O to be a night bird.

There is virtually nothing in life I wouldn't rather do first thing in the morning: working, writing, household tasks, gluttonous feasting, even possibly drinking.

I once tried out being a film critic, but decided that was too much of a challenge, since, for evening screenings, I required to take a kind of chaperone who could watch and report on the sections of the film I missed through sleeping.

Actually I thought it was OK to be a lark, even possibly quite virtuous. But now comes the bad news. If you want to get ahead, we are told by a University of Madrid study, be a night owl.

If your body clock dictates you are one who likes to work and play into the wee hours, then you belong to the group that scores, in tests, higher on inductive reasoning, tend to be not successful academically, and in the end are likely to earn more and have a prestigious occupation.

Suddenly the tendency towards waking up clear-headed at 6am seems like a sadly crippling disadvantage. Suddenly it seems that if you doze off during the pudding course of a dinner party or slump in a comatose state on the sofa at 8pm, you are cut out only for life's slow lane.

To be honest, I had always known it. Those night birds had always seemed more exotic, exciting and faintly romantic, which is probably why I got hitched to one. He carried about him all the mystery of the night. I wanted to join him there, to battle my way through the wall of sleepiness and on to the final stages of the party marathon. But, without chemical intervention, you can't really fight your body clock. And there are advantages too. Someone has to be vaguely alive at 6am when the kids get up.