Eva Bradley: Irritating clever people

I'm never going to bathe again. I am simply not worthy. Last week I went to international stage show Soap, a visual spectacular travelling the country making everyone who watches it walk away with their tail between their legs and a new commitment to showering.

For two hours, physically perfect acrobats who must surely have been born double-jointed made light work of turning a previously relaxing item of bathroom furniture into a launching pad for all sorts of strenuous and physically astounding acts.

By the intermission, I was exhausted just watching.

As I sat down in my cushy seat on my even more cushy derriere to enjoy the second half, I couldn't help thinking how irritating clever people were. Whether we come across them through work or play, there is nothing quite so annoying as having our own inadequacies revealed simply by standing next to someone so much better.

With all the will in the world and all the training to go with it, I simply will not be taking a bath now or any time in the future while simultaneously juggling eight balls and spinning a large towel with my big toe. At best, I could hope to juggle a good book and a bowl of icecream without dropping either into the water.

In my professional life I love what I do and I'm good at it, but that doesn't mean my heart doesn't sink when I go to a course by a visiting expert or look online at top international photography and feel like a three-day-old balloon that is slowly leaking air.

Even worse than feeling deflated professionally is finding your life lacking personally.

As much as I love and adore my friends and want nothing for them but continued happiness with their designer children and model husbands ... do they have to be so god-damned designer and model?

Couldn't someone's perfect poppet develop a minor behavioural problem or a handsome hubby fall victim to early pattern baldness, just so the rest of us who are single and childless might feel a teensy bit better by comparison?

There is a line from a song by Morrissey (who along with other wrist-slashing lyricists provided the soundtrack of my misspent youth) which says how we hate it when our friends become successful and, if we could destroy them, you bet your life we would destroy them.

It's perhaps a little vitriolic for my tastes, however, in contradiction with the famous quotation, there's a lot to be said for surrounding yourself with unsuccessful people.

Where others live for the challenge and the thrill of the chase, I have always thrived at being a big fish in a small pool and nothing inspires me to excel more than knowing I am better than the guy standing next to me.

As soon as he's top dog, I simply go find another tree to pee on.

We all have one irritating friend or colleague who has to be the best: competitive storytellers who always have the worst disaster experience, the better holiday to recollect.

Nothing is more off-putting to me then sentences that start with "If you think THAT'S bad, listen to THIS ..."

It's times like that I wish I had a hearing aid I could simply switch off. People who have to be the best, and those who actually are, are annoying in equal measure.

There are all sorts of inspiring quotations about success but my favourite is one of my own: to be the best, surround yourself with the worst. These are the sorts of thoughts that always come to me while I have a good long soak in the bath. I can only hope to be half as inspired now I'm exclusively using the shower.