I returned to Beelzebub Mansions on Monday night - having been on a mercy mission to replenish Mrs B’s stocks of rough cut St Bruno - to find the old girl watching what I took to be a low-budget satellite channel on the 48-inch plasma superscreen. The programme she was perusing seemed to consist of a dozen unknown “celebrities” farting around on a luxurious desert island.

After a short arm-wrestling contest I regained possession of the remote control. (Girls, girls – when will you learn that men have to hold the remote control? We cannot function without it. And at least it stops us putting own hands down our pants and scratching.)

I turned back to ITV in anticipation of watching Sir Trevor McDoughnut in action only to find that the “celebs” were still there. Yes, dear reader. This pile of abominable dross was actually being shown on our principal nationwide commercial channel. It is no wonder that I began to choke on a Werther’s Original.

From what I can gather, Celebrity Love Island consists of sticking 12 marginally-attractive people most of us have never heard of in a private holiday resort for five weeks and then surrounding them with hidden cameras in the hope that they’ll start having sex. At which point, they won’t show it. I think I may have spotted the flaw in this plan.

This televisual humiliation comes hard on the heels of the cancellation of Celebrity Wrestling, also on ITV, which featured young women grappling with each other to the point of toplessness at which point … they wouldn’t show it. Once again, I think I spot the flaw.

It’s all a bit sad really. ITV is currently celebrating its 50th anniversary. They might be a bit tacky these days, but in the past have brought some innovative and inspiring programmes to the screen. And don’t forget, if it wasn’t for ITV we’d still be having the news read to us by people wearing dinner jackets. Although in Moira Stewart’s case, that wouldn’t necessarily be A Bad Thing.

(There’s an opening there for all you Internet porn barons. Black women wearing dinner jackets. It’s about the only preference yet to be catered for online. And why do I have the terrible feeling that I’ve just said that out loud?)

One can only imagine what Ena Sharples would have had to say about the whole mess.

And why am I grumpy? I’ll tell you why. The lazy, slack-arsed postman who can barely be bothered to drag himself up the driveway of Beelzebub Mansions is to get a £1,000 bonus after the Royal Mail allegedly met its performance targets last year. He also gets a free car if he can be bothered to turn up to work instead of going sick every time it rains.

Perhaps he might now have the decency to pay me back for the £10 postal order from my Gran he stole out of my last birthday card.

And what targets were those then, anyway? The second delivery has been binned, people regularly get their mail (or even their neighbours) at six o’clock at night, and if there’s a post office open within 10 miles of your home, you can consider yourself lucky.

Worse than that, the Royal Mail is employing so many casual staff that they daren’t even trust them to deliver anything that looks remotely valuable in case they just steal it. Instead they creep up your path like a Viet Cong guerilla, silently slip a card through your letterbox, and then leave you to drive to the nearest Post Office depot to collect the free packet of “jus” sent to you with the compliments of Naked Monkey Celebrity Cooking, ITV’s latest Saturday night extravaganza.

It will come as no surprise to learn that the boss of the Royal Mail, a brylcreemed blunderhead called Adam Crozier, didn’t get the £1,000 bonus his worker drones pocketed. No, he only trousered a cool £3m. Think about that the next time you’re watching Naked Grannies Jog To The Post Office To Collect Their Pension on primetime ITV.

And why am I grumpy? Because poor spelling is not being penalised in English national curriculum tests for 14-year-olds. No, really.

Your indolent, ignorant, slack-jawed, hoodie-wearing offspring can now complete an entire exam in textspeak (2 B or nt2 B) and still get away with a pass. It’s enough to make you weep. What ever happened to “education, educashun, edukashun”?

We are now churning out droves of under-educated, semi-literate morons who expect a place at university by right and then pitch up in our offices unable to make the tea without taking off their socks and shoes to count how many sugars the Editor wants in his mid-morning Buckfast and Vimto.

It just isn’t good enough. Still, at least ITV will be guaranteed an audience for its latest series, Naked Celebrity Teachers Play With An Abacus.

And why am I grumpy? Let’s have a quick Nanny State update. Mr John Prescott, whose only saving grace is that he once punched a Welshman, has decreed that we are no longer capable of judging how hot our own bath water should be.

Consequently, we will all have to fit officially-approved NuLabour bath taps that will automatically shut off if Alistair Campbell gets a message on his computer indicating that our toes are going a trifle pink.

Now it’s a long time since I was a new parent (my ex-wife gave birth to Rosemary’s Baby over 20 years ago) but I seem to recall that there was a perfectly sensible test relating to the ambient temperature of bath water. It was called an elbow. Still, better to have a government-appointed jobsworth to come round your house once a year to check, isn’t it?

Our black shirt-wearing friends in the Health Police have also spent £100,000 on a leaflet warning you that it might be a bit sunny this summer so if you want to live to see the next series of Celebrity Naked Bath-Testing On Ice, in which Abi Titmuss comes round to your house and dips her silicone-enhanced baps in your bath (Saturday, 9.30, ITV) you might want to stay inside if that yellow thing is in the sky.

You should also learn that it’s cooler in the shade, that cold water can cool you down, and that cold food is colder than hot food. Well, thanks for that.

And we’re so full of self-righteous indignation that we’ll have to leave the Working Rights For Donkeys directive until another time.

And why am I grumpy? Take this David Blunkett fella. I read in the Mail on Sunday the dramatic story that the utterly-discredited-but-now-miraculously-back-as-a-Minister serial shagger is at it again. And, believe it or not, his latest floozy is “a woman friend who looks uncannily like his former mistress, Kimberley Quinn”.

At which point I sigh. Now I have every respect for the fine newspapers of the Daily Mail group (of which this is one), but did it not occur to the utter prat who wrote the story that there was a significant error in her over-emotional intro? Namely, if the woman did look like Kimberley Quinn, HOW WOULD DAVID BLUNKETT KNOW???

The case for the prosecution rests. And fervently hopes that they don’t waste a Cup Final ticket on him this year.

This column has long sung the praises of Rolf Harris. In fact, only last week I pointed out that our Antipodean artist in residence was clearly the superior to L.S.Lowry because he could paint horses’ legs while Lowry couldn’t.

Well, you never know where these words are read. Minutes after the presses rolled at the Brown Lubianka that is home to the Evening Post, it was announced that Rolf would have the honour of painting the official 80th birthday portrait of Her Majesty The Queen.

Can you tell what it is yet? Well it looks very much like a knighthood to me.