Several hundred comments to denounce a single harmless gap-year student. Poor guy. I thank Jesus there were no blogs or internet when I was his age. This Max is no more twattish than any other British teenager, only he has the misfortune to have a father who got him a column in The Guardian.

Is nepotism out of control in our newspaper industry? I remember Victoria Coren used to write columns about her A-levels in The Daily Telegraph. Those were superb, but then she starts abusing her position of authority to get a job for her drooling old parent, the self-styled “Alan”. And I was, like, we all admire your daughter, Mr Coren, but don’t you have any talent of your own?



Max Gogarty, student, now on his 37th gap-year.

CLINTON, OBAMA FACE OFF IN KEY PRIMARIES

Don't vote until you've seen this:

This year’s Academy Award nominees for Best Documentary Short:

Sari's Mother
"On a farm in central Iraq, a mother struggles to care for her ten-year-old son, Sari, who is dying of AIDS..."

Freeheld
"Facing death from cancer, Laurel Hester spends the final year of her life fighting a policy that will not allow her to transfer her pension..."

The other two finalists are set in an Indian slum and a Colombian prison.

Jesus, how depressing. The trouble with making films about an Iraqi boy with AIDS is that next year they are going to want to see an Iraqi boy with AIDS whose foot got blown off by a mine. And then an amputee Iraqi orphan (with AIDS) whose sister got raped. And so on ad nauseam.

Merely dying of AIDS in Iraq is no longer cutting it, I’m afraid. Not gloomy enough.

I’m not sure that being a 10 year-old AIDS victim would even be that bad. I remember when I was a kid my parents gave me some Star Wars figures for Christmas. But this kid Greg down the street got Star Wars figures, and a Millennium Falcon, and a new bicycle and a trip to Disneyland.

And I remember thinking, “I wish I had leukemia”.