It's a fair cop and a very embarrassing one at that.

Barely 12 hours after chairing a meeting about the Daily Echo supporting a road safety campaign aiming to cut the number of young drivers speeding recklessly on the roads of Dorset, I proceeded to set a poor example by exceeding the speed limit myself.

Even more embarrassingly, my camera incident came a few days after writing a hard-hitting leader column about the subject of speeding.

I decided to write to the fine, outstanding people at the Dorset Safety Camera Partnership to outline my excuses for travelling over the proscribed speed limit, but their literature very helpfully include a list of lame excuses that drivers use all the time.

"The following will not be accepted as excuses for exceeding the speed limit and correspondence of this nature will not be entered into..." it reads and provides nine of the usual suspects we supply.

Headed by the words, I was only speeding because...' they went: 1. I was unfamiliar with the road (Indeed, it is a road down which I rarely travel).

2. I didn't see the signs (It was dark and no, I didn't see the signs).

3. I didn't know about the camera (Yes, I did, because we did a story about this very one being slightly obscured by a tree some years ago).

4. The road was clear/it was late/it was early (Yes, the road was clear, yes it was very early in the morning as I start work at 4.30 am, but at least there's nothing on the road).

5. I was late (Well, maybe a few minutes) 6 It is my first offence (It is for a good few years).

7 I have a clean driving licence (Well I do as I write this pleading letter).

8 The children were distracting me (No child in their right mind would be up at that time of the day).

9. The car behind me forced me to speed up (There was no car behind me. Indeed, there were no cars within two miles of me).

Did my efforts to persuade the Dorset Police to put me on their Driver Awareness Scheme instead of taking the three points? Of course not and rightly so and I fully accept my punishment and feel suitably angry at myself for besmirching a good driving record and setting myself up for a good deal of finger pointing at work.

At the very least, I argued, it would make a good feature for a chastened newspaper editor to confess his sins in his paper!