Deborah Ross: My silly season hat is going to waste this year

If you ask me...

If you ask me, I'm guessing the silly season has been cancelled this year, which is a great shame, as I'd already bought a hat for it – Selfridges do good silly season hats or, if your budget won't stretch, try Debenhams – plus, just this morning, I saw the face of Denise Van Outen in the suds at the bottom of my washing-up bowl. She is, I agree, not quite up there with Jesus but, even so, in most silly seasons it would be enough to command the front page of The Sun as well as the centrespread and a hotline to call should you spot the face of a celebrity in your suds. I'd like to spot Clive James next time, as I've always been a fan, so I'm looking out for bald, portly suds with a brilliant mind. I once did spot some suds with a brilliant mind, but as they were rather thin and knobbly, I think it was probably Dr Jonathan Miller, who I'm just not so keen on, frankly.

So it's tough when the silly season has been cancelled and your Denise Van Outen suds count for nothing and, for all we know, there may well be great white sharks circling off the coast of Cornwall. They may even be circling Hampstead ladies' pond. They may even shoot out of your taps next time you run a bath. In fact, if I were you, I'd lay off any sort of bathing at the moment, just as I would lay off going outside, as who is to say we aren't currently suffering from an epidemic of killer squirrels? I might say so, and you might say so, but if the Daily Mirror doesn't say so, who is ever going to believe us? Killer squirrels could go mad right now and bludgeon your children to death and you know what? No one will care.

It's all a great shame, and I'm sorry. Sorry that I had to pack my hat away. Sorry that there will be no animals doing funny things. (I know of a hamster that can moue like Victoria Beckham and was hoping its photograph would make Page 3 of The Daily Telegraph, which is the Carnegie Hall of these things.)

And sorry, Denise, that I had to swoosh you down the plug hole although I will give you this: you're a fighter. I had to do several swooshings and then effectively hold your head under. Denise, I would like to offer you a word of advice if I may and that advice is this: sometimes, love, you have to accept it's over, and it's just not your year. Clive James would understand. He'd go easily, I think.