The worst joke ever.

For me, the weirdest thing about the Rebekah Brooks saga has been that I used to work with one of her family.
I used to temp, which sucked. One of the worst things was the fact that I never had my own login. in this one place, it had the kind of login that was your first initial followed by these first five letters of your surname. So I would have been cbrosn.

But I had to use someone else's. Specifically, abrook. It prompted a kind of existential crisis. Because I'm not abrook.

So I had mixed feelings before I asked who abrook was. "oh, that's Adam Brooks. He's on holiday. He's Rebekah Brooks' son."

Yeah. at this point, ambivalence slipped over to hate.

And when he came back from holiday, he introduced himself and put out his hand.

And I snubbed him. I said hello, but I didn't return the handshake. And I didn't feel good about that. And I was, to be honest, a bit of an arse.

After a few days, he came up to me, and he wanted to go for coffee. He wanted to talk about my problems with him. And we talked, and he turned out to be a nice guy.

And it taught me a very valuable lesson.

Don't judge abrook by his mother.

Short Story - The Happy Pills

Note - I've noticed an increased number of people finding this story by searching for 'pills to make you happy' or similar. This is a work of fiction, and not what you're looking for. If you are feeling particularly vulnerable, I strongly recommend you speak to The Samaritans (UK) or the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (US). I hope this isn't taken as patronising, and I hope that you find whatever works best for you.

I bought my first packet of the Happy Pills two days after they became legal. I'd have bought them on the day itself, but they'd sold out everywhere. And walking down the street, you couldn't really tell. People were still working, were still rushing, but there was a slight change. Barely noticeable at first, but the closer you looked...the more you noticed that there was a bounce in more peoples steps. There were slightly more smiles on faces, slightly more animated conversation. The mood was almost infectious. 

The Happy Pills fired synapses in your brain that, normally, needed stimuli in order to fire up hard enough to push your mood. The kind of stimuli that would be caused by those few hours spent in the park, basking in the good weather with no pressures at all. The kind of stimuli that would be caused by totally unexpected, really good sex. No, you didn't feel like you'd been doing those things - but you got the same kind of good mood that I can only describe by relating it to euphoria.

It wasn't euphoria though. Euphoria tends to lead to you losing some element of control. It doesn't always, but it can do. The Happy Pills didn't. They had absolutely no negative side-effects whatsoever. They just put you in as good a mood as you could possibly be in. That was it.   

At the time, Karen and I were having problems. We'd been married for eight years, and it's fair to say that the passion had long, long since died. Sex had been non-existant for the three years prior, and it hadn't been much present after we became parents anyway. And while Karen and I were best friends as well as lovers, eight years of cabin fever were beginning to cause their problems. There was still love in our marriage, but it had been a long time since we were in love. We'd tried things to get the romance back into our lives, but it just wasn't happening.

And then the Happy Pills came out. We talked about it, about trying them. We thought they might help. And so, two days after the pills came out, we tried them. Both of us. And then we waited.

It wasn't something that happened immediately. It wasn't that noticeable, because it was subtle. We were sat talking, and after a few hours, we realised we were laughing more than we had done in a long time. It didn't seem artificial either. It was just like we'd remembered things that we liked about each other. It didn't sort everything, not immediately, but it was fun.

We took the pills daily. That weekend, we went out and just walked around Hyde Park for a few hours. It was the site of one of our first dates, and we hadn't done something like that for a long time. Just enjoyed each others company for the first time in years. The park was packed, but there was no hassle. Everyone was in a good mood.

The longer you took the pills, the more you noticed the change, and - conversely - the less it mattered. The pills had a way of just clarifying everything. It was like realising that, for the last however many years of your life, you'd been suffering from a constant migraine that finally lifted.

Within two years of the pill being launched in public, they were selling on a similar level as bread. Everybody bought them. And there were new kids turning eighteen every day, so it was an evergreen product too. A product base that was only growing.

It wasn't just Britain either. The Happy Pills were worldwide. And it was making a difference. It took a while for the wars to finish, but they did. Suddenly, religious and cultural differences stopped mattering. It was difficult to find the emotion necessary to kill someone when everyone was in a good mood.

Crime was down too. Not actually zero, but certainly at the lowest it had ever been. Perhaps it was because poverty wasn't as big an issue any more. People were happy, and didn't feel quite as much of a need to prove themselves through money any more. As a result, there were record amounts being given to charity. Although the pills made you happy, the happiness meant that people were more productive. People either found the joy that made them want the jobs they were in in the first place, or they felt more confident bout themselves, and went after the jobs they actually wanted. And rejections were a lot easier to deal with when you felt good.

And the sex. Oh God, the sex. It was amazing. And every time was good. Karen and I were back like we were in our first year of dating, rediscovering everything about each other. It was fun, it was happy.

Last year my mother died. She was in her late sixties, and she had died in surgery, in an attempt to remove a benign tumour. An infection led to her contracting an illness, and the illness killed her. The funeral was a beautiful affair, full of joy and love, as we all remembered everything that had been good about her as a person, and how much she enriched our lives. The only tears that day were tears of laughter. She would have loved it. We grieved. Of course we grieved, but it wasn't as important as remembering how wonderful her life had been.

The world had become a wonderful place. And not artificially either - the mood may have been caused by the pills, and maintained by them, but it wasn't just them. Once you were up and running, the pills just helped you keep to a certain level. The real highs were natural, and the real lows just didn't happen any more.

It was a utopia. A real utopia, right here on earth.

And then it ended.

We didn't realise that the synapses in the brain would wear out. We didn't realise that, one day, they would just stop working. It wasn't one day, all over the world or anything like that, but rather a little over six years after you started taking them.

Nobody realised for a while. The suicides of the original scientists, and the chairman of Abblexcon were puzzling, but nobody understood. They didn't tell us.

As a result, it took time for it to spread, and for people to realise what was happening. But all of a sudden, there were two classes in the world. There were those that were happy, and those that weren't. Those who had been poor in the past were still happy, since they were generally the last to start taking the pills. Those that were the first - those internet buyers - were the first large group to be affected.

There were murders. Lots of murders. There's nothing worse than watching other people constantly being happy when you're not. And there were a lot of suicides. The death toll, as it stands, is in the millions.

There are riots on the streets. Unhappiness and depression, and anger towards those that still were happy. Watching it happen was horrible, and we empathised, but we didn't understand what it felt like any more.

Until it happened to us. You remember how I told you that it felt like a migraine had suddenly been lifted? Imagine getting the migraine back, and realising that it was never, ever going to stop again.

Imagine spending the best six years of your life, and realising that the rest of your life is going to be spent living with the memory of all the good feelings, all the happiness, and realising that it's denied to you forever. Because you used a pill to burn out the part of your brain that makes you happy.

You can't understand, David. I don't expect you to understand, and I hope to God that you never understand. I need you to keep the next sentence in mind for the rest of your life. Never take them, no matter how good you're told they are. Because I love you, son, and I never want you to feel like I feel right now.

Your mother killed herself two hours ago. We had an argument and we fought. It's all my fault, and I love her, and I miss her, and I miss feeling like we used to feel, and I miss being who I was when I was with her, and I miss how much I loved her, and I miss how much she loved me. I miss my mother. I miss my wife. I will miss you so much.

My body will be upstairs, David. Don't look. Call the authorities, they have enough practice in dealing with it. Just know that it didn't hurt. And it's the only thing that can stop me feeling like this. From knowing how much I've lost.

You will never fully know how much I love you.

Your father.

Flash Fiction: The Girl Who Cried Rose Petals

This was a flash fiction suggested by @armouredviolet, based on this picture she took on the Piccadilly Line.

She couldn't cry for many years and felt a sickening envy for those that could. She stopped crying completely between the ages of eleven  and twenty-three.

At twenty-four, her heart was broken, and for the first time in thirteen years, she cried.

Except she didn’t cry tears.

She cried petals.

Red, thick, rose petals. No pain, other than embarrassment. She tried not to cry in front of others.

On the Piccadilly line that morning, he got down on one knee and asked her to marry him.

For the first time in her life, she didn’t mind crying in public.

Lads Mags - degrading us all.

To say that I hate 'lads mags' like Nuts and Zoo would be an understatement. I would honestly rather see real hardcore pornography on sale in WH Smiths than I would these unpleasant, unfunny, sexist magazines.

It's taken me a while to put my finger exactly on what I feel the difference is, but this article in The Guardian finally helped me do it. It's by a former lads mag editor, Terri White, who has partially realised the damage that magazines like this do.

I have no problems with sex. I rather enjoy it. I even try to be good at it. I don't have any issues at all with the idea that people may get some enjoyment out of watching people have sex, or even just looking at naked people, and that some people may enjoy the idea of people watching them, or even be prepared to do it in return for financial recompense. That's all fine as far as I'm concerned.

For me, one of the most uncomfortable sex icons in the history of cinema is Barbara Windsor. Note that I'm not saying 'bad', but 'uncomfortable'. I'm not talking about her looks, body or voice, or anything like that. It was the attitude that the characters she played tended to put forward. The kind of characters that would respond to somebody pinching her arse or groping her with a 'Oi...cheeky!' and a friendly laugh. I always found something about that kind of thing to be written in such a way that it was somewhat encouraging of that kind of behaviour - because she enjoyed it, because she was up for it, because that kind of thing was all okay really. I love the Carry On films, but I do think their attitudes towards sex were uncomfortable at times.

It's the hint that real women? They love this kind of thing, they do. Women that don't are probably feminists or frigid or something.  And that's the kind of thing that Nuts and ZOO have ended up running with, with their emphasis on 'real women' and 'humour'.

Pornography tends to sell fantasies. Most glamour magazines tend to sell fantasies. Nuts sells attainability, and that's where the problem comes in. When it shows, say, "Karen, 24 receptionist from Wigan" with her tits out, talking about how she loves porn and has tried threesomes, it's not being sold to the reader as how strong and sexual women are or can be. Instead, it's being sold that this is what 'real women' like.

Bear in mind that the culture that these mags engender is the kind of culture where Danny Dyer (a man who desperately aims to be Ray Winstone but actually manages to land squarely on 'Artful Dodger') jokes that a man should 'cut his ex's face, so noone will want her', and that's okay until someone outside of the cocoon of tits and hate actually reads it.

One of the things that Terri White talks about is the idea that the mags didn't use words like 'tits', because that would be degrading. I rather feel that is completely missing the point, especially when there are regularly headlines like "Massive Boobs Special Issue!" plastered across the front of the magazines.

There's another point. The defence is sometimes put out that they're "celebrating women". They're not. If they were, they'd be reflecting a range of shapes of women, rather than the absolute homogeny of slim with massive boobs. This is a genre of magazine that once ran a competition where they encouraged women to win a boobjob by sending pictures of their boobs and then chose who was most in need of a boobjob. Celebration of women right there.

They don't celebrate women. They specifically celebrate women with huge boobs. Well, slim women with huge boobs. Well, slim white women with huge boobs. Because do take the time to try and spot how often any ethnicity other than white women are on the front cover. And no, Nuts and Zoo, 'ginger' doesn't count.

Anna Arrowsmith (AKA Anna Span) wrote a defence of pornography some time ago where she pointed out that porn is somewhat democratic, in that there's a variety of shapes and sizes, because all kinds of people get turned on by all kinds of visuals. And, also, it tends to feature men as well, rather than just constant disembodied breasts. This isn't to say that the porn industry doesn't have huge problems, and huge issues towards women - of course a lot of it does. However, with lads mags, there isn't even an alternative.

That's a big problem with the humour as well. It isn't humour. It's  what is more and more being referred to as 'banter', which is just shit, boring and moronic, and encourages more of it. It also tends to be parrotted by horribly defensive blokes, who spout homophobic, racist, sexist, idiotic guff and defend it with "it's just banter, mate". The magazines don't print outright racist or sexist jokes, but I'd be fascinated to know how many of them they get sent by readers.

The degradation of women in these magazines is awful. It reduces them and their worth to their willingness to get their breasts out (as long as they're big) and whether they enjoy being objectivised. They then act as if this is what real women are like.

The degradation doesn't just stop with women, either. The idea that this is what men like and are like is degrading to men as well. The idea that we're all lads, who can't think of anything better than what Eddie from Bottom would describe as a "wazzo pair of jugs". That we all think that this is what women should look like, and that we're only interested in a weirdly specific kind of woman. It degrades men and women by acting as if we're all stupid.

It's degrading to sex, by pushing a viewpoint that is entirely focusing on a serial-killer-like preoccupation with specific body parts, and women that act a specific way. It degrades sex by ignoring the idea that it should be about more than just big boobs. It ignores variety. It ignores fun and silliness and replaces it with banter.

It assumes stupidity. It assumes sexism. It assumes a base level of ignorance and attitude on behalf of the reader that must instinctively dislike anyone that isn't the same as them.

I can see how pornography can be improved. I think sex is an inherently good thing, and pornography can celebrate that, and the more women that work in the field, the more it tries to aim towards what women like as well, the more the audience can change and the more equal and positive a thing it could become.

Can anyone really see a way that lads mags can improve?

Left - Short Story

I fell asleep on the sofa an hour after my wife went to bed. I woke up in the middle of the night, which is always disconcerting. I stood up, noting an ache in my lower back from the uncomfortable position, and set about turning lights off and joining her in bed. They were already off, which sleepily confused me.

I quietly opened the bedroom door and crept in. One advantage of my mobile phone is that just switching the screen on gives me enough light to see where I'm walking without making enough light to wake her up. It wasn't until I was around to my side of the bed that I felt a sudden cold wave of fear and confusion flow down over my skin like ice water.

Next to my wife was someone lying in the bed, quietly sleeping.  I froze, trying to make sense of what I was looking at, and also thinking how quietly I could retrieve the cricket bat from inside the cupboard. I looked over at my wife, who was sleeping heavily, but breathing obviously. I then looked more closely at the figure's face.

I saw my own face lying on the pillow, eyes closed.

I recoiled, horrified and confused. I couldn't make sense of it. I just stood and watched the two in the bed sleep for a while. When he turned over, I could see that he was wearing the same t-shirt that I was wearing.

I walked carefully around to the other side of the bed again, and shook my wife softly. I didn't understand what was happening, but she was always my first port of call when I was upset, or when I needed to talk. She continued to sleep.

I shook her harder. She didn't wake up. I was scared about waking him up, but eventually, I couldn't bear it any more. I shouted her name, and I shook and slapped her to try and wake her up.

Nothing.

Had he drugged her or something? I went back around to my side of the bed and shook him this time. He didn't respond either. Neither of them did. I eventually screamed, but to absolutely no avail.

Not knowing what else to do, I went and sat on the sofa again. I cried out of frustration and confusion before falling asleep.

I woke to the sound of voices. She was in the kitchen while he was getting dressed, and they were discussing their day. It took me a few moments to recognise my own voice, with the slightly unusual quality of hearing it at a remove.

I raced through to the kitchen, and shouted, but she ignored me again. When he walked into the room, he didn't walk through me, but he may as well have. I was pushed easily out of the way when he brushed against me. It felt like I'd been hit by a car, and when I fell against my wife, it was like being hit hard in the opposite direction. I scrambled out of both their ways but continued talking. They couldn't hear me.

I stood up and watched him stood next to me, talking to her. He was exactly my height, my weight, wearing my clothes, speaking with my voice.

After a while, he went to work. I tried to follow, able to get onto the bus, but I lost my nerve when I got to the train station.

Instead, I trudged back to the house, and sat all day. I wasn't hungry. I didn't need the toilet. Nothing like that.

I could interact with household objects, I found. That first day, I wrote messages, but when my wife got home from work, she either didn't see them or didn't read them. The letter was treated as rubbish. The message written with her lipstick on the mirror was perfunctarily wiped off, without so much as any sense of comprehension.

I couldn't communicate with her in any way. When he came back, and they ate, I just sat and watched. When they sat on the sofa and watched television, I sat on a chair and just watched with them. Sometimes, he said the exact thing I was thinking. Watching quizzes, we would often answer the same questions.

One day, I followed him all the way to work. I wandered around the office while he worked at times, but at other times, something was nagging at me that took a long time for me to fully realise.

He was better at it than I was. He was working hard throughout the day, and seeming less distracted than I sometimes felt.

But then he was better at everything than I was. Not by much, but it was enough for me to notice. Better at exercising, better at working, better at listening and taking note of what my wife said. He was a bit neater than I was. A bit fitter. Better at making love.

Or was I just jealous of him, and looking down at myself?

I don't know, but eventually I got used to it. I became his shadow, more or less. I could spy on anyone, and find out information by myself, but I had nobody to share it with. It was so much less effort to allow him to make the decisions.

Sometimes, I sat around her while she went around her day. It felt like I was spending time with her.

Sometimes, it felt real.

One time, when I was stood in the bathroom behind him while he got ready for work, he looked in the mirror, and his eyes shifted from himself to my reflection behind me. He had never done this before. His eyes locked with mine.

And he smiled.

Gym'll Fix It

For the first time since 2008, and the first time regularly since... some point previous to that, I have started going to the gym.

The reason for this is simple. I've kind of got fat. Came as a surprise to me, I can tell you.

The sad thing here is that it actually did come as a surprise to me. I was a pretty skinny teenager, and remained so up until my early twenties. In my mind's eye, I'm still slim. When I think of how to describe myself, the words "fairly slim" tend to come to mind, even though they're an utter lie. It's not that it's an intentional lie - it's that I don't feel like a fat bloke. Not really.

It's not exactly rocket science how it happened. My work has, for most of the last ten years or so, involved me sitting in front of a computer. My main hobby outside of work is writing, which involves me... sitting in front of a computer.

Add in the fact that I'm a lousy cook. Well, that's not entirely true - if I put in the effort, I  can cook pretty well. However, I'm unlikely to put in the effort. Even though I've been a vegetarian for almost two decades, I'm far more likely to plump for a pot noodle or a pizza than I am for something healthy.

It's not necessarily that I'm lazy. I'm just not good at this stuff. I mostly started gaining weight when I quit smoking. Throw in a divorce a few years later, and I kept gaining weight over a good few years. My mother, bless her, has consistently been telling me I've lost weight every time I've seen her, in outright contradiction to all visual evidence to the contrary. This is because my mother is lovely.

Just before my thirtieth birthday, I went to the Doctors, as I'd consistently had pain in my hand for a long time. Being male, and an idiot, I put it off until the joint under my thumb swelled up visibly and painfully to the point of nausea. I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. It made me feel very, very old.

If you don't know, arthritis is when joints become inflamed - my hand had become particularly inflamed, and I didn't do anything about it other than start wearing a wrist support which actually caused more harm than good. The Doctor told me to start using ibuprofen. I've always avoided pain killers where possible, but I've found that ibuprofen has become my best friend. It was actually designed for arthritis, and God, it's good. I only use it when I have to, but it does work.

Since then, the arthritis has flared up mainly around my ankle and knees. At one point, I developed a click in my knee when I was going upstairs that I swear echoed, and every time I get up from the sofa, it takes me a while to get my ankles warmed up to the point where they'll actually move.

I realised I didn't like hobbling around, and that I wasn't making things any easier by carrying around all this extra weight. I may as well generally be carrying around a full rucksack. On top of that, building up the muscles in my legs may actually help me to take the pressure off the joints. The problem is that running is quite high impact on those joints.

So recently, I've been making more of an effort. A lot of this is down to my girlfriend who has rediscovered her love of cooking, and has been cooking lots of good, healthy food. She's also been encouraging me to eat more healthily generally, but in a very non-pressured way.  It turns out that fruit and vegetables are delicious. I can only assume this will come as much as a surprise to you as it did to me.

My work does have a small gym. It's been taunting me for months, but it didn't help that I felt massively self-conscious. It's one thing to actually be willing to get into the gym, but other people around, getting to actually see how out of shape I am? No. Not good.

So I got over it. About a month ago, I started using the gym. It was kind of scary at first, because I felt ridiculous.It doesn't help that I feel like it's all kind of mystical. The exercise bike, for example, has all these different settings on it, and I don't know what most of them mean. There's something that I can only describe as a big...frame like thing, which has loads of different attachments. On top of that, there are five different dials on the shower. And besides, will I look more strange if I keep the towel tightly wrapped around me when I'm getting changed after the shower, or if I go what the Ancient Romans would call "cock out"? Is it a moment of "God, you're obviously massively uncomfortable with yourself, aren't you?" or is it a moment of "For the love of God, why did you think it was appropriate to take the towel off before putting your pants on?" - I have no idea.

I kept relatively quiet that I was going to start using the gym. Some of the guys at work were very supportive, and one of them asked me a few times if I wanted to double up at the gym, but the fact that I could use it pretty much on my own felt very important, due to the whole 'feeling ridiculous' thing. Being able to be there pretty much alone, with my MP3 player on felt more private, and while I felt uncomfortable, that seemed like a good place to start.

I found it tough going at first. Of course I did. I had to stop a few times on the bike just to be able to keep going and get water, but I did keep going. And then I went back the next day. And the next.

And it's working pretty well. I've been going a minimum of three times a week, and am aiming for four times a week most times. It gets so much easier, and just over a month later, I'm burning twice the amount of calories than I was when I started, and I've started adding in a little bit of weights and stomach crunches.

I even bought some new trainers for more general wear, so I now have a pair specifically for the gym. It probably says a lot about me that, along with comfort and fit, my main requirement for trainers was 'not something that a twat would wear'.

The scariest thing? I've found that I actually enjoy it. The weight hasn't started dropping off yet, but my ankle and knees are definitely hurting less, and I'm feeling some actual muscle in my legs, and if I squint, I think I'm losing a bit of the gut. I'm also drinking more water and eating more fruit at work. The weight will come. I know this.

I know myself too well to be able to feel comfortable saying that I'm going to be able to keep this up for the long-term. But last week, I missed a session due to a lack of towels, and I ended up actually feeling quite anxious about it, and felt so much better the next time I actually went into the gym.

Fingers crossed, this will help. Fingers crossed, I'll be able to keep it up.

I think I deserve a beer now.

Motion Blur

I was sitting in the pub, quietly sipping a pint of ale when Blur came in and sat at the table with me.

"Did you see it?" Damon asked, his eyes shining with an excitement that belied the aged skin around it.

"What, you guys at the Brits?" I asked. "I actually did. Well done, that was a good show."

"Yeah. Yeah, it was. And did you see that we're on the Olympics closing concert as well?" He asked, nudging Alex James.

"I did. Congratulations. You must be very excited."

"We are." he said. "We're totally excited. We're not messing around this time. No new stuff. Just wall to wall, balls out, classics."

I realised that I wasn't going to get to drink my ale in private, so I put it down and attempted to properly engage with the conversation.

"No new stuff?"

"None."

"I thought you wanted to write, like, new stuff all the time. Like opera."

A glimmer of sadness formed in his eyes, and he briefly looked like a little boy lost in a man's set of clothing. Much like Richard Hammond. "All I ever wanted was to speak to God," he said. "He gave me that longing."

Then he focused and the sadness was replaced with anger.

"No, not this time." he said.  "I didn't want to do it this time. The Olympics, they asked me if I would, right, but I didn't want to. Alex wants us to - "

Alex interrupted him. "I have this great idea for a new chorus. It goes 'Doo doo doo doo doooooooo....I'm loving it'".

"Shut up, Alex." Damon said. "But we're not doing it this time. We're concentrating on what works."

"That's good," I said, beginning to look for my nearest exit. Damon was looking a little bit manic.

"And do you know what the best thing is?" He asked.

"....no, Damon, I don't know what the best thing is."

"It means we win."

"You win?"

"Yeah," he said, nodding his head. "We win. You saw The Brits. You saw Noel Gallagher. Reduced to duetting with fucking Coldplay. He didn't even win Best Solo Male Artist."

"So?"

"It proves we were best. Nineteen Ninety Four, 'Country House' versus 'Roll With It'. We won then, but people thought we lost the war. Everyone was all 'oooh, Oasis, they're brilliant', but look at them now. Where are they now, eh? Nowhere, that's where."

There was a dangerous glint in his eyes that scared me.

"Do the rest of the band feel the same way?" I asked him.

"Who cares what the rest of the band felt?" he responded angrily. "Noel Gallagher, right,  didn't even win best solo artist, and then everybody cheered for us. We won. Like we should have won all the time."

"Damon," Alex said, "Wait. Think about this. If we lose all the anger at Oasis, we can just have fun again. We can project a nicer image, and maybe get corporate sponsorship, like McDonalds. And McDonalds is brilliant, isn't it Damon?"

"Shut it, cheese-fucker." Damon growled. I couldn't help but raise my eyebrows as Alex looked sadly at the ground.

"Maybe you're being a bit obsessive." I tried to say to Damon.

"Everyone's going to be saying how brilliant we are at the Olympics, while Noel Gallagher is sat outside with a piece of card saying 'I used to be relevant, why did I ever argue with Damon'. That's what he'll be doing. While I walk out as the fucking God of Brit-Pop."

"Look, you need to calm down" I said, as Damon continued to raise his voice.

"You know what my last concert is going to be? It's going to be us doing a concert on Noel Gallagher's grave. We're going to dance all over it and sing Song 2."

"I'm going to leave now," I said.

"Woo-hoo, Chris! Woo-Hoo."

As I left, Damon continued shouting "Woo-hoo", getting more and more out of breath.

Alex ran up after me. "Look, I just wanted to say..." he said. "...I don't fuck cheese. I just really like it."

"I know, Alex," I said. "I know."