Much was made in the press last week from the arrival of A-level exam results last weeks into the waiting hands of young men and women of the country. (Congratulations, BTW, to Smudge and Evie for doing so well; we have the cleverest commenters.) With the papers full of celebrating 18-year-olds, I was glad to see that the naughty pupils who hadn’t studied so hard weren’t forgotten, either.

On Radio 1, the DJ spent a good five minutes explaining how, if you didn’t get the marks you wanted, it didn’t really matter in the long run, to finish of with the invitation to please call the BBC helpline if you were at all worried. “I know you still have to break the news to your parents. It’s scary, yeah, but ring the helpline, and we’ll figure out a way to tell them. You don’t have to do it alone.”

I pictured a girl with an envelope half-crumpled in her hand, wipe at her tears with a sleeve. “Yeah, right,” she says bitterly to the radio. “I don’t have to do it alone, sure. You’ll come to my house, tell my parents I’m not getting into Oxford, and bend over the back of the sofa next to me for that belt whipping.”

She doesn’t believe it would help at all, and still she punches in the number of the helpline into her mobile, and waits holding her tearful breath. Maybe they do have a magic word that stops parents from reaching for the belt. Maybe…