THERE is an old Victoria Wood joke about a couple having sex on a packed commuter train (if you've heard it before, don't yell out the punchline and spoil it for everyone else who has been living in a box under the stairs for the last 20 years).

As this passionate pair go at it hammer and tongs in a corner of the carriage, their fellow travellers pretend nothing unusual is going on. The men read the sports pages and listen to The Carpenters on their CD players (they think we think it's thrash metal; they don't know we know it's actually Close To You in a Green Day box), and the women bash away on their laptops or frown seriously over a pile of papers in a ring binder (they think we think they are working on some earth-shattering reports; they don't know we know they are actually checking their horoscopes and making out their shopping list).

Anyway, after the copulating commuters reach their sexual destination, they put their grundies back on again, sit back in their seats under a fluffy pink cloud of mutual satisfaction and light up a post-coital cigarette.

But no sooner has the flame on their match died out, than the other passengers turn and say en masse: "I'm sorry, you can't do that in here. This is a non-smoking compartment."

Victoria always gets a laugh with this one. I don't. But then again she gets loads of laughs with Dinnerladies, which is about as funny as a pile of cold canteen cabbage, so maybe it is not a failing on my part, it is just the way she tells 'em.

Anyway, I'm not necessarily going for a laugh (me being a serious journalistic type and all that), I'm trying to make a point. The point being that we humans have an uncanny knack for purposefully missing the point in a bid to avoid embarrassment.

We would rather chastise a couple for smoking than for grunting and shunting their way through a train journey. And, as the unusually coy members of the Melbourne Parliament proved the other day, we would rather come up with any feeble excuse in the book rather than expel a woman from the chamber for breastfeeding her baby on the backbenches.

Kirstie Marshall MP was booted out for "bringing a non-elected person into the chamber", the non-elected person being her 11-day-old daughter, Charlotte. This was a pitiful excuse for ejecting her, neatly side-stepping her real "crime", which was breastfeeding the aforementioned non-elected person in a way likely to cause offence to right-thinking bigots (i.e. with her breasts).

If these fine upstanding leaders of the people, who would probably still be in bed drinking strong beef broth 11 days after giving birth and would almost certainly not be back at work doing their bit for the electorate, had chucked Ms Marshall out for breastfeeding, it would still have been wrong. But at least it would have been honestly wrong, and not a feeble, gutless excuse for putting a woman and her breasts back in their place.

I mean, what did they think little Charlotte was going to do: storm the frontbenches and hold the leader of the house hostage at dummy-point until she achieved free rusks for all? If you ask me, this particular non-elected person was not the only one acting like a baby in the Melbourne house. If only the rest of them had had their own mummies on hand to give them a quick smack on the legs, maybe none of this would have happened.

Women should be able to feed their babies wherever they like. Heck, you should even feel free to breastfeed while reading this column, ladies, if your little one is feeling a bit peckish.

If, however, you decide to read this while committing heinous sexual acts with a partner of your choice on the 9.25 York to King's Cross express, please don't scream out my name at an inopportune moment. And for goodness sake, don't light up afterwards.

Updated: 08:52 Tuesday, March 04, 2003