Adrian Chiles has a bone to pick with his coccyx, and it's been picking back for nearly two decades. The culprit: an extreme cycling challenge from almost 20 years ago that his derriere has apparently never forgiven him for. "My coccyx still hurts," he writes, before asking the question every chronic pain sufferer eventually asks: is there anything it's good for?

Ten years ago, Chiles asked his GP why he needed yet another pill. The response - "Welcome to middle age" - landed hard, given he was then just shy of 50. Now just shy of 60, he mutters those words to himself at least once a day. There's a long list of aches, pains and assorted maladies about which to mutter, and high up on that list are his shoulders. Bloody agony, both of them. Picking something off a high shelf or fishing for something on the back seat of the car have had to become planned events to be undertaken only if absolutely necessary.

This week, Chiles interviewed Prof Alice Roberts - a writer, broadcaster, academic, anatomist, archaeologist and sometime medical doctor who knows her bones and no mistake. He noted with interest that her PhD thesis was titled "Rotator cuff disease in humans and apes: a palaeopathological and evolutionary perspective on shoulder pathology." He's rarely felt so connected with his ancestors, so human, and indeed so ape-like. In an instant, his shoulder pain became easier to bear, as he felt at one with a caveman wincing while reaching up to apply the finishing touches to some wall art.