Every December, I look back with delight at what I always reckon has been a vintage year for whacky stories.

But each year they get more and more bizarre - and 2002 has been one of the best ever.

Inevitably, many of them stem from our debilitating condition of political correctness.

It all started in rollicking style in Brighton. A firewoman at Preston Circus fire station sued East Sussex Fire Authority for sexual discrimination after she had been taken off active duty - basically because she was too short for the job.

She was just an inch over 5ft and could not even reach some of the equipment. What silliness to give her the job in the first place. The authority agreed a private settlement.

The RSPCA ran into trouble for drawing up a bill of rights for pets. It believed pets should be legally entitled to five 'freedoms' including freedom from hunger and discomfort. Pundits perceptively branded them loony, saying the same law should therefore apply to livestock, vermin and even wildlife.

I loved the folk at Bolton's job centre for refusing an advertisement for a 'friendly' catering manager because they felt it discriminated against applicants not lucky enough to have that kind of personality.

And what about the Fareham nursery school that banned the use of the words 'naughty', 'silly' and 'bad'. They were negative labels that might humiliate the children.

Even paedophilia can have its funny side when officialdom takes over. There was a bumptious attendant at a Bedford swimming pool who stopped a grandmother taking pictures of her granddaughter because of a rule designed to deter paedophiles.

At the nativity play in a school near Luton, parents were banned from taking pictures of their children in case paedophiles on the internet got hold of them. 'PC gone bonkers', said a local councillor accurately.

And from bonkers to conkers. What about the cub scouts who had to have written consent from parents before playing conkers. Kent scout leaders worried they might be sued if a child was injured by one of these lethal objects. In Newcastle, a council official feared a Punch and Judy show would promote domestic violence - so he banned it.

We taxpayers have been ripped off of course. A young criminal with more than 100 convictions won £75,000 from Bolton Council for sending him to the 'wrong' school which he blamed for turning him into a thug.

And we paid a £100,000 legal aid bill for Lithuanian asylum seekers to protest in the High Court, unsuccessfully, that the house Southwark Council offered them was not grand enough.

But my favourite story comes from Los Angeles. A farmhouse vegetarian restaurant called Gentle Barn had a rare treat for Thanksgiving and Christmas. While eating carrot pancakes, customers were given cantaloupe melon to feed friendly turkeys, nonchalantly strutting their stuff around the tables. Only in California!

I wish you all the happiest New Year.