Re Ms Goody, my take on it all is that it's not the poor girl that's the problem here - it's the circus which exploits her. Some of the bastards who create these programmes claim that the people who appear on them are "empowered" - no doubt the guys in charge of the Colosseum told that to the poor sods who had to appear in the arena.

As far as I can see the whole thing is a bit like slowing down on the motorway to eyeball a collision in the opposite lanes. We all do it, but it's not anything to be proud of.

On a positive note about gallows humour - last night we went to see the wonderful Dave Swarbrick - a Lazarus if ever there was one. For those who don't know, years of smoking legal and illegal substances resulted in a successful double lung transplant (or as one local rag had it, a double heart transplant). By this time we must all have heard Swarb's remark after his obituary was published in the Torygraph - "It's not the first time I've died in Coventry!"