The winner is: The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification by Julian Montague, published by Harry N Abrams.

Well,  it would be, wouldn’t it. There were also some great runners up. Here’s the shortlist:

How Green Were the Nazis?

D Di Mascio's Delicious Ice Cream: D Di Mascio of Coventry - an Ice Cream company of Repute, with an Interesting and Varied Fleet of Ice Cream Vans.

Tattoed Mountain Women and Spoon Boxes of Daghestan.

Better Never to Have Been: the Harm of Coming into Existence.

Personally I like last year’s winner the best: How People Who Don't Know They're Dead Attach Themselves to Unsuspecting Bystanders and What to Do About It.

Anyway, the bank are not to know this. I go in, deposit the cheque. I check the amount on the phone that night and find that the fools have put a tenth of the amount in my account. In any other business this would be called stealing.

Because they don't open until 9.30am (how do they get away with this?) by the time I charge through the doors there is a big queue behind me - around 15 people - and you know how quiet it is in a bank.

I get to the desk and show the girl the counterfoil and tell her the mistake they have made and she laughs.
"I don't think the fact that you have lost my money is funny" I said and I could feel the crowd shifting with the beginnings of some excitement. The smirk left her face quicker than money out of my account and she got the old woman of the bank (she'd be 35 if she's a day) to come along and talk to me. I explain the situation and she checks it out and she says, "Yes, we have made a mistake. We'll make sure it is in your account as soon as possible."
"Not good enough," say I. "It should be there now. It's your mistake and I'm not prepared to wait." (Yes, I know, I'm sounding awfully like Tom).
"Well, the bank has procedures, you know."
"Oh yes, I know all about those. That's why I don't have any money in my account."
The crowd tittered.
She looked at me over her half glasses and so I said, "I'll be charging you for my time until this is sorted out."
"You can't do that."
"Oh, I think you will find I can. If you go to my website, What A Load of Bankers," and here the crowd began to laugh, "you will find a sliding scale of charges, including one for mistakes which are not my mistakes. There's also one for inefficiency during banking processes, such as incorrectly inputting amounts into your computers. My time costs $500 an hour and the clock is ticking."
Upon which I turned on my heel and marched out to a ripple of applause.
What a good feeling that was.

Now, within an hour I got a call from the bank telling me the correct amount had been deposited and cleared. The girl they made call was so effusive I thought she was going to offer to come over and have my children (not the ones I already have,  you understand. Oh, you know what I mean).

I called Tony Jones and discovered he was in charge of journalism at the evocatively named University of the South Bank. You may or may not remember they went through this thing of renaming all the polytechnics, universities. Mostly they did this because it sounded better. (I think if they did it today it would be called, ”Refocusing and repositioning in the marketplace to achieve newly desired educational outcomes” but back in the mid-1980s when all this took place it was called, ‘renaming the polytechnics’). Trouble was, they were still polytechnics which meant they were underfunded places where kids who thought they couldn’t get a job went so they’d have another year or two of not being out on the streets without a job.

The reason Tony Jones had called, in a roundabout way, was because one of my friends had suggested that I try some teaching. At first this struck me as pretty bizarre, considering I’d never done any teacher training at all but she said, “You're a writer, you're a journalist, you know loads about this stuff. And besides, you remember the teachers you had at school?”
I nodded.
“Well, what did they know?”
So, here was Tony Jones telling me that as it happened one of their lecturers had suffered a heart attack and so he wouldn’t be starting the next term. Could I come and see him and he’d tell me what the job was all about?

I went along and by the time we’d chatted for half an hour  it was clear that they needed someone in a hurry and I was there. It was agreed I would start the following Monday and I would teach practical journalism. This, I thought as I left, would be interesting, mainly on account of the fact that I’d never stood before a class of students, let alone shared my knowledge with them. It scared me stiff.

Come Monday morning I arrived at the newly renamed University of the South Bank in one of Britain’s poorest suburbs.

As I walked through the university I realised there were no white people there at all. I felt like Sidney Poitier (well, except that I was white, but you know what I mean).

I entered the classroom and was introduced to a roomfull of students. The official title of the course was Journalism for Black and Asian Students.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’ve never been a racist. Tom saw to that. He might have had a temper and a half but he couldn’t stand the idea of racism. Interestingly, it was something he didn’t need to drum into any of us, we just grew up in a house where bigotry didn’t exist. There was never any negative comment at all about any other races, other people, no matter who they were. In fairness we never lived in any areas where there were any non-white people and I can honestly say that until I went to London I’d never so much as said hello to a black person - not because I didn’t want to, just because I’d never seen anyone within shouting distance who wasn’t white.

Until I stepped into that classroom, the only black person who’d ever had any connection with us was a man who helped Tom with a pushchair that he was carrying up out of the London Tube. We’d gone to London for the day when I was just a nipper and the youngest must have been the pushchair rider and Tom was struggling with everything and I think the youngest was under his arm and the pushchair was heavy because it must have been made in about 1950 and in those days they were made out of industrial strength iron by the same men who made the Royal Navy, or so it seemed. It was heavy, so when the black guy grabbed one side of it and took some of the weight off Tom, Tom initially thought it was a theft attempt (I remember I saw that flicker cross his face) and the man didn’t say anything or even look at Tom, just picked up his side of the pushchair and helped Tom to the top of the steps with it. Now, if I was looking for a cheap laugh here I’d say, and then he ran off into the crowd, clutching the pushchair, never to be seen again. But he didn’t.

Anyway, I was running that single encounter with a black person through my mind, reassuring myself with that story as I stood petrified in front of a class of 45 black students who were all staring at me.
The atmosphere in the room was thick with something and I don’t know what it was, but let me tell you, it was thick.
“Where is Ronald?” asked a girl lounging at the front and everyone stared at me. Not a sound.
“Well,” I said slowly, “he’s had a heart attack.”
I thought the air had been sucked out of the room.
“Ronald is dead, man!” shouted a young man at the front, his eyes rolling in his head like he was going to faint clean away and everyone started wailing. One boy started thumping his desk and moaning and at the back of the room some kind of dance got underway.
“Hey!” I shouted, “Ronald is not dead. Ronald is recovering.”
The noise died down as suddenly as it had began, though one girl was still shuffling about at the back. Maybe she always did, I’m not sure.
“Man!” shouted the boy with the rolling eyes, “you scared us man. You had us believe Ronald was dead. Why’d you do that man? Why’d you do that?”
They all shouted out their agreement and stared at me with naked hostility. “Man, why’d you do that?”, they kept shouting out.
“Look” I said, putting my hands up to calm them, “I know Ronald means a lot to you-”
“Ronald is The Man,” said the girl at the front, “he a friend of Nelson’s.”
“Nelson?” I said frowning, “Willy Nelson? The singer?”
The room erupted, wailing started (and I suspect some gnashing of teeth too), they were all up out of their seats, shaking their fists at me, screaming and the girl at the front, her head to one side said, “Mandela, man, Nelson Mandela. Ronald is his friend, man.”

It turned out that Ronald was a journalist (and a damn good one too) and he had been with Mandela back in the days when they were still free to demonstrate against the apartheid government. Ronald had been part of the inner circle of the ANC that had organised a credible resistance movement. Ronald had been at the Sharpville Massacre and had got himself shot, a bullet nicking his left arm.

He managed to get away but was hunted by the South African police. With the help of friends he eventually left the country and found his way to Britain. In those days they’d let you stay if you were in danger and so Ronald got to teach at Lambeth College, as it was then, and a good deal of the reason why the course was so popular, indeed why it had managed to get off the ground in the first place, was due to Ronald’s persistence, tenacity and sheer presence.

When I finally got to meet Ron he looked like Morgan Freeman. He had a calmness about him. Think about that film, The Shawshank Redemption, and you’ve got it. One day I asked Ronald how he felt about escaping and Nelson getting caught and banged up inside Robben Island for all those years and Ron smiled like Morgan Freeman and said softly, “We all have our own private sufferings. The trick is not to let them become other people’s sufferings.”
No, I have no idea what he was talking about...

These are trips where journalists are taken abroad by companies and wined and dined to excess in exchange (well, not that this is discussed directly, of course – that would be far too sordid) for publicity on their products.

On one trip to Spain I went on, the PR man was an ex-motoring journalist who some of us knew pretty well. As PR people go he was quite likeable. He told us younger hacks that there was no Bribe and so we decided to play a trick on the older hacks - the ones who traditionally were used to getting The Bribe.

The Bribe, I should explain, is a gift that you get given for sparing your valuable time going to stay in a five star hotel in Biarritz or Monte Carlo or Aspen so you can be told about a new product. It happens all the time.

Over dinner that night in Spain one of the old duffers whose nick-name was Bunty looked around the table all wide-eyed and then said in a low voice that he’d last used whilst leading a commando raid on a Nazi missile bunker in Norway in 1942, “Psst! Can’t seem to find the present. Not in me room.”
I said, “What? But it’s in your room.”
“In our room?” said about 10 of them in unison.
“Yes, I said, “in the corner near the big window.”
There was silence for a moment and then...
“Ah!” says Bunty, “of course. Thought so. Spotted it earlier. Right. Good.”

The next morning us younger hacks made sure we checked out early and then we all got on the bus. Around five minutes later all of the older hacks came marching out of the hotel, each clutching the large rubber trees that had been growing in pots in their rooms. You know, they were stealing them. I saw the manager looking all goggle-eyed but he never said anything, I think it’s because he was so shocked that a bunch of arrogant English journalists could nick the hotel’s rubber plants just like that on masse, but also that they could do it so obviously. They each clutched their plants in one arm as they signed their hotel bills with the other hand. I reckon that the manager also thought, well, these people have paid a fortune to use our hotel so what’s a few rubber trees?

Meanwhile, us younger journalists sat on the bus trying hard to keep straight faces as these fools brought on their tall rubber trees, cursing and grumbling as they struggled to ease them through the coach’s narrow doors.

“Ha!”, one of them said to me, “forgot yours did you?” And they all started laughing out loud at my inexperience. We laughed along with them, we laughed so loud it hurt and we continued laughing long after the old hacks had stopped. I think they thought we were mad. Of course, once we all got back to Heathrow and they strolled through customs like a moving rain forest the game was up.
 
“Hang on a minute there, sir,” said a Customs officer, “you can’t bring that bloody tree in here.”

“I’ll have you know this is a present!” shouted Bunty as he was ushered into a back room by uniformed officers and apparently subjected to an examination that had him walking funny for weeks.

For example: ‘competitive salary package”.
This should really be worded: “slightly less than McDonald’s hourly rate but you do get to look at the paper every day (if Mr Jenkins in Despatch doesn’t get it first, which, by the way, he always does)”.

“Room for career progression”.
This means you will be starting at the bottom and if someone dies you may get a shot at a more senior role, like executive envelope-licker working with Mavis Brown in the mailroom, which by the way Mavis rules with an iron fist and has done since 1864 when she took over from her mother, Mavis.

“Executive position”.
Err, no, it isn’t. This is the lowliest position of them all. Tack the word executive on and it’s like saying “architect designed’ when you talk about a house. Of course it’s architect designed – do you think the butcher in the High Street drew it?

“Must be skilled at multi-tasking. A comprehensive knowledge of Microsoft systems will be advantageous”.
You bet because you’ll be doing everything from putting the kettle on to designing the website and selling the company’s products. And Microsoft has 28,000 different software products, so get busy.

“Communications Specialist”
Ahh, this is always a good one – it could mean you get paid as much as George Bush’s White House spokesman or it could mean you need to be able to talk very loudly very often and have a successful track record selling gold suntan cream and original fake Donatella Versace ties to people who live on the Gold Coast.
In my experience the White House gig doesn’t often come up.

“The ability to deliver quality results in a high pressure environment”.
A government job, the highlight of which will be justifying to the media why your boss the Minister took his 14 family members on a six week fact-finding tour of European five-star hotels, at taxpayers’ expense.

“A strong leader possessing strategic vision and experience in change-management”.
You’re going to be tanning some serious backsides for this organisation. Previous experience firing lots of people will be advantageous and, as they say, ‘well regarded’...

“Be part of a team supported by flexible working conditions”.
You are going to be there all hours, buddy, and just don’t ask about the weekends.

“We will keep your details on file and contact you again should a suitable position arise...”
...and Jesus walks on the earth again.

“A fun environment awaits the ideal candidate”.
Yes indeed, if you like whoopy cushions on your chair, a battery-powered singing fish which belts out “Be Happy” every time a sales executive makes a sale and a boss who, it is rumoured, “has given up drinking”.

Now, we all know most men have a good sense of direction and can read maps and most women don't and can't. This is not a simple chauvinistic statement; there have been loads of studies proving this is true. If you're a man you will have sat next to many a partner who cannot find their way (well, unless you're a gay man of course).

Anyway, my friend cannot find her way out of a paper bag. She has lived in Sydney for close on 15 years and still cannot safely find her way to the end of the street. Actually, that's unfair - she can, she just can't find her way back.

So, we go to the multi-storey car park and leave the car on the roof (there is only one roof, I remind her, as she begins to look worried).  When we have eventually decided which GPS is the go, as they say, and parted with $680 we get in a different lift to the one we used on the way down and come out at the other end of the car park. I set off in the driving rain my man's antenna bleeping softly in my brain and she hesitates and I think maybe she is wondering how not to get her shoes wet which when they were drawn by a bloke in Italy and then artisan stitched of finest calf, had not been designed to get wet, except with champagne, but only drops you understand, but no. She shouted after me into the howling wind, "Are you sure you're going the right way?" And as I walked I laughed into the rain and fetched the keys out of my pocket and found the Bentley and opened the door and got in.

When she joined me and closed her door she brandished the box and said, "Do you know how this thing works?" And I looked at her and I said, "Are you joking, I can't even tune the video."
"Typical man," she said. As we drove off she frowned and added, "Are you sure we're going the right way?"

Some car companies didn’t invite them on trips any longer because they were in the advanced stages of dementia and it wasn’t only that sometimes they became a touch forgetful, it was more serious than that. Sometimes they’d forget where they were, sometimes they’d forget who they were and sometimes they’d even forget they were actually driving a car, which of course can be dangerous.

On one infamous occasion we went to Italy to drive a new Fiat. The Geriatrics were invited and as usual they teamed up. If my memory serves me correctly - and it should as I’m not yet ready to join The Geriatrics’ Club - this was the new Fiat Mirafiori and it was one of the first mass-produced medium-priced cars to have a five-speed manual gearbox as standard.

The Geriatrics, both of whom needed the aid of walking sticks to get about, clambered into the Fiat and eventually found where the ignition key went and eventually fired the engine. Then there was a prolonged period of nothing much happening other than the engine revving hard and then falling again. Eventually one of the Public Relations blokes went over and poked his head in the window and asked pleasantly, “Got a problem chaps?”
“I’d say,” huffed Gerry, “can’t seem to get it in gear at all. Seems as if it’s already broken. Can’t say I’m surprised,” he grunted as he once again tried to slip it in gear, “after all, it is Italian.”

“Hmm,” said the PR man, trying his hardest not to laugh, “I think you’ll find you’re actually trying to change gear with your walking stick. The gearlever’s that one there, the one with Fiat written on the top.”
“Oh yes”, said Gerry, getting all flustered, “I see which one you mean now. None too obvious though, is it?” And off they lurched.

Later in the day the news came in. While driving the wrong way up a one-way street (“back in ‘44”, said Gerry later that evening, “I took my tank right up that street and nobody said a single bloody word...”) the Gerry that was driving decided it was time to change up from fourth to fifth gear. Taking the Mirafiori to its limit in fourth, he snatched the gearlever (at least it wasn’t his walking stick this time) and with great gusto put it into...first gear.

These nannies are well paid. Most of them are on around $55K a year, which is what an editor would get (though I am careful not to suggest which one is worth more than the other...) and usually they get a car too, which is often a VW Passat or Subaru Liberty and in one case a Range Rover Sport that costs a cool $140,000.

One of the nannies is a pretty blonde girl who has the looks to make men loose the thread of any conversation they are involved in (but if I close my eyes for a few seconds it seems to pass) but what she has between her ears has not grown as swiftly, or as impressively, as her figure. I say this because the other day she arrived with a small baby strapped to her chest in one of those devices that makes it look like she is about to leap from a burning, diving plane, saving the infant as a parachute springs opens from her backpack. There’s another kid in a stroller (pushchair, for my non-Aussie readers) and another child (the one who actually goes to pre-school) hanging off the side of the stroller. On this particular day she had the family dog too, a golden retriever called Trevor (I know, I know, but what can you do?)

Now, really, just to digress a minute, I wonder why the mother and father of this brood bothered to have the kids, and the dog, in the first place. In fact I happen to know the husband is a financial adviser and the wife is a lawyer. Between them (nannies talk, you know) they earn over $1.5million a year, which explains how they can afford a nanny and a Range Rover Sport for her to tool around in, but doesn’t explain why they would want kids in the first place. Presumably they need someone to send to Shore (a very expensive private school whose academic record is nonetheless no better than the local state school – for my non-Aussie readers...) once they get old enough and someone in the family has to drive the Porsche, Bentley convertible and Toyota Prado – I mean there are only two adults. Also, they would need people to fill the five bathrooms they have in their house, so maybe it makes some sense.

“No,” I say quietly but now all the nannies are looking at me like they’re a coven (it’s a witch thing, madam, not a French oven) and the blonde looks like she’s going to cry and I know she’s going to starve herself and eventually be in the papers – Nanny Lived In Luxury But Could Not Keep Caviar Down – and underneath that it’ll say, Fat Jibe By Bald Man Led To Meltdown and I’ll be held responsible and shunned in the street.
Even more than I am now.

Tom had been shouting at us about something or other.
“Shut up in the back there, you bloody kids! All day you’ve been whining. Shut up!”
So we did.

We were going shopping and we all sat there in the Thames Trader quiet as mice while Tom’s temper sizzled up front.

We went into a car park. In those days there were loads of car parks on waste ground. You paid some bloke and he lifted a bent old metal pipe and you went in and drove around looking for a space.

So, there we were driving around this car park and Tom muttering about paying his money and not finding anywhere to park. All us kids were on the high back seat, as far away from Tom as it was possible to be. He was driving slowly and eventually mum spotted a parking space and Tom grumbled and said, “I’ll never get it in there. Jesus, it’s impossible!”
But he fought with the gear lever which always made the most amazing groaning and whining and crunching noises when Tom was trying to make it go in any direction. Eventually he let out a great cry as if he was murdering someone and banged it into reverse. Us kids all turned and looked over the seat back, down behind us. There was a woman in a Mini right there, looking up at us with terrified eyes as the Trader started to jolt back towards her.

From the height of the Trader it appeared to us that she was in a toy car. We started to go back and I saw her put her hand on the horn but it was a Mini so it didn’t blare it just peeped and Tom didn’t hear it over the sound of the Trader’s engine. Of course, he couldn’t see the diminutive Mini because it was way below the Trader’s rear end. We all kept staring out the back as Tom inched us closer and closer.

The woman, who was rather fat for a Mini, was struggling with the door and got it open and got out of the car just as the Trader made contact, the rear bumper crunching against her windscreen and shattering the glass. Tom was looking back but he still couldn’t see the car which he had now started to push backwards. The woman came up to Tom’s window and rapped on the glass. Tom looked at her and shouted, “Not now, madam. Trying to park,” and accelerated harder, pushing the Mini back again until it made contact with another parked car and Tom stalled the Trader. He huffed and puffed and then groaned and said to us all, “See. Bloody well stalled!” Then he looked back at the woman still standing there outside, her mouth gawping open, and said in an exasperated tone, “Now madam, what can I do for you?”

We watched them, our chins on the seat back, as Tom stood all mute looking at the damage to the Mini, listening to the woman who was by then almost hysterical.
“I really would have thought that your children would have said something,” said the woman, “they were all looking at me as you mounted my car.”

Tom looked around. We were sure of it. Even though we’d ducked down below the seat. Quivering with a kind of evil excitement, we could feel his laser-like stare looking for us through the metal doors and the vinyl seatback.

The editor had heard that the rough-tough men of steel had rescued a stray budgie that’d been flying around the strip mill. Some union shop-steward pushed a big red button and stopped the mill, losing several millions pounds in the process and I think momentarily sending the UK economy spiralling into deficit.

The steel men fashioned a cage of thick strip steel bars for the budgie, and then they started the mill again. A nice little story that, and because the editor liked to give everybody a By-line (this is your name on the story) I got my first and on the train home that evening I just kept looking at it and looking at it, finding it hard to grasp that it was me who had written that story.

The editor liked to use the words ‘bid, boost and bingo’ in as many combinations and in as many headlines as he could. He also finished every headline with an exclamation mark. My story was entitled Bingo! Budgie Bids for Freedom! (To my mind his all-time best headline was Bid to Boost Bingo in Blaenau Borough Bids For Big Time Bonanza!)

The following month when things were quiet he called me in to his office and asked me what I’d got on. Nothing, I said, so he said, “Okay, go up the steelworks and see how that budgie’s doing. Take Bob with you.”

Bob, the paper’s photographer, wasn’t a hard worker. Once we were driving along in his dark blue Ford Escort van when we saw a bus mount the kerb and crash into a bus-stop, scattering people in its path. “Uh-oh”, said Bob, slamming on the brakes and executing a quick three-point turn. “Too interesting for us.” He changed up into second, then third and as I stared at him we sped away from the scene, the urgent engine screaming, echoing off the mining valley’s small stone houses.

At one stage the company’s photographers had a secret competition to see how many times they could get their Ford Escort vans in the pictures that appeared in the group’s newspapers. This often demanded real skill. The best one was when we went to interview a Golden Wedding couple. I asked them the usual questions (“what’s the secret to your long marriage?”) and they gave me the usual answers (“give and take”) and then Bob went into action. He made them stand against the window. “Bob”, I said, “the light...”.
“Perfect,” he said softly and moved them at an angle. I stood beside him. He managed to get all of the Ford Escort van in the picture, there in the background, out on the road, one floor down. But because of the light behind them the couple were just shadows.

The editor used it on the front page with the headline - Shadowy Couple in ‘Give and Take’ Bid to Boost Marriage!

So, back when I was training to be a journalist, so that would have been when I was 17. Adam was a fellow trainee and his dad was Foreign Correspondent for one of the big Fleet Street papers, so the family was based in Paris.

To us other aspiring scribes, none of whom had ever been closer to France than the clifftops at Dover at that time, Adam was a touch exotic in that he spoke fluent French and had film star looks. He was also very funny indeed. Sadly he was a terrible trainee and he just couldn’t get anything right. When it was getting obvious they were going to boot him off the course he took a weekend off and went and visited his dad in France to seek his advice.

Adam had a close relationship with his father. For example, Adam had been going out with this French girl. Isabel was an animal in bed (Adam never specified what type of animal but when he told me the whole story I imagined that she was a member of the cat family, and I was soon proved to be correct...).

So, while he was living in France at home with his mum and dad he was going out with sexy Isabel. He was only 16 at the time and I think she was about 26 which must have seemed so old to him then, I know it did to me. Of course he was big for his age - in height I mean - and so he told her he was 25. Apparently she ummed and arred over going out with him because he was younger than her. Phew, what a shock she’d have got had she known the awful truth - that he was really just a schoolboy! A big one, but still a schoolboy.

Anyway, sometimes he’d stay over at Isabel’s. I mean he had to. He could hardly tell her he had to go home because his mum and dad were waiting up for him, what with him supposedly being 25 and all that.

Thankfully for him his mum and dad were pretty liberal, which was a bit weird because his dad wrote for just about the most right-wing newspaper in Britain (it truly is a strange world that we live in). Adam told his parents that he was house-sitting with a friend of his who needed him to keep her company during the dark Parisian nights. For some reason I think they thought this was innocent enough - what with Adam being 16.

Now, on this particular occasion Adam comes back from Isabel’s in time for breakfast and him, his mum and his dad are sitting there and his dad is reading the newspaper so all Adam can see of him are the morning’s headlines.

His mum brings her son some milk and she says, “Adam, your shirt is all torn at the back and it looks like there’s blood on it too. Whatever can you have been doing?”

Adam’s mind went into overdrive as he poured the milk on his cornflakes. And then it came to him. “Yes. Last night I was playing with Isabel’s pussy.” His father’s newspaper came down slowly and he looked at his son over his half glasses, pursed his lips and gave him a couple of slow nods before hoisting the paper once again.

“That must be some fierce pussy,” said his mother noisily buttering a piece of toast. “Oh yes,” said Adam, “if you weren’t careful it would actually gobble you all up.”

Anyway, the point is this. Adam went to Paris for the weekend and asked his dad what he should do about the journalism course. They talked about it for a long time and Adam told his father everything. About all the mistakes he was making, about how it just wasn’t going the way he wanted it to go, about the tutors who just wouldn’t give him a chance and his dad thought about it for a long time and if he’d had a pipe, indeed if he’d been a pipe smoker, he would have puffed and puffed aromatic smoke into the air, and eventually he did say to Adam, “Have you ever considered turning to crime?”

It made me smile. Whenever I think about the Isabel story, and Adam asking his dad what he should do about his future, it just makes me smile, and I think it always will. You know, the point is, Adam works for a TV company now and you’ll see him on your screens almost every night of the week. It took him a while, but he did become successful.

And he never did have to turn to crime.

There's the Big Fat Burger and The Skyscraper and The Gobbler - actually I just made the names up because I can't remember the real ones and can't be bothered to try and find the article which by now is probably being recycled somewhere in Hurstville, but the point is, these burgers are massive. We are talking in one instance here of a single burger which supplies the same amount of calories as a man would need in a day and a half. Brilliant.

Now, you may think this is bad, but I just don't see the problem with this.

For some time now I've been shaking my head at McDonald's and their salads and low-fat yogurts and raisin toasts and deli wraps. What is all this about? I mean, the McDonald's brothers must be spinning on a red hot rottiserie at this very moment. McDonald's was built on the burger, its very foundations are squelchy Big Macs, for God's sake.

If you look over the road at Hungry Jacks you're not going to see this namby-pamby salad stuff - you're going to see flame-grilled burgers by God and they will be slapped down on your plastic tray with fries and a big coke. There's no room in there for limp old salads - no room at all.

The thing is this - I think it's a bit unfair to blame these junk food companies for  rising levels of obesity (I know, it sounds like I'm trying to get a PR job at McDonald's but no, Ronald has not approached me and if he does I'll give his big red nose a left jab - on aesthetic grounds you understand, he just dresses so badly ).

Really, if people know it makes them fat - and really everyone should be aware of this by now and that a McDonald's and large fries is not recommended by Jenny Craig - then you either eat them and don't mind walking slow with some serious ballast on board or you don't eat them and you remain reasonably trim and quick moving.

Now, me, I don't eat McDonald's or Burger King or Hungry Jacks - well, actually that's not quite true, I probably have two a year. Why is that, you squeal with amazement! Well, see, I cook my own food and I like it very much, thank-you. And yes, I make beefburgers and I make pizzas (including the dough, I hasten to add...) so it's not like I'm a tofu-scoffing vegan.

Also, I walk. Yes, I use my legs to walk around and sometimes I ride my bike and I take the stairs instead of the lift (unless it's above two storeys, of course. I don't want a heart attack). If I feel I'm getting a bit fat then I stop drinking for a while and do some more exercise. It's not rocket science but it works.

So, I think we should all leave off these fast food, junk food people - they are just waddling around doing their job.

I would have been a bit older than him – I think about five - when I started the same campaign with Tom and my mum. I went on about it non-stop and when I think about it now it’s embarassing how much I pushed it. I think at one stage I stood poised on the roof of the house and threatened to jump. Looking back I’m not sure Tom was convinced I’d die, us living in a bungalow. At least I assume that’s why he went back in for a cup of tea.

However, I also stuffed newspaper into the storage bin under the seat of Tom’s Vespa (they weren’t trendy then you know, they were just scooters) and I set fire to it.

I watched the smoke curl out of the shed and then the flames caught the wood and the glass windows exploded. Tom came running out and looked at the shed and looked at me and then looked at the shed again as it turned into a blazing scooter funeral pyre. We both ducked when the Vespa’s fuel tank exploded, sending half the scooter whining over next door’s fence. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, so I did both alternately. Tom didn’t even shout. I don’t think he could find the words he needed. He just stared wide-eyed at the conflagration.

Anyway, the eventual result was they caved in and let me get the beast (I don’t think my parents could afford any more fires...).

I called this dog Tingha after the Tingha & Tucker show on the BBC. Tingha & Tucker were two koala bears. Well, actually they were two hand puppets with a man’s hand up their arse and they never spoke or uttered any sound, at least not as far as I can remember. Well you wouldn’t would you?

So, we got this dog called Tingha and he was a complete and utter nutter. Today I’m sure there are no end of dog psychology or advanced dog training courses he could have been enrolled in but back then I just accepted the fact that he was going to turn around and bite me on the hand every time I tried to stop him mounting Linda Lotion, the girl who lived two doors up. I was in love with Linda Lotion and yes, that was her real name.

Linda’s parents were actors and she was the coolest, most confident person I’d ever met. One day she said to me, “I want to introduce you to Simon & Garfunkel.” I thought they must be her next door neighbours.
 
Once I knew who they were I went out and bought all their albums, not because I liked them but because I loved Linda Lotion. Well, I was only 10. Even now when I hear The Sound of Silence or Homeward Bound I’m back in the winter, feeling the snow and the cold, getting on a bus to go to the shops to see if I could find another S&G album, but really I hoped I’d bump into Linda. Of course I never did, even though I walked up and down the High Street for hours until my toes were so cold I couldn’t feel them. It didn’t occur to me to phone her - well, actually it did, but I had no idea what I’d say. Besides, I didn’t have her number.

One day I saw her kissing my best friend Graham in the school playground.

Anyway, I digress.

At first I thought Tingha was just playing doggy games everytime he attached himself to Linda and humped her up the street. She thought it was great fun and squealed incessantly as they po-goed along.

But I must have been growing up because one particular day as Tingha tried to mount Linda in the high street in front of the butchers I somehow knew that this was not acceptable behaviour. Of course it could have been a frowning red-faced Mr Jones rapping on the window with his meat cleaver that made me see things this way, I can’t remember for sure.

Linda appeared to have no such concerns. She squealed with delight as Tingha salivated all over her neck. She certainly never got that excited with me.

Anyway, Tingha went from bad to worse. One day, in his quest to find more girls on which to practice his sexual favours he leapt out through our front door, shattering glass everywhere. He was not seen for a week. Everybody on the estate heard him though. It was like the Hound of the Baskervilles out there. All night he was either barking or howling. Eventually he came back looking completely knackered and slept and snored for three solid days, not even waking to eat. I know men like this, but a dog?

The climax came – as it were - when my mother was having a Tupperware party.

Tingha pranced into the lounge and as if the music had stopped, all the women sat down rather smartly. They’d heard about Tingha. The dog took a look around and then leapt onto the white shagpile rug in front of the gas fire and proceeded to give it a right good seeing-to, right there, right in front of the Tupperware party housewives. He humped it out through the kitchen - at one stage he had it up against the kitchen wall and was very vigorous with it - and then he took it out into the garden where he rogered it until it was in tatters.

Two days later a man in a shiny polyester suit came up the driveway, knocked on the door then came in and collected all of the plastic bowls, snap-tight lids and bendy cutlery. My mother had been sacked by Tupperware, her selling technique of having a dog walk in and perform sexual acts with a shag pile rug somehow didn’t sit comfortably with what Tupperware was all about.
 
Eventually, one grey winter’s morning, the RSPCA came along with a big white van and Tingha was marched out and locked in the back and I shivered inside the house and peered out from behind a lace curtain as the dog was driven away. He looked forlornly out of the meshed back window.

Years later I bumped into my old friend Graham and we went out for a drink and we had a few too many and he said to me, “You know, funny thing about Linda.”
They were married by then.
“What’s that then?” I said, taking a swig of my beer.
Graham stared into his glass and swirled his beer around and then looked at me, frowned and said, “She only really enjoys sex when I bark and howl at her.”

I picked a seat inside the plane, it seemed wise, and then the machine spat me a boarding-pass. You take this to the check-in desk (you know, I should charge Qantas for this easy-boarding guide...) and then give them your bag if you're checking it in.

A couple of things occured to me; this is another way for Qantas to save money by getting the customer to do stuff. I suspect that soon you will have to actually fly the plane and eventually they'll ask you to bring your own plane along.

The second thing is this; if you haven't got any bags to be checked in (let's say you are simply carrying a small thermo-nuclear device in your underwear) you can check in at the pedestal without showing any ID and then just go through the security screen which, frankly, is about as secure as entering a garden centre.

What I did see was several people taking their shoes off and putting them in the tray to go through the scanner. Now, why would you bother to do this unless you were asked, and nobody ever asks you, at least not at Sydney airport. The woman in the queue beside mine had taken her stilettos off and put them in the tray. I looked at them and they were Jimmy Choo which means they cost more than a Mercedes-Benz and because there is nothing to them they cost a lot more than other shoes, ones that have toes and heels and all that shoe stuff. Anyway, I looked at her and she looked at me and I looked at her shoes (but not at her legs, you will be pleased to hear...) and I thought, where on earth could you place any explosives in those shoes? I mean, really. I wanted to ask her but then I imagined myself being arrested and flown to Guantanamo Bay and really all I wanted was a quick flight to Adelaide. It also occured to me that she was more likely to die from tripping and falling the great height off those stilettos than in any terrorist attack. And then I saw some bloke take his thongs off and place them in a tray and I thought, I'm travelling with these people.

I have to say I hate flying. I have aviophobia - the fear of flying - and though I've been flying since I was 21 and I have to fly a lot I am never going to get used to it. Of course, some of my experiences haven't helped. On my first flight from London to Gothenberg in Sweden I dropped a lit cigarette (I can barely believe we all used to smoke on planes...) down the side of a plastic panel next to the fuselage whereupon it disappeared and then started to smoke profusely. I was on a press trip with a load of fellow hacks so when I pointed out the imminent conflagration to the bloke sitting beside me he quickly tipped a glass of water down the back of the panel, only it was gin and tonic and so there was a genie-like puff of smoke followed by a roar of flame that singed the headlining and gave me a crew cut. Pandemonium ensued and it wasn't until two fire extinguishers had been employed that the fire was put out.

I was on a Britannia Airways jet that stalled as we were climbing after takeoff which introduced me (very swiftly, i