I LIKE a laugh as much as the next man.
And what makes us laugh? Well, usually, we laugh because someone is hurting.
That’s why we titter when we see someone fall over and bump their head. Or fall from grace.
Or when we hear people use the wrong words, making themselves look stupid.
Or when someone is humiliated in some other way. Tee, hee, hee ... eh?

This is the basis of most humour and entertainment … from the acceptable, such as taking satirical swipes at politicians when they mess up… to the socially unacceptable, like giggling at someone’s disability or disease.
Humour that is cruelty-free isn’t really humour at all.
But there are limits. Oh yes, anything that is good in life, including humour, has to have limits.
If you laugh at everything and everybody, then what you really do is jettison your compassion and replace your natural humour with an awful, corroding cynicism.
I feel that Big Brother on C4 is encouraging us to laugh, or rather sneer, at people.
In the current series the gay Pakistani Scot Shahbaz has just walked out of the show after making a right exhibition of his serious psychological problems.
The TV cameras lingered on him as he sobbed his heart out.
They relayed his humiliation to the nation when he was ostracised by the other housemates.
His frightful tantrums, sulks and shouting matches with the others were showcased for public entertainment.
Shahbaz, 37, behaved like an injured child. He was hurting and craving attention.
He was showcasing his mental health problems and it was shameful of C4 to allow him to do so for as long as he did.
The emotional breakdown of a men in their late thirties is not that difficult to understand. Just look at the pressures on men ...
In today's decadent society male gender identity and the formation of traditional male personality faces hostility from feminists, from the liberal establishment and from the powerful but dangerous lobby which always seeks to politicise sexuality.
Actually, breakdowns such as Shahbaz's are fairly common in certain men and we should, in fac, expect them.
Who among us has never cried ourselves to sleep at night on the odd occasion, perhaps often?
Our pillows know the truth.
My point is this: while many viewers might have found Shahbaz’s tantrums funny in themselves, other Big Brother fans were simply getting pleasure from hating a man with such obvious insecurities.
To sneer and to hate another individual is wrong and a bit sick, frankly.
It was certainly wrong of a major TV network to use a person’s emotional fragility for the purpose of entertainment and ratings.
I hope sincerely that Shahbaz discovers how to manage his mental health problems in the future. I hope he gets help.
He was right to follow through on his threat of walking out of the show. Thank God he did not commit suicide.
He should remember – we should all remember – that Big Brother is nothing very important.
It is merely a telly show – surely one of the most frivolous of man's inventions.
Are we British really so crass and dumb that we get turned on by a immature fools and media harlots who sulk and show off constantly, display the shallowest emotions and very limited vocabulary, have heated arguments about things that don’t matter, and get horribly drunk?
I suspect a good many of us are.

TALKING of infantile attention-seekers, Madonna’s latest stunts are as sad as they are predictable.
She launched her new world tour with a mock crucifixion of herself on stage. She even wore a designer crown of thorns for this gruesome tableau.
Ho hum, another day, another shock tactic to keep this 48-year-old in the papers.
We’ve seen it all before, when she mocked Catholic images in the Like A Prayer vid. It was boring then and even duller now.
I expect before long Madge will be appearing on Parky again, talking grandly about her “art�.
Art my arse.
This is the woman who once simulated masturbation on stage.
Madge is no “artist�. She is that most trivial of entities, a pop singer who likes to prance about in her knickers.
It’s not big and it’s not clever.
And it won’t distract attention away from her thin and weedy singing voice either.

SO tired I’ve been, after a very gruelling two weeks at work, that I’ve been going into Hell’s Waiting Room for late doors almost every night.
Trouble with going in there for a couple before last orders is that I’m the only one sober and making any sense.
Last night for some reason Rocky Geetar told me, in great and laborious detail, what a marvellous source of protein earthworms are.
But only if you chop ‘em up and swallow them in the right way, mind, like he used to do in his Army days.
Well, the advice is stored away in my head.
Because if my overdraft gets any bigger, I’ll be on a strict worm butties diet myself.

FOR those who are interested, I’ll be reviewing the newspapers again on BBC Radio Merseyside’s breakfast show at approximately 7.50am on Thursday 25 May and again (at the same time) on Wednesday 14 June. Pip pip.

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