I have been watching the BBC Young Musician of the Year show, on BBC4 TV, and having my sleep patterns deranged dreadfully, because I can't videotape digital TV properly and have to listen to it when it goes out or not at all.

Tonight I watched the string semi-final. There were two very good older-teenage girls playing the violin, and a very good older-teenage girl playing the cello. There was a older-teenage guy playing the cello, also very good.

And there was Jennifer Pike, aged twelve, playing the violin.

Usually I can't pick winners in circumstances like these. For example, the other night I watched a lady called Yuma Osaki play the Tchaikovsky First Piano Concerto for the Leeds Piano Competition of 2003 (also on BBC4), and it sounded fine to me. But Artur Pizarro was unimpressed by it, and said she should have fifth instead of third.

But I picked Jennifer Pike to win tonight in about three seconds. She was an order of magnitude more confident than the rest of them. With the others, you hoped they'd play it well, and on the whole they did. With her, you knew she'd play it well, and you just listened. Truly, truly amazing.

It was only when I went a-googling that I discovered what I should have noticed in the Radio Times, which is that this was a recording of the 2002 Young Musician of the Year competition. And to my complete non-amazement I learned that she had won the whole thing that year.

In short, I was not the only one who was impressed.