SO I have been writing my weekly column for four years now and I still have no idea if an individual column will be well received or not.
This week’s did quite well, so I had a look using my metrics thing to see which ones have been most successful and which would die, unloved, in a field off the M56.
Here are the top three, in descending order of popularity:
A Man Of The World, in which I try to buy The Sex Issue of GQ without anybody seeing me.
When The Train Comes In, in which I have to stand next to the toilet on a train from Newcastle to York.
The Very Surprising Doughnut, in which I discover a doughnut impaled on my front door.
And here are the bottom three, in ascending order of popularity:
Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer III: Electric Boogaloo, in which Father Christmas attempts rapprochement with his old colleague,
If I Had A Penne For Every Lie…, in which I try to open an “easy to open and reseal” bag of pasta.
Life Is Full Of Ups And Downs, in which the only other person in my lift expels wind through her bottom.
What I have learnt is this.
People prefer doughnuts to pasta.
People prefer women going to the toilet to women trumping.
People hate reindeers and Christmas.
Above all, I have learnt that sex sells, so I am going to change my byline picture to one of me in a gimp mask, and if you don’t like it that is your own fault.
Gary Bainbridge 
You’ve obviously also discovered that people REALLY care about biscuits! Fours years, eh? Long may that continue!
Of course, this doesn’t really give an accurate idea of what was popular, since it only indicates what people read, not their opinion of it. I would have thought that the best indicator for how well any article was received would have been the number of people who went on to read the following article, since reading further is the best indicator of the appreciation thus far.