A friend of mine went on a date recently. Personally, I’ve never really been up for proper formal dates – they’re always so awkward and boring. I mean, the first date says so much about you – it’s all about judging people in a couple of hours, and frankly the moment a guy says “Let’s go for a meal – there’s this great little Italian restaurant…” I have already judged them. And not just because they had the bad taste to ask a fat chick out.

Let’s face it, there are a million billion places you could spend three hours in, so why pick a middle-of-the-road Italian / Chinese / Indian restaurant? It’s hardly imaginative, is it? So, in case any guys out there are reading, here are some less utterly banal suggestions.

Your local hospital
Why go to the theatre when you can go to an operating theatre instead? Let’s face it, more people like to watch a good old blood and guts horror film than a poncy West End play. It’s cheaper than you’d expect (all you’ll need to do is rent a couple of nurse’s uniforms / pretend to be worried relatives) and if you time it right you won’t even have to pay for food. Not that you’ll be wanting any. What’s more, your local A&E department isn’t just open for dinner dates – it’s an exciting 24-7 destination.

An air disaster
Increasingly popular due to an increase in terrorist activity, why not get involved in a plane crash together? You might be lucky enough to get a really close-up view of New York, for example, or end up stranded on a tropical island with unknown horrors lurking in the shadows. You might land atop a remote snowy mountain, living off the meat of your fellow passengers and slowly starving to death. Who knows? It’s truly the lucky dip of dates – what’s for sure is that nothing brings people together like an horrific life-threatening trauma.

Colonic irrigation
You might like the look of someone – you know, think they’re clean, well-shaven, nicely presented etc – but how can you really know what they’re like on the inside? That’s where colonic irrigation comes in, helping future life-mates really get to grips with their partner’s innermost thoughts and feelings bowel patterns. It’s all very well getting someone checked out for STDs, but how do you know they haven’t got worms? This works on so many levels. Oh yes, and again, nothing brings people together like an horrific life-threatening trauma.

A Scientology lecture
How secure is your partner in their convictions? It’s something worth thinking about – after all, if someone has it within them to become a cult-driven lunatic, it’s surely better to know sooner rather than later. Test them with a nice three-hour talk about thetans and Tom Cruise, and see how good their endurance skills are in the mental equivalent of close-up shotgun paintballing.

Greetings my lovelies. Last weekend and associated bank holiday were three days of glorious warmth: not too sunny, not too hot. Perfect. I was, of course, ill.

The moment I got well enough to stick my head out the door, my hair took on the appearance and texture of bit of well-used wire wool, chavs started taking off their clothes in public, small children started playing in the road, and slim good-looking people everywhere immediately started looking even better looking than before. Summer is really horrendously awful, and look – it’s finally rolled around again.

Anyone who is, like me, a fatty, will spend the next four months feeling the lard gruesomely creeping under their skin, cooking their muscles as it slowly obeys gravity and gets out where it can.

But never mind the fatties – I always really feel for the pensioners in summer. I mean, those guys hate being warm. They need actual government initiatives to get their lofts insulated, and they’re such frost junkies that every year, hundreds push themselves too far for that ultimate rush and end up dieing of pneumonia. Everyone knows it’s cruel to leave dogs in a hot car without at least rolling the window down a little bit, but pensioners are much older and more fragile than dogs.

So, while the rest of the country (especially us fatties) swelter under the burning rays, the least we can do is campaign for forced ice-baths for pensioners. You know, with Ice Wardens (much like Dog Wardens – loving this pensioner-dog analogy) patrolling the streets, sweeping up stray pensioners into vans and taking them straight to swimming pools full of ice.

Yes – people of Britain, we can make this a reality. Who’s up for making posters?

So it’s official: political playtime is over, and Bozzer has won the marbles mayoral election! Yay – years and years of guaranteed material for Teasmade Revenge!

But what about his manifesto? You know, that one we found in the V&A last September?

*clicky*

Hmm. Oh well. At least we’ll all be able to keep track of His Truly in our free Beanos.

Users of the brilliant b3ta.com get set image challenges every week. This week it is to expand the Uxbridge English Dictionary, in a rather touching tribute to the late great Humphrey Lyttelton. I couldn’t resist…