Even in the annals of those who have walked away with the national A-level student of the year prize, the teenager from Chelmsford stands out as staggeringly clever.

Not content with notching up six A grades while at King Edward VI grammar, David won the AQA exam board’s top award for performance in a humanities subject - then revealed that his favourite subject is maths.

David has done well in national maths, physics and chemistry contests, but also lists his interests as classical history essay-writing competitions.

Among those left gasping at his achievements were Jim Knight, the schools minister, who spoke at David’s prize-giving, and noted that David is now reading maths at Cambridge.

“As a humanities man through and through, I’m impressed,” he ventured, as the rest of the audience sighed inwardly and questioned where it had all gone wrong.

Mike Cresswell, AQA’s director general, also paid tribute to today’s generation of high achievers, revealing that his son can now beat him at chess.

Quite a feat, given that Dr Cresswell, an engineer by training and one of Britain’s leading exams experts, is nobody’s fool.