Oh The Disappointments You'll Know: Why You Should Be Making The Most Of Your Quarter Life Crisis

Kids these days don't know they're born. 

Back in the bad old days grown ups would have to wait until they hit at least their mid forties before they were granted the reprieve from the responsibilities of adulthood known in clinical parlance as the Mid-Life Crisis. Counting down the days until they could blow all their savings on rent boys and the kind of beverages that are so fancy they demand a tiny umbrella to shelter under, they would drift through the mundane activities of every day life while the wife that sat opposite them at the dinner table began to look more and more like a stranger and the idea of stabbing her in the face with a fork when she asked if you'd taken the bins out for the fiftieth time became an increasingly attractive prospect, if only to add a little spice to Pork Chop Thursday.

The meal that says 'I don't love you anymore.'

 

 

Fast-forward to 2012 and a generation of stunted adolescent-adults stand, trembling, on the cusp of entering the mysterious and terrifying realm of the Grown Ups. Albeit several years too late. Way back when, your grand-pappy would have been working the mines aged six and dead from the black lung aged 11, having spawned an expanse of spiteful progeny to fight over who gets to marry mam now the old man's popped his clogs. At the funeral, with lowered eyes, his survivors – the under-10's – would discuss in whispers what a long and lucky life he had lived. Things were different back then. Some might say better.

Chimney sweep or child sex worker, often there was no distinction between these two terms and a two for one promotion on clean chimneys and sticky bedsheets was a firm (snarrrf) favourite with the customers.

This generation of stunted adult-children are luckier than any of their ancestors had ever dared to believe. Thanks to advances in medicine and the art of keeping people alive even when they're pretty much over this whole 'living' thing, those coming of age in these brave new times can look forward to not only one but two, three if you're lucky and rich enough, crises in which you are entirely justified to spend all your cash on coke and whores and Topshop shoes.

The phrase YOLO – You Only Live Once for the uninitiated or those who can't hear internet acronyms uttered in real life (IRL) over the low-level screaming that rattles around their skulls whenever they're put into close proximity to any one under the age of 18 – is bandied about a lot these days and with good reason. You do only live once, so forget planning for the terrifying black hole of your future and concentrate on getting good and fucked up before you have to spend your thirties working a job you hate to save up enough money for when you hit middle age and are rightfully entitled to another total breakdown blow out, this time with a spouse and dependent children waiting for you on the stairs as you stumble in at 6 A.M stinking of sambucca shots and sexual frustration because you are old and fat and no one will fuck you unless you pay them and even then it's doubtful you'll get it up.

So stop being a cry-baby loser and go out and boff a hooker, dickhead.

Your loved ones may find it hard to understand your actions during these difficult times. If this is the case get nude. It also helps if your wife is also a bird of prey, because they are far more tolerant than other species.

Kurt The Social Anxiety Ridden Koala: A Cautionary Tale

One day there was a koala bear called Kurt, who suffered from crippling social anxiety. He was too afraid to leave the house. He had a girlfriend called Melissa, but he was too anxious to be around her. Sometimes they would talk on MSN, but whenever she requested a web-cam interaction he was debilitated by heart-wrenching fear.

The only person he could bear to be around was his mother, who only made him feel mildly nauseous. Kurt's therapist was a Freudian, and said that his problems stemmed from an extreme Oedipal complex. Kurt pointed out that most of Freud's theories had been discredited. Kurt's therapist saw this bold undermining of his authority as a demonstration of Oppositional Defiant Disorder. He decided the best course of action was to put Kurt on a shit ton of meds.

After Kurt had taken his shit ton of meds, he began to see his therapist's point of view. In fact, Kurt had depersonalised to such an extent, that he was willing believe that he was the kind of person who wanted to plough his mother.

Kurt's therapist was very pleased with Kurt's progress. Kurt had become so compliant that he had pretty much lost the ability to think for himself, but gained a whole host of new friends. But Kurt's new friends were a bad bunch. They used Kurt as a drugs mule. Kurt was so pliable, that they merely had to suggest that Kurt insert a bag of heroin into his anus and cross the state border, and Kurt would happily comply. Kurt was just happy to have such great pals. Maybe after the drugs pick-up, they would go for ice-cream sundaes, just like he always dreamed. 

THE END.

Wall-E Was Right: Why I'm Pretty Sure The Internet Is Killing Us All

The internet is the worst thing to happen to humanity since the Hydrogen-bomb. You might think this is an outlandish and wildly inaccurate statement and you would almost definitely be right. But after spending almost three days straight refreshing my Facebook page and posting pictures of small animals with assorted danish pastries on their heads on Tumblr, well heck, I'm burnt out. I'd just like to point out this isn't my usual approach to the internet. Normally I ration myself to only 20 hours a day. But this week I've been avoiding doing all the work I avoided doing over Christmas. And as we all know:

Honestly if it's not a bar graph I'm lost, but some boffins at Oxford made this (probably) 
so it's science.

Sure, the internet isn't all bad. It's saved an entire generation of young men from the shame of having to buy top shelf pornography in a discreet brown paper bag of shame that may as well have “FILTHY PERVERT” scrawled all over it, because everyone knows that if your bag is opaque, you're probably a sex offender. I guess there's some other reasons why we all dig the internet and if this was a rational, balanced argument wherein I carefully weighed up the pro's and the con's, then you would get to hear them. As it stands, this is basically what you have come to expect from my blog: the over-caffeinated ravings of a wildly unstable personality. That's right, I'm going to get all Michael Moore up in this shit.

As any good polemicist knows, facts talk. So here's a fact: THE INTERNET KILLS PEOPLE. Every time you fire up your laptop you have a 90% chance of dying. You could end up being strangled by your spouse for using up all the bandwith downloading every episode ever of Come Dine With Me: Extra Portions. You could die like that guy in the internet cafe when he sat infront of his computer for twelve hours straight. You could become addicted to pornography and furiously asphixi-wank yourself into an eternal slumber. You could even get addicted to World of Warcraft and die of shame.

Common side-effects of pretending to be a pixellated troll include adult acne and eternal virginity.

And, sure, you might say, these are all easily avoidable scenarios. Just step back from they keyboard, take a ten minute break, make a cup of tea, go outside for some fresh air. But you know what? People are dumb and they will stare at a screen for seventy-eight hours straight even though their eyeballs are bleeding and they can't stop dry-heaving from the everpresent stench of their soiled jeans.

Even if you manage to use the internet without dying, don't think you're safe. The internet makes it almost impossible to avoid people. You are always just the click of a button away from someone you really don't want to deal with. That guy you accidentally sat next to on the bus once? Yeah, he's not going anywhere until you've heard all about how difficult it is seeing his mother go through chemotherapy. That girl who stole your boyfriend? She wants to Facebook chat about their sex life in exruciating detail so she can ask you 'how did you ever let that one go?!' while you sit there, your genitals nothing more than a blank neutral space because it's been so long since you've felt the touch of another human being your body automatically assumes that you are an amoeba and reproduce asexually now. Pulling a sick day? Your boss just read your Twitter feed where you spent the last six hours LOLing about how much fun you had at Sea World and how awesome shaking fins with Shamu was while the schmucks at the office toiled away, wasting their miserable lives in the mediocrity of middle management. Well guess what, you've got all the time in the world to just get out there and live, because, hey, now your unemployed and soon to be homeless. May as well buy a season pass to Sea World and drown yourself in the conga eel tank. 

I've never read Moby Dick, so if a whale busts you to your boss via G-mail, you should definitely get all Ahab on him hunt down some nautical revenge.

Do you even remember what it's like outside? I sure as heck don't. Sometimes I twitch open my curtains to peek out into the world I've half-forgotten, before scurrying back to my desk, eyes, unaccustomed to natural light, bleeding ever so slightly. I've heard talk of a time before Tumblr, but honestly, I don't remember. My life has been spent before a procession of LCD screens. If I'm not texting my friends (that's hypothetical, because I don't have friends. Mostly I text the Samaritans Suicide hotline and they send me motivational messages like 'you can do it!' and 'be brave, soon the pain will vanish'), I'm tweeting, or tumblring or watching Iplayer. Human interaction that doesn't involve a protective barrier is pretty much impossible at this point.

So, what can be done about it? Well if, like me, you believe that Pixar are actually purveyor's of chillingly accurate Nostradamus type predictions, then humanity is in for a bumpy ride. In between the lost fish and talking cars, it seems as though the human race is heading for a lifetime of immobility, the loss of vowels from the alphabet and an inability to blink. Turn on, log on and let your brains dribble from your ears and out of your skull.

This guy ruined your life.

Disclaimer: I actually really like the internet, please don't make me live in a yurt.

New Year For The Neurotic

The prospect of the "New Year" holds a certain mythic symbolism for us. Every year the same macabre charade; the promise of change, the chance to become who we want to be instead of what we've ended up as. Another chance to shake away the apathy that hangs from us like cobwebs. Each resolution more ridiculous than the last, because you know you are running out of time. You're near thirty. What have you achieved? You are overweight, unattractive, unfulfilled, and talentless. The fear of failure looms large over us this time of year. We buy magazines, diet pills, how-to and self-help books. We stockpile these talismans; we surround ourselves with aspiration in the hopes that we too will achieve. It is cultural superstition endorsed in excess by those who profit from our insecurities and self hatred. An arbitrary date will not alter your personality. You will still be the same intrinsically flawed human being you were at the start of the year as you were at the end.

I am 100% on track for my New Year's Resolution of winning the Turner Prize.

Well, that’s what the bastards would have you believe. But in an uncharacteristically optimistic turn, I am here to tell you that, even though everything is pointless and your life is just one long meaningless march towards the grave, sometimes it’s nice to be in complete denial of your own limitations. For example, my New Year’s Resolution is to become a ballerina. At twenty-three years old, slightly asthmatic, with the flexibility of an iron rod and weighing in probably at the weight of twelve ballerinas combined,  some may say that this isn’t going to happen for me. To those cunts, I say, HATERS GONNA HATE. If I want to be a mother-fucking ballerina (not literally, I mean, I love my mother, but not in that way okay) then I will be. Yes, it could all end in tears, disappointment and despair, but most of my days end that way anyway. At least this way, there is a little glimmer of light in the abyss of my life.

Because ballet worked out so well for Natalie Portman.

People may laugh at those American Idol and X Factor contestants who have achieved such astonishing levels of denial that they are actually probably experiencing psychotic delusions, but you know what, I think those guys have the right idea. Why should we be realistic? Reality is terrible. I would much rather be completely self-deluded and believe that I am super-model hot with the voice of Christina Aguilera and the IQ of Einstein than face the reality that at the very best, I am poor to mediocre at almost everything I turn my hand to.

Who do these delusions really hurt? Certainly not the deluded. Other people only want you to face reality because they are jealous of how wonderful you feel when you are completely and utterly delusional. Imagine living entirely free from doubt. Your black-out drinking is just a charming eccentricity. Not many people could pull off a see-through orange plether cat-suit, but baby, you work it.

If you want to take this one step further and free yourself from the shackles of social propriety, then you might want to consider making solipsism your new years resolution. Dictionary.com defines solipsism as “the theory that only the self exists, or can be proved to exist.” This seems like the solution to every problem facing the socially awkward and unnecessarily angry teenager, whose parent’s still don’t quite believe the doctor’s reassurances that it isn’t autism. Rejected by the girl of your dreams? Doesn't matter, she doesn't exist! She is quite literally, the girl of your dreams; a figment of your omnipotent imagination. Failed your A-levels? Doesn't matter! 'F' is an arbitrary grade invented by your mind and you control your mind, so there is nothing to worry about. Drunk and crying in public, again? Doesn't matter! Nobody can see you because no one else exists. You are the centre of the world and the world is a pretty sweet place to be when you no longer have to worry about other people’s ‘feelings’. Solipsism means never having to say you're sorry.

Haters gonna hate.

Here’s an example from my own life of the joys of denial. I went out clubbing last Friday and woke up convinced that I had spent the night delighting my friends with my sparkling wit and easy charm. Instead, I was informed that I spent the entire time spilling other people’s drinks, slurring insults at strangers and apparently punching someone in the face. Repeatedly. But instead of holding on to those feelings of guilt, shame and fear that I might have to make an appearance in court quite soon, I decided to ignore all the evidence of my multiple transgressions and instead embrace the delights of denial.

Delusions

Reality

So, here are my self-awareness free resolutions for 2012:

1. Win the Pulitzer Prize with my debut novel “Brucey Boucher”
2. Become the face of Chanel
3. Master time travel
4. Survive the year with my dignity intact

Everything Is Awful: The Best Worst Moments of 2011

I'm probably not the right person to do a recap of the year post, because I basically remember nothing from this year. My chronic drinking and selective memory make most years fly by in a blur of shame, despair and confusion. But what I lack in memory, I make up for with bitterness and rage. I am also an excellent complainer, so who better to dredge up all the awful parts of the year you thought you'd successfully repressed and then rub them in your sad, frowny faces until you cry so hard you pass out and wake up wondering if it would have been better if you'd just died.

So let's get started party people!

5. Rebecca Black
   
   
    
   
   
   
   

2011 is when I lost my faith in humanity. Rebecca Black's Friday was a completely misunderstood and underrated MASTERPIECE and no one but me saw this. R-Bla, as I call her, even received death threats. C'mon people, DEATH THREATS? For a song that lasted three minutes and you only ever heard it if you went on Youtube and specifically searched for it and clicked play and then sat there for it's entire duration?

The song was clearly a ruthless satire of the Work Hard, Play Harder ethos that is so dominate in corporate culture. 'Friday' tells the story of an investment banker who drags himself through the working week like a mindless drone, sustained only by the promise of the weekend's cocaine binge and hooker mutilations that are an invariable part of social life in the City. In many ways, Rebecca Black's 'Friday' is this generations American Psycho or Bonfire of the Vanities, except it is much much better because it has a good beat and you can dance to it and you don't have to use your eyes and make them all squinty to focus on the page and then have to force yourself to keep your eyes in the same place even though they really want to look at the TV. 

Oh, and this might have happened in 2010, but whatever. Every year is pretty much an interchangeable continuation of the last as we trudge slowly towards the grave, letting videos of cats playing the keyboard distract us from the stark reality that WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE.

4. Kim Kardashian's Kar-Krash Kommitment Keremony
   
   

   

   I think she's crying because they put Kourtney's name before hers.

She was an American Princess, he was some tall guy who played some kind of sport or whatever, no one really cared about him. The wedding was a completely understated affair and there was absolutely nothing to prepare me for the happy couple getting divorced only 72 days after the wedding. I mean, c'mon kids, what happened to staying together to save face? That's how it worked in the old days. People got married, realised it was the worst mistake they'd ever made and that their lives were over, had children, felt even worse about their terrible lives, grew to resent one another more and more with each passing year, developed drinking problems, bought washing machines and died. And do you know why they did this? Out of social awkwardness. 

3. The Economy

This man is the 1% who uses 99% of our nation's hair product supplies.

Yeah, pretty bad, huh? As a vaunted economic expert, I have several theories on why things are not going so great in the world finance sitch. Basically, this is Penn Badgley's fault. His fancy new Jeff Buckley hair do takes a lot of hair spray and hair gel to maintain, more than the Gossip Girl hair and make-up department could handle. Badgley's outrageous demands for hair products put the manufacturers of Bryll Cream under increasing pressure and they were ultimately unable to supply the Gossip Girl star with enough products to keep his hair aloft. After they went out of business, Badgley began using liquid gold to style his hair. After Badgley exhausted his own gold supplies, President Obama sanctioned the use of the White House's super secret treasure trove, which is what Scrooge McDuck's Money Lair was based on, in order to style the star's hair. This led to the loss of America's Triple A rating, but when I spoke to Obama earlier this evening he insisted that “Penn Badgley's hair is a national treasure, the loss of volume and lustre in that beautiful boy's flowing mane would have been a disaster that would have far outweighed any financial crisis. And OMG, can you believe that Chuck and Blair are back together?!”

Penn Badgley at Occupy Wall Street deflecting attention from his own singlehanded destruction of the economy onto the innocent bankers. SHAME ON YOU PENN.

2. Climate Change
   
   

   

   Clarkson has been quoted as saying "BLAH BLAH BLAH, I HATE MINORITIES AND PENGUINS BUT I AM OKAY WITH ACID WASH DENIM."

This has been going on for way too long. It's like chill out already environment. I mean literally, it's going to be totally annoying if everything melts and it's hot all the time because I look really cute in boots and furry hats.

Anyway, I skim-read an article in The New Scientist today on the recent conference on climate change in Durban and it seems like the general consensus is that global warming is ALL Jeremy Clarkson's fault. Brainy scientist types have given power point presentations with pie charts that provide concrete evidence that Jeremy Clarkson and his inter-changeable pals, (they both have the same terrible hair cut) have literally destroyed the ozone layer just by their existence. When pressed on this, the scientists went on to confirm that C02 levels actually have not had as catastrophic an effect on the environment as the noxious W4NKER gas that is released into the atmosphere every time Jeremy Clarkson opens his mouth.

Moonlighting as a government advisor from time to time, my campaign to have Clarkson ritually sacrificed to the Sun God Ra has thus far fallen on deaf ears, but I'm hoping in light of recent evidence Prime Minister Cam-Cam will seriously re-think my advice. 

       1. The Senseless Destruction of a Priceless Work of Art

In a year of atrocities, this is surely the worst of all. The original had Kevin Bacon. This has... I don't even care. I don't want to live in world where this kind of shit happens.

If this list seems a little patchy, well, that's because I had so many 'black out' moments in 2011 that I've started calling the parts I do remember 'black ins'. I think some stuff happened in the news too, but honestly, I don't pay attention to the world because it is a cold, dead place and I would rather read about fat celebrities and shit.

A Beginner's Guide To Passive Aggressive Gift Giving.

Christmas is coming, the geese are getting fat (and so are you, but don't worry we'll deal with that in January.)
 

It's a well-known fact that suicide rates sky-rocket around Christmas time and this is almost definitely due to the stress of having to be around people you love and also buy them things. In Britain we have a time honoured tradition of ritual suicide practised by family members who have disgraced themselves by buying Mum the Dan Brown novel she's already read for Book Club. This is why I will be converting to the Jehovah's Witnesses on 24th December, but before I do, let me help you get through the holiday season with as little blood shed as possible. (NB: This does not involve simply switching to cyanide pills instead of the chainsaw you were going to use to disembowel yourself.)

Personally this is what I want for Christmas. To be immediately discarded in January, of course.

This year you won't have to kill yourself to avoid the awkwardness of giving someone a gift they are mildly indifferent towards. So be smart and survive the season (literally) by reading my go-to guide on purchasing Christmas presents for people you don't really like or who you think are okay but feel kind of resentful towards for having to spend time and money searching for something they probably don't really want anyway. Don't go to Lidls without it!

1.  MUM AND DAD

Sure, they gave you life, but what have they done for you recently, huh?

This year I wanted to give my parents something special, something unique that money couldn't buy. This was partly because I am a staunch anti-capitalist and I'm banned from John Lewis after stealing a wine rack in a radical protest against the bourgeois system of oppression. Also, I spent a lot of money on shoes this month so there's not much left over for anyone else.So this year, Mum and Dad are getting something straight from the heart that doesn't require me opening my wallet.

Having been taught to weave on a 16^th century loom by my mentor Rumpelstiltskin, I set to work on creating the kind of gift that you just couldn't buy from John Lewis (those fucking bastards). After painstakingly hand-stitching the opening line to Philip Larkin's 'This Be The Verse' – they fuck you up your mum and dad, they may not mean to, but they do – in Comic Sans, of course, I then went on to illustrate several (seventy-eight) traumatic key moments from my childhood right through until adult life. I like to think of it as a little Bayeux Tapestry of guilt and recrimination which will look lovely in our living room. 

We can't all be artists, but I am, and this is awesome.

For those of you who are struggling to find that something special to show your parents how much you resent them and question all the decisions they made when raising you, here are a few handy tips:

• Never buy individual presents for your parents. Even if they're divorced. Even if one of them is dead. Buying separate gifts makes it look like you think of your parents as actual people rather than the ATM machines we all know them to be. Except my bank doesn't usually criticise my expanding waist line and ask me when I'm going to get a real job when I withdraw cash.

• Don't  make the gift too personal - choose something generic that old people are into. For example, last year I bought my mother some denture toothpaste. She was very grateful and she's put it in a safe place so when she gets dentures she'll be ready to keep them sparkling clean. 

My personal recommendation for the perfect present to show your parents exactly what they mean to you is a copy of my latest novel, I Will Never Ever Forgive You: The Tragic True Life Tale of a Small Child Whose Mother Was Too Drunk To Read A Bed-Time Story To Him That One Time (available from any retailer with taste, published by Why Won't Anyone Else Publish Me? Press.) I suggest annotating your copy heavily, leaving notes in the margins letting your parents know how deeply you relate to the main character's plight and how being abused by a nonce was quite a lot like when you were seventeen and they used to pay you £10 to mow the lawn every two weeks. 

2. SECRET SANTA
   
   

Here I am DJing at last year's Christmas party. We listened to a lot of Leonard Cohen that night.

Secret Santa is the bane of every office worker and is actually a sneaky anagram of SATAN SECRET. This is no accident. The origins of Secret Santa actually go way back to the middle ages, when a group of monks decided they were totally over Jesus and began secretly worshipping demonic forces in exchange for small presents that cost no more than £5. The tradition has been carried on into our modern times and as such, every time you receive a Secret Santa present, you are actually making a pact with a demon who now owns your eternal soul.

Try explaining that at the office though and everyone thinks you're a spoil-sport. Or kind of weird. And maybe they stop talking when you walk into the room now. And maybe they all go out for lunch while you're in the toilets so they don't have to ask you along and you come back to an empty office and you sit alone at your desk, weeping silently, and wondering why it's so difficult for you to make friends. So take my advice, suck it up, say goodbye to your immortal soul and buy them something. 

May I suggest my newest Hypnotherapy C.D, So You Fucked Up Your Life: How To Come To Terms With Knowing That You're Stuck In This Dead-End Job Forever and Would Probably Be Better Off Dead. It's a step-by-step guide with a hypnotic induction which will help you successfully detach from your situation and depersonalise until you are basically a human automaton mindlessly drifting through the days not caring that every moment your wasted life is slipping through your fingers. Whoever gets this gift is one lucky son-of-a-gun! May I suggest also purchasing a copy for yourself too?

Don't be that guy. Let me help you suppress all those pesky emotions.

That pretty much covers all the groups that I have social contact with, so if you're one of those weird, desperate, needy people who needs constant human interaction to feel validated, I suggest looking elsewhere for tips on what to buy the people you cling to like a tragic limpet, sucking the life out of everyone around you until they're as empty and shell-like as you.

Let me leave you with this little ditty to get you in the Holiday mood. Put on your Rudolph ears, shove your face full of mince pies and Yule log and let your tears flow freely into the litre of Brandy you're already half-way through.

• 
  

Dating For Dunces: How To Make Men Think You Are Kind Of Okay And Good Back Up Material If It Doesn't Work Out With The Other, More Attractive Girls He's Dating.

Dating is difficult. Take the 'dat' out of dating with my handy-how to guide to woo any man!*

(*Any, as long as you don't set your sights too high, aim out of your league or punch above your weight. You know what happened to Icarus when he flew too close to the sun? He got BURNED, bitch.)

It's sad when hot guys die. Manage your expectations.

1. Dress Code

Men are simple creatures. You don't want to confuse them because then they won't like you. This is an honest to God fact that a male friend of mine once told me. Well, he actually shouted it at me whilst trying to force me out of a moving vehicle, and it wasn't that he said I was confusing – I think he was actually calling me a cunt. But boys never say what they mean, so you have to learn to read between the lines.

When it comes to outfit choices, you have only two options. Super Slutty or Amish. There is absolutely no middle ground on this. The renowned Sexologist Dr. Sigmund Freud has written extensively about a little something called the “Madonna-Whore” complex. Guys are super into this. Now, I know what you're thinking guys, Madonna does look kind of like a brothel madame, but Freud didn't mean that Madonna. I know, I googled it. The Whore is a classic look which tells guys you are a fun-loving gal who might also expect a cash payment at the end of the evening. The Amish leaves a little more to the imagination and is perfect for a guy who is just using you as a beard to take home to Mum and Dad over Christmas so he can prove once and for all that Brian is just his flat-mate and nothing more.

Here's a break down of each of these looks:

a) WHORE

If I had Courtney Stodden's body, I would wear way less clothes than this.

This look is pretty simple. Think of a stripper. Then dress like her.

b) AMISH

Leaving a little something to the imagination drives boys wild.

With this look, you should show as little skin as possible, because as Cher from Clueless once said, skin makes boys think about sex – and if the kind of boy you're dating is into this look, then he is probably terrified of sex and wants to keep you as asexual and un-threatening as possible. Don't forget to make sure your rape whistle is a prominent part of your outfit. If he tries to kiss you goodnight, blow the damn whistle as hard as you can. He will respect you for your straightforwardness and candour.

2. Conversation
   
   

   

    I'm just saying, more women should trade their vocal chords for a hot pair of legs.

   
   

Boys love a woman who can listen. To show that you are really listening hard, don't say a word the whole evening. This will make you seem mysterious but also genuinely interested in what he has to say. Don't talk about yourself, it's rude and he won't appreciate what you have to say. Instead ask him questions. Don't get personal – no family questions and definitely don't ask where he works because he'll think you're a gold-digging whore. Stick to casual and non-inflammatory chit-chat about sports teams, the weather and how funny you think Jeremy Clarkson is, especially when he's being derogatory about Mexicans.

Men hate women who take charge, so when he asks where you want to go, shrug your shoulders, avoid eye contact and for God's sake don't ever venture an opinion. Men like it when girls are completely passive and maybe even a little afraid of them. Remember to cower at various points throughout the night, hunch your shoulders and make your eyes look cold and dead. You could have all the right conversational skills, but without the right demeanour you're not gonna bag the guy – remember the three P's – Passive, Pretty and Punchbag material.

3. The Shrew
   
   

   

   His eyes are screaming.

   
   

This is an advanced move, for advanced daters. Unfortunately, if you've gotten to the stage where you're an advanced dater, then you are more than likely sad, old and terminally single. Disregard all the above information and make this your new go to move. The Shrew is a difficult one to pull off, but once you've mastered it, men everywhere will want to re-home the 45 cats that you share your apartment with so that they can move in instead.

You're familiar with Shakespeare's The Taming of The Shrew? Of course you are, that's why you're alone, because you spent too much time brushing up on your booksmarts and not enough time brushing your hair and trying to look cute. In Shakespeare's day The Shrew was a move that involves being an abrasive bitch and then allowing a man to 'tame' you. Now if you're in the advanced stages of dating already, you probably don't have time to be tamed. Instead, go to a bar, get drunk and obnoxious, bring someone home (if you're classy, but an alleyway will do equally as well) through sheer force of will and then poke holes in the condom. BAM, you've got yourself a baby and a new boyfriend!

My book WHY WON'T HE IMPREGNATE ME, IT'S BEEN TWO DATES ALREADY?! is out now.