THERE is something profoundly depressing about the way boys' football has now become infected with the growing unpleasantness in British society.

I suppose it was inevitable that after more than 20 years of celebrity worship, a culture of thuggish hedonism would become the new benchmark for behaviour.

Two matches were scrapped in Worcester last weekend and the antics of star players have been blamed. Apparently, the parents are just as bad as the kids.

Let's get a few things straight. If brains were dynamite, the average top footballer wouldn't have enough to blow his baseball cap skywards. Most can hardly string two words together.

And as for the youngsters... well, the playground loudmouth will always have a following.

However, it's the parents I worry about. It seems to me that they're almost certainly as thick as the numbskull exhibitionists they so obviously admire.

But what an example to the next generation.

Sadly, young people are now bombarded with negative images. The row over Dick and Dom is another case, coming hot on the heels of the Jerry Springer - The Opera yawn.

But I am perplexed by Mid-Worcestershire MP Peter Luff's increasingly enthusiastic crusades against such excesses. For was it not a former leader of his party - Margaret Thatcher - who famously claimed that "there was no such thing as society"?

In football and entertainment, some chickens would appear to have come home to roost.