Seriously, I can’t think of anything else you can spend the same amount of time and effort learning, until you can execute feats of such a high level of skill, with as little in return. Most skills give you something in return, juggling gives you virtually nothing.

Study for years in any martial art and you’ll be able to defend yourself if you get into a scrape. Spend hours in a gym or running every week and you’ll be as fit as a butcher’s dog, live a much healthier life. Learn to play a classical musical instrument until you are one of the best in the country and you can get a job in any orchestra you want. Put enough effort into any academic study and it will improve your mind, faster thinking, more eloquent.

Years of practising juggling, on the other hand, gives you a heightened ability to catch a jar of pickle you just knocked off a high shelf.

And that is about it. Sure, you can impress your friends with your “cool” skill. You might even be able to make a living from juggling. But to do those things you don’t need to be a good juggler at all. You can impress people with the simplest tricks, get paid for being able to perform skills anyone could pick up in a year. Eating the apple, anyone? All those skills that jugglers spend 10 years developing don’t get any reaction at all. Only other jugglers will be able to work out what you are doing and even then they will probably have seen it all before.

Imagine this: I spend years training to juggle 6 clubs. Countless hours spent drilling with 4 and 5, building strength and speed and accuracy. When I finally get it, I tell my juggling friends, they look at me with blank faces...

“Nice. Have you tried 7?”

Imagine this: Einstein spends years studying in his chosen field, training his mind to conceive something that nobody else had been able to grasp before. He finally chrysalises the concept into a presentable form and tells a few close friends...

“E=mc2? Cool, got any others?”

Only one of them actually happened.