'My balls were about to rupture': The Guardian’s censored 'How we met' columns

‘HOW we met’ remains a popular feature in the Guardian’s Lifestyle section, but some of the real-life stories were deemed too disturbing for readers. Here is a sample.

‘He’d got a really good wok set’

‘Elaine’ told the Guardian: I’d always dreamed of owning a wok set, so when Gerald told me he’d got one with three spatulas and a bamboo vegetable steamer I sucked him off immediately. I suppose I could just buy a decent wok for 25 quid and not be forced to have sex with someone I actively dislike, but it seems like a lot of hassle.

‘My balls were about to rupture’

‘Graham’ said: I was having a serious sexual drought, over a decade, and I desperately needed a shag with anyone or anything. Let’s just say the exhaust pipe on my Honda Jazz was starting to look incredibly sexy. That’s when I met Clare, who I find by turns annoying, boring and unattractive. We’ve been together 11 years now. Oh how I regret not just visiting a prostitute.

‘She threatened to leave me to die’

‘Josh’ said: I was backpacking in Phuket in 1992 when I fell into an isolated ravine, breaking both my legs. By some miracle I saw Susan’s face peering over the edge and she said: ‘You’re not bad-looking, promise to marry me or I’ll leave you to die from dehydration and the jungle rats will eat your corpse.’ A promise is a promise and now we’ve got three grandchildren.

‘He mistook me for a woman but I decided to roll with it’

‘Stuart’ said: I got talking to Roger at a gig when I used to have long hair, and it became clear he thought I was a woman. He’s not very observant because I’m six foot four with massive hands. Anyway, long story short, I hadn’t been having much luck with the ladies recently so I thought why not just go along with it? The sex is pretty unpleasant and it’s hard explaining why I haven’t got a vagina, but it’s someone to go to B&Q with.

‘I am just so gullible and I thought he was James Bond’

‘Natasha’ said: I got talking to this guy in Spoons and I asked his name and he said, ‘The name’s Bond, James Bond.’ And I thought, wow, he’s the actual 007 so I had sex with him by the bins. It wasn’t until Skyfall that I realised James Bond was made up, because I recognised Javier Bardem from Pirates of the Caribbean: Salazar’s Revenge. Obviously we split up, but I should have seen the warning signs, like his car not having an ejector seat.

‘We’re both incredibly racist’

‘Luciana’ said: Black people, Asians, Jews – I hate them all, and so does Simon. We met while I was shouting racial abuse at Eastern Europeans on a bus and we clicked instantly. We keep the romantic spark alive by finding new genetic subgroups to despise, so this year we’re going on holiday to Mongolia to have a good laugh at those twats.

‘I saw him in a dream but it might have been Norman Cook’

‘Cassie’ said: I’m a strong believer in the dream realm, so when I met Alan inside a massive brass snake I knew he was the one. Admittedly he kept turning into different people and one of them was the DJ Norman Cook, but when I saw him outside the chemist’s just four years later I recognised him instantly. We were clearly fated to be together because we’ve got so much in common, apart from dogging, taxidermy and rock-climbing.

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How to f**king own your role in the school nativity. By Christian Bale

TOO many kids are happy with mediocre turns in their school nativity. Here, Christian Bale explains how to put in an Oscar-worthy performance in the role of Sheep No. 3.

All right, listen up, this is some serious shit. It’s your school nativity play today, and the truth is: you’re not taking it seriously enough. And it f**king shows.

So you’ve got the part of Sheep No. 3. Sure, it isn’t a big role . But it’s not the size of the role in the play, it’s the size of the actor in the role. If you nail this, no one’s going to remember who played Mary and Joseph. They’re all going to be talking about that kid who stole the show with a breakout role as a fuzzy little mammal.

First up: live the character, all right? Go out to the fields, get down on all fours, and f**king baa. Chomp on the wet December grass. Crap on the floor. Suck on a sheep’s teat. If you think ‘Daniel Day Lewis wouldn’t go this far’, you haven’t gone far enough.

Yes, people will think you’re absolutely insane. You think people didn’t think I was insane when I lost all that weight for The Machinist? You think they didn’t threaten to shut down the film for health and safety reasons? Learn to live in the middle of that wild madness. That’s where the gold is. If no one threatens to shut this nativity down, you haven’t done your job.

Next: demand they rewrite the script so that you have a three-minute monologue about your troubled, intense lambhood back on the farm. You’ll get some pushback here – some people might claim that the Christ story doesn’t actually have much to do with sheep – but remember, the art of survival is a story that never ends. No I don’t know what that means either, but it sounds kind of deep and important, right?

When you’re on stage, make sure that the audience is looking at you, even when the other characters are talking. Cultivate an insane grin, a limp or do the moonwalk: anything to ensure that you’re the kid who gets noticed. At my school nativity I snapped one of my own fingers and one of the mums fainted. Now look where I am.

Right. That’s about it. Knock it out the park. Oh, and make sure you get residuals.