I'M thinking of asking my wife Maria to bash me over the head really hard.

Hopefully, this will render me instantly unconscious and, when I wake up, I could be a genius.

A blow on the head apparently worked for a chap called Jason Padgett who was the victim of a mugging outside a karaoke bar in Washington 12 years ago. Maybe somebody didn't like his singing.

The injury turned him into a mathematical genius whose world is one of intricate geometric shapes that he reproduces on paper and sells as art.

He says mathematical powers lay dormant in all human beings.

This is probably true. They have been dormant in me ever since third form trigonometry and I was frightened by Pythagoras' Hypotenuse which, for years I thought was a large African animal that sat in mud pools.

Maria herself had a cranial encounter many years ago that left her a changed woman. After eight hours brain surgery she had a head for money - a slot on one side where the surgeon operated.

Of course, my wife may not agree to bash me, but volunteers to do the job instead need not apply.

I am not sure a critic would use sufficient moderation. Which is why I may have to trick her into rendering the necessary blow by pretending to need help erecting a gazebo in the back garden.

"Here's the mallet and I'll hold the spike. When I nod my head, hit it."

Well, you never know, it might work.

Unfortunately, it is not certain that I would wake up as an expert in sums with a sideline in art or being able to play the piano like Liberace.

In fact, there are said to be only 40 people in the world who are known to have developed what is called savant syndrome.

Padgett believes that the inner genius can be released in anyone; they just need to be woken up and, for him, a bash on the head worked.

"I believe I am living proof that these powers lie dormant in all of us," he writes in his book, Struck by Genius: How a Brain Injury Made Me a Mathematical Marvel.

It might be worth it if you could guarantee that with one blow I would wake up with the ability to play the violin like Nigel Kennedy and paint like Van Gogh.

With my luck, I'd be able to play the violin like Van Gogh and paint like Kennedy.