Tis the season of the Oxbridge interview.

Ah, the tyranny of those dreaming spires. Why do they hold such malign sway?

Perky eggheads still seek my dotard wisdom: "How can I prepare? What will they ask?"

Who knows, eh?

I certainly didn't…

It is December 11, 1962. 6.20pm.

I am standing outside Room 13, Peterhouse College, Cambridge. I'm about to be interviewed by a learned fellow in the English department – a Mr Amis.

That's Kingsley Amis, famed scourge of pretentious clots.

I am 17, clinically shy, grammar-school grim, and quaking in my Hush Puppies. My apparel is by Sexual Desert, my hair by Medieval Peasant, and my confidence in freefall.

I hear wild boogie-woogie music behind his door.

Knock. Knock.

Nothing.

Knock! Knock!

"Do come in."

I shuffle into a crepuscular gloom. These must be the shades of Academe. There are books, booze and a record player – and the wittiest man on the planet.

"Hello!" he may have said.

He sips a whiskey and changes a record. Jelly Roll Morton? Low culture. I'm here to talk about higher stuff.

"Get cultured, boy!" I'd been told at school. I did. Like billyho.

I am chock full of rather significant opinions about such things as objective correlatives in Eliot, and the excremental visions in Swift.

I keel pointlessly about before sinking into a sofa.

"What novel would you take on a train journey?"

Erm.

Lucky Jim?

Of course not.

"Wuthering Heights!" I hear myself shriek.

"Why?"

Because I've prepared some parrot answers on it. I deliver them to bits of furniture and a piece of curtain. I seem to be swallowing marbles. I drone on about pathetic fallacies and thanatoid visions – just the kind of bilious bollocks the world's greatest satirist needs to hear from a callow wanker on a sofa.

My deliberations can't compete with Mr Morton, who is getting ever more jiggy about his jelly roll. Mr Amis seems keener on his profanities than my banalities. But I continue my monologue, mistaking him for the kind of fellow who gives a toss.

My confidence now nil, I elect myself mute. He intimates that the interview may well be over. I wrench self off sofa. We nearly shake hands. I totter out, filed under twerp.

My school is later informed that I am "woeful" and "without obvious potential".

Probably a fair cop.

You still want to go?

Tips?

Prepare nothing. Expect anything. Don't faint. Chill – then dazzle them with your quicksilver intellect. Or not.