WELL, this is it. My last column as Miss Caroline Dutton.

Soon she will be gone, destined to become a distant memory, and I will become Mrs Caroline Taylor.

Life as a Dutton has been pretty good, all in all.

As with anything it’s had its ups and its downs.

The downs namely being mistakenly called “Button” and an odd phase I went through, aged about 13, when I felt like I couldn't pronounce Dutton properly.

But the positives have been plentiful.

Having a name beginning with an early letter of the alphabet means you’re top of the pile when things are filed alphabetically.

I was always called early on in the register at school and was therefore always picked for team A or group 1 and I’m sure that makes a difference to you psychologically over time.

I also quite like the way my name looks — none of the letters go under the line when you write it, which has always appealed to me as a pernickety Virgo.

All in all, I can say I've been proud to be a Dutton. But I’m hoping that my life as a Taylor will be equally happy — and I’m sure it will.

The days before your wedding are a funny time. With everything organised and sorted, you find yourself in a strange kind of limbo.

All your time seems to be taken up with thinking of minute details and unlikely problematic scenarios, and then coming up with solutions to them.

All of your conversations seem to involve repeatedly answering the questions: “Are you nervous yet?” “Are you getting excited?” and “Is everything all sorted?”

It’s like the calm before the storm.

However, me and my husband-to-be this week decided to settle one matter once and for all before we tie the knot.

It’s the age-old argument of who is the cleverest. We agree that his knowledge of history, politics and music is superior to mine, but I argue that what I lack in general knowledge, I more than make up for in emotional intelligence.

Anyway, this week’s Mastermind gave us the perfect opportunity to find out which of us was most intelligent.

We agreed beforehand that this was it, the final answer.

Whoever lost would have to bow down and accept on entering our marriage that the other one was intellectually superior. And then we shook on it.

It was a close-run contest, and tense at times. I was so delighted with myself for correctly guessing “Henry I” as the answer to one of the monarch questions that I completely missed the next question.

And I was devastated when I couldn’t think of Sir Ian McKellen’s name to answer before the contestant.

When the final buzzer sounded the results were unavoidable. I had lost by four points.

A gracious winner, he didn’t gloat or boast.

And in a way I’m the real winner — it’s him who’s marrying the thicko, after all!