OKAY then. So you see a girl of 17 or 18, wearing your average Saturday night outfit of not very much, clearly having had too much to drink.

She’s tottering home alone in the early hours, maybe through the town centre or the road from Catterick Garrison, pausing every now and then to throw up, sit down or laugh hysterically at nothing, while groups of equally drunken, whooping and shouting lads stagger across the road to see more.

Do you think “Well that’s fine. She’s entitled to dress just as she likes and the men out there must take responsibility for their actions?"

Or do you want to stop the car, haul her in and take her home out of harm’s way and pray she’s not your daughter?

Exactly. Chrissie Hynde speaks sense.

Recounting the time she was attacked by a gang of bikers when she was 21 and high on drugs, she says it was pretty much her own fault. Women who dress provocatively and who are too drunk to know what they’re doing are “Enticing someone who’s already unhinged” she says, adding “You have to take responsibility.”

Her comments have, of course, caused outrage for those who say that it’s men who have to take all the responsibility for rape, not their victims.

Yes, but...

Surely it’s only grown up to take some responsibility for yourself?

People shouldn’t steal money – but we still don’t leave wodges of cash in an unlocked car. We do our bit to prevent other people doing stupid things.

If you make yourself so vulnerable that you don’t know what you’re doing and you can’t do anything about dodgy situations, then you’re putting all responsibility for your safety onto some other random creature. What if the other person is equally drunk and witless?

Someone’s going to take control. Out there in the real world, best make sure it’s you.

Bee Bill

BBC Breakfast’s Bill Turnbull says he’s leaving the show next year because he wants to spend more time with his bees.

Well, I bet that made his wife feel good...

Living longer

WANT to feel better, look better and live longer? Of course you do. If there were a pill that guaranteed to do that, there’d be queues down the street to buy it. Roads would be jammed, stores would be overwhelmed and there’d be punch ups in the aisles. It would be Black Friday meets the opening of a new Ikea store all rolled into one.

The Northern Echo: Experiencing "senior moments" may be a good sign rather than a cause for concern, research suggests.
Walking more may well be the answer to living longer

People would pay a fortune for such a potion. How daft, then, that it’s easier and cheaper than that. The answer is in our own hands – or feet.

The latest research from the European Society of Cardiology tells us what deep down we really already knew – a 25 minute walk a day will provide that life-enhancing, life-extending miracle. Free. No fancy bottles. No money. No queues.

So why are we so reluctant to get off our bums and put one foot in front of another? What sort of bloody-minded stubbornness does it take?

Life plays nasty tricks on us. Stuff happens. One day, it might be your turn to be unable to walk. Then, how you’ll wish you’d done more of it when you had the chance.

Worrying image

The Northern Echo:

BUT there are limits... last week Carol Vorderman revealed that she’d had a nasty fall while walking on her treadmill. Naked.

Is this normal behaviour? Bad enough that it happened, but to tell people..

Worst of all, I can’t get this worrying image out of my mind.

Minecraft money

The Northern Echo:

'THE problem with getting everything is that you run out of reasons to keep trying,” says Minecraft inventor, Markus Person, 36.

He should know. He sold his computer game company for $2.5 billion and now lives a lonely life in his enormous mansion. Even partying in Ibiza he says “I’ve never felt more isolated.”

He thinks it’s his riches that have set him apart from other people. Maybe. He might be a lovely, easy, out-going lad.

On the other hand, the sort of person who has spent years locked away playing and designing fearsomely complicated and brilliant computer games might not just have developed the social skills that fit him for this ordinary world.

Money’s great. But it clearly isn’t everything.

Sleeping separately

The Northern Echo:
Andy Murray and wife, Kim

ONE in six couples now sleep apart. Blame it on the snoring, the smelly feet or one partner’s passion for late night TV. Or just because they can.

Posh people – like the Queen and Prince Philip -have always done it. But when families of twelve grew up in two bedroomed houses, even a bit of a bed was a luxury, let alone a whole one to yourself. So now we have more space, of course some people want to use it.

Two people, hover much they love each other don’t have to spend 24 hours a day together. A bit of a separate life is always healthy.

Meanwhile, newly-married Andy Murray has said that his relationship with wife Kim Sears works so well because they spend so much time apart.

Mmmmm. Yes. I love that theory. Brilliant for well-established couples. But they’re expecting their first child early next year. Maybe Kim won’t see it quite that way when she’s been up ten nights in a row with a screaming, squawking baby – and Andy’s happily tucked up in a nice peaceful hotel room on the other side of the world...