I do like a statistic.  Just as John Major was the only person ever to run AWAY from a circus, so I was without doubt alone in my longing to leave the glamourous, exciting world of television (sic) to be an actuarist.  Go figure.  This latent longing was recalled yesterday when I read some research that proved that drinking wine prevented you from becoming diabetic.  Result!, fellow topers and clearly true. (Although as with all these ‘Hold the front page’ announcements I only really noticed the headline and was too busy looking for a corkscrew to read the small, inevitably dull details that followed).

I also have evidence to put the matter beyond reasonable doubt, although , like all humans, I am quite capable of persuading myself to believe something I like without a shred of the stuff.  The only time in my life that doctors have been concerned that I was pre-diabetic was when I was pregnant.  And had not touched a drop for months.  Case proven or what?  I could probably save the country millions by offering to do all future research single handed because most of the time the answers they come up with are, to use a well known phrase or saying, bleedin’ obvious.

I was at a meeting the other day when much time (14 minutes of which was, unforgivably, during an airing of  ‘The Archers’) was expended on talk of doing a survey, or to use corporate-speak, a ‘piece of work’ to find out why people joined Friends’ organisations.  ‘Sack the consultants’ I said, ‘I can tell you the answers they’ll find right now and then you tell me how that is going to move us forward one inch’.   Oddly my offer was not taken up but let me share my thoughts on the matter with a more appreciative audience.

Ask anyone a simple question and one hundred per cent of the time they will come up with the reply that they think you’re looking for, whereas the fact of the matter is that people only voluntarily do what they want to do anyway. You, dear reasearcher, just have to ask yourself why they might want to do whatever it is you’re flogging and bingo, you’re sorted.  What’s their  motivation and let’s face it, there isn’t a long list to chose from?  Could be simply sex in which case let’s change the name to ‘Friends with Benefits’ – the way forward!   Sadly the Charity Commissioners might have something to say and we can’t risk another raid by the Vice Squad. There’s no money to be made by signing up so not that one either. We are left with the desire for fame,popularity or immortality.  Give me and my evil sons twenty minutes with a paper and pencil and we will let you have an exhaustive list of how to apply that to membership issues.  Next!

My somewhat jaded palate was also briefly touched this week by the vexing issue of ‘corporate speak ‘ which I mentioned earlier, the gobbledygook that people use in an attempt to blind the listener with science.  Or boredom.  John Humphrey spends his life expressing his incredulity at the nonsense that comes out of the ‘Today’ shows guests and make them explain themselves in simple English, often a task too far. I was therefore particularly pleased to see that ‘The Times’ had a leader devoted to the subject this week.  You may rest assured, reader, that I will never invite you to try blue-sky thinking, that we are not ‘where we are’ and never will be, and the only ‘piece of work’ around here, in the proper sense, is me.