UNTIL recently I thought that the "water-board" were those men in hard hats who dug holes in the road and then went away for a couple of months.

I now know that it is actually a method of torture used by the Americans, "allegedly", to get people to confess to things they might or might not have done.

It's pretty nasty stuff by all accounts, and involves techniques used to simulate drowning. Clearly, this is unacceptable.

Yet the good news is that I may have found an alternative.

My suggestion involves the use of highly elastic rubber, taut-strung rackets and a relatively confined space.

It works on the same pleasure-pain principles that I guess you'd find in Madame Beaujolais' saucy torture emporium.

This, however, is much more wholesome than that and you may know it simply as... squash.

Tormentor

My tormentor for today, Ray Nevin, doesn't look much like I'd expect of the average CIA spook, even if pristine white sports clothes would help to ramp up the confusion levels.

This being the week when the National Squash Championships are being held at the National Squash Centre in Manchester, Ray has agreed to give me a taste of the game.

For the uninitiated, the game of squash pretty much involves hitting a small rubber ball against the wall of the court.

And that sounds like playing wall-ey (you remember, the game kids would play with a football and the gable end of a deaf pensioner's house) only with squash rackets.

The lesson begins with instruction as to how to hold the racket - a hand shake-like grip - and then we proceed to exercises designed to get me to hit the ball straight against the wall with a bit of oomph, rather than up and under like a weakling playing badminton.

We do fore arms, back arms, drop shots, and shots which I'd describe as "really hard shots".

And its then that I start to feel a funny sensation in parts of my anatomy which I hadn't previously noticed.

No, Ray hasn't morphed into Madame Beaujolais before my eyes, he's just helped me to rediscover muscles which I'd forgotten existed.

I play on, nevertheless, bending, stretching, lunging and generally getting out of breath.

Ray, on the other hand, doesn't even break sweat.

Flabbergasted

Almost spent, I try not to look too flabbergasted when Ray remarks that squash can be a really good all-round body work-out, and that "he could have made things really tough if we'd been playing a bit longer".

I reach breaking point at precisely 4pm, half an hour before we were due to stop the lesson.

Instead of confessing all, I make good my escape with an entirely plausible white lie about having to pick my daughter up in only a couple of hours.

"What if the traffic's bad, perhaps a truckful of pink elephants will roll over and block the carriageway, or something like that. I'd better go.

"You've been very kind. Thanks a lot."

Just as people who swallow poison pills think they've got away with it until they die from the delayed reaction only a couple of days later, I walked out of the National Squash Centre like the man who found that the door had been left ajar at Colditz.

It's only the next day, and the day after the next day, when it really starts to hurt.

No wonder they call it squash - I know exactly how the ball feels.

Simon is in training for the Bupa Great Manchester Run - one of the numerous world championship events which form part of Manchester World Sport 08.