"Why do people read these columns?", my husband pondered. "What makes them bother?"

It's a good question.

I'd not given much thought to it until then. Of course, a lot of people never read columnists. They buy a paper for the sport or the news and that's it. Anything else is a waste of time. In a way they're right. No-one nneeds gossip columns or opinion columns. It would be a sad comment on life if they ever became anything more than a way of passing an idle moment between more important things.

But I do read them myself. I have my favourite columnists, some of whom I've followed for years. One of these, whom I came across in a national Sunday when I was a student, is now writing as well as ever for Saga magazine.

There are those who write about politics from a light and humorous angle, those who write about family and friends, those who write about anything and everything. Those who are deeply serious or fiercely opinionated.

So, why do I read them? To be amused, certainly, and entertained;

because they say much more effectively than I could what I'm thinking and feeling about something; because I learn something from them. There are those I read because I know I'm going to hate every single thing they say. And, even while I'm hating what they write, it's helping me to work out what I really do think and why.

But whatever they write about - whether it makes me laugh or cry or nod in agreement, or fling the paper across the room in a rage - all these columnists have one thing in common: they write well, with a verve and vigour that makes me want to read to the end.

Like me, they're people with this compulsion to write. Like me, they've been offered the privilege of writing a column, so they have the responsibility to do it as well as they can.

And, as I hope to do, they'll find things they want to write about in all kinds of places: from their families and their daily lives, from things they read, from what they see on television.

Take that programme the other night about elderly drivers. Should they be forced to take another driving test at 70, it asked. Many older drivers point out that they're statistically the least likely to cause an accident, which is true. But haven't we all come across one of those "mature" drivers who drives as if there's not another car on the road, or so hesitantly that it becomes terrifying? And there are those who don't realise how poor their sight has become, or how slow their reactions. These things can creep up on you without warning.

I'm not 70 yet but I'm on the way there, and I'm a driver. How will I feel if I have to face another driving test?

The first was bad enough.

How will I feel if I cause a serious accident, because I just haven't realised I'm past it, and no-one's had the courage to tell me?

There's no question about it really.

We ought to face those tests. And meanwhile make very sure, too, that we fight tooth and nail for a better public transport system, for all of us.

Which is one thing these columns can do: to encourage people to campaign for something. But most of all I hope that I'll succeed in doing what good columnists ought to do and add just a little to your enjoyment of life.

Published: 12/05/2005