The Secret Diary of Mark Ramprakash, aged 37 and a half

April 2007

The new cricket season is about to start, and to be honest I’m petrified. Not about scoring runs for Surrey – that’s the least of my problems – but by all this female attention I seem to be attracting.

Up until the end of last season I could walk around un-noticed – it didn’t matter if I forgot to do up my flies, picked my nose in the car, etc., but not now. For twenty years the only attention I’ve attracted was the odd autograph request from cricket-mad young boys; sometimes I’d be collared by some old codger with a theory on why I didn’t quite cut it for England – oh , and once I was mistaken for Antonio Banderas when I was in Argos.

That’s all changed now. I can hardly walk down to the newsagents to buy the paper without women nudging each other and grinning at me. It’s un-nerving - one even fainted the other day when I bent down to tie my shoelaces and some bloke yelled “’ere Ramps – she wants mouth to mouth!” Darren Gough told me that I should pretend to be on my mobile phone so people won’t come up and talk to me but I was rumbled when I tried that on the tube - I forgot there’s no service and was having a pretend conversation with my Mum when I realised the whole carriage was sniggering.

When I do the school run I’ve noticed that all the mums have started wearing make-up and keep asking me what I think about Freddie Flintstone and Paul Bollywood – I’m dreading what they’ll ask me to do for the next school fundraiser. Hopefully I’ll be playing cricket that day – I’ll just curl up and die if they make me go in the kissing booth.

As for going to the gym, it’s turning into a nightmare - did I mention that I found a strange woman in my locker last week? I don’t know what she’d been doing, but my pants went missing that day and I’ve had to send my wife to buy new ones – I daren’t go myself, as within minutes of me leaving M&S the fact that I like their plain low-rise jersey trunks (size medium) will be all over the internet. I’ve had to throw my speedos away too and get some baggy swimmers – women just kept STARING at me at the pool and it really put me off my stroke.

I had no idea this would happen when I rashly agreed to take part in Strictly Come Dancing last autumn. I only said yes because my wife Van didn’t want me hanging around the house all depressed during the Ashes. It was fantastic to meet Bruce Forsyth, but I’m beginning to wonder if getting him to record “nice to hear you, to hear you nice” as my voicemail message is going to be worth all the aggro.

Right, I’m just off to get the car out to drive to the Oval. I’m not going on the tube today because signing all those autographs makes my arm ache and it’s bound to affect my batting. I’m going to spend a fortune on petrol this season, but on the bright side I might be able to get enough Nectar points to install my own home gym.