You know what it’s like when you have something awkward to disclose, something that may fundamentally change the way people think about you?

That’s me now. I’m that person.

I haven’t written about this “issue” before. This is far from surprising as I have confided in only a few people, perhaps fewer than 10.

I would like to say my reticence to discuss “it” springs from a noble trait; that I am motivated by a desire to protect those around me. But I would be lying.

The reason I have not gone public, until now, is borne from nothing more than a deep sense of personal shame.

And this is the thing: until my (very) late 30s, I hadn’t read a single novel by Charles Dickens. Not one.

Ordinarily, there might be a case for the defence but my own life experiences merely compound my dastardly crime. I am damned by my own actions, or rather inactions.

I took, and passed, both English literature at O-level and A-level without a whiff of Little Dorrit or The Old Curiosity Shop. My school years were Dickensless. Worse was to come.

I managed to go through three years of a literature-heavy university degree course (English and American studies) without picking up a copy of Bleak House, David Copperfield or Oliver Twist. In fact, I barely read any books published before 1900. I did read a Jane Austen story but it was dull and I can’t for the life of me remember what it was about.

I wouldn’t, however, say my degree was “easy,” although it did involve watching a few cowboy films.

Anyone who has ploughed through James Joyce’s Ulysses, Virginia Woolf’s batty To The Lighthouse (no idea what that was about) and just about anything by William Faulkner could not be accused of having had an easy ride.

And yet when I graduated I always knew something was missing from my literary locker – namely the chap frequently hailed as the nation’s greatest novelist.

Was it right that I had read Jaws and The Fog (mainly for the mucky bits) but had not addressed the exploits of Master Nicholas Nickleby? I didn’t think so.

As a trainee newspaper reporter, I had a golden opportunity to address my Dickens’ deficit.

Fortuitously, I found myself covering church fetes, ploughing matches, shoplifting crimes and the Page 3 glamour beat in the Medway Towns.

Now, the posh bit of the Medway Towns is Rochester, which is famous for its connections to Dickens.

Dickens is to Rochester what Shakespeare is to Stratford-upon-Avon, only more so because there’s no other reason to go to Rochester.

Dickens spent part of his childhood in neighbouring Chatham (another Medway town, today hailed as the birthplace of Chavism) and later lived at Gad’s Hill, near Rochester.

The city has a Dickens Festival which I frequently covered for the local paper, The Chatham News, now defunct.

I sat in on a mock trial for Bill Sykes without really knowing what he had done. I interviewed Mr Bumble, the beadle, laughing along with his in-character jokes despite having no idea what he was chuntering on about.