SOME THINGS in life are impossible to dislike. Declare a loathing for sunny days, chocolate ice-cream, Sir Paul McCartney, adopted puppies or Prince William’s hair, and you’re likely to be labelled a curmudgeon, a misanthrope, and, above all, a Bad Time.

Las Vegas is near the top of this list. To be tired of Sin City is to be tired of Elvis in white spandex; tired of Hunter S. Thompson books; tired of blackjack and Ferraris — tired of the very concept of fun.

In which case, I’m in a lot of trouble. You can probably tell from my pungent breath, the red welts on my eyeballs and the lightness of my wallet that I have just returned from a few days in the Nevada desert.

As usual, the trip was for business (I was reporting on the 2006 Consumer Electronics Show), not pleasure. And, as usual, I hated almost every second of it. Perhaps it was the two-hour queue at the airport for a taxi; the 30-minute queue at the hotel for check-in; the ten-minute queue for the lift to my room on the billionth floor; or the $450 (£254) charge for a one-night stay in a concrete bunker with cardboard bed sheets.

Or maybe it was just being being trapped in an overlit conference facility with 130,000 sweating gadgetheads.

I realise this is not a popular opinion — and will not win me many friends at the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, which is largely responsible for Sin City’s thoroughly misleading image. This was the organisation, after all, that commissioned the slogan: “What happens here, stays here.” What other city on Earth would entice tourists with a boast about the lax relationship between its police department and Interpol? But no other city’s image is based on the willing suspension of tourists’ disbelief.

After last week’s visit, I have another suggestion for the city’s motto: “What happens here, ends up on your Mastercard bill.” And I don’t mean the gambling. These days your credit rating is more likely to be ruined by the $40 Caesar salads.

In reality, there is nothing remotely edgy about Las Vegas. The place is one giant leisure/retail megaplex, populated by has-been celebrities, owned by a handful of entertainment conglomerates, and patronised by men in corporate-sponsored polo shirts who feel more interesting when surrounded by waitresses in bunny suits. There is more counter-culture to be found at Alton Towers. The proof? In 2003, Las Vegas made $6.1 billion from gambling — and $6.5 billion from business conventions.

Yet Las Vegas is like Voltaire’s God: if it didn’t exist, it would be necessary to invent it. In our non-smoking, decaffeinated, low-fat society, we need to believe there is a place where you can load up a Cadillac with booze, guns and drugs, and entertain yourself with impunity. We need a place where the normal rules don’t apply — where cocktails don’t come with hangovers; and where gambling isn’t for losers who dump their kids ’ college money on black. Las Vegas is our collective fantasy; a virtual reality of Americana.

Perhaps that’s why its reinvention — from cheeseball slum to multibillion-dollar yuppie preening ground — has gone unchallenged for so long. But the Las Vegas of our imagination no longer exists. All that remains is a brand, carefully manipulated to satisfy the baby-boomers’ need for rebellion, and the Gen-Xers’ need for irony. But visiting Las Vegas won’t make you rebellious or ironic any more than smoking a Marlboro will make you a cowboy. Not unless you think a $400 spa treatment, or a $250 ticket to Sir Elton John’s The Red Piano, is somehow sticking it to The Man.

Once upon a time, when Las Vegas was genuinely seedy and dangerous, it was the King who sang about it. These days, it’s J. D. Fortune, winner of a reality television contest that made him the new frontman of INXS. His first single for the band was a generic rock’n’roll anthem entitled Pretty Vegas — and an example of crafty brand alignment if ever I saw one. “The party’s over and the road is long,” Mr Fortune croons. “The party’s over and we’re moving on.”

I couldn’t agree more.

• WHAT happens here, stays here? Not for William Pinckard, 49, and James Rousseau, 40, a pair of dodgy building contractors from Las Vegas, who are accused of defrauding victims of Hurricane Katrina with a shameless mould clean-up scam. Last I heard, they had been extradited from Nevada to Louisiana, pending a bond hearing.

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