I DO not have a head for heights.

I get vertigo standing on a chair to change a lightbulb.

That’s a joke.

But I do get jelly legs in high places.

I remember feeling I might faint on the tower at Pembroke Castle.

My wife and (at the time) small children looked at me with the word ‘wimp’ in their eyes.

Having said that, I am fascinated by heights.

If I feel secure I’ll go as high as you like.

I’ve been up the Eiffel Tower and felt it sway.

I’ve braced myself at the top of Blackpool Tower. I’ve been up in a (tethered) hot-air balloon.

One of my favourite films is Safety Last where Harold Lloyd climbs the side of a skyscraper.

I love the bit where he grabs the hands of a clock and the clock-face pops out on springs, dangling a wriggling Lloyd over the tram-lined streets of Hollywood far below.

I would love to spend a night in a skyscraper in New York.

I know there are other skylines around the world with taller buildings.

But for me New York is where I picture myself when I’m gazing down on a city from the clouds.

Another fantasy – I think it would be cool to sleep in a tall remote lighthouse precarious on a rock in the middle of a stormy sea.

The nearest I got to it was spending a day on a gas platform out in Morecambe Bay for a newspaper feature.

I was helicoptered out with a few other journalists and we landed on the rig’s helipad. As we made our way across the metal platform I was both thrilled and terrified at being able to see through the gaps in the structure to the choppy waters of the Irish Sea many metres below.

I find it fascinating too watching rock climbers who sleep in flimsy canvas platforms hundreds of feet up in the air.

These makeshift beds for the night are supported only by metal pins hammered primitively into the face of the rock that the climbers are trying to conquer.

I would be petrified if I had to sleep in one of those.

But there is still something utterly electrifying to me about the thought of hanging in the air so high up.

Even for someone with a dreadful head for heights, these exotic vantage points are so mouthwatering.

And for the best seat in the house – how about Major Tim Peake’s place on the International Space Station looking down on Earth?

That would really have appealed to me.

All this seems perverse, doesn’t it, for someone who is scared of heights.

They do say there is a fine line between pleasure and pain.