I am not the obvious stand-in for Chris Barrie, of Red Dwarf, but when an urgent family problem forced the actor, impersonator and comedian to withdraw at the last minute from an after-dinner speech to the Sunderland Echo annual business awards at the Stadium of Light last Thursday, I flew in. I was the after-dinner equivalent of an emergency call-out plumber.

They were nice people; there’s always a good spirit at North Eastern dos. Compering for the evening was a man with a deliciously caustic wit, Ray Spencer, and it fell to him to introduce me as guest speaker.

“And I read here,” said Ray, consulting his notes, “that Mr Parris has written 12 books. Twelve, ladies and gentlemen.”

“Ooh!” exclaimed the 300-strong audience.

“So now be honest. Hands up any of you who have read one of Mr Parris’s books – any of them.” Not a single hand went up.

“Well, Mr Parris,” continued Ray, “I think the message from Sunderland is clear. You’re racing ahead of us. Slow down your book-writing until we’ve had time to catch up.”

— I myself have not yet caught up with all 247 pages of the IMF’s latest twice-yearly report on the world economic outlook. Much would be beyond me, anyway. Fortunately the gist was usefully summarised by headlines like “Property prices in Britain to crash”, and on Monday Anatole Kaletsky (“Black clouds loom on horizon”) thought serious price falls could be on their way. According to the IMF, he said, 40 per cent of the recent price rises in British property cannot be explained by “relative movements in incomes, population or interest rates” – which should be the building blocks of demand.

Well, I can explain that unexplained 40 per cent. It’s all puff. I keep repeating (but because I am not an economist nobody takes any notice) that, for us British, real estate has become the ultimate reserve currency, like gold. Talking about new home-seekers or extra housebuilding misses the point. Gold is not held for its use, and housebuyers are not just seeking accommodation, but an investment. A loss of public confidence in traditional pensions is part of the cause. We trade up in the housing market (or buy second homes or homes to let) as a kind of speculation. We do so more than we used to.

Economic boffins are well aware this sometimes happens, of course, but I believe they now overlook the likely scale. They prefer to deal in numbers and are uncomfortable with discussions about things as imponderable as human motives, especially in the nonbusiness world.

But I am sure that among ordinary people there has been a motivational shift over the past decade. It follows that if property begins to appear a sluggish investment, it will lurch back and there will be an accelerating exit into other forms of saving. The number of property owners in Britain now in the position to trade down or divest themselves of real estate without much trouble is so significant that – mark my words – a plateau will bring a tumble. Our economy cannot float for ever on bidding up the price of each other’s houses.

— In a written answer last week, the junior minister Kevin Brennan told the Shadow Commons Leader Theresa May that the Government has now held five of Gordon Brown’s vaunted “citizens’ juries”. And get this: the first in Bristol cost £57,047. The total cost of the four others, in London, Leeds, Portsmouth and Birmingham, was £467,704.

That’s £100k a shot. Had you, incidentally, realised that jury members are paid? This has nothing to do with democracy: these are just glorified focus groups, funded by the taxpayer, dreamt up so that at a party conference Mr Brown could strut around, puffing himself up with something masquerading as an idea.

It’s total bollocks, isn’t it? Where and how are juries’ findings to be published? Who decides which questions they are to consider? Who frames the briefing they are given for their deliberations? How are their verdicts to be translated into action? We, who are paying for these things, deserve an answer.

— A businessman who donated £8 million to the Tories was deluded, paranoid and insane, a court decided last week. The party was ordered to return to his children the money he bequeathed on his death.

Worrying news. Since when was insanity a bar to political patronage? Politics has always had a special appeal to lunatics. How will our political parties keep going if they are to be barred from accepting help from the paranoid, the deluded and the insane? UKIP would be out of business tomorrow.

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