SARAH VINE: My despair at Greta Thunberg and the insanity of her army of hate pixies protesting against silly, kitsch Eurovision

The older I get, the more I think that humans – as a species – are becoming increasingly bonkers. If not all, then quite a lot of them.

Take, for example, the hysteria over Eurovision. The annual event is a silly, kitsch, largely irrelevant music competition (I use the term 'music' loosely) in which embarrassing, regional acts perform pale approximations of proper pop songs against a background of cheerful xenophobia.

Occasionally, a decent act slips through (Abba, Maneskin, Domenico Modugno) but mostly it's all just overblown pyrotechnics and daft outfits.

In the case of the British entry, it's invariably a virtue-signalling ninny in a ripped T-shirt who thinks that simulating sex with crotch-grabbing dancers dressed as rent boys and pontificating about how much he hates the British flag will compensate for lack of vocal talent.

Eden Golan, representing Israel, holds her country's flag aloft as she sings Hurricane

Climate activist Greta Thunberg attends a pro-Palestine demonstration in Malmo, Sweden, where the Eurovision song contest took place

It doesn't, but who cares. It's just a bit of a laugh.

Or it was until Greta Thunberg and her army of hate pixies showed up and made it all about something else. Draped in a Palestinian keffiyeh scarf, the Swede, 21, explained in her characteristically sanctimonious manner: 'Young people are leading the way, and showing the world how we should react to this.'

If only that were the case.

Sadly, I am no longer a young person, but if I were I'd like to think that my reaction – and that of my peers – to the brutal rape, murder and mutilation of hundreds of young people at the Nova music festival last October 7 by a group of Hamas terrorists funded by Iran's totalitarian dictatorship that imprisons, tortures and murders girls like me – would be absolute solidarity with those victims.

Instead, at Eurovision and elsewhere, there is sympathy for the supporters of those terrorists and their vile actions, blind hatred for Israel for daring to defend itself and its citizens – and an attempt to mobilise thousands of others to bully and intimidate Israel's entry, Eden Golan, whose only crime (apart from her awful fake nails) is her nationality.

A 20-year-old was booed for performing a song about survival in the face of suffering.

She was forced to lock herself in her hotel room for fear of being attacked. She's been treated as if she was responsible for decades of conflict in the Middle East.

I've always thought Thunberg was a bit odd, but I didn't realise she was nasty, too.

The UK's Eurovision entry, Olly Alexander, rehearses his song Dizzy ahead of the contest final

A rally in the Swedish city sees signs branding Eurovision the 'Genocide Song Contest'

But the insanity doesn't stop there. A Brighton-based group calling itself 'Queers for Palestine' (they do know, don't they, what happens to homosexuals in places run by hardline Islamic regimes such as Iran?) posted online the contact numbers of venues that were planning to host Eurovision nights, urging people to tell them 'to reconsider' because the organisers were 'complicit in genocide' for allowing Israel to participate.

Inevitably, the BBC reported this on Newsnight alongside an interview with a drag queen called 'Crystal' by presenter Kirsty Wark (poor woman: decades of experience as a respected broadcaster and this is what it's come to).

Through thick mauve make-up and false lashes, Crystal said: 'I was going to host my own screening event, with 800 people screaming, cheering along, but decided to join the boycott because of Israel's inclusion.'

I'm sorry Crystal's party was ruined – but seriously, is this how low we've sunk – that the cancellation of a North London party is worthy of a slot on Newsnight?

And doesn't the irony of a drag queen complaining about the inclusion of Israel – a nation where LGBT culture flourishes as almost no other, and which was the first country in the history of Eurovision to field an openly trans contestant (the fabulous Dana International in 1998) – occur to any of these people? Or are they just too thick to see it? Young women such as Israel's Eurovision entry Eden Golan are not the enemy of the Palestinian people.

That enemy is Hamas and the terrorist network that oppresses Palestinian civilians, building a network of tunnels under their homes and hospitals, filling their heads with hatred for Jews, fuelling this endless and brutal conflict with their barbaric actions.

For the record, I didn't think much of Golan's song (though I liked her dress). It was a second-rate, sub-Celine Dion ballad with abysmal choreography. But I defend her right to perform for the simple fact that I believe in a world where young women with silly nails can dance and sing as much as they want without being afraid.

And I defend her because the fact that so many young people across the world have been trying to stop her represents a kind of derangement I shall never, as long as I live, understand.

• Hugh Grant is not a very nice human, so I'm reluctant to agree with him – but on the subject of a new iPad advert, he's right. He describes the ad, which shows creative objects, including musical instruments and books, being crushed by a press before an iPad appears in their place as 'the destruction of the human experience'. In other words, every painter, artist, musician and writer in history reduced, quite literally, to ghosts in a machine to feed the coffers of Silicon Valley. 

• A friend sent me a picture of his local hipster bakery with about 40 people queuing to buy sourdough. 'How crazy! It'll take about an hour to be served,' he said. Near me there a brunch place that's similarly mobbed at weekends. The food's nice but you have to wait 30 minutes for a cramped table and it costs about £50 a head. I can knock up two eggs on sourdough with bacon and avocado for about £1.50 – without the side order of other people's screaming kids.

What I can see in Meghan's speech

Taking Nigeria by storm, the Duchess of Sussex told a group of children an anecdote about her daughter Lilibet, aged two. 'She looked at me and goes: "Mama, I see me in you." As I look around this room, I see myself in all of you as well.' What a remarkable thing to say. I've known a few two-year-olds in my time, some quite bright, but none offering such a handy opportunity for a soundbite as Lilibet Mountbatten-Windsor.

Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, during a visit to Nigeria for the anniversary of the Invictus Games

A vicar armed with a chisel tries to break the protective glass on the Magna Carta as part of a Just Stop Oil protest. A vicar. The Church of England really is a joke. 

Rein in the lycra louts

A cyclist speeding at close to 30mph in a park with a 20mph limit avoided conviction despite a crash that killed an 81-year-old woman. As a cyclist myself, I've occasionally almost collided with distracted pedestrians. But with rheumatic knees and an ancient pushbike, there's a limit to the damage I can do. But lately I've been fearful of Lycra louts on high-tech bikes who cut me up and curse at my slowness. Worse are those on e-bikes and scooters. Surely, it's time the rules were overhauled?

No surprise that researchers have found that women who take time off from social media experience a marked improvement in self-esteem. It encourages an ideal of perfection that's utterly unrealistic. Not only are we encouraged to judge ourselves by others' standards, but to obsess about our own appearance and become slaves to the camera. Fortunately, I'm part of that last generation who grew up without the damn thing. We had no idea how terrible we looked most of the time – but we lived much happier lives.

So that's conviction politics!

Stormy Daniels with her lawyer Clark Brewster after taking the stand at Donald Trump's trial

Fascinating. A new poll finds that a guilty verdict for Donald Trump in his Stormy Daniels 'hush money' trial would lead to votes in his favour in certain key states. This could result in the extraordinary situation of a President with a criminal conviction having to issue himself with a pardon. Not even Silvio Berlusconi could have dreamed up something that sordid.