The trouble with posting on these it’s-political-correctness-gone-mad or health’n’safety stories is that you begin to become immune to them. No matter how daft the pen-pusher, how blind to common sense the box ticker is, we have started to shrug at them.

That is the worst thing to do, because these things are insidious. They creep into everyday thinking and culture until you stop questioning them and think them normal. Then the lunatics have taken control of the asylum.

Take this event which happens tomorrow (Sunday), the World Pirate Walk The Plank Championship. The organisers were told to cancel the event by elf’n’safety weasels unless they could prove the sea water was clean enough for them to jump into.

Chemical analyst (and twice winning pirate) Michael Young took a sample of the sea water from the Queenborough Harbour on the Isle of Sheppey, Kent, and declared it safe for ‘pirates’ to walk the plank into. The Council then had the result verified by their own scientists – doubtless local taxpayers enjoyed this use of their cash.

Organiser of the event, a man known only as Captain Cutlass, confirmed: ‘As a result of our own exhaustive tests the World Walking the Plank championships are still on for Sunday.’ ‘The plank-off starts at 2pm just before high tide.’ and ‘It infuriates me officials always come up with reasons why Britain can’t have fun. It’s time we fought back – which is what we pirates do best.’

The competition, which has been held for the last 12 years, judges ‘pirates’ on use of pirate language such as ‘Avast’ or ‘Arrr Matey’, original costume, execution of jump and overall star quality – dubbed the ‘Aargh Factor’.

The event has to warn its contestants that they ‘could get wet’ as part of its insurance. Frightening if you needed to be told that. The Apocalypse is truly upon us.