I called my kids Somme, Trench and Mustard Gas so I'll never forget the war dead. What did you do?

One company has commissioned a special Remembrance Bird House covered with pictures of poppies for the centenary. Gestures like that make you realise 60 million people didn’t die in vain

It’s the time of year again when we have the chance to display our true worth as humans by seeing how many poppies we can display to honour those who fought for us.

Katie Hopkins proved herself a true friend of the fallen this week when she wrote on Twitter: “I called my daughter Poppy, so I won’t forget. Will you?” She makes a powerful point, and that’s why my three kids are called Somme, Trench and Mustard Gas.

You see so many moving tales around this time, such as letters to the Daily Telegraph that say: “I decided to pay my respect to those who fought by travelling to Belgium and crawling around in mud for six months, and only stopped when I was arrested as it was a children’s play area on the outskirts of Antwerp. Now I have a restraining order against me, and have started a crowdfunding site to pay for my legal fees.”

At some point over the next week, Good Morning Britain will feature a retired security guard who’s had a kidney removed and replaced with a poppy. And Piers Morgan will shed a tear as he tells the story of a carpet salesman who paid tribute to our war dead by turning up five minutes late for an appointment and then shooting himself for desertion.

Around the country we’ll hear heartwarming tales, along the lines of a rambling group writing in their newsletter: “We just spent a delightful weekend walking around Pembrokeshire, where we enjoyed the glorious autumnal shades of yellow and rustic brown of fading bracken. But what a disgrace there are no poppies! So we clubbed together and bought four tons of Agent Orange and incinerated the whole area. Now maybe the local authority will plant some poppies and honour the fallen as they deserve! Mind you, they’ll have to be plastic as nothing can grow there for 300 years!”

The Sun will feature a family from Swansea who chopped their neighbour’s tree down because an apple fell off it and thumped on the ground during the two minutes’ silence. “How DARE it insult our war heroes?” they’ll say. “If it wasn’t for them, that tree would be German.”

Others who betray the memory will include shameful television personalities who appear onscreen without a poppy. Already there’s disgust because the BBC is planning to broadcast one of its mainstream shows in the week before Remembrance Day, with not one person wearing a poppy, and their excuse is it’s a repeat of Only Fools and Horses, originally shown in April 1986.

Would it be too much trouble to call everyone back and film it again with everyone proudly sporting a poppy? It’s a good job our servicemen weren’t so lazy before fighting Rommel in the desert.

The National Portrait Gallery should also be exposed for displaying a painting of Sir Francis Drake with no poppy. It’s especially upsetting that he shows such a lack of respect, seeing as he often took an interest in military issues.

And even the health and safety brigade have interfered with paying our respects. Kidderminster Town Centre has been told in an email that they’re not to remember the sacrifice of our forefathers by placing landmines around the Arndale Centre, as this “could lead to injury”.

We should insist we never forget – and to start with we should clamp down on traitors who make no effort to remember because they’re 98 and in the advanced stages of dementia. It’s one thing not recalling who your sister is, but forgetting our heroes is a scandal.

Even worse are soldiers who have shellshock and can’t recall their own battles. How dare they not remember? The ungrateful bastards.

Luckily there are people who ensure we will never forget. Coca Cola have painted a battlefield across its lorries with the slogan “Lest we forget”, because it clearly holds a deep empathy for those who fought against tyranny, with every fizz seeming to say: “Take that, Goebbels.”

Then there are smaller companies, such as Gardman, who have marketed a special Remembrance Bird House covered in pictures of poppies. Gestures like that make you realise 60 million didn’t die in vain.

But the poppies aren’t just about remembering; they’re also about providing a pension for those servicemen who fought for their country. And it’s fitting that our soldiers should be dependent on sales of poppies, rather than having their retirement properly funded. That way, they’re forced to hang around railway stations with buckets, which makes it easier for us to remember them. If we gave them enough to live on, they’d be at home or down the cafe with their mates, out of view where we can forget them, and they wouldn’t want that.

Similarly, the 22,000 servicemen and women present at nuclear tests fired by the British have been campaigning for 50 years for recognition that the aftermath of these tests had an enormous impact on their health.

“We refuse to be forgotten,” they say. What a bunch of traitors. How dare these soldiers confuse the campaign to remember our soldiers by demanding to be remembered?

This is why the most enthusiastic poppy fanatics, like Katie Hopkins and Jacob Rees-Mogg, encapsulate the British spirit by fighting the next heroic battle, for a Brexit that breaks all ties with Europe. We didn’t fight the First World War to be tied to Europe, especially not Belgium – except for the pact with Belgium that led us into it.

But never mind that. The point is we were fighting for freedom against Belgium, which is why the slogan we used to go into war was “Brave little Belgium”. No, hang on, I’ll get this right in a minute.