The iron gates at the end of Downing Street, the concrete blocks outside the Palace of Westminster and the glass screen in the Chamber already diminish the openness of British democracy.The authorities must not overreact Risk cannot be eliminated. But in terms of physical security, the balance has gone far enough. Mobile phones have become ubiquitous because they are convenient, cheap and easy to use The same goes for texting. So here’s a message to the boffins, in good old-fashioned text: pls kp it smpl. The idea of the telephone was as simple as it was revolutionary: talk into it and somebody far away would answer back.

Gadget freaks aside, most of us just want unfussy things that work well, like the Biro, the bicycle, or even the pure white, knobless iPod. But the latest “improvement” to phones, picture messaging, is a flop. This will not surprise anyone who believes life is too short to read a manual twice as heavy as the gizmo it was written for. I lost my British and Commonwealth titles which I’d held for five years, now I’m fighting for the world title.”He told his 30-year-old wife, Zo?that he was on the brink of quitting “I was putting myself under so much stress. On the one hand we take an almost proprietorial pride in the way he has tickled the nation’s funny bone. On the other, and as the barman at my local puts it: ‘Why should I pay good money to see him when I hear the same crap in here every night for nowt?’”* Gags from, respectively: George Formby, Tommy Handley, Ken Dodd, Les Dawson, Eric Morecambe, The Royle Family by Craig Cash and Caroline Aherne, Steve Coogan, Peter Kay.’Lancashire, Where Women Die of Love’, by Charles Nevin (Mainstream, £12.99), is published tomorrow.

Lord Lucan traced to Goa, 2003? No, it was a banjo-player from St Helens called Barry Ah, yes, St Helens. I know people who ring its rugby league club just to listen to the town’s favourite son, Johnny Vegas, giving the list of options They do Try it: 0870-756 5252. Remarkable.All the same, living in the national centre for comic excellence does have its drawbacks. Dave Hadfield, the rugby league correspondent of this newspaper, in his fine book Up and Over writes: “As for humour, people in St Helens must surely have the same problem with Johnny Vegas as we have in Bolton with Peter Kay.

Try these random happenings: Bull finds its way into china shop, Lancaster, 2003; Man ends 12-hour siege after police give in to his demand for an egg sandwich, Blackpool, 2003; First wedding in Britain on an allotment, Bury, 2004. No doubt, too, that working for the industrial revolution presented the old choice between laughing and crying, and that Celtic Lancs and Scandinavian Yorks made different choices Name me a truly great Yorkshire comic Ernie Wise? Hmm And?Lancashire, though. Well, I’ll go to the foot of our stairs! There can, though, be no denying that Lancashire is a place of exotic influence: ponder, for example, the Blackpool Tower, the county’s splendid homage to M Eiffel. I should also mention the fairly plausible theory that Napoleon III was inspired to rebuild Paris by Lord Street, Southport.And then there’s the Liverpool Effect. Liverpool, once the second city of the empire, more recently almost dead just beside the water, is now much revived, Europe’s choice for its Capital of Culture in 2008; almost as shiny as Manchester, Lancashire’s other viva-city, next to which London looks positively dowagerish.