The practice of “planking” may well be something that has passed you by if you’re over the age of 20, don’t spend inordinate amounts of time on the internet and are frequently baffled by what passes for entertainment among the younger sectors of society.

In short, planking involves holding your body rigidly flat, balancing in some unusual location – on top of a post box, perhaps, or across a toilet – and having someone take your photograph, which is then generally posted to the internet for other “plankers” to gaze at in awe.

As with most things of this type, though, what usually begins as pretty harmless fun often soon takes a darker turn. And so it is with the reports that foolish youths are getting their kicks on top of the viaduct in Thornton .

The reasons why this is rank idiocy hardly needs highlighting, but for the hard-of-understanding, perhaps it’s necessary to point out that it would not take much for a young person lying flat on top of the viaduct wall to fall to their probable death below.

It’s highly likely that planking, as a craze, is already on the way out of fashion – but don’t breathe a sigh of relief because the latest reports are that the current craze is “fridging” – young people squeezing themselves into refrigerators and posting the resulting pictures on the web, a practice that is also hugely dangerous.

But until planking is completely out of mode, the danger remains that some high-spirited youth will inadvertantly come to tragic harm from the top of the viaduct. And would you want to always be remembered as the silly little planker who died an idiot?