If you want my advice

Tomorrow I am starting a brand new advice column. But what is an advice column? What, come to that, is advice? Ah – now there I CAN help you. "Advice is something given by somebody who doesn't need it to someone who's not going to use it."

Tomorrow I am starting a brand new advice column. But what is an advice column? What, come to that, is advice? Ah – now there I CAN help you. "Advice is something given by somebody who doesn't need it to someone who's not going to use it."

Nice one. Like all quotations, that has a spurious attractiveness in that it sounds true, and a pleasing symmetry which makes you feel it should be true. Also, I just made it up, which predisposes me in its favour.

A reader writes: Then it's not a quotation, is it?

Miles Kington writes: I'm sorry?

A reader writes: If you just made it up, it's not a proper quotation.

Miles Kington writes: Yes, it was. It was a quotation from me.

A reader writes: If you're the only person who has quoted it, that's not enough people to make a quotation.

Miles Kington writes: Oh really? And how many people does it take to quote something before it becomes a quotation, may I ask?

A reader writes: Ask as much as you like. You won't trap me into naming a figure. Anyway, a quotation is only something said by a friend of yours which sounds too good to be made up by a friend of yours.

Miles Kington writes: That's nice. Who said that?

A reader writes: I did. You're not the only one who goes around making up quotations, you know.

Miles Kington writes: Oh, so YOURS was a quotation, was it? Even though you're the only person who's ever said it?

(Advice to readers. Keep your nerve. This can't last for much longer.)

A reader writes: All right. Tell me this, clever clogs. At what point does a clever remark actually become a quotation? When Oscar Wilde said that work was the curse of the drinking classes, was it a quotation as soon as he said it? If not, how long did Oscar have to hawk it round the drawing-rooms of London before people starting quoting it? And what do you call a quotation before it becomes a quotation?

Miles Kington writes: If you want my advice, there comes a point when you should ignore readers. I think we have just reached that point...

So, as I was saying, advice is something given by someone who doesn't need it to someone who isn't going to take it. Advice is the fruit of one person's experience applied to someone else who may be allergic to that kind of fruit. Advice is the act of trying to get someone else to dress up in a costume which looked good on you. And above all, advice is something which comes with no after-sales service. How often do you hear about the after-effects of the advice given by agony aunts in advice columns? How often does the recipient of the advice write in three months later and say: "Thank goodness you advised me to kick my husband out – I did so, and I can't begin to tell you the relief I have felt ever since. I only wish now that I had kicked out his mother as well"? The truth of the matter is that very few of us take advice, unless the advice is to do something that we wanted to do already. If we are stuck with a partner who is causing us grief, and all our friends advise us to leave them, why do so many of us refuse to do so? Is it because of the children? Because of inertia? Cowardice? Or is it, much more likely, that we like the quandary we are in more than the quandary we would find ourselves in?

Many years ago I overheard two women in Washington Square, in Greenwich Village, talking about the boyfriend of one of them, who had moved into her apartment and was proving hell to live with.

"Why don't you just kick him out?" said the other.

"Oh God, I just don't feel I know him well enough to kick him out yet," said the other.

Now, there was a woman who needed advice. The sort of advice provided by a brand new advice column starting in this space tomorrow. An advice column which will give two conflicting answers to each problem, thus ensuring that you like at least one of them. An advice column whose motto is provided by these words: "I have found out that the best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want, and then advise them to do it."

A reader writes: Is that a quotation?

Miles Kington writes: Yes. From President Harry S Truman.

A reader writes: Oh. Fair enough.

More from Miles Kington