I won't try a death calculator - I don't want to know how long I've got left

Plus, I thought "poppers" were something we'd grown out of in the 90s?

Every idle moment would feel wasted if we counted down the minutes until our demise. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Some things are a certainty when you’re the youngest of five: your wardrobe will contain hand-me-downs, you’ll get the most Christmas presents, you’ll discover you are adopted (I was left on the doorstep “wrapped in chippy paper”, apparently) and you’ll learn exactly when you’ll die.

At eight years old I was gravely informed by one of my sisters that the world would end at the Millennium. Kaboom. Game over. Doing the maths, I worked out that by the year 2000 I would be the ripe old age of 26 and so would’ve had a good innings.

Still, the news of the world’s demise was unsettling. For the next few years I was on a countdown. By my teens I was pretty sure I’d been cruelly duped, but confess that it was only at 10 past midnight on 1 January 2000 that I truly stopped believing the end-of-the-world story.

Now, at 41, I have the chance to learn how I’ll die thanks to a kind offer from a newspaper to simply click on a link and fill in a few details. In the spirit of journalism I should really have faced my fears and filled in the form – but then I remembered I’m not really a journalist, I’m a DJ, and I don’t want to know when it’s all gonna go Pete Tong.

If you fill in your vital statistics you’ll find out what you’re likely to die of, depending on your age, and what diseases will be all the rage when your time comes. I bravely glanced down the page and spotted a series of inappropriately cheery graphs featuring clumps of multicoloured spots, like a rug from Heals.

Rather than soft furnishings inspiration, I thought clicking the link would connect you to FaceTime with Zoltar from the film Big revealing the death tarot card by candlelight, instantly followed by a date reminder beeping into your smartphone (3 March: 10.15 hot yoga; 12.30 die; 19.00 tapas with the girls).

I’m envious of deeply religious people who see death as part of life’s journey, paradise the end destination. Where a big man with a long white beard (no, not Father Christmas – though that’d be a pleasant surprise, if the big G Man had been Santa all along) would assign you your own cloud.

I’m aware of my own mortality but if you knew exactly how many minutes you had left there’d be too much pressure to use every one. I enjoy what is literally my spare time: those day-dreamy minutes spent tickling the dog’s belly, picking at my feet, gawping at the rain through the window, standing at the fridge eating tuna from the tin.

If I knew exactly how long I had left, those moments of faffing would be deemed too wasteful. Nine minutes munching custard creams while listening to “PopMaster”? Come on! You’ve only 5,265,332 minutes left. Learn Italian; build a donkey sanctuary; meet Dolly Parton. I’d be a nightmare to live with and would surely take advantage: “Pleeeeeease make me a cup of tea. I’m gonna be dead a week on Tuesday.”

So for everyone’s sake I think its best if I just work towards a simple goal: to die aged 110 surrounded by family while watching Pretty Woman and eating panacotta.

Banning Poppers? That’s like banning 90s fashion

Conservative MP Crispin Blunt provided a surreal moment this week when he stood up in the Commons, “outing himself” as a user of poppers, a “party drug” which I associate with 90s rave culture but which is still apparently very popular in the gay community to enhance nookie.

He spoke up against a ban on amyl nitrite saying that, as a gay man, he uses poppers. Not to be confused with “party poppers” made from multi-coloured shreds of paper, this is a little bottle of liquid that definitely shouldn’t be produced at a six-year-old’s party and sprayed all over grandma. These “poppers” don’t explode – though after a quick whiff of the stuff you feel like your brain cells are popping and your head is trapped in a faulty lift door.

Should they be banned? There are more deaths from drinking, smoking and falling off ladders every year, so probably not. Personally, I thought poppers were something you grew out of, not needed legislation against.

Stress-busting idea seems certain to do the opposite

I’m all for reducing stress but found Twitter co-founder Evan Williams’ idea of “The Daily Message” rather twee. He wants to create an app that gathers your emails and delivers them to your inbox all together, at a designated time each day, like “going to the mailbox”.

Or the British equivalent, not being able to open the front door due to the thigh-high mound of mail blocking the way as your blood pressure shoots through the roof.

The unholy matrimony of smartphones and emails means a quick reply is possible and expected. Try as we might (or want), we can’t return to the 1950s – get home, pour a finger of scotch and then sort through the day’s messages from your favourite armchair. We answer our emails over lunch, crossing the road, on the loo.

I don’t like being a slave to my smartphone but I don’t think this app would loosen the shackles. It’d just create more stress.

Mums can do things that best friends can’t

I consulted my 11-year-old about this week’s report by a parenting expert which recommends that we don’t try to be BFFs with our kids.

We agreed there’s nothing more cringeworthy than a mum and daughter who are “more like best friends”. Both my daughter and I already have best pals. What she needs from me is to be her mum. To guide (nag) her, to advise (shout at) her and, crucially, to love her no matter what.

That’s why the word MUM stands for Manage, Understand and Mither.

Janet Street-Porter is away