KEVIN KING: Are we to blame for more aggressive seagulls?

As my old nan used to say, while watching somebody on the television doing something ridiculously silly: “They’re not quite the full shilling.”

I remember this quote in particular when she saw Bob Blackman on a variety show (back in the old black and white days) singing ‘Muletrain’ while hitting himself over the head with a tea tray.

“Really?”, you make be thinking.

Click onto YouTube, search ‘Bob The Tray’ and there he is in all his lunatic glory.

We’ve always been a nation of eccentrics, whether it be Bob and his tray, the slapstick of the Crazy Gang from pre-war music hall, through ‘Monty Python’ to MTV’s ‘Jackass’ and beyond.

Yes, there’s always someone who will do something daft in the pursuit of the entertainment of others.

So it was that my nan’s quote came to mind last week when I read a story that had been inspired by our esteemed Prime Minister when he said that the “situation regarding aggressive seagulls requires a big conversation.”

Have these birds become more aggressive or are they simply braver and tamer than they used to be?

Are we guilty of encouraging their behaviour by leaving out food in the garden?

I remember talking to a lady who liked to consider the two that she fed as pets and had named them Stephen (Seagal) and Gulliver!

Is the amount of litter that gets thrown around also encouraging them to walk and fly ever closer to us?

So it was that I read the story last week of a group of teenagers who had devised a new extreme sport, gull running!