MONDAY

MONDAY

NIGELLA Farrago, boss of Ukip, says he is giving up booze for a month. Mr Farrago, as is well known, likes a wee swally, which is Glasgow-speak for a barrel-full.

On occasion he overdoes things, and may even be hungover, which probably explains a lot.

He says that it's good on occasion to take the pledge, though he has not extended this to fags, which he puffs incontinently. God knows what he smells like. I have a pretty good idea too.

See those bins at bus stops atop which is a graveyard with fag ends instead of headstones? Ever tried smelling one? The perfume you're getting is Eau de Farrago.

TUESDAY

THE schools are back. They've only been off for two weeks plus a day. One sees teachers everywhere, shopping like crazy for retirement slippers or trawling travel agents for their next break in the sun.

Apparently, they've got to endure a full five weeks before their next holiday, which is in February, then it's Easter, followed by summer, followed by the October break and then Christmas.

No sooner do the weans get used to the sight of classroom routine than they're out on the street pretending they're in The Wire.

Meanwhile, we wonder why we have produced a generation who can't spell "diarrhoea" and don't know what Portnoy's complaint was.

WEDNESDAY

AN epic nightmare. The location is Carnegie Hall, New York. For some reason I am about to give a concert - as Leonard Cohen. I am backstage, surrounded by hangers-on, all of whom keep telling me how great I am and how much they're looking forward to the show.

I peep through the curtains - do they have curtains at Carnegie Hall? - and I see the audience is pumped up, full as it is of men in black T-shirts and homburgs and women - pace the song - tearing their blouses off.

It's a terrifying sight, not least because the guitar I'm holding has no strings and my memory of my dear friend's songs is completely blank.

What to do? I consider going on stage and telling a few jokes but they've suddenly lost their punchlines.

For a horrible moment I convince myself I can do this, I can be Leonard Cohen if I want to, as long as I keep my mouth shut and do not attempt to play the guitar, which I'm incapable of doing anyway. I feel the sweat running down me like a stream in spate. Then I have an idea. Just as I'm about to be announced and exposed as a fraud I gather my gear and race out of the hall, whereupon I wake up mightily relieved.

When I recount all of this to the Home Secretary she says that, spookily, she too has just had a similar dream. In hers, she was about to play Mozart's Piano Concerto which, she says, she hasn't practised for some years. Like me, she was about to panic when she came up with a life-saving solution: she would simply miss the last movement.

Therein, gentle reader, lies the difference between her and moi.

THURSDAY

PORRIDGE, according to a Harvard study, is the route to a longer life. Tell me something I didn't know!

More than 100,000 Americans were force-fed porridge morning, noon and night for a year, at the end of which all of them said that, while they were sick as parrots at the sight of it, they felt as fit as fiddles and were ready to run a marathon.

Researchers conceded that an epidemic of cliche was one of several unforeseen results of their work.

Another, it seems, was that participants noticed that quite often their skin felt somewhat lumpy, which may have had something to do with the consistency of the porridge.

Pasty faces were another unwelcome by-product, but as one guinea pig said: "What would you rather have, two years fewer or a face the colour of tapioca? It's a no-brainer."

MY dear friend David Sedaris, humorist extraordinaire, says that people who shop at Tesco drop more litter than those who use Waitrose.

"There's a Waitrose not far from me," says Mr Sedaris, who has left Yankeeland for Sussex. "I found one Waitrose bag. There's a Tesco Metro not far by and I find Tesco bags all the time."

Unwittingly, Mr Sedaris has wandered into a class war and some have accused him of being a snob.

Do poor people drop more litter than Prince Andrew?

Perhaps. But then he has people to pick up his litter and sort out his other alleged messes. But I digress, albeit ever so slightly. Like Mr Sedaris, I spend too much of my precious time picking up other folks' droppings.

Recently, I popped into my local Tesco with as much relish as one does Guantanamo Bay. The object of my visit was not the purchase of a tin of beans, but to inform the lady manning the customer service desk that the verges and shrubbery on the road to her superstore were besmirched with Tesco-related litter.

Had I informed her that Queen Tupperware was browsing in the pet food aisle she could not have affected more surprise. "Really," she said, "I'll get somebody to look it."

Needless to say, when last I looked, no-one had.

ON a related matter, I am pleased to report a breakthrough in dog mess research.

In the not too distant future, one gathers, it will be possible to identify the owners of dogs who do not pick up their mutts' you-know-what from a sample of the odiferous stuff taken at the scene.

This, of course, will require the owners to register their beasts, for which, one trusts, there will be a hefty fee.

What will now be needed is an army of folk prepared to do the dirty work.

This is not a job just anyone can do, and those with superior qualifications will surely be favoured.

Might this be of interest to our time-rich teachers?