They - the “they” who do everything - are going to rebrand Big Ben*. The House of Commons - worried that public associations with Big Ben are nostalgic, rather than contemporary - has engaged Colman Getty, the PR firm that represents Nigella Lawson and J.K.Rowling. They now plan a countrywide celebration of the clock in May, aiming to reinforce it as an “international symbol of a modern Britain”. Of course, one's initial reaction to this is to harrumph and tsk. Modernise the image of Big Ben? Is it really necessary? Colman Getty is presuming that everyone's vision of Big Ben is of Sherlock Holmes standing beneath it, trying to hail a red Routemaster bus driven by Winston Churchill.

I cannot say, however, those are my associations with Big Ben. Mine are 1) Big Ben's clockface turning into Sir Trevor McDonald's on the News at Ten, every weeknight from 1992 to 1999, and, 2) HP Sauce - a condiment whose labelling is so Big Ben-centred, one would presume that the ingredients list goes: “Malt vinegar, tomatoes, molasses, BONG.”

That's my Big Ben. How, exactly, can they make its associations more current than that? A Trinidadian knighted for services to British broadcasting, and the fried-egg sandwich spritzer of choice for the working classes. That's pretty much everything that's great about Britain, right there. It's hard to see how much more modern you could get. Put Big Ben on a skateboard? Make it go out with one of the Saturdays? Get it a cameo on Horne & Corden, pretending to be gay? Why does it need to be modern, anyway?

As it is, whenever you go down to Westminster and look at it - properly look at it, like a child would, with your head cranked right back, and your mouth open, and your hands balled into fists, because you're worried about falling over backwards - it appears datelessly odd: a Gothic skyscraper in white, silver and gold, looming over the river, shouting “BONG” every hour. Perhaps we shouldn't be looking at making it more modern - we should be making it less. We should pretend it rose up out of the earth 4,000 years ago, powered by tiny clockwork rats; and that one day its child, Little Ben, will emerge from the Thames, and it'll all kick off.

But the thing about being British is that we all - and I am given to believe that part of the work of the Large Hadron Collider is to prove this - have the cast of the classic Waddington's board-game, Cluedo, inside us. More often than not, our first reaction to news is governed by our internal Colonel Mustards. When our Mustard hears that some iPhone-using PR-boy is about to muck about with Big Ben, he's the first one out of his armchair, shouting: “Leave my bloody iconic Second World War-winning clocktower alone, you sewer!” But then, if we wait a while longer, our inner Miss Scarlett will step forward, and say, with a drag on her foreign cigarette: “But darlings, why not? Why not let the chatty young people muck about with the big sexy clock?” And she has a point. At worst - the very worst - “they” will cover the whole clocktower with a Burberry check and put a big tap at the base that vends WKD on Joe Pasquale's birthday, and we can all have a thrillingly unanimous moan about it.

But at best - who knows what they'll do with it? They could have it so that, for a day, the “bongs” are replaced by Britain's most worthy voices - Stephen Fry, Paul McCartney, Stephen Hawking, Joanna Lumley, Alan Bennett, Amy Winehouse - shouting “BONG!” over massive PAs. You could have steam erratically hissing from its base, like a rocket about to take off. A billion paper butterflies, exploding from its apex at midday. Honeysuckle, jasmine and wisteria planted on every sill. A scale replica of the clocktower, made of mirror, floated down the Thames on a barge, and parked opposite Big Ben, staring at it, like they were going to kiss.

I know why our internal Colonel Mustard is wary when the word “rebranding” is used. Often, he is right. Who, now, wishes that they had not gone to the wire over the Vietnam that was Opal Fruits? But sometimes “rebranding” is just the word that people who've had to take too many meetings against their will use, when what they really mean is “mucking about with.” “Playing.” “Having some fun with the big things.” And if we can't have some fun with the big things, that makes us look, I think, rather little.

People's differing interpretations of monuments was a bit of a theme this week, when we took the kids to Green Park, for a gallop around and a boggle at the daffodils. Just across the road from Buckingham Palace, there's a piece of modern sculpture - two large, smooth wedges of granite, lying in the middle of a lawn. As soon as the girls saw it they streaked across the grass, joining around 15 other children who were climbing up, then sliding down, and calling out in various languages. The parents - tourists and locals - sat around, keeping one eye on their children, drinking tea, chatting, and generally chillaxing, as Richard Madeley is wont to say.

That was until a very angry looking man - about 50, with a red face, and a mortified looking wife some 20ft away - stormed over. “This is a war memorial!” he shouted. “Have some respect!” He didn't stop to see anyone's reactions - just stormed off again, appearing to make the “wanker” sign; presumably so that all the parents from Belgium, or Japan, got the gist of what he was saying, too.

Of course, once he mentioned it, I noticed the small plaque in the grass: “Canada Memorial - From danger shared, our friendship strengthened. 1939-1945.” And I could kind of see where he was coming from: there is very little more important than remembering that nearly everything wonderful in our 21st century, came at the cost of nearly everything awful in the 20th.

But then again, if I were going to war for anything, it would probably be for what we were all looking at: a city where a bundle of children, of every conceivable ethnicity, were putting all their coats together in a big pile, leaping on to it, then grabbing hands as they slid down in the gentle cherryblossom sunshine.

*Yes I know “It's actually the name of the bell” blah blah blah, but, come on. You're making the QI klaxon go off.

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