After four solid days of tabloid tosh, I really wish that Frankie would go to Hollywood. Or Pinewood, Norwood, Halewood…….anywhere that the British media don’t know or care about.

In case you were in a coma this week, Frankie is the little twerp on X-Factor who decided he’d get into the coke and Groupies depravity before he’d even made it to the finals, let alone won. The lad was clearly out to wave everything about, just to make sure the scandal sheets would notice him. A case, perhaps, of premature gesticulation.

I’ve no idea what’s going on here. Frankie looks like the love-child of Max Wall and Twiggy. He can sing – he really can – but he gives off an insincere humility suggesting that, underneath the knobbing habit, he has a lot to be humble about. However, in recounting every thrust and pump of his R&R this week, the Red Tops soared beyond parody and on into jeopardy.

During the CM&S committee’s version of the Yes/No interlude with James Murdoch last Thursday, when the CEO of Newscorp was asked if he would ever consider closing down The Sun, I remember thinking “Don’t be daft”. Now, to be honest, I think it would be a good idea if every last one of them from the Mirror to the Sport was given the choice of either self-immolation, or relaunching as Tombola Weekly.

Would this be censorship? Undoubtedly: we would be censoring the use of brainless, uninteresting bollocks about (literally) pillocks, tits, and things which, in most instances, never happened. In the case of Frankie’s antics, for example, he was reported at one point to be in three places at once with five different women. Unless the boy is some kind of CERN neutrino – so well blessed by the Creator that he can service all points of the compass at the same time – then most if not all of the accounts were invention.

Now as an ex-adman who spent thirty years being ruled by truth regulators whose pedantic interpretation of every smile and statistic was beyond imagining, I resent this. The tabloids may be news media, but if the Red Tops can’t be arsed to at least approximate to reality, then they are just another product looking to be advertised. And the complete fiction on both front and back pages means one should be allowed to see this as an outer or wrapper – aka packaging. So just as with fag packets and every other form of cancer, they should carry a health warning. Nothing too overt: I thought maybe something that makes the point honestly. As in, ‘Everything in this paginated turd-salami is a pernicious distortion of real life, and represents an infantile escape vehicle aimed by cynical sociopaths at oafish fatheads’. I think that should just about do it.

We had to travel up to Blackpool today in order to see Dad. At 90, he has little or no idea who anyone is, but he looks content. When spending time now with this wisp of a shadow of a man who, at his peak, was a razor sharp perfectionist, the main thing I feel is so glad he is too out of it to know about Frankie, X-Factor, Sarkozy, Junckermann, Cameron and all the other mediocrities getting almost everything wrong in our culture.

It’s not a whole heap of fun travelling by car in UK 2011. When I was 4 and my brother 8 (or thereabouts) the greatest treat was to be woken at 5 am on Sunday morning by Dad – usually because he couldn’t sleep – and told we were going off to St Annes on Sea for the day.

Today at that time, it would be a journey of no more than an hour. In 1952, it was a long, winding journey through country lanes and along badly paved roads, with the ever-present possibility of overheating coolant or a snapped fan-belt. We probably arrived about 10.30ish, at which point Mike and I tore up and down the sandhills catching imaginary baddies until it was time to go back to Prestwich.

But one shouldn’t don the rose-coloured specs too easily. Travelling by car around England in the 1950s, and trying to take care of even the most basic needs of life, was a major undertaking. Toilet-spotting was a vital skill, and the chance of anywhere decent to eat was slim indeed. Sometimes my Mum would pack a sandwich lunch, and sometimes we stopped for breakfast at a B&B near Kirkham called Mrs Chadwick’s. My brother couldn’t pronounce this properly, and always referred to the lady as Mrs Twaddlewick. She had silver hair in a bun, and always seemed to be covered in flour.

Pop did his basic RAF training at Kirkham Camp, and Mrs Chadwick took pity on the young fresh-faced airmen who looked as if they didn’t have enough to eat. Before going overseas, Dad told her that, when the war was over, he’d come back with his family to eat there. He was as good as his word.

Despite the tedium of motorway driving and traffic jams, things are better now for young families on the road. The romance may well have gone, but so have the curly sandwiches and surly service. Petrol may be ridiculously expensive, but at least it isn’t rationed. And I’m not sure engines even have fanbelts any more.

Sadly, the innocence, patience, manners and quiet aspiration have also disappeared. We are become a nation with Great Expectations, and these can never be realised by just saying, as is the way now, “Wull, I’m titled inni?”

All young generations can rise to the occasion given half a chance. Clear out the Red Top crap, make interesting telly programmes, give them an education teaching independence of thought, and this (plus the worst depression in history) will soon render most of them admirable. One thing’s for sure: they’re going to get the chance whether they want it or not, so they better make the most of it.