During my long stay in hospital last year, my friend Katie made me laugh when she came to visit me, bringing a perfume called KARMA as a gift. Ironic, given the sheer volume of halfwits who’d been babbling on social media that – by being struck down by a spinal abscess which left me unable to walk – I was finally getting what I deserved after a lifetime of being beastly. Even louder than they had been a decade before, when I got the same response after my son committed suicide.

Many things mark one out as an ocean-going idiot. But the use of the word “karma” – often jazzed up into “karma’s a bitch!” – comes pretty near the top of the linguistic scale. It was bad enough in its original incarnation, but when Westerners got their paws on it, it became just something to put on a cushion like LIVE LAUGH LOVE.

I’ve noticed that people never say of their own bad luck, “Well, it must have been my karma – that’s why I’ve got cancer!” but only when misfortune befalls people they dislike and/or envy. But expecting logic from karma’s barmy army is like expecting it to rain diamonds.

The concept of karma – originated in the dharmic religions of Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikhism and Jainism – broadly refers to the idea of cause and effect; that if you are good in this life, you will come back as happier in the next life, whereas if you are bad in this life, you will come back unhappier in the next life. Of course, to believe this, one has to believe in reincarnation, which I don’t.

But the footballer Glenn Hoddle obviously did when way back in 1999 he brought this rather smug and doomy idea to mainstream notice in........

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