.

Far worse than being fat, however, was – and still is – my lack of coordination. I have zero. I can’t catch, I can’t kick, I can’t hit a ball. Every one of my PE school reports said things along the lines of “Manages to deal admirably with being completely and utterly uncoordinated.”

I was much worse at sport than other really fat kids. I would be paired with them and they would destroy me. In a sense, I was doing them a service: the fat kids in my school came away with a sense of self worth, as well as someone to bully. I did judo and the instructor, in a way that I am pretty sure was racially unacceptable even then, dubbed me and the fattest white kid in the class “Coffee and Cream”. At the end of every judo lesson, the rest of the class would chant “Coffee and Cream” as Cream pummelled the shit out of Coffee. The chanting may be an embellishment, but that’s how I remember it.

Sadly, this has continued into adult life. I imagine I have about three months before our sons realise that their dad is wired incorrectly. For a while I feared they might have inherited it but, thankfully, they seem to have their mother’s sports prowess. Either that or it’s skipped a generation, and our grandkids are going to be physically ill-equipped for the environmental apocalypse they will inevitably face.

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I am reminded of this because I have just started filming the new series of A League Of Their Own, an experience that is absolutely riddled with humiliation for me. There are so many physical challenges at which I am completely incompetent, and I am doing every one of them alongside two phenomenal athletes, Jamie Redknapp and Freddie Flintoff.

The truth is, all these challenges are fine, because everybody expects me to be worse than them. The real fear is when a football comes out as part of a game, and everyone decides to have a bit of a kickabout. Our host James Corden, Freddie, Jamie and the guests will all finesse the ball smoothly and do keepy-uppies (alchemy as far as I am concerned). I will spend the whole time terrified that the ball will come to me and I will accidentally leather it and kill an audience member.

It’s an unattractive trait. I know for a fact that when my wife watches me hit a ball one of my sons has bowled, and I swing and miss, and the boys say “You’re so funny!” and laugh at my physical comedy, she knows I didn’t do it on purpose. And as much as she feigns sympathy, and tells me she feels my sorrow, I bet she’s bloody delighted she’s better at sports than me.