Happy St George’s Day everyone! I can hear some of you thinking: ‘Oh, I didn’t know it was.’ And of course, you could be forgiven for that — because in England, unlike other parts of the union, we do very little to mark our special day.

Quite often, those who do celebrate are mocked, belittled or openly scorned for being patriotic and loyal to the flag of St George.

If you are lucky today, your town hall may hoist a flag to mark the event, but it’s more likely it will not. You may discover that your local authority has made funds available for a number of cultural celebrations over the year, although they’re unlikely to involve England’s patron saint.

If you’ve ever visited Ireland, Liverpool or New York on St Patrick’s Day, you will understand what the Irish flag means to its people. It flows from flagpoles as freely as Guinness does from the pumps.

They fly it, drape it, dress in it, and they are proud of it. The day is treated as a national holiday, when bands and processions march down the street, and the pubs are full to bursting.

Those who do celebrate St George's Day are often mocked, belittled or openly scorned for being patriotic and loyal to the flag of St George

You would struggle to find an Irish man or woman anywhere who would disown their national flag. The same can be said of the Scots on St Andrew’s Day and the Welsh on St David’s, where schoolchildren have been forced to speak in Welsh even if they’re English and don’t know the language.

They’re proud patriots, and we are not. It is only in England that we are embarrassed, where we hesitate before celebrating and allow our patron saint to be derided.

Every year, regular as clockwork, the slurs and insults over our history and heritage begin to fly as St George’s Day approaches.

This year, a poll tells us that one in eight Labour voters thinks the St George’s Cross is ‘racist and divisive and should not be displayed’. Keir Starmer tried to distance himself at the weekend from all this and from the era of Jeremy Corbyn by insisting his election candidates should fly the flag and claiming ‘Labour is the patriotic party now’.

Try telling that to his own shadow attorney general Emily Thornberry, who in 2014 sneered on Twitter at a home in Rochester that was draped with English flags, and was removed from the front bench for doing so.

And let’s not forget those Labour MPs who do down their country by banging on about the British Empire, telling us we should be ashamed of the acts of our ancestors from hundreds of years ago, and even pay reparations for the sins of our fathers.

No we shouldn’t! We are not responsible for the actions of those who are long dead. Accusations over imperialism and colonialism are thrown about as reasons to be ashamed of celebrating St George’s Day, ashamed of who we are.

This is despite the fact that it was England that led the abolition of slavery, ending its slave trade in 1807 and introducing the Slavery Abolition Act in 1833. And yet you won’t hear anyone tell you that as you hoist your flag.

It’s time to stop simpering and making excuses not to celebrate St George’s Day. Time for the English to be more Irish, Scottish and Welsh — and to make St George’s Day a national holiday.

However, that will only happen if the public starts to demand it. So let’s ignore the metropolitan elite who are terrified of being associated with anything as naff in their eyes as our patron saint. Forget the Labour Party activists who moan about racism and division.

Let’s stand up for our country and our patron saint. It’s only when the public voice is loud enough that the vote-chasers in Westminster will start to listen.

It’s time to cry ‘Three cheers for St George!’ And demand our national holiday.

Doting David and Victoria’s close family

Over the years, my life has occasionally collided with that of the Beckhams.

When a very young Victoria was struggling in the John Lewis car park in Cheadle, near Manchester — a baby in one arm and a pram in the other — I quietly helped her to lift the pram into her car.

A few years later, my husband and I pulled into a petrol station in Alderley Edge one afternoon as David filled up at the pump next to us. Alderley Edge School for Girls across the road was emptying out, and the petrol station was filled with schoolgirls asking for his autograph — he politely obliged. ‘Did he plan that?’ my husband asked, laughing, as he got back into the car.

Fast forward a number of years and I’m with a friend, collecting her daughter at a very smart school in London, and standing next to me is a baseball cap-wearing David, collecting his daughter Harper. He was unmistakably every inch the doting father.

Say what you like about the Beckhams, but it seems to me that they are a remarkably close family.

As parents they are fantastic role models. This was clear on Saturday when Harper joined her parents at Victoria’s 50th birthday in Oswald’s nightclub in Mayfair.

The Spice Girls sang and danced together, and Harper joined in — self-consciously at first. David recognised how special the impromptu dance was and got out his phone to film her. It may have been Victoria’s 50th, but it was an evening when the entire Beckham family shone — especially Harper.

Wooden toilet seats, the height of luxury!

Last weekend I was a guest at the home of wonderful friends who own a stunningly beautiful country estate. I slept in an antique four-poster bed adorned with blue satin damask silk drapes and woke to the sound of white peacocks calling across the 50 or so acres of parkland and topiary lawns.

I could have sat in the library for the rest of my life and still not have had enough time to read the books that I wanted to. The frescoed ceilings, the art work, and the beauty of the best antique furniture the ancient houses of Europe could provide were a long way from the house on Breck Road in Liverpool that I was born into.

When it was time to leave, I nipped to the loo at the top of the back stairs and there it was: an antique from my own past, a highly polished, dark oak, luxurious toilet seat, made from one length of wood which spanned from wall to wall and over the porcelain itself. Just like the one we had in our outside lavvy when I was growing up.

Even though it was missing the spiders, the draughts, the bomb-damaged window which was never replaced and the crispy Izal toilet paper, it was comfortingly warm and familiar. Why did we ever change to plastic?

Rayner’s tactical supporter

Yesterday's Mail reported that the ex-Tory minister who defended Angela Rayner over her council house sale — and is now advising Labour — is none other than the er, eccentric, Nick Boles.

He is supposedly working with Keir Starmer’s chief of staff Sue Gray as she draws up plans for the transition of power. With limited departmental experience, having only ever served on the lowest rung of the ministerial ladder for a short period of time, it’s hard to see what knowledge he could bring.

A close friend of Michael Gove, he was until recently working for Tory peers Baroness (Simone) Finn and Francis Maude, but is suddenly no longer listed on their political consultancy website.

Methinks this is more about Boles desperately attempting to ease his way into the House of Lords on the back of privileged friendships, rather than a record of achievement. Or, jobs for the boys as some will know.