Government figures released last week reveal that fewer young people aged 16-24 are using cannabis. I don’t know if this includes the current dynamic duo of self-destruction Pete Doherty and Amy Winehouse, but there are signs that even they are having a change of heart and maybe habit. After a busy week in the courts, Doherty suggested that he is going to clean up his act. Winehouse also spoke last week about her “shame” over taking so many drugs.

I have a little shame of my own I’d like to get off my chest. Back in the late 1960s I was a teenage druggy and so was everyone I knew. The great and the groovy of the baby boomer generation believed that drug taking wasn’t just fun, but also a tool of personal liberation that would make us freer and happier as individuals and as a society. Turn on, tune in, drop out, said the man.

To justify our excessive dope taking we used to quote William Blake’s dictum that the road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom. We soon found out that it leads to hairy men passing out on your living-room floor and throwing up on your cat. Even back then lives were being destroyed and brains scrambled, but we stayed silent.

Anyone who questioned the benefits of drugs or suggested there might be harmful side effects was a terrible square or a total fascist.

Along with the decline in cannabis use comes the news that more young people are taking cocaine and heroin. Unrepentant boomers would say: you can’t blame that one on us – we always looked down on those drugs.

That was true among serious pot smokers, but even heroin had a cool cachet because of its association with brilliant jazz musicians such as Charlie Parker and writers like William Burroughs. By the end of the 1960s, boomers put away their Beatles albums and got into the Velvet Underground.

As for the growing use of cocaine, it was the counterculture’s favourite film – Easy Rider in 1969 – that first made it a fashionable drug. Yes, I know that in Britain in the 1920s it was considered terribly chic to take a whiff among the decadent circles of the Bright Young Things. But back then cocaine usage did not seep out into the rest of society.

That was the legacy of the 1960s generation. It was the Beatles who sang how they would “love to turn you on”. It was the mission statement of a whole generation – and in a sense this is what they did. We sold the idea that drugs were good and glamorous to the rest of the world.

Now when we look around at the impact that drugs have had on contemporary Britain – the terrible rise of gun culture, the increase in addiction, crime and mental health problems – who can’t feel a little shame for their celebration of drugs back in the stoned age of the 1960s?

Cate’s won our hearts, Halle

The big question this week is who do you love most: Cate Blanchett or Halle Berry? The London Film Festival had Berry walking down its red carpet. She was in town to promote her new movie, Things We Lost in the Fire, and judging from her revealing dress she was promoting her breasts as well. Call me old-fashioned but there’s something about a pregnant woman showing off her cleavage which is suspect. Mammaries on display and impending motherhood don’t mix.

Cate Blanchett was here to promote her new film Elizabeth: The Golden Age and was wearing much more modest attire, but she was far more glamorous. Every woman I know automatically assumes that men are dumb beasts who would prefer making whoopee with Berry than talking movies with Blanchett. Not true. Berry has the big breasts, yes, but Blanchett has the real beauty and talent. In an age of mass celebrity and movie hype, she is a throwback to the golden days of Hollywood when we had stars who could also act.

We in Britain don’t have our equivalent of Blanchett – here you have to wait until you are in your sixties like Helen Mirren or in your seventies like Judi Dench to become a national treasure. Still, Cate belongs to us all.

George, put your manhood on the line

October is the month when little pink ribbons start to pop up all over Britain. Yes, it’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month. People will be organising charity events and a whole troop of women will be appearing in the media to discuss their brave battles with breast cancer. By the end of this month alone £8m will be raised for breast cancer charities.

That’s all fine and good, but what about us chaps? To my knowledge we don’t have months devoted to our diseased bits. Why don’t we have a Prostate Month or Colon Nightmare Week?

And why is that when it comes to cancer and women’s breasts they get glamorous figures such as Liz Hurley and Nicole Kidman campaigning on their behalf and who do we men get? Bob Monkhouse.

I loved Bob and admire his family’s decision to lend his name to the cause of prostate cancer awareness. But how come men like George Clooney and Brad Pitt aren’t prepared to put their celebrity testicles and prostates on the line for a good cause?

The television historian David Starkey collected his CBE from the Queen last week and said, “I feel faintly smug.” Only faintly smug? It would have been nice if Starkey – famous for his blunt speaking – had just come out and said, “I feel very smug, thank you.”

This is a man who could smug for Britain; a man who once boasted of being the highest paid presenter on television.

Why is it that old, right-wing, homosexual historians – A L Rowse also springs to mind – are always famous for being rude, smug and superior? Aren’t there any nice, old, right-wing, gay historians out there in need of a television programme? Or even better – what about a funny, charming, gay historian from the left. Do they exist?

I hear that Ewan McGregor is upset with the restrictions of Britain’s “ludicrous nanny state” and is thinking of leaving the country. Last week we had John Mortimer – playwright, raconteur and champion of civil liberties and the works of John Mortimer – attacking the nanny state and its army of killjoy experts for telling us what we should drink, smoke, etc.

These days everyone hates the nanny state. But there’s something dubious about people in the arts, and especially semidetached socialists such as Mortimer, complaining about the nanny state. What really angers these self-professed lovers of liberty is that their freedom to get drunk and blow smoke in others people’s faces has been curtailed. The nanny state they rage against is really a byproduct of their much-loved welfare state and the belief that government is responsible for the wellbeing of its citizens. If you really hate the nanny state then fine, shut up and let the free market take care of your health needs.

But what could be a more perfect example of the nanny state than the creation of the Arts Council in 1946 and the public funding of the arts. It was founded on the nannyish belief that the arts were good for people and they should drink up their culture like good little children. Would nanny-bashers like McGregor and Mortimer want to end funding of the arts?

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