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7 Reasons To Write A Song About Rain

I think it’s fair to say that this is the only time I have had trouble cutting my reasons down to seven. Usually I have four reasons for something and spend all night trying to think of three more. I will have slept peacefully last night. That’s nice isn’t it?

1. Creedence Clearwater Revival – Have You Ever Seen The Rain? Yes, I have. Pretty much everyone has seen the rain. Write a song about something pretty much everyone has seen and pretty much everyone will be interested. Pretty much.

2. The Carpenters – Rainy Days & Mondays. This makes sense because only people who like rain would like Mondays. So basically The Carpenters were talking about people who should be locked up again very soon. Or idiots as they are more commonly known. You can only make such an opinion known via the medium of song.

3. BJ Thomas/Burt Bacharach – Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head. You can basically admit to being a muppet in a song about rain yet no one will ever pick up on it. Apart from me. If raindrops keep falling on your head then buy a bloody umbrella. Or walk on your head.

4. Neil Sedaka – Laughter In The Rain. As this song aptly demonstrates, if you are a man it is perfectly acceptable to sing about the rain while sounding like an slightly butch sixteen year-old girl. Something that in every other walk of life would be deemed suspicious. And probably illegal in at least eighteen US states.

5. Gene Kelly – Singing In The Rain. Standing in the rain and having a sing-song is quite frankly a stupid thing to do. You’ll get wet and cold and the sound of the rain hitting the ground will drown out your harmonies. But if you are a songwriter then you have free license to try and brainwash people.

6. Supertramp – It’s Raining Again. Rain doesn’t actually have to mean rain. Fascinatingly in this song the rain actually refers to bad times and the fact that they happen all too regularly. Cleverly though, by using the word rain and adding an uplifting tune, you don’t realise you are listening to something that should really want to make you commit suicide until it’s too late.

7. Carole King – Might As Well Rain Until September. It’s a throwaway comment. If you said, ‘It might as well rain until September’, in the pub you’d be scoffed at. Put it in a song though and it’s fine. Helen Shapiro will even cover it for you. As will a Canadian pop duo called Gary and Dave. Seriously.

December 2, 2009
7 Reasons to Cycle Naked

Police in London are currently hunting a naked cyclist. Harassing our womenfolk is not a good reason to cycle naked. Here are seven better ones.

1. Fine Tuning. Chafing can be a problem when cycling. Your clothing, posture, the angle and height of the handlebars and saddle are all factors that can cause chafing in places where you really don’t want to be chafed. It’s hard to tell, when riding, exactly where and how chafing is occurring. If you remove your clothes, however, you remove one of the variables and can more easily make the necessary adjustments to your bicycle. This will help you get to the bottom of the problem (the problem of the bottom) more quickly.

2. Accidents. Accidents happen to cyclists. The naked cyclist, however, will not tear his new jacket when falling off. If hospitalized, he will not have to worry about whether he is wearing clean underwear. If the hospitalized naked cyclist is a lady, she will also not have to worry about whether her bra and pants match.

3. Wide Berth. Studies have shown that motorists give less room to cyclists that wear helmets and high-visibility cycling gear. This is because motorists believe that correctly attired cyclists are competent and unlikely to make suddenly and erratic manoeuvres. People are generally wary and sometimes frightened of nudity (it gives them the willies). Imagine how much room they’ll give you if you cycle naked.

4. The Chain. No, not the Fleetwood Mac song. The bicycle chain is an oily, abrasive clothing magnet that excerpts a mysterious force on your trousers, unerringly drawing them toward the teeth of the chain-ring. This is messy and annoying. If you ride a fixed-gear cycle it’s very messy, very annoying and very dangerous. If you cycle naked you can’t get your clothes caught in the chain.

5. Helmets. At least 50% of naked cyclists always ride with a helmet.

6. Naked Bike Ride. Going on the Naked Bike Ride is a very good reason to cycle naked. You can draw attention to oil-dependency and body-painting is encouraged. Who wouldn’t want to cycle around in the all-together painted as Spiderman or a mermaid?

7. Annoy James Martin. “Celebrity” chef James Martin hates cyclists. Last September in his Fail On Sunday column, he spoke of his joy at inflicting “sheer terror” on cyclists, and boasted of having run a group of them off the road while testing the Tesla Roadster. These lycra-clad cyclists, “with their private parts alarmingly apparent” managed to annoy him quite a lot. If the private parts of clothed cyclists manage to irritate him that much, imagine how much we could annoy this vacuous dullard by cycling naked. Hopefully to the point of spontaneous combustion.

December 1, 2009
7 Reasons To Become An Artist

1. Name. You can change it. To anything you like. Banksy. Hotelsy. Police Stationsy. No one cares. They just think you are cool and will queue up for hours to see your latest graffiti on the toilet wall.

2. It’s A Con. You can do anything and call it art. Take Tracey Emin for instance. No, actually don’t bother. No one is quite sure where she has been. Instead take a look above. That’s Emin’s artwork. My Bed it’s called. The Saatchi Gallery describe it thus, ‘Tracey Emin shows us her own bed, in all its embarrassing glory. Empty booze bottles, fag butts, stained sheets, worn panties: the bloody aftermath of a nervous breakdown. By presenting her bed as art, Tracey Emin shares her most personal space, revealing she’s as insecure and imperfect as the rest of the world‘. This is how Jonathan Lee describes it, ‘Bollocks‘.

3. Entrepreneurship. We’re in a recession here in the UK. You aren’t going to find a job. So become an artist. All you have to do is pop down to the scrap heap and pick up a bit of metal. Whack it with a hammer a few times and suddenly you have something you can call ‘The Distressed Pigeon’. Then go on Dragon’s Den and wink at James Cann a few times. You’ll be a millionaire before you can say, ‘Gordon Brown won the election! What the…’

4. Nudes. Apparently you get to paint nudes if you are an artist. The only reason I know this is because I occasionally walk back from Hammersmith past an art school. Look through the window and all you can see are naked people covered in paint. Someone out there is making a killing on the sale of White Spirit.

5. Van Cough. Not to be mistaken with Van Gogh. Well, actually, yes he is. Rory Bremner makes a fortune spoofing Blair and Brown and the like, so why not become the first art spoofer? A spoofer is very different to a forger. You can get arrested for forging art. For spoofing it you could probably earn £1.56 a week by showcasing your work on a website. You just have to make the Sunflowers look ironic or something. You’ll be a cult leader in no time.

6. Vive la France. You may be French or you may just own a beret. Whichever it is, it is illegal to own a beret and not be an artist. If you are caught wearing a beret while not working in the arts, you will be sacked and forced to sell onions from tights.

7. Drugs. Now I am not advocating taking anything illegal here, I am really addressing those already addicted. There is no doubt that being high improves your creative output. Just look at The Beatles or Brian Wilson or Silvio Berlusconi. Though thinking about it, I guess the only reason Berlusconi got high was viagra. So ignore that example. Viagra doesn’t count. I’m taking about proper Class A drugs. If you are on something, as by the law of averages at least one of our readers surely must be, then maybe think about paying for your habit by drawing what you see in the twilight zone? It’s not like anyone is going to try and find out if you are portraying the truth or not, is it?

November 30, 2009
7 Reasons to Pretend to be a Pirate

1. It’s cool. Whatever you do, there’s nothing that’s cooler than dressing up as a pirate. Being a poet is cool but people don’t dress up as poets. Being an architect is cool but people don’t dress up as architects. Being a deep sea diver is cool but people don’t dress up as deep sea divers. Probably one of the coolest things you can do is be in a really good rock band. Look at Johnny Kidd and the Pirates, they were a great band. They dressed up as pirates.

2. Avast. Pirates say “Avast” a lot, we’re not sure why. They preface many of their sentences with it. “Avast below”, “avast, ye scurvy dogs” and “avast, me hearties” are all commonly used pirate phrases. Saying “Avast” is fun. You can even improvise your own phrases. If, for example, while dressed as a pirate, you enter a room to discover your then girlfriend facing away from you and bending over, it is acceptable to exclaim “Avast behind!” Just make sure that you don’t trip over your own cutlass while running away.

3. Black eye-patches. Black eye-patches are great. When you’re a child that gets grit in your eye, you get given a white eye-patch. White eye-patches are surgical-looking and conspicuous, and you feel really silly wearing one until your eyeball heals. If your parents are thoughtful enough to get hold of a black one for you though, you can pretend to be a pirate while you’re at school, thus earning the envy and admiration of your classmates…and teachers.

4. Equality. Pretending to be a pirate is an equal opportunity business. While boys are pretending to be Blackbeard, Bluebeard, Yellowbeard or (ahem) Gingerbeard, girls needn’t be relegated to the role of pirate wenches. There’s a grand tradition of women pirates, from Lady Mary Killigrew through Charlotte de Berry to Anne Bonny, budding girl-pirates have loads of great role-models to look up to. Girls can’t be cowboys or spacemen, but they can be pirates.

5. Shanties. Sea shanties are brilliant. They’re tremendously evocative and a lot of fun to sing. You can’t sing sea shanties when you’re not dressed up as a pirate though, people will look at you funny and tell you to stop. They may even try to lock you away. We’re fairly certain that you’re not dressed as a pirate right now so, if you don’t believe us, stand up and sing this aloud.

Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest

Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum

Drink and the devil had done for the rest

Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum.

The mate was fixed by the bosun’s pike

The bosun brained with a marlinspike

And cookey’s throat was marked belike

It had been gripped by fingers ten;

And there they lay, all good dead men

Like break o’day in a boozing ken

Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum.

Wouldn’t that have been better if you were dressed as a pirate?

6. Required. Pirates arrrr cool.*

7. Costumes. When else does a straight man get to wear frilly shirts, tight trousers, thigh-high leather boots and flamboyant hats? Never. Unless they dress up as a Highwayman, and that would be silly.

*It is the law that you use this joke whenever pirates are mentioned.

November 29, 2009
7 Reasons We Fall Asleep

1. Bob Willis. I guess Bobby is most famous for destroying the Australian batting line-up at Headingley in 1981 (and being continually overlooked for this feat since). These days he would probably be described as a cricket analyst/commentator. Sadly, I have no idea whether he is any good or not, because, within half a minute of hearing his voice, I am out for the count on the chaise longue. Mr. Monotone is the sleep doctor.

2. Sunday. Everyone sleeps on a Sunday afternoon. It’s a rule. Sunday lunch followed by a Sunday sleep. As a child it is the first time you hear your Mum snore. Instead of having to hear it again, you decide to learn to sleep on Sunday afternoons too.

3. Cinema. It might be the darkness or the comfy seats or the lack of fresh air or the mind-numbingly boring plot that makes your eyelids feel heavy, but whichever it is, soon you find yourself struggling to stay awake. This never happens at a gig or in the launderette or in the queue at Tesco. So why does it happen after you’ve just paid £10.50 on a ticket plus a small fortune on popcorn and a ridiculously giant sized coke that doesn’t fit in the bloody cup holder?

4. Travel. Okay, so strictly speaking you are not actually asleep. It’s impossible to sleep next to this guy. He has been talking to everyone, shifting around in his seat and crunching nuts ever since you left. And you’ve got seven more hours of this to put up with. The one thing you can do is pretend that you’re asleep. Maybe if you do that and everyone else does that, he’ll eventually fall asleep himself. Then you can gag him and lock him in the toilet.

5. Grandparents. Another one of life’s mysteries is why your grandparent’s home is always ten degrees warmer than anywhere else. Even if it’s a sunny, warm May afternoon, they still having the heating on. Not only do you end up stripping down to your sweat soaked string vest but the heat also saps your energy. Before you know it you have fallen alseep with your head resting atop the pork pie.

6. Fancy Dress. Is there anything better than the person who really wants to win the Fancy Dress competition? Not only have they spent hours on their costume, they are prepared to act the part as well. Which is why you are delighted they have come as Sleeping Beauty.

7. Reading. Now reading can be fun. I know, I have done some fun reading myself. What is not fun is reading about how fun reading can be. So I’ll stop. Also into this category falls reading about what makes you sleep. Of course – as this post will testify – it very much depends on how you write it. The fact that you are still awake is testimony to my literary skills. But what if you were to try and read this? Seven pages on the topic of Why We Sleep. Good luck. I’ll wake you later.

November 28, 2009
7 Reasons Not to Have Children

1. Toys. There are toys everywhere. If you have children, you have to get rid of your toys and replace them with stuffed animals and pushchairs.

2. The Zoo. Adults don’t take other adults to the zoo, they only take children there (a lot). If you don’t have children then you don’t have to go to the zoo. This is a good thing as zoos are expensive and alternately boring, terrifying, disgusting and smelly. You can see far more interesting animals acting naturally in their own environments by watching David Attenborough documentaries from the comfort of your own sofa. You can eat a sandwich while you do this. Would anyone want to take a sandwich to the zoo? Of course not, a monkey would probably throw its poo at you while you were eating; a monkey in a cage that has nothing better to do. Who wants to visit the animal prison? Not me.

3. Sport. Sport’s a lot better when you don’t have children. If you participate in a sport on a regular basis then your spouse will rarely come to see you, and will take little interest in your performance when they do. This is good, as you can exaggerate your sporting prowess in years to come. When you have children, however, they will often get taken along to matches. This is bad, as children can be observant and cruel. If, for example, you turn out for a rugby team and are particularly injury prone, then having children is a very bad idea. They stand on the sidelines watching you make your return to the team after a lengthy lay-off and, ten minutes into the match, when you break yet another bone (the collar-bone, for example), they exclaim “Christ! He’s the Evel Knievel of Seaford Rugby Club”. In years to come they will complain that they spent most of their childhood weekends in the Casualty Department waiting room while you went for stitches or to have a broken collar-bone/arm/ankle/ribs(3 times)/nose(monthly)/shoulder treated. For the next twenty-five years or so their resentment at their lost childhood will manifest itself as a series of reminiscences at family gatherings whenever you mention your sporting career. “Was that the match when the nurse gave us chocolate?” one of your children will enquire, “No, it was the match when the ambulance crashed into the van” another will reply. Children are so cruel that they may eventually write about it on a website.

4. Butt-Power. A small child will jump up and run to the centre of the café you’re dining in and, thrusting his right arm heavenward, shout with all the volume he can muster, “Butt-Power!” for no apparent reason. The other customers will all turn to stare at you, the parent. This is embarrassing.

5. Money. Parents often complain about the costs involved in owning a child. We’ve all witnessed first-hand how expensive children can be. In the supermarket, harassed, distracted parents pushing a trolley full of the weekly shopping often miss several of the items that their mischievous progeny surreptitiously add to the trolley. Nuts, biscuits, jam, cotton wool balls, muffins, string, children don’t care what they’re putting in there, they’re just “helping”. Let’s say they get away with £5 of extra items per week, multiply that by the fifty-two weeks of the year and then multiply it by the eighteen years until they are grown-up. That’s almost £5000 pounds worth of stuff that you don’t need. That’s a lot. That’s 5000 lottery tickets you could have bought.

6. Hair loss. Each generation grows successively taller, so your children are probably going to be taller than you. This means that they will be able to see your bald spot. They will draw it to everyone’s attention and call you “Baldy”.

7. Harry Potter. If you don’t have children then you don’t have to have anything to do with Harry Potter. You don’t have to see the films, you don’t have to read the books, you don’t have to play the computer games, you don’t have to queue for hours outside Borders in the rain waiting for the latest edition, you don’t have to know anything about witches, warlocks, muggles, fairies or quidditch, you don’t have to talk total guff. No children: No Potter.

November 27, 2009
7 Reasons The British Know Thanksgiving Must Be Important To Americans

1. Where the hell is Wichita? Whole Hollywood movies are based around the theme of trying to get home for Thanksgiving and feature scenes in which the lead shares a bed with John Candy. Most other films with the theme of trying to get home, feature daring escapes from Colditz and shenanigans with a French Resistance fighter called Michelle in a bunk-bed somewhere outside Paris. So yes, if they make films about Thanksgiving, we know it’s important.

2. Happy Thanksgiving y’all!!! Such words are dominating Twitter at the present time. We haven’t seen the like of it since Balloon Boy didn’t fly. Even that naughty Britney girl is having a day off from following people. Oh hang, no she’s not.

3. He’s over the 40…the 30…the 20…no one’s going to catch him! Touchdown! That’s right, the football is on. And it’s a Thursday. Everyone knows the football (the kind you use your hands to play) is a Sunday and Monday night sport, so playing it on a Thursday must mean it’s a special day. We liken it to the Boxing Day Test Match – a much more delightful event that doesn’t include spiking.

4. Phone in now. If you’ve been listening to Simon Mayo on BBC Radio 2 this week, you’ll know he has been celebrating Thanksgiving by getting people to call in and tell him what they are thankful for. I have no idea why he’s doing this. Simon Mayo is not American. Neither are his listeners. But anyway, if Britain’s most popular radio station is celebrating it, it must be big. Though incredibly frustrating for someone like me who very much doubts that American DJs ask people to call in on St. George’s Day and tell the nation about the last time they fought off a dragon.

5. The one with the Thanksgiving. Yes, in at number five is the ever popular sitcom Friends. Every sixth episode of Friends features Thanksgiving. E4 are almost certainly showing one of them right now.

6. Another slice? We all know that Americans eat everything, but Pumpkin Pie? Seriously? That is some commitment. Especially when you consider that just four weeks earlier, the pumpkins had been used for Halloween. It’s full of molten wax and wicks and all sorts.

7. Oranges. It’s bad enough that Americans have swapped perfectly acceptable English words for their own made up nonsense. Pavement for sidewalk. Trousers for pants. Boot for trunk. But at least they kind of make sense. On Thanksgiving though, logic apparently goes out of the window and any old word is perfectly fine. ‘Orange’ instead of ‘aren’t’ for example. What is that about? And why is it funny to some checkout girl called Rose? Only in America. Over to you Mr. Hanks.

November 26, 2009
7 Reasons to Run Away and Change Your Name

1. The CIA. You are the co-author of a British-based humour website which gets an alarming number of page hits from readers in Arlington, Virginia (the home of the CIA). This scares you.

2. A Fable. Your name is Alan Lupus. You live in a small, unremarkable seaside town in a semi-detached house on the cliff-top. You have formerly had many close friends and been on good terms with your neighbours. For the last three weeks, however, you have been plagued by a recurring vision that seems to you to be completely real. You have seen it several times, all at different times of day. You look out from your living room window and see that a large, heavy buoy has broken free from its chains near the harbour entrance and, floating around unsecured, is causing a danger to shipping. Every time this apparition has appeared, you have frantically roused your friends and neighbours who have rushed down to the harbour to secure the buoy and prevent catastrophe. On all of these occasions they arrive to find that the buoy is safely moored outside the harbour entrance and everything is normal. Your behaviour has caused such a stir that the story has been printed in the local paper and the townsfolk have now begun to point at you in the street. You are being persecuted by your neighbours and former friends. You have brought shame on your family and, thanks to the story in the local paper going viral on the internet, you are notorious. You realise that your only hope of leading a normal life again is to run away and change your name. You are the Wolf who cried “buoy”.

3. Superb Pseudonym. You have devised the alias Fernando Manchega. Pleased as punch with your own cleverness at having devised a non-de-guerre that contains elements of your own name and one of your favourite cheeses, you run away to start a new life in Belize taking your wife, Mrs Manchega, and your cat, Ignatio Peregrine Constantine Manchega, for company. You are confident that no one will be able to track you down.

4. Jordan. Having been introduced to Katie Price you have unaccountably made a good impression. She is now pursuing you with amorous intent. Run man, run!

5. You Have A Dream. Your name is The Great Alfonso. Your father is a circus strongman and your mother is a bearded lady. You have been born into the circus business and your parents are adamant that it is your calling. Since childhood, however, you have harboured a secret ambition and, in the twenty years that you have been a circus performer, this dream has begun to haunt you more and more. You have now reached the stage that you find circus life unbearable. You realise that, for the sake of your sanity, you must act to fulfil your desire. You run away to join the accountancy firm of Baker, Foot and Slee.

6. You are rightly reviled. You are Jan Moir.

7. Sex. You are a trusted and long established Member of Parliament. The publication in the News of the World of your sexual peccadilloes (which make the previous week’s headline that involved a rocking chair, a gymnast and a spotted-winged fruit bat seem tame,) have caused a hubbub in The House, a furore in Fleet Street and a hullabaloo in your home. Your constituents are appalled, your colleagues are outraged and your wife is murderous. You may have earned the admiration of contortionists and broccoli farmers everywhere but this is not enough to save your career or your reputation. It is time to run away and change your name.

November 25, 2009
7 Reasons You Know He Was A Cub Scout

1. Good with targets. This harbours back to the days when he was obsessed with achieving. He was obsessed with achieving because in the Cub Scouts you were rewarded heavily. With badges. Anyone who is rewarded with badges at a young age is going to be programmed into thinking they will always be rewarded with badges. So they keep trying. And he probably likes achieving things three times over doesn’t he? That’s because you could get sports badges one, two and three. Not to mention cooking badges one, two and three. And even badge collecting badges one, two and three.

2. Good with names. Not only is he good at remembering names he is also amazingly talented when it comes to not laughing at funny names. This is because he often had to use the phrase, ‘Excuse me Akela, Baloo said you would help me with my woggle’. If you are not going to laugh at that you are not going to laugh at anything. (What was it with the Jungle Book names anyway?)

3. Good with knots. If his best moves in the bedroom are tying you up to the headboard then you can be assured that not only was he a Cub Scout, but that he also probably achieved the station of Sixer. To be absolutely sure of this ask him to explain what he’s doing. In 98% of cases he’ll explain that a Windsor Knot is the safest kind to tie you down with, it’s strong but easy to undo and is the preferred knot of the Queen. At this point he will rise and salute.

4. Good with navigation. He knows where to go. Whether it’s the middle of the night or the middle of the day he’ll be looking skyward and checking out the stars or the sun. Don’t suggest he uses his A-Z instead. That is a typical female thing to say and you are so much better than that. He’ll also be in a bad mood all day as you have just questioned his manhood. Don’t question his manhood either.

5. Good outdoors. Whether it is pitching a tent or making a fire, he’ll be good at it. You had to be as a Cub Scout. If you weren’t you died. And as he is alive you can assume he’s only dead on the instead. He doesn’t do emotion you see. Oh, he’s probably also very good at Morris Dancing. As a Cub Scout he was always grabbed by the Morris Dancers on weekend camping trips and made to skip around waving handkerchieves and jangling bells. It makes him sick. So don’t ask him to do it. He is all man.

6. Good with his hands. That’s good at cleaning them. And polishing his shoes. He does that with his hands too. And a cloth and brush and polish and stuff. In the Cub Scouts you lost vital points if you had dirty hands and unshiny shoes. He can’t quite remember why the points were so vital, but it probably had something to do with getting a badge for points accumulation. Next time he cleans your hands for you, give him a badge.

7. Good with stamps. A bit like when you interrupt him while he is watching England play rugby by asking bloody stupid questions like, “Ooh this looks a bit rough. Why did that man just grab that man and throw him to the ground?”, he’ll interrupt you while you’re writing a letter and tell you that the Penny Black is the oldest adhesive stamp and was issued on 1st May, 1840. He’ll also add that back then you had to lick them yourself and that tongue cuts were rife. You’ll want to slap him.

November 24, 2009
7 Reasons You Shouldn’t Wear A Tie

1. It causes a rash. When you’re the cool kid at your school, people expect you to do things differently, to be a bit rebellious. To subvert convention, you wear your black, orange and electric-blue striped polyester school tie with the thin end at the front. This means that you have to tuck the thick end into your shirt. You spend four long years at secondary school with a painful rash on your chest. You are cool though.

2. It hampers nudism. If a nudist dons a tie, he ceases to become a nudist, he becomes a weirdo.

3. It is disrespectful to Alan Hansen. Have you noticed something about football-pundits? They all wear shirts without ties. All of them, on every channel. They stopped wearing them at some point in the ‘90s. We believe that this was a football-pundit gesture of solidarity with Alan Hansen whose tie, along with his shoelaces, had been confiscated for his own safety when his “You’ll never win anything with kids” statement was disproved so emphatically and publicly. This is also why they never show the pundits’ shoes.

4. It can be dangerous. Ties can be dangerous, especially around the office.

Having been lured into a bedroom in an Austrian palace by a scantily-clad Jennifer Aniston, James Bond has been hit over the back of the head and knocked unconscious by her unseen accomplice. When he regains consciousness he finds himself in a nondescript office. He is bound at the wrists and ankles. He is seated and flanked by two burly henchmen. He faces the bad guy who sits behind a desk on top of which Bond can see a red telephone, a large rubber-band ball and a paper shredder. The henchmen take hold of him under the arms, pull him to his feet, and drag him to the front of the desk. One of the henchmen inserts the end of Bond’s tie into the top of the paper shredder which springs to life instantly, slowly dragging Bond inexorably toward it. Shocked and intimidated, his tie tightening, with beads of sweat visible on his brow, Bond enquires, “Do you expect me to talk, Bronzethumb?” The bad guy replies, “No Mr Bond, I expect you to tie-die.”

5. It causes moustaches. Hairy-chested lotharios can’t wear ties. They need to wear shirts – preferably yellow – with several buttons undone to expose their hairy-chests and large gold medallions. If lotharios were to wear ties, babes wouldn’t be able to ogle their chest hair and their gold pendants that depict an almost life-sized St. Christopher. Consequently, they would bed fewer chicks and would be forced to grow a Tom Selleck style moustache to demonstrate their rampant manliness instead.

6. It is phallic. It looks a bit like your penis. It points to your penis. Do you really want to draw attention to your penis?

7. It is unhygienic. Ties catch food. Everyone drops food on their tie. If they weren’t wearing ties the food would land on their shirts, which would be good. Then they could just put the shirt in the washing machine and get a clean one out of the wardrobe. Ties are usually made of silk and are always dry clean only, so people don’t remove them after a jam spill, they just rub at them for a bit with a damp cloth until the stain is less visible. The food stain eventually gathers bacteria and people go through life wearing bacteria-harbouring ties. What do people do before they arrive at the meeting? They straighten their ties. What do people do when they arrive at the meeting? They all shake hands. What do people do after the meeting? They become ill and die a hideous tie-bacteria inflicted death. What they don’t do at any point is take their ties to the dry-cleaners. Nobody does. Ever. You don’t either.

November 23, 2009