How to handle a family car journey without jumping out the f**king window

ARE you about to be trapped inside a metal box on wheels with your family for hours on end? Here’s how to survive:

Save yourself having to answer 60 annoying questions per minute by making a playlist featuring recordings of you saying ‘we’ll be there when we f**king get there’, ‘I don’t know who that driver is, I just waved to say thank you’ and ‘urinate into the bottle’.

Avoid having to explain what ‘stupid old wanker’ and ‘f**khead lorry driver’ means while you are on the motorway, by teaching them all the swear words before you leave.

When the kids ask ‘are we nearly there?’ 30 seconds into the journey, shut them up by explaining that, ‘yes, we are nearly there, because we are going on holiday in that big f**king wheelie bin at the end of our drive’.

Do not enter a service station – even just to use the toilet. They are filled with ghastly people and everything is expense and shit. Apart from Tebay on the M6 where it’s just expensive.

Sod the f**king lot of them. Get the train and meet them there.

Five utterly pointless debates you can't help getting sucked into

DO you sometimes get drawn into mindless ‘debates’ then bitterly regret wasting your time? Here are some classics to avoid.

Does God exist?

You can argue rationally all night in the pub and some dunce will still say “But you can’t prove God doesn’t exist!”. In an odd way it’s less infuriating than the person who says “Well, I just think there must be something out there” then goes to the bar as if the matter is settled.

Old TV programme X was brilliant/complete sh*t

Whether an old TV show was good is subjective and clouded by nostalgia. Ask yourself whether you want to ruin a friendship over Battle of the Planets or practically get into a fist fight about whether The Two Ronnies was f*cking awful. (It was.)

The European Superstate

You will ALWAYS regret arguing with people obsessed by this because they don’t understand the difference between things that are likely to happen and crazy hypothetical events they’ve imagined. You can bleat about vetoes all you like, but they’ll come right back at you with: “SO D’YOU WANT YOUR KIDS TO BE CANNON FODDER IN THE EURO-SS?” 

Benefits scroungers

Prepare to be deluged with dubious anecdotes about a bloke someone used to work with who lived next door to an unemployed family with eight kids and a Mercedes in the drive and blah blah blah. Also you will never have a constructive debate about the future of welfare with someone who thinks people should have their fingernails ripped out for missing a Job Centre appointment. 

The greatest films of all time

Likely to descend into a tedious evening of listing incredibly obvious films like The Empire Strikes Back and Jaws. You might get a good row out of Citizen Kane, but on the whole is there really any point in attempting to compare Zulu and Mean Girls?