Calls made to Childline about gender identity have almost tripled in the past three years, according to the NSPCC.

Last year, the service held 2,796 counselling sessions with youngsters — some as young as 11 — who felt their biological sex did not match their gender. Three years ago, the figure was 1,102.

So, are the nation’s children in the grip of an unprecedented epidemic of gender uncertainty? Or is there more to this than meets the eye? Could the fact that this rise coincides with a massively increased awareness of the issue have anything to do with it?

Calls made to Childline about gender identity have almost tripled in the past three years, according to the NSPCC. Pictured is Caitlyn Jenner, the former Olympic athlete who transitioned and is the poster-girl of the Trans lobby

Celebrities such as former Olympian Bruce Jenner — a star of reality show Keeping Up With The Kardashians and now reborn as Caitlyn — and Eddie Redmayne, who played a transgender character in last year’s hit movie The Danish Girl, are hugely influential.

And what of the conduct of certain elements in the political, educational and medical establishments?

Have they taken an approach that combines compassion with common sense — or have they simply caved in to the powerful and very vocal transgender lobby for fear of being branded as ‘backward’ or, worse, as bigots?

Let me be clear: I don’t for a minute doubt that there are a relatively small number of youngsters who genuinely feel they are in the wrong body.

And I like to think we live in the sort of open-minded society where they can get all the help and support they need.

But what worries me is that the whole conversation now takes place within a rigid structure constructed by the LGBTQ lobby (that’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and now Q, which either stands for ‘questioning’ or ‘queer’, depending on whom you ask) and is guided by an increasingly inflexible set of dos and don’ts.

Ideas that, until recently, were considered at best fanciful, at worst extreme, seem to have infiltrated traditionally sober institutions, including the medical establishment (hormone therapy is now available on the NHS even to pre-pubescent children) and, perhaps more worryingly, education.

Last year, the service held 2,796 counselling sessions with youngsters — some as young as 11. Stock image

Take an Ofsted-endorsed lobby organisation called Educate & Celebrate. Having been awarded a £200,000 grant by the Department for Education, it works in schools to teach children as young as ten about the rights and wrongs of the gender vernacular. It believes categorising children as boys and girls is ‘gender-biased’ and offers a staggering array of alternative terms.

Thus children who think of themselves as being the gender with which they were born are described as ‘cisgender’. Other terms offered include ‘panromantic’ (seeking romance without sexual desire), ‘intersex’ (neither male nor female) and ‘genderqueer’ (a combination of both sexes).

To help youngsters get the message, transgender ambassadors are sent into schools to talk about their experiences of transitioning. They offer advice on how to get hormone therapy and how the process has made them feel.

Next month, they publish a book, Can I Tell You About Diversity, which features a 12-year-old girl undergoing treatment to become male, to be distributed to primary and secondary schools. Their target audience is children not even ready to choose their A-level subjects, let alone challenge their own biology.

In case you think I’m exaggerating, I recently heard about a secondary school pupil who, during a PSHE (personal, social and health education) classroom discussion about gender, said that, on balance, she thought she was probably just ‘normal’.

Cue sharp intake of breath. The correct terminology, the teacher informed her curtly, is ‘cis’. She was even punished with a detention.

Eddue Redmayne in the blockbuster film The Danish Girl, in which he plays a transsexual

If I had been that teacher, I would have awarded her a gold star for bravery. Because she’s right: she is normal.

What is not normal is encouraging otherwise perfectly content children to question their identity.

If there is a genuine increase in gender-fluidity among children, I believe it’s entirely man-made. Young people aren’t naturally questioning their sex in 2016 any more than they did in back in 1916; it’s just that now they are being actively encouraged — some might say indoctrinated — to do so.

After all, children are very susceptible. They also have an inbuilt desire to please those they look up to — in this case, adults promoting the trans agenda.

In attempting to improve the lives of a vanishingly small minority, we are threatening the sanity of — and, yes, I’m going to say it — normal children.

It’s time to put an end to this nonsense. Yes, there must be compassion for the very few who experience gender confusion. But there must also be common sense that this is not something that affects the majority of children. But then common sense, that once great British characteristic, seems to be a dying quality these days.

Power list? Woman's Hour's lost the plot

Germaine Greer, one of the usual suspects on the list for Woman's Hour

I once sat on the panel for the Woman’s Hour Power List, the latest version of which was announced yesterday. They never asked me back — perhaps because I dared to disagree with civil rights campaigner Helena Kennedy QC, which, in Woman’s Hour terms, is a bit like ordering steak tartare at a vegan convention.

These lists are always hard to get right. But this year’s, for the Radio 4 show’s 70th anniversary, is so achingly worthy, so self-consciously Islington-centric, they shouldn’t have bothered.

It’s all the usual suspects: Helen Brook (who set up Brook Advisory birth control centres), Barbara Castle, Germaine Greer: yawn. Someone called Jayaben Desai, who I’d never heard of, but was apparently a Grunwick strike leader in the Seventies. As for the rest — Beyonce, the fictional Bridget Jones and, bizarrely, Margaret Thatcher — well, they just don’t make sense.

Beyonce is, however talented, small beer compared to someone like Aretha Franklin who, at 74, has been performing for six decades and never once in her underwear.

And Bridget is nowhere near as witty or well-rounded as some of, say, Nora Ephron’s more minor characters. Princess Diana had a far greater reach — and at least she was real.

As for Mrs Thatcher . . . well, having her in the No 1 slot is just wrong. Thatcher was a great politician. But I fail to see how she ‘influenced the lives of women’ — the supposed criterion — any more than any other Prime Minister.

She only ever employed one female — Janet Young — in her Cabinet, and was stupendously unsympathetic to the difficulties facing working mothers, claiming she had no desire to see her country turned into a ‘creche society’.

But the real problem with this list is the narrowness of scope it represents. Woman’s Hour seems to be retreating into its own little echo chamber: too lazy, too smug, too arrogant even, to challenge its own assumptions.

Not blonde, just brilliant

Want proof that you don’t have to be blonde, leggy, impossibly thin or practically a child to be a successful actress?

Step forward Olivia Colman, deservedly nominated as Best Supporting Actress at the Golden Globes for her brilliant performance in The Night Manager.

Of course, what with her not being impossibly tall, leggy, blonde, etc, most of the red carpet photos published of the event were of other people — mainly Claire Foy, who was nominated for The Crown and who, surprise surprise, just happens to be tall, leggy, blonde, etc.

So here, on the left, to redress the balance is an alternative view of what brilliant female talent looks like.

Olivia Colman, deservedly nominated as Best Supporting Actress at the Golden Globes for her brilliant performance in The Night Manager

Economist index that counts: Cost Per Wear

Nicky Morgan got it in the neck for criticising the Prime Minister over her £1,000 leather trousers when she herself is often seen carrying a similarly expensive Mulberry bag.

Personally, I don’t care how much the PM — or any other politician for that matter — spends on their trousers. Mrs May’s a successful woman, why shouldn’t she dress well if she can afford it? What I would say, however, is that there are only so many occasions on which one can wear a pair of brown leather trousers — whereas a Mulberry handbag will take you anywhere.

Woman-logic dictates that the important calculation is not the actual cost of these big ticket items, but the CPW — or cost per wear. On that front, the Mulberry wins handbags down.

Nicky Morgan, who criticised Theresa May for her £1,000 leather trousers but is regularly carries around a similarly expensive £950 Mulberry handbag

Poor Wonder Woman has been fired as UN ambassador for girls and women after protests relating to her appearance as a ‘large breasted, white woman of impossible proportions, scantily clad in a shimmery, thigh-baring body suit’. Quite why this is a problem is unclear: after all, most modern-day female so-called icons conform to that description, from Beyonce (as endorsed by Woman’s Hour) to Kim Kardashian to that ghastly pseudo porn quartet, Little Mix. What do they want, Andrea Dworkin in a burka?

Wonder Woman, fired as a UN ambassador after protests of her portrayal as a ‘large breasted, white woman of impossible proportions, scantily clad in a shimmery, thigh-baring body suit’

Off with Phil's head

ITV’s When Phillip Met Prince Philip, in which breakfast TV host Phillip Schofield promised ‘unrivalled access’ to the Queen’s consort, was trailed as a long-awaited insight into the mind of the man who calls himself ‘the most experienced plaque unveiler in the West’.

They also made much of the Duke’s alleged rudeness but, having seem the show, I’m amazed at his restraint. Schofield’s questions were vacuous, he spent most of his time waffling about himself and seemed more interested in cosying up to the younger royals than gaining any insight into this most intriguing of men.

If I were Philip, I’d have had him carted off to the Tower.