Hoping winners are on the way as earplugs may have restored my sound judgement

What is the key to a happy marriage? You could ask that question of 100 husband-and-wife combinations and get 200 different answers. If I was asked that question this week, I would probably get a rolling pin smashed round my temple soon after replying, because my answer would without any hesitation be: "Ear plugs."

It sounds more offensive than it is. That is often my plea after upsetting my wife with something offensive. Trust me, it sounds more offensive than it is, darling – you really shouldn't be offended, you've just heard it wrong and picked up the offensive words and must have missed the non-offensive words which balanced things out nicely.

In this case, though, I am genuinely not being remotely offensive. To function properly at work during the day, I need some sort of sleep through the night, even if it is only the four hours which Margaret Hilda Thatcher famously required to lead the United Kingdom through the 1980s.