Middle-class dinner parties indulge in craze for premium strength lager

A NEW range of boutique 12 per cent lagers are the drink of choice for sophisticated urban professionals at upscale dinner parties. 

The lagers, which are marketed under ironic brands like Dog Roper and Bridgesleeper, are promoted as lending an ‘authentic taste of bohemian street culture to staid social occasions’.

Thomas Booker, a senior marketing consultant, said: “In our current moment of fractured culture, the only valid discussions are the incoherent ones. And lager helps.

“Within a few cans, discussions about grammar school catchment areas and the Booker Prize shortlist devolve into arguments about what really matters, like who has been caught looking at whose bird and what the f**k that wanker just said.

“By the time I brought out the honey-rum tiramisu we’ve usually reached the most honest stage of all, which is violence. Once you’ve seen a leading poetry publisher thrown through French doors by a commodities broker, both howling pissed, no other dinner can compare.”

Helen Archer, a consultant surgeon, said: “It really is deliciously moreish to the point where I clawed at my host’s eyes to get the last can, which I never would for Riesling.

“I do live in a bus shelter now, admittedly, but I’ve invited a few friends over for pan-seared scallops, a discussion of Hungarian cinema and a few cans later this evening.”

Living in England its own form of assisted dying

EXISTING on this godforsaken island is a form of assisted dying in its own way, it has emerged.

Soaring energy prices, a broken housing market, and underfunded healthcare are all part of everyday English life which make legislation to legalise assisted dying a somewhat redundant venture.

Professor Henry Brubaker of the Institute for Studies said: “I’ve been clinging on to life in England ever since birth and it’s taken years off me. I reckon the stress of trying to catch a train on a Sunday alone lopped a couple of decades off.

“But let’s not overlook the class system, colonial guilt, the culture war, the decline of the steel industry, crap weather, zombie knives, a widespread lack of NHS dentistry, excessive drinking and poor social mobility. They all play their part in actively killing you too.”

Terminally ill woman Nikki Hollis said: “I’m so relieved that I have the good fortune to be living in England. When it comes to institutionalised hostility, we’re only beaten by the likes of North Korea and America.

“Admittedly we don’t have those swish-looking suicide pods like they do in Switzerland. But a wheelie bin and a bit of imagination can go a long way.”