I am writing today’s column at approximately 76 miles an hour. And sitting opposite me is as near perfect a specimen of geek as I think I’ve ever spotted.

I mean that in no derogatory way. After all, I’m a geek too, though a mere bystander compared to the one sitting across from me, gingerly unscrewing his Thermos and sniffing its contents.

He’s about 50, same as me, with glasses, ditto, a huge amount of dandruff (I have irritable bowel, so who’s counting?) and call me an amateur Hercules Poirot, but I’d guess he’s a cyclist too.

I say this only because cradled in his left arm, away from the train window, is his bike helmet, souped-up with all the style and chic of a Sunday School catwalk.

Bizarrely – though I’ll admit it’s curiously admirable too – he’s used wool, a whole ball I’d guess, to attach a Maglite torch of key ring size to its lid. Far out.

At the same time, one trouser leg is tucked into his sock while the other flaps freely.

On the small table in front of us, his lunchbox fights for space against my Samsung notebook. He has a tuna roll poking out of it circa 1959, an almost black banana, and a Penguin chocolate biscuit.

When sipping his coffee, he ‘sipppppppppppppppppps’, before checking his luminescent waistcoat with ‘Property of Reading B*&£$!’ faded onto it, that’s probably – and this is just a ballpark figure – 2,000 times too small for him.

Across from us, on the other side of the carriage, is a beautifully dressed woman, late thirties, with a look of such beatific contentment that everyone else is staring at her like moths drawn to a flame. Yet it’s the geek I can’t tear my eyes away from.

His mannerisms, grimaces, facial ticks, strange fumblings and well-thumbed copy of Riders by Jilly Cooper (how unexpected is that?) simply draw me in and again remind me how cool Oxford really is.

In any other part of the country, this man would have either been caged or welded to a portaloo. But in Oxford, we not only tolerate geeks, we revere them. And rightly too.

Indeed, in this city, I think it’s true to say the Geek inherited the Earth a good few centuries ago.

And the best thing is, peel away their surface with a simple nod, ‘hello’ or smile and a whole onion of hang-ups, idiosyncrasies, affectations and mannerisms bursts out and preens.

Truth is, it’s unique to live somewhere where the sports jock, man or woman, is effortlessly eclipsed by gangliness, awkwardness and an almost total inability to strip off in the summer.

We should be proud.