A Hugh for our times

You wouldn't want to make too many claims for Hugh Grant, what with him being just a very pretty actor. And you wouldn't want to make too big a deal about his latest film, About a Boy, given that it's principally just another example of this rather vulgar Brit-fetishism we've taken to lately. But having said all that, Grant is on to something this time.

This Will Freeman character in the film might be just another commitment-phobe, but he's got dimension: he makes mistakes which culminate in comic episodes; he experiences feelings which result in warm, tingly human-bonding moments. He's flesh and blood, basically, rather than your regular-issue bad boy, who is 10 per cent man and 90 per cent straw. And this is exactly what Modern Man has been waiting for. Part of his fabled crisis, apart from the fact that he probably messed up his A-levels, has been that he doesn't have a role model.

There is no quintessential man, and hasn't been ever since James Bond was jettisoned for being a bit too kinky and a lot too improbable. Single women have been able to crowd under the Bridget Jones umbrella for years; what have single men had?

A slightly greater leaning towards depression than their married friends, but other than that, nothing.

Of course, we've had various types in our heads - the New Man, the Lad, the Just Gay Enough man, the Not Gay At All man - but they collapsed because there was no obvious way to illustrate them. Hugh could turn this around. From now on, every time there's a statistic about men and childcare, you'll see a picture of him holding a baby; every time marriage statistics change, in either direction, there'll be a picture of Hugh looking beseechingly at Rachel Weisz. He and the troubled yet sparky boy of the title could be used to illustrate practically every crinkle of modern society, from mentoring to nutrition.

He could be called the Hugh Grant, or the Will Freeman, possibly just the Hugh (or conceivably the Everyhugh) but before you know it, Hughs will be cited in surveys as the secondmost frequent gym users (after Bridgets), and Pepsi will be sponsoring Hughrelated entertainment. Let's just hope the original Hugh remembered to thrash out some agreement, copyrighting his essential being.

So, we've been getting it all wrong. The Royal Family aren't out of touch with the young - however dodgily they dress; the young love them. The antiglobalisation protesters do not have the silent support of youth, and are profoundly unlikely to smash the system, however comprehensively they prove their mastery over McDonald's in Oxford Street. And against all odds, society is not about to break down into desolate, atomised units of Bridget Joneses on the one hand and troubled young men with high cholesterol on the other.

The kids are all right, in other words. Largely speaking, they think public protest is pointless. They don't have a radical bone in their body politic, and if you're looking for a force to change the world, you're going to have to look somewhere else.

If they proceed according to human nature by becoming more and more Right-wing as they get older, what are they going to be like by the time they're 50? They'll be like some hideous cross between Jean-Marie Le Pen and Mary Whitehouse.

When a whole generation is thinking more or less the same thing, you know whose fault it is - their parents. Loath as I am to share a view with Ann Widdecombe, I blame those Seventies radicals, with their Kool Aid Acid Tests and their experimental clothing ideas. They were full of big ideas, socialist purpose, sexual revolution, communes and all the rest of it, yet by the time their children were born, what were they doing? Saving for a private education, that's what, and filing for divorce as soon as they caught even a whiff of free love anywhere on their street.

It should come as no surprise, therefore, that those hairy "revolutionaries" have spawned a generation with no interest at all in politics and no faith in their power to change anything.

Oh, apart from one thing: 70 per cent of youths have a vibrant and keen interest in legalising dope. They just have no interest in going on a demonstration to that effect.

She wanted us to remember that the brunette took on the blonde and triumphed, and how could any of us forget? That singular mix of gloss and dishevelment told us all we'd ever need to know about the state and permanence of her relationship with Sven - it's great, and it's forever (or

until she gets bored, whichever is the sooner). It's strange, given that everything else about her is such a mess of contradiction (the glamour and yet the silly name; the femme fatale aspect wasted on an ageing footie coach). Could her hair have its own publicist?

? I'd be the last person to defend Ali G for saying Mother****** on Radio 1 when there were probably children listening whose young lives might be permanently blighted by the rudeness. Nor do I have any proof that any part of BBC radio has undergone a permanent change of policy since it had its knuckles rapped over the ersatz rapper. All I do know is that I went on London Live the other night and found that you're no longer allowed to say "tits" live on air. This is absolutely absurd - how on earth are we supposed to discuss current affairs?