subscribe
/ Sign Out

Are you a workaholic like our tireless King? Take our quiz

ARE you, like King Charles, unable to stop working 16-hour days, not even taking weekends off? Find out: 

You wake up. What’s the first thing you do? 

A) Fumble for the snooze button, throw the duvet off, shower then head off to the train station in darkness to be at the office for 8am
B) Lie there making a ‘Gaah’ noise until your needs – lighting, food, the removal of bedclothes – are met by others

What are your morning working priorities? 

A) Christ, so many. Check the overnight IT reports, work out cover patterns for the next month, go over invoices, and that’s before we get to the meetings
B) A man is coming in a car to take me somewhere. I will be briefed on the way

What do you do for lunch? 

A) Crisps and a Dr Pepper at my desk, it’s all I’ve got time for
B) I am served a banquet at a ghastly provincial location where I must make conversation with a Mayor. The food is no more than adequate

What about the afternoon? 

A) All those bloody meetings wasted so much time I’m head-down non-stop just to try and get my inbox halfway cleared. By the time I look up it’s dark
B) I am taken to a place where I am required to shake up to 20 hands while being polite, then conveyed home

And the evening? 

A) Train’s late and I can’t work on it because there aren’t any seats, dinner, put the kids to bed then I’m back on my laptop. You always swear you won’t but then you have to
B) After I am bathed and dressed, meet my wife and complain about the bloody abominable day I’ve had. Still, nothing now until February

ANSWERS

Mostly As: Workaholic? You barely put in a shift. Britain’s productivity crisis is entirely down to you and your layabout ilk.

Mostly Bs: Nobody could possibly work as hard as you do, Your Majesty. You are a shining example of hard graft for your subjects to follow.

Opening paracetamol at the leaflet end: six 50-50 chances that never work out in your f**king favour

IF the chance of getting it right is 50-50 it should happen half of the time. Instead, in these incidences it seems the odds are always against you: 

Opening paracetamol

Last time you opened the top, you’re pretty sure, and had to battle through the bloody leaflet. So this time, older, wiser and hungover yet again, you open the other end and once again the leaflet’s there blocking you from relief. Either it’s a design of anticipatory evil genius countering you at every turn or witchcraft.

Inserting a USB

How can a 50-50 choice take three attempts? Try it one way up, won’t fit. Turn it around, confident, and same f**king problem. Turns out you were right the first time, so why didn’t it fit first time? How can such a simple piece of technology beat you repeatedly?

Light bulbs

A light blows? No problem, you’re an adult with a drawer full of spares, but you bring one back and it’s a bayonet fitting and the socket’s a screw-in. Fine, shit happens, you go and buy more bulbs. The next bulb that goes is a screw-in but all your bulbs are bayonets? Are they morphing while your back’s turned?

Opening blinds

One cord opens them. The other closes them. It should be easy to remember given you do it every day, but your brain seems incapable of retaining the information. So every morning you swipe everything off the kitchen windowsill trying to open it, and every evening you get the f**ker jammed at the top instead of shutting it. This is why people have curtains.

Push-pull doors

The easiest way of branding yourself an idiot in a public space, you approach this challenge to your intelligence and immediately begin second-guessing. Pull? Or push? No matter which it is you’ll make the wrong choice and yes, there are people behind you, and yes they will step in to help and open it effortlessly while you feel as small as Rishi Sunak.

Passing a stranger

You’re headed towards each other on a narrow path. One of you must yield. Being British, you’re each eager to show how accommodating you are so you step left as they do then step right as they do and now you’re performing the exotic dance of mating birds right there in the street. The only comfort is the other person entirely blames themselves.

Next story ›