Fifty years ago Britain was a gloomy and miserable place. You had Reg and Ron chopping your head off every five minutes, your kids had diphtheria and you couldn’t buy a banana for love nor money. But in a contemporary poll 52% of the nation said they were “very happy”.

Today we’re much cleaner and we’re much, much richer but in a new survey only 36% of those questioned said they were “very happy”. Worse. Just under half said that despite their BMW and their wife’s magnificent new breasts, they were actually thinking of eating rat poison.

And now comes news from America that Bill Gates is fed up with being the richest man in the world because “there’s nothing good that comes out of that”.

You may find this surprising. I mean, the Bill Gates foundation is the world’s biggest philanthropic organisation with an endowment of $29.1 billion. So the man can go to sleep at night knowing his money is bringing health and hope to those less fortunate than himself. Which is everyone.

And it’s not like his generosity has necessitated much in the way of cutbacks at home. He lives in a 66,000 sq ft, $113m house that is dug into a hill. Inside, the shower curtain is a 4,500lb slab of granite, the swimming pool is 60ft long and there are 52 miles of cabling, some of which is used to monitor the wellbeing of a maple tree in the driveway.

What’s more, when he threw a private party the guest list was so important the American government’s department of homeland security imposed an exclusion zone, even going so far as to ban cars from the nearby interstate.

So, you’re thinking, what’s his problem? His guests are happy. His trees are happy. And since his staff have their own trampoline room, you can be assured they’re happy too. Yet, the man at the centre of all this says he’s not.

I’m not surprised at all. First of all, he has to get up in the morning and think: “Oh no. I’ve still got this face.” And deep down, he’s still a computer geek, which means he has the personality of a speaking clock.

I think I met him once but for the life of me I can’t remember where, or why, or what we may or may not have said to one another. And don’t you think that’s weird. I can remember precisely what I was doing when I met Roy Wood, out of Wizzard, and I can remember, verbatim, what we said.

I can also remember the one time I met Greg Rusedski and what I said to him. “Why did you just serve that ball at 150mph into my testicles?” And yet I have no recollection of my meeting with the world’s richest man.

This is a problem I’ve found, actually, with all of the very rich people I’ve encountered over the years. It’s almost as though they can’t be bothered to be interesting or memorable because what’s the point?

I’m not joking. I had lunch with a rich man the other day who, midway through his main course, got up and without a word, went to bed. And the longest sentence ever constructed by Flavio Briatore is “unh”.

Most of us try to light up a room for two reasons: because it might result in some sex, or it might make us richer. Money and rumpy-pumpy are the twin engines powering everything we do.

But if you’ve got more than a billion in the bank, chances are you can bounce around on top of whatever Russian model takes your fancy from now until the end of time. You don’t need to be funny, or passionate. You just need to yawn, give her something golden, and hey presto, you’ll be playing wheelbarrows till dawn.

And there’s definitely no point talking, or listening, to other men because you’re already much richer than they are and all they want is some of your dosh. And you can’t be bothered with any of that because a 16ft Georgian has just walked into the room and you’re thinking of giving her a Fabergé egg . . .

It gets worse. There are two ways of getting rich. Either you make the money yourself, or you inherit it. Neither will make you happy.

If you make it yourself you will be far too busy trying to make more to have any fun in your life. And if you inherited it, you will be in a lavatory, in Kenya, off your head on heroin.

So what about a social life? Well, the recent survey found that six out of 10 people in Britain spoke to five friends or fewer each week. But that one in 25 spoke to no one at all. And I’m betting that all of this last lot were rich.

The fact of the matter is this. It’s very hard to be friends with someone from a different income bracket. They want to go on holiday to Scarborough. You want to go to space. They watch Jamie Oliver on television. You had him round to cook for a private dinner party. And you paid him so much he agreed to serve the food himself. While wearing a gimp suit.

See what I mean. Well, now put yourself in Bill Gates’s shoes. He’s the richest man in the world. That means he can’t be friends with anyone.

The rest of you should just cheer up.

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