One of the many, many benefits of the wisdom that comes with age (In this case about the same age as when doubts creep in about Santa) is that you know when the Government is lying.  I know.  It’s not really a challenge even for a five year old given the generally staggering odds against them telling the truth.

What makes it even simpler is that even if they’re not lying now, whatever they say will not be true eventually.  Remember when Craven A was advertised as ‘the cigarette that soothes your throat’?  The good old days was sugar was not officially classified as a Class A drug?

As we used to say about scurrilous gossip at ITN, even if it’s not true now, it will be in six weeks time.  Over a year ago a friend of mine was warned not to use a well known DJ on the cover if a book for example …

The birth rate in Britain fell so low during the 1920s that women, well, middle class women, were begged to have more children.  Today the average teenager gives birth more eagerly than a rabbit although curiously by the time she turns twenty one she becomes completely barren and needs endless expensive fertility treatment which bring the NHS to its knees.

Before the War British schoolchildren were so rickety, in both senses, that school dinners were introduced and kwashiorkor was all but eliminated in mainland Britain.  Today 99% of all children are so fat that the risk of them exploding poses major Health and Safety issues in the classroom.  I seriously suspect that the playing of conkers has been banned because one striking the distended belly of some Bunteresque brat could detonate them with consequences too ghastly to imagine.

Pensioners who once had the decency to die in their forties now live so long that they will eventually be reduced to eating each other, urban foxes having long since gobbled up all the children grown vast on gobbling cholesterol rich conkers instead of fighting with them as nature intended.

With one voice our leaders tell us that everyone is living far too long and with the next breath warning us that unless we stop eating/drinking/smoking AT ONCE we face certain death within weeks, perhaps days.  How can both these statements possibly be true?  Where on earth are these long-lived people coming from?  Remote Himalayan villages with an average life expectancy of 150?  Is that the real reason that they want to crack down on immigrants?

Live long enough and you’ve seen enough of these hand-brake turns to make your head spin.  No sooner have you weaned yourself off one of life’s ever declining number of pleasures than it becomes compulsory to take it up again.  The upside of all this is that you can ignore everything you read except, of course, my own excellent advice.  Cancel your copy of the Daily Mail and an endless stream of things to worry about simply vanishes.

So turn on the daytime telly, light a fag, open a can of Tennants before composing your very own set of rules by which to pass your remaining years.  Prizes next week for the top ten. Cheers!

We are all familiar with the great lies – ‘There’s a cheque in the post’, ‘It’s not what it looks like’, ‘I can explain’.  Perhaps the worst of these, and one unforgivably put about by women, is that you forget the pain of childbirth.  That is, readers, simply not true.  It is just that the sleepless, exhausting horror of the first few years, that is to say the time you spend awake with your offspring, especially when they are teenagers, makes it pale into insignificance.

My snippets of priceless information have been referred to as ‘factoids’ by people less blessed with bottomless general knowledge but as I have often said to the children, get long odds if you’re betting that I am wrong. We were recently playing the A to Z game on a long journey (Rules explained at the end) and my chosen subject was medical conditions.  Someone dared, dared to challenge me on several of my choices! Me, who worked for over six months on a best forgotten series called ‘General Hospital’ and made millions of videos for drug companies. Behind the camera, since you ask.

Added  to which I would expect everyone over the age of five to have heard of such run-of-the-mill ailments as ascariasis, babesoisos, condylomata acuminate and so on.  Diseases whose existance I was able to prove in a truce by referring to that most useful of volumes – never leave home without it – ‘101 illnesses you don’t want to get’ (Available on Amazon obviously) .  Another top tip while we are at it ; always carry a list of US states and their capitals.  You cannot begin to imagine how often it will prove useful.  Just trust me on that one.

I love  a good fact, something that may well have held me back in the news business and an indisputable one is that February is pretty much guaranteed to lower your spirits.  We’ve all had enough of cold and miserable, inside and out, although another fact is that the worst month for suicides is May, which ironically is the nicest month of the year in England.  Possibly by then people who have been hiding under a duvet sucking their thumb since January don’t even realise that things have finally picked up outside.

I once made the novice mistake of eschewing alcohol in January because it is well known as a depressive and at that point of winter you don’t need to pour misery into a glass, just draw the curtains far enough to see the Christmas tree needles still stuck to the carpet in the puddles of Baileys Irish Cream spilt on New Years Eve.  Of last year.

So my message for today is keep on smiling.  Literally.  Put a smile on your face at all times and it is a FACT that you will begin to feel more cheerful.  There may even be research to prove it.

A-Z game: First person says ‘A is for Apple’, second person says ‘A is for Apple, B is for Banana’ and so on.  There are some subjects where one is allowed to drop letters like X, as in countries or crisp flavours.  It is considered bad form to beat someone with Alzheimer’s.

‘And what do you want to be when you grow up?’ you ask of some whey faced child with fingers mentally crossed that it will blurt out ‘A Kardashian’ before its pushy mother can say ‘ Brain surgeon’ .  Not that it is likely to reply ‘Mini cab controller’ or ‘Tax advisor’ or any of the other mind-numbing things that people really end up as.

So,  if you’re stuck indoors today to avoid having to face the neighbours when you collect the five Valentine’s bouquets that they have ‘kindly’ taken in in your absence, you can pass the hours by playing one of my favourite time wasting game, and one, for once, where the consumption of alcohol is not strictly necessary.

What would you LEAST like your children to become?

The scoring system is exactly the same as used  in ‘Mornington Crescent’: you’ll just know when you’ve got a winner.  Spare parts manager at the Guildford branch of a Ford dealership scores very highly as does my own personal best – Professor of Trans Gender studies at the University of East Anglua.

A trump card used to be Army Padre but as my son with his degree in Theology has failed to find anything else this may well become a serious option.  With touching maternal optimism I continue to scan ‘The Stage’ sits vac column searching for his perfect occupation, ‘Beaufitul young Man wanted to play comatose hospital patient, long contract offered’.

For many parents however, the worst possible thing in the world would be for their child to become a journalist.  ‘Better a UKIP candidate, even an estate agent’ they sob, although the last option was only said in the heat of the moment.

Sadly this is not an uncommon view and with Piers Morgan as an example you can see why.  It probably  explains why so many stroppy teenagers opt for Meejah studies rather than follow their parents advice to read Geography. (It hardly needs saying that my own son has an MA in journalism, does it?)  Social workers would sooner leave children with their natural parents who might raise them to become  lawyers!

What utter folly.  Where on earth, since Agincourt I venture, was ever gathered together a finer band of men and women than at ITN? Accuse me of blowing a trumpet if you wish but if you wanted as award winning example of what can be achieved by people working to the highest possible standards in every sense (I will stand upright in front of camera even after 6 pints (of wine)) then look no further.

When it came to professional standards of honesty, accuracy, God we were slaves to akuracy, loyalty and integrity maintained despite the siren call of an extraordinary capacity for strong drink and private lives that would make a phone hacker blush, we had no equal.

And the very worst thing for anyone to be when they grow up? Easy.  A person without a sense of humour.

Welcome, trusty reader, and today’s task for Lady K is to bring you up to speed with what’s what at the Oscars. I am assuming at this point that you aren’t on the voting list and won’t even be going to LA.  (I wouldn’t bother.  It is an unspeakably ghastly place and the goodie bags for nominees, said to be worth thousands of pounds contain dross a five year would toss aside). Tell me you do at least have an in-house cinema?

So in a selfless quests to save you wasting your time this weekend I have personally sat through a great many of the nominated movies, many wasted hours in some cases, and here’s what you need to know.

The most talked about and hotly tipped is ‘The Revenant’.  Now, I’ve worked on outside broadcasts, which only ever appear to take place in seriously inclement weather and produce the kind of feelings that got Jeremy Clarkson sacked but, big but, just because you had a miserable time making it, doesn’t make it good.  Or award winning.  It’s supposed to be based on a true story.  Even the charitable would only go as far as loosely based. The original happened in August on pretty flat territory.  Spot the differences.  As to the ‘acting’ – sling me in an icy river and I’ll give you a convincing impression of cold.  It’s not acting sweetie.  Best thing in it is the bear, leaving aside the fact she fails to kill him and cut out two unnecessary hours.

‘Bridge of Spies’ won’t win but it’s well worth seeing.  Tom Hanks and Mark Rylance, who should get Best Supporting Actor, what’s not to like, and its a good solid watch.  Also lots of cold scenes.

‘Brooklyn’ is another listing for Best Picture.  Quite sweet, great costumes, but it won’t change the course of history. Possibly funded by the Catholic Church as a reaction to ‘Spotlight’ which takes a decidedly negative view of kiddy fiddling.  Neither is in the same league as ‘Doubt’, something you should definitely make an effort to watch.

‘Joy’ has a Best Actress nomination. Euphoria and mops have no link in my mind; bit like trying to finish the sentence ‘Donald Trump is attractive because …’ Don’t bother.  Sickeningly jingoistic as well.

‘The Big Short’ is on similar lines to nowhere.  Who gets excited about synthetic mortgages or is won over by a girl in a bubble bath explaining it?  Only, only a banker.

My own front runners are ‘Mad Max, Fury Road’ and ‘Room’.  As a long time fan of the Max Max movies it was with heart in mouth that I went to Number 4, made years after the others and without Mel Gibson but what a great film! To be uncharacteristically brutal I couldn’t actually tell you the name of the actor who plays Max; the film is totally stolen by Charlize Theron.  A stand on your seat and cheer movie. I loved it.

Very, very different to ‘Room’, no warrior women crossing the desert and kicking ass here.  It is based on the story of the Austrian man who kept his daughter in a cellar and raped her for years, family viewing but not in a good way.  Your first, and very understandable reaction, is probably a firm no thank you but stay with me, it is worth seeing and for the first time in living memory the child is not a bowl-cut haired moppet but a real kid.  Brie Larson plays the mother and has a well deserved nomination for Best Actress along with Alicia Vikander for ‘The Danish Girl’ – she plays the wife to Eddie Redmayne’s transgender girl. She, Alicia not Eddie, is the best thing in this film, apart from the costumes. I’ve never been a fan of Miss Redmayne who seems unsure if she’s Arthur or Martha at the best of times.  Simpering on an industrial scale.

Actually this is a good year for women with Cate Blanchett quite brilliant in ‘Carol’, a lesbian love story set in the stylish fifties but on far gentler lines than ‘Blue is the warmest colour’, a film which would certainly have brought Queen Victoria up to speed. Rooney Mara, an Audrey Hepburn lookalike as Cate’s girlfriend, is also a hot tip.

And finally, ‘Amy’ is up for Best Documentary.  It may not win but make an effort.  It is to genuinely heart rending what ‘Joy’ is to saccharine.  You choose.