Grace Wood-Morris chose the bank holiday for a discussion, in which she was the key contributor, of how Jack Browne never tells her anything or shares his feelings that lasted for the whole of a Family Guy double bill with adverts.

Browne said: “She muted the TV, took my hand and embarked upon an explanation of why we needed a grown-up conversation about opening up to each other that was without significant pause.

“She said we needed to review how unmindful I am to her needs, and open a broader conduit for emotional discourse, then something about needing to have a more impactful role in nurturing her feelings.

“It was longer than the relationship conversations in Love Island without even the benefit of her being in a bikini. The television continued behind her but I knew better than to even glance at it while I was busy saying ‘Mm’ and ‘Yeah’.

“45 minutes in, when she was outlining the creation of a mutual atmosphere of honest communication, and maybe a trust bubble, I could no longer pretend to understand any of it. I was mainly watching her face move and giving her teeth names.”

Wood-Morris said: “He was attentive and understood the importance of a shared commitment to open channels to prevent our relationship stagnating. But that wasn’t the talk. That was the talk about having the talk.”

‘The text’s too small’ 

After several attempts to use a two-finger gesture to zoom in, you irritably decide that with all its densely-packed words in daunting paragraphs, lack of tabs and unwillingness even to impose a comforting pop-up, this book is refusing to meet you halfway. What are you meant to do, get your glasses? They’re all the way inside. F**k that.

‘Too many pages’ 

The comforting endless scroll of social media means you have no idea how much you’re reading, even when you’re an hour deep into a Reddit thread about Heated Rivalry ships. Books, on the other hand, can’t even be held without revealing an intimidating number of pages and exhausting you before you even start, so you don’t.

‘There’s no comment section’ 

When you come across a villain online there immediately follows a long comment section where hundreds agree on what a monumental arsehole they are. Bad guys in books require you to make your own judgement and then stick with it all the way to their eventual comeuppance. Justice is delayed too long when you’re ready to condemn now.

‘It’s too slow’ 

Page after page of description of some bloody Victorian workhouse. Can’t they just jump-cut between one paragraph and the next? Include explanatory captions? Couldn’t this be condensed down to a 15-second Instagram reel? What was Charles Dickens thinking, not pivoting to short-form video?

‘There’s no tits in it’ 

Social media these days has, like all other media, discovered the lowest common denominator and it’s boobs. Novels? You’ll struggle to find one which has an actual picture, even in medical textbooks. Compare that to any app. Even LinkedIn has tits these days.

VR headsets

We’ve only been hearing how revolutionary these are for 30 years or so. A decade ago you gave in and decided you wanted to venture into virtual realms and experience bold new realities. Okay, porn, you wanted VR porn. What you got instead was a boring rock-climbing simulation and a phenomenally severe migraine.

3D television

You watched Avatar in the cinema and were seduced by the possibilities. Okay, porn, you wanted 3D porn. But blue extraterrestrials plugging their ponytails into plants were the only 3D content available and it turns out Avatar isn’t as rewatchable as Titanic or Terminator 2. Also you kept losing the glasses.

Nutribullet

A purchase you believed would make you a smoothie-guzzling Adonis which, with hindsight, you should have asked Amazon to deliver direct to the back of your kitchen cupboard. Nothing but a messy ballache which produced unpleasant tasting drinks with disturbing, slimy textures. Also you’re not all that keen on fruit.

Segway

Slow, difficult to ride, dangerous and deeply uncool: the Segway was a compilation of all the ways in which a vehicle can be bad. It didn’t revolutionise getting from A to B. It’s now exclusively associated with obese Americans travelling between urban tourist sites that can be walked around if you haven’t breakfasted on links in syrup.

Peloton

You were never going to get fit when the gym was a 15-minute drive away. Exercise classes in the spare room? Perfect. Then came an astonishingly fast transition from cycling while watching a class, to cycling while watching Netflix, to lying on the sofa while watching Netflix. The subscription’s lapsed. The Peloton remains, silently judging you.

Robot vacuum cleaner

It seemed such a wonderful solution; you go to bed, set the little fellow running and wake up to a lovely clean room. Until you get one and discover waking up means growling ‘Where’s the f**king hoover?’ before retrieving it from whatever corner or sofa it’s stuck under. You’ve gone back to your Henry and you swear he looks smug.

48-year-old Julian Cook, who regularly stays up late watching Instagram content chefs pimping out Gozneys, is secretly yearning for a wood-fired dome oven that can deliver a perfect pizza in 90 seconds.

He said: “I was in the market for something new. What my wife doesn’t know won’t hurt her. And this sexy little bitch gave me the eye.

“Foldable legs right up to her arse, double-decker, able to take a 12 inch pie without flinching. Imagine that gleaming under the sun, splayed out on the decking? Phwoar.

“Twiddling knobs on a gas barbecue doesn’t do it for me anymore. I need a piece of strange. Just wait until the lads see what a ride she is. 500 degrees of pure jealousy. They’ll all want a slice but she’ll be at home with me.

“The char on those crusts is enough to get me salivating, but it’s nothing without the foreplay. Watching that thermometer peak before sliding the wet dough in. She’s calling me for only a cool two grand. I’ve got the big spanking paddle ready.”

Wife Emma said: “We all have to sublimate the unfulfilled sexual urges in our marriages somehow. I lurk on Norwegian property forums.”

Susan Traherne, percussionist: “Not sex. I wouldn’t have sex in my garden in full view of everybody. Just oral.”

Wayne Hayes, delivery driver: “Front garden: strimming in nothing but a thong. Back garden: not realising my balls hang within strimmer range once I’ve discarded my thong.”

Joe Turner, IT consultant: “Playing our regular weekly Dungeons & Dragons session. These people were not made to be seen by the sun, or God.”

Jo Kramer, GP: “It’s not so much regret doing as regret not doing for me, and I very much regret not going out to pick up a single one of my Great Dane’s shits since October.”

Tom Logan, web engineer: “Ignoring my wife and kids to spend 14 hours a day on my f**king phone, as usual.”

Forecasts of a bank holiday heatwave have thousands planning evenings in the garden, days at theme parks and picnics in the country that will be ruined by gnats, wasps and ants respectively.

Sophie Rodriguez said: “Summer’s here at last! I’m going to drink in a pub by a canal, and by 10pm will be lighting each cigarette off the last one to keep the bloody bugs away.

“Then tomorrow I’ll fling the double doors to my flat’s tiny balcony wide to enjoy a prosecco out there before spending the evening gently persuading an enormous bee to leave via a much smaller window it is pathologically unable to find. Summer!”

Martin Bishop said: “I’m going camping with the family, having forgotten I spent a full fortnight after the last time applying cream to every one of the 33 red, inflamed bites on my legs.

“I also hope to lie in a deckchair, seemingly asleep until I sitting bolt upright to swat the flies drinking moisture from the corner of my mouth. And a child will be stung by a wasp. To teach them.”

Carolyn Ryan said: “Einstein famously said ‘If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left.’ But he’s dead and I’m willing to take the f**king risk.”

Having wisely conserved energy by not keeping their carriages warm during the winter months, train companies have decided to treat passengers to nice, toasty journeys during the bank holiday heatwave.

Rail manager Martin Bishop laughed: “All our trains will be overcrowded and running late this weekend. So the warm, dusty air blasting out of the heating grilles is our way of making up for these inconveniences.

“The refreshments trolley won’t be running either due to a lack of staff, but that just adds to the effect we’re going for. That’s also why the windows on older trains will be locked shut until November. We wouldn’t want you to catch your death as we idle for no reason under the glaring sun.

“If for some reason you need to cool down, try peering into the first class carriage. You’ll see people beating the heat with the complimentary fans we hand out to our better-off passengers. That should do the trick.”

Regular rail user Nikki Hollis said: “This is peak bank holiday vibes. The only way it could be better is if the toilets are out of order and someone plays shit music without their headphones in.”

Issues

Both parties have made the wise decision to discard trivial issues like education, the economy, and employment in favour of a relentless focus on immigration. But while chickenshit Reform only wants to freeze non-essential immigration, Restore demands net-negative immigration, ie. sending them back. Which does your heart truly desire?

Image

Cloth-cap wearing Farage looks like an angry gamekeeper threatening to shoot children for trespassing, which makes him an immensely sympathetic figure any Briton will automatically identify with. But Lowe’s pinched, reddened features make him resemble a local squire who kills a man drink-driving and gets off on a technicality. A tough choice.

Personality

We all know Nigel, the beer-drinking smoking thin-skinned man of the people who starts shouting ‘Boring!’ if he doesn’t like the topic of conversation. But Rupert? The chairman who took Southampton into administration who’d dismiss you from 20 years employment without notice if he walked past and deemed you to be ‘lounging’? Also attractive.

Being an outsider

Both men are mavericks and political outsiders as only wealthy, privately-educated white men with long careers in the City of London can be. But while Farage is now so much a part of the establishment it seems odd when he’s not on Question Time, Rupert is such a rebel he kicked himself out of Reform to found his own party where he is king. Sexy.

Bigotedness of local candidate

You’re not voting for the leader. You’re voting for either Reform’s plumber Robert Kenyon, because everyone finds plumbers trustworthy and reliable and unlikely to double the price without warning, or Restore’s Rebecca Shepherd who is a woman and backed by Dragons’s Den heartthrob Duncan Bannatyne. On second thoughts, vote for the leader.

Verdict

Open bigotry, promising to reverse time to an imagined AI 1950s, a track record of broken promises; how can you choose? But in your deepest soul, you know Reform have been outclassed. Now you just have to remember which is which in the voting booth. If only their names weren’t so similar, and you not much of a reader!

‘A most puzzling case, Watson,’ said Holmes at our lodgings in Baker Street. ‘A young bride by the name of Katie Price has had her husband snatched from her in a strangely unconvincing kidnap plot.’

Holmes sucked on his pipe thoughtfully. ‘I suggest we hail a Hansom cab willing to take us to Mrs Price’s Tudor-style rented home in Sussex.’

*****

In her drawing room, Mrs Price related the distressing tale. It was impossible for any man not to be entranced by her innocence and natural beauty.

‘I’m worried f**king sick,’ she said. ‘We’d only just got f**king married and now he’s f**king been kidnapped and they’ll probably cut his f**king fingers off and probably his knob too what the f**k is it with me and f**king men?’ 

‘A grave predicament, I agree,’ said Holmes. ‘Or is it the case that you are a dissembling shrew engaged in outrageous falsehoods for cold pecuniary gain?’ 

‘You what?’ said Mrs Price, and I too felt compelled to ask tersely what he meant by this vile accusation. ‘Come with me, Watson,’ he said. 

*****

Holmes led me to Mrs Price’s bedroom, a nightmarish study in pink. ‘What strikes you about this house, Watson?’ ‘It is tasteless?’ I ventured. ‘Yes, but you will also note a complete absence of books, an indicator of low intellect. And where might such a weak-minded individual choose to hide themselves?’ 

‘The most obvious place…?’ I said. ‘Yes,’ said Holmes. ‘Come out from under the bed, Lee.’ 

At which point a shamefaced specimen I recognised as Lee Andrews crawled out pathetically. He soon confessed all: the whole scheme had been concocted to hide the fact that their marriage was a sham, and seeking out mindless D-lister publicity was the only course of action these wretches knew.

*****

As we climbed aboard our carriage back to London, a question still vexed me. ‘Another crime solved, Holmes, but I still don’t know what alerted you to it being a pitiful charade in the first place!’ 

‘A shitty podcast,’ Holmes replied. ‘When your beloved spouse is at risk of torture and murder, who would continue with their celebrity podcast, as Mrs Price did yesterday? A podcast so lame the only guest she ever has on is her sister.’

‘Of course!’ I exclaimed. 

‘Elementary, my dear Watson,’ said Holmes, as he completely fails to do in the books.

‘I’m looking for something serious’

This sentence has ended more modern romances than OnlyFans. A guy who previously texted ‘Good morning, beautiful’ every single day will suddenly remember he’s ‘actually focusing on himself right now’. Even though he spent the last three weeks focusing exclusively on your minge.

‘What are we?’

A man who has happily spent six months acting like your boyfriend – sleeping in your bed, attending your friends’ birthday drinks, and once even calling your dog ‘our baby’ – will react as though you’ve asked him to enter an arranged marriage naked on live telly. Expect ‘labels complicate things’ and ‘why does everything need a definition?’ before he disappears so completely you start wondering if he’s joined the French Foreign Legion or if alien abductions need to be taken more seriously.

‘I’d like you to meet my parents’

Even the most confident man will hear this and immediately picture himself trapped at a barbecue discussing mortgage rates with your stepdad Gary. Within hours he will begin ‘needing space’ and posting gym selfies captioned ‘protecting my peace’.

‘I don’t believe in sex before marriage’

A useful tactic if you’d like to watch a man look for all the building’s exits faster than the SAS can. He’ll initially pretend to respect your values before quietly evaporating into thin air like steam from a kettle, later resurfacing on Hinge saying he’s ‘not sure what he wants right now’. Could it be sex? Sounds like it’s sex.

‘I love you’

The nuclear option. Men can survive intimacy, shared holidays and even seeing you sobbing in Wagamama over ‘everything lately’, but direct emotional honesty is a step too far. The second you say ‘I love you’, he’ll stare into the middle distance like a soldier remembering the horrors of war before explaining he’s ‘actually in a really tough place mentally right now’. He seemed fine 40 seconds earlier when sending you memes about ducks.

While talking to friends and acquaintances at social events, Martin Bishop has been insisting they are old fogies well past their prime like him – something that is clearly not true.

Nathan Muir said: “Martin and I were getting on fine in the pub. We agreed on a lot of things, like the state of the roads, how much we hate e-scooters and our dislike of loud teenagers on the bus. 

“I’d started telling him about how I did my back in jogging – jogging, which is what young people do – and he clearly said ‘Well, that’s what happens to people our age’. Where the f**k did that come from?

“Martin’s got grey hair and wears boring M&S shirts, whereas I wear trainers and like to think I am quite fashionable in a sort of ‘ageless’ way. I mean, yes, I have a few flecks of grey but that can happen in your 30s. Although I’m not in my 30s, I’m in my 50s, obviously. 

“So I’m not sure how he got this insane idea we’re in the same over-the-hill age bracket, just because he was in the year above me at school.”

Bishop said: “I distinctly remember Nathan from school, so he’s not much younger than me. Also I saw how big he has the text on his phone. It’s good to know he’s socially and sexually irrelevant too.”

We – I speak for the gull population as a collective – are the downtrodden of the UK. 

Disparaged by everyone. Forced to live in deprived coastal towns and the victims of you putting your leftover chips in a bin rather than letting us equitably share them.

There seems no reason why. Rats, yes, I get why you’d hold the Black Death against them. But us? With our magnificent wings and our harmonious cries? It’s prejudice, pure and simple.

So for you to send an outdated representative of the discredited system of hereditary monarchy out here, to us? In Northern bloody Ireland, for God’s sake? That same King that recently cuddled up to Trump? No way, mate. Not letting that stand.

I took my proposal – namely, to swoop and eject hot guano at exactly the right trajectory to splatter his Anderson & Sheppard suit – to our action committee. We agreed this was no empty gesture.

‘They’ll recognise this is in solidarity with the Catholic population,’ Jerry said. ‘And against globalised capitalism and its environmental impact,’ added Conor. ‘Plus he’ll look a right twat with shit all up his back,’ said Sheryl, who’s not quite there yet with her Marx.

The motion was passed. So during his condescending little walkabout I commenced my low-level run and properly fired my excrement, with pinpoint accuracy, all over him. ‘That’s for the Boyne!’ I squawked though I knew the lapdog media wouldn’t report it.

A blow has been struck for the working gull and for all the oppressed peoples of the world. No way the British monarchy’s coming back from this. Has he abdicated yet? We don’t get the papers.

Self-hating jobseeker Tom Booker can barely look at himself in the mirror after typing out sentences like ‘I am a proactive self-starter with a commitment to excellence and growth’ in a professional covering letter.

Booker said: “I would never sincerely say something like ‘my goals are in alignment with your corporate values’. No self-respecting person would.

“But thanks to the sick capitalist society we live in and my inability to win the lottery, I’m forced to churn out ridiculous word salad that even ChatGPT would be ashamed of. I’m only applying for a minimum-wage position, for Christ’s sake.

“Each cap-in-hand, jargon-stuffed sentence is an assault on my worth as a human being. I hope to God my wife and kids never read it. They’d move out, change their names, and never contact me again. And that would be the right thing to do.

“I shouldn’t even have to write a sodding covering letter anyway, all of the relevant information is in my f**king CV. Maybe if I just write that they’ll admire my balls-to-the-wall honesty?”

Employer Martin Bishop said: “The worst part is we won’t even read it. The job ad was merely a formality and we’ve already hired internally.”

Naked Attraction

‘Base’, ‘animalistic’ and ‘taking civilisation backwards’ are fair descriptions of the naked dating show, in which contestants are dehumanised by being put in a box then exhibited like meat. It’s got that horrible Channel 4 ‘we’re so edgy’ vibe to it, and if indeed it was made by a bunch of real-life Nathan Barleys it would explain why no one said: ‘Wait, this is f**king horrible.’

There’s Something About Miriam 

On Sky One cisgender male contestants lusted after hottie Miriam, who turned out to be trans. It’s a better reveal than discovering your carriage clock is worth f**k all on Antiques Roadshow, but the risks are painfully obvious: one contestant turned violent and the show undoubtedly contributed to Miriam Rivera’s suicide years later. Also the whole thing was clearly just morally wrong, like devising a show called Who Wants to Be A Hospital Arsonist?

The Jenny Jones Show 

In 1995 Jonathan Schmitz went on this US show, where Scott Amedure, who he knew socially, revealed a crush on him. Schmitz later shot Amedure in the chest with a shotgun he bought the same day. Who could have predicted there’d be bad consequences to appearing to call into question the sexuality of a man you know nothing about on national TV in a country awash with guns?

Love Island 

Unedifying to begin with, because the premise is: put simpleminded humans in a confined space and wait for them to mate. Meanwhile contestants have claimed they were deliberately turned into hate figures, and many struggled with overnight fame, with two committing suicide. As if this wasn’t enough red flags, the show now requires contestants to have eight sessions of therapy afterwards and be monitored by a welfare team for at least 14 months. Strangely that doesn’t happen with Countdown.

Big Brother

The Shilpa Shetty incident on BB5 got all the attention, but viewers noticed the makers ratcheting up the aggro from BB3 onwards, mainly with ‘conflicting personalities’, ie. adding a load of annoying twats. At no point did Endemol or Channel 4 say: ‘Maybe we shouldn’t keep fomenting extreme personal hatred in a closed environment where any sane person would be justified in drowning any of these dreadful bastards in the hot tub?’

Embarrassing Bodies

Oh come on, this should be called Latterday Medical Freakshow, and illness ghouls were treated to everything from severe acne to the joys of bowel leakage. Unsurprisingly Channel 4 claims it destigmatises distressing conditions, but it’s still just a licence for office workers at the water cooler to say: ‘OMG! Did you see the guy with the weird bent cock?’ Or indeed for strangers in a pub to say: ‘OMG! You’re the guy with the weird bent cock!’

Chips for tea

If Manchester stands for anything, it’s chips for tea. Not every night, unless you’ve the misfortune of being vegan. Every Friday, usually Mondays, Wednesdays occasionally, Sundays if you’ve not been able to shift your hangover. Also we have chips for dinner. What you’d call lunch. 

Pints

You can get cocktails and the like up here but you can’t really go wrong with a pint, can you? And another pint after that. Followed by whatever you like but chances are it’ll be another pint once you’re two down. If anything else seems like the thing you’re not fitting in. 

Rain

Not sure how Andy’s planning to shroud the whole country in the beautiful rain we get 24-7 and 365 up here, but he’ll need to if we’re going to get everyone in anoraks. You can’t beat a good downpour. Makes the cobbles glisten. 

Gays

We’re very big on our gays up here, but they’re proper gays. Not these online queers you get down south. To claim an alternative sexuality down Canal Street you’re still required to pass the physical examination. Also, you have to eat at McTucky’s and survive. 

Curry

It’s not all chips, as I detailed above. There’s also the Curry Mile, a phantasmagoria of spices and neon signs that serves everything the Indian subcontinent has to offer. Your arse’ll be smoking like there’s a flare up it. 

Very specific musical nostalgia

All the best bands come from Manchester if you insist on an arbitrary cut-off point of roughly 1996. Joy Division, New Order, The Smiths, the Roses and the Mondays, Oasis, music ends after that. There’s the lad who does the rapping I suppose but he’s not on Factory. 

Hatred for your immediate neighbours

You’re no real Manc if you don’t despise Liverpool, loathe Leeds, look down on Birmingham and consider London beneath contempt. Personally I think anyone from Salford’s a twat. Should fit right in with Britain’s post-Brexit foreign policy.

Bees on shit

They only used to be on the bins, but this last 15 years we’ve adopted the bee as the symbol of our fair city and plastered them on everything. They represent Manchester because they work together for the good of all, they’re natty little bastards and if you mess with them, they’ll f**k you up. Alright? 

The ‘Hobbit’ box

If BBC presenters aren’t from London, they tend to come from the North or Wales. And while this is good for representation, the broadcaster has been lacking when it comes to hiring scruffy-haired yokels from the Shire. Widdicombe hits this diversity target and thanks to clever camerawork you’ll never know he’s three feet shorter than Emma Willis.

The ‘Zippy-voiced’ box

Most presenters have voices audiences enjoy hearing, but not everyone is blessed with the warm, earthy tones of a Wogan or Attenborough. By presenting a prime time family show, Josh Widdicombe has beaten those gatekeepers and proved the weirdly-voiced deserve the dignity of being listened to as well. His laugh is also a bit much.

The ‘annoys your mum and dad’ box

Every light entertainment BBC show must include at least one host that makes your mum and dad leave furious, misspelt screeds in the Daily Mail comments section. A clever move on the Beeb’s part, as angry parents will purposefully tune in regardless to boost their blood pressure and bump up the ratings in the process.

The ‘not Romesh Ranganathan’ box

Hard to believe, but a slim minority of BBC shows are not presented by Romesh Ranganathan. Often they’re scheduled in BBC Three’s graveyard slot so as not to disturb people with his troubling absence. To ease the general public into the weird notion of a mainstream show without him, there will be trigger warnings before each episode.

The ‘straight white male’ box

The rarest of all boxes. Contrary to popular belief, the BBC is charter-bound to hire a heterosexual white man as a presenter every now and then. Having listened to the mixed reaction to Josh Widdicombe’s announcement though, the broadcaster will make sure this box is never ticked again. It’s diversity hiring from here on out because that’s what the public wants.

Oliver O’Connor was ostensibly caught recording a Boro training session, prompting the FA to replace Southampton with Boro in the Championship play-off final and O’Connor to radio ‘mission accomplished’ back to base.

He said: “Come on. I was ‘hiding between a tree and some bushes’? How shit a spy do you think I am?

“The whole plan was to get caught, admit it, and boost Middlesbrough into a play-off final they could never have reached by fair means. False flags aren’t just for incidents of white men doing terrorism!

“Southampton had no idea I’d been turned by their rivals, but Boro could offer me inducements no South coast club ever could. Cheap oil and a lifetime’s supply of parmos.

“Job done. Southampton ruined. Middlesbrough now only have Hull City to beat and they’re in the Premier League. No way will they do it.”

Southampton manager Tonda Eckert said: “This should secure us at least another two seasons in the Championship, thank Christ. We’d get the shit kicked out of us in the Premier League.”

Following consultation with bishops, the Anglican church has decreed onanism is fine for those who nobody wants to get off, but an offence in God’s sight for hotties.

Stephen Cottrell, Archbishop of York, said: “The diocese has met and we have decreed: it’s fine if you’re below a six out of ten. Or four and lower for women.

“Intense biblical study and private prayer revealed that God pities those who are both ugly and horny, and, because of the loneliness that will follow them through life, begrudges them not monkey spanking.

“But if, hypothetically, asking the truth of the Lord within your heart, there are others who could benefit from your orgasm God condemns your self-flagellation and will send you straight to the fiery pits of hell. Share your love around, as Christ did.

“For as Matthew 5:15 states, ‘Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house.’ He couldn’t have been clearer.”

Devout Christian Jordan Gardner said: “For years I feared the Almighty’s judgement, for I am at it six times a day. But I am absolved for being a steg. I knew God was cool.”