MAYBE the tide is turning…Maybe the charities are finally beginning to realise that hitting us over the head with heavy emotional demands and rubbish pens is not the way to our wallets.

Last year the growing unease with the big charities’ fund raising methods came to a head when we heard that a 92-year-old poppy seller had been bombarded with 200 charity begging letters a month.

She wasn’t the only one. We’re all tripping over a sack full of mail on the mat. Even in a good cause, it’s bullying . We were all so hacked off with it that charities were told to back off and clean up their acts – especially on the late night phone calls.

Emotional blackmail is a powerful weapon. “Don’t you care about the starving children/displaced refugees/blind/sick/incurable children/ dogs or donkeys?” asks the voice on the phone.

“Of course I do!” I shout “But not all of them, all at once.”

And if you send them anything, it just encourages the blighters. More phone calls, emails, demands, “hand-written” letters and piteous pictures.

But not any more. True the amount of mail remains ridiculously high but since the outcry last year we’ve definitely had fewer phone calls and raffle tickets and it’s months since any earnest young person has come to my door pleading for me to sign up a direct debit.

Then the Royal National Institute for the Blind rang, thanking me for my help in the past and asking if they could call on me again. Well no, I said, sorry, there’s so little money, so many good causes and they’ve had their turn.

I braced myself for the hard sell, the wheedling tone, the blackmail, the undoubted list of good things they do.

But no.

“Of course,” said the caller pleasantly. “Would you like me to take you off the list so you won’t be bothered again?”

Yes please. And I put down the phone in a daze. A charity that didn’t bully. I felt a warm glow, kindly disposed, expansive, generous.

So much so, that I might even send them some money…

LAST Saturday I was utterly hacked off. It was raining, I had a painful eye infection and a swollen knee. All I wanted to do was wallow in the armchair, eating cheese and pickle sandwiches and reading a trashy novel.

Instead, I did my tax return… If a day’s that bad, you can’t make it much worse. As I do not have squillions in offshore companies, this didn’t take me very long, just a matter of raking round in the carrier bag that passes as a filing system.

But it served two purposes. First of all it made me feel Very Virtuous at getting a tedious job done. Secondly, it meant that I wouldn’t have to waste a nice healthy, happy day on such boring admin.

A dreary day for a dreary task. Quite cheering really.

THE artist formerly known as Cheryl Tweedy/Cole/Fernandez-Versini now apparently wants to be known simply as “Cheryl.”

Well yes. Easy to see why. On the other hand, to be known by a single name – Madonna, Elvis, Dylan, Adele – is something just for superstars.

Let’s hope that Cheryl isn’t left with people asking “Cheryl? Cheryl who?”

A headmistress in Milton Keynes sent home 29 girls on the first day of term because their skirts were too short or their trousers too tight. One of the reasons she gave was that tight clothing is very unflattering to bigger girls.

Well, wasn’t the whole point of school uniform to be seriously unflattering? When I started at my very old-fashioned grammar school we actually had to wear gymslips – and the hems had to touch the floor when we knelt down.

Well developed 15-year-olds in gymslips – it must have been some old men’s fantasy.

But when I was in the second year we all rebelled. We all cut the tops off our dreaded gymslips and turned them into skirts instead. More comfortable and more flattering – and much easier to hitch up somewhere round our bums.

We all thought we looked amazing. But looking back at photos now I cringe.

Maybe that headmistress has a point.

JOHNNY Depp’s apology for smuggling their Yorkshire terriers into Australia was weird and wooden.

I thought he was meant to be a great actor. Maybe he should have got someone else to write the script…

SHOCKED at the news of the death of Victoria Wood – so sudden, so private, we hadn’t a clue – I found myself later going round the house singing The Ballad of Barry and Freda. You know, “Let’s do it… be mighty, be flighty, come and melt the buttons on me flameproof nightie…” and laughing at the fun of it.

There are worse epitaphs and far worse ways in which to be remembered.