An indecent proposal.

I ASKED a colleague to marry me today. He said: "Yeah, all right."

So that joke backfired. I am now contractually obliged to buy him a ring and a holiday. I don't even know when his birthday is, his favourite colour, or anything. I've been thinking of ways to call it off, ranging from the "I just don't want to rush you" talk to flicking elastic bands at him until he breaks off the engagement in a huff.

February 29, for reasons that are completely lost to me, is the day when women are traditionally 'allowed' to ask men to marry them. Call me bolshy if you like but if I wanted to marry someone I'd just say so, not wait for the one day in 1,460 when 'tradition' says I can do what I want for once. And how must it feel to be the man who gets asked by a woman who was so unconcerned about it she could wait up to four years to pop the question? If a chap did that he'd be labelled a commitment-phobe or at the very least too laid-back to be of any use.

Marriage is something strung about and laden down with 'traditions' - wearing white, not seeing the groom before you walk up the aisle, speeches, first dances, certain things that are done a certain way because that's the way they're always done. But if we always did things the way they've always been done we'd still be curing headaches by drilling holes in our skulls.

When I got married there were some of the traditions I wanted to keep and some I didn't. Not being religious we had a civil ceremony, some nice poems, and a big party with all our friends. There had been no surprise proposal because it was something we'd discussed in advance, and I insisted on choosing the engagement ring because he didn't know what an amethyst was.

Then he said "I'll ask you properly when the moment's right" and for a couple of months I got increasingly irritated when every time there was a nice moment and he'd left the ring at home (it's almost as though he was trying to tell me something, isn't it?) Eventually I packed a picnic, told him we were going to Richmond Park for the afternoon, and made sure he had the ring. After a bit he fished it out of his pocket and even though I'd nagged him for weeks it was still, strangely, a bit of a surprise how much it all meant and I burst into tears and he said he was worried I might say no.

And this all happened to a girl who was never the least bit bothered about getting married, in fact didn't really care at all. But the rules of such things suck you in and before you know it you've got an A4 wedding folder, a colour co-ordinated timetable and need the UN's help with the seating plan.

We were (largely) happy; the wedding was lovely. The marriage went phut after a very short space of time and it's no coincidence that I've no intention of ever repeating the experience without the benefit of a frontal lobotomy and Kofi Annan's solemn promise to be on call 24/7.

The main problem I have with the institution is not falling in love, or deciding to chain myself to someone for life - although that's a considerable hurdle for the once-bitten - but the fact it's an institution at all. Marriage is a declaration of commitment, and it's a joyous thing. If you don't do it in a white frock, you're still committed. If you don't do it in a church, or in front of 200 guests, or with a cake and a DJ, it's still a commitment. All that extra stuff is just padding. And the problem with padding, as I think my ex-husband probably found, is that sometimes it forces you into something you're unsure about and sometimes, as with me, it keeps you down when you really want to get out.

But then marital traditions are based on the tenets of our religious books which themselves are basically a set of rules on how to behave written by people thousands of years ago. Mary was 13 when she conceived Jesus, if you believe the books; Muhammad had 11 wives, one of whom was nine at consummation; and quite a large chunk of the Old Testament is about handing daughters and wives around like poker tokens. Catholic priests used to marry and have children. Romans married girls off at 12. The Bible says you 'marry' everyone you have sex with. Just because things used to happen doesn't mean they still should.

As society matures so it decides that women aren't chattels, that one wife is generally enough and children are off-limits. It's okay with co-habitation, jumbled-up families and people of varying sexualities and genders doing their own thing. And as I've matured I have learned that weddings are expensive puff, marriage is a lifelong project, and you're best off picking someone to do it with who thinks the same as you about the important bits and will hold your hand when times are rough, not piss off down the pub.

If two people can do that, and want to get married in whatever way they fancy - be it up a mountain or down a mine or on unicycles - I think it's an impressive enough thing that they should be allowed to give it a go. I don't care if they're a man and a woman, or both the same gender, or if she asked him on February 29. So long as they don't break the law or hurt others I'll clap them on their way and keep the mutters of "one in two, you know, it's one in two" under my breath, because there are more than enough people hating each other in the world and if two people want to do the opposite it's anything but indecent.

Let's use the extra day we get every four years to celebrate the fact that YOU CAN ASK HIM ANY TIME YOU LIKE.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to break it to my fiance that it's against the law to marry a fox and we'll have to wait until society sees things our way.

Some people spend too much time thinking about gay sex.

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.

Licence to grill.

WHEN I heard Mr Justice Coleridge's comments that "divorce is easier than getting a driving licence" I had my normal spurt of righteous anger.

I am tired of hearing people who have never been through the process implying it's a doddle, and something done for a laugh or because you're bored. My marriage was pretty good to start with and then fairly grim, but even its worst moments paled by comparison with the 16 months it took to end the union.

It was not a decision I made lightly, it was no fun, and it took me a good couple of years before I felt like I was back on my feet. To have that dismissed as 'easy' or the cause of social breakdown - when I regard it as a great social freedom - sends me into a fury, every time.

But then a driving test has a course of lessons and several exams. Getting divorced comes down in the end to filling in a bunch of forms which, in theory and if you're not married to a twat like I was, can end your marriage in six weeks.

What the good judge failed to mention is that getting married is simpler still. There are only two forms to fill in and the basic fees are a lot cheaper, if you don't insist on a three-day festival with marquees and foreign heads of state.

So why not make it harder to get married in the first place? All couples could have a course of lessons in the rules of the road they're about to start down. A relationship counsellor teaches them to recognise the hazards and how to navigate them, what is safe and what's ridiculously dangerous.

After that each party has to do a theory test on the basic standards of behaviour, the correct way to deal with problems and a computer simulation in which they are grilled on what might happen:

• Are you prepared to put up with the public humiliation of your partner sleeping with prostitutes? a) yes b) no c) maybe, so long as I get a £4,000 handbag once a week and some hair extensions
• You've been caught with two lapdancers and some cocaine in a hotel room 18 months after your marriage to the granddaughter of the leader of the Catholic Church in the UK. Do you a) blame the newspapers b) shout 'AHA!' c) get a second series?
• If you take a holiday with your partner to India will you a) visit the Taj Mahal together b) visit the Taj Mahal alone?
• Has every first-born male in your partner's family since 1066 had a mistress? a) yes b) no c) shit
• Your partner likes cats and hates dogs, and you like dogs and hate cats. What are the chances of your marriage lasting more than two years, nine months, and three weeks? a) 100% b) 50% c) 20% d) 0%
• Your mother sends your partner an email outlining their faults. Do you a) hide b) emigrate c) talk to both parties in an effort at reconciliation d) post it on the internet

There are no right answers and you pass the test only if your responses are the same as your partner's more than 50 per cent of the time. Then you can go on to the practical exam, which lasts a month, and at the end of it if you still have a 51 per cent agreement rate and haven't totally lost the will to live you can get married.

If I'd been asked some of those questions before I wed, I might have realised before the ring went on that not only were we ill-matched the man was a dog-hating idiot capable of making Steve Coogan look committed and mature.

As for who should be the instructors - that's obvious. The divorced.

Fancy a ride?