No more secrets in the bedroom

LAST WORD ON THE WEEK:

WHOSE head is on your pillow these cold winter nights?

Is it Tiddles the cat, Rover the dog, Ronnie the rabbit or Bertie the bedbug? Or is it, ahem, someone you would rather keep secret? And no, I don’t mean sheep or donkeys!

The 2011 census wants to know details of your bedrooms (not the colour of the walls, the fluffy curtains or the handcuffs in the drawer).

But it also wants to know the identity of overnight “guests”. And, presumably, depending upon your energy, athleticism and enthusiasm, the numbers.

Those who don’t put all the details on the census forms will be interviewed, under caution, on the doorstep (just think how much the neighbours will enjoy that) and anyone telling porkies could be prosecuted and find a report of their court case on the front page of the Chronicle and even, the News of the World.

Will the responses on the forms find their way onto Wikipedia? Will all our darkest secrets — the sex and identify of our overnight visitors — finish up on Facebook or Twitter?

The best bet, of course, is to volunteer now to be one of the 35,000 nosy parkers taking forms round and helping people to fill in each of their 32 pages. They will be paid for their services, this exercise in nosy-parkering (who needs phone hacking?) will cost a modest £482 million. Who said the country was nearly bankrupt?

The first to object to the invasive nature of the forms were, surprise, surprise, Tory MPs who said that they were “intrusive”.

John Major, after all, would have had to put on his form that he was sharing a duvet with Edwina Curry which was not only shameful but a clear sign of desperation.

News of the census will, however, have filled Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi with delight that he is not English because he would have been filling in forms every day from now until 2025 at least.



IS it good news or bad news that scientists are now telling us that we are alone in the universe? Is it akin to being told there is no Father Christmas?

Spoilsport astro-physicist Howard Smith says that life on earth is unique and that we are not ever going to be confronted by an intelligence greater than ours. That is a shame. There is intelligence here on earth (not always easy to find, I grant you) but there are those with the intelligence of a backward amoeba as well and it was always a comforting thought that someday little green persons with sad eyes and no noses would land at Mumps to show us where we were going wrong.

Now it looks as though it’s just you and me.


FINAL WORD: Men with brittle egos should avoid the current trend of underpants that offer tight control in some areas and bold, if fake, enhancement in others. The reality, and reaction to it, will be so embarrassing.