There is a simple solution for the many parents who jammed TV switchboards to complain about the first showing of the cartoon advert for the morning-after pill Levonelle.

The advert was shown post-watershed, but many teenagers still saw it. Perhaps in future the complaining parents should have their impressionable teens tucked up in bed by then, teeth brushed, lights out. Impractical? Not easy to get a teenager into bed that early? I understand. But then, if these parents have scant influence over the mundane bedtime aspect of their child's life, what makes them feel they can control the sexual part of it?

First things first. Why wouldn't a parent want their teenage child to see an advert about the morning-after pill? Do they think this will be the first time they'll have heard of it, that, at school, or out with friends, all their precious, purer-than-pure darlings talk about is oiling their skateboards or getting up a campaign to bring back Follyfoot

Then the dread day the nasty morning-after pill advert comes on screen and there's an anguished cry of: "Mummy, they're putting sex thoughts into my head in a bad, accessible way." Sweet, innocent teenagers everywhere collapse to the floor with an attack of the vapours. Dream on, mater and pater.

The truth is that, one way or another, the vast majority of teenagers are already thinking about sex. To stop the boys in particular, you'd probably have to boil their brains in neat bromide. So what's so wrong about encouraging these young, hormonally driven people to consider contraception, even the morning-after pill, if necessary? Nothing, when you think about it, except perhaps that it jars with the modern British penchant for ostrich parenting.

It used to be the children who couldn't bear to imagine their parents naked "doing it". Now it seems to be the parents squeamishly blocking the thought of their progeny becoming in any way sexually active, all of which is quite understandable and normal. Still, how deep into the sand do we want this parental ostrich neck to burrow?

Indeed, it has long seemed bizarre that whenever this subject comes up there is only the same droning, judgmental talk of the wayward teens and the feckless "bad parents" who allow them to be wayward. Sure, they exist, but what about the other sorts of parents - the prudish, controlling, anti-liberal "good" and "respectable" kind? Aren't they part of the problem, too? What about those people, much given to panicking, screeching like some breed of middle England Amish, about TV adverts for morning-after pills, while all the time exuding a Victorian mentality that does their children no good and even slightly reminds one of Michael Jackson creepily putting covers over his children's heads?

Continue down this route and what do we end up with? Short answer: what we've always had. Too many British teenagers who know nothing about sex, or protection, bar a couple of giggly biology lessons and any ill-informed gibberish they can glean from one another. Yet more groping, blundering, lost innocents who use the fingers-crossed method of contraception at a time in their lives when they couldn't be more fertile and end up hiding bumps under jumpers. Or tearfully confessing in time for their delightful pre-uni abortion, the one occasion there isn't a Hallmark card for. Yet.

Is this what we are doing when we are "protecting" our teenage children from those dreadful, corrupting, morning-after pill adverts? Aren't we basically calling for an information blackout, harking back to the Dark Ages, instead of instigating something useful, the dawn of a kind of Stark Ages, of information, information, information, so drilled into our youngsters' psyches, that even when the hormones hit, they will have some chance of making it through? One really has to wonder what kind of "good parent" would want barrier protection against that?

It's time for your happy pills, Hillary

Should we start worrying about Hillary Clinton? In the middle of a speech about climate change, the US secretary of state suddenly pronounced it "overwhelming, like trying to lose weight, which I know something about".

Hmm, disintegrating ozone, rising oceans, global destruction, the same as Hillary's struggles with her Spanx pants - you can see the link. Well, actually, you can't, but here's Hillary to illuminate: "You think, oh, I only have to lose X number of pounds, but it seems such a faraway goal. It's kind of like world peace and so therefore why even try?"

Rrright ... "Now Mrs Clinton, come this way, that man in the white coat wants you to sit down and take these pretty pills, after which you'll feel a lot better."

Happily, Clinton went on to see "the point" in both global warming and world peace but, dare we ask, what is going on here - has ennui finally hit home with our would-be first female president, following that very public hammering from Obama?

Or are we going too deep and it was just a truly killer fat day? Was Clinton subconsciously linking global warming to the diet pill, Alli, just on sale in the UK, which has generated widespread anecdotal controversy all over the internet for bringing on certain noxious emissions of its own?

It's along the lines of: "It's great, it really works and I'd tell you more but unfortunately I've just gone and pooed myself." Come to think of it, climate change, clothes change. Perhaps our Hills was right.

Susan should be thankful she's not in The Apprentice

Regarding Britain's Got Talent's Susan Boyle, you have to wonder whether public attitudes to reality TV are starting to verge on the surreal. The poor woman spent the week scurrying around, head bent, as furtive as a mass murderer going for sentencing at the Old Bailey.

Her crime? To get a new hairdo, which upset people who keep harping on about how Boyle must remain unchanged, as if she were some kind of public woodland or listed building. This flags up the self-serving undercurrent in all this Boyle-worship: aren't we all super for loving her voice and not minding about her appearance?

This has nothing to do with how Boyle looks, but how we think we look (the fabulous, non-judgmental British public). Talk about Gwyneth Paltrow's "frenemy" (the friend who was really an enemy); Britain is one big "frenemy" to Boyle right now, to the point where we get sulky when she attempts to escape from the pre-assigned role bestowed upon her by the media.

Over on The Apprentice, the reality gets yet more surreal. It's one of my favourite shows, but what's with this year's sexist bullying? Maybe it's the editing, but Ben, a sprouting potato in braces, and Philip, the missing link that should have remained missing, are constantly rounding on female colleagues, shouting in their faces, in a way they simply don't with the men. Moreover, the female victims who've complained have been fired. Is this reality? Surely in the real corporate world, this kind of behaviour results in a tribunal?

Bizarre. How can people cry sexist when Alan Sugar inquires about previous contestant Katie Hopkins's childcare arrangements, but when it comes to all-out, misogynistic bullying, not a peep - it's just "good telly". Likewise, does the nation really care if a middle-aged churchgoer wishes to treat herself to a demi-wave?

Basically, it boils down to experience. Long-time fans of reality TV such as myself know how to pace ourselves. It's a gift. By contrast, just like those kids said to be rotting their brains on Facebook, certain members of the British viewing public seem to be taking this kind of television either far too seriously or not quite seriously enough. Maybe it's time for reality TV to get a reality check.

A dullsville shade of paler

Hard to take seriously the news that Procol Harum have been fighting over who wrote dreary, overrated, prog anthem A Whiter Shade of Pale. Sure it's had a zillion radio plays, but Whiter ... remains the aural equivalent of falling face first into a pile of hippy vomit in the Green Fields at Glastonbury. Subtract money from the equation and they'd probably all be fighting to prove they didn't write it.