MONDAY

MICHAEL Jackson is deid. I hasten to add this is not Sir Michael Jackson, below, a sojer who says that the Scots are better in the UK than out of it because we can nuke anyone we want to.

Naturally, I am bereft at the news that the other Michael Jackson has "passed", as our yankee cousins say, as if he were a motion. You may not be surprised to learn that I was not a member of his fan club. I did, I confess, listen to him and his brothers when they were the Jackson Five. Personally, I'd rather listen to chalk squeak across a blackboard. Whoever said they sounded like castrated Bee Gees was surely accurate.

After that, whenever I caught sight of Mr Jacko on the telly he seemed always to be holding his crotch, possibly because he had a urinary tract infection. I gather he wrote a couple of decent songs which no-one else can replicate. Ditto Schonberg. Ignorant eulogists compared him to Mozart and Beethoven. More appropriate would have been comparisons with Gary Glitter who, had he lived in the United States of Attention Deficit Disorder and had $20 million to shush witnesses, may not have ended up in the pokey.

Not that this has any effect on the mass hysteria which is pathetically predictable on such occasions. In search of sobriety I turned to The Penguin Encyclopaedia Of Popular Music, which you might expect would devote acres of space to such a musical behemoth as Mr Jacko. It gives him half a page. The Beatles, by comparison have three pages, the Stones much the same.

Even among the Jacksons, Mr Jacko is way down the pecking order, with fewer words devoted to him than Mahalia Jackson, Milt Jackson and Willis Jackson, who was known to his chums as Gator Tail. Apparently Mr Jacko was especially big in Japan, as is endangered tuna, where he was "seen as the sort of beautiful young idol who should die young and tragically, but he's already too old to die young". How very unthoughtful of him!

TUESDAY

SO, faretheeweel Steven Wells, who has tootled off to the great Fopp in the sky. Mr Wells, who had hitherto not crossed my radar, wrote about rock music, which you may say was a waste of an existence. I cannot possibly comment. Among his great achievements was coining the word "saddo", which my much-thumbed Chambers defines rather inadequately as "a dull or unsociable person". A saddo, by my definition, is someone, invariably male, who tries to pass himself off as cool, young and with it when, in fact, he is bald, fat and, well, sad. To saddos the word "hip" is usually adjacent to "replacement".

To view saddos en masse you need only visit an event such as Glastonbury, which is essentially a care in the community convention. Viewing it on the BBC, which it has been almost impossible not to do because it sent half a million staff to ensure it was covered ad nauseam, one was struck by the decrepitude of the audience and most of the performers.

Time was when folk of a certain age would only be allowed out in public to collect their pensions or attend funerals. Nowadays, thanks to free travel on public transport, they are everywhere, dressed like mutton - though not, obviously, as tasty - and behaving like nursery tots on a visit to Largs. If there is a better argument for selective euthanasia I have yet to hear it. "Why don't you all grow up," I shrieked at the screen, "and take up dominoes!?"

Not, of course, that the artistes were much better. When, if ever, was Tom Jones, above right, acceptable? What on earth did the Welsh do to deserve The Green Green Grass Of Home? And, I should add, the grass Mr Tom is referring to is not the stuff that makes you giggle but the staple diet of Jerseys and Guernseys. As for Status Quo, how aptly named are they?

The only band that passed muster was the much-underrated Elastic, who hail from Much Binding in Dorset and whose huge talent is stretched very thinly. At one point in their set I thought they were close to breaking but they pulled through, thanks in no small part to their classic anthem Knights Of The Garter. As their slogan says: "The future is bright, The future is Elastic."

WEDNESDAY

MICHAEL Jackson is still deid. Or so most of us believe. Unconfirmed autopsy reports suggest that the body found in LA was actually a blow-up doll. Said a source close to someone who knows someone who once went to one of Mr Jacko's concerts: "Think Barbie with you-know-whats."

Meanwhile, sightings of the real Mr Jacko continue to flood cyberspace. Apparently, he has been seen variously at Braehead shopping centre purchasing support tights, looking lost amid the tram mayhem in Princes Street and haranguing our old chum Silvio Bonkersconi outside a pizza joint in the Cinque Terre. Many things had Mr Bonkersconi and Mr Jacko in common. You will recall, for example, the former's wife saying she could no longer "stay with a man who frequents minors".

Ach weel. For a prescription of common sense we must go to Aberdeen, whose Evening Express reports that a donkey called Lottie gave birth during one of Andy Murray's triumphs. Its wean, however, was not - as any sane person might expect - named after Mr Andy but was called Jackson in homage to Mr Jacko. Though it was born just as Mr Andy eclipsed Stan Wawrinka, council workers at Hazlehead Park nevertheless cruelly snubbed the Dunblane superstar in favour of the legendary weirdo. According to the Express: "Lottie's struggle to give birth matched Murray's fight with Wawrinka for endurance." Contemptuously, no-one from Aberdeen City Council was available to comment on this remarkable happening.

THURSDAY

AS the Bard wrote, what a parcel of tumshies in a nation! I refer, sadly, to the discourtesy shown yesterday to Queen Tupperware III by EmSPees at Holyrood, many of whom were elsewhere when they ought to have been at the foot of the Royal Mile celebrating a decade of devolution. Many were Gnats, and I trust my dear friend Alexei Salmonella will give them what-for when next he bashes into them. One, namely Christine Grahame, a bigger bampot than most, which is saying something, said: "I do not want to be seen as a hypocrite. I do not believe in the aristocracy running our country." Ignoring the fact that she and her ilk are meant to be running the country, who would she rather ran it? Plebs?

If anyone ought to have had his nose out of joint over the so-called celebrations it was surely me. Years ago I attended the opening of Holyrood in a writerly capacity and, Zelig-like, found myself leading The Riding from Parliament Hall to the newly reconvened parliament. Many were the envious glances cast in my direction, especially from worthless hacks who as ever had one foot in the gutter. Regally, royally, I made my way down the Mile, magnanimously acknowledging the mob and encouraging them to take some exercise by attempting a Mexican wave. Few did. Next day, the Hootsmon's man wondered how I had come to be in such a prominent position. Some, I would suggest, are born to such things, others are mere witnesses to them. Need one say more?

FRIDAY

NORMALLY I wouldn't burden readers of this throbbing organ with my dreams. This despite the fact that I regularly receive requests to interpret the dreams of many of you, most of whom - I humbly submit - are in dire need of straitjackets.

My dream concerned James Joyce, about whom I have been reading quite a lot of late. In it, I was giving a lecture about him and his novel Ulysses. It was a distinguished audience made up, hearteningly, mainly of celebrities. David and Victoria Beckham, left, were there, as was Elton and his squeeze. Sitting in the back row were Brucie, Tarbie and The Two Ronnies, entranced by my havering on about Bloomsday, the Martello Tower and Molly's erotic soliloquy. In the front row was Sven-Goran Eriksson who, rudely for a Swede, yawned throughout.

I ploughed on regardless. After about three-quarters of an hour, a man sitting towards the rear of the room in which I was delivering my spiel got up and went to a window. It was Martin Clunes. "Look," he shouted, "there's Tessa Jowell in a caravan!" Not surprisingly, this dispelled the spell under which I had put them all, as everyone abandoned their places to confirm Mr Clunes's sighting. I had little option but to join them and while they all acknowledged that Mr Clunes was right and that there, indeed, was Ms Jowell in a caravan, in vain did I counter that it was not the minister in charge of the 2012 Olympics but Margaret Beckett, whose love of caravans is legendary. Whereupon I woke up sweating like French cheese. I await eagerly dear Sigmund's interpretation of all of this.

SATURDAY

FOR the third time today I have mislaid my mobile phone, a too frequent occurrence. And for a third time I have retrieved it by phoning it. This I now appreciate is what landlines are for. Yet the trend is to give them up. To anyone considering doing so I say: don't.

***

IN

Just when you thought it was safe, up pops super-fit hockey mom Sarah Pale-Insignificance, right, to challenge Obama to a Presidential running race.

OUT

Looks as if she pipped herself at the post by announcing that by the end of this month she'll no longer be Alaska's big fish

SHAKE IT ALL ABOUT

So ... is she limbering up for a 2012 dash down Pennslyvania Avenue - or fleeing from bad press and shot oil revenues?