Next Saturday that come, I pitched the cart on the same pitch, and I was in very high feather indeed, keeping ’em laughing the whole of the time, and getting off the goods briskly.

Victor the Diceman Lemieux started life as a seven-and-a-half-pound fuck trophy, in a third-floor walk-up brothel off Canal Street in New Orleans.

Think back to the first time you dared think about getting a doctorate. Excited? Surprised at your audacity? Adrenalined? Scared? What did you dream about?

All that is happily a thing of the past, following construction of a new combined engineering and traincrew depot to which some 450 frontline and managerial staff have been transferred.