IT IS a sick and twisted logic, but there are burglars and thieves who make believe that stealing items from garden sheds and outhouses is not too serious an offence. People claim everything back off their insurance, they argue. They're not really harming anyone, they claim.

I wish they could have been in the Indian restaurant with us last Saturday night as a couple's mobile rang. We could hear their six-year-old daughter screaming and crying down the phone from several feet away. Then her older brother came on and said he was scared. As they prepared to leave the restaurant in the middle of their meal, the mother explained: "Our outbuildings were burgled this week, the children are scared the burglars will come back, they just can't sleep or settle. I was half expecting this to happen."

Those burglars didn't just escape with a lawnmower and a few bikes. They snatched something much more valuable - those children's security and peace of mind. These are things that aren't easily replaced. Unfortunately, they can't be claimed back from an insurance company either.

BOB Geldof has maintained a dignified silence over the past few turbulent years. He has endured heartbreak, public humiliation, vile accusations and, finally grief, without getting involved in public slanging matches, pouring his heart out to the tabloids or feeling the need to give his side of the story. His main concern has always been to protect his daughters. So why has he blown it now? Sir Bob, on his latest album, cannot contain his bitterness over his ex-wife Paula leaving him for Michael Hutchence. "You got the palace, I got the shed," he sings, self-pityingly, about them getting the bigger house. "Why put a noose around your neck? What was going on inside your head?" he writes of Hutchence's bizarre, lonely death. Sir Bob said recently that he was keeping videos, pictures and albums for Hutchence and Paula's orphaned daughter, four-year-old Tiger Lily, whom he is bringing up, to remind her of her parents. Will his own cruel, bad-taste record be among them?

THE current Big Brother has none of the appeal of the original. In the first series, the contestants were like lab rats, taking part in a unique experiment and unaware of just how much of an interest the outside world would be taking in them. At times, they did almost seem to forget the cameras. This time, the house is full of performing chimps, fully aware of the eyes of the nation, and the tabloids, upon them. Every utterance is so carefully crafted, every action so self-consciously deliberate that it's all a bit like watching precocious young children showing off in a talent contest. The wannabe TV presenters, actors and pop stars even started talking about how many agents may be turning on the telly to watch them. But I don't know what happened next because I (probably along with thousands of others) switched off.

IN the middle of the election campaign last week, Mo Mowlam replied to my request for a contribution for a charity joke book, to help increase awareness about life-threatening food allergies, with a witty gag and a signed photo. Peter Mandelson sent me a lovely letter wishing us well with the project but explaining he was too busy to think of a joke. Noel Edmonds sent a joke scrawled in French, which nobody could understand. The responses are turning out to be more revealing than I expected.

AND then there was a joke from John Barnes. I thought my sports-mad nine-year-old would be thrilled, but when I told him, his response was: "Who's he?" For footballers, fame can be fleeting. I wonder, by the time the book comes out, how many people may be asking the same question about some of the currently-prominent politicians we plan to include in it?

Published: 08/06/2001