Somehow, the Chilcot Inquiry has become like Big Brother. About once a month it pops up as a small item in the news and you think “Oh blimey, I didn’t realise that was still going on.”

Even when John Prescott described the evidence his government went to war on as “Tittle-tattle” no one took much notice. Before long, like Big Brother, they’ll come up with stunts to try and revive some interest. So they’ll reintroduce contestants from previous inquiries such as Martin McGuinness and Christine Keeler, or make some witnesses complete a task of finding hidden ping pong balls in the room or they have to give evidence blindfold.

So it might seem these procedures are pointless, in which case it makes no difference that the Israelis have agreed to co-operate with a United Nations inquiry, into the episode in which nine people died after the Israeli Defence Force went aboard the Mavi Marmara as it sailed towards Gaza.

But it seemed to matter to the Israelis, because until this week they insisted their own inquiry was sufficient, and that was already under way.

One fact emerging from this process was that the victims, according to ‘Sgt. S’ who shot six of them “Were without a doubt terrorists.” And he produced evidence to back this up, which was “I could see the murderous rage in their eyes.”

This matches the classic definition of a terrorist according to international law, as someone “With murderous rage in their eyes”, and shows the key witness in any terrorist trial isn’t the forensics expert or explosives analyst but an optician. If they’re trained well enough they can shine a light at the iris and tell whether you’re short-sighted, long-sighted, Hamas or Basque separatist.

But there was more. According to the Jersusalem Post the IDF told the inquiry the group on the boat were “Well-trained and likely ex-military” because “Each squad of the mercenaries was equipped with a Motorola communication advice, so they could pass information to one another.” A Motorola communication advice? So these so called peace-activists were armed with mobile phones! It’s a wonder the whole Middle-East wasn’t set alight. And to think Motorola and other sinister arms dealers such as Nokia and Orange go round trading in this deadly merchandise quite openly.

If the IDF were asked to police a rock festival, at the moment when everyone used their mobiles to take a photo they’d open fire on the whole crowd, then once 3,000 were dead Sgt.S would say “Well done boys, if we hadn’t been so careful that could have turned quite nasty.”

One possible difficulty in proving the optically murderous gang’s intent could be that none of them had guns. But the IDF dealt with that by saying the ‘mercenaries’ preferred to use “Bats, metal bars and knives, since opening fire would have made it blatantly clear they were terrorists and not peace activists.”

So this was another cunning trick of the terrorists, to disguise the fact they were terrorists by not doing anything terrorist. My neighbour’s much the same; disguising her terrorism by being seventy-four and spending all day peacefully doing the garden without ever shooting anyone, the evil witch.

Even more blatantly, the inquiry was told the group did have guns on board, but “The mercenaries threw their weapons overboard after the commandos took control of the vessel.” Because that’s classic guerrilla training, to carry guns right up until the moment when the enemy arrives, and then throw them away. This is the strategy of all great military thinkers.

That’s why Nelson, at the Battle of Trafalgar said “Men, I see the French, and so let every Englishmen do his duty, and chuck all our weapons in the sea. That’ll teach the bastards.” On and on this goes, with Prime Minister Netanyahu making it clear he agrees with it, himself calling the victims “Mercenaries.” Because these mercenaries were trying to get goods such as medicine to an area that’s under a blockade, which is typical mercenary behaviour, except instead of gun-running they were inhaler-running.

But bit by bit Israel is finding it has to answer for itself publicly, and the old excuses are not so easily accepted. From now on they’ll have to put a bit more thought into their bollocks, which has got to be for the good.

Occasionally I find a message has been sent to this website from an unexpected source, and curiosity gets the better of me. A while ago I was invited to a conference in Kazakhstan to a debate on the world economy with John Bolton, the man with the bushy moustache who was chief of something or other for George W Bush. This was so magnificently surreal that if I didn’t have a family or a radio series to attend to I’d have been straight over there, hastily swotting on the effects of the free market on Tanzanian farmers as we chugged over a desert on whatever spluttery contraption was offered as the pride of Kazakhstani Airlines.

A few weeks ago I was invited to speak to a group of humanists in the Isle of Man, and there was an offer to debate that men were better than women on Qatari television. So at times my messages appear to be the transcript of a dream. I wouldn’t be surprised to find one saying “Dear Mark, my name is General Custer and I would love you to knit a sweater for my porcupine as it got eaten at the battle of Little Big Horn. You’ll recognise me as I look like your old headmaster.”

This morning I find someone called Richard Waghorne has written to me “I am getting in touch from the Daily Mail and I am hoping to speak to you about your Glastonbury appearance in 2005.”

Anyone with a notion of common sense would have immediately deleted this message, gone to make a pot of tea and forgotten it had been sent by the time the kettle boiled. But that bastard curiosity got to me. What can have emerged about my show from five years ago at Glastonbury festival that has upset the Daily Mail? Are they under the impression my show was a diversion so we could use the tent to smuggle in 150,000 Lithuainian asylum seekers who posed as the audience? Have they been told my show included a series of extended pirouettes and yet at the time I was claiming invalidity benefit?

So I rang Mr. Waghorne, told him I was calling as he’d asked me to ring and he said “Ah, remind me what it was about. I’ve been rather busy today.”

“Glastonbury”, I said, “You asked me about my appearance at Glastonbury in 2005. I’m intrigued as to why this is of any interest.”

“Oh yes”, he said, “You were on a platform with Derek Simpson of the Unite union were you not?”

This changed matters for several reasons.

Firstly I can only vaguely remember being on some sort of panel in the Leftfield tent, which I think was organised by Unite Against Fascism but I’m not sure, and have no idea whether Derek Simpson was there or not. And secondly because huge beeping noises and red flashing lights went off in every corner of my head while a blinding neon sign screamed “DAILY MAIL – UNIONS – DANGER – GET OUT NOW!”

And also because I wanted to scream “Why are you only interested in that event – I did an hour to a packed crowd that year and went down a storm as I remember, you cruel beast?”

“I really don’t recall much about that event”, I said cautiously but honestly, “And I have no idea whether Derek Simpson was there or not. Why do you ask?”

“I’m writing a piece about the UNITE union”, he told me, and I notice they have held events where they’ve tried to appeal to young people.

In my head I see an article that starts “Holiday-wrecking cabin crew union leader once appeared at hippy festival at which drug-taking and sex has taken place and layabouts openly admire long-haired heroin addict Jimi Hendrix who famously killed himself with drugs and is a favourite of people who claim housing benefit.”

I didn’t answer, so he said “Can you tell me what sort of an event this was?”

I said “Are you asking what sort of event Glastonbury was?”

“Well I’ve, I’ve er heard of Glastonbury”, he said, and I wondered whether I could wind him up. I could probably have told him Derek Simpson played guitar that year for Janis Joplin, and the Yorkshire Ripper was his backing singer and their encore was their hit single, that goes “My life will be complete when you’ve booked your airline seat, but you can’t even leave your street ‘cos I’ve fucked your trip to Crete.”

“But I’m especially interested in this event with Derek Simpson”, he persisted. I told him again that I couldn’t recall anything about it and he said “Really?”

“Well it was five years ago”, I said, “And you couldn’t remember what you’d asked me in an e-mail you sent an hour ago.

“Hmm” he said sheepishly. And then he asked again what sort of event it was, and how many people were there and how many of them were young people and I wouldn’t have told him if I could remember but I honestly couldn’t anyway. So I told him I felt certain he was trying to write an unfair piece denigrating the union and he told me I’d been very useful, which was slightly disturbing, and we parted company.

A brief inquiry alerted me to how Richard Waghorne, on his own website, tells us he works for Joint Force Quarterly, a journal of the US defence department, and while he greatly admired President Bush, he became frustrated at his work in Washington on privatising social security as his schemes moved too slowly.

So my guess is that soon an article will appear in the Daily Mail that informs its readers of the history of the UNITE union, which will amount to an incoherent series of concocted tales, one of which will be that, in an effort to seduce young people into their wicked trade union plot, they sent Mr. Simpson to peddle his extremism amongst the dope-addled gullible youth of Glastonbury.

Then in five years’ time I’ll receive a message from Mr. Waghorne, asking “Mr. Steel, I’d like you to contact me with regard to an invitation you once received from a bunch of humanists in the Isle of Man.”

This was written (and amended as the day unfolded) on the day David Cameron became Prime Minister, for the Independent, but didn't go in the paper.

The mayhem of the last few days seemed as if it would go on and splendidly on. I’m still half-expecting that by tomorrow morning the Lib-Dems will be holding talks with the Portuguese Social Democratic Party on an offer of a three way coalition with the Hell’s Angels.

The best solution might have been to keep the chaos going for four years, when it would be time for another election. So every day the news would say something like “This morning William Haig offered the Lib-Dems two places on the British Council of Buddhists, and the job of England football manager to Simon Hughes, but in a dramatic twist at 3.00 pm, following pressure from Paddy Ashdown, Peter Mandelson appeared at the treasury office and hung himself, thus removing a crucial obstacle to a pact with Labour. But further talks were stalled at midnight when David Blunkett threatened Chris Huhne with an axe, so negotiators have now offered the SNP independence for Stenhousemuir.”

Even when there appears to be an agreement they don’t mean it. So when the Tories say they’re willing to consider electoral reform, you know for some that means we should get one vote each for every field we own.

And it still seems as if the most important clause in the Tory offer to Clegg is “We pledge to do exactly what we were going to do anyway, but if you can find a spare chair we’ll let you watch.”

One consequence of these games is the Tories don’t know each day whether they’re supposed to flatter the Lib-Dems or denounce them as Euro-loving lefty scum. For example, the headline on yesterday’s Daily Mail said “Brown quits but cynically bids to keep Labour in power by guaranteeing two-faced Clegg voting reform,” which seems slightly tetchy. If the next talks had broken down the headline would have been “OOOO Clegg you make me MAD you bloody double-crossing ARSE that’s what you are an ARSE.”

At one point today a deal appeared equally likely between the Lib-Dems and either Labour or the Tories, and it seemed probable the winner would be announced by Davina McCall, saying “The government for 2010 will be (ten thumps of bass drum) – THE CONSERVATIVES.” Then glitter would pour over George Osbourne’s head while Cameron covered his mouth and shrieked “Oh my Gooood.”

But despite all the entertainment, one lesson of the week is how all wings of the establishment unite to prevent any real change, no matter who wins an election. Senior civil servants insisted a change in the electoral process would take “At least the length of a full parliament.” So bringing in an Alternative Vote system would take roughly as long as it took to defeat the Third Reich. I’m sure the civil service would say “Indeed, but the relatively minor difficulties entailed by our engagements with the Axis powers should not and must not be compared to the more rigorous complications posed by alterations to the standard ballot paper.”

And throughout the process has been the cry that we have to find a solution to satisfy the markets. Because to solve the economic crisis caused by the people who run the markets, we must pick a government that doesn’t upset the people who run the markets.

So a consensus is created that the deficit must must MUST be cut, as if to oppose the cuts in welfare and public spending this entails is as futile as trying to stop the laws of physics, and if we don't do it we'll all catch leprosy or evaporate. And throughout the negotiations not one voice was raised to suggest the bulk of the population should maybe not be entirely made to pay for the unprecedented growth in wealth of the richest one per cent in recent times.

In the end, the final moments for Labour came when they were presented with a chance to cling on, but many of their own side preferred to give up. This seems fitting, as the history of New Labour is one of giving up. It was born because their members, bruised by defeat, gave up on radical change. They spent their years in office handing power to the bankers and invading Iraq because they’d given up on the more equal peaceful world that attracted most of them into Labour. Exhausted, and with no sense of purpose, they’ve ended up saying “What’s the point? Can’t we just go home?”

Which is why the best hope was that in the middle of the confusion Caroline Lucas of the Green Party might nip to the palace to say to the Queen “Tell you what, I’ll take over shall I?” and run the place while the other parties didn’t even notice.

Now - who can think of the best way of making "Conservatives and Liberal Democrats out out out" scan properly?

Aaagh, what am I supposed to do?

Some things I’m clear about. It’s obviously a farce. Cameron staying up all night so he can run around saying ‘Hello, and what are you making?’ to shift workers is a splendid way for the upper class to waste their time. If there was any justice he’d have been investigated by the Drugs Squad to see whether he was out of his head on Es and whizz. There’s probably footage being hidden by Sky News of Cameron saying to a security guard “Hi I’m Dave I’m a great leader my dad’s got an orchard have you seen my wife great arse I could do security I’ve got terrific muscles Woah I’m coming up ba-ba-ba baaa dida dida dida don’t forget to vo-o-o-te for me me me.”

Instead the others tried to copy him, with Brown insisting he was only having two hours sleep, and I expected Clegg to announce he was proving his energy by doing 36 hours non-stop campaigning on a trampoline.

So much of an election campaign involves the ridiculous being presented as serious debate. The ‘highlight’ has been declared the incident in Rochdale with Mrs. Duffy, who, amidst her complaint to Gordon Brown asked him the challenging question “These Eastern Europeans, where are they flocking from?” It’s true he’d have done better to respond by saying “Barnsley, love. Eastern Europeans all flock from Barnsley. One bit of Barnsley’s called Poland where they breed cheap plumbers, they’re like ants, you can put powder down but they walk straight over it, where do you THINK they flock from?” Then if he’d put his arm round her and gone “I’m only teasing love”, it would all have been laughed off.

Even so, grumbling she was a “Bigoted woman” isn’t the worst thing anyone’s said in private after an argument. But from the media reaction you’d think he’d said “Right – get onto Big Tony, I want her FUCKING house burned down.”

I’m also clear that the Tories are still Tories. This means more than Cameron is a toff, it means they represent the rich and powerful and stand for their values. They’re the party that opposed the minimum wage and whose goddess called Nelson Mandela a terrorist. They’re the preferred party of almost all of big business, even after New Labour’s efforts. For all the wisdom that class no longer dominates our choice of party, it’s still true that the richer an area is, the more likely it is to vote Conservative.

And now it’s supported by Murdoch again. While waiting at an airport I watched an hour of Sky News, that repeated on a loop a short clip of a man heckling Gordon Brown, with a big flashing caption saying “BREAKING NEWS” while commentators appeared as experts to say “Brown’s campaign just keeps descending into more and more chaos, this is another calamity” etc. They might as well have shown him drinking tea and put up “BREAKING NEWS – BROWN, AND A MUG, CATASTROPHE.”

It was all an obviously crude attempt to make Labour appear useless and attached to disaster, because Sky is run by Murdoch whose interests will be served by Cameron. Therefore any reasonable person must feel a shaking chilling hollow sickness bordering on self-combustion at the thought of Cameron winning.

So it should be easy – vote Labour to stop them. Brown is the only person who can realistically be Prime Minister apart from Cameron, so even after Iraq, Mandelson’s delight at the ‘Filthy rich’, after the achievement of extending the gap between rich and poor at a faster rate than any time in modern history, even then you have to vote Labour. They may be the lesser of two evils, but 5 units of evil is surely better than 12 units of evil. (Those are accurate figures though I’m not sure how to convert them into metric).

But it isn’t so simple. Until 1997 I was always desperate for Labour to win elections, regardless of their specific policies. Wilson supported the Vietnam War, Callaghan went to war with the unions, Kinnock wouldn’t back the miners, and Blair had proudly removed socialism from Labour’s agenda before his election as PM. But despite this a vote for Labour was always a vote for the idea of a more equal society, for a notion that we should organise our lives collectively, as opposed to the Tory values of looking after yourself and sneering at the worse off.

And Labour was tied to those aspirations to some extent by their roots. They were founded by the trade unions, and became a mass party after the First World War by promising the working class their own representatives in parliament.

After the last thirteen years does that still apply? The first problem with applying the same formula now comes when you compare Labour’s outlook to that of the Liberal Democrats. To argue with someone who’d campaigned for a fairer society that you should vote Labour rather than Lib-Dem in this election, is to ask them to back a man who was crucial to sending us to war with Iraq, against a party that opposed that war. It’s to back the party adamant we should spend billions on Trident, against those who say we should scrap it. It’s to back the man who enthusiastically boomed “Your policy will open the gates to a flood of immigration” in a TV debate, against the party supporting a more humane attitude to asylum seekers.

On almost every issue the Lib-Dems appear more social, humane and collective than Labour. But, the reluctant Labour voter could argue, Labour is still tied to its working class roots and is therefore open to influence from socialists in a way the Liberal Democrats never could be. But how true is that now? Under Blair the flawed democracy of the party was extinguished, and now an ordinary member has virtually no influence on that party. So the membership is at its lowest for 100 years, and the branches barely exist.

Even after the disastrous 1983 election there was a vibrant Labour Party in most towns, attracting the young and enthusiastic. They were the core of the miners’ support groups, backed local campaigns and mobilised in their hundreds during elections.

During this election, where I live in Crystal Palace, for the first time I can remember there have been no Labour supporters visible during an election. In the area where they have always run a stall, there has instead been a Liberal Democrat stall. One woman there told me “I was in Lewisham Labour Party for years, but Labour abandoned social housing, reneged on their promise to reform the House of Lords, supported the Iraq war and handed the country to the bankers, so now I’m with these.” The following week another of their activists told me an almost identical story of how, she feels, she’s had to change parties to stick by her ideals.

I suspect the Liberal Democrats will betray fairly quickly the hopes of those who flock to them for egalitarian reasons, not because of the personality of Nick Clegg but because their base is spread amongst people who desire opposite values. In some areas they attract those like my Crystal Palace friends, but in Conservative areas they promise an agenda to appeal to disaffected Tories. This may explain why Clegg became so defensive when he suddenly found, for the first time, the whole country listening attentively to him at once. The radicalism was downplayed, and became unsure even of his most long-standing policies, such as backing a referendum on the Euro, if they could be considered vote-losers in the Tory suburbs.

So then what? The easy way out for a socialist is to declare the election is not an important issue, as all parties are promising to make the mass of the population pay for the crisis caused by the greedy few.

And it is true that, while commentators insist the election debate has been ‘thrilling’, the boundaries have been pathetically thin. There’s been hardly a mention of troops in Afghanistan, no one would dare suggest renationalising transport, and they all agree we have to accept massive cuts, as if to oppose this is to dispute the laws of physics.

But the world in which those cuts, and the resistance to those cuts takes place, will be shaped by the outcome of the election. For example, a thumping Cameron win will give his friends absolute confidence in cutting whatever they fancy. And Cameron, despite the repulsive Obama-esque front page in the Sun, represents the nastiness of fear far more than the others. But something else makes me feel melancholy on this morning, which is that after 13 years of a Labour government that has exceeded almost all predictions of how conservative it would be, most notably in Iraq, no force has been built that can challenge it from a socialist direction. Attempts have been made, with some fleeting success. The Scottish Socialist Party won seven per cent of the vote across Scotland, but then disintegrated in spectacularly hilarious fashion. Respect won a seat with Galloway, looked ready to become a force and decided to celebrate either by going on Big Brother or tearing itself apart in a row about fuck-all.

So this morning I arrive at the polling station to find as well as the major parties, the Greens, Respect and the Communist Party are all standing in my area, to make sure the meagre left vote is split three useless inconsequential pointless ways.

It’s not just a trick of the memory. That day in May 1997 was gloriously sunny. Despite the smarmy Blair it represented a rejection of greed as a virtue. So much seemed possible. The sadness for me is not just that Labour betrayed that hope, as it seemed likely they would, but that it’s not been possible to construct a credible force that can take that hope forward. But the hope’s still there. None of the leaders have dared to be honest about the scale of the cuts they’re planning, as they know there would be widespread revulsion when it’s obvious whose avarice has caused this mess.

And in the odd place where a sustained attempt has been made to build an opposition to the idea that big business should rule every aspect of our lives, it’s been rewarded. Caroline Lucas in Brighton and Salma Yaqoob in Birmingham could well win in their areas for the Greens and Respect, and this is an extraordinary achievement.

So the task, I feel, is not just to stop Cameron but to build a process whereby eventually a genuine alternative can be offered to his view of the world. I voted Green for that reason, but I’ll admit to cowardice because if I lived in an area where the Tory might scrape in I’d have voted for whoever could have stopped them.

Now – even if that smug Tory fucker wins, the agenda should be a) Ten minutes spitting and swearing b) Pledge to get a million on the streets when the bastard tries to cane us.

And if Brown wants to be remembered fondly, if the moment comes when he has to concede defeat, he’ll put his head in his hands and say “Oh well, thank fuck that’s over. At least I don’t have to pretend to like that arsehole Clegg any more, mind you that Spanish wife of his is a different matter, ay? Oh shit this bloody microphone, I’ve done it again haven’t I?”

A few weeks ago I began the awkward business of starting work on a second series. This is always a frightening moment, as you’re told when the recordings are being held, and when the tickets are going out and when it’s being broadcast and you’ve got nothing, absolutely nothing. It seems possible, or even probable, that on the night of the first recording I’ll walk on stage and say “Good evening. I’m afraid I couldn’t really think of anything. I hope you haven’t had to come far. I’ve brought a box of Quality Streets to share so I hope that makes up for it a bit.”

Somehow the start of a second series is more daunting than the first. I reckon that when Dickens started writing his first novel he set off with a carefree demeanour, unaware of all the complications that awaited him. But years later, after a deal was signed, he’d sit there with a blank sheet, thinking “What the fuck is there to say about Christmas?”

The series is called ‘Mark Steel’s in Town’, for Radio 4, and I have to go to six more towns, and do a show about that town to any of its inhabitants that come along. The last series ended on the Isle of Portland in Dorset, where amidst the quarries it turns out there’s an insistence that no one says the word ‘rabbit’, as this is deemed extreme bad luck. At first I assumed this was a quaint jokey custom, like the law in Hereford that you can still fire an arrow at a Welshman if he’s in the church courtyard. But as I went round the place it turned out they mean it.

The local historian, whose book on the island was otherwise splendid, referred to ‘underground mutton’. When the Wallace and Grommit film ‘Curse of the Were-rabbit’ came to town, all the posters had to be re-written to read ‘Curse of the Were-bunny’. Kids have been sent to detention for saying the word (so if a kid says it and the teacher barks “WHAT did you just say?” they’d be better off replying “I said ‘cunt’, miss.”)

The marvellous part is how quickly you become tuned to this fear of a word. You sense the horror in the same way you know not to say ‘fuck’ if you’re on live radio, especially on Thought For the Day. So at the end of the show I said I felt the series had been a celebration of community, and for that reason we should finish on an old-fashioned sing-along, of a classic old Chas ‘n’ Dave song, and I started singing the chorus of their Rabbit song, the bit that goes “Oh she won’t stop talking, why won’t she give it a rest.”

And they gasped. The Weymouth people and the immigrants to the island shrieked with anticipation, but one of the islanders stood and thrust his middle finger, with a rage that reminded me of the Serb militia under Milosevic. I glanced at the producer, who gave an expression that suggested it might be advisable to not do the ending we’d planned.

“Oh come on Portland”, I said, “This is a show about bringing towns together, I’m not really going to ruin the whole series by coming to Portland and enraging you all by saying ‘rabbit’.”

And the middle finger man hurled a pound coin at me with impressive force, so that if I was a footballer my team would have been led off the field.

Once it had all calmed down, a waitress from the restaurant that was attached to the theatre told me she’d been warned she could be sacked for saying the forbidden word. And an elegant man in his seventies wearing a silk cravat told me he was delighted with how cross the word had made some of them, and then walked across the restaurant and started playing ‘Run Rabbit Run’ on the piano.

So now I’ve got to find the craziness in a new batch of towns. But whereas for the first series, a bit of me imagined this was just a bit of fun and no one would actually listen to it, this time I know that some people will. For example, a butcher in Lancashire told me that after listening to the show about Skipton, he and his wife went on a weekend break there.

This is the sort of power Nigella Lawson has, when she mentions gherkins as a possible side dish and the following day the world supply of gherkins is bought by five past eleven.

The first of the new series is in Dartford, the Kent town alarmingly near to the town of my upbringing, the charming Swanley. So I went to the library to take a glance at some of their local books, and an endearing bubbly man came over to tell me he’d heard the first series and ask what I was doing there. And when I told him I was doing one of the programmes in Dartford, and the date of the recording, he said he wasn’t sure he could come because he’d recently broken up with his wife and wasn’t sure when he was having his kids and then he burst into tears while lying on the table.

So I sat with him for a bit in a pathetic attempt to console the poor man, and I have to hope my programme wasn’t somehow the trigger for his divorce.

The recording is this Friday, 15th January, and to add to the tension I know at least thirteen of my old school mates will be there who, as much as I know this can’t be true, I’m convinced will still all be fifteen.

I’ve also visited the magnificent Cheshire town of Alderley Edge, where Alex Ferguson and Wayne Rooney and Andrew Flintoff live, along with Aston Martin showrooms and an off license that sells more champagne than any other in Britain, and about sixty beauty salons and a charity shop full of stuff from Gucci and Prada that doesn’t have the prices on its clothes. In the Post office, amongst the cards in the window that would normally say ‘Pram for sale’ or ‘Carpenter available – no job too small’, was an advert on a card that said “Ring me if you need a butler.” I think by the time I’m half way through the recording there, I’ll be wishing for the amiable charm of the rabbit moment.

Tickets for the recordings are available from the BBC ticket unit, which has a website, I believe. And they will be in Dartford on 15th January, Wilmslow (by Alderley Edge) on 12th February, Dumfries on 26th February, and then in Gateshead, Penzance and, if you fancy it, the Orkneys, sometime in March.

Also, it seems the BBC is making the first series available to download in March, which is as technologically advanced as I’ve ever felt since my Dad bought a TV that could get BBC2. The shows will go out in March and April, assuming that I’ve written the bloody things.

A number of people have pointed out, with good reason, that the last pieces I've put on here have no paragraph breaks. I have no idea why it's happened, given that I'm barely capable of switching the computer on in the first fucking place, but I certainly didn't write it like that.

I get irritated by as much as a missing apostrophe in a text message so I can't tell you how shame-riddled and guilty I feel. As internet crime goes, this is only marginally less appalling than whatever it was Pete Townsend did.

Someone, somewhere, will sort it out one day soon. Meanwhile I'm off to confession.

In August 2009 I was asked to do a show at the Andersonstown Sports Centre, as part of the West Belfast Festival, an annual event that first took place twenty years earlier as a cultural wing of the Irish nationalist movement. Andersonstown is the most unyielding of the nationalist areas, at the far end of the Falls Road, and back then an evening of culture was almost certain to end with a room full of people standing, with moist eyes and glasses aloft as they sang along to a ballad that went something like

"Twas in the year of eleven-seventy three that brave ol' Tomas 'O'Hara,
Was shot with an arrow fired from the men sent o'er by Henry the Second,
And the spot where Tomas lay slain,
They still call today,
The Tomas O'Hara car accessory shop."

But since the ceasefire the Festival has become an event involving glossy pamphlets and literary figures, and tickets booked through agencies and chicken tikka wraps in the dressing room. And to emphasise the point, the patron of the festival is Danny Morrison, a leading member of Sinn Fein, believed by many to have once held a senior position in the IRA. At one level you have to assume this means he gets his way, and if there's an argument on the committee it ends with Danny lowering his voice and saying quietly "I say we put on 'Taming of the Shrew'," and the decision is agreed.

I stayed with a Protestant friend in East Belfast, someone with no allegiance to Unionism whatsoever, who told me she'd never been to Andersonstown, and wasn't sure of the way, pointing vaguely and saying "I think it's over there somewhere" as if she was guessing the direction to Libya.

So I booked a taxi and the driver said "Are you sure you want Andersonstown?" with such astonishment I wondered if I'd said 'Atlantis' by mistake. And then an 'Alright, if you say so' look, as if I'd said "Take me to the Dignitas centre in Switzerland please."

The Andersonstown sports centre, it turned out, hadn't been designed with comedy shows in mind, and was one of the most unsuitable venues possible, somewhere behind a bottling plant and a hospital's stroke unit. The sound bounces and echoes across the volleyball courts like the tannoy announcements in a supermarket, and there's a constant chatter of people squeezing past tables to queue at the makeshift bar. On this night the queue for drinks consistently hovered at around a hundred people, and groups sat round tables getting drunk and loud and drunker and louder as the first three acts went on and the time I was due on got later and later. Eventually the room was awash with a tsunami of chatter that was so slurred, by the time most words had ended the beginning of the word had already bounced back off the wall to where it started.

As the compere began to introduce me, three hours after most people had arrived, around two hundred people sat in the middle, looking as if they were waiting for me to start, while the other eight hundred shouted 'Hey Kieran, they've run out o' fucken' Grolsch' across the tables, threw peanuts at each other, and shrieked with laughter as they and fell over, like in a Hollywood depiction of eighteenth century sailors on a night in a tavern.

So I went on stage and surveyed this splendid testimony to disorder, aware that I might as well try to do a show to a flock of geese, and a few of them shouted "Fuck off you fucking Brit." I battled, pointlessly, for maybe three or four interminable minutes, while a core of supporters in the middle yelled at the rest to keep quiet and the rest made it clear they wouldn't and probably couldn't. Maybe, I pondered, the two groups would start fighting, it would spill out onto the street, the troops would be called back and this comedy show would result in the breakdown of the ceasefire, and for the next hundred years rival factions would fire at each other and paint murals of me sloping off the stage.

"I used to come here when the war was raging," I said, "And you were always friendly then. I think I preferred you how you were."

And then I went backstage to collect my things and leave, and as I left the dressing room was greeted by someone I vaguely recognised. "Mark," he said with a ripe Belfast baritone, "I'm Danny Morrison, trustee of the festival, and I can't apologise enough for what went on tonight."

"It's fine, Danny," I said.

"It's not fine," he argued, adding "Mark, I'd like to speak to you about what happened there. Will you come into this room with me for just five minutes."

And it was so hard not to smile, at the thought of whether in the past, there were people Danny had made a similar request to, who might have been slightly nervous about what could happen when they got in that room.

So we went in the room, and Danny said he was disgusted by the behaviour of the audience, who had no discipline and were "racist, there's no other word for it - racist against you for being British."

"Maybe a few of them were," I said, "But mostly they were just drunk." But secretly I thought "Of all the people asked to follow Danny Morrison into a room, I bet this is the only time the reason's been to receive an apology for the Irish being anti-British."

Politely, wth great charm, Danny offered to organise a taxi to take me back, and to accompany me until it came, so I didn't face any more revelrie from the crowd who were now stumbling outside.

In a way the frustrations of the evening were signs of how positive the change in Belfast has been. Because it was just a show that went haywire, no different to how it might have happened anywhere, for the familiar reason that a community was encouraged to come to an event and get drunk.

"Where are you going?" said the taxi driver, incredulous that anyone from Andersonstown could possibly suggest the journey to the Newtownards Road in Protestant East Belfast. And he puffed and said "Jesus" a few times and tried to figure out which way was East.

But eventually I got in, and relayed the events of the night to my host, who just said "Oh dear, that's a bad night when the safest option is to stand alone in a car park with a murderer."

I’m not finding it easy to keep up. You’re supposed to write things on your website every few days, explaining your thoughts on whether Ryan Giggs’ becoming Sports Personality of the Year will help Labour recover in the polls, or why kettles don’t last so long these days. And you’re supposed to twitter every few minutes, with messages like “I’ve just seen a car”, or “I might have a raspberry later”, but I’ve managed to go six months without writing anything on here, and every day of that time I’ve thought ‘I must put something on my website today’, and then failed.

So I’m going to start with last summer, and try to catch up, though I’ll probably fail again, in which case I’ll be six months behind forever, like the very early days of Pathe news. Or I’ll fall further behind until I’m commenting on the prospects for a Prime Minister that’s now dead, or how I’m excited by a radical new band, the lead singer of which is now General Secretary of NATO.

So - to start with I had a week in the utterly splendid city of San Francisco; a place that illustrates more than any other that America is the best of worlds, the worst of worlds. On the morning of Independence Day I had breakfast with my son and daughter in a diner, with at least a thousand glittery balloons and Gene Vincent rattling from a jukebox, and the rushed diffident waitress held her notepad while looking away from us and asked if we wanted our eggs sunny side up and everything came with pancakes and she called out “Hey, extra hash browns for table nine”, and I thought ‘This country is marvellous, you’d need a heart of stone not to forgive them for Vietnam and Hiroshima’.

Because whatever else the place is so enthusiastic. Even when they’re bored they’re bored enthusiastically. A taxi driver, hearing my daughter ask where the famous hills were, said “You want hills – I’ll show you hills,” and sped up and down the ridiculous terrain, on a free ride, as if it was his personal roller coaster that he’d just finished building and he couldn’t wait to show it off. The tramps are enthusiastic, eager to relate how they’re going to get their ass together if only you give them the dollar they need to get going. A huge bus driver, whose stomach squeezed and moulded itself around his steering wheel let us travel free, saying “I don’t charge tourists.”

Anyone uninitiated would think “This country just can’t help but be overwhelmingly helpful to foreigners. I bet this place would never harm anything abroad.”

The celebrated Haight Ashbury lives up charmingly to its stereotype, its shops full of bongs and exotic pipes and contraptions designed to puff hash into five separate orifices at once, and now there’s a board game called ‘Weed’, in which the idea is to go round getting as wrecked as possible. Presumably if someone gets a card saying ‘Miss a turn’ they head off into a trance, take no further part and they’re the winner.

At one end of this street is the glorious Amoeba Record Store, that is literally the size and layout of a large supermarket. Except the signs hanging above the aisles say ‘Funk’ or ‘Middle-Eastern hip-hop’ instead of ‘Beans’ and ‘Ethnic sauces’. You get a basket as you go in, as if you’re getting your groceries, and you need someone with you to say “STOP – you must STOP now”, or you’d pick up more and more basket and then book a 35 hundredweight van. As it is I came away with about fifteen records, which, compared to all that was in there seemed pathetic, the equivalent of going to the Souk in Marrakech to buy a packet of Polos.

And we cycled over the Golden Gate Bridge, and went to the baseball where my daughter spent the game on a giant coke bottle that’s a slide, an innovation I suspect is some years from being installed at Selhurst Park. But the event I was there to speak at was a weekend put together by the International Socialist Organisation, and was itself wonderfully infectiously enthusiastic. It was held at a Mexican women’s centre, in the poor and Mexican part of the city called The Mission, and as we arrived around one hundred Mexican women stood outside waving placards and yelling slogans demanding something or other. “How brilliant”, I said to my son, “There’s a protest already.”

“Yeah but what you don’t know Dad”, he said, “Is they’re yelling ‘We don’t want that Mark Steel speaking in our building’.” About nine hundred people came to this event over the weekend, a figure which always makes me feel two thoughts quickly in succession – 1) Blimey, that’s impressive for a socialist event in California – 2) Hmm, it still leaves quite a bit of California to win over though.

But there was a joy to the event that seemed to leave everyone who went with a sense of realistic optimism. Much of this is due to the direction the country has turned in. Five years ago it felt the place was under the eternal relentless rule of Bush and his co-signatories to plans such as the Outline for Universal Totality of Subservience or whatever. So Obama’s election has created a sense that change is possible.

But also there’s something about the left in America that seems more inviting than the British left. Maybe this is because they seem, and this is a most peculiar phrase to say about any sort of Americans – more humble. For example I went to one talk about how to create an opposition to a media dominated by rabid outlets such as Fox News. And there were people who ran independent radio stations, and a student who’d been to Palestine to film people in Gaza, and someone who’d gone to live in a homeless camp and written their experience as a blog, and the whole thing seemed so disconcertingly positive. Unlike when events are put on by the British left, no one got up to castigate anyone else for taking the wrong line or felt the need to gently correct anyone, or say ‘While you were under fire in Ramallah you should have made more effort to argue a socialist perspective’.

There was a sense of everyone pulling together to somehow construct a coherent opposition, the room full of people exchanging e-mail addresses and arranging activities, and it was an unrecognisably warm sensation compared to the embitterment that flows through so much of the British left. Or maybe the Americans just can’t help being sentimental. So on Independence Day, which happens to also be my birthday, I was about to begin my talk on Tom Paine, the corset maker from East Anglia who went to America and inspired the war of independence. But the person introducing me said there was a quick announcement before I began, which I assumed would be about fire exits or a set of lost keys or something. But instead my daughter emerged from the back of the room holding a cake, and made the announcement which went “Today’s my Daddy’s birthday.” And then they all sang Happy Birthday. And then I had to do my talk. The cruel Californian bastards.

The most exciting part about travelling, you would think, is things are different. This is even better when a place behaves exactly as it's meant to. I was overwhelmed with joy on my first ever morning in New York, when a stranger in a cafe yelled 'Fuck you asshole' at me for no apparent reason. It was glorious, like arriving in Brazil and being immediately dragged into a carnival by a woman with fruit in her hair.

And within Britain I find it thrilling that you get out at Birmingham New Street station, after a ninety minute rail journey from London, and they're all talking like that, different. And in Oldham they eat pie and red cabbage and in St. Helens they play rugby league, and everywhere has slightly difference reference points, creating that warm feeling of slight discomfort, as you're not quite sure what's going on, which makes a journey exciting. Which is why if you went to the South Pole and it was quite warm you'd want your money back.

So that, I suppose, is the premise for my radio show 'Mark Steel's In Town'. We started in the North Yorkshire town of Skipton because I did a show there last year, and thge place excelled itself at living up to a comically dour Yorkshire stereotype. I did one line that I'd done that week on television, and about twenty people yelled "You did that ont' telly." Then a woman called out "We don't like yer jacket - it's RED." So I retaliated with "I was just trying to bring a bit of colour to your otherwise grey miserable agricultural lives," and they liked that, before launching into more and more insults. Then, when I said I'd seen a road sign for Keighley and wondered whether that was their rival town, it went all quiet and in a chilling voice one woman said clearly "Keighley - is a sink of evil."

And yet the whole place looks like the sort of town where they film dramas for Sunday nights on ITV. So even at the curry house, you expect a farmer to come in and say "Ee I'll have a steaming hot bowl of your finest dopiaza please Betty love. And with extra chillies, I shall need warming up after inseminating that ewe." And at the brothels of Skipton they must go "Not the full session tonight Elsie love, I have to be up at dawn to take calf to vets at Otley, just 'and relief if that's a'right wit' thee love."

Then, after choosing Skipton for this reason, it won the award for High Street of the Year, largely, it seems, for resisting the tsunami of chain shops that have engulfed almost every town centre. And to allay any fears that it might not be the right place to start the series, when I arrived at the theatre, which is in fact the cattle market, a farmer was stood by the door in a thick green jumper and very muddy boots. "I like yer bag, love" he said to the producer.

"Thanks," she smiled.

"Now all yer need to make it perfect is to fill it wit' bricks an' chuck it at Prime Minister," he said, and walked off.

Looking through the history of the place it's clearly been dominated by cattle. The mist and perennial damp made the land unsuitable for much vegetation so early settlers relied on livestock, and this distinction has driven the place ever since.

In the eighteenth century there was a famous market every Monday, in the High Street. According to W.H. Dawson, editor of the Craven Pioneer "The filth and odours of massed animals could be almost unbearable, so dangerous to public health."

Around the same time there was a circus, which advertised "For the first time in Britain come and see Tipster, the world's first clairvoyant educated talking horse."

That's how hard to please they are in North Yorkshire - it has to be an educated talking horse - otherwise they'd go "I shan't trouble myself with going to see stupid talking horse. Albert went down and asked it if he'd read much Russian literature, he said 'I can't say as I have, just snippets of Dostoyevsky', well I don't call that conversation, I shan't bother going."

Skipton is a funny place, I think, because it's different. But every time I allow myself to think these shows will make sense to most listeners, I remember a night in Winchester. It was while I was doing a show about the French Revolution, and I tried to find some way in which the town I was in was connected to those events. In Winchester, it seemed, the town was transformed because hundreds of wealthy priests fled France, and came to England as posh refugees, and many of them were put up in Winchester Cathedral.

So I did this thing about how locals probably complained "Bloody Catholic priests coming over here, you don't hear English round here no more, it's all bleedin' Latin. And they get straight out of the back of their lorry, go down the Town Hall and get given transubstantiation for free. My daughter's been on a waiting list three years, not been given so much as a fucking wafer..." And I did a bit about this ugly statue of Alfred the Great they've got there, and about the twee shops near the theatre, and the people queuing up at the cathedral. And as I was leaving a middle-aged man approached me and said "Mark - lucky you were in Winchester tonight ay, seeing as you've got all that material about Winchester."

And he must have believed, that the next night I'd do all that again, while the audience muttered "Why does this mean anything to us, given that we're in Belfast?", on account of how I hadn't noticed that places are different.

No column in The Independent again this morning, as they weren't overly keen on the issue I was writing about, which is connected to the Viva Palestina convoy of trucks, that left London on February 14th to deliver food and medicine to Gaza.

The convoy was financed by collections throughout the country, which were enough to fund 110 vehicles on a journey to across the channel, through France, Spain, across North Africa and hopefully through Egypt into Gaza. This, you might imagine, is the sort of charitable venture that would be publicised across the media as a chirpy feelgood tale, perhaps involving a regular feature on Blue Peter and at some point resulting in Cat Deeley squealing 'The response has been AMAZING, you've been ABSOLUTELY FANTASTIC'.

But in the tradition that anyone's permitted to carry out crazy wacky acts as long as it involves charity, the police decided to contribute to the event with a spectacular lark. Early in the morning, on the day the convoy left, they arrested nine people on the M65 under the Terrorism Act, who were on their way to Hyde Park, where the journey was due to begin. They blocked off an entire section of motorway, and grabbed their suspects with what was described in the local newspaper as "Dozens of police cars, vans, 4x4 vehicles and a helicopter."

The first I knew of this episode was from that afternoon's BBC news, on which it was the main item. Which is as you might expect, with nine suspected terrorists being pounced on by an operation that included a helicopter. To be fair, the BBC journalists didn't have to work too hard to find the story, as the police informed them in advance, and in addition, by a splendid coincidence, a press photographer happened to be on hand to record this successful swoop.

Maybe this is how the police plan to fund themselves from now on. They'll follow the practice of celebrities and stage their events so they can be sold to OK and Hello. Major criminals will find themselves lying on the floor in handcuffs, while a photographer claps his hands and calls out "That's lovely, now can we do the arrest one more time while the Inspector stands just behind kissing his wife, and then have a profile of the murderer's assistant on a sheepskin rug in front of a coal fire."

The news reported that the terrorists were on the way to join the Viva Palestina convoy, which straight away seemed a little peculiar. Why would terrorists be on the way to join such an event? What would they be planning to attack? The convoy of trucks heading for Gaza? And what sort of Jihadist terrorist would say "I know how we'll move around without being noticed - we'll drive down the motorway in three vans with Palestinian flags flapping from the windows and a fucking great 'Viva Palestina' logo painted on the side."

The story was reported in almost every Sunday paper, with headlines such as “Galloway’s Aid Convoy linked to three terror suspects”, in the Mail on Sunday. And they had the effect of reducing contributions to the charity by eighty per cent, as the astute might have been able to predict. But the nine men, six from Blackburn and three from Burnley, were questioned, and the lorries, which were full of children's toys, were searched. And presumably the head of the anti-terrorist squad stood there throughout saying "Check that Bratz for semtex." By the next morning six were released without any charges, and a few days later the other three were released as well, the police appearing to be duly embarrassed to the extent they've paid the fares so the wrongly arrested men could catch up with the convoy, which by now was moving into Algeria.

The local councillor for the arrested men in Burnley is Wajid Khan, described how they were “Well respected men in the community, seen in a positive light.”

Presumably then, all the broadcasters and newspapers who considered it a major story that the police had successfully pulled off this anti-terrorist operation will now make it an equally prominent story that the arrests had no validity whatsoever. Apart from anything else there must be many people who saw that story, and are wondering why they've heard nothing about it since, assuming a bunch of terrorists have escaped and are running round on the loose. They may even indulge in some investigative work, which will show that three of the arrested men are defence witnesses in a separate trial, which may, or may not be a coincidence.

So you can't help be suspicious that the arrest of people volunteering for charity may be connected to them being Muslims, and being associated with Palestine. If not it's going to mean Comic Relief this year will be chaos, with Richard Hammond and Lenny Henry spending the whole evening making announcements such as "Now we're going to meet the wonderful children of St. Josephs junior school in Kidderminster, who've raised two hundred and sixty-four pounds with a sponsored cartwheel race. So here's Alan Titchmarsh to speak to them from their high security cell in Belmarsh."   

There are moments in life that signal you've reached a new stage and nothing will ever be the same again - death of your first pet, the first time you hear your dad say 'fuck', your first curry, that sort of thing. One of those moments happened at the recent demonstration in support of the people of Gaza.

It was the end of a process that began in the days before the march, after I told my twelve-year-old son it was taking place, and he said "Cool - I'm going on that." He'd been on marches before, but as a result of me dragging him on them for my own convenience. For example when he was three I took him on a march demanding an increase in the minimum wage, which he enjoyed so much he repeated the most popular slogan of the day over and over again for the next week, so that at random moments in the street he'd yell "You can stick your three-pounds eighty up yer arse." This also meant that if he met a relative who gave him some money, there was the dread of what might happen if they gave him exactly three-pounds eighty.

But the reaction to the Gaza demonstration was clearly different. He wanted to go, compelled by the mix of urges that drives anyone to take part in such an event, rather than because the alternative was to stay at home until discovered by social services. And once there, all the marks of demonstrations that become cliches to those of us who've been on countless processions, to him were captivating. "Look dad, a man in a Tony Blair mask with a placard saying 'war criminal'. That's BRILLIANT!" Which was wonderfully infectious, because I had to accept it was BRILLIANT!, just as when your daughter's two and says "Look daddy bus bus," you become equally excited about the existence of this bus, rather than reply "Alright it's only a bloody bus. If you see a zeppelin let me know but a fucking BUS."

It helped that it was a vibrant freezing raucous frosty day, and the march rumbled with youthful enthusiasm, so that it smelt of teenager. But then we got to these vast gates that policed the road to the Israeli embassy. Hundreds of people stood around these gates, calling and gesticulating, and occasionally lobbing the thin strip that once formed the backbone of a placard. At this point I wondered whether it might appear a little frightening to my lad, but he said "Oh for God's sake, they're not going to break down the embassy with balsa wood." Then he added "Come on dad, let's get to the gates."

"No I think it's safer to stay here," I advised.

"COME ON," he insisted, and we shuffled through the squashed crowd to get nearer the front. "Why don't we all invade the Israeli embassy?" he asked, and whoever was stood next to us answered "Because the Israeli embassy is better protected than Buckingham Palace."

"Well then let's invade Buckingham Palace," he said.

After a few minutes I asserted parental authority and we carried on up the Bayswater Road, round the corner and back past the other side of the road with the embassies. Here the march was completely blocked, so several thousand were stood around becoming agitated, unable to proceed through a police cordon towards Trafalgar Square. Then a line of riot police slid gently into position, all identical in their helmets, shields and truncheons so they looked like a line of aliens in an old computer game.

'I'll calmly suggest we leave', I thought.

"COME ON DAD, LET'S GET GO TO THE FRONT AGAIN" called my son.

So I explained that, although there was nothing to worry about, it was probably best if we left. "People in Gaza are getting bombed and all you want to do is get home to get WARM," he objected.

Then a steward told me the police had used tear gas up the road, so they were advising anyone with kids to leave.

"But Daaaaad," complained my son, "Let's get near the front", and I found myself making the most ridiculous response, saying "Alright - you can have FIVE MORE MINUTES," as if this was a dispute about bedtime, and he wanted to watch a bit more of Terminator.       

It was as daft as if I'd looked into his eyes and said "Right, you can throw three lumps of rubble and THAT'S IT - no more than three, DO YOU UNDERSTAND. And if I see you throwing four we won't go to the anti-arms trade march at all - IS THAT CLEAR?"

It was the moment I realised he was experiencing the enthusiasm of protest, the optimism of resisting apparently invincible power, the belief that injustice can be dealt with NOW NOW NOW, without the inevitable blunting of that confidence that comes with age. I was the cautious one, he was the fiery one, from now I'd be told off for being too safe and too warm and too conservative by my own son, I'd had one of those moments. I bet the Israelis never considered they'd cause all that before they started bombing Gaza.    

Given that it takes me several months to collect together the documents needed to get my car tax, I'm amazed that anyone manages to assemble the hundreds of bits required to produce a newspaper every single day. Then something happens, such as John Updike dies, and the newspaper gets someone to write something about him, and right in the space where my own column was destined to appear. Couldn't he have hung on for a few more hours and buggered up someone the following day? So, for anyone pining, this is what would have appeared had it not been for John Updike's genuinely untimely death.

The BBC are right. If they broadcast that appeal for food and medicine to be sent to Gaza it WOULD be taking sides. The Israeli Defence force could legitimately say "We've gone to enormous lengths here to kill people, then you go and help to keep them alive. How do you square that with your remit to be neutral?"

So the BBC needs to look at other areas in which its 'impartiality' could be called into question. To start with they'll have to scrap 'Crimewatch', which clearly takes the side of the murdered against the interests of murderers. Maybe they could get round this by having a new balanced Crimewatch, in which the police plea for witnesses to a crime, but then the presenter says "Next tonight - have you seen this man? Because Big Teddy and his gang are desperate to track him down and do him in for ringing us up earlier. So if you have any information please call us, where Nobby the Knife is ready to talk to you in complete confidence."

It's impossible to be entirely neutral about anything, especially with an appeal for money. Appeals are made for injured veterans of the Second World War, but I don't suppose they'd take them off air if they got a letter to Points of View saying "Dear BBC, I'm a Nazi war criminal but I pay my license fee just like everyone else, and as such I was appalled by the biased images of the Battle of Normandy used to promote your financial appeal. There are two sides to every story you know, and I thought you had a promise to be impartial. So come on BBC, us Kommandants watch television as well!"

Appeals have been made for victims of wars in the Congo, Darfur and Bosnia, keeping people alive and thereby undermining the aims and efforts of the armies who tried to wipe them out. But if the current stance carries on, from now on if anyone feels their block of flats collapsing on them they'll think "I hope this is an earthquake and not an invading army or we won't get a penny via the BBC."

Aware of the frail logic of not showing the appeal, the BBC have made some even stranger statements to justify their decision, such as claiming they couldn't be sure the money would 'get through'. Ah yes that must be it. If only Gaza was like the Congo or Darfur, where the Red Cross can pop along to the village cashpoint machines, draw the money out and get Janjaweed or Hutu militias to help them search for two-for-one bargains in the local Somerfields.

Luckily for the Middle-East, the American government has been less squeamish about this question of impartiality. For example in Bush's last year he sent Israel 2.2 billion dollars worth of military aid, and there's no record of anyone saying "This couldn't be seen as breaching our impartiality in any way, could it?"

The problem is that when viewers are confronted with scenes of misery and destruction, they're bound to ask what or who caused this, and if it was done deliberately. So the BBC couldn't remain neutral. Either they allowed the appeal that would lead to those questions being asked, or they refused it, in which case they're suggesting they shouldn't aid the relief of civilians who've been bombed, starved and slaughtered, as on this occasion their plight can be justified. And it's decided this time to be biased not towards the impoverished but towards the impoverishers.

Or maybe they've been under such a barrage of complaints lately they just panicked that in the middle of the appeal the presenter might say, "Oh and by the way, I shagged David Attenborough's grandson. Anyway, back to the lack of clean water."  

Amidst the coverage at the start of the year of all the bombing and lying and murdering and justifying and slaughtering, there was a splendid moment on Wednesday morning on Radio 4's Today programme. The genetics expert, Professor Steven Rose, was introduced to talk about some new discovery that means we can identify the bit of the brain that deals with morality, which have been called 'morality spots'. "How can we know about these spots?" he was asked. And with posh English academic authority he said, "Well - we could study the brains of the Israeli cabinet to see if they had no such morality spots whatsoever."

It was an oasis of sanity within the dual assault on the senses of orchestrated Israeli carnage, and global excuses for such destruction. One group of people is hemmed in without electricity, medicine or provisions for a year, and fires rockets that kills four people. The other, with an almost incalculable arsenal wipes out 600 in ten days, few of which are directly connected to military action, obliterating mosques, schools or whatever they fancy. So almost every world leader puts most of the blame on the people being slaughtered. It's as if there was a report on a gang kicking an old aged pensioner to bits, and then quotes from presidents saying "We call upon this old man to promise never to cough again in the direction of this gang, as soon as he comes out of his coma."

For example, the Israelis blow up a school, which has United Nations flags around it, killing dozens including children, and somehow blame HAMAS, like a wife-beater who growls "I don't want to hit her but she MAKES ME, 'cos she turns the telly over while I'M WATCHING THE RUGBY." And the world's leaders agree with them. Or, in Gordon Brown's case, say "This is a humanitarian crisis," as if it's an act of nature, a type of earthquake in which colliding tectonic plates force Apache helicopters to randomly devastate a housing estate.

If you hope the school incident was a one-off, Amnesty International reported that "After the Israeli army first took the town on Saturday night, soldiers had ordered about 100 members of the Soumani clan to gather in a house owned by Wael Soumani around dawn on Sunday. At 6.35 a.m. on Monday the house was repeatedly shelled, with appalling loss of civilian life."

And far from this being 'regrettable', the predominant attitude within the Israeli establishment is that of the biggest selling daily paper in Israel, Yediot Aharanot, which gleamed "The attack was a stroke of brilliance...the element of surprise increased the number who were killed."

The deputy defence minister Matan Vilnai said of the Palestinians "They will bring upon themselves a bigger shoah because we will use all our might to defend ourselves." And 'shoah' is the Hebrew word for holocaust, as he clearly knows.

The evidence for the Palestinians' continuing viciousness is their use of underground tunnels which, apart from being used to bring in food and medicine, have become a route for smuggling arms. So if this is the main area of contention there must be an obvious route for a compromise. Israel should give HAMAS half its F-16 fighters, half its multi-billion pound annual arms budget, mostly provided by America, half its missiles and destroyers and tanks, then the Palestinians may well agree to abandon their practice of smuggling guns through a tunnel.

And yet somewhere deep down in this atrocity-fest is a glimmer of hope. Because while the Israeli war machine has no difficulty in keeping global leaders onside, they no longer seem able to win over the general population. In America, a poll suggested only 31% of people who voted for Obama support the Israeli action, which may eventually have at least some impact on the new president. The demonstrations in Britain this week have been bigger than any on this issue before, and Steven Rose type comments are voiced with little complaint, where once they would have invited inevitable mayhem. Within Israel itself there have been several thousand people on demonstrations in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

There's a sense that Israel has lost the argument, betrayed the sympathy it once claimed as its right. The wonderful ticket collector at my local station, who regularly causes people to miss their trains with his amiable and often furious banter, called out to me yesterday "MARK - MARK - MARK - WHAT ARE THESE BASTARDS DOING?" Then he quoted from a magnificent Robert Fisk article, spat with such venom about something Blair had said, and the queue before him grew and grew, with no re-start to the selling of tickets in sight. "WE NEED TO OVERTHROW THEM," he yelled, " and the posh woman in front of me said "Bloody right we do."

All this is very different from how it once was. In 1982 when Israel invaded Lebanon, killing thousands of civilians, or when Ariel Sharon allowed 1,700 refugees to be massacred in the camps of Sabra and Chatila, it was hard to get anyone in the West to take notice. Now there's a bit of a space - to shout in railway stations, crowbar cutting comments into interviews about the brain, or maybe even go to Saturday's demonstration, 12.30 at Hyde Park.

One of the most brilliant aspects to touring a stand-up show is you get to realise how small Britain is. And yet it didn't used to be this size. When I was a kid, we'd go on holiday to Ilfracombe, and the preparations for the journey would take a month. For several evenings the table would be covered with maps as my dad planned the route, so that anyone looking in through the window would have assumed our reason for going to North Devon was to impose a military occupation of the place. My mum would contact a variety of people on the issue of the most suitable transport cafe on the A3 at which to stop for breakfast. The day before the journey involved a frenzied routine of preparing the car, buying the right type of fizzy drink, consulting weather reports and exclaiming 'There MAY be scattered showers in Dorset but they're saying that won't be until the evening so we should miss them so we're lucky', visiting the chemists for Phensics, Milk of Magnesia, plasters, travel sickness pills, and an assortment of ointments as if the map had suggested the quickest route was up the Amazon, making sandwiches in case we got hungry before we got to the transport cafe, alerting the neighbours to how we'd be leaving at twenty to six in the morning to avoid the traffic through London so they needn't be alarmed at seeing someone set off at such an unusual and potentially upsetting time, checking for a ninth and final time we'd cancelled the papers and milk, then getting to bed at seven to make sure we'd be up on time. The next morning we'd check everything four more times, then as we pulled away the neighbours would wave in their dressing gowns and my mum would clap her hands and exclaim "Right - we're OFF", with the same mix of achievement and anxiety I imagine General Sherman conveyed when he set off with his army to attack South Carolina.

Now, if I had a show in North Devon I'd spend twenty minutes choosing some CDs, and probably get back the same night to take the kids to school the next morning. So I try to retain at least some sense of wonder at the unique, the idiosyncratic, the personal quirks of each place I visit on a tour that propels me across the country.

This time I started in Kendal, a beautiful Lake District town where even the High Street smells of cow pats. There are still enough independently non-corporate human slightly tatty cafes, clothes shops, off licenses and toy stores to leave the ubiquitous forms of WH Smiths, Greggs the bakers, The Link and so on in a minority. And when I was there, as if to live up to a stereotype specially as they knew I was coming, a huge banner across the High Street announced the forthcoming mint festival. But a few yards from this banner, a pub called Dickie Doodles displayed an itinerary of forthcoming bands playing in its basement, the next one being 'The Vicious Bastards', with a picture of an unfeasibly angry skinhead with no shirt and a tatoo on his forehead thrashing a guitar and bellowing something with unrestrained venom. We can't know what he was screaming but I doubt it was "I'll be exhibiting a mild and fruity mint cake at the festival which begins, don't forget, on September 9th."

The show was in a theatre converted from a brewery, and as it was a new show, afterwards I felt an overwhelming sense of relief, because no one had got up after twenty minutes and announced "I'm sorry Mark, but this is incoherent gibberish. As spokesman for the audience, I'm afraid we've all decided to pop up to Dickie Doodles. If we're quick we should catch The Strangled Sheep, who last year were support band for The Vicious Bastards."

I may have been helped by the local paper. Usually it seems a bit too easy to read out the trivial parochial headlines from the regional papers. The last time I did this, I think, was in High Wycombe on the week the Queen Mother died, and their paper boasted "The Queen Mother was known as a fan of Buckinghamshire. She visited Aylesbury in 1948, and came again in 1997."

But as I was walking onto the stage for this first show of the tour, I saw the front page headline on a paper discarded by the lad doing the sound, which proclaimed "PHOTO TAKEN OF BIG CAT."

What must have gone on in that editorial meeting?

"Has ANYTHING happened here this week?"

"Someone I know took a photo of a cat."

"Hmm, not bad - but it needs an angle."

"Well it's quite a BIG cat."

"Is it? Now THAT'S a story. Get every reporter on the case - I want interviews with relatives of whoever took the photo, a statement from the cat's owner defending animal privacy, a comment from a local vet on what causes some cats to be a bit bigger than others - this baby could end up as the lead item on Newsnight."

Shrewsbury can appear a bit posh, with its vast public school that boasts of Michael Heseltine being amongst its ex-pupils. Right next to the school was the football ground, which made me wonder whether the local supporters were the only fans in the country to chant in Latin: "You're Turdius and you know you are," that sort of thing. But even lowly Shrewsbury's ground has been knocked down, to be replaced with an out-of-town soulless mini-stadium that's incorporated into a sterile retail park. Soon local darts teams will be told they'll no longer have their matches in the public bar of the pub, as they've been relocated to the Unilever Arena, five miles away in a car park behind PC World, and when not used for darts, the board is somehow converted into a Nando's.

The last time I was there, I was put up in The Prince Rupert, a hotel named after the commander of Royalist forces in the English Civil War. I think that for a moment I pondered the possibility of refusing to stay there out of Republican principle. But they had a full-size snooker table.

At some point during the second half of the show it occurred to me that it was somewhere near Shrewsbury where that millionaire went berserk on his farm a couple of weeks earlier. There was nothing I could do about it - the words just came bounding out with no forethought - "Hey, the class struggle's easy to fight round this way isn't it? You don't have to do a thing and the rich just kill each other." I think I achieved a local record for the greatest ever collective gasp in the town. But they seemed to get over it quite quickly.

Lovely venue, the Wedgwood Rooms. It's more suited to music than comedy, with its informal seats, its mixing-desk area in the middle, its tarnished black walls covered in posters for past gigs and its slightly sticky student-unionish floor. Then on the way home I was caught by a speed camera for doing forty-three miles per hour in an area with a thirty miles per hour limit. Now THAT'S rock and roll.

It's a few weeks since it happened now, so I've calmed down a bit, but I'd maintain it was one of the highlights of my life.

From around the age of eight I've listened to Test Match Special, developing the insiders' knack of decoding the narrative, not just the cricketing jargon but the references to each others' nick-names and foibles, mostly a product of public-school juvenility that seemed quaint and hilarious.

I especially adored John Arlott. Firstly I was fascinated by his voice, a croaky Hampshire drawl dredged from the bottom of the throat, and slightly breathless as if he was commentating while running up stairs. He seemed more serious than the others, often saying things like "and the ball's picked up by John Edrich, just inside the shadow cast by the House of Commons," as if he was aware the game must always be kept in its proper perspective. As I got older I realised he followed those ethics with some courage, as an implacable opponent of apartheid, which placed him in a small minority within the English cricketing establishment. .

Arlott was also magnificent on television, because he couldn't see the point in any unnecessary words. When he was commentating on Sunday League cricket the sound would often stop altogether for ages, as if he was thinking "What's the point in telling you where he's hit it, you can SEE that can't you?" Once I remember the batsman was clean bowled, but still there was nothing, not even an "oo." The batsman left the field, the new batsman took his place, still there was nothing and I yelled "MUM - THE TELLY'S BUST," while giving it a nineteen-seventies telly-whack on the side. Then, just as the bowler was about to bowl the next ball Arlott muttered quietly "And he's bowled him."

By some quirk of commissioning Arlott was booked to do a television series which involved him in conversation with intellectual England captain Mike Brearley, while sipping wine in front of stacks of musty second-hand books. It was around the time the SDP had been set up by David Owen, and Brearley was a supporter, so one week Brearley asked Arlott whether, in a society in which class structures had been undermined etc. etc. we had to accept new forms of shifting something or other, and wasn't the SDP a valiant attempt at responding to this and creating that. And after about three doleful minutes of this Arlott poured a glass of wine, sniffed it in no hurry, sipped it, said "Aah, Australian red 1965 - very good wine for politics," and that was the end of his answer.

For most of my life as a cricket fanatic, Test Match Special was the only port of call for vital Test match information. In my first job, as a messenger delivering documents around London in the summer of '76, I'd carry parcels in one hand as the other clasped a portable radio to my ear to bring me the commentary, and in the blinding sun I'd think "And this is WORK - woo hoo."

There can't be a single year since 1968 that I couldn't identify through memories of Test Match Special; a group of us in the squats, foregoing the usual nocturnal debauchery to sit entranced as England beat Australia by three runs; hearing Caddick take four wickets in an over to bowl out the West Indies for 54, on the way to my partner's scan while pregnant with our daughter; desperately scrabbling for odd moments of commentary in between takes, as we filmed my programme about Oliver Cromwell, while Australia survived with nine wickets down for a draw at Old Trafford. So a few weeks ago my stomach went into a pulsating knot of excitement and anxiety, because I'd just been asked to go to Edgbaston the next day to be the lunchtime guest on Test Match Special.

I travelled up with my son, and we were shown into the commentary box, the actual box with the perfect view from where the sounds are made, and there they all were. I'd met Henry Blofeld once before but even so it seems remarkable, when you hear him close up, that he really speaks like that. A bit of me expected him to step away from the micropohone at the end of his stint and go "Thank fuck it's lunch, I'm fucking knackered talking like that all bleeding morning."

I tried to adopt a certain poise, that wouldn't betray the volcanic anxiety of being half an hour from the interview. Then it started to rain, and the covers were brought on, and a few seconds later Jonathon Agnew turned to me and said "They're taking an early lunch so we might as well do the interview now." Aaaaagh. I wanted to say "You can't just bring a momentous occasion like this forward by half an hour, that's as if Mission Control at Houston had said 'We might as well go half an hour early as we're ready' to the astronauts on Apollo 11."

So I was in the chair, with Bill Frindall (the veteran resident scorer, famous for his autistic knowledge of statistics) still furiously writing figures on a sheet. Was he scoring the rain? Or maybe he was marking my interview. And in twenty years time, when someone in the commentary box vaguely remembers me being on, Bill will interrupt "He was the lunchtime guest at Edgbaston in 2008, performing two impressions and receiving 3.7 laughs off the crew."

"Well my goodness," said Agnew near the start of the interview, "It says on my sheet of paper here you were a punk?! A punk eh?" Only on Test Match Special would anyone still be shocked by a musical trend that ended thirty years ago. There's almost nothing, you realise, that isn't too modern for these people. If they were interviewing a classical violinist they'd say "Oo my word, classical eh? Well it goes to show cricket can appeal to the young and trendy, though we're all rather attached to fugues and madrigals in here, aren't we Henry?"

But we chatted for half an hour, about the Kent team of my youth and the impertinence of selling the TV rights to Sky and comics who liked cricket but mostly I had to restrain myself from yelling "Fuck me, I'm on Test Match fucking Special."

And then my son and I spent the rest of the day hovering around the sort of room where, at one point, in my vision were five England captains at once, including David Gower, who flitted in and out with a sardonic smile, as if he's perpetually thinking "I can't believe I've got away wth pursuing this ridiculous game instead of dealing with the real world for so long."

But none were as entertaining as the magnificent Geoffrey Boycott, who walked straight up to my son and with crisp authority said "And what do you do? Do you bat or bowl?" Because it can't occur to Geoffrey there's any category of human being that doesn't do either. If you stuck him in the middle of Ecuador he'd go straight up to an old woman on a donkey and say "And what do you do? Do you bat or bowl?"

My son threw him a bit by saying "I'm a wicket-keeper," so Geoffrey replied in an instant "Well you want to get out there now because England's wicket-keeper's RUBBISH." And we were into a real live sketch, perfectly written and wonderfully acted, involving what would happen when Boycott met an eleven-year-old boy. I wrote down the perfect lean dialogue as it happened and I've been repeating it in my live show.

Alec Stewart, on the other hand, is disconcertingly engaging and generous, to the extent that at one point he said to me the ridiculous words "You'd know that, as a batsman." As if I should say, "That's right Alec, because we're both alike aren't we, in that we're batsmen. Sure, not all batsman are identical, so for example you're style was to score more runs for England than anyone in history whereas I'm more of the type that misses nine consecutive balls off a bowler who's fifty-seven and recovering from a hernia operation, but we're batsmen, you and me both, Alec."

But for this one day I could pretend I was part of the heirarchy of the cricketing world, because I was on Test Match Special. I'm aware, of course, of the contradictions here, in that Test Match Special is a colonial hangover, redolent of empire and the dominance of public school. But somehow, and I've no idea why, even if you've no interest in cricket, if you couldn't find anything to admire in Test Match Special, and be manically excited at the prospect of being its guest, I'm not sure you cou're the sort of person who could entirely be trusted.

For a while I've found the extent to which the most unlikely figures speak out against the Iraq war inspiring, but also slightly disconcerting. I accepted Jimmy Hill, and Burt Bacharach and Joanna Lumley and Eminem. Then I saw an interview in my local paper with Leo Sayer to advertise his show at the Fairfield Halls, and in the middle of a question about his seventies perm he informed us that George Bush was a war criminal. This was now like a puzzling dream, where you wake up gibbering to your partner that you were in a canoe with Eddie Large who was yelling "I can't sell my gooseberries because of that bloody illegal occupation." Would we get as far as Roger Whittaker releasing an album called 'Whistle Against the War' with Des o'Connor in the background reading extracts from Robin Cook's resignation speech. Even more remarkably, while I was driving to do a show at the Tolpuddle Martyrs Trade Union Festival in Dorset, I was listening to the Test Match commentary. And Jonathon Agnew was complaining that the security had been so tight it took him an hour to get into the ground. So out of nowhere came Geoffrey Boycott, who sneered "We've Tony Blair to thank for that."

"I'm sorry Geoffrey," said Agnew, with a hint of "WILL you keep quiet" but Boycott asserted "Tony Blair's to blame for that. He was told if we went to war with Iraq it would increase the risk of terrorism but he wouldn't take any notice."

"Well," said Agnew, "I think it's the terrorists to blame really," mumbling as if he had a dozen producers yelling into his earpiece "SHUT HIM UP - distract him by suggesting he was weak against left-arm spinners or something."

But Boycott held firm, which was how British radio broadcast for surely the first time ever the sentence "We should never have invaded Iraq in the first place that's pushed out gently on the off side and there's no run."

I've suggested before that the Labour Party, supposedly a party of the left, now finds itself on the defining issue of our times militantly to the right of Jimmy Hill, two ex-Presidents of America, Joanna Lumley, Zoe Ball, the ex-President of France, ninety per cent of Spain, Chris Eubank, Brigadier Hewitt, almost every living Arab, Burt Bacharach, the Liberal Democrats, Leo Sayer and the Pope. But who amongst us, even the most poisonously cynical, believed on that day when Labour were elected in 1997, that this government would end up being chastised as too right-wing, pro-war and up America's arse on Test Match fucking Special. 

Do things like this happen to other people? To me they seem normal, but I'm often told they're not.

A few days ago I left my phone charger round someone's house, so it was posted back to me. But the postman delivered it at a point in the morning when I was out, so when I got back it was jammed into the letter box, in a parcel. I pushed it one way, then the other, then ripped off the package so only the charger was left, utterly immovable, impervious to any shoving at all. So I tried whacking it out with my cricket bat, but the bat was too big to swing in the area behind the door. Then I remembered my daughter had been given these kiddies' golf clubs, kiddie size but proper metal ones, as if they were designed for blasting phone chargers that were wedged in letter boxes.

So I chose my club carefully, and could almost hear a commentator mumbling "Ooooo he's going for the putter - brave choice." Then I stood by the front door ferociously swinging this thing, but even on the occasions I connected perfectly with the charger it didn't budge at all (although the sports fanatic in me thought 'Hmm, I'm pleased with the way I timed that one').

There's a moment in a crisis like this one where you panic, and contemplate the consequences if the problem can't ever be solved. I could get a new charger, but what would I do with the door? How would I get any post? Was there a way this could go that would end up involving the fire brigade? Could it result in the whole street being condemned and all my neighbours being put up in temporary accommodation at a DSS hostel? So I went to the sorting office, where I know all the staff, and they all started laughing. Then someone got the manager and, being a manager, he only giggled politely. But he got a hammer and came to the house where the two of us bashed and shoved the bastard thing, occasionally getting excited because it squeaked a millimetre sideways. Passers-by were infuriatingly English, allowing themselves a puzzled glance, then marching on, perhaps assuming this was an experimental form of anger management called 'Letter box aggression therapy'.

After about half an hour it surrendered and popped out, probably because all the bashing had increased the size of the letter box by about three square miles. You feel such a moment of triumph in that sort of situation, you want to lie on your back and yell out an exhausted groan like Nadal after the winning point against Federer. "Here you are," said the manager nonchalantly as he handed me the liberated charger, and he gave me an "I don't know - honestly" look, as if it was MY fault. But maybe it was. Because perhaps things like that don't happen to anyone else. I don't know.

Still, I bet you won't get service like that if it's all privatised. Or there'll be a 'jammed charger hammer tariff', or you'll have to ring a call centre that goes "If the jammed object is perpendicular to the door frame press seven." 

Then a couple of nights ago I was walking home when two local postmen ran out of the pub they were in and yelled across the street "Here Mark, got anything stuck in your letter box mate. Haaaaa haaaaa." I almost felt like a celebrity.

There's never a way of saying this without sounding slightly pretentious, but I've just been in New York for a few days. And like every other time I've been there, it seemed the whole place was playing at being New York. As I came out of the airport's automatic doors onto the road, a shortish man of about forty, with an unnecessary moustache who looked like the teacher you had whose name you can't remember, began striding up and down past the queue for taxis screaming "What the FUCK is wrong with this fucking place - I was FIRST IN FUCKING LINE there," his suburban voice almost snapping as it failed to carry the ferocity he was trying to load onto it. "This place is full of FUCKING ASSHOLES," he told us, and a part of me thought he must be employed by the tourist board to greet visitors with the New York experience. He couldn't be real, any more than if you arrived in Tel Aviv and a bloke with a beard in the taxi queue started singing "If I were a rich man diddle iddle iddle um."

But while New York must be the loudest screamiest place in the world it's possibly also the friendliest. People yell at you because they're interested in you. They talk to your kids in the lift and make them feel important. On the subway, when my kids were squabbling, a black man in blue overalls told me in a deep voice "Hmmm, she annoys the hell out of her big brother right, and makes him mad, and there's times when he wishes she'd never been born. But if anyone laid a finger on her there ain't nothing he wouldn't do to protect her." So I returned his warmth with a smile, but a bit of me felt this must be Morgan Freeman practising at being a wise grandpa.

Because often in New York you find yourself thinking "Oh you don't really mean that." A twitchy woman with hair poking in several directions was talking manically to her friend in a diner, and I tuned in at "I'm telling you - he's a MARXIST. He's a black JFK." Then the waiter arrived. "Are YOU voting for Obama?" she asked. "No," mumbled the waiter, disinterested. "Then I'll let you take my order," she cackled, triumphant.

But they can't mean it. In the taxis there are screens showing adverts, and one of them is for a centre that organises yoga for dogs. That's to say yoga, but for fucking dogs. And there are these dogs, in this big hall, lying on their back and sitting in slightly odd positions as encouraged by their owners, who presumably are under the impression that the dog is clearing its mind of all the stress that's built up from being a dog in New York. So you half expect the next advert to be for insect insurance, with a reassuring voiceover asking "Do you worry about ants? In today's crazy world you never know when they might get injured and fall behind in the line carrying crumbs. Well now those worries are over." Or it will say "Do the stones in your garden seem lifeless? Then brighten them up with a massage. Our highly trained pebble masseurs specialise in de-knotting the clogged up anxiety that collects in a stone's 'antagonism zone'."

One morning I was watching one of the customary sugary pairs that front the news channels, when the woman said "And we'll be looking at the disastrous consequences that can follow some plastic surgery." Then came a clip of an interviewer leaning earnestly towards someone you couldn't see, and saying "So one morning you woke up with four breasts." Then back to the studio where the pair put on their distraught look, and one said "More on that shocking story later. But first here's Anthony with the sport."

So New York can't help but make you laugh. But that's tested if you try to go up the Statue of Liberty. In a rare attempt at prior organisation I booked up tickets in advance, which is the only way now that you can go up the statue, rather than just visit the island. But you still have to queue for about forty minutes at a security check before boarding the boat, as a series of officials in purple jackets yell at you - "REMOVE all watches, cell-phones, camera equipment and other electronic devices and PLACE THEM IN THE TRAYS PROVIDED, REMOVE belts, jackets and any metallic equipment..." and you wonder if you've joined the wrong queue and you're being shipped out to Alcatraz. Eventually you're searched, far more thoroughly than at an airport, and this entitles you to get on the boat. Then at the island you have to join another queue and do it all again, presumably in case someone's managed to get there without going through the first check, perhaps through a series of underground tunnels. But this time they're far more stringent, so the queue moves slower and the yelling is more ferocious. You daren't even turn your head away as they're likely to bark "DO YOU THINK THIS DOESN'T APPLY TO YOU, ASSHOLE, NOW GIVE ME TWENTY PRESS-UPS."

After about an hour you make it to where you have to deposit all your belongings in a locker, which you operate by placing two fingers on a machine that takes your prints, then giving it a dollar. Then there's another queue until you're ushered into a plastic doorway that looks like the thing that beams you up in Star Trek. Then you move one pace forward and an automated voice snaps "Air puffers ON." There's a wait of around two seconds, which is just long enough to ponder whether air puffers is a term that sounds so innocent but then so is waterboarding, then there's a big 'Whooosh whooosh' noise and a bloody great puff of air comes up from underneath and goes up your trouser leg as if it's the thing they used to make that scene with Marilyn Monroe.

By now it's clear there's nowhere in the Western world in which there's less liberty than at the Statue of Liberty. My son said "If immigrants still came here by boat they'd look across at all this as they were passing and shout 'Can we go to Canada instead'?"

And yet somehow it still seems funny. They CAN'T mean it. On the subway going back we must have had six friendly conversations. Then, in the clammy stifling bustle of several thousand people trying to get out of the station, everyone pressed against five other people like when you're leaving a massive rock gig, the woman in front yelled "Some ASSHOLE'S PUSHING me, well FUCK YOU." And I thought about the equivalent in London, which would be a disgruntled sneer of contempt and a muttered 'Do you mind', and realised the New York version was much more engaging, and it just made me laugh.