The people of Portsmouth are unhappy because Boris Johnson has slagged them off. He said that Portsmouth was a place “too full of drugs, obesity, underachievement and Labour MPs”.

Before that, he made the people of Liverpool a shade unhappier even than the people of Portsmouth by suggesting Liverpudlians were the sort to “wallow in victim status”. Both cities immediately sank into a state of indignation. Right now the MP for Portsmouth South is saying that Mr Johnson should walk barefoot to the city to apologise. Which, apart from being a stupid idea which will never happen, won’t get its inhabitants anywhere.

What the people of Portsmouth should be saying is: “Thank God that blond-fringed fatty singled us out for undeserved and arbitrary humilation in his GQ motoring column this month.”

Likewise, if you are fat and were offended by the word “fatty”, don’t work yourself into a lather. Don’t waste this sunny Bank Holiday weekend firing off letters of complaint to the Editor — it won’t bring you happiness. Instead, try the latest in personal development theory. Be grateful. As in genuinely pleased. Try thinking: “Thank God there are columnists out there ignorant and insensitive enough to offend me over my breakfast of five sausages, three fried eggs, a rack full of toast and the Cadbury’s Cream Egg I thought I’d eat a day early, by using a descriptively accurate but, in these days of political correctness, downright offensive word.” You’ll get over it much more quickly.

I’m not sure if the “Thank God I . . .” movement will ever properly take off in Britain but I’ll go ahead and explain it anyway. Let’s see if it works.

The TGI movement began, like almost everything in publishing these days, with the quest for happiness. Money and choice weren’t cheering anybody up, John Castagnini, one of the founders of www.thankgodi.com had noticed. Instead he decided to embrace “the healing power of gratitude”, along with his co-founder, Amanda Kroetsch, who had penned a pamphlet called Thank God My Mother was an Alcoholic. Her mother is presumably right now writing a counter-pamphlet entitled: I’m So Very Pleased that My Daughter has Exposed my Grimy Secret.

Anyway, the TGI brigade has caused more than a ripple on the internet. To be clear: although God’s name comes up, this is not about religion. If you believe that Richard Dawkins founded the Universe, insert his name instead. Nor is it about the people who decide they are “survivors” — not “victims” — of some unspeakable childhood experience. This is about the people who have decided to be profoundly, publicly and sometimes creepily thankful for everything that’s gone wrong.

“Thank God I have a dysfunctional family,” writes a woman called Betty Smith. She describes how she married a man “and set out to create a family. We created a version of what we grew up in. Thank God I became so unhappy.” There are people thanking their lucky stars for migraine headaches, or grateful for the husband who chucked them for the babysitter. “Thank God I am a network marketer,” writes one young man — who knew working in marketing could be so grim?

In her book, Thank God I had Breast Cancer Olivia Parr-Rud explains that her illness “forced me to decide if I wanted to accept and love my body enough to survive”. Bridget Copley counts her lucky stars that she is a single mother. “At first glance one might think that I am grateful to be a single parent because I hate my exhusband and I wanted to get away from him,” she writes. “That is what I thought a few years ago.”

Before you turn the page in search of something altogether more Saturdayish in the paper — how Gordon Brown has ruined your retirement, perhaps — remember that Britain is doing rather badly in the international happiness stakes. We’re at No 41, better than France at least but not many other places. That sinking feeling you had this morning? You’re not latching on to the healing power of gratefulness. Try looking yourself in the mirror and saying: “Thank God that Britain is such a miserable place to live.” Feel good yet? A little tingling? Did I mention the word “fat” earlier on? I think I did. It’s a word off-limits to a friend who teaches at a primary school in London. Lately she has been instructed by the local education authority not to use “negative words or body language” as it is thought to be bad for the self-esteem of the pupils.

So turning her back on the kids is considered psychologically damaging. But my friend must also be vigilant with her vocabulary. Included on the banned list of words are the words “no” and “stop”, which I would have thought are essential when dealing with any brats. But no fear, the LEA has come up with its own moronic alternative to the word “stop”. If I close my eyes I can just about hear Tessa Jowell trying it out at her next press conference. It is “beep”. In the Netherlands they’ve got a good tradition called Philosophy Week. I’m sure we’ve got one too but nobody seems to celebrate it. Anyway, a man in the Netherlands spent this week in a tub, as a tribute to Diogenes who sat naked in a tub from where he preached that humans should live according to their instincts rather than artificial, social values. People could be happy, he thought, if only they behaved more like dogs.

I think Diogenes still has a lot to say to us about the pursuit of happiness, although today we would have banged him up for nudism or for creating a fire hazard — he once wandered around Athens in daylight with a torch in his hand, “looking for an honest man”.

I go to the park and see dogs skipping about. They eat, they tussle, sometimes they have puppies but they don’t agonise about twig allergies. I should have remained dog-like this Bank Holiday. But instead I decided to leave my apartment for a quite unnecessary trip abroad by plane. I’m flying from Luton. I know, I know: “Thank God I’m flying from a dump like Luton.”

But Luton does have one big thing to be said in its favour, which is that it’s about the only place left in Britain about which you can say whatever you like. Nobody gets offended, even when Luton was voted the worst place to live in the country. As a member of the groundstaff told me the last time I was there: “It’s a shithole but it’s me.”

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