When was the last time you swooned? I love the idea of swooning. It makes me think of Jane Austen.

Being trapped in an emotional straitjacket, suddenly overcome with love and desire, helpless in the presence of your beau, heart pounding, blood rushing to your head you collapse in a heap.

I love that idea.

I can’t say I’ve ever noticed much swooning in my direction.

But then, as a stunted, completely bald little man in thick glasses, with a nasal accent and hunch back who comes from Watford, I’m hardly in the Mr Darcy class.

Let’s face it, it’s hardly swooning material is it.

I’ve chosen to counter this deficit by resolutely refusing to swoon at anyone myself.

In Hamlet, Act 1 Scene 3 Polonius counsels his son Laertes with these sage words: “Neither a borrower or a lender be”.

I’ve taken this as my inspiration for my own adaptation “Neither a swooning or a swooner be”.

It’s served me well I have to say. I recommend it. For the protection of dignity.

This little mantra though will not protect you from the faint, which is quite different from the swoon. And which I discovered this week.

Although the final outcome, as in passing spark out is the same, when making the comparison cross off “Romantic overload“ for the swoon and replace with “physical decrepitude“ for the faint.

Brace yourself, gentle readers. This will paint an unedifying picture for you.

I am visited by occasional bouts of cramp that come upon me in the night.

The calf muscle suddenly contracts in an agonising spasm and is only assuaged by my leaping out of bed and pressing down with my foot on a nice hard floor.

The relief is almost instant and always exquisite.

I don’t usually sleep in the nude.

I don’t usually sleep in the middle of a bed with two other people.

But on this occasion there I am.

Wife on one side and our child on the other all fast asleep.

Sudden cramp.

However sandwiched in by my comatose family I am unable to leap out to the relief of the nice hard floor but can only struggle upright and clasping the headboard begin running naked on the spot but with only the squishiness of the mattress to press against, it isn’t really working and I suddenly feel very light headed.

I managed to make it off the end of the bed, my bemused family are now sitting up startled, puzzled and asking what on earth the matter was.

I apparently answer, and with perfect clarity with the bizarre words “That’s not a butter knife” before passing out cold between wall and the side of the bed, with my head quite literally landing in my wife’s handbag.

Cue cramp attack number two.

I leap up again, sending the concerned pair looking over me flailing in all directions, now with my wife’s handbag still on my head, still naked and start running on the spot to alleviate the second bout of agonising cramp.

I feel your recoil at the vision. I did say to brace yourself.

Not so much Jane Austen as Carry On Cramping. Whereupon I pass out again, for a second time, sparko, on the bed.

If you are to take anything away from this sorry tale of one man’s descent from dignified swoon proof hero to naked dancing imbecile let it be this. Pyjamas.