Short people feel paranoid, according to scientists. Which sounds like a tall tale to me. Mind you, at my height, every tale is tall.

Professor Daniel Freeman of Oxford University ran an experiment for the Medical Research Council where people of average height were put on a computer simulated Tube journey with everyone else 10 inches taller.

The suddenly short people felt mistrustful and afraid, thinking they were being stared at, the research team concluded.

“Reducing people’s height made them feel inferior,” said the Professor. “This all happened in virtual reality but we know people behave in VR as they do in real life.”

Tell Dustin Hoffman and Daniel Radcliffe (5ft 5inches tall) that they're inferior. Or Al Pacino and Tom Cruise at 5ft 7. They don't think they're second class.

Surely the research suffers from a basic flaw. It takes people of average height – 5ft 10in for a bloke (177 cm) – who have never previously experienced being on the diminutive side, and sticks them in the middle of a crowd of travellers who are all 6ft 8inches tall. This is a new experience, they are in shock and do not know how to react.

On the other hand, chaps who are vertically challenged have grown up (figuratively speaking) not bothered by the differentials. I am 5ft 6 on a good day and have never felt inferior in my life. Even when confronted with the entire defensive line of the Seattle Seahawks.

It happened years ago on a ship that had been converted into a nightclub. I paused at a hatchway to allow a large gentleman to come through first, and the rest of his squad mates followed. They had to turn sideways to get their shoulders through. Rather than feel intimidated, I hoped they had the sense not to all congregate on one side of the vessel at the same time. Their combined weight might have tipped us over.

America, of course, is the land of extremes. I have been visiting the country for 40 years and discovered on my first trip that its residents are taller than most other nations. These days, they also hold the unenviable record of having more fat people than anybody else. Some of them are taller than me lying down.

Me feel inferior? I always feel superior in the United States. But then, I'm British.

The only time I got a Virtual Reality impression of what it might be like to be tall, was when I was a young man and travelling on a bus that was full of pensioners. When everyone stood up to get off I realised I was the tallest person there. I could see over their heads to the horizon.

By heck, I thought. What a lonely existence.

Which is why I've been kind to tall people ever since. Some of my best friends are tall.