Those readers wishing to provide celebratory birthday cakes, cards, or even examples of the folding stuff in plain brown envelopes are encouraged to forward the same to the newspaper's main offices.

If large numbers gather outside said offices for a few hearty choruses of "For he's A Jolly Good Fellow!" I trust police officers will not disperse them with water cannon.

I have penned more than 250 columns for the News Guardian in that period, a total of 170,000 words. Should those words be laid end to end - well, the activity would achieve absolutely nothing at all.

So what is the life of a columnist like, I almost hear someone enquire? Do I dash off these 700 words in the blink of an eye with barely a second thought, or are they carefully crafted over several days, the process of tortured creative anguish which is the inevitable travelling companion of those who live their life by the pen (steady – Editor)?

Readers write to me in fits and starts, and I am also stopped in the street by those wishing either to engage me in intellectual debate on the contents of the latest offering, or punch me on the nose.

At such times, a columnist can feel an important contributor to the community, part commentator, part jester, a Shakespearean fool able occasionally to insert the odd telling truth into the nonsense of everyday life. At other times, he feels it's all a waste of time, and wonders about doing something useful, such as unblocking drains.

For while it is true that at some time in your life you may ring an emergency number for the unblocking of said drains, never once will you ring an emergency number to summon a columnist. We serve no useful purpose whatsoever.

Denied of our services you would neither starve to death nor develop an unsightly rash. Were I to go on strike, nothing would grind to a halt.

And yet, as someone once almost said, we do not live by unblocking drains alone. And the useless can be useful.

Yet I am often approached by those who do wish the column to be more functional. Can I highlight the wonky paving stone outside their front door, or publicise the Boys Brigade annual jumble sale? At a recent reading to mark the publication of selected columns, (What? Still not bought your copy of the book? Come, come!) I was asked if the column had achieved anything concrete.

Not much. It helped in the successful resistance to the planned Cullercoats giant mobile phone mast, and in the campaign to save the invaluable Linskill Centre in North Shields. It also persuaded The Briar Dene in Whitley Bay to change the categorisation of all-female pub quiz teams from 'disadvantaged'.

Such examples may have done little to shift the planet on its axis, or move the earth in other ways, and I confess to having failed in my attempts to reverse Metro's bone-headed policy of trusting cold technology (ie CCTV cameras) rather than humans (ie more on-train inspectors) to make the system safer and more secure.

Perhaps this week's report highlighting the uselessness of such cameras might help.

Nor was I able to persuade North Tyneside Council to revitalise Whitley Bay with a hi-tech mile-long pier.

Plus which, in the age of the blogger, the world is now awash with columnists. I may soon be extinct.

My only hope is that some people will still take pleasure in opening a book or newspaper, (as against staring at a computer screen) for their reading experience.

Such computer screen are omnipresent, though not overloved.

And writing a column is a refuge for those poor in other skills, such as using a spanner or screwdriver. Or driving. Or remembering people's names. Or going into supermarkets.

Or much that is practical.

Thus I quietly intone: Happy Birthday To Me.

PETER MORTIMER

Mortimer at Large, Selected Columns, is now published by IRON Press/North Tyneside Libraries.