PEOPLE in Thornton-le-Beans, North Yorkshire, are understandably upset that their village chapel of ease could be converted into a home. They have even formed a Friends of the Chapel committee to fight the planning application.

"Our shop and post office have closed and we don't want to lose the chapel as well. It's our local heritage," say campaigners. This is admirable, fighting talk. But where have they all been for the past ten years while the chapel has lain unused? A church without its people is just an empty building. And that's all the villagers are losing now.

The Thornton-le-Beans crisis merely reflects what is happening nationwide, with church attendance declining so dramatically senior bishops are urging clergy to meet people in shopping malls and housing estates. These campaigners may win the battle to keep their chapel. But they lost the vital part of the "local heritage" ten years ago.

I HAVE never read the Darlington Football Club fanzine Where's The Money Gone?, edited by 16-year-old David Maclean, It clearly didn't please chairman George Reynolds, who has banned the youngster, a fan for four years, from the ground for life. But shouldn't any 16-year-old passionate, skilful and energetic enough to produce a fanzine be given some credit? Many other businesses dream of inspiring that sort of enthusiasm in their customers. So what if the lad's critical? He could have a point. If I were George, I'd put him on the board.

A NEW report says more than 80 per cent of elderly people prescribed strong tranquillisers in a sample of British nursing homes were given them for no medical reason. The drugs, it appears, are being given routinely to quieten patients with "behavioural problems". If the same treatment was meted out to difficult toddlers in a nursery or even to animals in a dogs' home or a zoo, there would be a public outcry. Sadly, ill-treatment of our elderly doesn't seem to inspire the same sort of protests.

AUTHOR Salman Rushdie and his glamorous girlfriend Padma Lakshmi have split up amid an entertaining row over who dumped who. She says she was bored but Rushdie claims the Indian-born model was not "intellectually challenging" enough for him. But if he's so smart, how come it took him four years to work this out?

URI Geller advised his good friend Michael Jackson to do the Martin Bashir interview in an attempt to improve his image. Now he is appearing on TV and radio, railing against Bashir and Granada, claiming the whole thing has been a stitch-up. But it's a bit late for a "world renowned psychic" like Uri to get incensed now. Shouldn't he have known this would happen in the first place?

THE "devastation and distress" Catherine Zeta Jones and Michael Douglas say they suffered as a result of having snatched photographs of their wedding appear in a magazine is nothing to what they are putting the British public through during their court battle for damages. Pointing out that they don't care about the money, Zeta Jones stated that, while £1m might mean a lot to people in the court, it "is not that much for us". Well, that's really rich. As I can feel myself coming over all devastated and distressed, perhaps I can claim damages.