I come from Bristol, and my only job apart from writing was when, as a 15-year-old runaway, I briefly sold perfume in a chain chemist in central London. I was very good at it, but sadly I lasted only two months before the police spotted me and took me home. I figured then I needed something involving shorter hours, higher pay and less concentration, so I started planning to be a writer instead. I have earned my living solely by scribbling from the age of 17 to my current age of 51, and it's true what they say that if you do a job you love, you'll never work a day in your life. But some days, I still go off into a daydream when I get a whiff of Ma Griffe, and I think about what might have been...

My mum worked in shops too, both local and supermarkets, when she wasn't a cleaner or factory girl, and my dad's union Usdaw represented shop workers, so I've got a soft spot for them. That's one of the reasons I felt so disgusted when I heard about those total tossers in my hometown attacking Tesco.

And I immediately thought "Oh, it's those little creeps all over again – Pinky Floyd Jnr, swinging from the Cenotaph – but this time, they're smelly." Look at the Great Satan Tesco, started by 21-year-old Jack Cohen in 1919, after serving with the RAF during the First World War, who invested his £30 demob money in surplus food stocks and a stall in the East End of London; on his first day he had a £4 turnover and made £1 profit; now £1 in every £8 spent by shoppers in this country is handed over in these glorious emporiums. Look at Topshop, owned by Philip Green, another working-class man from an immigrant family who created his business empire from nothing. Jealous, stupid bourgeois students/squatters/sad-sacks, OR WHAT?

Once more, it's a case of "the silly led by the sinister", to quote Christopher Hitchens' line about the Not In My Name lot. The leaders may be hard, and hardcore, but the followers are the biggest bunch of public school tools this side of Coldplay. They won't be as rich as the Gilmour step-spawn, but most of them will be cut from the same cloth – pretending to be starving students/squatters when really they're Little Lord Fauntleroys who've swopped a cummerbund for a keffiyeh.

The boys who love smashing up big shops (vandalism) have more in common with the girls who love having smashing big shops (retail therapy) than they realise – they do it to make themselves feel bigger, better, shinier people. They are both equally silly, and looking for self-respect in all the wrong places, but I far prefer the girly version as it doesn't actually injure innocent people. (The Selfridges New Year sale being the possible exception.)

And look at the little Ahava shop in central London, which has been so shamefully picketed by activists that we have now seen the first forced closure of a Jewish shop for QUITE A LONG TIME – give yourself a pat on the back for carrying on Hitler's work so well, gang! – by a landlord who simply got sick of all the trouble.

Fighting the good fight to make the world safe for artisan shops where some dopey Sloane charges you three quid for one warty, unwaxed lemon – ooo, it's the Cuban revolution all over again, innit! Would it have been equally revolutionary to smash up the shops of hard-working Indian immigrants when their sheer effort displaced the white-owned shops which had always met the needs of their own "community"? No, because progress happens and if you don't like it, you're a reactionary. You probably also don't believe in cheap flights for chavs, just like you don't believe in cheap food for them. You may not wash, but you could just as easily be a Tory MP, or Prince Charles.

There's more than one way of being elitist, stuck-up scum. Some snobs wear wing collars and toast the Empire, some snobs wear Palestinian scarves and burn the flag. But what the Bullingdon Bullies and the Tesco-attacking Toytown Trots have in common is that they both think they know what's better for people than people do themselves. The only difference is that the BBs send a cheque to cover the damage next morning to whatever oik watering hole they've destroyed, whereas we who fund the public purse – as ever – pick up the bill for the damage the TATTs do. Chuck both sides into a pit, let them fight it out and let's make it another workers' holiday.

Having great nails says so much about Jo Whiley

I really dislike Jo Whiley, the DJ. Because she's so slender and pert and well-preserved? Because she's so well-paid – £250,000 a year for her Radio 1 show as recently as 2009 – despite having all the charisma of a thrice-used teabag? Because she has always been the chief mainstream cheerleader for the sort of music the brilliant Andrew Harrison characterised as "indie landfill"?

I'm not sure. But now I have a brand new reason to loathe her. In a Sunday paper she opined thus: "I've tried to teach my daughter that simple things, such as having great nails, speak volumes about you and make you feel fabulous."

Yes, having great nails DOES speak volumes about you but – unless you are under 25 or your looks are your living, in which case fair play – they say you are a wet, worthless wuss who doesn't do their own housework and whose image of herself is something like Lady Muck crossed with Queen of the May.

I had to have a manicure once, for a TV show I was making – never again! The poor little Korean girls, the size of children, sitting in those fetid pamper-pits breathing in goodness knows what chemicals all day, while painting the podgy paws of stupid white chicks – ick! Whisper about THAT on Radio 2, Whiley, you dunce!

Obama's made me into a Glenda Slagg

The execution of Osama bin Laden brought to my mind the time some half-wit of a hack wrote a piece making fun of hackettes who had crushes on OBL – and I was the main example! You can imagine how, as a devoted enemy of Islamofascism, I winced on reading some other broad's description of his molten brown eyes and his lush headgear, put into my mouth.

But I didn't sue or demand a silly apology even though the only thing I'd ever written about OBL was: "A certain sort of wet Western self-loathing lefty, if they came across Saddam Hussein and OBL spit-roasting their very own poor old mum, they'd say 'Deserves it – she looked at them funny, thus offending their precious Arab pride!'"

This time though, it is personal. His dancer's grace, angel face and, yes, his molten brown eyes – Oh, Mr President! You've finally made a Glenda Slagg out of me...