Simon Pegg has announced his diagnosis of ADHD, a condition now so well known that its abbreviation is normally left unexpanded.

The BBC explains the good news. Before, Pegg had attributed certain of his qualities to ‘just character fault’. Now he sees them differently, and so does his wife. ‘She makes allowances for forgetfulness and and lack of concentration,’ says the Beeb’s article.

Human variation, like human suffering, can be defined in a host of ways

Perhaps Pegg repeated the word ‘and’ in that sentence because of his ADHD; perhaps the BBC editor let it stand because of theirs. Certainly, I didn’t spot the repetition the first time I read the piece, which might, for all I know, be because of mine. I can’t guarantee the BBC piece won’t be corrected by the time you read this, and trust to your good nature to believe that it was there this morning.

Simon Pegg’s work has given me great pleasure. I happen to believe the purpose of film is not heart-rending insight into the profundities of the soul but frothy entertainment. Shaun of the Dead is not Tolstoy, but neither does War and Peace offer what I look for in Mission Impossible. Many Spectator writers mention their proximity to the lives of the globally famous and I am no exception. I once met Elvis. That sounds like a non-sequitur, and it will sound even more like one when I add that Pegg’s Hot Fuzz, which is a fabulous film, funny and witty and charmingly intelligent, has a key scene involving a rampaging swan.

Elvis – that was the swan’s name – lived in Heythrop Zoo, near Chipping Norton, which trained animals for film and TV work, and which would open up one weekend a year for curious locals. We went along and my young kids, who were often restless and fretful when asked to sit down to do their homework, watched the animals with fascination and deep reserves of concentration.

There are people who have noted the rise of ADHD diagnoses and concluded that the condition does not exist. They are wrong. Yes, it has exploded in popularity with all the appearance of a craze. Yes, it shows a striking overlap with other fashionable conditions. None of this means ADHD is not real. If in many people it represents a constellation of symptoms that seem fundamental to human nature, and thoroughly normal, that still does not make it unreal. Depression is all in the mind – attempts to reduce it to a biochemical error have so far failed – but it is not a jot less real if it stays that way.

Human variation, like human suffering, can be defined in a host of ways. With psychiatric diagnoses, there is a question beyond one of accuracy. The question is what impact a diagnosis has and whether it is helpful. Does it help us live better lives? Does it help us see the world and ourselves more clearly? Do our days become richer and more interesting?

Pegg has spoken of his heavy drinking and his depression, and it seems he feels having a diagnosis of ADHD helps him deal with this. He has talked of reversing into a post and finding out that people with a label of ADHD have more car accidents; he seemed to feel the diagnosis helped here too. What isn’t clear is whether it made him more forgiving of his own mistakes or more watchful for them.

To the best of my knowledge, I don’t have ADHD. I recall wrestling with inattention as a child, I remember being hyperactive on many occasions, and I can certainly be impulsive, but I grew up as part of a generation taught to view these as features of character. I rather think I was helped to overcome them by being taught this view, and suspect – shallow adolescent that I was – that I would have found a disease label a too tempting excuse for not doing what I can to improve myself. But I am not Simon Pegg and I am not you, and if a different approach works for different people, then I can only applaud.

None of us can do very much to remake our characters and our minds, which should make us open to whatever really does help – and wary of what does not. Simon Pegg is of my generation, and though ADHD diagnoses are on the rise everywhere, his late-in-life acquisition of an ADHD label seems more typical of Hollywood stars like him than bourgeois rustics like me.

Probably my scepticism about what Pegg’s label offers him is obvious, but it would be a grave mistake for me to look down on him, or on anyone else, for finding it helpful. The fact that I fear the label may do harm does not mean I hope that I am right.

Elvis in Hot Fuzz is a running gag, outwitting the slow rural coppers. In the climax of the film, he ambushes the chief villain from the backseat of a getaway car. A hard animal to train for a movie appearance, I imagine. But there were people who knew how to help him become a film star. And if stardom alongside Timothy Dalton and Simon Pegg pleased Elvis then he got all any of us can hope for: a life that brought out the best in him.