The latest high-profile victim of swine flu in Britain is Chris Ostrowski, the defeated Labour candidate in the Norwich North by-election. Chris desperately wanted to make it to the count so that he could explain how he had come to donate almost the entire Labour vote to the other parties and lose a safe seat for the government - but sadly, that darned virus struck, kerpow, and Chris was left sweating in bed, apparently.

He sent his missus along to give the election defeat address, much as you or I might leave our wives to clear up the bathroom after we’ve had a slightly heavy night on the tiles.

I wonder what would have happened if he’d won the seat. I suspect the Churchillian spirit would have suddenly kicked in and he'd have made it, wheezing and spluttering, to the count and delivered his speech, spraying his potentially lethal phlegm over the assembled throng in the process.

Quite rightly, the British public in general is grabbing what slender consolation it can from this perky little virus. Bored with work? Feel put upon by management - who have claimed their bonuses while you’re on short-time working? Have a couple of weeks off then, and tell them it’s swine flu.

Nobody will check too much; they’ll be too petrified. After all, your line managers are the sorts of people who wear those stupid face masks on the Tube – the ones that serve no purpose other than to inform those who see you that you are an utter and complete arse – so they certainly won’t come round to verify your excuse.

It’s difficult, given the year we’ve had – the economy wrecked by the incompetent rich and bailed out by the blameless poor – to complain about this growing penchant for swinging the lead a bit. Swing on. Not least as a consequence of the confusing messages we have all been given by those in authority. Don’t go out – but do turn up for work if you can. It’s a terribly mild virus, all things considered, nothing really to worry about – but somewhere in the region of 60,000 of you are going to die of it within the next few months.

In truth, the government is caught between the prognostications of its medical advisers and common sense.

Meanwhile, the opposition complains that the NHS swine flu hotline is “too little, too late” (© Andrew Lansley, Con, South Cambridgeshire) and simply cannot cope with the calls pouring in. Nope, Andrew, that’s because there have been 2,600 hits on the website persecond, partly as a consequence of you lot whipping up the hysteria.

So, the statistics. At the time of writing, 800 people worldwide have died from swine flu (ignoring possible underlying medical conditions such as having dodgy hearts or compromised immune systems or being Mexican). That’s about 0.08% of the number of people who have died of malaria worldwide during the same period, just to add a little perspective.

In this country, however, 31 people have died, out of a supposed total of 106,000 who have been diagnosed with the virus. The medical authorities suggest that they are looking at a death rate of between 0.1% and 0.35%, which sounds terribly scientific and important.

But that’s not what has happened so far, on the quoted figures. The death rate on the quoted figures is 0.029245%, or roughly tenfold less than the median death rate we’re being warned to expect. And that calculation includes all the people who had, on the one hand, underlying medical conditions and excludes, on the other, those who have swine flu but haven’t bothered going to their doctor about it, but have just sat at home grinning with a bottle of Jack Daniels, watching cricket on Sky and wondering if Flintoff is going to be fit enough for the third Test.

We are being hyped up, on the one hand because the government and the medical authorities do not wish to be accused of treating this pandemic lightly, and on the other because the government’s critics wish that it was worse than it is.

+ Rio, the African grey parrot, has got his owner into a spot of bother by squawking Loyalist marching songs at her (presumably) Catholic neighbour. Whenever he is let loose in the garden in Whitburn, West Lothian, Rio strikes up with a rousing version of The Sash My Father Wore. First the council investigated the matter and then the landlords stepped in and eviction was a possibility until Rio’s owner, Linda Gillies, agreed to keep her vociferous bluenose parrot locked in the house.

It seems a bit rough to threaten action against Gillies, even though she is a supporter of Glasgow Rangers. Animals, especially tropical birds, are notoriously right-wing: it is more likely than not that Rio has formed his own negative opinion of the Hillsborough Agreement, the IRA and – as he would undoubtedly put it – the Whore of Rome, without human intervention.

You very rarely read of parrots singing The Fields of Athenry or Bhoys of the Old Brigade, no matter how republican their owners: they won’t do it, they refuse point blank. But as soon as they hear a tin whistle they leap from their perches like birds possessed and flap out into the garden wearing bowler hats and screeching stuff about brave men crossing the Boyne etc.

M’lud, I plead Phil Collins

An important legal precedent has been set in the trial of the Liverpool footballer Steven Gerrard. It is henceforth acceptable to smash a disc jockey in the face if they won’t play a Phil Collins record. (We do not know if this jurisdiction also applies to the work of Chris de Burgh – perhaps their lordships could clear this up.) Gerrard was acquitted despite being filmed lamping the DJ, without visible physical provocation. Meanwhile, the chanteuse Amy Winehouse was cleared of having punched someone in the face at a charity function, possibly on the grounds that the victim refused to hum a Phil Collins song to her. So, all together, before the celeb punches fly in: “I can feel it coming in the air tonnniiight, Oh Lord . . .”

A fly on one end, a fool on the other

Swimming in the lovely River Wylye with my two sons was a pleasure always enlivened by the presence of pompous anglers on the bank. “Go away, you’re disturbing the fish!” one senile old twit bellowed from his fold-away chair. “Well what do you think you're doing?” was the only possible response. These clowns pay a ransom to harass the docile and stupid trout put in the rivers for their benefit – lesser mortals are barred from the banks.

So three cheers for Griff Rhys Jones, who has suggested that canoeists should disturb as many anglers as possible; rivers should be open to all of us instead of being the preserve of these rod-toting weirdos with their boxes of writhing maggots and foxed copies of Isaac Walton. We should make anglers go through extensive CRB checks; you just know, somehow, they’re wrong ’uns.

Congratulations to the Gallery of Modern Art in Glasgow for its exciting, publicly funded installation which encourages people to scrawl obscenities on the pages of the Bible. This particular work of brilliance is called Untitled 2009 and is designed to celebrate “sexual, gender and theological diversity” - incredibly daring, isn’t it? You may think you’ve been told to celebrate diversity so often that you’ve begun to bleed from the ears, but at Glasgow, they won’t give up.

To embrace theological diversity fully I suggest the curators let people scrawl obscenities on other religious texts - such as the Koran. Meanwhile, I intend to celebrate diversity by spray-painting obscenities on the walls of Glasgow’s Gallery of Modern Art.

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