THANKS to Celebrity Love Island and Channel 4's A Modern Morality Tale, we've all got the Abi (Titmuss) habit now. Whether we like it or not.

You can't open a newspaper, turn on the box or walk past a magazine stand without catching a glimpse of Britain's self-confessed "most pointless celebrity".

You can't, I've discovered, even mention her name in the workplace without a public debate exploding.

Judging by the comments from folk I'd usually regard as sane, it's the general view that Abi's doing no harm whatsoever. If she can earn a million from flashing her Big Macs/ flogging calendars/ fronting porn channels and generally looking easy, then good luck to her, or so the thinking goes.

And, the implication is, why should anyone who's not prepared to earn their crust in that manner have the cheek to object? The gist is that it's a free country and it's Abi who's exploiting all the helpless blokes who buy her tat and pay good money to meet her.

So that's all right, then.

Except that it isn't. Dressing up Abi Titmuss as some kind of poster girl for liberated modern women is like dressing up Wayne Rooney as the poster baboon for modern chaps. True, they're both there because they've got something to sell but in Wayne's case it's his talent. In Abi's case, it would appear to be generous portions of herself.

In this she's no different from many who have gone before. But the secret of her success is, I reckon, based on something entirely different.

Not only does she sell pictures of herself, she appears to spend a deal of time creating an image that she is available although, as she said on Channel 4, that's not actually the case.

Abi was said to be "shocked and surprised" when drunken men in a northern nightclub demanded she get her Titmusses out for them.

On Celebrity Love Island she was saddened again because - pass the smelling salts - another contestant accused her of being promiscuous.

Abi says she isn't, but that's not the point any more. It's the impression she gives out and it's the one she appears to trade on. Most women stuck in a room full of legless blokes who are demanding they get their bits out would be either terrified, or run a mile.

But this is what Abi does for her living. What's she going to do if, one day, someone feels a little short-changed if she comes over all maidenly on them?

Abi Titmuss sprang to fame as the demure girlfriend of John Leslie, a man with a vivid private life. Unlike the clueless Leslie, who crashed and burned, Abi cashed in big-time on her lewd image.

Commentators even more bitchy than myself have been sneering at the way Abi's real figure, (wobbly tum, batwing arms and pendulous boobs) not the airbrushed version you see in all the mags, appears on Celebrity Love Island.

But if they think for one second that this will dismay her legions of male fans, then they don't get it.

Blokes don't love Abi for anything worthwhile, like her figure or her face or for saying anything intelligent or witty or even for being a nice person.

They love her because she behaves like the perfect woman - she makes like a slapper, makes no demands and she goes away when you've had enough of her.