Hi-diddly-dee, an actor's life for me.

IT IS easy to bitch about celebrities - the egos, the money, the gilded cage they live in.

Even the nicest and most normal ones, in my experience, will throw all their toys out of the pram if they are asked to join a queue or, worse still, they are mistaken for someone else.

I am not sure how George Clooney might handle someone asking him about his bisexual girlfriend, his speeding points or nuclear energy policy, for example.

(Sorry about that; once noticed the similarity cannot be forgotten).

Sometimes they make it even easier for us to poke fun.

An Emmerdale actor by the name of Rik Makarem, an habitual speeder trying to dodge a driving ban after totting up points for several offences, said that he should keep his licence on the basis that he was too famous to catch a bus.

Let's leave aside for the moment the fact that I wouldn't know who he was if he tap-danced outside my house wearing a sandwich board with "I'M RIK MAKAREM!" scrawled on it, and concentrate instead on the legal arguments he presented to the Dewsbury magistrate deciding the case.

The 29-year-old said if he had to use public transport - gasp! - his many fans would expect him to remain in character during his commute and it could make him ill.

He said: "Acting is a difficult profession. It's hard work. It has a dramatic effect health-wise. There is pressure of having to maintain this media personality that the public know. To have to do this on a daily basis would be an immense challenge."

Hang on. Standing where you're told to stand and reading words someone else has written in the way you are told to can make you ill? I never realised. Does this mean I can sue for being made to take part in the school panto when I was 10? How has Kirk Douglas survived so long? And has anyone warned the cast of The Only Way Is Essex?

Someone ought to tell this prat that acting is a piece of piss, and he's taking it. The difficult bit about the trade is not acting, which is what most actors do, and generally they use this time to moan, smoke, and "write this great play I've been thinking about for yars".

Being one of the few to have a very well-paid job is not quite the same as being down the pit, is it?

Rik ought to realise that firstly he's damn lucky to be in work considering the trade in he's in, and even more so bearing in mind that 2.62million people are unemployed and for the first time since records began there are 1million young school-leavers on the dole, a fact which has knock-on effects on their health and social well-being for the rest of their lives and which, in their usual style, our current Government is doing sweet-FA to reverse.

The magistrate, bless whoever they were, saw through this poncey pillock's piffle and banned him for six months so the good people of West Yorkshire can go about their business without being menaced by a man tearing up the roads while thinking he's Charlton Heston in Ben Hur.

It's just a shame he won't be spending the time looking for a proper job.

It's £2.60 return and get your feet off the seat.

Money can't buy me love.

CELEBRITY weddings give me a sinking feeling. And not just because I'm fairly sure their divorce rate is worse than the 1 in 2 the rest of us have achieved.

It's because they inevitably involve a web of secrecy which I then have to find a way through. Not because I give a damn someone off the telly has married someone else off the telly, but because they've signed a six-figure magazine deal to pay for an extravagant shindig in return for exclusive coverage and if there's one thing which gets Fleet Street's gander up it's telling us we can't report something.

But seeing as it gets sales up too, everyone's a winner.

So when the rich and famous get hitched muggins here has to locate the venue no-one wants to confirm, blag details of the menu, the cost of the flowers, sweet-talk the DJ, find who's making the dress, flatter the caterers and suck up to the extended family. On the day itself I have to be up at the crack of sparrow's fart, file running copy throughout the day on a phone that's losing its charge, help the photographers trespass and hide and get their shots before writing their picture captions for them because they don't know how to spell anyone's names, and wangle details out of every last guest who leaves until the wee hours of the morning, all while trying to outwit my rivals and outflank a security detail who usually blunder about with fists and expletives flying and make the whole event a lot more intrusive and violent than it needs to be.

It's usually such an arse-ache that it makes me long for the days of local newspapers where I wrote wedding reports from forms filled in by the happy couple who willingly provided all those details because they wanted it in the paper.

Because what the famous forget is that weddings, by law, are a public event. It's a public promise which makes love a part of the State, and that is why you have to be married in a licensed venue with public access, and your intent to marry must be posted in public weeks beforehand.

That's why Carina Trimingham, the bisexual lover of beleaguered Energy Secretary Chris Huhne, is likely to lose at least part of the legal case she has brought against a newspaper for reporting the fact and photos of her civil partnership with a woman, and on whom she cheated with Huhne who was himself cheating on his wife. Trimingham says her wedding was "an inherently private" event, which flies in the face of logic, law and simple common sense. She and Huhne made public promises which they betrayed with their private behaviour, and that makes them fair game.

When you get wed you want to shout it from the rooftops; it's only when you get caught out you want to brush it under the carpet.

So thank heaven and praise be for Sir Paul McCartney whose wedding on Sunday showed that 50 years of fame and fabulous wealth make you much less of a pillock than someone who's had it for five minutes.

He got married in a register office for a few hundred pounds, told his 30 guests to take pictures but asked them to "politely refrain" from sticking them on the internet, walked down the steps with his bride in front of well-wishers and the Press, answered questions, winked and waved before releasing one official photograph for newspapers to use in return for a donation to his favourite charity.

Which seems like a graceful and sensible way to carry on. The happy couple got their perfect day, the Press got their pictures and story, and Heather Mills will have been absolutely furious at all of it.

Perhaps he should do an instruction manual.

Some stories never change.

SO Fred Goodwin's super-injunction has been revealed and it seems the banking crisis was caused by his affair.

That footballer injuncted Imogen Thomas because she was trying to blackmail him. Chris Huhne is on the ropes because his ex-wife wants revenge. Dominique Strauss-Kahn was set up by a chambermaid and if Gaddafi's regime ever tumbles you can bet your bottom dollar it'll be because one of his female bodyguards betrays him.

That's right girls, it's all down to us. We made Adam eat the apple and everything that's ever gone wrong since The Fall is our fault.

It is certainly not the fault of dick-crazed men incapable of accepting the consequences of their actions. Not at all.

Think of the things we'd never know.

THE tabloid press is under attack; not for the first time or the last.

We're used to it. It's healthy, and I don't mind in the least. Privacy is different to secrecy and the more that gets talked about the better for everyone.

Hugh Grant, Jeremy Clarkson, Jemima Khan, Kenneth Clarke and various other self-centred whingebuckets think tabloids are "out of control" and need to be brought to heel, quick smart, with some privacy laws which carefully delineate things the Press must stop doing.

So here's a few things we wouldn't know if it weren't for the punchy, fighty, mischievious, celebrity-poking, no-privacy-law-thankyou tabloids:

* The identities of the five men widely-known to be involved in the murder of Stephen Lawrence.

* That John Leslie is a sex-pig.

* That Chris Huhne left his wife following an affair mere weeks after parading his happy family in election leaflets, that she has since accused him of bullying her into taking speeding points, and as a result of this coverage Essex Police will question him over perverting the course of justice.

That the former leader of the Lib Dems is an alcoholic, that the head of the IMF has a long history of aggressive sexual behaviour, that Prince Charles' marriage was blighted by his long affairs, that Andrew Marr had a super-injunction, that Katie Price is anything but what she lets her TV show broadcast... the list goes on. And yes, the tittle-tattle which is what millions of people really buy the papers to read.

We're not perfect, we make mistakes, we cross the line sometimes. But we usually get pushed back pretty quick, and I'd far rather have an aggressive tabloid press than a supine spin machine for PRs' press releases.

Otherwise we'd all think Max Mosley was just a public-spirited, charming old grandad.

They're asking for it.

THE problem with politicians is they do not live in the real world but rather above it, like socially inept gods playing dice with our fate.

They see a chambermaid and think she's fair game; they get speeding points and think they're not a danger on the roads; they wonder whether to cut rape sentences as a way of getting the conviction rate up.

So far this week, thanks in large part to the tabloid press which Hugh Grant thinks we don't need and is "out-of-control", they have been taught that it is not a good idea to treat either chambermaids or ex-wives badly. Yes, Hugh, rich and famous men are "naughty by nature" but when these are the allegations made against them they should be screamed from the rooftops so the millions of people who buy newspapers can hear it.

And with a career in which I have spent far too long listening to the gory details of rape cases - drunk girls who didn't know what was going on, startled men accused of assault the next day, sexual predators drugging drinks in bars and parents holding down their own children so they can be attacked by strangers - I have to say yes, the rate of rape conviction, at six per cent of complaints made, is too damn low.

So our esteemed Justice Secretary Ken Clarke - a barrister once, many years ago - decided the best way to win votes would be to HALVE rape sentences, along with those for burglary and robbery, if the alleged rapist confesses early and so saves their victim the trauma of a trial.

Except the reason the rape conviction rate is low is not because victims don't want to go to trial. It's because if they do they will have their reputation traduced by a barrister like Ken, who will imply that because of their clothes, their behaviour, or lack of common sense they were inviting rape. It is the attitude of the 12th century, it is the attitude of strict Shariah law, and it's utterly damn disgusting.

If you want to get the rape conviction rate up, set out new guidelines in which the behaviour and sexual history of the victim cannot be used in court. I don't care if she slept with a million men, was drunk as a skunk and wore nowt but a thong - no-one deserves to be abused. Ever. Bring in anonymity for the accused until they are convicted, and you will remove the sympathy I've seen a thousand juries feel towards the man in the dock who says he thought she was willing and his is the life that's been ruined.

And if Ken Clarke wants to win back the millions of votes he's just pissed up the wall he should get himself down to one of the crown courts he's so keen to close and listen for a day. Alternatively, he should be locked in a room with a rapist and, when he gets out, see how he feels about someone insisting he was asking for it.

What's next? Free the paedos?