Lincoln Imperial

Metricate America? You would have to be as rich as he was in order to be quite that eccentric.

But he did vote against the Iraq War when he was a Senator, even though he was a Republican at the time. It is impossible to measure his superiority to Hillary Clinton.

As to things that it is perfectly possible to measure, I would teach both the imperial and the metric systems in schools. I am at a loss as to why that does not already happen without controversy.

I would also teach the fact that it was the Conservatives, with Thatcher as Education Secretary, who began metrication and who decimalised the currency.

Although metrication has nothing to do with EU membership, and in fact the European Commission long ago gave up even trying to metricate everyday life in Britain. It knows a lost cause when it sees one.

I would also teach the fact that the metric system was invented by an Englishman, John Wilkins.

He is supposed to be the subject of the last chapter of my book otherwise about the Frenchmen whom French children are taught invented or discovered pretty much everything. I am thinking of calling it French Exceptions.

Another book on the To Do list. It lengthens by the day. But this one would be an excuse to go to Paris for the research.

19 years after A-level, I always surprise myself with how much French I can still read when I give it a go. Once I was back in the swing of it, and all that. I am highly unlikely ever to write in French. But never say never.

Britain is the only country in the world where a completely different system of weights and measures could be used in day-to-day life from the one that was taught in schools, but everything would still work out all right. The situation ought perhaps to be maintained for that reason alone.

Although there is also the sheer comedy value of the BBC's attitude, insisting that children's television presenters speak in metric measurements purely in order to annoy the Daily Mail (which dutifully plays along in order to laugh at its own readers, something that it does a very great deal of the time), and putting such things in the mouths of middle-aged Tory farmers in the pub on The Archers.