No honour, no pride: a brief history of Tim | Tim Dowling

Being christened Tim sets you up for a life of failure, it's been claimed. I'd hoped this was nonsense, but sadly a new study suggests it may be true

A lot of baggage comes with the name Tim. I have not forgotten Martin Amis's 20-year-old description of Tim Henman as "the first human being called Tim to achieve anything at all". More recently Will Self wrote: "There's little doubt that your life chances will be constrained should your otherwise risk-averse parents have had the temerity to Tim you." This was in a review of the JD Wetherspoon pub chain, the many faults of which Self put down to founder Tim Martin never being able "to escape the fact of his Timness".

At the time I was summoned on to the Today programme to defend being called Tim, along with the wine writer Tim Atkin. He came armed with a roll call of accomplished Tims, which sounded like a list of people the programme editors might have rung before we finally said yes.

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