I read the news today oh, boy Four thousand holes in Blackburn, Lancashire And though the holes were rather small They had to count them all Now they know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall.

Anybody who can sing the tune to those lyrics can join me in the queue for my bus pass in two weeks time. It is, of course, from the Beatles’ song A Day in the Life which featured on its radical 1967 album, Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

The fact is, though, that Buckinghamshire now has enough holes to fill the Albert Hall several times over. They have pock-marked our county’s roads, many of which are taking on a look that resembles a lunar landscape.

My journey into work takes in Gravelly Hill Way and Common Wood Lane into Tylers Green. These two roads are so badly potholed that a trip down them not only rattles your teeth out, but also has all your internal organs switching places.

However, do not be dismayed. We are not alone.

A report out last week revealed that the number of holes appearing in the UK’s roads has gone up by 32 per cent and that the average road now has a pothole every 120 yards. And unfortunately it doesn’t look as though we’re going to dig ourselves out of this particular hole any time soon.

The Asphalt Industry Alliance revealed in its annual report that councils filled in 5,252 holes on average last year, but because of an £8.5b funding shortfall it is likely to take another 13 years to get them all patched up.

The report says it costs £65 to fill one pothole on average and it would cost £47m per local authority to deal with the backlog.

On that basis it looks like the problem of potholes is here to stay, so we might as well get used to the fact that we are going to bounce and crash our way round the roads of Bucks for the forseeable future.

The only ones to come up smiling out of these craters are the 4x4 brigade with their Tonka toy tyres and 93-speed gearboxes.

But as Britain’s roads crumble into oblivion – which must have those Roman engineers spinning in their graves – at least they are not as bad as those in Malta. A huge political row has blown up there in the last week over the state of the island’s roads.

Malta has no motorways and only one stretch of dual carriageway – a half-mile stretch which bypasses St Paul’s Bay. Around 75% of the rest of the roads wouldn’t look out of place as a remote rutted track in the Lake District. At least our potholed roads aren’t that bad …. yet.