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No hobby as good as mindlessly staring at your phone

THERE is no hobby which can compete with staring vacantly into a mobile phone, experts have confirmed.

Research by the Institute for Studies found that people engaged in supposedly more ‘glamorous’ pastimes like sailing, rock-climbing or cycling, were in fact just looking forward to the life-affirming joy of staring blankly at a lit-up screen.

Professor Henry Brubaker said: “After sustained research into the pastimes and happiness levels of participants, there is simply no activity which can compete with thoughtlessly scrolling stuff you’ve forgotten four seconds later.

“In fact, other hobbies are positively harmful as they take away time spent with the phone. Socialising is just about okay because you can scroll Instagram in the pub while people are talking. 

“Even ostensibly similar pastimes such as film and television should in fact be used as the starting point for googling the actors on screen and then engaging in a magical mystery tour of searching for useless trivia, ensuring you only half-listen to the plot and have no idea who anyone is.

“Although the phone offers more knowledge than was available to humans at any point in history, it brings most happiness when used to look at cat videos and call Michael Gove a wanker. Admittedly, the latter is a worthy endeavour in itself.”

Mobile phone user Tom Logan said: “My mobile phone hobby has massively enriched my life. Oh, look, there’s a new Reddit thread entirely devoted to calling Lizzo a fat cow.”

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Six humiliating celebrity cash-ins, ranked

JUST because you’re rich and famous doesn’t mean you cease to be greedy or cheap. These demeaning celebrity attempts to cash in on their fame are tragic: 

6. Kevin Bacon’s EE ads

Despite the undoubtedly massive fee, a bit of a comedown for the once-huge star of Footloose and Tremors. The true horror lies in the fact that the ads don’t even inspire contempt, they’re just an ever-present minor irritation, like a stain on a carpet you wish wasn’t there but it’s behind the sofa so it doesn’t really matter. It’s like seeing Richard Burton pretending to have a genuine passion for Toilet Duck and feeling sad.  

5. Catherine Tyldesley’s birthday 

Former Coronation Street actress Catherine is a client of a PR agency who asked a bakery for a cake and 100 cupcakes for her birthday, payment being the resultant publicity. In fairness, Tyldesley said she had ‘no idea’ the emails had been sent and PR agencies tend to be staffed by insane blonde women. But the question remains: how f**king low is the celebrity bar set if being in Corrie in 2018 counts as ‘fame’? Other largely forgotten celebrities take note. MC Tunes’ birthday must be worth at least a couple of vanilla slices.

4. Anthea Turner’s Cadbury’s wedding

Anthea’s (probably true) account is that she sold the rights to her wedding to OK! magazine for £120,000, not knowing they had a deal with Cadbury. She and Grant Bovey were then snapped eating Cadbury’s Snowflakes, so Britain’s tabloids decided she was a cheap, money-grubbing whore and destroyed her career. Rather unfair when all she’d done was accept a tacky deal, not taken a shit on Tracy Island live on Blue Peter. Although that would have been excellent.

3. David Cameron’s memoirs

David Cameron is a prick, and his life is extremely predictable and well-known: Eton, doing public relations for ITV, experimenting with cannabis, huskies, etc. You’d actually have to be f**king deranged to want to read all this again, so to pretend For The Record (shit title) is a worthwhile book people intend to buy is a truly pathetic lie. The only interesting thing about Cameron is that he’s much more of a bastard than he lets on, and somehow we doubt he mentions that.

2. Gwyneth Paltrow’s vibrator

After the vag candles and love eggs, you may as well complete the range with the Goop Double-Sided Wand Vibrator. But as with all celeb sex toys – everyone from Dakota Johnson to Lily Allen has dabbled – you are basically saying: ‘Imagine me sticking this up my fanny.’ There are many demeaning jobs, from cleaning railway station toilets to being Sid Little, but none of them involves inviting every pervert in the world to imagine your genitals.

1. Farage’s Cameo videos

Easily the most humiliating, due to the gulf between Nigel’s belief that he’s a historically significant politician and churning out inane birthday greetings to people called Gav. While £70 a pop is a nice little earner if he gets through them quickly enough, he’s still got the rigmarole of setting the mic up, going through hundreds of emails, re-recording them when he’s fluffed someone’s name, etc. You didn’t see Winston Churchill doing birthday greetings for £1 a go in 1946, did you, Nigel? No, because despite Winnie’s faults, he wasn’t an enormous twat.

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