I’ve always had an inferiority complex about knowing so little. I can hardly ever, for example, answer any of the questions on University Challenge (and I’m not much better at Who wants to be a millionaire?). I also abhor crossword puzzles - and Trivial Pursuit is sheer hell. The fact that all the things I don’t know are labelled as ‘trivial’ somehow makes it worse.

I have, of course, developed some strategies for appearing more knowledgeable than I am. One of them is to, when in doubt, keep quiet and look thoughtful. Another one is to concentrate on knowing a few things that are pretty much guaranteed no-one else will have bothered to find out or remember. Example: How long would it take to drive from the earth to the sun at exactly 62 miles per hour? Answer: 171 years.

Anyway, the good news is that a couple of things have happened recently that have helped me feel much better about being such an ignoramus.

First, I went to a seminar about the brain where I heard Professor Susan Greenfield, director of the Royal Institution, say that there was a difference between information and knowledge. Information is “just facts - which on their own are not at all interesting”. Knowledge, she went on to explain, occurs when disparate facts are linked and turned into ideas. This helped me to see that I lack information, not knowledge, and that I can easily obtain information whenever I want it; the skilful bit, having got it, is turning it into something useful.

Second, I listened to Peter Senge, of Fifth Discipline fame, talking about the explosive growth in available knowledge (he meant information - but it seemed churlish to correct him!) and the absurdity of anyone thinking that they could keep up with it. He went so far as to proclaim that, “if you are into organisational learning, you’re into incompetence, ignorance and not knowing the answers”.

Knowledgeable people in the audience looked threatened, not to say worried. But I became more and more cheerful that the ignorance I had always imagined as shameful and sought to hide was being hailed as appropriate for the so-called knowledge age. (What a fascinating paradox - that ignorance is a required competence for the knowledge age!)

So all that stuff on University Challenge is merely information - and I only need to know how to find it as and when I need it. (Clearly, I would be in trouble if I was faced with an impatient Jeremy Paxman saying “Come on, come on!” but it is a risk I am prepared to take!).