A NICE Mr Talbot from Northallerton wrote to tell me he "always" enjoys reading this column. Letters like this go into the glass case above my pictures of Lana Turner and Freddie Flintoff. In fact both of them are housed there.

I wrote straight back to Mr Talbot and said: "Thank you very much for being a fan of my column. I would have said that makes two of you - you and my mother. But sadly Ma passed on last year." But it's not all rounds of applause at the Echo and Mr Talbot's letter continued with a big "But". He said: "But you exaggerate, Peter, when you go on about Britain being a totalitarian regime."

Well, Mr Talbot, did you see the papers over last weekend and the latest developments in the Sovietisation of the English language? The Lord Chancellor, no less, has decreed that some words and phrases be removed from official documents because they are "offensive to certain minorities".

Such as? "Homosexual" for instance.

Now what's offensive about that? It just means someone who prefers the same sex. What would the offended minority homos like to be called instead: faggots, puffs, queers, shirtlifters or - in that expression which borders on lyrical poetry - "gentlemen who bat for the other side"?

Lord Falconer has banned "immigrant" too. But it's a merely descriptive word without any judgemental connotations and it simply means someone who has come into this country to stay. And "asylum seeker" has gone. But isn't an asylum seeker just someone who is seeking refuge here?

No moral overtones there. All this might, I suppose, be dismissed as just another piece of tomfoolery like "Baa Baa Rainbow Sheep" and the alleged banning of black binliners. But there is worse from the most senior law officer in Britain. He has banned the phrase "man and wife".

This is the latest attack on the traditional family. Does it herald a new Act of Parliament to ban marriage?

If a man marries a woman, how else are we supposed to refer accurately to the pair? "Person and partner" is not exact. We are rapidly approaching that epitome of totalitarian control which even Stalin in all his hideousness never achieved. We are in the perfectly Orwellian condition in which free speech is universal - only nobody is allowed to say anything. Shall I take your nice letter out of the glass case now, Mr Talbot?

Talking of weasel words, the Archbishop of Canterbury, aka the Regius Professor of Obfuscation, was being interviewed on the wireless the other day. I can't remember the question - anyhow the answer would have been the same whatever had been asked.

But the interviewer began: "In our increasingly secular, pluralistic and fragmented society. . ." And the Archbishop just accepted this description of how things are. Why should our leading Christian accept the secular agenda without demur? What a missed opportunity. Dr Williams might instead have begun his answer: "Secular, pluralistic, fragmented? In my parish we're religious, committed and united. . ."

Roll up, roll up and see the Church of England roll over in public once again. Damn the humbug and let me have about me men that are fat. That's if I (and William Shakespeare) can still say "fat" Lord Falconer?