OF course it's ridiculous that Manchester United boss Sir Alex Ferguson (pictured) should be accused of indecent assault for allegedly touching a young girl's thigh as she drove him home from a jazz club where she had spent most of the evening flirting and "swivelling her hips in his direction", according to witnesses. If squeezing a thigh in such circumstances constitutes a sexual assault, unattached men everywhere will be wondering how they are ever going to get it together with a woman again.

But equally ridiculous, of course, is the all-too-familiar sight of a successful older man whose head has been turned by a girl young enough to be his granddaughter, and most probably on the make.

Sir Alex is an experienced manager, who others look to for advice. Alarm bells should have started ringing the moment the attractive 21-year-old made a bee-line for him across the dance floor.

Common sense should have told him that young girls don't usually find your average-looking grey-haired 60-year-old that irresistible. Vanity may have told him otherwise. The police were right to drop the indecent assault charges. What a shame they couldn't have charged him with another offence - behaving like a silly old fool.

UNLIKE Sir Alex, the stunningly beautiful actress Amanda Donohoe, who turned 40 this year, is brutally frank about what she considers to be her declining attractiveness. Men, she says, have stopped staring at her. This can only make the rest of us, who have never had to endure being oggled at by hordes of men, feel better. But, as someone who also turned 40 this year, I can sympathise with Amanda on one thing. "It was ghastly," she says about her birthday in the summer. "I hated it. I wept, got very drunk and tried to reassess my life." Yes, it wasn't very nice. But then again, I can think of worse things than reaching 40. Not reaching 40, for one.

HONESTLY Ulrika, what did you expect? The former weather girl says she feels let down by England manager Sven Eriksson. She thought he was a decent man and was shocked he did not stand by her when their affair was exposed. Yet she must have known her boyfriend of four months was a cheat. After all, she joined him in his betrayal of his long-term girlfriend. Didn't she speak to him in Swedish on the phone to dupe Nancy? Didn't they talk about renting a flat to use when they fancied sex? This wasn't true love, just another tacky affair. Surely Ulrika has had enough experience to know the difference.

BATHING my baby the other morning, using a special, expensive "Baby Sponge" from Mothercare, which advertises itself as "extra soft, ideal for baby's tender skin", I noticed the small print: "WARNING: Not suitable for children under 36 months." Foam pieces, apparently, can break off and cause choking. So if anyone out there has a three-year-old baby, I now have a sponge going spare.