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Can I make one thing clear – no matter what you’ve heard, and I’m sure you’ve heard plenty – I’m not a full-blown Karma-Denier. It might exist, it might not, like how on earth would I know? All I’m doing is giving my version of events.

However, if Karma does exist, I’ll say one thing for it, it’s got a fantastic PR machine. We all know the ‘story’: Karma is running a great big ledger in the sky where every good deed done by every human being is recorded and at some later stage – the time to be of Karma’s choosing (Karma is cagey that way, plays its cards close to its chest) – Karma will refund that good deed. Maybe even with interest.

So we think if we sponsor youths to climb a hill to raise money for the local hospice, or if we change our niece’s nappy when we’d rather stab ourself in the head, that at some point in the future something good will happen to us. And when something good does happen to us, we go, Ah, that’ll be my old friend Karma, paying me back for my erstwhile good deed. ‘Hey, thanks, Karma!’

Karma has got a string of credits the length of the Amazon, when in fact I suspect Karma has been doing the conceptual version of lounging around on the couch in its underpants watching Sky Sports.

Let’s take a look at Karma ‘in action’.

One day, four and a half years ago, I was out driving in my car (a cheapish Hyundai SUV). I was moving along in a steady stream of traffic and up ahead I saw a car trying to get out of a side road.

So I thought, Ah, look at him there, the big, smug, Range Rover driver, I’m not letting him out. Then I thought – and all of this was happening quickly, because, like I said, I was moving along in a steady stream of traffic – then I thought, Ah, no, I’ll let him out, it’ll be – and mark me closely here – it’ll be good karma.

So I slowed down, flashed my lights to indicate to the big, smug, Range Rover driver that he was free to go, and he gave a tired smile and started moving forward and already I was feeling a warm sort of glow and wondering vaguely what form of lovely cosmic payback I’d be getting, when the car behind, unprepared for me slowing down to let the Range Rover out – on account of it being a Range Rover – went ploughing into the back of me, shunting me forward with such force that I went careering into the side of the Range Rover (the technical term for such a manoeuvre is ‘T-boning’) and suddenly there was a three-car love-in going on. Except there was no love there, of course. Far from it.