PERSONS described as researchers have ‘discovered’ – although not, presumably, in the same sense that Christopher Columbus discovered – that a couple of glasses of wine a day actually improves one’s quality of life.

Yep, those of us who drink in moderation score highly on something called the Health Utilities Index. In plain English that means we have better emotions, ability to understand things and dexterity than abstainers.

Well, who’d have thought it?

Certainly not the po-faced researchers working for our government, who have repeatedly and spitefully tried to brand anyone who is middle-class and who enjoys a tipple as a ‘problem drinker’.

I’ve always thought this was nonsense just as I’ve always thought the continued research into happiness – and David Cameron’s desperate citing of it as a political goal – was a load of old you-knowwhat.

Because everyone knows what makes you happy, don’t they?

• Copping for the end bit of the Markies’ choccy covered Swiss roll

• Getting your flip-flops back on again at the beginning of summer

• Clocking a For Sale sign outside the house of the least popular person in the neighbourhood

• Finding an extra £1 coin in the car-park ticket machine when you collect your change

• Walking barefoot over a Chinese wash wool rug

• Watching the moment when England won the 1966 World Cup

• Putting in the last piece of a particularly complicated jigsaw

• The look of concentration on a guide-dog’s face as it leads its owner across a road

• Eating candy-floss

• Being brought a cup of coffee in bed

• Swimming in a choppy sea

• Snow – especially the sort that prevents you from going to work

• Spotting a bullfinch in your garden

• Finding the frock you couldn’t afford half-price in the online sale – and in your size

• And, of course, finding that the last Fruit Pastille in the packet is a green one!

Dear old eBay reckons that auctioning off the average 28 unwanted items we all keep in our homes would raise us enough money to pay for a whole holiday.

The internet site’s been doing its sums and claims that our unwanted handbags, mobiles and laptops could add up to a tidy sum if we flogged them off to the highest bidder; up to £2,000 if we live in London, which obviously has a better class of clutter.

And my answer to that is: oh really? Because the reason that most people, myself included, have not made more than £50 from eBay isn’t because we haven’t tried it because we have.

I used to worry that my eBaying colleague, Steve, would whack me with his keyboard given the number of times I interrupted his work to ask how you went about the whole, complicated business.

The truth is, when you get down to it, there’s a reason the stuff in my home, your home and everybody else’s home is discarded and ignored. And that’s because it’s a pile of old toot.

If you could actually afford a Mulberry handbag would you a) consign it to the attic or b) use it until the handle dropped off? But your handbag wasn’t made by Mulberry, was it? It was made out of faux leather in a foreign sweatshop for an emporium run by the kind of people who go in for elaborate tax avoidance schemes.

The reason your old laptop isn’t worth £300 is because it is eight years old and you drove it into the ground because the price of a new one made your eyes bleed.

And the reason your old mobile isn’t worth anything is because you are still using it.

Even though the screen is split and the numbers have worn off the buttons.

If there really is a household with a mythical two grand’s worth of items lying about, then I very much suspect it’s owned by a family called Beckham.