I want to give my tumour a name. It's about time I had something to call the little sod. "Tumour" is too melodramtic, "acoustic neuroma" too cumbersome. "Vestibular schwannoma" is just a non-starter. Besides, I want something specific to my own particular lump of cells. I'm far too vain to let this just be any old common-or-garden growth. 

Dennis Potter called his Rupert. An excellent name, but then his was malignant. What better title for something corrupting everything in it touches, rampaging cancerously through the body politic? But mine just sits there, growing without spreading. It doesn't so much want to destroy or ravage as intrude into a place it isn't wanted, and the chaos it creates is an unitentional side effect of its existence rather than its raison d'etre. It needs to be called after something more, well, benign.

I'm thinking Ally McCoist rather than Graeme Souness, Dermot O'Leary instead of Davina McCall. Not so much Phil Collins as Mike Rutherford. A year or so ago I would have called it Jamie, after Mr Oliver, but for reasons explained here my attitude towards him has shifted from viceral, cold-blooded loathing to grudging acceptance.

This isn't to say than benign destructiveness is necessarily preferable to malinancy. Compared to someone who is obviously evil - Michael Howard, say, who as a minister looked as though he would have happily gone around setting fire to maternity hospitals and hospices if only the parliamentary arithmatic were not so tight - Kenneth Clark seemed the very image of good-natured bonomie. Yet with his hush puppies, love of jazz and Nottinghamshire vowels he did more to royally gut our public services of equity, professional automonmy and efficiency than any other member of that sorry excuse for a government.

And at the other end of the political spectrum, how about calling it Ralph? Few doubt Mr Nader is a good man, well-intentioned, principled, and with a track record of fighting noble causes. Yet by splitting the vote in 2000 he is as much to blame for the presidency of George Bush as is the thoroughly malign Karl Rove.

Literature has always understood the tragic potential of such characters. I'm thinking Gregers Werle in Ibsen's The Wild Duck, whose well-meant idealism destroys a family. I'm thinking Don Quixote. I'm thinking Mr Magoo. Actually, I like the last one best.

Or should I pick someone who is ultimately a parasite, growing on a host organism without malice but having an ultimately destructive funtion? For this we need to pick a member of our own Royal family, being careful to score out the more obviously malignant. That's Charles ("These bloody people. I can't bear that man. I mean, he's so awful, he really is"), Harry with his swastika and Phillip with the opinions to match ruled out, then. William, then, or Edward? Actually, a more appropriate example, after having built a career standing outside Buckingham Place reading out press releases and covering the opening of lesiure centres in Windermere, might be Jenni Bond.

Right now I'm toying with Ally, a name that reminds me of gormless, soul-drenching cheeriness giving a cloak of respectability to the dominance of a football club whose signing policy would have done PW Botha proud. But I'm sure you can do better. Post a suggestion below or email me with your favourite - I'll let you know the result in due course.