School reunion

You’ve been in touch with a few of them, but now there’s an official event of your whole year, and you absolutely have to bring your wife to prove that you can pull and you’re not gay and that graffiti about you was a lie. But is she keen on an evening of niche nostalgia about who shat themselves in a French mock? Or has she got food poisoning?

Second cousin’s third wedding reception

You weren’t invited to the first two but she’s fallen out with everyone so needs you to make up the numbers. It’s at a former Labour club in a dodgy bit of town. You’ll barely know anyone there, bear grudges against those you do, and it’s not a free bar. When your husband says he’s coming down with a bug you know he’s lying and don’t blame him.

Classic car rally

Renovating a clapped-out Morris Traveller when you have too much time on your hands is an admirable achievement. Naturally you want other middle-aged men to validate you when they’re not cooing over their own Mk1 Ford Cortinas. But your wife already hates you and cannot be in a field with a hundred men just like you. ‘I’m ill,’ she says.

Soft play birthday party

The birthday boy is all of three, as is your own progeny. They won’t give a shit if your boyfriend is sitting there on his phone while screaming, sugared-up sweaty kids crash into the table and spill his third latte at 9:30am on a Saturday. You want him there for moral support, but he goes out until 3am the night before instead to ensure vomiting. Clever.

The West Midlands Comic-Con

Why? Why would anyone dress up as Deadpool just for photos with people who wouldn’t want the photo if you weren’t unrecognisable? What’s the attraction? And, apart from proving your existence, why would your girlfriend need to be there? She allows what is clearly a quasi-sexual kink, that’s enough. Her excuse? ‘Getting a bit of a bad leg.’

Annual company awards ceremony

He already endures the torture of your corporate grumblings on a daily basis. Why would he want to meet these pissed, brown-nosing corporate clones circle-jerking over pre-paid accomplishments? Just to watch you accept a meaningless prize from the boss you f**king hate? Faking illness is a compromise. Your boyfriend would rather fake death than go to this.

Callie Ryan, socialite: “The September 24th PTA meeting. Teach the pricks to vote me off the health and safety committee for ‘persistent non-attendance’. They’ll see what they’re missing.”

Jason Statham, former SAS corporal: “Freeclimbing the wall of a Turkish fortress before breaking in and single-handedly massacring everyone, including the son of a bitch who kidnapped my daughter. One must be properly attired for such instances.”

Ryan Whittaker, dog walker: “For being done from behind in the back alley behind the Bayswater Arms by a man I barely know, just like she was.”

Greg Hands, former MP: “Oh God! Oh God! I’m being knighted by King Charles at Buckingham Palace this afternoon and in a freak accident every item of clothing I own has fallen into the corn thresher! I’ve got no choice! I’ll have to wear this!”

Lottie Phleps, timpani player: “Why, Les Bal de Débutantes in the Shangri-La Hotel, Paris, of course. Ah f**k, I’ve not been invited.”

The peers, whose average age is 70, explained they have lived long lives, do not wish to end them and will therefore obstruct any bill that mentions death on the grounds they are against it.

The leader of the Lords, Baroness Smith of Basildon, said: “It’s alright for the Commons. They’re still in the first flush of youth in their late 40s. Dying’s abstract for them.

“But here? We’re got peers who were old when John Major appointed them. How are they expected to approach a bill about ending unhealthy lives in a dispassionate way, with their arteries?

“The House made a lot of amendments last time this bill came through, yes, and some of them were unworkable. But can we not feel the humanity in Viscount Chandos’s amendment ‘Would it not be preferable to first find a cure for death?’ and act on it?

“Bottom line is we don’t like death, we’re not about to help it along, and we’re certainly not legislating to make it easier. ‘Six months to live’ nonsense. These GPs just say that to get rid of you.”

Joseph Turner, MP for Torbay, said: “I was undecided but now I’m voting for the bill. Anything but end up like them.”

118 118

Before the internet, directory enquiry providers were the alternative to scouring phone books. 118 118 did that and charged you for it, but by 2010 they were in serious decline thanks to easy internet access and smartphones. This was a good thing because the two runner guys in the advert were fairly annoying twats and nowadays the idea of ringing a phone number to get another phone number feels utterly insane.

0898 550055

Late-night TV viewers in the 90s had the number for Chatback drilled into their brains permanently, or perhaps Party Line (0898 21 21 21) or Yakety Yak (0898 22 66 22). Ring them and you could have a stilted conversation with random persons, and the only reason anyone did so was the incessant adverts. These usually had an annoyingly catchy jingle, a picture of a pretty blonde girl, or actors fake-chatting or dad-dancing. It didn’t matter that the ads were dogshit, their audience was lonely and captive. They may as well have just called themselves ‘Sad Bastard Number’.

3.142

Everyone remembers Pi, it’s a number at the heart of mathematics that has something to do with circles, the exact details of which were drummed into you at school but you instantly forgot as soon as the bell rang. These days you’re more likely to find some internet New Ager ascribing mystical significance to Pi, but f**k that. It’s just a Greek letter denoting a ratio. You don’t think ⅓ is mind-blowing cosmic magic, do you? 

88

Film geeks will never forget that Marty McFly needed to reach 88 miles per hour to return to 1985 and trigger a strangely depressing sequel. It’s also the calibre of a famous German WWII anti-aircraft gun put to effective use against tanks. Knowing either of those facts is largely pointless.

01 811 8055

The number, of course, for Swap Shop, and you have to retroactively pity all the poor parents badgered to ring up with millions of other people trying to do the same. If you did get through you could swap some shit, win something, or speak to Suzi Quatro. It’s a number now tinged with sadness, because Cheggers is dead and you never did win a Millennium Falcon. 

58008

Arguably the best number because when turned upside down on a calculator it spells ‘BOOBS’. Or you could input the longer and more formal 5318008. Calculator words got even sadder, with ones like 71077345 (‘shell oil’) proving fascinating to people of the 80s. What could be more romantic than impressing a girl called Debbie by typing 31883007734 on your Casio FX-7000G? Quite a lot actually, especially if she was called Rachel but you were constrained by the limited upside-down calculator vocabulary.

8.30am

I was in my golden office in Trump Tower, the third tallest building in Manhattan, making deals. The greatest deals, just beautiful deals. What a day that was for deals.

8.44am

The first plane crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. The official reports say it was 8.46am, but I actually saw it before anyone else.

8.46am

By the time those in the tower – and these were the best people, superb businessmen, I knew one and his wife liked to have sex with him – realised the plane had hit I was already on to the CIA. ‘This is Osama Bin Laden,’ I told them. ‘I warned you he was going to do this. And there’s a second plane coming at 9.03am.’

9.03am

Trump proved right again.

9.22am

Using a powerful telescope, actually a gift to me from Galileo, I look over at New Jersey where thousands of Muslims, all the Muslims, are celebrating. ‘Disgusting,’ I murmur.

9.37am

A plane crashes into the Pentagon. I put in a call to the Department of Defense with my bid for the reconstruction contract. They’re so unprofessional they never call back.

9.57am

Arrive at the WTC using the secret entrance from my office to pop up in a phone box just outside, just like I did in Gremlins 2: The New Batch. Terrific movie, biggest box office hit of 1990, but nobody ever gives Trump credit.

9.58am

South Tower collapses. Trump Tower is now the second tallest building in downtown Manhattan.

10.03am

Flight 93 crashes in Pennsylvania. [shrugs]

10.10am

Realise the North Tower is going to collapse well before the firefighters, they’re good people but have no background in construction, and rush in to save as many people as I can. Two firemen stop me and carry me out. They have blood on their hands.

10.21am

Do some clean-up, while I’m here. Shift approximately 18 tonnes of rubble with my bare hands, then leave my people to do the rest while reminding them to credit me in the media.

10.28am

Trump Tower becomes the tallest building in downtown Manhattan.

12.30pm

Meet Wilbur Ross and Michael Bloomberg for lunch at Le Bernardin to discuss events and decide how much compensation we’ll put in for. A hundred grand seems fair.

Be quite racist 

Jim is frequently accused of racism, for some reason. Let’s just say that if you find the idea of a weed-smoking black man being called ‘Chalkie’ side-splittingly hilarious, then it could be that Jim is ‘the one’. Fingers crossed!

Make sure you love panto 

Panto is a big part of Jim’s life, so it’s essential you’re compatible on this level. He’s done mainstream panto but is better known for his own braindead ‘adult’ ones, which began with Sinderella and later included Boobs in the Wood and Big Dick Whittington. So it will help on a date if you love theatre because he’s not just a comedian, he’s a playwright too.

Be much younger than him

Jim’s wives got progressively younger over the decades, and his ex-fiancee is 23 years his junior. Don’t let this put you off though – he’s 72, so you can be in your late 40s and still meet his age requirements. Great news!

Familiarise yourself with his work 

This is a no small task, as his back catalogue includes endless stand-up DVDs with titles like Red, White and Very Blue, seven series of The Generation Game, the aforementioned pantos, five books and two shit sitcoms. However it will make a fantastic impression on Jim if you’ve seen or read all of these. And managed not to kill yourself.

Laugh at his jokes 

Men love it when you laugh at their jokes on a date, so you might sometimes feign amusement to be nice. That won’t be a problem with Jim, whose jokes are all belters like ‘What do you give a constipated canary? Chirrup of figs’. The challenge won’t be pretending to laugh, it’ll be to stop yourself literally laughing to death!

Support Reform

Jim’s a super-keen Brexiter and Reform supporter, so it will help if you are too. If things go well he’s bound to invite you to the Reform conference to hang out with his mates Nigel Farage and Lee Anderson. The benefits of going out with Jim just keep on coming!

Practise catching keys 

An odd thing to suggest before pursuing a relationship, but in 1987 Jim had the misfortune to throw a bunch of keys at his wife and accidentally give her a black eye. Obviously that was a long time ago, but practise safely catching a bunch of keys anyway, ideally massive iron ones, because the ones Jim threw must have been quite heavy.

Realistic tyre degradation

Gamers don’t really care about things like story and characters. What they’re interested in is whether the tyres of the vehicle they’re driving are gradually – and almost imperceptibly – losing tread as they drive. It’s an important detail, and one that will also help educate younger players about the importance of regular checks.

The ability to default on a mortgage

Robbing a bank is a lot of fun, but you should also be able to arrange a 45-minute-long meeting with an account manager called Steve to discuss your options for a fixed-rate mortgage. The previous games have never quite captured the exhilarating ups and downs of home ownership and personal financial management.

Getting stuck in traffic for three hours

Not a car chase. Not a shootout. Just sitting with the engine off gradually losing the will to live as teams of emergency service workers deal with a nasty crash a few miles ahead. Some will say, ‘Just drive on the pavement and get around it, you can do whatever you want!’ What? And completely destroy my sense of immersion? No thanks.

That thing where you try to walk past a stranger in the street but you both keep going the same way

This should be motion-captured and go on for far longer than anybody expects. Both characters should apologise and do an awkward little laugh afterwards. I have already raised this in several letters to Rockstar and will continue until I receive a response.

Muscle cramp

Halfway up a fire escape mid-heist, I want my leg to buckle. No warning, no workaround, just bad luck, exactly like real life. How am I supposed to believe in a game world if there’s no chance whatsoever my hamstring will simply seize up for no reason?

Actual prison sentences

I don’t want to just cut to a shot of my character simply strolling out of the police station. I won’t even settle for a montage of their time inside. If your character commits a robbery they should go to prison for 15 years, played out in real time, with gameplay reduced to reading, showering and lifting weights.

Getting out of bed

For years your failsafe alarm was your exasperated mum yelling increasingly annoyed demands for you to leave your pit. Now you discover being alone in halls and relying on your hungover self to manage timekeeping is a f**king nightmare, and you can’t ask mum to ring you every morning because she’ll just laugh. Luckily you discover a clever way to free up time for a more civilised start to the day: skip lectures for three years.

Getting about

That ‘Mum’s taxi’ sticker in the back window of her car was there for a reason. At uni there’s no such service, which is a disgrace and Burnham should do something. Instead there’s a choice of buses, cycling, walking, or what will become the most popular transport option for you: not bothering.

Feeding yourself

Home was like Hogwarts, where all the delicious food you like magically appeared. Now you’re having a bitter taste of independence. Initially you can live on takeaway deliveries but it’s a fool’s paradise and your cash will start to run out. You can mooch off the one mature girl in your block who can cook, but when she gets fed up of sharing her pasta you’ll have to make your own meals, or rather start rehydrating instant noodles. However by necessity your culinary repertoire will soon expand, so look forward to instant noodles on toast. 

Washing and ironing clothes

It used to be irritating when your mum interrupted your gaming with a pile of washed and ironed clothes and fascistically asked you to put them away. They didn’t get clean and crease-free being scattered on the floor, as you’re about to find out. But don’t worry – you’ll be going home with a bag of stinking clothes and crispy bedding soon. And also don’t worry that it’s obviously just to get decent food and your laundry done. Your parents and the washing machine will be expecting you.

Cleaning yourself and your room

You’ll be packed off with cleaning products and given an explanation of how a trigger spray and cloth works, but that alone is unlikely to result in a clean bathroom. Hopefully you’ll have a bossy housemate with basic hygiene expectations in a not-all-male household, or you’ll learn that the toilet in The Young Ones was only a mild exaggeration. 

Paying for things

At first you’ll be flush with cash from your maintenance loan and your parents. However three weeks later when you’ve blown the lot on alcohol and the odd textbook you’ll realise, shockingly, that budgeting, which absolutely everyone told you to do, is something you should have done. At first the bank is your friend and will extend your overdraft, but they have a tendency to suddenly stop giving you money to throw Jägerbombs down your neck and back up again. You should have known the capitalist fatcats didn’t really care about your education. 

Tom Wooton, Mayor of Bedford

We get very little tourism, due to there being nothing to do or see in Bedford, so a day spent here remains a perfect blank in the mind. However, millions drive up the M1 which has signs for Bedford and they’re looking at those yet contributing nothing to our town. So from now on it’s £6.70 per look, to be paid online before midnight the following day.

Ros Jones, Mayor of Doncaster

As a national joke, we’ll establish a new social media monitoring unit and every time anyone makes a disparaging reference to Doncaster it will be logged and a £40 fine levied. And when those people pass through the region our police, famous for their corruption, will detain them until the full sum is paid. If they can’t pay it they’ll just have to live here.

Andrea Jenkyns, Mayor of Greater Lincolnshire

As a Reform zealot who formerly worshipped Boris until the scales fell from my eyes and I realised Nigel was the one true messiah, I plan to redefine ‘the tourist’. Anyone who has been resident in our flat, cabbage-growing region for fewer than eight generations is now classified as a tourist and pays quintuple council tax and a mayoral enrichment surcharge.

Zoe Garbett, Mayor of Hackney

We welcome tourists here in Hackney, but a Green mayoralty cannot entertain those with incorrect attitudes on climate change, Palestine or the trans struggle. So all prospective tourists must complete an examination costing £80 and if they pass they can enjoy our attractions unhindered. Don’t miss the Clown Museum.

Andy Abrahams, Mayor of Mansfield

We welcome all tourists and will impose no extra taxes, but we’ll come down bloody hard on anyone confusing me, Andy Abrahams, former civil engineer, with Andy Abraham, former binman and Britain’s 2008 last-place Eurovision entrant. It’s just ignorant. We’re not even the same race, and it’s not f**king funny shouting ‘nul points’ at me. Two grand fine.

Bev Craig, Mayor of Greater Manchester

£300 per person if you’re on a stag do, £800 per person if you’re on a hen do. We will wipe out this scourge devastating our cities. Piss off to Prague and leave Mancunians to savour our bleakness, our rain and the backdrops to group photos by miserable indie bands who broke up decades ago. You don’t deserve them.

Following a row, Tom Booker has barely spoken to Nikki Hollis for two days, failing to anticipate that for her it would turn out to be one of the happiest times in their relationship.

Hollis said: “Tom’s in a strop about something and thinks he’s punishing me with his silence. I’d argue the punishment is not that effective, because I’m bloody loving it.

“No pathetic hint-dropping that he wants sex, no tedious work anecdotes I couldn’t give a f**k about, and best of all I have full control of the TV remote. I turned the football over to watch Corrie last night and because he’s so determined not to speak there was nothing he could do about it.

“It got me thinking, if life is so much better without his perpetual blathering, how great would it be if I didn’t have to look at him either? So I’m thinking of dumping him before the weekend then going out on the pull with the girls.”

Booker said: “To be honest, I’ve forgotten what I was in a mood about, but I’m not breaking my vow of silence. That would just be an admission I was in the wrong. About something.

“Nikki’s putting a brave face on it and smiling all the time, but I can tell she’s incredibly upset underneath. I’ll start speaking to her again on Friday so I’ll get a shag at the weekend as usual.”

Stare for an acceptable period

Stare at exhibits long after you’ve got the gist and have started feeling bored. This proves you appreciate culture and are not some working-class oik who only enjoys chips and copulating. Never mind that you really can’t see what’s so amazing about a picture of a horse.

Think about sex

Gazing at a painting is less tedious if you’re weighing up which, if any, of the subjects you’d do. It’s easy for blokes at a John William Waterhouse exhibition as he was into hot redheads and Lady Godiva is naked, but a lot harder with the Bayeux Tapestry, which only has six women and they’re really unrealistic. Who knew 1066 was so sexist?

Maintain the right facial expression

Look interested and alert at all times with no yawning, sighing or glazed eyes. It’s hard but not impossible; if you’re in a relationship and can not look suicidally bored by Love Island or Operation Barbarossa for an hour, you can manage it with Degas painting bloody ballerinas again.

Cast your mind back to the cafe

Museum and gallery cafes tend to be upmarket these days, so think about things you could eat there later – the toasted paninis looked nice, maybe followed by a slice of chocolate cheesecake? You’ll be so lost in your own world of food people will assume you’re captivated by a completely pointless painting of a Dutch woman sitting in her living room.

Read the placard enthusiastically 

Show how engaged you are by eagerly reading out the explanatory placards saying things like ‘The vase depicts Heracles in the Garden of the Hesperides in the style of the Hellenistic period’. Then nod sagely and look thoughtful, instead of more truthfully saying: ‘I have no f**king idea what that means.’

Buy loads of postcards 

Nothing shows your deep appreciation of art and history like buying a load of postcards and Blu-Tacking them up in your kitchen. If you’ve been to the Bayeux Tapestry they’ll be of Normans and Anglo-Saxons with weirdly elongated bodies who are too big for their horses, so they might even make the rubbish your kids draw look good for once.

A six-year study into whether liquid that would scald skin if poured directly onto it could do any harm inside the body has discovered that it does, upending our understanding of hot liquids.

Nathan Muir of Hitchin said: “What? A cup of tea so hot I wince when it touches my lips is bad for me now? My God. And I never suspected.

“But according to this research, it ‘damages cells’ by a process called ‘burning’ – I’m not familiar with these medical terms – and increases the risk of oesophageal cancer. Wow.

“It goes on to say that drinking six or more cups of boiling hot tea raises the risk further, which I question. There doesn’t seem to me any link between a thing being bad for you and doing it repeatedly being worse for you. That’s conjecture.

“And all they’ve suggested is waiting until the tea is cooler? I can’t spend all day hanging around for drinks to cool. I’m a builder.”

The government is planning a multi-million awareness campaign starring Martin Clunes with the tagline ‘Cool it! Don’t let your cuppa char’ which the British public will completely ignore.

Cinema

Watching a film together quietly will be excellent practice for the rest of your relationship. But since going to an arthouse flick is cooler than slumping in front of Ludwig, you’ll both be able to invest in the fiction that you like each other and are compatible before moving things along to sex.

Theatre

Like the cinema but more so, the theatre only truly exists to persuade couples they’re doing something other than facing in the same direction while not speaking. Doing this as a date? Legitimises your shared pretence you are classy so means you can skip straight to rutting like beasts, because they did in Pretty Woman. 

Gig

Trickier, as you need to agree on an artist you both like. Or pick someone entirely unknown and hope the audience is cool enough to validate it. But has the appeal of conversation being impossible and you can hold hands so as to not lose each other in the crowd, and once you’re holding hands you may as well do oral later.

Comedy club

Suggests you’re fun because you like to passively enjoy other people being fun. In reality it’s likely to be either dull (weekday) or drowned out by pissed arseholes (weekend) but at least the poor bastards on stage will be the ones straining to say something interesting, rather than you. And it encourages drinking, which encourages sex.

Ice skating

Introduces very real danger into the equation. Your date will be so busy concentrating on not falling over, making a tit of themselves and breaking an ankle they’ll forget to ask if you have a good relationship with your mother or have any pets. Also they’ll clutch onto you a lot and be so grateful it’s over you’ll be banging as soon as you’re in proper shoes again.

Silent disco

Taking off the headphones is cheating, you explain, adding that it’s also expected to move around the venue and you needn’t stick together. Then groove to your heart’s content, meeting up with them at the end. Remove your headphones and say ‘So, fancy coming back to mine for full intercourse?’ It might work.

All those who pay no mind to school holidays to take advantage of cheaper deals and cooler climates are right now standing around at Gatwick wishing they had not decided to go with shorts for the flight.

Martin Bishop of Leominster said: “I could watch this footage all day.

“Look at that guy there. He’s just queued for 40 minutes at Costa and paid £13.75 for a coffee and a dry, unpalatable croissant and that’s his breakfast. That’s his f**king breakfast. I had blueberries on my porridge, dickhead.

“They’ve spent all summer bragging about how Crete is ‘so much better once the heat of August passes, and actually far more affordable’ and now they’re spending two days of their holiday at East Midlands Airport.

“And according to the news even when they finally get flown out their luggage won’t, so they’ll spend all holiday in cheap Spanish polyester filing compensation claims on their phones. Ah. Glorious.”

Holidaymaker Carolyn Ryan said: “I may have been stuck at Heathrow for 26 hours but I haven’t got any bratty kids while I do it. So I still win.”

Homeworker Joshua Hudson of Winchester was cracking one out during his lunch break, in order to provide himself with motivation for the afternoon, when he switched hands and felt an unpleasant click.

He then found himself unable to rise from his reclining position and had to roll onto the floor and crawl into the bathroom for a clean-up he described as ‘degrading’.

He said: “Christ, I’ve already given up vaping, drinking on weeknights, all prospect of sex and fry-ups. I can’t have this become a risky activity as well.

“In the moment I over-exerted myself, I understand that, but is this going to happen regularly? Do the elderly in sheltered housing have to bash the bishop by the pullcord for the warden?

“I’ll be struggling to walk for the next three weeks at least, I’ll need six cushions to get through a film, and sleeping will be hell. Still, I finished. I feel that shows strength of character.”

Wife Sara said: “Useless bastard’s put his back out again. How I don’t know. He does nothing but lie around and occasionally wank.”

For example in Portsmouth, where we smashed the windows of police cars to stop buses of asylum seekers, I joined the chants of ‘Christ is King’. Just our way of saying we’re not Muslim immigrants? Of course not. Christ and his teachings guide all our lives.

Certainly God hates those of opposing faiths, which is why he commanded St George to go on the Crusades from a burning hedge. Why he didn’t provide air support is beyond me, but he moves in mysterious ways.

But suggestions I’m just pretending to be a Christian because I’m a thick racist is ridiculous. My faith is a source of comfort to me in difficult times, like when Chelsea lost to Arsenal at the weekend. I only twatted one bloke because I knew it was God’s plan.

What do I most value about Christianity? The rules it provides on how to live an ethical life, such as ‘love thy neighbour’ meaning the white ones you already have, and not lying with mankind as it’s an abomination, and destroying Sodom. Good ethical shit.

When me and the lads mask up, that’s Christianity in action. Vicars wear all black, don’t they, apart from the collar? They intimidate their flock with threats? That’s all we’re doing, but on the streets and in a rather more literal sense. These fists are His instrument.

So as you can see, Christianity isn’t just something racists have appropriated in a superficial way. Do I actually go to church and do good deeds and so on? Yeah, I went to a wedding in 2022 and I always buy a poppy. I reckon that ticks the f**king boxes.

So the pigs can f**k off banging my door down at 8am and arresting me for throwing a bottle at a copper. I’m pissed off that an omnipotent being didn’t wipe the CCTV footage and save me a lot of aggro, but then God does move in mysterious ways.

The 13-year-old is looking forward to not falling asleep to the sound of an argument, not waking to the sound of breaking crockery at 3am, and not having to tiptoe into the kitchen for breakfast while his father sleeps off a cognac binge on the sofa.

A close friend said: “A tutor asked if he’d miss his mother and father. George laughed incredulously, then muttered ‘I’m never going back.’

“For him it’s a relief not to have to clear up the empty cans in front of the telly every afternoon. To not have to explain to his sister that no, mum’s not leaving home, she was just joking. To not have to retrieve his father’s clothes from the garden again.

“He doesn’t like to talk about it. He cried when he confessed he’d spent his Christmas money on buying Louis a new bike after his father crushed his old one reversing the car out of the drive blind drunk.

“He said as soon as he’s 18 he’s leaving his family forever. I said what about being heir to the throne, Defender of the Faith, Duke of Cornwall and Lord of the Isles. He said ‘Oh yeah.’”

Prince William said: “George! GEORGE! What do you mean he’s at school? Well in that case Charlotte can go tell her bitch of a mother I’m not speaking to her and where did she hide the TV remote.”

Nathan Muir says the odd idea came up when he asked his partner of ten years, Francesca, if she would be up for sex during his lunch break.

He continued: “We were both working from home and I asked if she fancied it. She comes back with a claim she wasn’t ‘in the mood’. I had no idea what she could possibly mean.

“She’d finished her meetings, I know because she swore and slammed shut her laptop after the last one, and she’d had soup so she wasn’t hungry. How are you not up for the sexual ecstasy of an orgasm?

“I can only assume she had explosive diarrhoea and was embarrassed to say. That’s pretty much the only thing that would give me pause. Even then I’d manfully try to push through it.”

Francesca Johnson said: “I’ve got deadlines hanging over me, I need to book a catsitter, it’s broad daylight and the only conversation we’d had all day was about what bins to put out, and he wants to f**k? What’s wrong with him?”

Muir said: “I suppose I should endeavour to understand her complicated inner world better. Next time, before I ask, I’ll see if she needs an Imodium.”