I’ve had some pretty ropey caddies in my time, but I’ve never had a donkey on the bag.

It’s not that I haven’t thought about it: there’s nothing I’d like better than a velvety-muzzled Abyssinian calculating my yardages or a Spotted Ass flopping down on the green beside me and reading the break on a tricky downhill par putt. The truth is simply that, what with my east Midlands upbringing, my long lay-off from golf in my twenties, the foot-and-mouth scare of 2001 and the purchase of my first electric trolley, donkeys and I just never seemed to intersect.