We’re all sulky toddlers now – even when launching space probes

I wonder how long it will be before we actually crawl back into the womb? The average mental age of our population stands at about four. A decade or so back it was surely higher — maybe six or seven, I would guess. But we have regressed with great rapidity, as if we were characters in a Philip K. Dick short story, hurtling backwards towards zero. One day soon we will have a national nappy shortage.

My wife made me watch part of a programme called The X Factor last Sunday. She said she wanted to watch this egregious shit because she was ‘tired’ and ‘there’s nothing else on’. I’m 90 per cent certain there was football on some channel somewhere, but I didn’t press the point. Anyway, the bit I saw was a ‘sing-off’ between two morons who were both incapable of singing and possessed of not even the remotest vestiges of talent. After they’d screeched their way through a couple of vacuous ballads they stood on stage hugging one another, like frightened toddlers at a pre-school nativity play. The audience — presumably adults, nominally at least — shrieked and howled like young children used to do in the Crackerjack audience. The hysteria was so overwhelming I wondered for a moment if they were all mentally ill. I assume they are the sort of people who go to places like Disneyland — without the kids. Adults are the big market for theme parks these days, not children.