Today is of course Valentine's Day and by rights I should be dashing this off quickly before taking my wife out for an over-priced meal with complimentary glass of lukewarm champagne-style Ukranian Cava in a crowded restaurant full of couples bickering over who is going to drive home.

Doubtless my wife will read this and brand me a lifeless dullard with all the romance of a Nazi stormtrooper opening fire on an orphanage.

But I don't care. I hate Valentine's Day and all that it stands for. It is a global conspiracy perpetuated by card shops and florists designed to make the ugly feel inadequate and men in general hopeless.

So ugly men like me are even worse off.

What I don't understand is that the myth must have been started by men. What were they thinking of? They are obviously gender traitors. It is a bit like finding out that Christmas was invented by a turkey.

Of course my attitude towards Valentine's Day might be skewed by my school years. While my peers were showered with cards and kisses from the opposite sex I was shunned like a tramp with halitosis at a Royal garden party.

I couldn't have been less attractive if I'd shaved my head and adorned it with a cow pat. I should know, one boy did that and he still got more cards than me.

Every Valentine's Day I would turn up at school hoping against hope that someone myopic enough to qualify for a guide dog and large print reading material would have sent a card.

But without fail my desk was as empty as Bobby Davro's engagements diary.

It is little wonder than I look at February 14 with a jaundiced eye. Ever since school I have resented being told what day I must buy flowers and chocolates, accompanied by pledges of undying love. And then being charged three times the usual amount just because they have a piece cellophane with love hearts printed on around them.

One year I decided to write my then wife (and that phrase may give you a clue as to how successful this gambit was) a poem instead of buying sickly chocolates and a tacky card.

I figured that something personal and heartfelt would mean more than a piece of cardboard designed by a committee and spewed out of a printing press in Staines.

How wrong could I have been? She looked for all the world as if I had gift-wrapped the contents of the cat's litter tray.

Since then I have resolved to have nothing to do with it. It is far better, I always say, to choose a random day of the year to buy flowers for the one you love.

If only I could ever remember to do that...