YOU know when card companies or organisations decide to invent special occasions?

Like Grandfather's day? Or National Sausage Week? Or Secretaries Day (no, really, it exists!)? Well, I reckon that someone, somewhere, has declared that October should be National Wash Your Dirty Laundry In Public month.

You simply can't move at the moment for torrid confessions from individuals gagging to share their most painful experiences with an open-mouthed, drooling world.

First we had Edwina Currie and that "Major" revelation (and we could have done without that particular mental image, thanks very much, Edwina).

Nicole Appleton recently revealed in her autobiography that she had an abortion when she was seeing Robbie Williams, talking about it on a chat show with evident discomfort. Surely a counsellor would have been a more suitable ear than Frank Skinner?

Ulrika, fresh from her revelations about Sven's cadishness, is cleaning out her closet at a spirited rate, with the latest installment leaving half the nation cheerfully playing guessing games regarding the identity of her alleged date-rapist-cum-TV presenter.

And, earlier this week I bought a newspaper and discovered that Michael Barrymore's long suffering and ever-supportive missus has decided to reveal the truth about life Chez Barrymore the way she experienced it, letting rip with alleged tales of druggings, beatings and disturbing incidents which, quite frankly, would render Attila The Hun a more sympathetic character.

It's not that these people shouldn't speak about what has happened, its just that sharing the dirt with a country of voracious, gossip-hungry vultures (that's us, by the way) is about as sensible as going on Trisha with a genuine belief that you are going to leave the show with a sorted and happy life.

Perhaps our obsession with the details of other people's lives (fed, at first, by soap operas and now, even more so, by reality TV shows) is to blame.

After all, mystery is no longer a quality we admire in our celebrities. Sod the allure of the reclusive film star. If we can catch them giving birth on the Internet, we'll be there with a tray of nachos and a tub of Ben and Jerry's.

The fact that we chew them up and spit them out faster because of this (Big Brother, Hear'Say, Geri, Posh...) hasn't really hit home yet. So stars who might once have complained that they couldn't go to Tesco without being mobbed by the cooked meats are now inviting us into their most intimate spaces, whether we want to see them or not.

And why not? After years of being splashed across the front pages against their will, why should stars let hacks make a fortune out of their sordid stories (which, in this gossip-hungry age, would inevitably come to light) when they can do that themselves and rake in the profits? After all, if you can't beat them...

It's not a pretty thought, but then there's nothing pretty about dirty laundry. Still at least, after that lot, National Wear Brown Shoes Day, National Suckling Pig Day and National Carve a Radish Day will come as a welcome relief.