Well, here we go again. Another Saturday column which is supposed to entertain the nation but instead inflicts itself on the populace like a particularly virulent strain of avian flu. Back in ye olden times, when pleasurable, genteel distractions came in the form of wood carvings, chiselings from limestone, root vegetables or the guillotine, folk were quite happy to make do with a modest gathering of humble belongings.

Nowadays, of course, we have everything and more. In fact, we have more than that. Even your fancy, all-singing, all dancing phone tells you that you’ve got too much; there’s not enough data storage, this e-mail has been put in the junk file, Microsoft has moved a message to the clutter folder. If your hovel is anything like mine, then it will contain a number of fusty nooks and dusty drawers that are jam-packed with technological antiquities and relics that used to serve a valuable purpose in everyday life but now lie twisted and useless like the aftermath of an explosion at the Museum of Twisted and Useless Paraphernalia.

Obsolete chargers, tangled flexes, archaic adapters, bewildering piles of whitdoyoucallthems? Our appetite for gadgetry is insatiable. Personally, I thought the human race had plumbed new technological lows when I discovered a pub that had small television screens bolted into the urinals with each showing half-time analysis from Huddersfield versus Burton Albion. Now, read that sentence back again and ask yourself if we live in a sane, civilized society? The answer to that is clearly no. How else, for instance, can you explain the popularity of the Ultimate Fighting Championship.

Brutish men, beating each other to a bloody pulp while drooling, hissing onlookers bawl and bark from the sidelines? It’s a scene strangely reminiscent of an afternoon on an increasingly crotchety sports desk at The Herald when the chief football writer pinches the last mint Viscount from the communal biscuit tray and is set upon by a rabid mob of brassed-off colleagues. I’ve never been a fan of fighting let alone organised fighting. The idea of fist regularly connecting with head, for example, is an ambition I never, ever harboured. “When I grow up, mum, I want to have a set of higgledy-piggledy teeth that resemble head stones in a vandalised cemetery and a swollen face of odd lumps and protrusions which will make me look more like a clump of raw ginger.”

The reason for this tentative wander into the world of UFC is that an e-mail crashed into my in-box urging me to take advantage of some ticket offer for one of these forthcoming kick-and-punch-and elbow-fests. Almost simultaneously, another message arrived promoting the far more civilised exhibition of burly endeavour that is Europe’s Strongest Man. There was also another e-mail excitedly extoling the racy merits of spandex and the cat o’ nine tails but we don’t need to go into that.

As for those strong men? Well, the slightly mystifying attraction of watching hordes of humongous blokes with no discernible necks pulling a Cessna 120 light aircraft down a runway with their teeth has never really lost its lustre. It’s the sheer simplicity of the whole muscle-rippling palaver that gives these competitions their majesty. The premise really is so basic you could’ve explained it to a caveman in one or two grunts and a hand gesture and he would’ve nodded his head in complete understanding before trotting off merrily to throw a shard of flint at a Pterodactyl, or whatever it was that cavemen did. Essentially, it’s a case of finding something heavy, picking it up until your face turns the colour of a freshly-creosoted fence and your eyes pop like cherry tomatoes on a barbecue, before putting it back down again. Beer kegs, fridges, vast spheres of ornate Greek masonry? You name it, they lifted it.

Of course, heavy hoisting is a timeless process of gasping exertion and a tribute to the toiling donkey work of mankind. Whether it was Adam heaving Eve’s overflowing suitcase into the Garden of Eden or early hod-carriers labouring away during the construction of the Colossus of Rhodes, the procedure of puffed-cheek straining is an age old chore.

A few years ago, the World’s Strongest Man, featuring such pant-and-vest wearing behemoths like Geoff Capes and Jon Pall Sigmarsson, was as much a part of the Christmas Day traditions as white socks, Blue Stratos and abdominal bloat. As Her Majesty the Queen finished delivering her annual, earnest address to the nation, attention swiftly turned to the prospect of Sigmarsson standing in the middle of a hollowed out Talbot Samba and wobbling his way down a 30-metre track while bellowing like an agonised bull elk that had just been condemned to a lifetime of celibacy as his eyes bulged to the point of subconjunctival haemorrhage.

Now, that’s what I call simple pleasures.