My sporting career began in ignominy and ended in disgrace.

From the first day I kicked a ball and it went the wrong way, I realised superstar status or even normal competence were always going to elude me.

It started in the street when I used to play football with my friend Korbontze. He was two years older than me and had at least 20 times the talent.

He was always England and I was any other country in the rest of the world. This was in the days when England always won and he did.

At school I was so bad at sport that teams used to toss a coin to see who would not have me. In the end, I became so disappointed at not playing proper cricket that I started my own club. As I chose the teams, I could usually guarantee a place - batting at number 11.

In all those years of playing cricket, I never made more than 18 in any match and once went two months, playing twice a weekend and mid-week, without scoring a run at all.

I was once in a team which was all out for four. Another match had to be stopped for a time because the umpire was convulsed with laughter at a shot I had played. I was out with the next ball.

When I bowled, I had a whirling arm action that resembled a series of Dutch windmills on a dyke during a storm. I frightened a few people out on occasions.

My finest moment in football came when as left back (I should have been left out) I frustrated a notable right winger called Ron Impey.

By dancing in front of him like a dervish, I seldom actually touched the ball but annoyed him enough to mess up his crosses and we only lost 5-3.

I played hundreds of matches but only ever scored one goal when I was making a guest appearance for another team.

It was such a one-sided match that my hopeful punt trickled into the opposition net only because all their players were in our half. I scored a much more emphatic own goal a few minutes later. We lost 16-1.

The club secretary once had to give brief pen portraits of players for a team photograph. For me he wrote: "A. Trimingham. A 100 per cent effort player who never gives up trying."

This was the truth but not the whole truth and I fancy my enforced early retirement was widely welcomed.

Next, I turned my attention to tennis and played every week, summer and winter in Hove against my highly competitive brother, Oliver.

I calculated that we played more than a thousand sets over the years. Much easier to work out was the fact I never won any of them.

I went for a series of races swimming in the sea. I came last in all except one. I even lost the Round the Pier Handicap, in which I started minutes before everyone else.

To cap it all, in the pier-to-pier race, it took me half an hour to pass the Metropole Hotel and when I signalled to be rescued, I upset the boat.

The only sport I might have been any good at was table tennis and bearing that in mind, I decided to enter the adults' contest at Center Parcs in Longleat.

I was reassured to see the other competitors all looked refreshingly non-professional, including a middle-aged man, his teenage son and an old lady.

It was a round-robin contest before semi-finals and finals. I played the man and lost emphatically 21-13. His son came next and whipped me by the same score.

Finally, I fancied salvaging some dignity against the woman, who must have been at least 70, but it was a sound thrashing , 21-13 yet again, and I was last once more.

I should have stopped then. It might have been a warning to stop or a reminder that I should never have started. But there is always croquet. Perhaps I'll do better at that ...