A new survey claims that, on average, we spend 19 minutes a day brooding over our regrets, and that 11 per cent of men — wearyingly predictable, this — cite “not having slept with more women” as a major lifetime regret. Refreshing, then, to read of the former undercover policeman Mark Kennedy — who spends his 19 remorseful minutes in the shower each morning contemplating the exact opposite regret.

While he was working undercover among eco-activists and anarchists, he says his superiors failed to act to prevent him sleeping with the women he was supposed to be spying on. The High Court will next year hear his claim for compensation of £50,000-£100,000 for personal injury and emotional distress caused by the negligence of his commanding officers.

“The world of eco-activists is rife with promiscuity. Everyone sleeps with everyone else,” he said. “If I hadn’t had sex they would have rumbled me as an informant.” What started as a professional sacrifice, though, led to something else.

“My superiors knew who I was sleeping with but chose to turn a blind eye,” he says. “They did nothing to prevent me falling in love.” When his cover was blown, he says, he lost his job, his girlfriend and his reputation and he has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Is it possible at once to sympathise with Mr Kennedy and regard this as slightly absurd? I think it is. Things are further confused by the fact that 10 women — three of them ex-girlfriends of Mr Kennedy — are also suing the police after sleeping with undercover officers, saying they “used techniques they had been trained in to gain trust and thereby create the illusion they might be a ‘soulmate’ to the women’.”

It should be said, incidentally, that if getting sex by misrepresentation were routinely actionable we’d all have even more lawyers and even less sex. Caveat emptor is the general rule.

The picture is a little indistinct, in this case, too. Was this a hive of free-loving eco-warriors, banging away like billy-oh and rumbling as a nark anyone capable of keeping the mouse in the house? Or a tangle of romantics “falling in love” and seeking “soulmates”? No doubt we’ll find out in court.

The upshot, though, is that Mr Kennedy is demanding compensation from the Metropolitan police for having slept with these women. And these women are demanding compensation from the Metropolitan police for having slept with Mr Kennedy.

Looking back on the situation, what’s funny is that all concerned believe the state is ultimately responsible for who they jump in the sack with. That’s a point of view — but it’s not a very anarchistic one.

The spirit of Southfork

Larry Hagman’s last secret has been revealed. On a visit to Bucharest in the Eighties, Hagman was taken aside by Nicolae Ceausescu.

The Romanian dictator wondered if Larry would mind a giant portrait of him going up on the side of a building for propaganda purposes. fine — provided a bag filled with hard currency was left in the ladies’ lavs of a government office for his wife to pick up. It was.

Talk about historical “tipping-points”. Here’s the moment when the jig really was up for global communism: a communist dictator paying American dollars to shore up his regime with a giant image of J R Ewing, Stetson-hatted embodiment of capitalism itself. Even more to the point — remember what happened to Ceausescu a few years later? — it didn’t work.

Badgers, deer and a whiff of hypocrisy

Amiable, clog-wearing Brian May is in the soup. The guitarist-cum-astrophysicist, a high-profile campaigner against badger-culling, is revealed to have once retained the services of a stalker to cull deer on his Dorset estate.

“Hypocrite!” squawk his fellow animal-lovers, outraged that while seeking to protect badgers he should sanction the deaths of deer. “Hypocrite!” squawk farming types, outraged that he should see the

point of culling deer but not see the point of culling badgers. This should make us think less of them and more of Mr May.

Why shouldn’t you be in favour of culling one thing but not another? I’m in favour of culling clothes moths, wasps, Clostridium difficile and those one-legged pigeons that make you feel slightly sick when you look at them, for instance, but against culling blue whales and Eastern European migrant workers. So does that now make me a hypocrite?

Redemption of the early years

The new Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, has talked movingly about his relationship with his father, an alcoholic he describes as having been “very affectionate, brilliant intellectually, but quite demanding”. Certainly, it’s a remarkable story: Gavin Welby went to America as a teenager with £5 in his pocket, ran bootlegged booze in Prohibition New York and is said to have briefly dated Vanessa Redgrave.

Funny, though, how it now feels almost de rigueur for public figures — even in offices as austere as the Archbishopric of Canterbury — to present their childhoods for public inspection. You used to salute the uniform; now you’re invited to give the child inside it a hug.