Which I suppose makes writing a column a little like going to the toilet in public.

And in the case of this here strip that's probably especially appropriate seeing as it has been compared to loo roll on the odd occasion.

Personally, I'm a bit of a snob when it comes to stuff like that and if it's not Andrex I'm not happy – certainly using a newspaper sounds no fun – but that's probably not the point.

Loo role, though? Harsh but, as they also say, everyone's entitled to their...

Opinions are tricky little creatures to understand, I find. How can you possibly have a point of view on anything unless you know everything? And how can you ever know everything about anything?

They have a similar ambiguity to friends. Should you try and keep them for life or move on once they become dull?

People who change their mind after hearing new arguments are only ever accused of flopping – but stubbornness is rarely considered a virtue either.

The problem with subjectivity is it's all subjective.

Aubrey Beardsley had a few thoughts on thoughts. Who's he? A 19th-century erotic illustrator. Obviously. Keep up.

He also, according to one opinion, looks something like yours truly.
That's probably not a compliment seeing as Oscar Wilde described him as having a face like a silver hatchet.

But the guy had style if nothing else. Before he died at 25 he was a leading figure of the aesthetic movement.

He believed, like Wilde, that art – and life – should not provoke opinions on whether it was good or bad, right or wrong; only whether it was beautiful.

The messages in a book, a film or, say, a newspaper column, shouldn't matter as long as they are expressed with something approaching panache, flair or wit; as long as they look, sound or read nicely.

I like that.

It can make you feel safer when you're unsure about what you're saying. For, no matter how corroded a view is, as long as it's declared with style, you can get away it.

Everyone wants to be Dorian Gray, just for a day, right?

The problem is when you take it to extremes.

A Nazi rally was a visually astounding piece of choreography yet a 500,000-word government White Paper guaranteeing the eradication of child poverty would make seriously dull reading. If morality was judged only on beauty, would that makes Adolf's views superior?

And, if not, should Wilde and Beardsley and I (who agrees with their lines of thought) be treated with contempt?

How should I know? I spent last night watching repeats of Auf Wiedersehen Pet.

Opinions are like the mind. Everyone has one and I don't understand my own.