Well, haven't we had some fun this year? I suppose the answer, as usual, has to be yes and no.

For starters, I have absolutely no objection to ladies getting their kit off in public to delight us with their various bits and bobs.

When they look good, it can be very, very good. But when they look bad - oh dear, it's enough to frighten the horses!

So the worst theatrical bloomer of 2001 was Cilla Black and Barbara Windsor's ill-advised decision to flaunt their lumps and bumps, their creases and wrinkles at the Royal Variety Performance.

Even Joan Collins, across the river at the Old Vic, managed it with more style - though it did not stop her play closing.

As always, the church provided some wonderful laughs. What about the Rev Richard Farr, the Essex vicar who banned yoga classes from the church hall because he felt they were a gateway into other spiritualities, including eastern mysticism.

They were therefore inappropriate (that dreaded word) in church property. Oh, bless him!

Even better was Cheshire's Rev David Herbert who banned the singing of 'Onward Christian Soldiers' comparing it with the Taliban calling Muslims to jihad, saying its image of military might was (here we go again) inappropriate.

It was almost as bizarre as banning 'Land of Hope and Glory' from the Proms.

And didn't you love the curate from Derby, the Rev Andrew Thompson, a Harry Potter fan who thought performing magic tricks in the pulpit would help to liven up dull church services.

Talking of Harry Potter - what a disappointment! The film was wildly over-hyped, boringly over-long and sadly over here.

It even managed to upset the frightfully politically correct New York Times because there were so few black children at the Hogwarts school for wizards.

'At a time when London is filled with faces of colour,' the remonstrative critic wrote, 'the fleeting appearances by minority kids is scarier than the villain Voldemort.'

Still on colour, the TV writer Farukh Dhondy produced the most politically incorrect quote of the year.

He denied his Asian version of Pride and Prejudice, in which an Asian girl runs off with a black rap star, was a lesson in race relations.

'Blacks ought to be seen as what they are, murdering dirty swine,' he said, and added even-handedly: 'They are just as murdering and just as swine-like as any whites.' Couldn't you just hug him!

But do I sense the start of real anti-PC backlash?

After Birmingham renamed Christmas as 'Winterval', Luton has turned Christmas lights into 'Luminos' - in case non-Christian minorities are offended.

But Leicester's Muslim leader, Manzoor Moghal describes such behaviour as nonsensical, as only six per cent of the population comes from ethnic minorities.

It is absurd, he says, to ignore the rights of 94 per cent of the population in the name of some spurious concept of anti-racism.

I look forward to hearing much, much more from him in 2002.