MEDIA mogul Chris Evans has confessed to a penchant for exposing himself as he walked around the office or in the middle of meetings at his Ginger Media Group.

When female staff annoyed him, he would wave his appendage about, saying: "I bet you haven't seen one of those for a long while."

Sniggering about his little habit this week, he says: "Getting your willy out is the funniest thing in the world. Everybody laughs." I'll bet they did. Evans, after all, was the boss. We've all been in intimidating situations where someone in a position of authority or respect - whether it's a manager, the person who pays the wages or even a dinner party host - cracks a tasteless or offensive joke and everyone else goes along with it, laughing politely, but only through fear, embarrassment or self-preservation.

It's the one area where the otherwise brilliantly observed The Office fell flat for me. Because every time the boss David Brent did or said something appalling, which he clearly thought was absolutely hilarious, everyone stood around in stony, embarrassing silence, faces blank and unmoving as he continued to perform, desperate for a reaction. The brutal truth, of course, is there would have been stifled, nervous laughter all round, which would have been much more painful to watch.

Evans isn't hilarious. He's a bully and a megalomaniac. His behaviour is nasty and threatening. If the office junior had done the same thing, he would have been banged up for indecent exposure and sexual harassment. Meanwhile, Evans is back in the limelight, fronting and producing high profile shows again. Perhaps if the public greeted him with a David Brent-style stunned silence, he would realise just what a plonker he has become.

A FELLOW bishop, commentating on the radio on the death of the former Bishop of Liverpool and former England cricket captain David Sheppard, remarked that when he gave up sport for the Church, it was the equivalent of Michael Owen ditching football to become a vicar. The idea seemed ludicrous, but why? The thought of Owen, Beckham or Rooney swapping their mansions and designer clothes for draughty vicarages and dog collars in order to serve others is simply inconceivable.

Bishop Sheppard's life highlights just how sport has changed. Today's top athletes are encouraged to be totally self-absorbed. They, and their teams, are expected to devote themselves to little else apart from winning, for which the material rewards are immense. But there is little emphasis on morality, virtue or duty to others. Head teachers have called for footballers to curb their bad language and behaviour on the pitch because it influences youngsters. They are right. But it is the insidious effect of today's selfish, money-grabbing sporting culture on our children that worries me more.

THERE are times when I think the Queen is just fantastic and whatever we're paying her, it can't be enough. Like recently when, introduced to a gathering of famous British rock stars at a palace party, she worked her way down the line asking: "And what, exactly, do you do?" "Have you been playing long?" "Do you play an instrument?" appearing puzzled when they referred to their bands, Queen or Led Zeppelin, as if she had never heard of them. But of course she knew who they were. The Queen has a huge team of advisors who brief her thoroughly and whisper into her ear before she shakes hands with carefully selected guests. Clearly as fed up of egotistical, overblown celebrities as the rest of us, she was merely taking them down a peg or two.