WHO needs hellfire when we’ve got Twitter?

Once upon a time the fear of hell and eternal damnation was a good way of keeping people in line. But preachers aren’t much given to hellfire and public condemnation these days. Not so many people would hear them if they did. But we’re even stronger on public humiliation.

Make a fool of yourself and every embarrassing moment, piece of daftness or less flattering picture can be winging round the world to millions before you’ve even sobered up. Grim.

Especially bad for the young who are (a) more inclined to daftness and (b) more likely to have friends filming them.

Celebrities are fair game, even Royals aren’t immune. Remember Prince Harry in all his naked glory?

Those of us of a certain age can only be glad we were young and foolish before the age of smartphones.

Pity the poor girl drunk enough to perform sex acts, as they say, with 20 young men in a bar in Magaluf. That wasn’t brave or bold or anything to do with feminism. It was just drunk and sad.

But she didn’t deserve a worldwide audience and public shaming, the modern version of putting people in the stocks and throwing rotten veg at them.

If your children are about to go off on their post A-level jaunt, there’s not much point pleading with them to “be sensible” – fat chance.

Far better to push the international pain and mockery that could follow when all the pictures get on social media. Not to mention in some subsequently outraged newspapers.

They could be there forever, to haunt you when you’re job hunting or meeting the in-laws.

There’s another side, of course.

There’s a bit of a fashion at the moment for successful 30-something women to reveal accounts of their misspent youth – sex, drugs, hangovers, one-night stands and too many embarrassing memories for your average Facebook account.

But, having survived it all and now happily married mothers, they’re turning their misspent youth to great use by writing about it, in memoir or fiction.

So if your 18-year-old daughter says she’s off to Magaluf “to do some research for a book”, then be afraid. Be very afraid.

KATE Reardon, editor of Tatler, told pupils at a top girls’ school that good manners are as important as good grades for girls wanting to get on in the world.

Of course they are. Dealing decently with people not only is an intrinsically good thing to do, but it also means they’re more likely to be nice in return and help you too – as well as wanting to employ you.

The only thing wrong with Kate Reardon’s advice is that it should apply equally to boys too.

Meanwhile, research from Canada proves what we’ve always thought – that great careers start with humble summer jobs. It’s the best way to learn how to get on with people and the routine of work so that you’re eventually ready for the grown-up world.

Good manners and a summer washing-up – any future employer will snap you up immediately.

SO Harry Potter’s going grey and a scandal sheet gossip columnist is dropping leaden hints about his marriage to Ginny Weasley.

JK Rowling’s image of her Potter heroes in their thirties is inspiring thoughts of what other childhood heroes would be up to once they had grown up.

Julian and Dick from the Famous Five would no doubt be smug and successful and in the Tory cabinet, William and the Outlaws would be organising party nights in Ibiza – and as for Noddy, Big Ears and Mr Plod, I fear they might be the subject of a Home Office inquiry…