I usually avoid joking about politics because it alienates a section of the audience who think the target of my joke is decent and trustworthy – even though he’s a politician.

But here’s a political joke that shouldn’t have anyone dipping their pen in green ink to protest.

“How do you know a politician‘s lying? His lips are moving!”

The political conference season is over for another year and once again the NHS has been in the spotlight.

Our Prime Minister …what’s his face … promised to keep it funded on a rate higher than inflation until 2020, which would be great news if there wasn’t  a general election due in 2015 and he might not be around to keep his promise.

Every Prime Minister promises the NHS will be safe in his/her hands, knowing that if they reneged on this promise they’d probably end up in hospital –  having their manifesto removed from their Parliamentary seat.

The NHS, created in 1948 by Aneurin Bevan, has evolved into a phenomenal organisation covering hospitals, general practice, preventative healthcare, mental health, medical research and so much more.

Few of us will pass through this life without having to use its services. But if you have a healthy lifestyle you have a fighting chance to avoid going into hospital. Though if you’re fighting at every chance, you’ll never avoid going into hospital.

If you’ve ever visited your local A & E Department on a Saturday night, waiting your turn while all around you is chaos, you’ll have seen that many cases were self-inflicted due to binge-drinking, smoking and overeating.

We need to cut down on drinking, give up smoking, take regular exercise…and eat  less chips, cheeseburgers, bacon butties and deep-fried badger on a bed of crushed pomegranate and herb mash.

Or is that only me?

Clearly, the NHS has problems, but from personal experience the nurses and doctors at the sharp end are caring, hard working and committed individuals.

Hospital medical staff are true life-savers, stoic in the face of long shifts; bloated bureaucracy; a constant influx of patients; insufficient funding; a shortage of available hospital beds; sloppily-cleaned, unhygienic wards and the terrible diseases that fester in them….the list is endless.

The NHS is part of what makes Great Britain great and is being handled like a private company, with cost-cutting and viability exercises being carried out by well-paid bean counters who seemingly don’t give a thought about people in desperate need of life-saving treatment.

Like the Dalek who tried to make love to a dustbin, this is very short-sighted.

No one is immune to illness. Not even well-paid bean counters.

One day it might be their turn to be told they have a serious condition that requires them to take medication for the rest of their lives.

Will they then say ”But these drugs cost thirty thousand pounds a year! I really don’t think I should take them”?

Answers please, on the back of a prescription, to me at my office.

The highlight of last week for me was a show that I did at the Usk Vale in Newport, Gwent, with fellow comedians Ignacio Lopez and Karen Sherrard.

This was a comedy line up of totally different styles and characters, just like the good old days, variety as its very best.

This wasn’t the first time I’d played here and to hear a few days before that it was a sell out was music to my ears; it makes such a difference to have something other than tables and chairs to work with.

As the years go on I now firmly believe that an act is only as good as its audience and for an ideal outcome to an evening’s entertainment both parties must engage to make the night a success. The audience at Usk Vale was engaging and a pleasure to perform to.

But let us never forget. Everything is funny as long as it is happening to someone else.

So, if you were there on the night please don’t share the big secret and give the game away. Let the rest of the world buy a ticket just like you did and discover a good night of entertainment for themselves!

“You can’t beat a bit of bully!” said Jim Bowen on the much-missed ‘Bullseye’ which I still associate with the Sunday teatime aroma of beetroot, cheese, boiled eggs, cucumber, ham and tomatoes. My gran never did  know how to make Welsh stew (cawl)!

And it seems we really can’t beat bullies because they’re everywhere.

Cyber-bullies, playground bullies, work-place bullies, gay-bashing bullies- even celebrity bullies.

When the fragrant, immaculately-coiffed Cheryl Fernandez-Versini (aka ‘Biffer’ Cole the famous mime artiste) starts getting wobbly-chinned and weepy over a singer strangling a power ballad on “X Factor”, she’s hoping you’ve forgotten her well-reported encounter with a female nightclub toilet attendant.

It was the attendant who was female, not the nightclub. Being a building, it was gender-free. I just wanted to clear that up. Which may well have been what the toilet attendant said to Biffer at the time.

When Biffer, who trained at ‘Putting-In-The-Boot-Camp’, replied “You’re going through”, she meant a window.

We’ve all read in the newspapers about children who’ve been bullied so relentlessly by their wicked classmates that they saw suicide as the only way to escape it. Can you imagine what hell those children must have gone through day after day to reach a state where they decided the only way to stop the violence and humiliation was to end their young lives?

Tragic doesn’t begin to describe it.  I only hope that those responsible for the needless deaths of their class mates have their dreams haunted forever by what they did.

When I read these stories and then hear head teachers say “We have no bullying in my school’ I feel like saying, “Take off those rose tinted spectacles!” because, just like when I was in school, if you happen to be slight of build or look or behave ‘different’, the likelihood is you’ll get picked on at some point.

I had no fear of school bullies and stood up for myself and the weaker kids who’d been the victims of bullying.

Sometimes a bully would back down after I’d had a few well-chosen words with him, but invariably there were times when the real hard cases thought they could take me on . . . which led to me getting into many scrapes.

So many, in fact, that when I’m asked what qualifications I left school with, my answer is “Just the one; a Black Belt” (to hold my trousers up, of course)!

Since the days of the court jester, it’s been the job of the comedian to prick the balloon of pomposity and to put in their place those in high office who lord it over us a little too smugly. If a well-aimed spear of truth, in the shape of a clever gag, can persuade these people to start treating the rest of us with more respect, I’m continuing the work I did back when I was a lad, standing-up to the school bullies.

Except that, today, I stand-up in front of an audience and (sometimes) get paid for it!