You are trapped in a lift with 20 examiners, three candidates and the maintenance man. Who do you eat first and why?

Of course the orals have been criticised in the past for subjectivity and quirkiness, and they're certainly tough on the acutely nervous - but we all have to be able to make decisions, don't we?

If I couldn't make decisions, Mrs Meek would still be wondering if bird flu was a real risk to people who have stuffed owls, and Mr Spleen would have been engulfed by the minute patch of ringworm which necessitated an emergency appointment on the Thursday before Christmas, just to reassure him it wasn't anthrax.

The MRCGP has now moved to Croydon, which those of us who shop feel is not quite the same as the old College building, sited just a stone's throw from Harrods.

Nevertheless, Croydon has attractions of its own, and the evening we spent in a local restaurant is particularly memorable. It wasn't the quality of the tenor who serenaded us that particularly sticks in my mind, nor even the fact that he performed almost the whole of O Sole Mio with his arms around my waist and his head on my bosom. No, it was the fact that I was so paralysed with indecision as to be unable to sock him with the hard end of a French stick. Not to mention the fact that my fellow examiners chose to photograph the moment on their iPhones rather than leap to their feet and hurl him into the tiramisu.

We, who had spent a week persuading candidates to make ethically sound decisions vacillated like jellyfish. (Your partner is assaulted by a bearded soloist whilst you are eating loin of lamb with redcurrant gravy. Do you leap to her rescue, pour her more wine, or record the incident on your iPhone? What ethical framework have you used to decide?)

The man with the iPhone knows which he chose. It just shows how difficult it is to practice what you preach.

Dr Selby is a GP from Suffolk. Email her at GPcolumnists@haymarket.com