Here's what we have to do, if we have any sense of social conscience and care about the fragile individual. We need to stop watching reality television featuring the likes of Katie Price. We need to shut down the money supply these shows offer, the enablers who fund the former model’s crazed excess, of buying her way into chaos via big houses, big cars and big publicity relationships.

And if we’re going to live out own lives vicariously via reality TV exploits of celebrities, we should instead celebrate our home-grown output such as Jules and Greg’s Wild Swim. This show (a 28-minute free ad for Visit Scotland) deliciously endorses Calvinism (lite), the pleasure which comes from depriving yourself of pleasures such as body heat. It reinforces, by its sheer simplicity, the need to learn to love, (as the great American philosopher Sedaka once suggested), laughter in the rain, to giggle at the midges and even embrace the morning sky when it’s the colour of tarmac.

But back to Katie Price for a moment. This week’s television output, Making Babies, described by sections of the media as ‘grubby’ in its self-absorption, suggested the woman once known as Jordan had parted with any sense of propriety in revealing the process of trying to conceive a sixth child with her third husband.

This wasn’t about investigating the real heartbreak felt by hopeful parents in the UK, but yet another demonstration of a high-level narcissism matched by a money grab. Over the years, we’ve watched as Price has earned fortunes –........

© Herald Scotland