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The cannabis laws have been relaxed in Britain. It was no great shock, really. If you had to bet on any set of laws being relaxed you’d pick those ones. Mmmmm… r-e-l-a-x-e-d.

Of course, I mean quasi-legalised. Although you can no longer be arrested for being in possession of small amounts of marijuana in Britain, it is still illegal to be in possession of small amounts of marijuana in Britain. In a nutshell: instead of pretending to care when they discover someone in possession of an amount of weed that is mind-altering but not life-changing, the police are now legally allowed to not care, thus affording themselves more time to devote to the pursuit of large carrier bags of Chinese takeaway food. They’re eating, we’re stoned – everyone’s a winner baby.

Or so you’d think. It has come to my attention, however, that a vast number of British broadsheet commentators seem to have completely misinterpreted the new rules laid out by David Blunkett and his Home Secretary hound-dog Lucy. These lads seem to be labouring under the delusion that all Oxbridge media types with their own newspaper column are now obliged by law to buy cannabis from a street-dealer, roll a big fat one, smoke it… and then bore everyone to tears by writing about what it was like to get high.

That’s certainly been the impression conveyed by the “quality” newspapers in the week since the laws were relaxed to the point of flaccidity.

Indeed, things got so fraught for The Observer’s normally peerless social commentator Euan Ferguson that, when his particular deal went down, he couldn’t even roll his joint properly. When he finally assembled something that could be smoked, it made him feel dizzy and sick. Just reading his account of the whole debacle was making me feel the same way.

The articles were fascinating. These guys weren’t chasing dragons across expanses of aluminium foil, neither were they chawing on crack pipes, nor injecting large quantities of Ketamine into their fleshy middle class buttocks. No, that might be interesting. These guys were smoking joints. If a less interesting idea for a 2,000 word epic has ever been proposed in the history of journalism, it was probably me that came up with it.

One can only assume these scurvy hacks were exploring this particular avenue of reefer madness because they could no longer be arrested for it and - unburdened by the threat of prosecution and the inevitable, eh, small fine – they had decided in their droves to enlighten an expectant public on what it’s like to be stoned.

Quite why they couldn’t have done this years ago before we all investigated off our own bats is beyond me. We can only thank Jah that it wasn’t the laws on bestiality that the home secretary decided to relax – otherwise the nation’s few remaining sheep would surely be rueing the day they decided to play possum during the foot-and-mouth festival..

Peerless American comedian Bill Hicks used to do a great bit about pot. “They tell us a lot of lies about pot,” he’d spit. “They tell us pot-smoking makes us unmotivated and that’s a lie. When you’re high you can do everything you normally do just as well… you just realise it’s not worth the fucking effort.

But enough about dope, I figured out something that’s been bugging me for ages the other day. In recent years, there’s been a very obvious David Baddiel backlash which has seen the once unfeasibly popular comedian get kicked from pillar to post by a staggering number of people who seem to have condemned him for no crime more heinous than being less razor-sharp and more middle class than his occasional sidekick Frank Skinner. As a longtime fan of Baddiel, this puzzles me.

It can’t be to do with the quality of his work: those who dislike him would have to concede that it hasn’t got any worse and, despite having enjoyed massive success as a comic and TV presenter, the lion’s share of his output has always been mauled by detractors whose formula for writing television criticism appears to be based on the theory that something which does not appeal to beard-stroking, middle-aged Eddie Holt-alikes is automatically unappealing. Despite his myriad bad reviews, however, Baddiel has always been able to bask in the knowledge that if he had nothing else going for him, at least he had the respect and admiration of the man on the street.

Then he lost it by committing that comedic faux pas of attempting to be taken seriously: (good) novels ensued, as did interviews with the Prime Ministers and appearances on arts programmes that were ever so slightly more high-browed than Fantasy Football League.

Last week, he did his cred no favours by writing a “serious” think piece about David Beckham in London’s Evening Standard. “At 4:51pm on Saturday 6 October,” it began, “as David Beckham lined up to take the last free kick of England’s qualifying game against Greece, I turned to Frank Skinner, who was sitting next to me in the North Stand at Old Trafford, and shouted: ‘I can’t even entertain the possibility he might score!’.”

Coincidentally, at 9:03pm on Wednesday 24th October, as David Thompson ran towards goal in the Nationwide League Division One encounter between Coventry City and Wimbledon, my Coventry born-and-reared mate, Steve May, who was sitting next to me in the Arthur Wait stand at Selhurst Park, leapt from his seat and shouted: “No! Don’t shoot you useless fucker!!!”

Two days after what transpired to be the winner fizzed into the Wimbledon net, I couldn’t help but chuckle as I read Baddiel’s bizarre intro. He might have shouted: “I can’t even entertain the possibility that he might score!” at Frank Skinner, but you know deep down that what he actually meant to say was: “No! Don’t shoot you useless fucker.”

This column was written by a journalist who was mildly out of it on relaxed-law marijuana while listening to The Aloof on the hi-fi as a video of Coventry City’s 1987 FA Cup final victory played on a television in the background.

Next fortnight, if you’re really lucky, he might write about what it was like.