Editor-At-Large: See where John Lennon fried an egg!

Devotees of Steven Spielberg's television series Taken will be only too familiar with its thesis that out there in space lurk gleaming flying saucers driven by blue plastic creatures with pods for heads. These highly intelligent alien beings can't wait to pop down to Earth and breed with us in the hope of creating a master race.

I know this sounds preposterous but honestly, after a bottle of wine and a gruesome episode of Casualty, Taken almost seems plausible. Sadly the series ended the other week with a little girl being whisked off to Mars. Since then I have been nurturing a dream that a blue pod-headed little man might emerge from a spaceship in Clerkenwell late one night and enrich my life. Sadly, nothing doing – for some reason Great Britain does not seem a receptive zone for intergalactic breeding plans.

Could the reason be that we present an incomprehensible society to outsiders? For an alien looking for a well-balanced group to infiltrate, you're better off in rural Utah or Wyoming. Life in Britain seems wierder than anything I would imagine possible on Pluto. Last week, for example, we decided to create a fresh pilgrimage site in the form of a 1930s semi-detached house in a Liverpool suburb. John Lennon's childhood home has been saved for the nation courtesy of Yoko Ono. And for £10 Beatles devotees will be able to fawn over ancient lino, a single bed, a three-piece suite and a cast-iron cooker, before completing their devotions at the 1948 council house down the road once inhabited by Paul McCartney.

Why bother saving cathedrals from falling down when you can spend thousands of pounds less restoring a 1960s kitchen where a rock god once fried an egg? It's easier to "recreate" John Lennon's bedspread than prop up Wells Cathedral or rebuild Brighton Pier. And you've got a guaranteed fan base of millions of record buyers world-wide. The National Trust has jumped feet first into popular culture and I expect we'll shortly be asked to stump up and save the flat in Cromwell Road SW7 where the Pink Floyd rehearsed as well as the grotty offices off Oxford Street where Malcolm McLaren masterminded the Sex Pistols.

At the same time as the National Trust "saved" these two undistinguished structures, Baroness Blackstone, the Arts minister, announced a fresh list of post-war buildings that have been listed, making it extremely difficult (although not impossible) to demolish them in the future. Advised by English Heritage and the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment, the Department for Culture has listed 21 modern buildings (built more than 30 years ago) since 1995, including commercial buildings such as New Zealand House, Centre Point and Millbank Tower, and public housing such as the Roehampton Estate and Trellick Tower in London. Now it is the turn of six communications structures to be granted this protected status, including the lighthouse at Dungeness and the BT Tower, constructed in the Sixties. When I spoke to the minister she was adamant that listed buildings should not just be "castles, cathedrals and country houses". She also admitted that many people think contemporary architecture is "crap" and that listing buildings helps the public to learn to love the more modern. I agree, but why not list less, demolish more and construct the inspirational?

My blue-headed aliens would find all this very confusing – we are saving stuff that is simply not worth it. The Post Office Tower might have represented white hot technology back in the Sixties, but today the creation of the old Ministry of Works' Eric Bedford is laughably feeble, squat, unimpressive and symbolic of an era when a lot of crap got off the drawing board and on to the skyline.

Architecture has to be bold and brave, and the BT Tower is the built equivalent of a limp wave. At the time it was erected, much more creative architects such as Cedric Price and Peter Cook and Ron Herron of the Archigram Group came up with breathtaking proposals for cities that walked, cities covered in space-frame skins to create permanently good weather and plug-in housing pods. None of this avant garde work got built. Abroad these architects are revered, in Britain, they survived on teaching. They were the people who could have given us a truly modern vision on the South Bank of the Thames, not the piecemeal concrete jungle for which we're spending millions on yet another master plan to sort out.

Another listing disaster, Centre Point, caused outrage when it was completed in 1966. The public spaces Richard Seifert created around the base of the tower are a disgrace – a place where litter gathers, tramps urinate and fountains never work. Listing this building represents all that is wrong with the current system. We have saved a white elephant, a building that doesn't bring any joy whatsoever to Londoners, erected because the London County Council wanted a roundabout.

It is typical of architects and groups such as the 20th Century Society to rate buildings like Centre Point and campaign to get Alexander Fleming House in Elephant and Castle by the Sixties cult figure Erno Goldfinger listed (unsuccessfully as yet) because architects love how things look from other buildings. Architects are unconcerned with the practicalities of how these butch structures function at ground level. They love the grand gesture, not the reality of how walkways and gardens actually get used. Architecture is not about buildings, but the places between them. And if anyone can tell me an underpass worth listing I'll eat my hat.

Different planets

Meanwhile, if my blue aliens are reading the new Lonely Planet Guide to Britain, they might find that the reality doesn't quite match up to the prose. Our inept Tourism minister Kim Howells has recently taken time off from sounding off about rap music and modern art and announced a new body to market tourism for England at home and Britain abroad.

There is a £14bn gap between the money leaving Britain in the form of money we spend on travelling abroad and the money we spend travelling here. A £14bn deficit in any Whitehall department would be a cause of concern, but Mr Howells still seems overly occupied in attracting foreign visitors, spending three times as much money on selling Britain to foreigners as to the people who voted him into parliament. The guide's spookily upbeat prose describes Birmingham as "radiant" and Cardiff as "on a high", while even Aberystwyth has a "modern fizz" – whatever that is. Manchester is "one of the most exciting cities in Britain", and Exeter is "vibrant, with a buzzing nightlife". I suggest Mr Howells saves his department a huge sum of money by just scrapping the Come to Britain ads and dishing out the Lonely Planet happy-clappy vision of Blighty. It might even tempt those aliens to mid-Wales.

Finally, I begged a ticket to see living legend Suggs star in Our House, the musical based on the Madness hits. This cheery entertainment was recently voted musical of the year and is thoroughly enjoyable and uplifting. The choreography is sensational. The only trouble is, poor old Suggs can't really sing and certainly can't dance. None of this seems to matter, as he gets a standing ovation nightly. I expect the National Trust will soon be preserving the street in Camden where he grew up.