The Frankie and Benny's chain has a 1950s New York theme.

We ate our meal under the gaze of a gallery of entertainment and sports stars. I thought, "This'll be fun; bet I can identify them all..."

I couldn't. I got Sinatra, Durante, DiMaggio and Jackie Mason. Ailz added Rudy Vallee and Mario Lanza. And that was it.

Who were the big palooka with the broken nose and the tiny dame with the corkscrew curls? Looks like they were in love. Beauty and the Beast.

They'll both be dead by now.

I thought I was an expert on mid century pop culture. Seems not.

All those wiseguys with their shiny hair and shiny eyes and shiny teeth. Repellent.

And that got me thinking about Doris Day.

The way you do.

How that unmoving blonde helmet- later made infamous by Mrs T- has to be nastiest hairstyle ever.

Cute little actor, accomplished comedienne, utterly unsexy.

Though I love Que Sera, Sera.

This is the decade I was born into. It couldn't be more alien.

Piers Morgan, former editor of the Daily Mirror, was banging on about "useless celebrities" last night. Channel 4 gave him a whole hour to eviscerate people who are famous for having slept with footballers or come second on Big Brother.

Piers is brash and coarse and bullying and I wound up on the other side. Most of the "useless" celebs he interviewed were actually quite charming. He was rude to them and they responded with guffaws and giggles. I especially warmed to Jade Goody (who is famous for giving a fellow contestant a blow-job under the sheets in the Big Brother house.) She's big and bosomy and jolie-laide and full to over-flowing with the life-force.

I mean what harm do these people do? They amuse us, they entertain us. Does it matter that they have no very obvious talent? It's not as if anyone takes the seriously.

At one point Piers prety much gave the game away. Talking to acerbic, old Anne Robinson, he admitted that he resents Goody and co's easy fame because he himself had to graft for his. So, yeah, it's actually all about the Protestant Work Ethic.

Yawn.

Meanwhile he'd commissioned a poll to discover the 10 celebs that the Great British public considers most useless. We counted down through the programme until we came to David and Victoria Beckham at numbers 2 and 1. Now Posh and Becks may be among the most irritating people around, but "useless" they're not. Posh was a member of one of the most successful and influential pop groups of recent years and David is a world-class footballer. At this point Piers's ugly argument wobbled and went out of focus.

He tried to pull things back with a piece of closing rhetoric. If we don't change our ways, he intoned, it'll be too late and.... well, what exactly? All the people of real talent will emigrate? evaporate? Sorry, Piers, but that's just silly.