The campaign to have doctors, surgeons, consultants and other representatives of the sententious medical clergy banned from all public places gathers pace. For the moment, we are concentrating on those areas where they pose most danger to the general public: hospitals and surgeries.

But there is growing evidence of a genuine desire to see these awful people barred from restaurants and public bars, too, or at least confined to clearly signposted, hermetically sealed remote areas somewhere near the toilets, where the effects of their pious droning and occasional homicidal impulses can be minimised, perhaps by the use of lead screens and stocky, unforgiving bouncers.

According to the British Medical Journal, more than 30,000 people in the UK are killed every year by doctors, consultants, surgeons etc through mistakes, misdiagnoses and so on. The BMJ adds: "Many more are injured or suffer other consequences." The magazine does not explain what these "other consequences" might be, although I suppose we might guess. Headaches, nausea and a particularly distressing form of eczema are all fairly common symptoms of prolonged social exposure to doctors. In severe cases - a result of, say, being trapped in a lift with a thoracic surgeon - anaemia and vomiting can occur.

The BMJ figures show conclusively that doctors kill more people in Britain each year than are killed either directly or indirectly as a result of smoking tobacco. And, don't forget, those staggering statistics do not include the ordinary people actually murdered by medical staff, who are either psychopathic or suffering from such weird ailments almost entirely confined to the medical profession, such as Munchausen's syndrome by proxy. No - the BMJ has collated details only on those people accidentally killed by doctors, through their incompetence, negligence, arrogance or stupidity.

In the US, meanwhile, where smoking is a crime comparable to being, say, black and poor, the doctors do away with almost 100,000 citizens every year.

It's hardly surprising, then, that the doctors should wish to shift the blame a little and create a smokescreen, if you'll pardon the pun. The British Medical Association recently voted by an overwhelming majority to press for a ban on smoking in public places, as if it were smoking, rather than themselves, which posed the graver threat to mankind. Sandy Macara, the former boss of the BMA and currently top dog in some expensive and ineffectual quango called the national heart forum, says: "The majority of the population want these measures."

No they don't, Sandy. You might want them, but the majority of the population is more worried about you and your kind than it is about smoking. In fact, according to the most recent opinion poll, 94% of the population is opposed to a ban on smoking in all public places. This came from a survey of people aged between 25 and 44 in London for the Metro newspaper - in other words, a section of the population which one might more normally expect to swallow the fatuous shibboleths of modern health fascism with more eagerness and alacrity than anyone else.

Sandy and the BMA aren't alone, of course. The chief medical officer Liam Donaldson has called for a ban on smoking in public places. And the BMA's Dr Vivian Nathanson has concurred, saying: "There can be no debate that passive smoking kills."

No debate? Perhaps he means he hopes there isn't a debate. The latest study of the risks of passive smoking - which focused on 118,094 people in California - showed that non-smokers exposed to passive smoking experienced no greater risk to heart or lung disease than non-smokers spared such exposure. This work was not carried out by British American Tobacco or Wills but by the American Cancer Prevention Study. Still, if Viv says there can be no debate, who are they to dissent?

Some people will argue that my comparison - people killed by doctors versus people killed by smoking - is unfair: we all use doctors, whereas only 46% of us smoke cigarettes. But I'm not sure this objection holds up. Most of us avoid a visit to the doctor at all costs unless we are wracked with pain and cannot obtain the necessary pharmaceuticals independently. In other words, we may swing by the surgery every couple of years or so for a prescription, thus giving the doctor little scope to do us serious harm.

Whereas, by contrast, those of us who smoke do so at least 10 times each day. Or even more; much, much, more.

The secret of a happy relationship - lies, lies and more lies

Apparently, it has now been scientifically proved that all women tell bare-faced lies all the time to their partners, or husbands, or boyfriends or shagees (take your pick). They lie about everything, always. I'm astonished that this has come as a surprise to anybody. Why would women not lie, when men lie perpetually?

The comparatively recent notion of romantic love - with its prerequisites of monogamy, fidelity and blind devotion to one person - is dependent on serial lying, or at best a fudging of the truth and the ability of both partners to swallow whole the most outrageous porkies which, if they heard them repeated third-hand, would draw from them gusts of cynical laughter.

And with the advent in the past 30 years or so of what we might call serial monogamy, the various lies have become even more transparent and difficult to sustain.

But they are necessary lies and perpetuating them is, you have to say, a hugely entertaining undertaking, fraught and exciting and the closest many of us get, these days, to real danger, physical or mental.

Mutual suspicion, mistrust and intrigue have become as vital to our sexual relationships as alcohol and contraceptives. Suspicion has replaced chastity as the single thing that serves to perpetuate or prolong our interest. Many years ago, a former girlfriend of mine was so suspicious - with justification, as it happened - of my nocturnal movements that she went through my contacts book and obliterated or altered the telephone number of every woman within it. Among the numbers she destroyed were those for the politicians Betty Boothroyd, Gillian Shephard and Glenys Kinnock; also scribbled out were contact details for Woman - a magazine - and the radical Welsh periodical Rebecca. Her thinking being, presumably, just in case.

But, of course, I knew she looked through my contacts book and had taken the appropriate remedial action. The women she was really after were filed under the most boring, fictitious, male, work-related headings. So, Tiffany, a vibrant and interesting American girl I met late one night in a bar near the Brewer Street market in Soho - and the first female I had encountered who wore a silk chemise - was described, rather blandly, as "Bob Davies (Howard League for Penal Reform)." It was a problem, sometimes, remembering who was who - but hell, it kept our relationship going.

And, as I found out later, my girlfriend's intense suspicion was merely a case of what the psychologists call displacement; she was at it like the clappers with half of the local pub. But it was a fine relationship and lasted for a good three years - which is, incidentally, the average span of heterosexual relationships these days, married or otherwise.