JUST to confirm my suspicion that the the whole of the legal profession in this country could be quietly disposed of without any adverse affect on society, I read that a Derbyshire couple have been allowed to claim compensation through the courts for the activities of a couple of spooks.

The spiritually troubled husband and wife are asking for their money back because they say they were not told that the house they bought was haunted.

Repeated attempts to rid the house of its unwanted guests by an exorcising vicar have proved fruitless so the only recourse is to a County Court judge.

Perhaps instead of a compensation claim, the couple should pursue an eviction order against the irritating spooks to force them to move on somewhere else.

If they promise to put the kettle on and do the ironing now and again, they can come and live at my house.

I just wonder if the ghosts will be called as witnesses when the case comes to courtand if so, can they claim expenses from the legal aid budget?

One the one hand the case could be regarded as downright silly. Ghosts do not exist. They are a product of our half-conscious insecurity fooling around with our imagination, in a process triggered by a combination of external random circumstances, such as the dark, or a cool breeze.

As one of my relatives used to say: The dead wont do you any harm - its the live beggers you have to watch out for.

The clergy have to believe in ghosts of one kind or another because their whole livelihood is based on the existence of a spiritual realm, but as for the rest of us, we are free to choose whether to interpret bumps in the night as the affect of high winds on loose floorboards, or alternatively as indisputable evidence of a headless horseman prancing about in the attic, still fuming about his demise at the hands of ruthless Roundheads.

Personally, I choose not to believe in things like spooks, UFOs, fairies, leprechauns the Loch Ness Monster and the like, preferring to waste my gullibility quota on the absurd notion that Manchester City will one day be at least a fairly competent soccer team.

Others could regard the notion of unquiet spirits replacing this mortal coil with a coiled chain to rattle around at midnight, much to the annoyance of their corporeal neighbours, as a perfectly sensible state of affairs.

Perhaps the case could set a precedent? If I am hauled up before the Beak for speeding I could claim that an invisible gremlin in my cars engine made it go faster than I wanted to.

I did have a tax disc Your Worship, but it was stolen by a mischievous imp that has been hanging around our house for the last few weeks.

The idea that ghosts lurk around anyones house because something awful happened to them in that place is fraught with complications.

Ghosts, by their nature, should be able to go anywhere, passing through solid walls on their way.

Any spectre with an ounce of common sense would leave our shores for the winter and hitch a free lift on a luxury cruise liner around the Caribbean, instead of freezing half to death in a draughty loft.

Children see things that frighten them in the night all the time: dinosaurs, tigers and lions are my sons favourite bite noires at the moment, but I expect when he gets older he will realise that his bedroom is not full of ferocious animals - for one thing there isnt room.

The fear will still be there but in order not to appear silly, he will rationalise the insecurity into a dread of invisible things, just like most adults do.

When our children wake up in the night frightened of imaginary monsters, instead of reassuring them that such things do not exist and that they are perfectly safe, perhaps we should call a solicitor to help them sleep soundly? The whole affair is a nonsense.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.