There are two types of people in this world -- those who say they enjoy working and those who tell the truth.

Because let's be honest, who could enjoy working in an environment where all your colleagues undermine and plot against you at every turn, tell nasty stories about you behind your back and write your phone number on the toilet walls of disreputable drinking establishments?

But, on the other hand, there is one thing worse than going to work, and that must surely be staying at home, where you have to spend time with family.

But it seems that whatever brief sanctuary the office used to provide could be ripped away from us.

According to the Parenting In The Workplace Institute, more and more American businesses are capitulating to these lunatics and are allowing mothers to bring their kids into work.

Not in a bring-your-kid-towork-day type of thing, and not even into a crèche. But literally into the workplace. Every day.

It’s hard enough to trying to sleep off a hangover under your desk as it is, without having to listen to Sheila from Accounts’s happy accident bawling its lungs out, but according to Parenting In The Workplace:

“The baby programme attracts new employees… attracts new customers.” Really?

Can you imagine going for a job interview and after asking about the salary, the perks and checking out how rigid their sexual harassment policy is and then saying that the final cherry on the cake is the guarantee that you will be working amidst a load of kids?

Not surprisingly, the group has been set up by two women.

Honestly, children have taken over our pubs and now they want to take over our workplace? Maybe we should start drinking in their crèches, see how they like it.

THE FIRST ROUND IS ON ME

If there’s one thing we are collectively guilty of in the West, it’s the lack of care and respect we offer to old people.

Sure, they’re grumpy and dismissive and frequently smell of turnips, but they deserve respect. And, in the case of 88-yearold Jack Hammond, they deserve a drinking partner.

Hammond recently moved home, away from his friends and, like all men regardless of age, he particularly misses his local boozer and doesn’t want to go drinking in his new pub on his own.

So he’s now advertising the position of someone to accompany him to the pub twice a week, for seven quid an hour.

He’s quick to point out that he doesn’t want teenagers and people he has nothing in common with.

The former soldier’s interests include World War II, football and science.

So, you have a slightly grumpy old soldier who wants to talk about the war and footy and gadgets? Sign me up mate, but only on the condition that I get to pay him seven quid an hour for the privilege.

LADS, LOOK AWAY NOW

Yes, yes, yes, we’re all meant to be diverse and tolerant and accepting and understanding of all cultures. And that’s fine. To a point.

But no amount of diversity training will ever get us to understand the bizarre determination so many Thai men have for chopping off their wieners and pretending to be girls.

But it seems there’s a new problem with this crazy, erm, craze – cheap castrations.

In a country boasting 180,000 transsexuals, castrations are now as cheap as €75. But the speed and availability have caused some botched operations.

The local Medical Council has even intervened to warn that: “Castration can have damaging long-term effects.”

Really? You mean chopping off the Old Chap might have long term repercussions? If only someone had told me that last week before… well, it doesn’t matter now.

IN THE OCTOPUS’S GARDEN

We all know Octopuses are cool, smart and, in the case of the 1955 classic It Came From Beneath The Sea, they can actually destroy San Francisco.

But they’re dirty little buggers too – new research indicates that the average octopus often engages in strangulation and rough sex, has been found to stalk their love interest, kill rivals and even cross dress to inveigle their way into the lair of a female, while they have also been known to engage in gang fights.

Sounds like they would love Temple Bar.

AMY’S LOWEST POINT

Oh dear. The tedious car crash that is Amy Winehouse continues to stumble along, increasingly shabby, scruffy, and did I say tedious?

But they do say: in every addict’s life there comes a time when they hit rock bottom; a moment so shameful, so hideous, so utterly, publicly humiliating that you finally realise that you must see sense and change the error of your ways.

And maybe Amy has finally reached the bottom of the barrel - she has started to hang out with Aisleyne from Big Brother.

Standing out from even the crowd of narcissists and dangerously deluded cabbages that populated the BB house every year, the self styled “ghetto princess”, who speaks like she comes from South Central LA and not London, has struggled to keep any sort of a profile and it looks like she has decided to stick to Winehouse.

Now if that isn’t time to actually ask for an intervention, God knows what is.

- Ian O'Doherty