As I was eating my mid-ride snack this morning I noticed my seatpost looked a little bent. When I got back I checked: I removed the post, put it on a piece of paper, held a pen to the side of the seatpost and traced the shape of the post on the paper. Sure enough, over the distance from the saddle to where it enters the frame there was almost a 5mm deflection from a straight line. The seatpost is a no-name alloy jobby that came with the bike. Is it replacement time, or can I ride safely on it for a while?

Or worse you lose your bum cherry to a jagged piece of metal.

Get a Thomson from Merlin Cycles, it may seem quite expensive (~£50 atm) but they are top quality, super super strong and you will never need buy another one.

Change it now! My mate who is, to be fair, a big chap (100kg?) had 'an incident' when his seat post failed. It basically went up his ring and did some fairly unpleasant damage. No one wants that. £50 is a small price to pay for a functioning gusset.

Agree with all those above, replace your seatpost before riding again. A broken seatpost can leave you with quite a nasty injury (and a big crash!). You dont have to spend much!