Last week, in The Times, Helen Rumbelow pondered on what it is that drives people to achieve great things. Having spoken to the obituary writer on The Times, she reported, a common thread presented itself: suffering. Suffering in early life - physically, or mentally, appeared to be the kiln in which the most enduring of personalities were fired.

For reasons that will become exceedingly clear in a moment, this all made me think of me. Of course, I thought. It all makes sense now. This is why I have not achieved greatness - and, indeed, why the nearest I have got to achieving greatness is probably achieving “gateness”, ie, employing someone to fix my gate for me. Physically, a sum total of chickenpox at the age of 8 scarcely makes me Frida Kahlo (impaled, through her uterus, on a rail during a bus-crash; subsequently became a genius artist) - although I do sometimes get quite bad cystitis, and have to leave dinner parties to sit on the toilet, reading old copies of The Best of Giles that have been left stacked up on the cistern; so I do kind of know where she's coming from.

However, taking the long view, it's clear that I certainly have not learnt any hugely important, self-improving lessons at the International School of Pain. The career enhancing possibilities of lifelong, chronic agony have, sadly, been denied me. I have, however, been lucky enough to suffer some manner of mental disorder. The problem here, though - in terms of any possible knock-on effect into “greatness” - is that my mental disorder is, well, a pretty cheering one, all things considered. It's quite ... nice.

You will be familiar, I suppose, with paranoid schizophrenia. Hearing negative voices, and feeling that your actions are being judged by a hostile audience. Well, I have all that. But in a good way. All the voices I hear are, it pains me to admit, resoundingly pleasant, and whenever I feel my actions judged, it's by a panel of guys who are never less than 100 per cent pro-Moran.

For all those who have, like me, done a bit of armchair psychiatry, I want to make it clear that this is in a wholly different league to any semi-psychotic narcissistic disorder. I illustrate, by way of instance, with swimming. At the pools where I swim, there is always a single, bored life-guard on duty, ever alert for fatal cramps, or kung-fu in the shallow end. Over the months, as my stroke and speed have improved, I have become convinced that this life-guard is watching me. Indeed, not just watching me, but that he has talked to other lifeguards at the pool, in reference to my unprecedentedly accelerated level of improvement and, as of last week, “Olympic potential”. Every time he gets down off his life-guard high-chair, I presume that he's going to squat by the side of the pool, wait for me to swim along side, and then say, quietly: “I've told Ken [Livingstone]about you. We want you for 2012.”

This is not just an idle, Billy Liar fantasy. I genuinely believe it to be true - indeed, when he finally did approach me a few weeks ago, only to tell me that I should really “be wearing foot protection in the poolside area”, I had to restrain myself from yelping: “But what about the Olympics?” I can only presume that he's playing the long game, in view of my psychological training. Likewise, I experience a similar unparanoia - perhaps we could refer to it as parajoya - whenever a “bingy bongy” announcement comes over a PA. In a supermarket, say, or at an airport. I will, again, always presume that the impending message will be about me. And something razzy, too - that “they” (the Live Aid committee, the Obama campaign, the two hot foxes from Flight of the Conchords) have a desperate need of me, are going to pick me up in a 4x4 with dark windows and take me somewhere to make vital, top-level sideways glances at the week's news. I'm always nonplussed when it turns out to be merely that someone has parked a red Saab too near the exit ramp.

But these are not just ludicrous, exciting thoughts entering my mind. They extend to full-on auditory hallucinations, too. You know that McFly song, It's All About You? I thought it was called It's All About Me. And when we had Handsome Builder Tommy in the house, even I was slightly surprised to hear him greet me with “You look pretty, Cat”, one morning. Slightly flustered but hugely flattered, I simpered for nearly two solid minutes - until I looked up, and saw Tommy staring at me in puzzlement.

“Er, I said ‘Hello, puddy-tat',” he said, pointing at the cat.

Really, it's as though Van Gogh were a self-satisfied, faux-middle-class woman in Crouch End.

For those who might think that I am making light of mental illness, I'd like to remind everyone that that a) laughter is the best medicine (aside from risperidone), and b) it is not as though I am being wholly supercilious, anyway. These positive mental disorders can, on occasion, be very isolating. Everyone else I know likes to say gloomily: “They're all out to get me!” I get looks that can only be described as “askance” when I chirpily reply: “I know! I can't wait!”

However, by and large, I can't lie: as reality-distorting mental disorders go, this one's pretty pleasant. I have tried to work out what it was that might have caused such a phenomenon, and can only conclude that it must be genetic. My nanna was convinced that she was the direct descendant of Brian Boru, and would one day be called upon to make Ireland whole again; primarily, as far as I could work out, giving everyone concerned gigantic amounts of sweets: which, now I think about it, might actually have worked. It clearly is far too late for an upbringing that will lead to greatness. I have, instead, a life that has lead to Caitness.

Is a torch on a bus really such a bright idea?
Still on the Olympics, I noted that the route of the Beijing Olympic torch was published in The Times on Friday. As the torch is pencilled in to travel around the world - including up Everest - before lighting the giant Chinese barbecue pit this summer, its itinerary takes in London on the way. According to the International Olympic Committee, on April 6 the torch will begin its journey at Wembley Stadium at 10.30am, then make its way to Ladbroke Grove via Willesden, Harlesden and Kensal Green - by bus. And all in a mere half-hour.

Now I am very pro the bus, but I do think this is a slightly fanciful journey. After all, if - as I have been repeatedly told during my years of motherhood - a bus cannot allow more than two buggies on board because of “health and safety”, then whither a burning fence-post? Should the torch-bearer go upstairs, or stay downstairs? And should he leave the Olympic flame in the luggage area if he does?

Advert alert
Ofcom, the media regulator, has proposed that TV in Britain have more frequent, US-style ad-breaks. Currently, there must be 20-minute intervals between adverts - but one possibility being investigated is that commercial stations just do what the hell they want, and insert ads for “The Abdominiser” in between words of important sentences in Coronation Street, if they like, so long as they get pots of cash. Really, we can't be having with this. It is the custom here that we have one ad-break per half-hour of TV so that we can all go to the toilet at the same time, and queue up on the landing, trying to work out who will be murdered next in Midsomer. This is the way of our people. This is how it has always been. Some Johnny-come-lately Yankee ad-flurry would undermine social cohesion. It cannot be allowed to come to pass. It must be stopped.

Times Recommends

• Police beg us for food. What hope is there?
• Moral darkness that engulfed Baby P
• More to Advent than cheap chocolate