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Five signs your partner wasn't thinking about how much they love you for a fraction of a second

IN the attention economy, even a second spent not contemplating the wonder of you is tantamount to cheating. Here are five signs your partner has been momentarily unfaithful: 

He blinked

Er, what the f**k? Gaslighters will say you’re crazy for getting mad at him for taking picoseconds out of his day to remoisten his eyeballs, but who knows what adulterous thoughts he was entertaining? If he asked you to let your cornea crust over as a symbol of your undying devotion, you’d do it instantly.

She looked left and right before crossing the road

Red flag. When you’re walking arm in arm with your true love, her only thoughts should be how fortunate she is and dreaming of your old age together. The illusion of living in a romcom is shattered if she checks for oncoming traffic. Besides, there’s something timelessly romantic about rolling over the bonnet of a Ford C-Max.

He’s wondering what’s for dinner

Download the dating apps and draft a bio now. Even if he was planning a candlelit dinner for the two of you, he was still prioritising food like a f**king caveman. Why doesn’t he just ask out the two-for-one Slug & Lettuce meal deal while he’s at it, seeing as he clearly loves it so much more than you?

She checked the time

Talk about trouble in paradise. Why does she need to know the time, anyway? She’ll come up with some lame excuse about ‘being late for work’ or ‘wanting to go to bed’, but these are the pathetic alibis of a devious love rat. Time doesn’t matter to people who are truly in love, because you’ll be together 24/7 for eternity.

He said ‘um’ while talking

Caught in the act. What’s the matter, cat got his tongue? If he’s stumbling over his words, God knows what else he’s scrambling to cover up. Snatch his phone right now and start trawling messages and photo albums for dirt. What’s this? A bathroom selfie taken without you years before you met? Just as you suspected. Dump his ass.

I have my own plan for slimming down the fat unemployed, and it's needlessly sadistic

By Helen Archer, judgemental taxpayer and size eight

THEY are too fat and they are too lazy. Something has to be done. But before we waste Ozempic on them, what about trying my vicious, twisted ideas?  

Because, if anyone had only asked, I’ve been coming up with them since the Jeremy Kyle days. Complete with sketches, mechanical plans and an index of suffering I’ve devised myself called the Caligula Scale.

For example we’ve got this one, where a system of opposing treadmills are set up. Here, on either side of the pit full of whirling blades. The genius bit is that each workshy porker is running against their opposite and only one can survive. That should motivate them.

Or here, where we put them into a high-sided arena to compete for a dangling ham. The sides are greased which I’ve represented with shading. The only way to get food is to clamber on the defeated bodies of your enemies, survival of the fittest-style.

All that may seem expensive, but it would be televised. The BBC ’s cancelling Doctors next month so there’s a slot. But I do have cheaper ideas involving whips, electric scooters and cross-country routes.

It’s not that I’m against injections. Drug addiction can be very slimming. But precious Ozempic should be saved for those who are a little bit overweight and have jobs who want to fit into the next jeans size down.

So come on, Britain. Ignore Wes Streeting’s liberal chatter about ‘transforming the health and wealth of our nation’. That’s not who we are as a country.

Let’s work together, in our pubs and our workplace canteens, to come up with a needlessly cruel programme to get the idle and oversized slim and productive. They’ll thank us for it.

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