Aren’t Elton John’s coarse little hissy fits vile? The latest involved him alleging that Madonna lip-synched her way through her latest tour.

“Madonna, best f****** live act? F*** off!” he volunteered at last week’s Q awards. “Since when has lip-synching been live? Anyone who lip-synchs in public on stage when you pay £75 to see them should be shot. That’s me off her f****** Christmas card list, but do I give a toss? No.” And off he stomped, with all the wobbling indignance he could muster. Ooh, rock’n’roll.

Elton John is, like a particularly unattractive toddler, a relentless attention seeker. Whether Madonna did or didn’t lip-synch is neither here nor there (“Madonna doesn’t lip-synch, nor does she spend her time trashing other artists,” her publicist said).

The point is that Elton John is a gruesome human being and it’s time we stopped treating him as though he were a sweet little gay teddy with tiny legs and funny ginger hair.

Far from being a benign “Queen Mum”, he embodies everything that is mean minded, vicious and woman hating about a particular type of old-fashioned queenery. I wish he’d shut up and go and be ghastly somewhere else.

I know he is wonderfully generous and gives lavishly to charities and to people with Aids. And this, obviously, is great. But it doesn’t make him a lovely human being — or even a nice one.

He is an old-school poof: misogynistic, bitchy, camp in a weirdly charmless, angry, sour way that might have made sense in 1932 but is pretty odd in 2004. He appears to be fuelled by resentment and bile. And he’s not doing himself — or anyone else — any favours by opening his mouth yet again.

All too often, John serves up a kind of tantrummy brattishness, laced with a considerable dollop of self-pity.

The prize scene in Tantrums & Tiaras, the documentary film made by his boyfriend, David Furnish, showed the singer flouncing off a tennis court in the south of France, shouting: “I’m supposed to be on f****** holiday. I’m never coming here again. Get me on a plane tomorrow.” His problem? A fan had said hello.

Last month, arriving in Taiwan on a private jet, he was forced to go through immigration with the general public and was greeted by a barrage of flashbulbs.

“Rude, vile pigs,” he shouted. “Do you know what that means? Rude, vile pigs. That’s what all of you are.” When someone yelled back: “Why don’t you get out of Taiwan?” he replied: “We’d love to get out of Taiwan if it’s full of people like you. Pig! Pig!”

Beechy Colclough, the therapist who once treated John, describes him as a totally addictive and compulsive person. “If it hadn’t been the alcohol it would have been the drugs,” she said. “If it hadn’t been the drugs it would have been the food and if it hadn’t been the food it would have been the shopping. Only he’s got all four.”

But as if being a huge, spoilt 57-year-old baby weren’t enough, Elton also displays the kind of misogyny that one imagined went out with the ark.