Jacko warned not to give up the day job! I entered a short-story competition last week - and the judges hammered me!

The rules were simple: Submit a previously unpublished true story about yourself. Max 1,500 words. Prize: £1,000. I delved back into my sporting past and regaled the judges with an inglorious episode from my short boxing career at college.

Here's my effort that garnered "nul points" from the worldwide juries:


IT'S difficult to enjoy your breakfast when you know a fit, strong, aggressive bloke is going to punch you hard in the face sometime before lunch.

This was neither an irrational fear of an unprovoked attack nor a ghastly premonition. It was a planned event, I knew when and where it would happen. It was to be a self-imposed initiation test. A test of my mettle and courage.

I'm certainly not a masochist and whoever was going to land that punch was going to have to earn the privilege. Before that blow landed (and hopefully afterwards!) I would be doing my damnedest to dish out similar punishment.

In short, I was learning to box.

At that early stage of my training I had only recently progressed to light sparring after weeks of gruelling fitness work and practising basic punches and combinations. So far, no one fending off my newly acquired skills had actually fought back. The instructors didn't have to and the leather bags tended not to - which is not to say they didn't nip back at you a bit sharpish if you lost concentration!

I'd been told I could develop into a useful boxer. Despite being dominantly left-handed, I adopted an orthodox stance but could switch to southpaw at will.

Yet one thing was nagging at me. I had no idea if I could actually take a full-on "bloody-hell-this-bloke-means-to-damage-me" punch. I'd been caught accidentally a few times by my fellow students but never at full power and never without the action immediately stopping and accepting the apologies of the perpetrator. And I have to say these innocent tags still hurt like the dickens and made the prospect of genuine combat genuinely unappealing.

So I decided to find out how bad it could be. When it came to a bit of proper sparring, I would deliberately leave myself exposed and invite the consequences.

On the appointed day, despite my undigested breakfast turning somersaults in a suddenly turbulent belly, I was able to see one or two positive aspects as I pulled on my gloves. First, the bloke in the opposite corner was a little lighter than I was and looked just as anxious as I imagined I did. Second, we were given headguards. This cheered me no end. Flimsy as the padding looked, it offered reassuring protection - unless I was careless enough to take a blow straight to the chin.

Which is exactly where he pinged me about 12 seconds into our first round!

All my plans went out the window - as did most of my cognitive processes. I thought I'd have a few rounds toe-to-toe before dropping my guard and taking my medicine. I didn't count on matey-boy flying out of his corner like an adrenalin-fuelled, hay-making demon.

I blocked a flurry of wayward blows, ducked under a hook and was just about to take a step back and wait for his nervous fury to pass. But as I came out of my crouch, I just had time to realise my field of vision was filled with red leather before I saw stars exploding spectacularly all around me.

In the half a second it took my rear to thump Bambi-like on to the canvas, my addled noggin tried to make sense of what was happening. Had the gym blown up? Had something fallen from the ceiling and struck me? And when did my opponent invite another two identical versions of him into the ring?

My disorientation was only momentary and I was soon in full possession of the facts. I'd been laid low by a man who had his eyes closed throughout his entire pinwheeling mayhem and had no idea he'd hit me until he almost tripped over me. As I stood up, he had the proper mix of concern and badly-hidden triumph flitting across his face. Our coach just looked perplexed by the whole sorry debacle.

I suppose, ultimately, I had my questions answered. I knew what a knock-out punch felt like - and I can report even brief unconsciousness is a fine anaesthetic! But my boxing career was stillborn. I carried on long enough to find out what the other side of the equation was like. A few weeks later I knocked my sparring partner out cold. It was the day I called it a day.

I'M sure the sympathy expressed was sincere. But it was so shockingly wide of the mark I was momentarily stunned.

"Sorry to hear about your loss - I read a bit of your web thing," offered the venerable Doug. "Very sad. What was it again - your cat?"

"Very kind of you, Dougie - but it was my niece."

"Really? I didn't read all of it. I think I'll get padded up."

And so Headliners CC bade farewell to the balmy winter and it was down to the serious business of nets in preparation for the 2007 campaign.

Still a little put out, but finding it hard not to laugh out loud at the continual air of absurdity that surrounds this club - I picked up the pill for the first time since last September and measured out a seven-pace run up.

Fitzy stood at the crease - and despite a long step across the off stump and full-length stretch of the bat - he was still a good foot away from my Harmison-like loosener which fizzed pathetically into the side netting.

After five or six balls of varying prowess, I switched to left-arm over the wicket in the desperate hope of better luck. And - knock me daahn wiv a fevver - I found it!

With a few wayward exceptions, KJ was pinging the ball in on a good length with a bit of movement and Fitz, BT and Doug were all on the defensive.

One ball, had it been in a match, would have had the scorer marking the first downward stroke of his 'w' as soon as he saw it leave my hand. That's certainly how i felt about it. So you can imagine my disbelief and dismay when a clearly flummoxed BT somehow toe-ended the ball away for perhaps a streaky brace. No justice.

With bat in hand, I felt good too. Especially as the bowling on offer was distinctly low-grade stuff. Yet BT once again proved my undoing.

I took a look at one shabby lob and decided that I could cart it back over his head once it reached me on the second bounce. Sadly, I felt the swish of willow without any resistance of leather - and heard the terrible death-rattle of my flattened plastic furniture. My distress was compounded by witnessing the oaf's delighted gloating.

Roll on winter and the end of this sporting charade!

IT is not just with bat and ball that KJ has failed to impress as a sportsman.

A day after my return from the beautiful ski resort of Megeve, France, I can report I'm as equally inept on Alpine pistes as I am on the greener, occasionally flatter venues of home.

Actually, I do myself an injustice. After four years of skiing holidays, I'm not too terrible. I'm still more Stanley Baxter than Alain Baxter but drop me at the top of almost any slope and I'll muddle my way down.

Lack of bottle holds me back. Technically, I can be the bees knees. Indeed, my short-radius turns were the talk of the town. But while the rest of my ski gang point down the hill and gracefully carve their way to a waiting vin chaud, yours truly zig-zags out of the clouds with eyes like saucers and thigh muscles burning like hot coals.

So it was with utter surprise and a sense of foreboding that I heard myself sign up to a potentially humiliating and life-threatening experience:

I entered a genuine, competitive, gongs-for-the-winners giant slalom race! And I even had to shell out ten of your johnny foreigner bank notes for the privilege.

The omens were not good. My only previous attempt at getting up a proper head of steam on skis cost me an eye lid and my original facial bone structure. I can testify to the stunning stopping ability of a noggin buried into the side of a mountain which sneaks up on you at 60mph.

As it happened, speed was not my enemy in the slalom race. Far from it. For an indication of my performance and prowess, it did not go unremarked in the hotel afterwards that the official race photographer captured three pin-sharp pictures of me - and single, dramatic blurred shots of everyone else!

I didn't help that to even get to the start gate - that's right kids, a start gate (plus race bibs and proper electronic timing when I was expecting only a frog with a big flag at the top and his mate with a stopwatch at the bottom) - I had to negotiate the steepest, scratchiest run in the entire Alps and then ski a treacherous route through a haunted forest past the frozen bones of long-dead English adventurers.

Maybe I'm bending the verite a tad, but it was certainly no preparation for an all-out assault on the fiendishly fiendish giant slalom course that stretched away fiendishly below me.

All too soon I was no longer louche English tourist Jacko, I was suddenly competitor No 29 with a weak bladder, slack bowels and visions of a life spent eating through a straw next to big machine that goes 'ping'.

I got off to a flier. The first three gates whizzed past in a stylish swish of parallel excellence. The next few were slightly more ragged but commendable. Then, disaster! The after-burners cut-out! I was in a Top Gun-style icy tail spin and had to dig deep to remember the procedure - and deployed the emergency snow-plough!

I crossed the finish line, just, with help of ski poles, to polite rather than excited applause. The timer consulted his calendar . . . 1 min 41.2 seconds. Not bad at all thinks KJ, coolly falling over in the snow trying to remove the bib.

Not bad. But still dead last! And not by fractions of a second. Last by more than 20 seconds! 40th out of 40! The winning time was a shade under 37 seconds.

I'm not expecting a call-up to Team GB for the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver - but at least I can now call myself a "competitive skier."

*I have been asked to point out that Mrs J also took part in the race. She took 1 min 09 sec. But you have to remember the ladies' course was, um, the same one.