Life can be dull and grim, so thank goodness for daftness and pranks

Let’s face it, statues have been wearing traffic cones ever since someone had the brilliant idea of doing road works near pubs

I wouldn’t want gnomes in my garden; but I’m glad to see them in other people’s (AP)

I’d never have heard of Thomas Waghorn, if I hadn’t seen a civic statue of him with a traffic cone on his head and another on his outstretched hand.

I was travelling in a cab to the theatre in Chatham and the driver pointed it out. He said Russell Brand had done it but, on further investigation, it seems Mr Waghorn (a 19th-century postal pioneer who discovered a new route to India, knocking 10,000 miles off the original journey) has been sporting such orange and white plastic hats for decades, as has the sublimely busty Queen Victoria statue in Leamington Spa.

Let’s face it, statues have been wearing traffic cones ever since someone had the brilliant idea of doing road works near pubs. And if this sort of thing really floats your boat then there are entire websites devoted to the cause: feast your eyes, cone freaks.

Of course, the most iconic of the traffic cone titfer-wearing statues is the Duke of Wellington, whose bronze be-coned likeness sits astride his horse in Glasgow’s Royal Exchange Square. Occasionally the horse gets to wear a cone too.

A few years ago, Glasgow council suffered a massive sense of humour failure over this jape, bleating that it cost them £10,000 a year in futile cone removal and threatening to double the height of the Duke’s plinth, thus rendering Wellington’s head out of drunken reach. Fortunately the good people of Glasgow shouted them down and the sight is now listed as one of Lonely Planet’s “most bizarre monuments on earth”.

Good work, Glasgow. There is something really cheering about a community which is in on a good-natured joke, because we can’t allow the po-faced to take over the asylum completely, can we? Let’s face it, the grown-ups have made a pig’s ear out of everything recently, so let the childish play.

Life is pretty grim at the moment and if the occasional bra-wearing statue or yarn-bombed telephone box can brighten up the day, then so be it. Personally, I’d put guerrilla gardeners on an annual wage and pay them to jazz up our verges and wasteland: anything to cheer us up, please, and the madder the better.

I like a bit of idiosyncrasy when it comes to a neighbourhood; I like evidence of local character. Life, after all, is too short for bland. I like the fact that in Peckham, some of the road bollards are designed by the artist Antony Gormley, a few of them being deliberately penis-shaped and aptly situated on Bellenden Road. Hahaha, d’you geddit?!

Call me juvenile but any road sign that can be adapted to make a rude word will guarantee a guffaw from me. “Sturdy Road” or “Turd Road”; I know which is funnier.

But I promise not everything has to be bum-related to amuse me; all sorts of things will catch my eye and gladden my heart as I mooch around wherever I find myself.

For example, I couldn’t think of anything worse than filling my front garden with gnomes and ornamental windmills (I’m far too much of a style snob), but I’m really glad that other people do, especially in London where most people have tarmacked over their front gardens in order to be able to park and where it’s therefore nice to see the occasional wishing well.

A bit of naff can be good for the soul. So yes, while I’m grateful not to live next door to anyone who lights their house up with blazing rooftop Santas at Christmas, I still miss those neighbours who hung a massive pair of Xmas knickers up in their front window, thereby heralding the festive season from the beginning of November until the end of January.

I like the fact that people want to entertain other people – although I suspect sometimes it’s more by accident than design.

Once upon a time, round the corner from where I used to live, someone spray-painted in big orange letters the words “Liza Minnelli eats too much tagliatelle”. I’m very anti-graffiti as a rule, but if something makes me laugh then I’ll make an exception.

At the moment my local bus stop is situated next to a private garden, where behind the railings sits a small tree stump. Every few days, as if by magic, there is something different sitting on top of that stump. It might be a carved wooden pig; or a pelican made from pink wire; or a plastic figurine of the Queen waving next to an ornamental polar bear; or a circle of ceramic frogs.

On St Patrick’s Day, it sported a mannequin’s head complete with a jaunty shamrock-green trilby. It’s a harmless, silly thing, but in the absence of a village duck pond I know several young mums who make a point of wheeling their toddlers to see it. Even teenagers waiting for the 176 will put down their smartphones for a second and check it out.

Life can be very corporate and boring sometimes, so thank you to anyone who occasionally creates a bit of a diversion by doing something daft.