If defamation of religion was illegal it would be a crime for me to say that the notion of transubstantiation is so ridiculous that even a small child should be able to see the insanity and utter physical impossibility of a piece of bread and some wine somehow taking on corporeal form.

What does Christmas mean if we can't encourage small children to sit on a stranger's lap?

Are we expected to live in a world where we can no longer send death threats to colleagues via email? Where we can no longer IM other people to suggest physically improbable and morally dodgy sexual practices? Where doctoring photos of people to place them in legally compromising positions is frowned upon? Who wants to live in that sort of world? Not this column, that's for sure.

Where would we be without science? Sure, those boffins may have come up with occasionally handy items such as life-saving medicine, air travel and the internet, but science is also guilty of some terrible things, like eugenics and Jordan's breasts.

Polls are now even more meaningless than ever... there was the case of Ronnie O'Brien, the young footballer who incredibly found himself at Juventus, and even more incredibly found himself in the running to win an internet poll of the great club's greatest ever player. The curse ironically struck O'Brien a second time when he was at one point leading Time magazine's list of the Greatest People Of The 20th Century. The error in the polling was soon rectified and O'Brien, happily, is leading a highly successful career playing pro-football with FC Dallas in the American soccer league.

According to the nanny who sold her story, Victoria used to scream at her husband: I gave up my music for you. So, the next time you feel like slagging off David Beckham, just take a moment to ponder on how much we all owe the man.

It is fashionable to scoff at Americans, but they routinely produce most of the important and ground-breaking entertainment in the world. 'Popular culture' is still culture, Shakespeare was once as popular as any of today's icons with the common people.