I TURNED on the wireless in the car the other day to find Ed "Stewpot" Stewart broadcasting the soundtrack of my youth. As part of Radio 2's 40th anniversary celebrations, we had I'm A Pink Toothbrush, Nellie The Elephant, Puff the Magic Dragon and Terry Scott's seminal My Brother.

It was marvellous; real radio for real people. Not a hoodie or a visible thong within miles. The only tattoos were those that would wash off in the bath and the only time you put white stuff up your nose was when a sherbert dab went wrong.

And that was the BBC at its best. News and entertainment, structured across four radio stations and two television channels, and managing to cater for every age group and every special interest group.

Chuck in some local radio and television, serviceable but not particularly good, and we were happy. The licence fee was worth paying.

These days the corporation is an out-of-control monster.

Expensive satellite channels that no one watches; a multiplicity of websites with a readership of one; a magazine publishing division that abuses its access to free publicity and resources at the expense of those companies exposed to harsh commercial realities; digital radio stations listened to by a teenager in his bedroom in Derby; the madness of BBC Worldwide, an arm of the corporation that should be selling The Office to Saudi Arabia and Teletubby dolls to the Yanks, but instead has just bought the Lonely Planet book company for an undisclosed sum the lunacy goes on.

Then there's the obscene profligacy, all funded by our licence fees.

The small matter of £18 million over three years for Jonathan Ross, the 400 staff at the Athens Olympics to cover the exploits of 259 athletes, the £11.8 million spent by BBC staff on taxis in 2005 I'll say that again the £11.8 million spent by BBC staff on taxis in 2005.

Still, the gravy train has now hit the buffers. Three thousand staff (out of 23,000) face the axe. There's a £2 billion black hole between what director general Mark Thompson says the Beeb needs and what the licence fee will provide.

So what will he do? Bin the stupid sideshows and crack on with the main job? No chance. The brunt of the cuts will fall on news and factual programmes. It's an utter disgrace. And with our money as well.

  • TRY AS you might, it's difficult to escape the inevitable conclusion that People Are Stoopid.

Take the radio listeners who rushed to text in their entries at 25p a pop when a local commercial radio station in Birmingham announced in May that it was offering 100 tickets "to go to Athens and watch the Champions League Final". What are the chances of that then? The hottest ticket on the planet and yet a radio station in the Midlands reckons that it has 100 tickets to give away? Plus travel, drinks and food? It's enough to make a cat laugh.

Even when you factor in the Bullring Quotient (a calculation that people who wear plastic "leather" blouson jackets and grey, Velcro-fastening shoes are likely to have a low IQ) it beggars belief. Not even the cash-happy BBC would have the money to offer that kind of prize.

True to form, the "Athens" in question turned out to be an area of Birmingham and the food and drink was served up in a Greek restaurant and the match was watched in front of a big TV screen. There's one born every day

  • I'M A bit puzzled by this Alistair Darling fella and his much-vaunted green tax on planes, rather than on passengers. How does that work then?

At the moment we each pay £10 a time inside the EU and £40 for long haul. An average plane carries around 150 passengers, so raises taxes of about £1,500 per hop to France. So let's assume that the new tax for the same flight is going to be £2,000 (well it's only going to increase, isn't it?) Do you really think that the swivel-eyed loon in charge of Ryanair is going to absorb the cost into his profits?

Of course not. The cost will be passed straight on to the poor bloody passenger, who'll now have to cough up £13.30 instead of a tenner. The airlines will blithely carry on running as many flights as before while forcing us to pay the penalty. And the people in charge of doing the nation's difficult sums are supposed to be clever? I'd rather trust my bookie to balance the country's books.

  • A READER writes to take issue with my argument that there was no need for the Health and Safety Nazis to ban people from knitting in a hospital waiting room in case anyone got injured by a flying needle, saying that he had a pal who lost his eye due to an accident with a knitting needle.

I think you'll find that's natural selection - Darwinism in action - rather than anything for the rest of us to worry about. He confesses he doesn't know anyone who's had their arm broken by a swan. That's interesting. Neither do I.

In fact, is there a single recorded incidence anywhere in the world of a swan breaking a man's arm with its wing? No. Yet we were all warned by our mothers of the terrible fate that would befall us if we even meddled with a swan. It makes you wonder what other porkies we were force fed as kids.

I'd go out and pull a face until the wind changes, but it's still not worth the risk that you'd end up looking like Ann Widdecombe for the rest of your life.