Whingebag Vs Samaritan Prime et alia

One of my favourite things about having this column is that it gives me an excuse to be a misanthropic whingebag during any given week. Last week's subject was Osama bin Laden (he had it coming) and the folk who overzealously celebrated his death, and the previous week it was the never-ending build-up to the Royal Wedding, which has since ended.

Readers should be happy too because it gives you the opportunity to be whingebags about my whinging. See, everyone's happy. Or unhappy. It's a tough one to work out.

You might think it's easy being annoyed at something every week. Well it is. Except this week I'm torn. I can't make my mind up whether I hate this week's subject, pity them or downright adore them. I'm trapped in my own version of Snog, Marry or Avoid. Except there's no Jenny Frost, just men in fancy dress.

Let me explain. I was driving from London to Wales last week when I heard a BBC Radio One 'Newsbeat' report about a team of 'super' 'heroes' 'fighting' 'crime' on the streets of New York. They go by the names of Nitro, Zero, Samaritan Prime and Battlestar and each evening they will dress up in their crime-fighting outfits - usually skate gear - and parade about town scaring off baddies. They're effectively Eurovision entrants without singing ability. Scrap that, they're exactly like Eurovision entrants.

[Newsbeat: 'Real life superheroes' fighting crime in New York]

"If you turn yourself into a nameless symbol, you can stand for so much more than just one person out there" says a man who has ironically named himself Samaritan Prime.

Presumably his symbol is a Transformer with long hair and a beard. Think Optimus Prime meets The Good Samaritan, you know, him from that parable.

Obviously we never learn their real names - it's part of the superhero code. But I must have missed the scene in every superhero comic/TV series/film ever made where the hero actively seeks out media attention and adoration shouting 'HEY WORLD LOOK AT ME' and therefore removing any hint of coolness they may have had. And did Batman have his own Facebook fan page? Because Samaritan Prime does.

It's not just in New York where jacked-up geeks with an overwhelming sense of self-importance are wandering around with mouth organs as weapons (no, really.) 'The Statesman' hit the news a few months ago when he was ousted by the Daily Mail as a 26-year-old bank worker who scoured the streets of Birmingham in his Fiat Punto dressed in a skin-tight union jack top and an eye mask. There's also another 'hero' in Seattle who goes by the name of Phoenix Jones. He recently had his nose broken.

"We're doing something," says Zero. "It's better than sitting on our asses and complaining about it." And you can't really argue with that I suppose. It's not exactly what David Cameron had in mind when he launched the Big Society but there are worse things than impressionable big kids trying to help people, especially seeing as they actually appear to do some good in between their presumably endless quiet nights fixing ladders in their tights. This particular rabble claims to have recently prevented a rape, which no amount of insults or quips will discern credit from.

So what have we learned? Nothing. But at least we've all got something to whinge about now. Next week mushrooms. God I hate them. If only there were someone out there who could help…