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Your friends: Are they worth the effort?

HAVING good friends is meant to be a key part of a happy and healthy life, but are they actually worth the effort? Here are some reasons to consider ditching them.

They want you to leave the house

Despite knowing you spend a fortune on various TV streaming subscriptions, your mates are always on at you to go out and ‘have fun’ like you used to. This usually involves going to a pub where you pay six quid for a pint of the exact same beer you’ve got in the fridge at home, and then moan to each other about how much your mortgage payments have increased.

They want to come round to your house

Your home is a tranquil retreat, where you can leave the dirty dishes to pile up and never vacuum. If your mates come over you have to tidy up in an effort to seem like a functional adult, and then they just drink all your booze and take the piss out of the tatty Reservoir Dogs poster you’ve had since 1994. It’s even worse if they turn up unannounced and catch sight of the VR headset you only use for porn.

They are a bad influence

You’re feeling pretty smug about doing regular exercise, losing a bit of weight and cutting down on your drinking. It’s only when you’re out with your mates that you realise your willpower hasn’t improved, you just don’t have the temptation at home. By the time your friends are buying trays of flaming sambucas, getting absolutely shitfaced on a Tuesday night seems like a great idea. But you can guarantee they won’t be there for the three full days it now takes you to recover.

They get in touch and then ghost you

You’ve just about accepted the fact that you’re never going to see an old friend again, when they get in touch out of the blue about meeting up. You make the effort to look at a calendar and suggest some possible dates, then don’t hear back from them for weeks. After angrily writing them off as useless, they tell you their mum had to go into hospital, so then you have to feel bad about feeling pissed off with them as well.

They cost you a fortune

The costs of having friends are never ending. Stag and hen dos, weddings, significant birthdays. And then they start having kids. Once you think you’ve reached a lull in that parade of expense, they start posting their parkrun times on Facebook. There’s only one place that ends up: a JustGiving page for the inevitable marathon where everybody but you seems happy to show their support to the tune of 50 quid.

They are better than you

Just when you’re feeling like you’ve got life sorted, one of your friends will do something really impressive. They’ve bought a bigger house, had another kid, got an impressive job, moved to a civilised European country. All your mates do is make you feel like shit by being more impressive humans than you, so you might as well ditch them, the bastards.

Katie Price's guide to safe and pleasant motoring

NOTHING compares to the sense of freedom you get from leaving magistrates’ court having narrowly avoided a driving ban or prison. As a keen driver, here’s my advice for fellow touring enthusiasts.

No insurance makes you a safer driver

Okay, so I’m in trouble for driving without insurance again. But think about it – if you’re insured, why not just crash into someone and let the insurance pay for it? And most of the time you don’t crash, so it’s a total waste of money you could be spending on something worthwhile, like getting humongous new tits every month.

Fate plays a surprisingly large role in flipping your car

I’m a strong believer in fate. And also tarot, psychics and ghosts. But it’s fate what recently brought me together with Married At First Sight’s JJ Slater. And if fate is responsible for important stuff like me finding everlasting love again, it must have been responsible for me being over the limit while coked-up and flipping my car that time. Bloody fate. I wish it would just f**k off sometimes.

Plan your journey to take in the scenery 

A carefully-chosen scenic route makes driving an absolute pleasure. One of my favourite places is West Sussex, where there’s South Downs National Park, Arundel Castle, East Wittering Beach and some wonderful traffic lights to not stop at, leading to a trip to historic Crawley Magistrates’ Court.

Choose the right vehicle for your needs

Someone like me who never drives off-road and has poor driving skills definitely needs a large vehicle which builds up plenty of momentum and gives you a false sense of invulnerability, so it’s a Range Rover every time. However I’ve also got my eye on a pink Porsche GT3RS. They say most accidents are caused by people driving too slowly, so a top speed of 184mph is a safety feature, basically.

Always check your tyres and points on your licence

It’s estimated that worn-out tyres cause a shocking 25 per cent of collisions in the UK. Do the ’20p test’ and check your treads cover the outer band of a 20p coin, and if you’re still unsure go to a garage. Also keep an eye on how many points you’ve got on your licence. They go away after a bit, but the golden rule is: three to nine points, totally fine, 12 or more is bad and you’ll just have to hope the coppers don’t see you. Maybe turn your headlights off at night, that should help.

Cover your miscellaneous motoring costs with OnlyFans

Driving for pleasure can be a pricey business. All the little extra costs add up – antifreeze, a car vacuum cleaner, a copy of The Reader’s Digest’s Most Amazing Scenic Journeys in Britain, and so on. What I’ve done is set up an OnlyFans page for the handful of very sad men who still care about my latest space hopper boobs, and that more than pays for my driving gloves and tyre pressure gauges.

Your latest court appearance is Peter Andre’s fault

If you should find yourself in trouble with the law, it’s not your fault. It’s all those no-good fellas who ruined your life and made you a bag of nerves, in particular Peter Andre. It may sound implausible that a relationship which ended in 2012 could make you forget you’re doing 70mph in a 40mph zone, but that’s how much of a bastard Peter is.

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