IT WAS with depressing inevitability that in the week the much-lauded TV series Life On Mars came to an end, a leather-elbowed teachers' union apparatchik should crawl out of the woodwork and lambast the Gene Hunt character for being a bad example to schoolchildren.

According to a woman called Chris Keates, general secretary of the NASUWT (probably with sensible shoes and slight moustache), youngsters are taking the politically incorrect bile spouted by DCI Hunt at face value and using it in the playground. Well of course they are. They're children, innit?

Ms Keates raises the spectre of homophobic bullying and mass suicides, but fails to mention Hunt's legendary line about a particular case moving "slower than a spastic in a magnet factory", mainly because leg irons seem to have gone out of fashion these days.

What worries me is not the idea that we're breeding a new race of violent bullies (although that would be preferable to another generation who burst into tears because they've had their iPods confiscated by the Iranians), but the fact that public servants like Ms Keates may well be in charge of educating our children.

Are these people completely without humour or understanding? Are their lives so lacking in colour that anything deviating from the monochrome, right-on world of the Guardian Education Supplement is to be immediately condemned?

Kids are kids. They've always recited the catchphrases from TV shows in the playground the next morning. They always will. Ms Keates should just be thankful that Class 4A isn't reciting huge chunks from Monty Python's Dead Parrot sketch during double history, as we did in my day.


* IN ANOTHER throwback to the 1970s, an appalling outbreak of rampant snobbery sees Prince William give his bird the boot because she's a bit common (i.e. she doesn't get out of the bath to have a wee). Cue crowds of wailing, blubbering, nose-blowing old ladies throwing themselves under horses in The Mall.

It appears William's chinless hooray pals have been looking down their noses at poor Kate just because her mother used to be an air hostess and the bloodline of her family goes back not to Tudor aristocracy but to only-just-walking-upright mining stock. How outrageous.

Anyway, we've all seen what happens when the Royals go searching for someone to deliver an heir and a spare amongst their own inbred circles - they end up with some mad bint liable to run off with ginger-headed tank drivers or hurl herself downstairs in despair just because Duran Duran have split up.

I think young William should have a careful think and then do the right thing by Ms Middleton. It's only fair.

By the way, anyone want to buy a William and Kate souvenir tea towel? I've only got 10,000 in the garage.


* COMBINE humourless Lefties and rampant snobbery and you'll get the reaction of the ciabattering classes to events at Virginia Tech this week.

Anti-Americanism abounds.

Aren't those liberal gun laws terrible? You know that five-year-olds can walk in off the street and gunshop owners are legally bound to sell them pump-action shotguns, don't you? Yes, and they're giving away Walther PPKs in cornflake packets.

Well perhaps we ought to have another look at our own situation before casting sneering glances westward. Since the tragedy of Dunblane and the blanket banning of the possession of handguns, gun crime in this country has absolutely soared. Your average scrote can lay his hands upon a small armoury in ten minutes flat. Bullets routinely fly through the night in our major cities.

The British Olympic shooting team might have to travel to France to practice, but look the wrong way at a 15-year-old wannabe Yardie and he'll pop a cap in yo' ass without thinking, innit.

So say what you like about the Yanks, but at least over there the would-be victims are just as likely to be armed as the would-be assailants. That must do wonders for their burglary figures. It's called the Tony Martin Effect.


* Some blonde totty called Jacqui Oatley has been crow-barred into the job of commentating on football for Match Of The Day this weekend. (Look at the stupid girly way she spells her name. I bet she draws a little heart above the "i" as well.) There is no need for this blatant sexism. There are dozens of middle-aged men on the BBC payroll who are quite capable of commentating on a football match. Their voices fit; they know how to behave. Now we're going to have a shrieking harridan inflicted upon us just so the Beeb can play at ticking the PC boxes.

I only hope there are no controversial incidents during Fulham v Blackburn Rovers. I can't afford the new windows. Or the new telly, should my foot go through it.