PHP/MySQL problem

I'v got this small PHP/MySQL problem which for some reason i just can't seem to get past.

I've got this table with a field called for example "topic" and for each entry there may be different topics or the same topics e.g.

id: topics:
1 fish
2 fish
3 beans
4 bread
5 bread

What i want to do is to count up the occurrences of each entry, but if they are the same then print them like this them like this:

fish 2
beans 1
bread 2

Sounds simple enough? if i've explained it at all well, but for some reason i cant seem to get it lol. I would show what code i have got, but its messy and i've changed it about so much that it probably looks silly

Any help would be appreciated?

 

$query = "SELECT topics, COUNT(topics) FROM topic GROUP BY topics"; 
	 
$result = mysql_query($query) or die(mysql_error());

while($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)){
	echo $row['topics']." : ".$row['COUNT(name)'];
	echo "<br />";
}

PHP:

 

Thanks very much YIAM.

That is exactly what i was after