THANKS to the Arab Spring and the outrageous doings of Sasha Baron Cohen’s General Admiral Aladeen, tyranny is, like the poor, very much on the agenda.

It’s great that Colonel Gadaffi and other assorted despots have gone to the great torture chamber in the sky but don’t think that tyrannical behaviour is on its way out. Oh dear me, no.

Thankfully we don’t face daily beatings with an iron bar, or, indeed, the forced worship of clueless-looking chaps in Mao suits, in the manner of North Korea. But nonetheless, tyranny stalks our land. In fact, you may be suffering from it right now.

I know I am. Like me you may have uttered a mild comment, made an unremarkable observation, or gently complained about something you found irksome/tedious to the point of death, or just plain odd about a certain event or personality and suddenly found yourself in a parallel universe of hate for being so off-message. Most mysterious of all it seems to be the same old things that set everybody off...

Olympic tyrannies. You thought it was a large event for the sporting of mind. But to the BBC, its cheerleader -in-chief, it is the Greatest Event Of All Time. And Will Be Treated As Such. Not content with bending and twisting every single news item to ensure it has the obligatory Olympic angle it has commissioned a swathe of programmes, website factoids and link-ups to ensure that no one is safe from its despotic reach. The torch relay has been hyped up to er, Olympic proportions, and if you so much as dare to intimate that you, personally, are not that interested in any of it you are immediately branded a hater, an enemy of all that is cultural and multi-diverse, and sporting and ... well, you get the picture.

Junior football tyrannies. You thought you were signing up little Johnny for a bit of a kickabout of a Saturday morning. In reality you have just consigned the next 50 of your precious weekends to standing by a soggy pitch, cheering on the team while they lose 83-nil. Again. You will be bombarded with weekly, daily, even, emails from folk who have confused themselves with Sir Alex Ferguson, ordering you to be at this perishing cold venue or that, and to bring money for the burger van ‘because they support the club’. (Of course they do, where else do you think old leather footballs go to die? In burger vans, that’s where!) If you make the mistake of informing the manager that you’re going on holiday/to a family wedding/your nephew's bar mitzvah and will sadly miss that week’s match, they threaten that your kids will ‘never play for this side again’. At this juncture, if you are sane, you will emit a small whoop of joy at the thought of finally being released.

Coleen Rooney tyrannies. She’s presented as the lovely Liverbird next door when she’s actually a Tangoed Scousewife who would appear to turn a blind eye to almost anything her old man gets up to, just so long as he keeps shovelling money into the family bank account. Point this out to anyone, however, and you’ll be accused of Scouseism and of envying People Who Have Made It. (NB This also applies to Katie Price, the tyranny of which dictates that she cannot be regarded as an irritating and underdressed mare but must be looked upon as a businesswoman who uses her assets to exploit men, meaning, to those who admire her, that she must be Very Clever Indeed, and certainly cleverer than you.) Lord of the Rings tyrannies. Mention mildly that you find this movie a bit over-lengthy, and ask your kids why it has to be running on a seemingly endless loop and you’ll be treated like a cultural pariah because you have not recognised its Genius. Explain that you find Elvish the most annoying sound since Katie Price opened her mouth and you’ll be shouted down. But not so loudly that it will cover up the shouts and screams of ‘aarrrrgggghhhhhhh’ that, to me at least, appear to make up the majority of the dialogue of these tortuous films.

Reading tyrannies. No, I have not read 24 Hours and I don’t intend to. I didn’t finish White Teeth, and I never attempted War and Peace. I find everything written by Salman Rushdie to be plotless gobbledegook and never understood a word George Elliott was on about. I like the Number 1 Ladies Detective Agency, Kate Atkinson and anything by Linda La Plante. But I don’t think everyone should have to read them!