Michael Howard playing the immigration card? A man descended from Romanian Jews? What red-blooded, salt of the earth Englishman is going to vote for him?

Come on, tories! Get Kilroy-Silk in quick. He's available and mad as a hatter. And the people love him.

There follows a transcript of my interview with Nick Jolliwell, the government's 'booze czar', responsible for changing the nation's drinking culture...

What is the ultimate aim?

Education. Pure and simple.

So you think that by education, a whole culture can be altered?

It's going to take time, but yes.

Where does education start?

We mustn't make alcohol a naughty thing. Children need to see alcohol as an enjoyable part of life if taken in moderation. They need to start getting used to alcohol at a young age.

How young?

When parents sit down to a meal with their bottle of wine, give the child a little diluted wine. It's what they do in France.

What about babies?

Maybe dip in your little finger, let them suck it. Very diluted, of course. Just gets them used to it. Makes it part of normal life at a young age.

Do they do that in France?

Maybe.

And if they don't, they should?

Look, I just think having the family together, sharing a bottle of wine at the dinner table, good civilised conversation.

With children?

Certainly.

In French?

Maybe some French could be used. It's not a bad idea, you know. It's all good practice.

What about a family that say, doesn't eat together. Maybe they have their meals on trays in front of the tv, at different times?

I'm not talking about every day of the week. Sunday lunch is good. Once a week.

How are you going to get all families in Britain together for Sunday lunch?

These are just suggestions, Geoff. We're not going into people's houses.

How is relaxing the licensing laws going to stop young people binge drinking?

It won't.

Then why have longer opening?

Basically to stop flashpoints. When all the pubs empty out at the same time there's going to be trouble.

What, pub versus pub? The King's Arms versus the Queen's Head?

Just having hundreds of extremely drunk young people on our high streets at 11.30, you're going to get violence.

Because they're drunk?

Yes.

Because they drink a great amount in a short time?

Yes.

Which you can't stop?

No.

But if you stagger the staggerers...Say have one pub closing at eleven o'clock, one at twelve, one at one. That's going to stop flashpoints?

We're not telling establishments when to close.

So they could all close at midnight and we could have even more drunk people on our streets. The pubs and the drinks companies will make even more money.

But they'll have a responsibility. We want to make pubs more responsible.

What do I tell my seventeen year old daughter? How do I educate her when I know she goes out at weekends and gets smashed on alcopops and vodka shorts?

She shouldn't be getting served.

Ok, she's just turned eighteen. And she goes out at weekends and gets smashed on alcopops and vodka shorts?

She'll learn.

How?

The way we all did. By drinking too much and feeling so ill she'll never do it again.

How do I know she's not got the constitution of an alcoholic? Maybe she doesn't get ill and just drinks more and more?

The chances are she won't become an alcoholic.

What if it runs in the family? I binge drink.

I'm sure most of us do from time to time.

No. Every week. According to government figures I am a binge drinker three times a week. Am I to be educated?

It's your body. If you're not harming anyone...

Isn't it in the government's interest for us to drink as much as we can? Everytime we have a drink we swell the government's coffers.

Look, Geoff. Drinking is part of life. Most people know when to stop. Some people are predisposed to going too far. Some people get violent. But most of us are sensible, social drinkers. And here endeth the sermon...I think it's my round.

You got the last one.

Did I?

A premium rate phone sex line in Sherwood, Nottingham was staffed with forty local women rather than the advertised 'Filipina girls'. Boss Andrew Vanderahe, 41, was fined £65 with £1,000 costs for breaching the Trade Descriptions Act. 'We had to act,' said a council spokesman. 'So many men were being ripped off'.'

Hungry to get some meat on the bones of the report, I contacted one of the cheated callers. He made himself comfortable by his phone and in hushed, nervous tones, he described his disappointing experience...

'I wouldn't have minded, but she kept on and on about her arthiritis and how she's on pills for this and pills for that and how you can't get a decent piece of fish anymore and how there's not enough shelter at bus stops and how what with all those yobs about she's scared of going out in the daytime, let alone after dark. It was a good ten minutes before she got around to what she was wearing.'

A statement from the Home Office on the Yorkshire Ripper's day trip to the Lake District to visit the site where his father's ashes were scattered said, '...the individual was closely supervised at all times. At no point was there any danger to members of the public.'

And there was me thinking he'd been left alone with a machette, a slasher movie, and three teenage prostitutes.

Iraqi captives (looters) stripped and forced to simulate sex acts by British soldiers? Our boys? Our brave boys? I don't believe it! They're brave boys! They're British! British boys are brave! British boys have character. British boys have respect for people who are not like themselves. British boys are not racist, cruel, homophobic, cowardly. They don't offend people for a laugh. They're gentle and decent. They see the irony in 'Little Britain'. They're on the side of the underdog, the poor, the oppressed, the minority.

Oh, and by the way...

I'm a lady!

It's UK Radio Aid Day and we're all tuned into one of 288 commercial radio stations which are broadcasting the same shows from 6am to 6pm. Great dj's from the past such as Evans, Bates and Goodier are here to make the day go with a swing and give away prizes to those of us who text them at £1.50 a go. It's all for this year's good cause, the tsunami disaster fund, and I for one am having the most fun I've ever had.

Encouraged by Radio Aid, our office is doing so many fun things to raise money for the victims. And all it took was an email from the boss.

Things we are doing:-

1. The boss has donated £75 so that he can have his six month old baby for the day. His estranged wife left him during pregnancy and he's in a bitter battle with her to get access. But today they have put apart their differences and the baby is in the office. The boss wears cufflinks inscribed with the words 'World's Greatest Dad'.

2. We each pay £1 each time the boss changes his son's nappy. He is extremely keen to do this as he says 'It's a bonding thing'. He seems to change the nappy about once an hour. Either he changes it when it is not necessary or the baby was on the beer last night.

3. We pay for the boss to do the tea and coffee runs all day. I'm concerned that he may not be washing his hands so I drink bottled water.

4. We have a swear box (£1 for a 'shit', £2 for a 'fuck', but nothing for the 'c' word as that would be encouraging filth).

5. All the men in the office are sponsored by the women to wear thongs for the day. The men sponsor the women to wear decent knickers.

6. We have a lunchtime auction of unwanted Christmas presents. Everybody seems to have brought in their secret santa presents from office colleagues. Mine is a bottle of Hugo Boss aftershave.

7. We have an auction, too of childrens' paintings. There are no bids and parents are forced to buy their own kids' creations at £1 each.

8. We have a sweepstake to guess the weight of the baby. It's a fat thing and I've no idea how much babies weigh so I say 2 stone 7 pounds. I do not win.

In all, we raise £274 and we get a mention on the radio. They play Dido for us.

Congratulations, team!

Today's (large) graffiti on the inside of the train door as I get on brazenly tells me to

'FUCK OFF'.

I wish I could.

Prince Harry dressing up as a Nazi?

How could he stain his ancestors' name in this way?

Has he forgotten how his great grandmother almost singlehandedly saw off the Luftwaffe during the blitz on the east end of London, spending night after night shooting down doodlebugs?

Not to mention her brother-in-law who bravely infiltrated the heart of the beast by posing as the lover of an American friend of Hitler.

So jolly punk Prince Harry's in hot water again, this time for dressing up as a Nazi at a 'native and colonial' fancy dress party. His brother attended the party as a lion.

Well done, Harry for showing up the British Empire for what it was. We invaded countries and enslaved them, too!

And well done, William for dressing up as a native animal rather than blacking up as a native human being. You sensitive boy, you.

Carlisle is still under water of course because carbon dioxide is going to kill us all! CO2 + H2O = annihilation of the human race.

Unless...

Unless we rip up all the roads in the world, plant a tree every five metres, and like millions of Tarzans and Janes we can swing to wherever we want to go.

Or would you like to swing on a star?

I remember a woman,
A rock 'n' roll woman,
Dancing to heavy rock tunes.

A long-legged woman,
A whole lotta woman,
The only one in the room.

Do they still have heavy metal discos? And are they as gut-wrenchingly depressing as in the seventies, before the New Wave of British Heavy Metal lapped at the balls of impressionable young men up and down the UK?

Saxon, Samson, Praying Mantis, Angel Witch, and of course the all-conquering Iron Maiden who are back in the singles charts this week at number three with yet another very old song in several new formats, delighting their obsessive fanbase, many of whom must be in their forties.

A quarter of a century of earache is thus celebrated as the wave comes into the shore and recedes like thinning forty-five year old hair.

In addition, we've now got Elvis at number one for the next few months, almost completing a full circle for Top of the Pops. As it was in the beginning, so shall it be in the end.

Shock, horror! Mohammed is the UK's twentieth most popular baby boy's name of 2004. And of even more concern to those neo-nazis among us, Joshua spends his third consecutive year at number two.

For the tenth year running, Jack tops the list. A no-nonsense heterosexual name presumably inspired by no-nonsense heterosexual Jack the Lad rather than no-nonsense heterosexual Jack the Ripper. Effete creatures with hairdresser names such as Geoffrey, Simon, or Philip don't even make the top hundred. Who'd want a name like those?

Jack the Lad is a young man who behaves in a very confident way, knows what he wants and how to get it, and will leave a trail of broken hearts throughout his teens and twenties. He's been wrestled from the clutches of the 1980's middle classes (posh Jacks never sounded convincing) and taken his rightful crown as king of the state school playground.

But tell me this. When was the last time a Jack won the World Cup with a hat trick? Geoff Hurst or Jack Charlton? No contest.

Midday. A three minute silence to remember victims of the tsunami disaster. Do not answer the phone, piss, shit, or throw up.

At a time when many religious people may be questioning their faith, I've decided to suspend my disbelief for three minutes and speak directly to God (silently, of course). So here goes...

Thank you God, that you have made me part of the most generous, caring nation on earth.

Thank you God, that I am able to earn so much so that I can give so much.

Thank you God, for sparing our fair isles from mass natural disasters.

Please God, give mankind the technology to predict such awful devastation so that people living in the threatened areas can be evacuated from danger.

I have the office radio on for the three minutes. Heart 106.2, of course. They play what can only be described as the sound of the sea, just in case we forget what caused the disaster. It sounds like they've planted a tiny microphone inside a seashell. The 'silence' is followed by Robbie Williams' 'Angels', the UK's favourite funeral tune. I can't think of a better song to convey the horror of terrifying death.

Barn owls bought as pets for Harry Potter fans are being kept in poor conditions (few people having barns nowadays) or released to die.

It's teenage mutant ninja turtle syndrome. Except in the earlier case, terrapins were released into the wild to terrorise indigenous species. Now soft domestic owls are given a harsh lesson in the realities of life.

What sort of children are we bringing up that can't distinguish fact from fiction? Do popular, hard kids say 'I want to wear spoddy glasses and I want a fucking owl!'? Or do unpopular, bespectacled wimpy kids plead 'Please may I have an owl, mummy? Ben's got one and he's ever so affectionate.'

Harry Potter's owl, Hedwig, is a snowy owl who delivers mail and presents between witches and wizards. Snowy owls are two feet tall, live in the northern tundras of Europe and America, and hunt lemmings for food.

Hmm, lemmings. So that's why the morons are buying barn owls.

In the week in which Sir Bob Geldof was bemoaning the proliferation of charity shops in town centres in Britain, especially in the town in which he lives (presumably because he's sick of seeing his old cast-off shirts which no human being in their right mind would buy)...

In the week in which Sir Bob harkened back to the good old days when such shops were small businesses (i.e. where have all the independent sweet shops/tobacconists/toy shops/pawnbrokers gone?)....

In the week in which we proved ourselves to be the most generous nation on earth by giving all our disposable income to victims of the Asian tsunami (didn't need a sanctimonious song, just a rising death toll on 24 hour news).....

Hold on, maybe we do need a sanctimonious song sung by say Christian of the millennium Sir Cliff Richard and written by failed Cliffalike shit-dj Mike Read which might raise a few quid more than Maxine Carr rattling a children's charity tin on any UK high street...

Jesus...

There's nothing that makes your New Years Eve complete like watching a bunch of like-minded people having a great time while you're sitting there wishing the night away, feeling sick, bloated, and painfully awake.

Thus it is with the golf club annual do and thus it is with Jools' Annual Hootenanny.

FrenchHenrySaundersEdmonsonRivronCornwellLaurieEnfield. A multi-headed comedy beast. But the ugly monster is not here to tell jokes or to entertain us in any way other than to nod its heads, drink bottled lager and say 'hello' to its mate Jools.

The logic is that 'funny' people will spice up Jools' turgid, plodding, middle-aged, half-dead ('live') music show and transform it into FUN just by dint of them being there. The problem is, when they're not being funny, funny people aren't fun to watch and can't save the show from dying on its arse.

Happy New Year.