My own masochistic impulses kicked in when Channel 4's Super Botox Me appeared on the television and - despite my squeamishness and moral objections to such ridiculous TV formats - I stayed glued.

There was something sickly fascinating about watching a so-called headstrong, intelligent young woman journalist go headfirst into a blood-splattered blitz of cosmetic surgery, driven solely by her tragic levels of self loathing.

My civilised Sunday evening soon turned into a sorry, gruesome gore fest that left me screaming at the telly in frustration. Jeez.

How stupid some women can be. I already have a niggling disdain for these supposed social reporters who end up trying out the very things they are supposed to be investigating, as if it somehow adds to the authenticity of the project.

Remember cutesy former pop singer turned WAG Louise Redknapp, who starved herself for five weeks for a similar show, ITV1's The Truth About Size Zero, in the earnest belief she had a moral duty to live, breathe and sleep the anorexic's nightmare?

She wa

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Now what d'ya know? There's a hoo ha over the violence in the new Batman movie.

Parents are apparently crying out for stricter censorship on The Dark Knight, which - violent as it is - is still the most popular film in UK cinemas.

Former Home Office minister Keith Vaz has demanded children under 15 should be barred from screenings of the flick, described hyperbolically as a "symphony of sadism".

Even “quiet man” ex-Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith has added his voice to protests that the 12A rating granted by the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC ) was woefully inadequate.

But for all this so-called controversy, just how up in arms is Britain, really? And just how dangerous can a classy fantasy in which a man made up as a Joker takes on a man dressed as a bat be for the 12+ youngsters of this country?

It must be so tempting for politicians and the like to blame all society's woes on arty, fictional portrayals of life - instead of on their own botched attempts at "managing" society. To my mind however, a lot of the more

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Kids with creepy joker faces painted to look like Heath Ledger brandishing R.I.P. signs, a massive roaring Batmobile zooming up and down the length of Leicester Square, its engine revving like a chainsaw ready for massacre.

I was disturbed to see quite how fanatical people were getting over The Dark Knight, the latest in the new Christian Bale-led franchise. I guess it was inevitable. People love to fetishise the freakish.

The premiere felt tacky and sensationalist and over the top. I went home after the premiere with a pounding headache from inhaling too much gas, gallons of which had been used - well, wasted - to fuel the 10-foot flames blasting from all corners of the cinema's forecourt.

Noise from the roaring Batmobile still rang in my ears. But despite my reservations about its marketing, I loved the film. It was spectacular. Intoxicating. Comical. Horrifying. Fear is everywhere, but so is kindness - a sentim

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That nugget from Homer Simpson still makes me wince. So tragic. So funny. So hideously inappropriate.

The crushing experience of being royally dumped is supposed to be character building and all that but when it actually happens it feels like you've been winded in the stomach and you'll never stand up straight again.

People say "What doesn't kill you will make you stronger," which sounds good at the time because you can pretend that it's all a steep learning curve and that pain is useful in some way.

But in reality, what doesn't kill you feels a lot like it makes you weaker. No?

It's on my mind because if you want to see what "dumped" looks like just cast your eye over any magazine and you'll see it in the guise of a scraggy-haired Welshman.

Yes, Notting Hill actor Rhys Ifans has been personified in the press as the result

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An extract from next month's issue of the toff gazette features a 'hard-hitting' article on an apparently new brand of horror drug: ketamine.

"If you thought Special K was just a breakfast cereal think again. It's also one of the street nicknames of a drug that's surging through the social scene..." writes the breathless reporter.

Not that I care, of course, what Tatler, the Sloane Ranger's bible, that mecca of all things horsey, says. But it's the way it tries to report on so-called "new social trends" that, well, just aren't.

The other month apparently smoking was the cool new thing to be doing.

The act of puffing on a cigarette a la Kate Moss or Lily Allen was supposedly, like, so the new black - especially now that smoking is banned and you totally have to sneak outside like you did at boarding school when the house mistress wasn't looking. (Ignore that cancer thing people keep talking about).

But back to this month's "trend": ketamine.

Apparently the Class

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