Sometimes I really don’t know why I bother. Slog my guts out week after week hunched like a drunken goblin over the keyboard and, when it comes to official recognition for this selflessness, what do I get? Nothing, nil, nada.

Late last week the gay rights organisation Stonewall released the shortlist for its prestigious and sought-after bigot of the year award: believe me, I’ve worked like a black to win the trophy — but my name’s missing again. It must be a fix.

The award is largely restricted to people who have said nasty things about poofs in the past 12 months and I’m absolutely certain I’ve written reams of stuff about how we need to set fire to Alan Carr and section anyone who voluntarily watches Mamma Mia! — but to no avail. All caviar to the limp-wristed general, as Shakespeare might have put it if he’d been a — what’s the word? — homophobe.

Actually, looking at the shortlist makes you worry about Britain; hell, the one thing we used to be good at, the one thing you could depend upon with the British, was some good straightforward call-a-spade-a-darkie bigotry. It’s what we fought a war for etc. And yet there’s nobody on this shortlist I would call a proper bigot, nobody who truly punches their weight.

Hot favourite for the title, for example, is the Bishop of Winchester. He is nominated for having spoken in a House of Lords debate about freedom of speech, during which he said that people “should be allowed to question the current political orthodoxy” that sexual orientation is a fixed characteristic, like race.

He didn’t actually say he would agree with people if they said that, just that they ought to be allowed to say it without being arrested. Come to think of it, that really is what we fought a war for — and the polar opposite of bigotry.

“We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavouring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still,” as JS Mill put it. Perhaps he’s on the shortlist too. But the Bishop of Winchester did not do anything so outrageous as quote from the Bible (Paul, or Leviticus) about homosexuality; he simply said that people should be allowed to express a point of view which differs from what may, or may not, be the majority point of view.

But this is Stonewall’s agenda; real bigots need not apply. The debate has moved on and it is no longer about what you and I would call naked bigotry — instead it is an assault upon those who believe in freedom of speech and freedom of conscience.

For example, also on the shortlist is the community paediatrician Dr Sheila Matthews, who sat on adoption panels in Northamptonshire and politely requested that she be allowed to abstain when considering adoption requests from gay parents because it conflicted with her religious beliefs. This is the point: she didn’t sit on these panels and veto prospective gay parents, growling darkly about not letting the shirtlifters near our kiddies. She simply asked that she be allowed to abstain.

Needless to say, she was sacked — until the public (which is split 50/50 on gay adoptions — maybe there should be another 30m people on that shortlist) demanded she be reinstated in a slightly different role. But you begin to see that when the word “bigotry” is bandied around by organisations such as Stonewall, the boot is now firmly on the other foot. A boot which, incidentally, the rest of us pay for.

The bigot of the year award is a big glitzy event held in London in November and attended by scores of celebrity homos all mincing around mwah-mwahhing one another before they burn in hell for eternity.

Actually, I didn’t mean any of that, not remotely. It’s just that if the Bishop of Winchester pulls out, I’d like to be considered as a replacement on the shortlist. Come on, sign up some real bigots.

+ Should teachers be allowed to get drunk when off duty? Or should they only be allowed to get hammered when actually in charge of a classroom? It’s a tricky one.

New rules drawn up by the General Teaching Council insist that teachers should, of a weekend, “maintain reasonable standards of their own behaviour”, which, the teachers fear, precludes them from getting paralytic, consummating a brief alfresco affair with someone they met down the pub, vomiting in the doorway of Greggs and punching the minicab driver on the way home, like the rest of us tend to do on a Saturday night.

It seems terribly rough to constrain teachers when you consider that this is precisely how their pupils occupy their time once they have stopped learning about Mary Seacole and the bell has sounded.

Perhaps we should simply ask teachers, politely, if during their hours of leisure they could try hard to refrain from actually killing anyone, insofar as this is possible, and unless they have been provoked. But that this stipulation should be entirely voluntary and agreed beforehand with the various teaching unions.

Lining up a small fortune

This sketch, which I stumbled across in my attic yesterday afternoon while looking for some masking tape for the kids, should be worth a fortune. It depicts Chairman Mao narrowly losing a game of Connect Four to Michael Jackson — a game which took place, in November 1974, round at Henry Kissinger’s house. You will have seen the story about a newly discovered sketch of Hitler and Lenin playing chess — a game which really took place, according to the owner of the drawing who wants to sell it for £40,000. Mine is even better. I’ve got another one, too — an etching of Lech Walesa beating Mrs Bandaranaike of Ceylon at Scrabble. Never play Scrabble with a Pole — they have words such as przymusic and uzywac, havoc on a triple word square. Anyway, please forward your offers. Bidding starts at £100,000.

Read my lips: no genius on camera

Terry Wogan has risked incurring all sorts of fury by suggesting that newsreaders have the easiest job in the media. Quite a lot of people believe that Huw Edwards, Fiona Bruce et al do not simply read the news from an Autocue but, with great imagination, make it all up as they go along. Sometimes, watching the Six O’Clock News on the BBC, I’m tempted to think the same.

But Wogan is right — and given that the only talent needed for such a job is to read out simple words without belching or giggling too much, why, then, the anger about alleged ageism and sexism whenever a female presenter is sacked? Selina Scott is forever carping that she was booted out because she no longer looks as fit as she once did, a clear case of both ageism and sexism. Well, sure, love — but why do you think you were given the job in the first place? Because you’re a genius?

Remember swine flu and how it was going to wipe out the western world, according to the government’s chief medical officer, Sir Liam Donaldson? Well, it isn’t. Sir Liam — the reincarnation of Private Frazer from Dad’s Army: “We’re all doomed, doomed” — has now admitted that it may well kill no more than 3,000 people and has reduced his “worst-case scenario” from 65,000 deaths to 19,000 (ie much fewer than in a normal flu outbreak).

At one point Liam had his ministers whipped up into such a frenzy that they were predicting 100,000 new cases of swine flu a day (the actual figure is about 700, at worst). Is it maybe time Liam found a new job? He’d fit in quite well at the Met Office.

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