Brace yourself - it's time for my yearly humour-free blog post.

I've just come across this letter printed in The Independent a couple of weeks ago:

"After all this time, it is saddening to see the problems of bullying running on unchecked. Almost 40 years ago, as a boy of ten, I was subjected to persistent bullying at a new school. The problem became so intolerable that I was packed off to the child psychiatrist to find out what was wrong with me and why I was causing the bullies to target me. Of course, this had no effect on the bullies or the bullying. But there was one positive outcome for me: the psychiatrist's IQ tests revealed that I had the highest IQ he had ever measured. Here was something of my very own that could not be spoiled or taken away by the bullies, and it was a great impetus to me.

Twenty years later I had earned a PhD. But I still have the deep and intractable depression that the bullying caused. I cannot use my intellectual and academic skills to earn myself an income, but live at the state's expense on benefits, isolated at home with my books and strange interests, keeping myself quietly and irrelevantly away from a society I cannot cope with.

Dr Stephen Kent, London WC1"

I just found that very sad. And kinda familiar.

Although obviously it should be "a society with which I cannot cope", not "a society I cannot cope with". High IQ, my foot.

(I can't believe I just said that).