Is that a moon rock in your pocket, or are you just pleased to see me?

Frankly, I’m still smarting over all those lies we were told at primary school about how we’d all be living on the moon in the year 2000 and flitting about in hover cars with robot slaves to attend to our every whim.

It’s a harsh blow, therefore, to discover that not only were my teachers big fat liars, if their uneducated predictions had been correct and the human race was living on the moon, we’d all be big and fat too. Oh, and bald. Big, fat and bald – three cheers for the future.

Dr Lewis Dartnell, from the University College London, has single-handedly burst the space bubble, meaning that only the terminally masochistic would consider signing up to a long period away from the earth.

“With very little effort required to move around in microgravity, future spacemen and women are likely to become pretty chubby. Also with no need for hair to insulate the head or eyelashes to flick dust from their eyes, future humans may become totally hairless,” he said.

BEFORE: 'Mum? I'm off to space for a decade. Remember to record Cash in the Attic'

It’s one big step for mankind that I’m not sure many astronauts would be willing to take – or able to take, once they’d halved in size.

Jetting off into the stratosphere is pretty sexy: returning as a hairless, rotund dwarf is slightly less so, even if you do have a few moon rocks in your pocket and an absolutely enormous helmet to show for your intergalactic troubles.

AFTER: 'Ladies? I've been to space. Form an orderly queue'

If we had all decamped to the moon, Gillette and Immac would have gone into administration overnight, no one would be able to reach the top shelf in the kitchen and the human race would be slowly dying because no one would be able to summon up the enthusiasm to go on the (gravitational) pull. It’d be like living in Wales, albeit with a far better view.

And it gets worse. If our future truly does lie in the skies, we’re not only going to be smooth, shiny dwarves who break a hip if we brush up against a cobweb thanks to our muscle and bone wastage, we’re also going to have huge, swollen heads.

Dr Dartnell added: “Without gravity, fluid would float up to pool in the skull, which would cause the head to look permanently swollen and out of proportion.”

Bloody marvellous. Anything else? Will we grow horns? Or tentacles? Or start farting smoke?

I’m waiting until they invent a space where you come back home thinner, better looking and more intelligent. I still want the robot slave, though, that’s a given.

PS My Uncle works for Nasa (FACT!), which means I’m pretty likely to get a trip on a rocket any day soon. Will you still love me when I am a fat, bald, huge-headed dwarf? Oh hang on, I already am. Phew.