Maybe it’s just the end-of-year effect, with ideas running low and a couple more commissions to fulfil. Or perhaps it’s just the traditional news lull over the festive period, obliging newspaper columnists to dig into their own experiences and prejudices. Whatever the reason, we’ve been somewhat spoiled recently with slightly silly opinion pieces about cycling.

The two that come most immediately to mind include one from this very website, a Boxing Day offering by journalist-turned author Linda Grant. Something of a classic of the “cyclists are the number one road peril!” genre, it prompted a number of complaints to me, as if somehow I get to edit or veto every Guardian article about the subject (I don’t).

Then on Saturday another very experienced writer, the Telegraph’s Libby Purves, turned in a curious pudding of a column. It began by soberly noting the reason a number of London cyclists ride along at a fair pace – it appears to be safer amid the speeding motor traffic – before spending numerous paragraphs castigating the “Lycra louts” (yes, the phrase again) for doing just that.