Most modern family trees are a bit on the tangled side, with some branches coming to an abrupt end while others meander off and get entwined in neighbouring twigs, but the Salomone family tree must surely be the most knotted and twisted of the lot.

As I'm sure you are aware by now, Salomone is the name of French siblings Jeanine and Robert who tricked a fertility specialist in the US into giving them IVF treatment.

The result was "twins" Benoit-David and Marie-Cecile who were both born in May, a couple of weeks apart and to different mothers. Jeanine gave birth to the boy on May 14 after receiving a genetic cocktail of her brother's sperm and a donor egg, while the egg donor herself gave birth to the girl at the end of the month before handing her over to be raised with her brother by her father, her auntie/mother who is also her brother's mother/auntie, and her 80-year-old millionaire grandmother.

Confused? You may be, but just think how confused the kids are going to be when they are old enough to start digging around in the pungent dirt around their family tree.

This story is as weird as they get. Even American soap operas, which are not completely opposed to a bit of incest if it means a rise in the ratings, wouldn't touch this if it was sugar-coated, slapped in a burger bun and presented to them on a plate by Jennifer Lopez in the buff.

It is quite simply unbelievable. But it is true, it has happened and we have to deal with it - or rather America has to deal with it.

While the UK is the most regulated country in the world when it comes to IVF, the US has only a flimsy set of guidelines for doctors to work to, so fertility tourists such as the Salomones can simply waltz in, pay up and waltz out again with a couple of kids in tow.

Dr Vichen Sahakian, the specialist the French "couple" conned, has admitted that he didn't do any background checks on the pair, he didn't know how old the prospective mother was (she was 62) and he just assumed they were married because they had the same surname.

He has shrugged off criticism in the last few days, claiming that he works to his own guidelines and does not need to be regulated by either state or national laws. But as his own guidelines allow him to "treat elderly couples as long as their combined age does not exceed 110", maybe it's time the US government stepped in.

Unless of course it is all part of a cunning plan on behalf of the powers-that-be across the pond to endorse and perhaps even encourage familial interbreeding to produce future generations so stoopid they will continue voting George W back into power ad infinitum.

Forget soap operas, will someone please call Mulder and Scully?

I blame Duran Duran myself. If Simon Le Bon and his floppy-fringed bunch of "wild boys" had stopped murdering melodies and got themselves proper jobs ten years ago, none of this would have happened. But, oh no, they had to keep touring didn't they, they had to keep bringing out singles didn't they, they just wouldn't let it lie would they?

And now we are paying the price, and that price my friends is high indeed because where the Duranies lead in their flouncy, multi-buckle boots, others are now following.

Porcupine-haired Limahl is in York all this week in the musical show What A Feeling! Blossoming TV gardener Kim Wilde is swapping her secateurs for a microphone as she hits the road again with fellow Eighties "legends" Paul Young (but not as young as he likes to think), Heaven 17 (more like purgatory if you ask me) and Go West (erm, Go Where with Go Who?).

Can you imagine the kind of audiences they are going to attract?

The venues are going to be packed to the rafters with old, farty folk like myself trying to convince themselves that they are dancing and singing along in a knowing and ironic way, and that they only know all the words to every song because their younger sibling was a fan and they just happened to hear the records... and buy the badges... and posters... and memorise the lyrics in Smash Hits.

This in itself is frightening enough, but what if it's just the thin end of a very bad wedge haircut.

Before you know it, Thatch will be back to battle it out in the Commons with Phoney Hair - as one of my son's favourite telly programmes refers to our beloved PM - and we'll all be running around with enormous, back-combed hair wearing ra-ra skirts and "Frankie says..." T-shirts.

Please, I'm begging you, somebody stop the madness now. Madness, you see, there's another band we can't seem to get rid of.