The Federal Liberal parliamentarian and front bencher Andrew Robb has disclosed that he has a depressive illness that he'd long discounted as being not a morning person. He's 58, and he can recall being afflicted by morning despair and negativity as even a 12 year old. Later, as an adult, he learnt not to make decisions for the few hours it took for the morning low to pass. The problem has become more severe in his 50s, he sought help and he has learnt that he suffers from a condition known as diurnal variation of mood. And, importantly, he's assured it can be cured. The diurnal means that it is daytime and daily and, often, that it changes during the day.

I have known, well, quite a number of people who would describe themselves as "not a morning person", usually by way of apology, and some were positively unpleasant for the first hour or two of the day. No, not teenagers, who can be hideously contrary in the mornings. Research has found that teenagers' morning grumpiness and lethargy is due to the overnight release of the sleep hormone melatonin being delayed by a few hours for their teenage years, with the result that regardless of what time they went to bed they find it disagreeably difficult getting out bed.

Perhaps in some people this melatonin release is not recalibrated as they move into the 20s. Perhaps people who are not a morning person are just lazy, horrid and inconsiderate. Perhaps they have a medically recognised depression, as does Mr Robb.

How do you get out of bed? A train driver friend who has to rise at irregular times and often after short sleep tells me he steels himself with the assurance that he has to get up only once! If you're grumpy, why? Any ideas how the bright and chirpy can push the gruff and grumpy over the 7am hump?