When comparing things, we are deciding if they differ from each other. Not to or than each other.

Well, I could go on. But who would believe me? If I went on to describe it as weighing two and a half kilos, wired in, and rented to us by the State-owned post and telephone monopoly people would think I was making it up.

So I won’t mention that it didn’t even have a screen, for that would be unimaginable.

Strange idea in the 21st century, really. Television broadcast by satellite from the other side of the globe has become commonplace. So what was it like paying £15 to watch something that wasn’t quite a film, and wasn’t quite like being at a live performance?

It did feel a bit detached – almost voyeuristic. We in Manchester were witnessing something, more than directly engaging in the performance. The audience in London applauded but we did not. There was raucous laughter at the NT – and a few muffled guffaws in Manchester.

We had a better view than those in the theatre’s cheap seats. The camerawork was sophisticated, mixing close-ups with wide angle views and audience shots. It was not just a static projection of the entire stage as I had feared it might be. We also got a backstage tour in the interval, conducted by Emma Freud.

And what of the play itself? A five-star performance from the truly talented James Corden, supported by a very strong cast – including a skiffle band. It’s a farce based on Goldoni’s Servant of Two Masters written in 1743, brought up-to-date (actually to 1963) by Richard Bean. The script is sparkling, the slapstick comedy timed to perfection.

I’m really glad I went, and just a bit sorry that I didn’t clap at the end. It transfers to the Adelphi Theatre in London’s West End from 8 November, with the original cast. Go and see it!

I think it’s now time to purge the English language of other gender distinguishing words. Let’s stop saying ‘he’ and ‘she’. Let’s just choose one and dump the other. ‘He gave birth’ sounds strange now, but at one time, so did ‘She is an actor’.

This dangerous and illegal practice exploits the fact that the victim cannot stop in time to avoid hitting the vehicle in front. In other words, it can only succeed when the victim is driving in an unsafe manner. As Rule 126 of The Official Highway Code says:

Drive at a speed that will allow you to stop well within the distance you can see to be clear.

If all motorists obeyed this rule perhaps there would be no incidents of ‘crash for cash’.

Q: Which town is not only the birthplace of Baroness Bakewell, but is also the home of Lottery Street and Hollywood Towers?

A: Stockport! Its inclusion in Crap Towns: The 50 Worst Places To Live In The UK is therefore clearly a travesty.

Does the ‘full price’ include an exorbitant 50% profit margin which they can completely afford to give up and still pay shareholders their dividend?

Instead of seeing a bargain, we should be seeing red. How dare they ask £9.00 for a bottle of wine which they can comfortably sell for £4.50?

Of course the 50% off claim should simply be ignored. Buy it if the price is right, leave it on the shelf otherwise.

But what do you do about the ‘buy one get one free’ and ‘buy one get one half price’ offers? I sometimes find myself in a mental loop like a PC that needs rebooting. Somewhere in a security control room I am probably being watched via CCTV. A bloke frozen to the spot staring at the merchandise. My internal conversation goes something like this:

1. OK so Crunchy Nut Cornflakes are £2.99
2. but if I buy three cartons I get them for the price of two. That’s £5.98 which works out at £1.99 a carton. An attractive saving!
3. But wait – I only want one, and haven’t got room for three.
4. So I should just buy one then.
5. But that means giving Sir Terry Leahy an extra £1 for the privilege of purchasing only what I need. I’m not falling for that!
6. But I want Crunchy Nut Cornflakes …

I was a keen coin collector in those days, and had already enthusiastically bought several sets of the new coins which were available at the Post Office as early as 1969.

I also purchased Britain’s last complete set of pre-decimal coins – struck in 1953 and sealed at the Royal Mint. This comprised nine coins including the farthing (there were no less than 960 in a pound!) and both Scottish and English versions of the shilling (twenty to the pound). The sealed set cost £12.10.0 in 1969 (equivalent to £12.50).

Taking inflation into account, this equates to over £165 at today’s prices. I saw it as a wise investment then, because numismatics was flourishing and prices were rising steadily.

Unfortunately decimalisation virtually killed coin collecting overnight. Whereas previously you could rummage through the change in your pocket and pull out a Victoria coin in collectable condition, most of the coins in circulation after 1971 were brand-new. The exceptions were the old shilling and two shilling pieces which were the same dimensions as the 5 pence and 10 pence pieces and which therefore remained in circulation.

Also the sixpence – equivalent to two and a half new pence – was reprieved until 1980 due to public pressure (partly sentimentality, partly because parking meters and other slot machines accepted sixpences and there was a fear that these would be converted to 5 pence operation, stoking inflation).

Decimalisation was a controversial costly operation which did raise prices (and wipe out the value of my coin collection!). But who now would argue that we should not have converted from a system with twelve pennies in a shilling, and twenty shillings in a pound?

So let’s crack on now with the final stages of metrication and consign stones, feet, inches and yards to the history books. We won’t miss them.

It’s a frightening experience, watching it increment every ten seconds:

It stood at 6,891,575,316 as I started writing this post, and the total number of people alive will continue to rise throughout today, this week, this year …

As a species, shouldn’t we be doing something about this? And I don’t just mean making sure implantable contraceptives actually work.

How can human population growth not be the Number One Priority – above the world economic crisis, above climate change, above HIV, above every other concern which occupies our thoughts as we hurtle around the sun, trapped on this very finite ball of rock?