A BIG high five to all the brave and brilliant souls who took part in Race for Life and Pretty Muddy at the weekend.

We’ve made great strides in the battle against cancer in recent decades and it is thanks in no small part to the various and valiant fundraising efforts of ordinary men and women.

Every penny helps and every year we move a step closer to eradicating this brutal disease.

Well done, each and every one of you.

Yes, it’s truly terrible, but it’s not about you “WHAT on earth shall I write about?” I asked.

“Well, there’s only one thing you can write about... anything else would look a bit trivial.”

Such was the consensus at a dinner party the other night when everyone else was looking forward to a lie-in and I was contemplating an early start in order to write this column.

“But I don’t want to write about that – what can I possibly say? It’s awful. The people who offered up their homes, their taxis, a cup of tea, a shoulder to lean on – they were amazing. That’s all there is to say.”

One of our number was in her twenties.

“Just don’t do that thing that everybody does and say how much it’s affected you,” she said. “Social media’s full of stars saying how much they feel for Ariana Grande and the people who were there. They act like they were directly affected. It makes me sick.”

And she has a point.

We seem to be teetering on a very thin line between paying our respects and morbidly joining in.

I heard a woman, who lives in Manchester, speaking on the radio and telling the interviewer: “I could have been at that concert.”

But she wasn’t.

It seems it’s not enough to be appalled by such an atrocity, it’s not enough to sympathise with the victims and their loved ones – instead we need to go a step further and claim it has directly damaged us or could, given an entirely different set of circumstances, have damaged us. We need to have had a narrow escape.

To behave like this is to diminish the grief and pain being endured by those who actually were affected.

Perhaps it’s the effect of reality TV, this modern obsession with knowing every spit and snog of people we don’t know, never will know and whose lives have nothing to do with our own.

I heard someone compare the reaction to the Manchester bombing to the hysteria which hit the nation when Princess Diana died – “everyone wants to be seen to be mourning,” he said.

Don’t get me wrong – it is right that we show our respects, that we offer our sympathy and support in light of such events.

Vigils such as the one held in Swindon this week show solidarity and extend kindness to those who are suffering.

But to claim your vicarious pain is in any way important when you weren’t there and nobody you knew was there is insensitive and arrogant.

If I had lost someone in Monday night’s horror, I’d be thinking ‘back off – this happened to me, not you. How can you possibly know how I feel?’ I was in Edinburgh when Thomas Hamilton took a gun and killed 16 children and a teacher in Dunblane.

The event cast a pall over the city. It was eerie. Nobody smiled that day and everyone spoke in hushed tones.

However, there was no public hand-wringing, no gnashing of teeth, and no celebs beating their chests in 140 characters or less. There was just a quiet, dignified respect and sorrow.

But now it seems it’s not enough to remember where you were when something momentous happened – you need to remember where you were and work out how you can claim your portion of the tragedy. We’re living in an era of fake news – let’s not indulge in fake grief as well.

My thoughts obviously go out to everyone who has been affected by Monday night’s terrorist attack in Manchester.

But let’s show some real respect and stop picking over the bones of their heartache and leave them to grieve in peace.

I’M intrigued by racist people who insist they’re not racist when they clearly are.

It must be interesting living life in this alternative reality.

Take Captain Paddy Singh, who is running for election on behalf of UKIP in North Wiltshire.

Captain Singh is not racist because he says he’s not.

On Twitter he posed the little puzzler: “At times I ask myself, were the Nazis right in herding the Jews into concentration camps.”

Mmm. What on earth could be considered racist about that?

What I’d really like to ask, Captain, is if you and your comments are not racist in your book, can you give us an example of what is? The mind boggles.