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'Did you see me playing The Smiths in Ukraine? I bet girls did'

From the ongoing correspondence between David Gedge, lead singer of The Wedding Present, and the prime minister

Dear Gedgey, 

Hope you’re okay me writing, I don’t want to disturb you if you’re recording a new Weddoes album. That has to come first. 

Just wanted to say I’m running the country now – not that it compares to what you do. It is pretty cool. But did you see me in Ukraine playing The Smiths on an acoustic?

They were expecting a dull politician when I hit them with Rusholme Ruffians. Now that’s Manchesterism. You could tell they were into it.

Sucks I has to wear a suit later. Zelensky was in this long-sleeved black top with, like, this understated muted design. Like Clint Boon in the DJ booth at South levels of cool.

Anyway, back home now and we might have to raise taxes. My advisors say the public won’t be happy, but happiness is overrated. What’s wrong with a general aloof miserablism? In my experience girls like it.

But I’m worried. I keep thinking it’s selling out, like when REM signed to a major label which kind of ruined them for me.

Wouldn’t we be better as a lo-fi country? Like the cash might technically improve the NHS, but will we lose the purity of the Peel Session NHS we have now?

I’m only doing this until my band takes off anyway, but I’d appreciate a few pointers from a legend of the scene. You can’t trust anyone from outside Greater Manchester. They’re trendies or, worse, Goths from Leeds.

Okay, get back to me whenever you can. I’ll see you on the Seamonsters 35th anniversary tour in October. I’ll be down the front at Wrexham. In my glasses.

Yours, Andy

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I went to a sex club purely to disapprove: The wholesome bodice-ripping yarns of a tradwife

By Emma Buckley-Hough, who writes letters to Penthouse on parchment with a quill pen

SEX should only take place in two locations: the marital bed, or beneath the very heavens as the rapture approaches. Everyone who chooses to live as a God-fearing housewife knows that.

Where else are people supposed to fornicate? The stairs are impractical and dangerous, and making whoopee in a field risks staining my stout hessian clothing. Plus insects might bite my intimate parts and I must eschew Piriton.

Recently, however, I overheard a conversation beyond the garden fence which was about ‘sex clubs’. As would anyone, my first thought was there’s nothing erotic about a cudgel. But it turns out they’re actually gatherings for social and sexual intercourse.

I nearly choked when I realised. Why would people want anyone except the Lord, and perhaps the Holy Ghost, to watch them while they make the two-backed beast? But like any sexually repressed woman, I had to learn more about something I hated.

My research led me to a nondescript ‘warehouse’ in an ‘industrial estate’ at 2am. Apparently this is where the sordid action takes place. I felt it necessary to wear thigh-high PVC boots and nipple tassels so as not to stand out from the crowd.

Like David Attenborough, who is so venerable even I am permitted to have heard of him, I was here only to observe. I could not intervene in group sex even if was against scripture, though I allowed myself to make loud tutting noises as they rutted away.

I was horrified It was so debauched even the people of Sodom and Gomorrah would’ve blushed. I loudly flicked through the pocket Bible I had stowed in my cleavage to register my disapproval.

This drew attention, because the attendees thought I was initiating some elaborate roleplay. I explained that I was simply a buttoned-down domestic slave, but this only made them more frenzied.

To cries of ‘spank me and bake me pies, tradwife’ I fled this dungeon of depravity and returned to the marital bed with my husband and our normal life of pretending we’re from an earlier time for sexual gratification. We’re the normal ones, not those sick perverts.

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