It’s not very often that you find yourself siding with Justin Bieber.

If I am totally honest, until now I have always considered the over-rated pop star to be a bit of a twerp.

And although I don’t often take much notice of what the flighty showbiz media are saying about him or the other twerps, I couldn’t help clicking on stories on the internet telling me about the “bonkers” demands that Justin has allegedly laid down, ahead of his concert tour of India.

We are supposed to be outraged because he has "demanded" a ping pong table, a massage table, essential oils and sweets - among other goodies - to be delivered backstage.

But as my holiday with my lovely wife is coming sooner rather than later, I ought to confess that when we go ‘on tour’ we also expect certain things to be provided.

If you have booked some hols yourself, I dare say you are guilty too.

A ping pong table? Well, as we aren’t going to an uninhabited island in the Outer Hebrides, staying in a yurt and living off wild mushrooms, we will be expecting some kind of recreation to take our minds off lazing around, and if we get the chance we will do some pinging and ponging.

In fact, we are thinking of buying a table so we can play at home.

Essential oils? If you stay in a posh hotel, little luxuries like that are left for you in the bathroom. But we stayed in a cheaper place in Italy once, where the plumbing wasn’t too special, and wished we had had something to make the place smell like home.

A massage table? I am no pop star, but I have played drums on stage - mostly badly - and even I know that performing live is far more difficult and stressful and tiring than it looks, so I’d be surprised if a professional didn’t prepare for a concert like a footballer prepares for a match.

And sweets too? Well, I once asked my wife - and this is a true story - if we should also buy some for the journey to the airport and she replied: “No. We’ll buy them when we get there.”

But even she understands that we always take sweets on holiday as a little treat.

So you see we are all guilty of wanting to surround ourselves with familiar and nice things, or just practical ones, and never more so than when we are away.

We even take a bar of Pears soap with us. You know - the supposedly ‘transparent’ one that isn’t quite.

A holiday isn’t a holiday without a bar of Pears, and we would forget our swimming costumes before we forgot that.

I could make a list of plenty of other things we always take with us when we are away from home, and a much longer one of things we like at home.

And the older I get, the more I like to surround myself with things I like.

So I am actually applauding Justin Bieber for doing the same, and can’t help thinking that the same people who are criticising him are also the ones who watch those awful programmes on the telly that tell us to de-clutter.

I don’t care for Justin Bieber’s crummy music, but I would far sooner sit through an hour or two of his wailing rather than listen for a single minute to minimalists telling us that having a few comforting things around is somehow sinful.

I am making a list of people not to trust, and those who worship at the altar of de-cluttering are already on it.