Who are all these organised, anally-retentive people who still have their school reports when they are well into middle age?

When I heard about the BBC2 TV programme about famous people's appalling school reports, I went searching in the loft.

I found lots of boxes for long-gone electrical things (I kept the boxes in case I needed to return the product under warranty, but my stuff normally conks out three weeks after the guarantee expires).

I found an old typewriter I was keeping for when the world ran out of electricity and we all faced a bleak future without computers.

I found a collection of yellowed newspapers containing my very first stories as a young reporter; and a box of old clothes that should have gone to Oxfam but would now fetch me a fortune in a retro-fashion shop.

I did not find a collection of mint-condition Dinky toys, Meccano or Hornby Dublo train set which would top up my pension fund.

Neither did I find any school reports. Funny that. Then I started to wonder: did I ever take them home after I had steamed them open and read my teachers' comments in burning shame?

It was different in my day. There was more trust. Parents did not have to sign a slip saying they had received the report. So some pupils just ripped them up and flushed them down the loo. But even if I did take home my reports, why would we have kept them? They were hardly great literary achievements. My teachers were not very imaginative or original. They always said the same old thing: "Could do better!" That's all I remember.

And it wasn't my fault that I could do better. It was the school spoff's fault. He always did my homework in return for cash or sweets. Why didn't he get me a good report? Perhaps the teachers meant I could have done better in my choice of someone to bribe.

Come to think of it, the teachers who slapped, slippered or caned me within an inch of my school shorts were probably good judges of character. I've heard "could do better" throughout my life, from a variety of bosses, wives, bank managers and pub landlords.

It's not that I turned out a total failure. I managed to stay out of jail and the bankruptcy courts and I've always managed to find my way home. It's just that I did not achieve the amazing potential they apparently saw in me. They obviously could see the raw material for a future Churchill, Hitler or Harpo Marx.

At this point I want to apologise to all the teachers I ever abused. For all the fibs I told about the dog eating my homework or burglars stealing my games kit from my bedside. For all the times we reduced our German teacher to tears by answering her in 'Allo, 'Allo-style pidgin German; and how, as a class of 40 all in chorus, we used to stammer along with our French teacher when he could not finish a particular word. I blush unreservedly.

I do not apologise for the time I was sent one mile home to change my dark grey socks to the regulation medium grey. I do not apologise for letting my hair reach my ears to the point where I was sent out of school to get a short back'n'sides (look at it now).

I do not apologise to the games teacher who punished me for coming second in a cross-country run. He knew I "could do better" so he made me do a ten-mile run after school every night for a week.

So who needs all those school reports when every word is still branded into our brains, when every "injustice" is as fresh a memory as if it happened ten minutes ago?

Sorry if I've bored you to distraction this week. Next time I will do better. Honestly, Miss.

Updated: 09:05 Tuesday, March 14, 2006