How David Cameron's yellow Y-fronts gave me an astonishing memory

The former PM's pants were just the beginning of my journey as I tested a prizewinning memory palace technique inspired by an ancient poet

A surreal scene is unfolding in my home: David Cameron is sitting at my kitchen table in a pair of lemon yellow Y-fronts. He's having his hair trimmed by his Ethiopian barber, who wears an Adidas tracksuit. Out in the garden, Trinny Woodall is lying in a toboggan swigging Spanish port from the bottle and Alan Carr is blithely wading into the pond, where we keep the pet piranhas.

No, I am not a modern-day Gatsby. These are the motley inhabitants of my newly constructed memory palace, designed to help me memorise 63 world capitals I didn't know, for a test set by my editor. Cameron is Cameroon, the yellow undies are Yaoundi(C) and so on (I'll leave you to guess the rest). By translating the country-capital pairs into vivid images in specific locations within a familiar environment, the facts will be indelibly imprinted on my brain - at least, that's the aim.