WHEN you have a column, people seem compelled to tell you what you should and shouldn't be writing about.

Over the past couple of years I’ve had all sorts of suggestions from family, friends, and total strangers.

I’ve had ideas thrust upon me in the pub, and in the street — everything from the influx of foreign meat like chorizo into our supermarkets, to why some people feel the need to have a TV in every room of the house.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful for the ideas. It can be hard coming up with new things to write about every week.

This week my dad rang me with a joke which he said I should include. (Ricky Hatton has decided to follow in the footsteps of George Foreman and launch his own kitchen appliance. It's called the Ricky Hatton toaster — it’s all right at first but it breaks after two rounds).

One thing I never expected to happen, however, was that a celebrity would tell me what to write about.

But that's exactly what happened this week during an interview with the comedy legend that is Mr Bobby Ball.

Between jokes and “Rock on Tommys”, Bobby said he had an idea that he wanted to tell me about (he plans on writing to every newspaper in the country about this too).

He thinks every newspaper should start running a “happy column”, a section where readers can get away from news about crime, financial doom and swine flu.

I quite liked the idea because, let’s face it, there's not much to smile about at the moment.

And so this week I set up about finding some happy news.

The first thing I found was a story about a dog from Lancashire who is up for a bravery award.

Bracken the Border Collie is a real-life Lassie and has saved five lives in the course of a long career as a mountain rescue search dog. She had a tough start in life, having been mistreated by a farmer. But Bracken went on to rescue lost walkers, including a missing dad and three toddlers close to hypothermia after getting stuck in fog on Pendle Hill.

Another good news story was the New York family who celebrated their mother's 85th birthday by planting daffodils to spell out her name.

Then there was the American couple who were reunited 17 years after their divorce by a kidney transplant.

When asked what had changed, Bernadette Tobin, who donated her kidney to save ex-husband Jim said: “You grow wiser. You're gone through a lot of things, for better for worse, in sickness and in health.”

I even discovered that there’s a news website, www.happynews.com.

Things that have made me smile this week include seeing a picture of Susan Boyle posing outside her home with a too-tight blouse and her fly undone (her “Hollywood makeover” didn’t last long, thank goodness); managing to run for 14 minutes on the treadmill; and my friend lending me her tiara for my wedding.