Here in Britain, our special talent is to be able to make a tradition out of anything – that and a class distinction.

We should not be surprised, then, if there are few more reliable gauges of middle-class status on these islands than to harbour special memories of sweet/embarrassing/appalling life-episodes played out to the accompaniment of Test Match Special (TMS).

The much-loved BBC radio programme - which offers listeners ball-by-ball commentary of cricket internationals and much, much more - celebrates 60 years on the air this week.

You will appreciate what I mean about our genius for tradition if I mention in passing that this makes TMS a comparative stripling when set against Desert Island Discs, first broadcast 75 years ago, and The Archers, which began in 1950 or 1951, depending on whether you include the pilot episodes or not.

Oh and an interjection for non-cricketers, just in case you are still reading. Test matches may stretch for 30 hours over five days and should you find yourself commentating on one, you will also need to take account of the interludes while play is halted each day for lunch and tea or because the weather is not cooperating.

OK, and so to my sweet/embarrassing/appalling TMS-accompanied life-episode, because you knew I would have one, didn’t you?

One of the things about sport is it enables you to date things precisely, so I can tell you that the harrowing events you are about to read about happened on July 21, 1981 - well before most of my precocious young insidethegames colleagues were born.

It is a Tuesday morning and I am sitting outside Guildford railway station in whatever battered jalopy I was driving at the time.

I am still buzzing with Ian Botham’s outrageous, defiant, undefeated 145 at Headingley Cricket Ground the previous day.

But the Somerset miracle-worker, who was awarded a knighthood in 2007, has only Bob Willis left to accompany him and England are just 124 ahead.

It is amazing they have a lead at all, given their first-innings deficit of 227. It was thrilling while it lasted, but it is almost certainly too little too late.

So I am comfortable with my situation, which is that I have agreed to give a London-based friend a lift to a job interview, rather than watch first-innings centurion John Dyson and his Australian team-mates knock off the runs required to win with pitiless, metronomic efficiency.

I cannot remember exactly where this interview was. It was one of those places beginning with B broadly to the west of the London sprawl – maybe Bracknell, maybe Bagshot, maybe Basingstoke.

What I can remember was that by the time my friend came out of his grilling, Australia were 50-odd for four, wobbling alarmingly in pursuit of their 130 target, after losing a flurry of three wickets for just two runs.

The race was on, insofar as such a concept is compatible with a 1100cc Escort, or a Morris Minor, or whatever it was.

Yet, seemingly at every red light, the inspirational Willis, and just occasionally some chap at the other end, would strike again.

We had still not escaped Basingstoke (or Bagshot, or Brackley) before the great Allan Border was on his way back to the hutch.

Quite unbelievably, this meant that an Aussie middle order also comprising players of the quality of Kim Hughes and Graham Yallop had departed without a run between them.

As the TMS team did their thing on my clapped-out car radio, we suffered. The agony could not have been more exquisite had it been inflicted by a vengeful femme fatale with lacquered nails, a candle or two and no scruples.

We wanted the wickets to fall; oh no we didn’t. We were desperate to see the dénouement on an actual TV; oh no we weren’t - not if it meant that the wrong team won.

My memory tells me we got back to my living-room in time to witness the demise of poor Ray Bright at the hands of the irresistible Willis. But, looking at the timings, that might just be what I want to believe: I have seen the clip enough times.

Either way, I now regard this as the stupidest, most hare-brained, most reckless act of generosity I have ever undertaken.

You simply cannot take the great game for granted like that. What was I thinking?

I am pretty sure my friend did not even get the job. At all events, he was working as something in the City within a few months.

The pain is still raw. It is only today, nearly 36 years later, that I have been able to bring myself to talk about it.

But, without TMS it would have been even worse.

And the dear old thing continues to deliver, as much for the noises off as the soap opera of the game itself.

I mean Aggers (Jonathan Agnew), a former paceman, interviewing pop music’s Lily Allen – what’s not to like?

And the cakes and the pigeons and the buses on the Harleyford Road and the exotic, on-tour creepy-crawlies and so many other things.

Only a few weeks ago, I was mesmerised by new boy Dan Norcross, whom I must admit when off-air is an occasional team-mate, trying to explain between deliveries – that is what made it – why one of his middle names was Edmund.

It was not even a Test match – the brand covers other formats nowadays. But, of course, with live Tests having migrated to pay-TV, it is more indispensable than ever for many cricket-lovers.

So, happy 60th TMS, and here’s to the next 60!