We live in a world where things are set up to favour right handers

The vast majority of us have no concept of these sorts of difficulties because we live in a world where things are set up to favour right handers.

However, pick up a pair of left handed scissors and you'll soon get the point.

Left handers have always had the rough end of the stick though.

Go back to the Roman times - their word for left, sinistra, has been adopted in our language to identify unusual or strange occurrences.

A number of scientific studies have suggested that left handers are more accident prone as they are forced to adopt systems that are geared towards the other side.

One study on baseball players (because it was easy to know what hand they used as this had been recorded) suggested that left handers die earlier than their right handed counterparts.

Infant's tale

My first experience, and what started my interest in the subject, came at infant school when I sat next to a good friend of mine who was left handed.

We both discovered that there was only one way we could sit beside each other without a fight, and that was with me on his right side and him on my left.

Quite simple really, but I remained fascinated by the subject and a number of years ago I went along to the Lawn Tennis Association to examine the records of top tennis players.

What I discovered was at that time approximately 12% of the top 100 tennis players were left handed, but that there were three left handers in the top men's game and two in the women's.

Hardly scientific I grant, but it does beg the question whether, far from being a disadvantage, left handedness might in certain circumstances give you the edge.

And how would you react if I told you that of the last six presidents of the United States, four have been left handed! A coincidence perhaps?

However, slightly lower on the evolutionary scale I spoke to London Zoo to ask whether monkeys had right or left handed preferences and I discovered that they tend to use both left and right, and hands and feet, interchangeably.

Now, if we could just teach the president to do that!