A young man in uniform came up to me, demanded to see my passport. He squinted at every visa from many different angles, flicked back and forwards through the pages at least a dozen times, checked the details of every name, date and city over and over again. Then he repeated the procedure. A minute passed, then finally, he handed the document back, looked up and said: "Football!"

He told me he had five days off the following week, and he was flying to England to see his favourite team, Manchester United, in action. And I was spending two days just to sail to Shanghai!

Why would someone fly halfway round the world to see a game of football? And why do people need to become fans, support teams, paint their faces, wave flags, let off firecrackers? What is this human need - this desire to identify with a team: MY team, the blue team, the red team?

Actually this seemingly irrational behaviour makes a lot of sense, both socially and psychologically. For since the end of traditional, village-based communities, where else do people get to be members of a tribe, to share the rituals, symbols, rites and ceremonies of an almost sacred order? Where else can people experience such highs and lows, week in, week out?

On a psychological level, the sports fan will use his team to create a social identity as a member of a group. If the team is successful, the fan shares in the success, experiencing raised self-esteem. Of course, if the team fails, this comparison is no longer psychologically useful to the fan who, refusing to share the idea of failure, is left feeling angry or upset. Put simply: your success is OUR success, but your failure remains YOUR failure.

Many of these processes are unconscious. Raising self-esteem also requires negative feelings to be projected onto the other team's fans - the "out" group. Comparisons with the opposition thus allow the members of the in-group to feel a stronger sense of psychic security and self-worth.

For a while, I had thought I was beyond these influences, and I had become tired of the corruption, excess money, cheating and over-emphasis of football in modern life - the way it had been marketed, turned into a commodity. But last week, as I sat in a pub in Mayfair, the TV burst into life - the World Cup draw! I thought I wasn't interested, but I was wrong. Suddenly I had to know: who was in "our group"? Ah, the USA, Algeria, Slovenia. And Japan? Tough group: the Netherlands, Cameroon, Denmark.

Then the memories came flooding back - where I watched Maradona score his miracle goal against England in 1986, a pile of bodies on a sofa celebrating an England goal against Germany in Italia 1990. Walking into a bar in Milan just as Italy scored their winning goal in the 2006 World cup semi-final. As I pushed into the bar, the whole crowd had jumped in unison, knocking my glasses high into the air then trampling them into a thousand pieces on the floor. The next day, as I retrieved the twisted frames from the bar manager, I didn't really mind...

In his novel Fever Pitch, Nick Hornby describes the suffering of a fanatical Arsenal supporter - the huge joy of celebrating a win, or the total and utter dejection of a loss. In no other area of life, he argues, is it possible to experience such a range of emotions. To some it may seem silly, childish even, for grown men to react like this to the result of a football match. But the fans are fortunate in one respect, since through experiencing these emotions they feel a brief surge of full, total life. And that may be the drug that the fanatical fan seeks.

On another level sport, and especially football, may be seen as a "metaphor for life", and this is something the ancient Romans understood very well, providing free wheat and circus games to the population to keep them happy and under control. Of course, if we look at sport like this, we may see it as one way a power elite can exert control over the masses. However, from another angle, it could also be a way for people to experience group loyalties and inter-group competition in place of nationalism, political violence and war. And surely football, even hooliganism, is better than war?

I won't be painting my face for the World Cup next June, and neither will I be waving flags, wearing football kit. I won't be crying when, as usual, England lose to Germany on penalties. However, my place on the sofa is already booked; the beer is already in the fridge.
I won't be missing any games.

Since 1961, West Berlin had been a psychological construction as much as a tangible, physical city, existing in the mind as much as in reality. If ever a city had acted as a mirror to the unconscious, this was it. "People never stop partying in West Berlin!" people would say. "You must go there - you've got to experience it! The atmosphere is incredible! It's so hedonistic!" But what exactly created this atmosphere?

One rainy night in November 1987 I found myself in Amsterdam station. The day had not gone well. Earlier two North African men had flicked a knife under my overcoat in the Damrak while I paused in front of a shop window. Money had been demanded, I had resisted, but the knife rose to my jugular. I had surrendered.

Later, with my one remaining credit card (hidden in my luggage), a police report and a European rail pass, I stared at the indicator board in the station. I needed to get out of here! Anywhere! The letters on the board clacked and crackled into life - spinning and clicking, finally settling on the destination: "West Berlin". An island city! A walled city!

In 1987 West Berlin really was an island - a capitalist enclave hundreds of miles inside communist East Germany. The only way in was by plane, or through a few heavily-guarded rail or road "corridors". For the citizens of the East, there was no way out. Berlin was schizophrenic - a wall separated East and West, there were bombed-out church spires, disused tunnels, abandoned government buildings. It was a city of ghosts, a fantasy city of the imagination.

As the train rolled through the damp Dutch night I settled into my seat - there was no budget for a bed - enjoying the empty compartment and the silent night. Even the fact of nearly being murdered seemed less shocking now.

The silence was shattered as five British soldiers threw the door open. These Cold War warriors opened beer cans, shouted questions "Where you from mate?! What the **** are you doing here" One unscrewed the light bulb; another prised a picture off the compartment wall as a souvenir. They swore about the Germans, they sang rude songs but, at Osnabruck, they vanished from the train as quickly as they had appeared, laughing into the night...

Next morning, after we pulled into Berlin's "Zoo" station, I took a walk in the Tiergarten, found lodgings in Spandau - famous for its prison that had housed just one inmate, the Nazi Rudolf Hess, for over 20 years. Now, though, the prison lay empty - Hess had died three months previously. A prison with one inmate, an empty jail - this could only make sense in the battered psyche of West Berlin.

The Wall, Checkpoint Charlie, the watchtowers and the grim-faced guards: what had once been the centre of the old city was now a no-man's land of barbed wire, search lights and guard dogs. The area was mined: escapees were shot on sight.

The cracked psychology was emphasised by the subway. The Wall did not follow a straight line, so an ordinary subway ride in West Berlin could pass through, or rather under, the East, where stations had been sealed off to avoid people escaping. As we passed through these "ghost" stations, the train slowed, revealing a spectacle of dimly lit platforms, 1961 advertising hoardings and bored communist guards. The West Berliners paid no attention and continued on their capitalist carousel: humans will get used to anything.

In the middle of this ghost-train subway ride was Friedrichstrasse, where the train DID stop. Here were the border controls, here was Checkpoint Charlie, where I exchanged 25 Deutschmarks (compulsory), got a stamp in my passport, and walked into the communist zone. I found a world of drab shops, unspoilt architecture, almost no cars and few people on the streets.

There was little choice in the restaurants, but what there was cost almost nothing. There was no mad consumerism, no expensive department stores, flashy sports cars or designer clothing. People didn't look particularly happy, but they also seemed calmer, less stressed than their western counterparts. The atmosphere was tranquil, peaceful almost.

That afternoon I had spent only 10 of my 25 Marks (there was nothing to buy) but taking money out of East Berlin was forbidden. There were no tramps or beggars on the streets, so I left the rest under a lamp post, and walked back through Checkpoint Charlie.

Back in 1987 the two parts of this city really were like a fractured psyche - a yin missing its yang, a conscious without an unconscious. Each part existed only in relation to its opposite: neither was complete without the other.

On reflection, Cold War Berlin was an extreme example, but really ALL cities can be thought of in this way. The way a city is constructed, with its underground tunnels, passageways, box-like offices and skyscraper apartments, the way most of it is hidden from view, unknowable, compartmentalised. We can only ever know a tiny part of its reality.

And come to think of it, isn't this just a replica of our own brains?

Over the last eight years men had flown planes into sky scrapers, wars had raged in Iraq and Afghanistan and, as always, people had lived, died, loved and cried. But while the world changed, my books just sat in the swirling dust in the half light from a ventilation shaft, surrounded by old flipcharts, ancient 1970s tape recorders and the fading records of a thousand students.

Like an archaeologist exploring an Egyptian tomb, I shone my torch round the cellar, saw my boxes, and hauled them to the ground with a bump. Slitting them open, I turned them upside down, and the books fell into a pile in the dirt, followed by eight old lightweight aerogramme letters fluttering slowly to the ground like paper planes. These letters were all from Australia, and all from the same long-lost friend.

Gathering them up, I threw them into the refuse bag, but then I had a sudden pang of guilt. Wasn't I destroying a part of my own life history? How could I even have considered throwing them away? These were LETTERS, an ancient form of communication soon to be spoken of in the same breath as hieroglyphics, the scratching of prehistoric man on cave walls, and writing with a feather quill.

No one writes letters anymore - not even my mother. Email is a wonderful invention that affords us daily contact with friends and relatives anywhere in the world. Gone are the days of waving tearful goodbyes to emigrating relatives on ocean liners gliding out of port and, most likely, gliding out of our lives forever. We stay in touch.

But all this comes at a price. Letter writing was above all a physical activity, one that involved all the senses: the act of writing, the sound of the pen, the feeling of folding, sealing the envelope, even the smell of the paper itself. For the reader this meant the physical action of collecting the mail, tearing open the envelope, the visual impact of an individual's handwriting - spidery, curly, neat, expansive - revealing so much of the writer's character.

I picked up a letter from the cellar floor and began to read. Triumphs, disasters, sickness, health, happiness, depression, marriage, divorce, all rolled off the page: memories came flooding back. The depth of communication - the emotional honesty - truly surprised me, although I had not been surprised ten years ago. Maybe I had changed too, along with the world...

As the memories returned I remembered how I had responded to these aerogramme letters long ago. Every six months I would take a sheet of the finest Basildon Bond writing paper, fill my 1950s emerald-studded Parker fountain pen, and sit down in the window seat to summarise the last six months of my life. This had been a powerful, comforting ritual, but it was one that I no longer practised.

Expressing detailed emotions, following rituals and the physical involvement of the senses are all important to human beings, but are largely absent in written communication today. We need to find a way to compensate for this loss. The world may have changed beyond belief in 20 years, but surely people are more or less the same. Or are they?

Given the fact that letter writing is not coming back any time soon, how can we stop ourselves becoming, literally, computer-people?

Answers on a postcard...

Wedge, wonga, grand and shrapnel, dosh, fivers, bucks and greenbacks - no word has so many synonyms, not even "sex". We are endlessly obsessed by it, we think about it morning, noon, and night. We can't live without it, though sometimes we can't live with it...

"Hey! Big Spender!", "Money Makes the World Go Round....", "Money! Money! Money!", we sing about it, we shout about it, we dance to its tune, though we rarely choose it as mood music.

We have our reservations: "Money can't buy happiness"... "Money is the root of all evil". The bible warns that "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven". Greed is one of our favourite seven deadly sins.

In Greek mythology Midas had one wish - everything he touched should turn to gold. This was fun at first, but soon became a problem when his food became bars of gold and his daughter turned into a statue. Soon he was begging the gods to reverse his deadly gift, jumping into the river to wash away his golden curse.

Croesus was so rich that he allowed his guests to take away as much gold as they could carry. One, greedier than most, asked to come back later. Croesus agreed, and the guest returned with hundreds of pockets sewn into his tunic, his body and hair greased so he could roll in the gold dust, his mouth crammed with coins. The Gods surely frowned on this golden fool.

We love to hear stories of lottery winners who waste it all, footballers jailed for speeding, pop stars blowing the lot on drugs. But isn't this more than just gloating at others' misfortune? Perhaps we really do believe in the curse of excess wealth and, deep down, aren't we secretly convinced that there is a price to be paid in the end?

We must remember Shakespeare: "All that glisters is not gold". And we should ignore the advertising men telling us to buy more, the politicians shouting "Consume!", the friends endlessly trading up to bigger houses, at the cost of a ruined work-life balance. Who do we trust more: the voices of antiquity, the Bible and Shakespeare, or the politicians, marketing men and newspaper headlines?

To stop racing mindlessly round the hamster wheel, to get off the carousel, to freeze the movie, there is one simple question to confront, and that is this: "How much do I really need?" This question, so easy to ask, is so very difficult to answer. Any answer, though, provides a snapshot of who we are and what we should do next, as well as a fixed point of reference in an unstable world. It is also the question "they" don't want us to ask, because maybe, probably, surely, we would not buy their baubles. But in responding  we take back control, we assert our will and we define our own destinies. We draw a line in the sand, and we know ourselves all the better for it.

In their search for the philosopher's stone, the Alchemists spent their time turning lead into gold. But it takes an expert eye to make sure this gold is real and, anyway, who said lead wasn't useful?

Don't be fooled by fool's gold: how much do you really need?

Artists, singers and poets respond in turn. Blue Moon, Paper Moon and Moon River will ring down the centuries; Moonlight Serenade brought big band style and romance to the most unlikely occasion - the Second World War. Frank Sinatra insisted that his lover "Fly me to the Moon and let me sing among those stars". And sing he did.

For Shakespeare the Moon was "...an arrant thief, her pale fire she snatches from the sun", while the thin crescent moon shines like a jewel in Van Gogh's night skies. Li Bai, the Chinese poet of the Tang dynasty, loved the Moon as much as he loved the wine cup. So much so that he met his end in the Yangtze, drowning in a drunken attempt to embrace the Moon's reflection. What a way to go....

But though we paint it, sing about it, read about it and write poems about it, are we sometimes forgetting to look at it? Walking across open parkland one night last week, a full moon stopped me in my tracks. This perfect, sombre yellow disc is the one thing every human being can gaze on, and not even the sun can claim that honour. Surely it is marvellous, I reflected, that under this same moon Shakespeare composed sonnets, Van Gogh raved and raged in his final madness, and Li Bai sat with his shadow and his wine cup, slurring poetry at the black night?

However, two minutes later the vision had faded as I turned into the high street. The Moon had disappeared, banished by tall buildings and street lights, shouted down by the roar of taxis and buses. People bustled in and out of bars and restaurants, loitered at bus stops. No-one looked up. The Moon was dead.

Forty years ago the Americans landed on the Moon. Just for one day, the world put down its tools and its weapons, stopped whatever it was doing, and huddled round radios waiting for news from the skies. The ultimate peaceful competition, the Space Race, was over, and the winner had been declared. For once, and only once, inter-group hostilities were suspended and the human race became one single group, with one of its kind walking the Moon. We were, briefly, united - there was hope for a new dawn of peaceful cooperation.

Of course this state of affairs did not endure - we soon lowered our gaze, lost the new perspective and forgot the space dreams. Petty jealousies, rivalries, the urge to fracture into small groups, the bloodlust of war, have continued unabated. The new dawn of 1969 has been eclipsed by a bad moon.

Somerset Maugham's novel The Moon and Sixpence is based on the life of Gauguin. In the book the central character - Strickland - throws up his job as a stockbroker and becomes a painter in Tahiti. The Moon in this sense is the pursuit of Art and Beauty, while the Sixpence represents everyday life and human relations.

Chasing the Moon comes at a cost for Strickland - he abandons his family, and he eventually dies of leprosy in Tahiti. The message, though, is clear. We'll soon run into trouble if we wander down the high street, ignoring the sixpence at our feet. But just so often, every now and then, we need to look up to the skies, and remember the Moon.

What was happening was Princess Diana's funeral, and I found myself overwhelmed just like the million people lining the funeral procession route. And I wasn't even there! So the question I have often asked myself since is: how real was that emotion?

Certainly there have been many examples of mass outpourings of grief but the British reaction to the death of "Princess Di" was exceptional. Millions of supposedly reserved Brits took to the streets, massing outside Buckingham Palace, laying flowers, demanding action. Even the Queen temporarily lost control, rushing back from Scotland and lowering the Royal flag against all historical protocol (and when you are a monarch, protocol is everything).

The death of Eva Peron (Evita) was a case in point. This so-called hero of the people, of the working classes, of the "descamisados" (shirtless ones), was mourned by millions when she died during the evening of 26 July 1952. At 8:25 p.m., the moment of her death, movie theatres stopped playing, customers were shown out of restaurants in the middle of their meal, radio broadcasts were interrupted to break the news, and Argentina went into a deep state of collective shock. Millions took to the streets -  within a day all flower shops in Buenos Aires had run out of stock.

Hers was a very public death with tragic overtones - just like Alexander the Great and Jesus Christ, Evita lived to just 33. There were some, of course, that claimed that the reaction was, at least in part, orchestrated by the Peronist regime, or that the myth had been built up by Peron herself. But whatever the cause, the grief, the weeping and the chanting actually happened, and those emotions, however induced, were real.

The current death for our times is of course that of Michael Jackson: a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions. This was a star on the verge of a comeback, overcoming his demons and returning from the brink of disaster. Then a sudden and unexpected nemesis, all under the glare of an incessant media spotlight. If Kennedy's was death-by-motorcade then Jackson's could only have been death-by-tabloid.

Then, the reaction. Fans who, like me, last bought his records in 1983 suddenly reappear to proclaim his genius. Websites are flooded, news channels roll 24/7, a ticket lottery is held for the ultimate media funeral. Rapacious reporters lurk, desperately feeding the media monster and searching for any news, however tiny, of drugs, scandals, custody battles, family feuds. A collective sadness hangs in the air, the shock of realising that this was a human being after all. Was it, in the final analysis, all our fault?

And then, in the space of a few days, it's over. The media caravan moves on to the next story, leaving barely a footprint in the sand. The tragic icon is consigned to the history books, and we are left to wonder what we really feel.

The death of a celebrity, the speech of a war leader, love for the king or assassination of a hero - none of us are immune to mass emotions - these are surely hard-wired into the human psyche. Only the context, culture and characters differ. These emotions are very powerful, and we actively seek them, perhaps unconsciously. But they appear in an instant, and in an instant they vanish, as if they had never existed. They are impossible to label, and yet they are very, very real.

Crowd emotions will always be with us, and their importance should never be underestimated. Ask Adolf Hitler.

According to ancient legend, villagers of the Yaohnanen tribe have long believed that the pale-skinned son of a mountain spirit would one day sail across the sea in search of a powerful woman to marry. When, in 1974 the Duke arrived on the island with Queen Elizabeth he was immediately declared to be that god and so the Prince Philip Movement was born. It is active to this day.

This is a cargo cult - a religious practice following interaction with technically advanced non-native cultures. Typically, cult leaders believe that material goods (cargo) brought by foreigners are created by spiritual means. Imitating the behaviour of these wealth holders will, sooner or later, convince the islanders' spiritual agents to award this cargo to the islanders.

World War II was the period of greatest cargo cult activity. First, the Japanese and then the Allied forces airdropped huge quantities of military equipment, weapons, tinned foods and clothing onto these Pacific islands. Then, when the war ended, the airbases were abandoned, the foreign soldiers disappeared and no further cargo arrived.

However, the islanders believed that ritual and magic could get the ships and planes to land again. Carving wooden headphones, they sat in fake control towers, and stood on disused runways waving imaginary landing signals. They made radios from coconuts and built airplanes from straw. Marching up and down using sticks for rifles, they painted Western military insignia onto their bodies. And they waited...and waited, but of course no cargo ever came.

Over the last 65 years most cargo cults have died out, although one, the John Frum movement, is still active in Vanuatu. In the 1940s, when 300,000 US troops arrived, the locals were impressed by the generosity of their wealthy visitors. The result was the creation of a mythic figure, John Frum: a combination of Uncle Sam, Santa Claus and John the Baptist. He is expected to return one day, and 15 February is still rigorously celebrated as "John Frum Day".

Cargo cults might seem to be the mark of less-developed nations resisting modernity and holding on to ancient superstitions and beliefs. However, if we look a little closer we can see similar practices in the so-called developed world.

There are examples all around us. Football fans, in their team shirts, are as tribal as any Papua New Guinea village elder. Week after week they go to their stadiums, performing ritual ceremonies, chanting magic slogans and exorcising demons. Once in a lifetime, their cargo ship might come to port (their team wins the cup) but mostly it never arrives.

In democracies people cast their votes in highly stylized ceremonies. Political parties have colours, slogans (Change you can believe in!), and we vote in the same place, in the same way, year after year. The change is rarely, if ever, delivered, but we never tire of repeating the ritual.

At a higher level, the term "cargo cult" includes any poor analysis of cause and effect. In this way, Maoism was "cargo cult Marxism" while cargo cult science produces flawed results based on uncertain assumptions, with the usual goal being only that of winning more research funding.

In sport, politics, economics or science, we follow cargo cult thinking just as much as any Pacific islander. It may look different, and is expressed differently, but we are just as obsessed with rituals, and we wait just as patiently for longed-for results, which usually never arrive.

So we really shouldn't be surprised to see Prince Philip installed as a lesser pagan god on some sandy South sea island. Some of our cargo cults are just as strange...

In "The Crucible" we are back in 1692 in Salem, Massachusetts. Here a closed, puritanical community becomes obsessed with "witches in our midst". It is a story of betrayals, denunciations, jealousies and accusations. Collective paranoia has taken hold and victims must be found: only violence will satisfy the cold, cruel anger of the mob. The play ends darkly - the community has become hysterical, blood must be shed to calm the psychic frenzy, and the innocent must hang. And hang they do.

These days we don't exactly believe in witches, but the term "witch-hunt" is still in common use in English. Usually it refers to public accusation in the media in response to some deep anxiety that seems to build up in society - maybe as a result of religious, political or security fears.

In the Chinese Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, the slightest accusation of counter-revolutionary activities could result in a teacher ending up on a pig farm, shovelling manure for many a long year. Teenage students joining the Red Guards suddenly had a way to get back at teachers they didn't like. Or maybe they simply found themselves in the possession of a new kind of power that met some sadistic impulse. They could be cruel, without having to be accountable.

So what is it that leads a group of people to destroy an individual publicly? From where does humankind get this impulse? Reasons might include a desire for justice or revenge, the need to maintain group harmony or even the opportunity to express natural innate violence. Psychological explanations include in-group persecutions of the outsider, or Freudian ideas of unconscious projection of negative emotions onto a convenient target.

Witch-hunts are all around us. As I write, here in the UK a scandal is being revealed in the media. Politicians have been claiming excessive expenses, and the newspapers have found out.  Every day a new target is selected, and their expenses, either shockingly high or embarrassingly trivial, are revealed. Careers are, perhaps rightly, terminated. But the interesting thing is not the scandal itself but the way public anger is expressed. TV audiences boo and hiss, people jump up in political meetings, faces twisted in rage, to denounce "thieving toads". Anger is everywhere.

It is difficult to assess how real this anger is. The emotions are surely genuine, but they are expressed in a GROUP context, and how much does the individual truly own the anger of the group?

Group anger is a very unpredictable thing, and that is why we need the rebels, the individualists and the free thinkers to tell the group when it has gone too far. Of course, this could be a very dangerous position to be in, since the individual might quickly become a target him- or herself.

Challenging the group to support the victim of a witch-hunt requires great reserves of physical and moral courage. However, going against the herd has a vital role in a civilised society. And it is a role that is just as important today as it always was.

On Sunday 30 September 1938, the Mercury Theatre of the Air broadcast a Halloween radio drama on CBS, narrated by Orson Welles. The broadcast was an adaptation of the H.G. Wells novel The War of the Worlds, in which aliens from Mars land on Earth, with the intention of attacking and colonising the planet.

The show consisted of urgent news flashes without commercial breaks, with shocked reports of strange explosions on Mars, and of a meteorite landing in New Jersey. To the shouts from the panicked radio reporters the meteorite opened, and a tentacled, pulsating Martian emerged, incinerating the crowd with heat rays. Huge tripods climbed out of the crater and began to destroy power stations, bridges and railroads, massacring the local army. All the time reporters screamed of casualties, and millions of refugees took to the roads. Planes crashed and poisonous gas was released as the machines waded across the Hudson into New York City. The White House made an urgent appeal for calm.

Of course, the programme was a complete hoax, but the mass hysteria it induced was real. People rushed into the streets, thousands called the police and many grabbed guns, jumped into their cars and headed for the mountains. Phone lines were down, a power cut caused further panic, and frightened neighbours knocked on each others' doors for news of the disaster.

After the panic had died down there was a public outcry, and an embarrassed Orson Welles was severely criticised. CBS promised never again to use the phrase "We interrupt this programme..." to introduce drama. However, the show produced a huge reaction. Within a month more than 12,000 articles had been written about the broadcast, while Adolf Hitler, a careful and creative manipulator of crowds and propaganda, claimed it showed the 'decadence and corruption of democracy', presumably wondering how it was even possible for a public entertainer to play such a hoax on an entire nation.

Why did people believe the broadcast? In 1938, radio was a relatively new media, and the programme format was a novelty. Certainly, listening to the broadcast today it seems almost comical that people might believe it, and the actors' voices sound like.....actors' voices. But in 1938 people were not subjected to a 24-hour media bombardment and were not "plugged into" the television or computer as they are today. They were less practised in differentiating between drama and news.

The context in 1938 was that of the build up to the Second World War and the end of a huge depression, so it is not surprising there was paranoia in the air. The show also reinforced the relatively new science fiction genre, with the idea of aliens as "little green men from Mars".

Despite this, it is surprising what people will believe even today, and what can cause mass hysteria.

In the 1970s there was the Villejuif leaflet hoax which claimed that safe foods such as citric acid were in fact cancer-inducing. People rushed to inform their friends of the danger of these foods and, over more than a decade, the leaflet was passed to more than seven million people, circulating in schools, companies and even hospitals.

In 2001, in New Delhi, people reported the sighting of the Monkey Man, a monster covered in thick black hair, with a metal helmet, metal claws and red, glowing eyes. Some people reported being scratched or bitten by the creature, and some were so frightened on "sightings" that they jumped to their deaths from high buildings. Police even issued wanted posters and the Russian newspaper Pravda reported the reappearance of Monkey Man on a Moscow-bound flight.

Then, in May 2006, when an actor in the popular Portuguese youth soap opera "Morangos com Açúcar"  showed  symptoms of rashes, breathing difficulties and dizziness, 300 children at 14  Portuguese schools suddenly developed exactly the same virus. 

It is unclear how people would react today if faced by a huge threat, whether real or perceived. But it seems unlikely that people would be any calmer today than they were in 1938, once fear had truly seized their imagination. That fear has yet to be tested, but a meteorite hurtling towards Earth, an exploding sun or a true global plague would provide the answer. Let's hope we never have to find out.

"Ah, yes, red balloons!" said a colleague, when I told her the story later. "Don't think about red balloons..."

Whether you try this game with pink elephants, red balloons, purple tigers or green Martians, the result is always the same: the visual part of our brain does not distinguish between positive and negative instructions. To the brain, a pink elephant is just the same as a not-pink elephant. And if a balloon is not-red, then what is it? How do you picture it?

Let's imagine a few, familiar examples. The dependable best friend, trying to console a teenager who's just been abandoned by her boyfriend, offers this advice: "Put him out of your mind, forget about him...try to think about something else. But whatever you do, don't call him!!" Even with the words "Don't call!" ringing in her brain, the teenager still reaches for the phone the moment she's on her own. So what does she actually picture in her mind's eye? She pictures herself, (not) reaching for the phone. The image is strong, and before she knows it, she's dialing frantically. With predictably disastrous results...

An HR manager, seeking to reassure an anxious workforce, makes this announcement: "Don't worry about the future of your jobs! Don't listen to malicious gossip spread by our competitors, and please, pay no attention to rumors circulating in the press!" Strange, then, that everyone rushes out to buy a newspaper in their lunch break.

We've all found ourselves at some time trying to protect a friend or colleague, to build them up, to get them to say 'No', to put iron in the soul. But when we say: "Don't let them get away with it!" "Don't let them manipulate you!" or "Don't let them shout you down!" are we being as supportive as we think? Perhaps at a conscious level, our friend may try to take the action we prescribe, especially when the instruction seems so obviously to their advantage. However, on a deeper, psychological level the effects may well be the opposite - we could be chipping away at their self esteem and self confidence.

It is clear that when we give people advice, sometimes they follow it, sometimes they ignore it, and sometimes they do the complete opposite. If we tell someone not to jump off a cliff, they may well picture the idea of leaping to their deaths, but are highly unlikely to actually do so. Basic self preservation kicks in.　

In less extreme cases however, we should be aware of the subtle power of emotional or visual ideas, and how the deeper, mental impact may often be the opposite of what we intend. Of course, in the case of reverse psychology, people sometimes do this deliberately.

So, if we actually DO want an audience to think about pink elephants, but we can't admit it, perhaps for legal, personal or political reasons, then what better way to achieve our goal than to shout: "DON'T think about pink elephants!"?

Yes, Anglo-Saxons do have a tendency to stick their noses in other people's business, and it's true that this can be almost hypocritical at times. Brits love to lecture each other on the dangers of smoking, drink-driving, obesity and, of course, anything involving children.

But I think that PEC is doing a good job in keeping English clear and concise. And, since English is an international lingua franca, keeping it comprehensible is especially important for non-mother tongue speakers.

The PEC website has some wonderful examples of gobbledygook, including job descriptions and their "real world" titles. These include: Head of Verbal Communications (secretary), Revenue Protection Officer (ticket inspector), Knowledge Navigator (teacher) and, my personal favourite, Space Consultant (estate agent).

But it is in the corporate world where jargon and management-speak is at its worst. Some more examples from PEC:

- blue skies thinking (creativity)
- moving the goalposts (changing the conditions)
- core competencies (skills)
- thinking outside the box (being original)
- deliverables (results)

The problem with all this jargon is that people hide behind it, almost distancing themselves from the human aspect of communication. And, as a corporate meta-language, the effect can be aggressive - you're either "in" or you're "out" (or in jargon you're either "on message" or "off message").

So here are my top five hates, in reverse order:

[5] "Learnings and outcomes"
A favourite of training and HR people:
"The key learnings for the training are..."
Translation: Goals

[4] "Heads up"
This one exists as a verb and a noun!!
(i) "He heads up the marketing division".
Translation: He heads the marketing division. (Why the unnecessary preposition?)
(ii) "Can you give us a heads up?"
Translation: Advance warning

[3] "Ring fence"
Sounds like something to do with cattle ranching:
"We need to ring fence the problem"
Translation: Limit, contain

[2] "Align, alignment"
This one was used constantly when I worked briefly for a US multi-national in Japan. The effect was always aggressive, and somehow threatening:
"We need to align with Sales".
Translation: Agree, be in line with

And in first place...

[1] "Leverage"
This is the worst offender by far:
"We need to leverage all opportunities".
Translation: Take advantage of

Perhaps you, the reader, would like to send in your examples of management gobbledygook. If you are in alignment with me, then let's try to ring fence this problem, and share our key learnings. If you all give me a heads up, then perhaps we can leverage our core competencies.