It is my I remember where I was when… moment.

Not the assassination of John F Kennedy - I was still in nappies then - but something that happened on Monday, December 8, 1980, now an almost unbelievable 40 years ago.

I was a recently dropped-out student, aged 19, earning some Christmas money by sorting parcels at Kay’s mail order warehouse in Rodbourne, and I arrived at work there on that morning, oblivious to the news that others were waking up to on the radio.

“Have you heard?” asked a colleague.

“Heard what?”

“John Lennon’s been shot.”

If she had realised what a huge fan I am of The Beatles, she might have broken it to me more gently, but it was just as horrible to suffer some agonising moments of confusion while I ascertained that “been shot” actually meant “been shot dead”.

To me, John Lennon was (and still is) a genius and a hero, and it was (and still is) the biggest loss I have ever felt for someone I have never met.

Not that I was alone in feeling such grief, because it seemed the shock and sorrow that I felt was shared, right around the world on that day.

Apart from that initial hearing of the news, my main memory from 40 years ago is an episode of Question Time that was broadcast on BBC1, a couple of days later.

I vividly remember a member of the audience referring to the blanket coverage the murder was still receiving, and asking the panel if it wasn’t all a bit over-the-top.

I was (and still am) lost for words to describe how disappointing it is to have to share our limited time on this earth with people like that, who not only fail to recognise greatness when they see it, but - even worse - are callous enough not to empathise with the deep grief that others are feeling.

As for Mark Chapman, the man who cowardly shot Lennon four times in the back that night: I’ve barely thought of him over the last four decades.

He is a loser who reputedly did it only to achieve notoriety, and I have always been reluctant to give him that satisfaction.

It’s only recently, with the 40th anniversary looming, that I decided to find out more about him.

Google obliges one’s curiosity first with a report, from earlier this year, that Chapman’s appeal for parole was turned down for the 11th time.

But it also brings up a mugshot of Chapman, taken in 2018, in which he has a half-vacant, half-confused look in his eye - which I am relieved to say leaves me feeling only pity.

Chapman is ultimately no more guilty of the crime than every other misguided soul in the United States who isn’t disgusted by the gun lobby and every sickening inhumanity it stands for.

Because if you ask Google how many people have been killed by guns in that country since the murder of John Lennon, the answer is a staggering 1.4million.

Imagine.