So, farewell then Adam Yauch. Dead of cancer at 47. Yauch, and his fellow Beastie Boys - Mike Diamond and Adam Horovitz - comprised one of the biggest rap groups ever. Along with mogul Rick Rubin, co-founder of Def Jam - label home of the Beasties, Run DMC, Jay-Z and Kanye West - they put Jews at the forefront of the genre in its early days.

Readers, you may remember that, late last year, I got dumped by my girlfriend Mandy when she finally twigged I wasn't going to be able to provide her with the things she really wanted: my ultra-rare Frankie Say Arm The Unemployed T-shirt from 1984 and box set of nine Seinfeld DVDs.

David and Caroline Stafford
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Maybe it is his status as one of America's foremost songwriters, the one to whom other acclaimed tunesmiths defer. Perhaps it is the forbiddingly acerbic nature of his songs.

The new Year's eve just gone was a significant one for me - it was my first without my three children since 2006 (my ex-wife was looking after them).

Breaking up - as that old Jewish sage Neil Sedaka once put it so pithily - is hard to do. And that was in 1962. These days, it's even harder.

I am writing this column sitting beside a hotel pool in Tunisia, where I have come on holiday because I needed a break from all the financial misery and rioting back home. Did you not hear about the Bushey riots? Jews went on the rampage because they ran out of herring at the Deli Cafe.

Why, I hear you wondering, would I pick for my annual holiday destination Tunisia? Because it's cheap.

You might have noticed that, after three years of being called "Suddenly Single", this column has changed its name, to "Still Single". That's because I'm still single. It's a title that sums up my continuing utter uselessness with the opposite sex.

One of the great things about being single is, you don't have to put up with anyone moaning at you. And yet somehow I still managed to get told off this week by a virtual stranger, a young lady in a pub who approached me to complain that lately I've been coming across as "too bitter" in this column.

Before Lady Gaga and Madonna, there was Debbie Harry, the original subversive platinum blonde pop star. In the late '70s and early '80s, she became the world's hottest pin-up.

What is the appropriate age-differential when it comes to dating? What I mean is, how low is it OK to go before disapproving stares become audible tuts? I ask this because I've been seeing a girl who is a bit younger than me and I'm wondering what you think.

How much younger? Put it this way: I was born during Beatlemania and she was born during punk.

My barmitzvah was three decades ago. My eldest son's was three weeks ago. But the similarities are uncanny. Both services took place in north London synagogues and were conducted by young rabbis. Both parties were held in tastefully decorated function rooms (we decided against the replica of the barmitzvah boy sculpted out of smoked salmon). Oh, and I was single at both events.

It would be hard for me to argue that I have become more vain since getting divorced, especially considering that one of the many things that annoyed my ex-wife was that, whenever I was in a restaurant, I would regularly check my appearance in the cutlery.

By Dorian Lynskey.
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