The work of this column sadly goes unrecognised.

We sit at the word processor face making stuff up, sometimes with the help of strong drink or mind-altering drugs, inventing ways in which society may be improved.

Just this week, we suggested an investigation into the running of the Catholic church in Scotland conducted along the lines of the Spanish Inquisition. (Show the cardinal the implements.) And that the independence debate be overseen by a United Nations peace, truth and conciliation force. And Glasgow's bigger potholes being turned into tourist attractions protected by Historic Scotland.

All of this has been roundly ignored by the relevant authorities. It is difficult to compete with events in the real world. Just look at the latest list of winners of the Ig Nobel prizes.

The Ig Nobel awards are a humorous spoof of the serious and illustrious prizes doled out annually in Oslo. At a ceremony organised by the Annals of Improbable Research at Harvard University this week some unlikely science was honoured.

A team from China and Japan received the medicine prize for their work assessing the effect of listening to opera on mice heart transplant patients. The psychology award went to a study which proved that drunks believe alcohol makes them appear more witty and attractive.

The joint prize in biology and astronomy was won by an international team who discovered that when dung beetles get lost, they navigate their way home by looking at the Milky Way (the galactic entity not the chocolate bar). The award for engineering excellence went to the inventor of a system to trap airplane hijackers. It involves dropping the hijacker through trap doors into a package which is them parachuted via a bomb bay to police waiting on the ground.

The probability prize went to Dutch and British boffins who established that the longer a cow has been lying down, the more likely that it will soon stand up. And that once it's up, it cannot be easily predicted how soon the cow will lie down again.

The Ig Nobel Peace prize went to Belarus president Alexander Lukashenko, for making it illegal to applaud in public. His state police got a special mention for arresting a one-armed man for applauding.

Mr Lukashenko is the man who made irony unlawful. The biggest irony is that the Nobel Peace prize is funded from the profits of the explosives industry.