My maths just doesn't add up - it's embarrassing

You know the sort of thing: 'What's 5x7?' Or, 'What's 8x6?' Don't follow me down the aisle firing out questions like that because the chances are I'll just look even more gormless than usual while I, a) try to work out the answers and, b) try to distance myself from you.

I have never been very good at maths. There, I've admitted it. Are you happy now?

What some people find easy – "Six multiplied by seven is 42, obviously. What's the matter with you, you idiot? Eh? Eh?" – I still have to think about. (I had to count to double check that 6x7 really does equal 42 – which I think says pretty much everything you need to know.)

I once explained this to a county councillor I'd been sent to interview. He'd been a maths teacher for many moons, and while we were talking I admitted that I was as thick as two short ones when it came to numbers.

"No," he'd said, "you just haven't been taught properly."

It's possible he had a point. If you were to go up to my relatives and ask them a random multiplication question (but pleasantly, mind. Bit of respect, eh?) they'd answer you almost instantly. They hardly have to think about it. They had times tables drummed into them from an early age. They and the rest of their class recited them over and over until the numbers sank in.

Now by the time I got to school some terribly clever people had decided that this was no good at all and should be scrapped. Children didn't need to know multiplication tables. That's old and dull and fuddy-duddy, daddio. (Their exact words. Probably.)

The result? My nearest and dearest have near instant recall of the foundations of mathematics half a century after they left school. And I've got a nice calculator.

Now the reason I mention this – yes, there is a point – is that Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, has been getting a bit of a kicking from certain circles after announcing plans to reform the teaching of mathematics.

One of his ideas is for children to learn their 12 times tables by the age of nine.

According to some critics this involves rote learning – parroting out the answers – and this is dull and repetitive and will lead to children switching off in the classroom.

And yet the system we've had over the last 30-odd years, which presumably isn't dull or repetitive, doesn't appear to be working brilliantly either.

Apparently almost half of adults – 17 million people – have poor maths skills, and this leaves them struggling when it comes to working out their finances, calculating change or reading a bus timetable.

There is clearly a problem with maths in this country, and you only need to go into a big department store when there's a sale on to see it.

Nowadays the shops print out sheets showing that 10 per cent off a £20 shirt is a £2 discount, or that 50 per cent off makes that shirt £10.

You should be able to work those two out in your head without a crib sheet. Even I can do that, and as I say, I'm not exactly Professor Brian Cox.

I wish, I really wish, we'd spent just 10 minutes at the end of each day in primary school whizzing through the times tables.

I'm not saying I'd be lecturing in economics at Cambridge by now if I had, but I'd have saved quite a bit of money on calculator batteries.

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