QUITE simply, we’re in the wrong game. We should have become Z-list celebrities, making our fortune on the after dinner speaking circuit or opening waste recycling facilities.

I was once asked to speak at a dinner. Afterwards the secretary of the host organisation explained: “We didn’t offer you a fee. We just put a fiver in our charity box if that’s okay with you.” That’s how big a celebrity they thought I was. A bit different from Countryfile presenter John Craven’s value when it comes to public appearances. According to figures revealed by the Sunday Telegraph, under the Freedom of Information Act, Craven pocketed £10,000 for supporting a recycling program in Cumbria.

Somebody should have told Keith Chegwin because he only trousered five grand for doing a similar job for local authorities in Worcestershire.

I am sure John Craven did a thoroughly professional job. He used to host the awards night for a firm I worked for and was an assured and well prepared host.

But the celebrity circuit has got totally out of control and there are some real turkeys out there. I’ve heard one ex-sportsman speak three times and each talk has been exactly the same as the last one. Four grand for 15 minutes of dreary anecdotes? Hardly value for money, but while people out there pay it they will continue to cash in.

A lot of celebrity jobs are dished out by town halls. Some are not even open to the public. In times of spending austerity this money for old rope is ripe for cutting. And being told their fiver fee is going in the charity box would bring a few of these ex-sportsmen, actors and politicians down to earth with a bang.

SHALL I COMPARE THEE, DOUBLE FLAKE,

TO A SUMMER’S DAY?

SUNDAY was one of those rarities of the English summer, a day when the sun cracked the paving stones and suddenly acres of pallid flesh were exposed to public gaze. People got out their mowers and cut the grass for the first time in ages while tourists languished on the lake shores soaking up the rays like they were in Greece or the Costas, but without the bother of getting home after their travel firm had gone bust.

And suddenly, in the distance, came an unmistakeable reminder of happy childhoods — the jingles of an ice cream van as it toured the streets and the estates.

It’s funny how something like that chimes with us. As a kid I recall the ice cream vans going round at weekends and sometimes in the evenings if it was particularly hot weather. There was something reassuring and uplifting about their individual chimes. You could recognise which firm’s van it was by the slightly different tones. And the summer holidays seemed sunnier somehow.

Sadly, Sunday’s delight was ephemeral. By the time we had counted out our money the chimes had disappeared into the distance along with their lollies and those wonderfully unhealthy nougat ices.

Mind you, not everyone shares my juvenile delight at the sound of the ice cream van’s approach. I was reading a recent article on The Guardian website by the paper’s northern correspondent which referred to an ice cream van incurring the wrath of the law in one Cumbrian village.

The threat of a £30 fine for sounding the horn in a road ironically called Trumpet Terrace caused a bit of a stir amongst the locals. It seems the officer of the law was not a local and The Guardian quoted a police spokesman as saying there was no intention of stopping the ice cream man from sounding his jingle.

The Guardian’s man in the north must have a thing about ice cream vans for he went on to describe the discovery of a book entitled Fifty Years of Ice Cream Van Design in his newspaper’s library. A truly unputdownable tome that clearly had him licking his lips for a double flake covered in that strange fruity red liquid whose contents are known only to those in the trade.

I suspect this has not been a glorious summer for itinerant ice cream men in the Lake District. However, Sunday was their golden summer. Like the magnificent peacocks and red admirals that descended on the buddleia bushes, it was a day, all too quick in its passing, to savour.

GO COMPARE … BUT SOMEWHERE ELSE

STRANGE how television adverts catch our imagination, but after we have been exposed to them day in, day out they start getting on our wick.

I am absolutely fed up with the “Go Compare” man. Once I could not get the theme song, advertising an insurance comparison website, out of my head. As TV ads go it was catchy and witty.

But now I have to leave the room every time — and it seems to be at least 100 times a day — he appears on screen singing that same annoying ditty, which has become vastly more irritating since it was mixed with a calypso band on a desert island.

Gio Compario is really Wynne Evans. I suppose you’ve got to work where the money is, even when you are one of the UK’s leading tenors.

Shifting Kerry Katona from Iceland stores released one heavily annoying burden from the shoulders of television viewers. But now we’re saddled with meerkats and a bloke with a huge curly moustache. One TV research company described the past year as being “a vintage 12 months for irritating ads”. It wasn’t wrong.

RARE POLITICAL HONESTY

I COULD never vote for them. They are far too eccentric to be taken seriously and some of them do get a bit wild eyed when it comes to Europe.

But you’ve got to admire the UK Independence Party’s almost naive honesty, which is such a rarity in politics today.

Ukip leader Lord Pearson admits frankly that he’s “not much good” at the job. The party deserves someone better and he is standing down next month.

The 68-year-old former businessman draws attention to his age and says he can’t get to grips with party politics. It didn’t help that he failed to read the party manifesto before the election.

What a pity Gordon Brown didn’t show the same refreshing honesty and admit he wasn’t up to the task of leading Labour into the election.

THE LOTTERY OF LIFE AFTER MONEY

CUMBRIAN lottery millionaire Callie Rogers was just 16 when she won nearly £2 million.

Six years on the money has hardly enhanced her life. Parties, flash cars, breast implants, depression and losing control of her children. She says she has finally grown up. One would question that when she is plastered all over a magazine and newspapers wearing nothing but a few £20 notes.

I think it’s outrageous that the lottery can give that sort of money to an immature teenager when you can’t put a pound each way on a horse until you are 18.

Yes, the lottery has done good things. But the money it gives out doesn’t fall like manna from heaven. It’s our money. Yours and mine from our losing speculations.

It’s worth remembering that the next time they tell us how generous they have been yet again. And it’s worth remembering, too, that money does not always bring happiness. Just ask Callie Rogers.