PUBS packed with people drinking green Guinness, kicking their legs in the air like Michael Flaherty and singing maudlin rebel songs with tears in their eyes and shamrocks sticking out of their ears - don't you just love St Patrick's night?

No, neither do I.

Our local is having an Irish night this weekend. Possibly yours is too. There are posters and adverts up all over the region urging us to get out and party on March 17. I hope everyone has a great time. But please, please, just leave me out of it.

As someone born on Erin's Isle, I suppose I should be dressing up as a leprechaun, dying my hair green, white and gold, and getting into the spirit of things. But I don't particularly want to jig the night away with others who, by accident of birth, were born on the same island as I was, and now, with forced jollity, want to congratulate one another on the fact.

Even worse are those English folk who had a great-great-great-granny from Limerick and now behave as if they are more "Oirish" than the Irish themselves. Then there are those bleeding English hearts who, to assuage their feelings of guilt over past British imperialism, have named their children Sean and Siobhan.

Don't get me wrong. I love Ireland - I go back there several times a year. We holiday on the west coast every summer. The people are warm and welcoming and we have fantastic friends and family there - but I don't have to carry a shillelagh and stuff shamrocks in my hair to prove it.

I love the North of England too. Thankfully, North-East people don't feel the urge to take over town centres all over the world once a year, force people to dress in flat caps, eat stotties, drink Newcastle Brown Ale and sing the Blaydon Races, Fog on the Tyne and When the Boat Comes In.

The main problem with this weekend's celebrations is that they promote an over-sentimental, cartoon version of Irishness that too often descends into mawkish self-pity and an underlying sense of victimhood.

Some people will say it is all about being proud to be Irish, and that there is nothing wrong with that. I am reminded of a documentary I saw a few years ago about children living on a rough Dublin estate.

The English interviewer asked a teenager if he was proud to be Irish. The youngster, with a wisdom belying his years, responded: "Well, I've never been anything else, so I wouldn't know, would I? I could hardly say I'm proud to be English or French."

I WOULD like to think that we have moved on and that Pop Idol Will Young announcing he is gay is, as he says "no big deal". Yet all the newspapers, from the red-top tabloids to the snootiest of broadsheets, gave acres of coverage to the story, most of them mentioning that he had "confessed" to his homosexuality, as if it were a crime. If Will had revealed he had an ingrown toenail, a mole on his back or anything else that was equally "no big deal" would it have received the same coverage? No big deal? Sadly, Will, it looks as if it is.

THE surviving Fat Lady, Clarissa Dickson Wright, has been promoting the great British fry-up breakfast as good for us. You may be happy to take her word for it - just don't look at her.

Published: Friday, March 15, 2002