I CAUGHT some psychologists talking a load of tosh about guilt during a television programme last week. As far as I could understand it, their drift was that we should not indulge in the emotion as it was something created by our social culture.

It’s certainly something that gets abused and manipulated by our culture, but guilt is surely a basic emotion that’s critical to our make up?

Creatures like lions don’t need to feel guilt. All they do is kill, eat, sleep and procreate. Nothing to feel guilty about there.

But we’re a tad higher up the evolutionary chain and as a consequence prone to doing things that we really shouldn’t do because we’re apparently more intelligent and so have more choice. We’re clever enough to write books, but stupid and nasty enough to steal from people and beat up pensioners.

So the ‘guilt’ trigger is needed to try and control irresponsible behaviour. I’m not a psychologist, but I don’t think you can – or is it wise – to try and seal off the guilt channel. Just be mindful of how some people will use it against you.

Which brings me to whales and albatrosses.

You see my guilt wires overheated when talking to a chap in Twickenham a few years ago. He was an environmentalist and was doing the carbon off-set stuff way before it became fashionable.

Anyway, he was telling me what happened to our plastic bags and how they floated out to sea killing whales and albatrosses a zillion miles away because they got lodged in their guts and how the bags take several light years to rot in landfill sites. He even backed it up with impressive logic, figures and pictures.

I became a convert on the spot and vowed ‘to never use another plastic shopping bag again.’ My zeal lasted all of – ooh – 24 hours.

Subsequent prods at this piece of guilt circuitry finally did the trick and I adopted the ‘New Approach to Shopping’ style. I bought one of those shopping bags that supermarkets sell to stop you using their free placky ones and felt all smug.

I vowed to have it with me at all times when out and about.

Unfortunately this plan quickly descended into something quite farcical.

On the next visit to the supermarket I left the bag in the boot of the car and arrived at the checkout with a pile of goodies.

Revelling in my new title as Saviour of the Whale, I couldn’t bring myself to snatch a plastic bag hanging tantilisingly at the end of the conveyor belt and so bought another reusable shopping bag.

It gets worse.

Unfortunately this wasn’t a one off occasion and the upshot is I now have a large and varied collection of reusable shopping bags, as you can see from the photo. And it seems I’m not alone.

Having talked to friends and colleagues about this, it seems to be a common problem. There are loads of people driving around with boots full of reusable shopping bags.

Of course someone somewhere is making a pretty penny churning out these bags as shoppers – some of whom are no doubt psychologists – wrestle with their guilt.