Isolated… or just enjoying her own company?
Isolated… or just enjoying her own company? Photograph: Pierre Desrosiers/Getty Images

There used to be a fashion for scaremongering surveys about single women, saying things like: "Eight out of 10 women are going to die alone, surrounded by 17 cats." But to that I would mentally add: "Or it could all go horribly wrong." To my mind, aloneness never necessarily equated with loneliness. It wasn't a negative, something to be avoided, feared or endured.

Now a survey from the Office for National Statistics says that "Britain is the loneliness capital of Europe". Overall, Britons are less likely to have people they can turn to in a crisis or to feel close to neighbours. On this last point, we came 26th out of 28 European countries – beating Denmark and France (but they scored higher in other areas).

However, Britain was better than average in areas such as feeling that life was generally worthwhile. And though we did come near bottom on having people to turn to in a crisis, there were still 88.7% who could turn to someone. Slovakia's score was nearly 100%, but that's just showing off. Joking apart, if the truly lonely in Britain are to be identified and helped, then the first step would be to stop lazily lumping them in with the contented-alone.

I sometimes think of myself as a natural loner, though, in my case, this could just be a cover for being a sullen, unsociable, misanthropic cow who was warped by reading too much as a child. The upshot is that "alone" doesn't bother me much. But, then, there are two types of solitude – voluntary and enforced, the latter being a killer.

Past studies have reported the debilitating impact of loneliness, one stating that, for older people, it could be more deadly a factor than obesity. Such loneliness is caused by myriad factors – disability, unemployment, economic stress, mental illness, family breakdown, relocation and so on. Few would want to suffer it.

Then there is the other type of "alone". This study could just as well be interpreted as saying that many Britons are self-reliant problem-solvers, respectful of others people's privacy – and what's wrong with that? Isn't this the modern British definition of neighbourliness: not over-chummy and intrusive, but friendly, considerate and, most importantly, happy to sign for your Amazon parcels?

Now I'm being flippant. Of course you'd hope that people would help each other out in a crisis. However, generally, things such as "neighbourliness" seem defined by personality types. That's why some people go to London, are shocked by its standoffish ways and leave, while others like myself (escapees from villages) relish the freeing anonymity.

Likewise, while these days social media et al provides a sense of ersatz "community" without human interaction for those who want it (the equivalent of the television left on "for company"?), some people don't even want or need this.

Odd, then, that it's usually loners who are viewed with pity, condescension or suspicion. But why? Britain is an overstuffed, teeming little rock. It makes sense that, just as some people will be sociable, others will adopt the "island mentality" of standing alone and neither is right or wrong.

Still, the feeling persists that sociability is a skill, while the opposite casts a person as a loser or a weirdo – someone who's going to end up walking down a high street wearing a bandana, firing guns at those who've "wronged" them.

Personally, I'd be more likely to distrust people who can't bear time with themselves. What's wrong with them that they can't abide their own company – what are they trying to hide in the crowd?

This is what I take from these kinds of surveys – that there are the lonely, and there are the alone. Seemingly the trick is to reach out to the group who truly need help, rather than getting them mixed up.

Corrie, go easy on teen pregnancies

Coronation Street is to make 12-year-old character Faye Windass pregnant. This beats the record of the other Corrie character, Sarah Louise Platt, who was pregnant at 13.

I bow to no one in my love for Corrie – for me, its theme tune is the true British national anthem.

A key part of the show's secret is its taste with storylines, treading softly where others might barge around, like coarse, attention-hungry bulls in the soap china shop.

In such a production, the issue of teenage pregnancy need not be avoided (it happens and, handled properly, such a storyline could probably do some good). Moreover, after Sarah Louise, it's not exactly new.

However, this time around, there's a key difference that makes me feel uneasy. When Tina O'Brien performed Sarah Louise's teenage pregnancy storyline, the actress was 16 going on 17. By contrast, Ellie Leach, the fabulously stroppy young actress who plays the role of Faye is only 13.

As soon as I heard she was doing it, I was concerned about an underage actress acting an underage pregnancy, which, being in a soap, in quasi-real time, would run for months.

Obviously you couldn't have a much older actress performing this storyline, but that was the beauty of O'Brien, an older teenager able to play someone younger convincingly. An important issue could be covered without anxieties about the responsibilities of care to a child actor.

Is 13 too young to play a 12-year-old pregnant girl? If not, where is the cut-off point, especially as some young girls enter puberty extremely early?

As a lifelong fan, I'd urge Coronation Street to take care, and not only of its younger cast members. It should also make sure that the taste wheels don't suddenly fly off.

Fabricant's apology is too little and too late

What an odious exhibitionist twerp Conservative MP Michael Fabricant is – tweeting that he'd have punched journalist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown in the throat had he – and not Alibhai-Brown's fellow journalist Rod Liddle – been debating with her about race on Channel 4 News.

As it happens, both Liddle and Alibhai-Brown were composed and good humoured during the debate, having quite a ding-dong without things becoming ugly. There was nothing in the content of their encounter that could have inspired Fabricant's absurd, offensive message – it was entirely his own creation. Fabricant has apologised, saying that anybody who knew him would realise he would never punch a woman in the throat (gee, thanks!).

The episode was made worse by the shocking reports of the (entirely unconnected) case of the female Saudi Arabian student stabbed to death in Essex, her Islamic dress having potentially made her a target. Even if not genuinely meant, as Fabricant claims, when such toxic things are said, they steadily become normalised and "acceptable", and then part of the problem. As a grown man with a grown-up public life, Fabricant should know that.