The short, unhappy life of Richard Hammond

Without further ado, I am thrilled to announce a new occasional Lost in Showbiz series. Top Gear On The Couch will consider the stars of TV's most obvious psychoanalytic allegory, eventually taking in the id (Jeremy Clarkson), and the super-ego (James May).

But we begin with the ego, Richard Hammond, who this week has revealed that he might have been bullied at school. In some ways, this is to be expected. Just as there is no supermodel or beautiful actress who does not insist they were an incredibly ugly teenager, so there is no one even remotely connected with showbusiness who does not claim to have been bullied at school.

"I've never thought of myself as having been bullied," Richard tells an interviewer. "But lately I've been thinking maybe I was for being short."

Maybe. Or maybe, just like everyone else in the entire world, he was teased, sometimes upsettingly, for something or other at school. Which is different from bullying.

Anyway, who knows how many years in analysis it took him, but today Richard not only submits to Clarkson teasing him about his height every week, but is given to asserting his superiority over lesser mortals such as Mexicans ("lazy, feckless, flatulent oaf[s]"). We can only salute him for having found the strength to "move on".