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Being a musician only cool until you're 30 after which your life is a failure

THE ability to play an instrument is only cool until you turn 30, after which point it is a sign you have failed at life, it has been confirmed.

Individuals who can strum a few chords or hammer out a song on a keyboard should enjoy their street cred while they can, because the second they turn 30 they will be regarded as tragic failures and a detriment to society.

Donna Sheridan, partner of guitarist Tom Booker, said: “I instantly fell in love with Tom when we were teenagers because he could play ‘Wonderwall’. But he’s 29 now and shows no sign of moving on so I’m starting to panic.

“Unless he puts his guitar away and starts applying for proper jobs I’m going to have to dump him. Even if he makes it big in the next few months, which he won’t, I’m walking. It’s too little too late.”

Booker said: “Being a musician over 30 is fine. You can still play in pubs or form a cover band with your recently chucked friends. Sure, all of these options are deeply embarrassing, but it would be a shame to waste my talent.

“And I can give music lessons to kids. I could be nurturing the next Jimmy Page, if my two pupils weren’t such talentless f**kers. And there’s busking. I can easily earn a cool 24 quid a day doing ‘A Groovy Kind of Love’ in the shopping precinct.”

Reflecting on his life, Booker added: “Oh who am I kidding, I wish I was in the 27 Club.”

The six worst possible places to be caught needing a shit

HAVING a massive dump in the morning is a wonderful experience, but there are situations where getting caught short is your worst nightmare. Avoid these at all costs: 

In a Wetherspoons

Left at the double doors, up two flights of stairs, turn left, down another flight of stairs – emptying your bowels in your local Spoons requires considerable advance planning. Best to begin your journey long before you feel the urge, unless you’ve just eaten there, in which case you’ll be shitting through the eye of a needle within minutes. 

On a train

Those stupid f**king sliding doors will steadfastly refuse to open no matter how desperate you are, and even if you do make it through them in time it’s important to never let your arse cheeks touch the filthy seat. That’s assuming there isn’t a queue of 30 people or all the toilets are out of order. If so, your journey just turned into that sadistic Japanese game show Endurance.

At a posh dinner party

Your partner’s boss has invited you over for dinner and right on cue your guts start sending out warning signs during the starter. You know that as you sit on the bog and the seconds tick by they’ll all be thinking, correctly, that you’re having a shit, not a wee. If the downstairs toilet is right next to the dining room and you perform a symphony of farts, grunt and splashes it may be easiest to climb out of the window and run away to avoid the embarrassment of going back.

In an important Zoom meeting

You’d think working from home would avoid defecatory dilemmas, but it’s hard to excuse yourself from Zoom without a terrible excuse, eg ‘I think there might be an owl trapped in the loft.’ You can try the high-risk strategy of balancing your laptop on your knees on the toilet, but you’ll need to have a silent shit like a ninja. Oh and don’t treat the entire office to a full frontal.

At the swimming baths

A sudden uncontrollable urge to birth a turd is the last thing you need when sedately splishing up and down the municipal swimming baths. If there’s no time to make it out and rush to the toilets, pull your shorts down, launch the torpedo and hope someone blames it on one of the little kids. A bit disgusting, but you can muse wryly on the fact that you have ‘done a length’.

On a long cycle ride

An afternoon out with your cycling mates sounded like a good idea, but now you’ve got a stool in a hurry to liberate itself. You’re miles from a toilet on open roads, so pray a suitable ditch comes along and hope your dreary cycling-obsessive buddies don’t abandon you. If the worst comes to the worst, cack your lycra pants and make sure you’re at the very back of the pack so no one spots the squishy bulge you’re now sporting.

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