THE general public, I’m quickly realising, has the common sense of a teaspoon.

It scares me and baffles me in equal measure.

Why do people pull out of car parking spaces without looking? Why do they remain oblivious to the pile-up they’ve caused by stopping dead on the pavement to look at their phone? And why, oh why, do some people put milk in their tea before water?

I don’t like it – not least when it puts lives in danger, as one particularly dense motorist did last month by coming to a complete stop in front of me on the M6.

This, I have to clarify, was on the actual motorway.

When every other car around us was doing 70mph.

I waved my arms, beeped, flashed my lights and uttered some choice four-letter words, and after about 10 seconds (the longest of my life) the driver set off again as if everything was perfectly normal.

“What? Just? HAPPENED??” I shrieked.

The Fiance looked at me, all blood drained from his face.

“I have no idea. Just get us away from them!”

But this stupidity isn’t just confined to the roads.

On holiday in Ireland I was asked if I could point some tourists in the direction of ‘the lapreeshans’.

“Where can we find them?” continued the group, who’d stopped us on the street.

They said it slowly, as if we were the idiots (or eejits).

“We want to see the lapreeshans,” they continued. “Where do they live? The LA-PREE-SHANS?”

It took several seconds before we realised they were trying to find a colony of small, green men, who they believed to be alive and well somewhere on the outskirts of Dublin.

“Oh, you mean the leprechauns?” we laughed. “They live over the rainbow with the city’s thriving unicorn population.”

We realised they weren’t joking when they pulled out a map.

I’ve also recently been asked if the BNP is a petrol station, and whether the Lake District is ‘somewhere near London...like Hertfordshire’.

But I’m not claiming to be above this kind of idiocy and I’m sure I’ve caused several face-palms myself.

And on that note, I’m off to join the mermaids I’ve heard are thriving just off the Morecambe Bay coast.