In Goody company

On the other side of the table sits The Devil, Beelzebub, Satan - call him what you will. He is wearing horns and a spiky tail. He burps loudly and a wave of sulphurous gas blows across the table.

"Sorry," he says. "One too many scotch eggs last night. Now what can I do for you?"

Mr Endemol's head drops into his hands. "It's this new series of Celebrity Big Brother," he moans. "We've made a right mess of it by putting Jade Goody and her family in there.

"Half the celebs have walked out, it's boring people stiff and viewing figures have dropped through the floor. We need help."

"Hmmm," says Beelzebub, stroking his beard. "And what do you have to offer me for my assistance in this delicate matter?"

Mr Endemol sighs. "We can offer you the soul of Paul O'Grady - he's on his last legs anyway - and the services of Russell Brand as your emissary on this Earth. Oh, and we can let you have series six of The Sopranos on DVD before anyone else has seen it."

"Fine," says Beelzebub. "Leave it with me. I'll see if I can liven things up a bit ."

I have no idea what the state of play in the Big Brother House will be by now.

At the time of writing they're all still in there bickering about a stock cube, but I expect that Jade will have been voted out by now, soon to be followed by her co-conspirators and her idiot boyfriend. And surely ridicule and vilification awaits.

There's a delicious irony in the fact that this appalling woman was catapulted from the gutter to the glitter by Big Brother 3, only to be revealed as a foghorn-gobbed ratbag by a later series of the programme. I hope she's banked some of the alleged millions she's supposed to have made.

So are we really surprised that the flower of English womanhood, as portrayed on the programme by Jade, Jo and Danielle, brought up on a diet of instant celebrity and casual sex, turns out to be shallow, stupid, ignorant and inherently racist?

These are escapees from the Underclass we ourselves have created - or at least allowed to evolve. Why should we expect any more from them?

Meanwhile, in the real world, four Royal Marines strap themselves to helicopter gunships and demand to be flown back into a firefight to try to rescue a fallen comrade who had been left behind after a battle. The fact that it was only his body that they recovered doesn't diminish their heroic efforts. We sometimes need to remind ourselves that these chaps are the realrepresentatives of our nation, not the cackling coven of playground bullies currently shaming us around the world.

IT'S HOWL at the moon time folks, as an illegal immigrant drink-driver who killed a 12-year-old boy turns out to be living rent-free in a council flat in Leeds.

Best take a deep breath. Zambian Aaron Chisango, 29, was one-and-a-half times over the limit when he knocked down and killed Jamie Mason in Wolverhampton. Needless to say, he had no driving licence or insurance.

The CPS decided that there wasn't sufficient evidence to charge him with causing death by dangerous driving, so he served just two months in the nick on lesser charges.

On release, he was sent to a detention centre (a small mercy, I suppose) where he continued to fight a deportation order originally served in 1999.

For some reason, a judge then ordered that he should be released on bail.

Thanks to your benevolence, and the huge amount of tax you pay, Mr Chisango now lives happily off a combination of state benefits and legal aid while lying in bed until the afternoon when he presumably gets up to watch Celebrity Big Brother.

With typically mealy-mouthed paper-shuffling, a Home Office spokeweasel said: "We are determined to seek to remove all those who have no legal basis to remain in the UK." Fair enough. What he doesn't say is that the Government currently has a policy of NOT deporting people to Zimbabwe, in case they're roughed up at the other end.

It's all utterly pointless. And certainly enough to make a cat laugh.