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The ars*hole neighbour's guide to holding a garden party

HAVING a garden party? Keen on maximising aggravation to your neighbours? Here’s how: 

Make the barbecue good and smoky

Your neighbour’s garden should be unusable due to suffocating smoke. If supermarket charcoal isn’t doing it, add some cardboard or damp twigs. If they’re choking and weeping like gilets jaunes in a cloud of CS gas, you’ve got it just right.

Hire a hugely overpowered sound system

Borrow or hire some speakers more suitable for a Metallica gig than a suburban garden. This is especially irritating if nobody is dancing and a crappy little CD player would clearly do.

Ensure your guests are ars*holes too

Try to include vile kids with a supernatural ability to scream solidly for six hours, golf-obsessed business types talking as if their six-employee glazing firm makes them Alan Sugar, and several sh*tfaced middle aged women who shriek like banshees if anyone mentions sex or sausages.

Do some intrusive activity

Maybe a drunken game of rounders, or hire a bouncy castle. The constant excited shouts of kids and guests will be drowned out by the diesel generator anyway.

Lie about how long it will go on

Tell neighbours ‘it’ll all be over by about half-ten’. Neglect to mention the guests turning up when the pubs shut and the small hardcore of boozers loudly talking b*llocks until 4am.

No one cares what song is stuck in your head, Britons told

NOBODY is remotely interested in hearing about what song you have stuck in your head, experts have confirmed.

The Institute for Studies found that millions of Britons regularly tell each other which tune is plaguing them, despite it being something utterly tedious that happens to everyone.

Professor Henry Brubaker said: “There is no point whatsoever in telling people about the song in your head. They can’t hear it and there’s a danger they might ‘catch’ it, which is bad news if it’s something by Aqua.

“That said, I have had Taylor Swift’s ‘Shake It Off’ stuck in my head for the past two days. I’ve been considering stabbing myself in the ear with a biro to escape it.”  

Graphic designer Martin Bishop said: “I always tell people when I’ve got something like the Mr Tumble theme on a permanent loop in my head. That one’s a killer. I had it for four days once.

“I used to think at least it was something funny and interesting to tell family, friends, colleagues and random strangers in the supermarket.

“But now it turns out no one gives a sh*t, so I’ll have to keep it to myself that I’ve got ‘Man! I Feel Like A Woman’ stuck in my head until I go completely insane.”

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