THE LATEST Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in the US reports that elephants can recognise their own reflection in a mirror. In a series of experiments, one elephant — Happy — knew to touch a white cross painted on her forehead when she saw a reflection of it in the mirror. One of the scientists, Joshua Plotnik, of the Yerkes National Primate Research Centre, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, put it this way: “We see [in elephants] highly complex behaviours such as self awareness and self-other distinction.”

I think we’re supposed to find such a discovery heartwarming and sweet. I’m afraid I found it profoundly depressing. How else, after all, is one supposed to take the news that an elephant called Happy has more highly complex behaviour than our country’s Deputy Prime Minister?

Self-awareness may, indeed, be a sign of intelligence and the mark of a high-order species. But it is uncanny how many members of one high-order species — Homo sapiens — lack even the most basic self-awareness.

True, I’ve never actually been, in the manner of the film Being John Malkovich, inside John Prescott’s brain. But I think it’s a pretty reasonable assumption that he regards himself as an homme sérieux. I don’t need to spell out how the rest of us regard him.

This has nothing to do with stupidity. Sir Menzies Campbell is clearly a bright chap and a former Olympic sprinter to boot. But as his behaviour over his party’s £2.4 million donation from the convicted criminal Michael Brown shows, when it comes to self-awareness he is left at the start. “The legal advice is we’re not obliged to repay it,” was how he put it at the weekend. So they won’t. Oh, that’s OK then. To pretty much every man, woman and child in the country, the idea of taking money from a crook to fund an election campaign surely stinks. But because it’s legally, technically all right, Sir Menzies is happy to hold on to the cash. Either Sir Menzies is an idiot — which he isn’t — or he hasn’t got a clue how he and his party come over to the rest of us.

Dame Edna Everage once began an interview with Lord Archer of Weston-super-Mare thus: “Is there no beginning to your talents?” Doubtless to this day he still thinks his rightful place is either in No 10 or at the Nobel Prize for Literature ceremony. As for David Blunkett . . .

It’s not just politicians, of course. We all know people who have no idea how they come across. In some ways it’s the human condition. Which of us actually wants to know how other people see us? A total lack of self-awareness is clearly a prerequisite for John Prescott to function. If he admitted to himself the depth of the esteem in which he is held, he’d have slunk off the stage years ago. And in that respect, those of us who use these pages to opine are similar — heaven help me — to the Deputy Prime Minister. When I get letters informing me that I am stupid and ugly, I ignore them. Clearly, the letter writers are idiots. The thought that they might be speaking for the majority, or that they might even be right, never enters my mind.

What was I saying about lacking self-awareness?

The Director-General and the Deputy Director-General of the BBC both gave interviews on Sunday on whether newsreaders could wear a veil. According to Mark Thompson: “We do not believe it would be appropriate for a newsreader to wear a veil over the face, not because we favour one religion over another but because we believe it would distract from the presentation of the news.”

And here’s what his deputy, Mark Byford, had to say: “The key is, if it does not hamper our primary obligation to deliver the news and information to our viewers and listeners then we would be respectful of that.”

Who says there's no diversity at the BBC?

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