…of how my trousers fell down and I laughed. If you’re thinking “that’s all very well, but’s I very much doubt if it’s something The Guardian would print in their Comments & Debate section” - if that’s what you’re thinking - then I can see your point. But you’d be wrong!

Anyone buying the nation’s most well-meaning newspaper tomorrow (Monday 12th) will get the chance to read exactly such a story, in which my trousers are quite brutally ripped off. It may not be something that the nation needs to read, but it’s got to be better than this, right? Yeah?

Alternately, you could just look at this link, where the new article will appear as soon as it’s up. And my fourth piece, believe it or not, actually expresses an earnest opinion. The last time I did that, I swear I nearly wiped out organised religion.

Synthetic Opinion is my attempt to weave a strong opinion out of something I know nothing about. This one was suggested by Rob, who writes the excellent Internets Dairy. He asked:

“Log, do you think the Large Hadron Collider MUST BE STOPPED in case a tiny black hole swallows the Earth? (Remember the set of things on the Earth includes Robert Mugabe and cancer, so it is not as simple a question as it first looks.)

Let opinions be weaved from the rainbow of ignorance!

NOT UNDERNEATH MY CONTINENT
Your Mechanical Beasts Are Not Welcome Here, White-Coated Butchers Of Innocence

Last month, I was playing tig with my two children in our garden. I call it a garden, it’s more of an orchard; but it’s very important, if you care for your children, that you provide an orchard for them. I understand that not everyone has access to an Orchard as gigantic and fertile as mine, but perhaps that’s God’s way of telling you to use contraception. As they played, naivity scrawled over their faces, a brief tremor ran underneath us. Imperceptible to all but the unshod foot of the family truly at one with nature, my poor saplings were flung into the air like reckless handfuls of grass.

“Mummy,” screamed Kieron. “I have landed on some soil, and I think I’m dying!” Natalie was more prosaic still, complaining of a troubling sense of disconnect with gaia, as though the very earth was pained, and shrinking from her. The innocence of children! I hadn’t the heart to tell them that deep beneath the Earth’s crust, scientists had built an infernal atom-smashing factory that would, one day, crush everything they loved to the size of an angel’s whisper.

The Large Hadron Collidor first came to my attention during a marquee lunch at the foot of the mountain that seperates our orchard from our rock star neighbour’s jungle. I’m not against other biomes per se, but that kind of sub-tropical expanse has the unsavoury whiff of new money. My dear best friend Sandragh, who is a highly experienced astrologist, informed everyone that atoms smashed together at such high speeds are liable to create energy with a significant cosmic resonance. My dear best friend Juliiann, who has spent a long time in the fascinating and important new field of crystallological endeavour, confirmed my worst fears when she said that her amber necklace had been positively squealing for the last three days. She went so far as to produce a large prismatic shard of quartz, and everyone agreed that it looked deeply uncomfortable.

Even the scientists admit it. Normally, I wouldn’t believe a word these poisonous merchants of steel theories put forward - but if they say something that seems cosmically sensible to me, then it can only be a very important concession. What these Butlin’s Whitecoats are saying, is that when you brutalise atoms at the very highest settings, black holes will fly out like freshly cracked pepper.

I’m reassured that the black holes this tiny wouldn’t completely annihilate my children. Sandragh, who is very open-minded, admits that an atom-sized black hole, placed a few feet behind your head, would even exert a gentle gravitational pull that would be like a surgery-free facelift. And Shiva knows, we girls need all the help we can get! But the contraption required to hold these unstable cauldrons of dark energy in place would probably resemble a harness - and are we really willing to be ridden around by astronomical phenomena, in the name of vanity?

The point is that we don’t know what’s going to happen, and I can’t see how finding out is going to help my Kieron and Natasha survive in a future of obesity timebombs and Frankenstein carrots. In a world so full of data, wouldn’t it be nice to leave a few pockets of factlessness, and allow them to be filled the the precious beauty of human imagination? You don’t need to smash electrons into each other to watch a basket of puppies having a kiss, and nature doesn’t need robotic “science” or so-called “atoms” when she’s conjuring the miracle of childbirth.

I’m not one to blow my own trumpet - but like my spirit guide Nathaniel says, if you let anyone else blow it, you can never be sure they won’t flob some green in the pipes. He’s very coarse, but you can’t choose the voices that whisper in your head. However, you’ll have to believe me when I say that I am almost definitely the most sensitive and emotionally intellectual person in the world. And if something makes me uncomfortable, you’re just going to have to trust me when I say that it will cause the death of every last one of your children.

NEXT, IN SYNTHETIC OPINION #3

Can you write 700 words on the subject of “things that are sluiced” without hesitating, deviating or repeating? -Tyler

I promised to write a 700-word opinion piece on any shit you care to suggest. The only rule is that I can’t research a single thing. The first suggestion came in from Adam…

“What about that hot button topic for 2008 - the US Presidential election?”

No sooner said than done, Adam! And to celebrate this inaugural opinion, I have included an animated gif of Hillary Clinton trying on a few new hands. That crazy cow just can’t settle on “the hand for her”. You should see some of the ones that didn’t even make it onto her snap-on attachment hole, though! They would have shaken your very root. Right up to the vinegars.

This Was Supposed To Be Fun
Why have you stopped my election from being excellent

Facts are great, but after a while they stop being fun. Say, you’re enjoying a game of Swingball with your best friend, who is a vet. Suddenly, someone rises from a nearby deckchair, and informs you that over the course of his career, he has negligently caused the death of over two hundred Springer Spaniels. An unwelcome distraction, for sure - but then, if you’re easily distracted you have no place playing Swingball. Far worse, would be the sense the you’re playing a kind of rotary tennis against a man who doesn’t know his way around a Spaniel. A stupid, irrelevant fact has just ruined the game.

The less basic and rudimentary a fact, the less fun it is. Take my imaginary friend, the vet. That simple fact is lovely – he has probably seen a cow’s fanny, and I can draw pictures of him squinting at a giraffe and saying “I’m Sorry, It Has Got Very High Mumps”. The more information I find out about his job – that his assistant is called Maureen, that he is unlikely to ever diagnose a giraffe, and that he’s fatally shit at Spaniels – every fact I learn takes me into a world that’s more complicated that I care to learn about. The fact that it’s important to him just makes it annoying.

With this in mind, here are the facts that I know about the American Election, in ascending order of whatever, get over it, Jesus.

1. A black man and a woman are going to have a fight, and as far as everyone can tell, it looks like they mean it.

Hillary Clinton is a woman! That means she has cables running to her big, tanned nipples that are capable of firing out milk. If you don’t think the idea of someone running the world with lasers of milk pissing from their chest isn’t awesome, then I honestly don’t know what to say to you. Legislation brought in for approval would be dabbled with an approving squirt, and evil budgets would be obliterated by a machine gun burst of white staccato squits.

This is all old and stupid hats to us Brits though, we had Maggie Thatcher. We remember when she took the free milk from those poor schoolkids, and poured it into a mechanised tit that she used to rush through the anti-union legislation of the eighties. But even in her most unpopular moments, we - the British People - would never have asked her to fight a black man. Who can imagine the special powers that each candidate could draw from their respective stereotypes during the final rounds? It’s an excellent and probably racist scene to imagine. It’d probably climax with Barack channelling the powers of the Omegahedron through his Burundi Wand, while Hillary straddles his neck and tries to strangle him with her fallopians.

At this level of understanding, anything is possible, and the American Election is possibly the second most exciting thing in the world, after walking into a zero-gravity chamber full of St Bernard puppies, all rotating on a different axis.

2. Another man says he wants to fight the winner.

This is the first fact you’ll encounter in the American Election that is boring. His name is so unremarkable that you might as well simply let your mouth hang open instead of saying it. I can’t think what he looks like, I don’t know anything he’s said, and if you want me to feel something about him then you’re barking up the wrong tree. Everything’s already 40% less fantastic.

3. Super-delegates are being used to reinstate the smoky back rooms and hidden decision-making processes that gave the Democratic party a bad name in the past.

That clattering sound was the pan lid of my interest. First, it made me think “Typical! Politicians!” which is the single least thrilling thing a person can think. Secondly, they’re called super-delegates, but their only superpower appears to be the ability to vote for who they like, and even we’ve got that. Finally, though, it’s rubbish because it ruins the first, excellent point. If you’re going to fix the fight, do it in a cartoon fashion. Put horseshoes in boxing gloves, use suits of armour and massive magnets. Not in some pervasive, creeping and utterly reliable way that would make the public feel a bit shocked if they didn’t already assume that everything was already fundamentally broken.

4. The winner gets to rule the world.

Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realise I was watching Highlander. If you’re going to take the piss, I won’t bother.

In Synthetic Opinion #2, I shall be answering a question on which I have even less knowledge than American Politics:

Log, do you think the Large Hadron Collider MUST BE STOPPED in case a tiny black hole swallows the Earth? (Remember the set of things on the Earth includes Robert Mugabe and cancer, so it is not as simple a question as it first looks.)

To finish off, here is a decade of UK political opinion distilled into one moderately compressed image.

Here’s how to enjoy St David’s Day - first go out with a Welshman, then go to the pub.

http://www.disappointment.com/welsh

There’s a 12-page booklet in there. It’s a pdf, if you fucking please. Also some photos, which you won’t be interested in unless you’re a mate. Which, I admit, is probably all of you.

Whenever I have an opinion, I tend to find it pretty embarrassing. Being wrong’s humiliating enough, but when you’re wrong about something you were dumb enough to frankly care about, it’s like pressing a heart-shaped cookie-cutter against your chest and making a noisy display of ripping yourself slightly open.

I’ve done it a couple of times on this blog, with religion. Can’t stand the thing, but I’d never tell my mum to stop believing her dad isn’t in Heaven, so there’s weak. I also seem to remember Twiggy got me frothy once by saying there’s no excuse to be fat. How can you say that, Twiggy? Have you not tasted how delicious food is? What are you supposed to do, just lick it?

Both times I was left slightly mortified by having a real thing that represented something I believed out there. If I were to imagine myself as a boss battle - and I do - then you’d have to plough your way through a six minutes Parodius level of self-deprecation and whimsy before reaching a glowing red chicken nugget of sincerity that you destroy with the whiff of disagreement.

So, when I was asked to write something for The Guardian’s comment section, I was kind of paralysed by my own unwillingness to be contradicted, so this is what I came out with.

Read it, and comment on it - make me look popular, please. Yeah, even you, freaky comments stalker who’s forced me to ban three IP addresses. And call that fourth-commenting cunt a retard who completely missed the point, yeah? As if the world needs more pricks gobbing off about what they reckon.

When someone decides to tell you their dreams, it’s usually a sign that you’ve got a minute of listening to someone trying to offer you massive clumsy insights into their precious, hidden psyche.

“I dreamed I was falling down a pit, do you think that means I am not keen on being a gigantic failure for the rest of my life?”

Because the people who tell you about their dreams are often quite dull, they’re the kind of people you ignore. But this opens you up to a new situation. The situation where you are listening to someone telling you about their dream, but you didn’t catch the bit where they told you it was a dream.

You, the sudden listener, feel like they’re opening up their true, interesting self - and your aghast reactions are giving this person exactly what they want; a reassurance that their subconscious is the most shockingly imaginative cloud factory to which you’ve ever been exposed.

Of course, the fact that this person’s most noteworthy and recountable dream is something that just about constitutes “quite an interesting story if it had actually happened” is the depressing opposite, but you can hardly say that to their face. It’s a kind of symbiosis, I swear it fucking is, but it is short-lived. For when the mistake comes to light, you must part - an abused host and a parasite bloated with self-regard.

TWO MINUTES INTO A TYPICAL DREAM CONVERSATION

LIFESPONGE: Meeeeh. Snib zha zha zha. And I said to him shakkatakka. Hnggg. Hnggg. Told him to fuck off.
YOU: What?
LIFESPONGE: Bold as you like, I just said “fuck off”.
YOU: Then what happened?
LIFESPONGE: Well, he didn’t know what to say. Shut him right up.
YOU: Good for you, that’s excellent.
LIFESPONGE: Then I flew away. And I was reading a book about that, it means I’m up for a promotion.
YOU: You made me care for you, Denise. You made me believe there was something substantial inside you from which I could hang my emotions. This is nothing less than a betrayal.

It’s something I’m completely guilty of myself, but at least I waited until I’d had ten really shit dreams before I got past the embarrassment of sharing them.

Yeah, well that’s all very well, but I JUST HAD THE BEST DREAM and I’m going to tell you about it so FUCK YOU.

MYSTERYU DREAM THEATRE
THE CANDLE AND THE HOOF

Alright, so I had to light a candle. This is basic stuff - lighting a candle is one of the primary ways of unlocking a door / causing a chest to appear. I had even been presented with a griddle - a source of fire, perfect for my quandary. My problem was that the griddle - which had a fucking great big horse on it - was twenty yards away from the candle, and the candle was fixed to the ground.

It wasn’t urgent, and I didn’t mind. I was outside an American High School, and there were people sitting under a tree that I liked the look of. I’m like that in my dreams, I’m devil-may-care. I wouldn’t be surprised if I was wearing a denim jacket, I’m that laissez-faire with goings-on.

Then this guy showed up, and offered me the solution; use the horse’s hoof to transfer heat from the griddle to the wick of my candle. The horse, he explained, is incapable of catching fire - it simply stores the heat energy in its hooves. It’s like when dogs pant, he explained, and I nodded in a sage way that must have screamed “Do go on”. He dragged the leg of the horse over to the candle, tapped the wick, then put it back on the griddle to refuel.

Nothing happened, but my friend explained that the wick was still cooking, “because it was microwaves”. I was about to deliver a brutally sceptical chinny when the candle burst into flame. I was so impressed that I tried to convince a nearby reporter to cover the story on the TV. She was reluctant, but I was pumped; I launched into a song to convince her. To the tune of Sweets For My Sweet (Sugar For My Honey);

Motherfucking hoof
Lit the fucking candle
Come on and see it, everyone.
That motherfucking hoof
It lit that fucking candle
Now I’m gonna use it to mourn my mum

“This is for kids,” she warned - possibly in relation to the language and adult themes of grief. I asked if that would be a problem. “No, they’ll love it,” she replied. I said good, because the solemnity of the final line was important for the point I was making, and would lend emotional gravitas to a situation that was in danger of becoming whimsical and unscientific.

AND THEN I WOKE UP

Having made this blog post, I am officially the dullest cunt on the internet.

I just found out that Bette Davis and Joan Crawford didn’t like each other very much. Although this is sad, I suppose there’re a number of good reasons for the two to have their differences. For starters, Bette Davis had big wet eyes, and Joan Crawford had a fat top lip. These are both laudable traits when taken individually, but put yourself in Bette’s shoes; if you’re going around with huge soggy eyes, the last thing you want is a massive lip bouncing around the set.

At best, the canoe-like slug of a lip would distract movie-goers from the pints of liquid coating Bette’s slowly rotating, wide-open eyeballs. At worst, Joan’s tongue might have curled, unseen, from the vast shadow of her upper lip and drank from Miss Davis’s basketball-sized tear ducts during a moving monologue. In the combative atmosphere of 1930s Hollywood, this would have been unforgiveable.

That’s just my speculation, though. There are many more official rumours about Bette and Joan’s mutual hatred. Some say that they were great friends until Greta Garbo pinched Joan’s bottom in a bus queue and blamed it on Miss Davis. Others insist that Bette went bass fishing with Jayne Mansfield, and during a more theatrical cast, her hook got snagged in Joan’s bra-strap, severely twanging it.

Fighting your way throught these rumours, it’s a relief to find out what really happened, in my visual dramatization of the book “Bette & Joan: This Hollwood Feud Is On, Starting From… NOW“.

(Click for more legible)

Couple years ago… I’m sorry, I’ll start again.

A couple of years ago, I farted seven times in two minutes in a toilet cubicle, and had to spend many more minutes trying to meditate myself out of a frankly childish giggle fit. I’ve never done anything like that since. It’s not for lack of trying. For a good while after that, I took my dictaphone with me everywhere, convinced that it could only be hours or days until my next musical bumphony.

Two years later, no such lyrical toot has been delivered to me. Tomorrow is the year’s shortest day, and that’s something of a metaphor for this penury, this dearth, this void. This Dearth Voiders’ Penus. Incidentally, if Darth Vader had a penis, and that penis could talk, and if that penis was granted an audience on Michael Parkinson’s final show, I’m fairly certain it would secrete a tactile brown putty that would provide a second metaphor for my emptiness by rolling onto the floor and being ignored for the whole show.

It wasn’t always like this. Let me tell you a story I forgot to mention when it happened, because I was too busy stealing picnic hampers and having my photo taken playing Swingball for Athena.

I listen occasionally to a podcast called Distorted View. A large percentage of the show’s content is the audio from porn clips; either bloopers, anal fisting, incest or screaming Asian girls falling off a table whilst getting DVDA. Farts are definitely a staple. Here’s a tiny clip of a messy-sounding plop attack. It’s not safe for work, but it’s a sound clip, so what the fuck are you worrying about.

And here’s a yipping chick giving flatulent and fruity birth. This isn’t safe for work because it’s just fucking annoying. However, it does show exactly what a relief a good fart can be, especially when coupled with the removal of an aubergine from the anus.

So, the scene is set. I’m on the train, and I’m listening to Distorted View.

STEP ONE: QUEEF CAN HAVE LOTS OF FUN

That day’s show centred around Queefing. I capitalise Queef because I refuse to believe it isn’t a contraction of Queen Latifah, who done the first fanny trump on the Eiffel Tower. It’s a long section, about two minutes of vaginal farts interspersed with Tim Henson laughing and saying things like “Madam, get your cunt laced shut”.

STEP TWO: IT’S JUST ME AND YOU (THE ENTIRE CARRIAGE)

Because I’m on the train, and I’m tediously polite, I take my earphones out to see if they’re too loud. I am horrified and overjoyed when I hold them in front of me, and hear a waspish, but unmistakably loud series of farts coming out of my hands. This is brilliant. It’s like I’m nursing a little trump with a broken wing back to health, in my loving hands. Needless to say, I laugh out loud.

STEP THREE: HEE HEE WHEE

Having laughed out loud, I try to disappear. Being a massive prick who won’t stop eating, this calls for special measures. So, I lean forwards and look down a bit, giving myself a chance to replace my earphones and turn the volume down a bit. It doesn’t stop me laughing, because there are still fanny farts going off in my ears and I can’t stop knowing that everyone around me knows I’m listening to trumps on my iPod.

I’ve got a friend who has filled her iPod with birdsong. She’s a birder. She’s also beautiful, funny, and if any TV company is thinking about pulling birding back from the hairy ex-Goodie demographic, she’s your girl. But for now, the fact she exists is a curse, because I can’t stop thinking about myself walking around, studiously listening to trumps as part of some… hobby.

I am shuddering.

STEP FOUR: I AM SPIRITUALLY POOR

Having regained my composure, the train pulls into Great Portland Street. The train has been getting busier, and the newcomers are forced to fill the gap between the chairs. I’m hiding, but sensing something close, I look up. Just in time to be eclipsed by a massive woman’s midriff. The profile of one buttock switches into a staggering full arse as she turns away from me. Because I’m leaning forward as part of my stealth costume, this new arrival is alarmingly close to my face. Bearing in mind that I’m already primed for puerility, a big bum is absolutely the last thing I need to see. I make a little whimpering sound, and bite my lip.

Sadly, that cunt on Distorted View chooses this moment to play the largest queef of the segment. A ripsnorting slurper, that sounds like hot Plasticene being sluiced through a didgeridoo. There’s no point hiding it anymore. The laugh that comes out is a yelp, the snigger that follows is stifled into a mucus-producing rasp, and when I get out at Baker Street I look like a man who’s won the lottery and been punched in the nuts.

Two things come from this story; a renewed tolerance of people who look like retarded cunts on trains, and an opportunity to recommend Distorted View. If you, you know, like that sort of thing.

There’s nothing more satisfying than forming a relationship with a salesman. It’s like rubbing yourself off against a human transaction. Because I’ve done most things that are thrilling and sexually enticing, I spend nine days in advertising, during which I came up with most of the slogans you’ll have heard in your life, such as “Kiss the Tandy” and “NOT PANDA PLOPS, PANDA POPS”. Here’s just a few of my incredible slogans that have made shareholders across the world instant billionaires.

MY TOP 6 ADVERTISING SLOGANS THAT CHANGED THE WORLD

WALNUT WHIP : “It’s got a nut on - and so will you, after you finger this fucker into your mush”

GANESH : “I know you don’t be steppin’ on this bad mother’s trunk, stone cold”

HOUSES : “No there isn’t a scullery, what are you, Edwardian or something”

THE POPULAR NINTENDO WII MACHINE : “Mine organs have beheld the wyrd illusion factorie ycleped thee Nintendo Wii, and my mum loves the Tennis like billy-o”

COFFEE : “Buy six coffees, and we’ll pamper a spastic”

BRITISH GAS : “British Gas puts the Gas Board into Smorgasboard.”

It was only a matter of time before the advertising department in the company I work for saw my incredible talent and <del>stole</del> incorporated one of my slogans into an item of hooded clotheswear. Check this out, fuckbuddies!

Behold, my addition to the world of PC gaming merchandise - “In The Absence Of Sexier Hobbies Or Bands I Like, I Wear PC Games Clothing”.

I am the advertiser. I just sold you.

Hello! Here is my happy story about bicycles, dwarves, and Richard Archer from Hard-Fi. It’s in three chapters!

CHAPTER ONE
BICYCLES

I have bought a bicycle. Having a bicycle is brilliant, even if you can’t just put your legs in the air and go forward by yelping enthusiastically. It’s exercise, it’s saving me money, it’s all the best things in the world and I can’t shriek at a high enough pitch to express my love for my new bicycle. I’ve only got one problem with my new bicycle - it’s too small, and I hate it.

I knew it was going to be too small, from the moment the 5′6″ sales assistant looked me up and down, and said “I’ll put you down for the twenty inch frame. That’s what I ride, and we’re the same height.”

I’m six feet tall, give or take OK TAKE half an inch. I’m a full penis taller than this guy. But you can’t say to a tiny fella “excuse me, knee-high superguy, wake up and smell the congenital defect - you’re a tiddler”. I dated someone who was 5′8″ once, and he’d have a spaz attack if you prefaced any insult with the word “little”. I can only imagine how someone two inches more miniscule - and substantially deluded about his own height - would react if I rested my chin on his head and told him he was like a dinky toy version of a real man. He’d probably hop from foot to foot and shake his pea-sized fist at me.

Partly to prevent this humiliating situation, and partly because I’m convinced he’s a biter, I console myself with the idea that I can just put the seat up myself. Turns out, right, I’m so fat it goes down again while I cycle. Lol! Fat people. In retrospect, though, I think I made the right decision. Cycling with my knees bumping against my chest is a small price to pay for the dignity of a man who isn’t as tall as he thinks he is.

The theme I will be taking from Chapter One to Chapter Two is “a simmering strangeness around short people”.

CHAPTER TWO
DWARVES

A genuine dwarf came into the office, yesterday. He was promoting a Lord of the Rings game, under the pretence that he was a Hobbit.

As a professional dwarf, he’s completely aware of his position. And when I say his position, I mean his position as a man who’s as sexless to women as a disabled gay. Far from discouraging him, he realises that this means he can abuse his position as honorary child by groping the bums of ladies. No well-groomed lady will shriek in horror at the leering advances of a dwarf. Instead, they will laugh, and say “oh, you! You’ve seen what we do and you’re copying us!”

So, this sex pest mini-man is perfectly aware of, and profiting from, his shortness. It should, in theory, be perfectly acceptable for me to go up to him and say “can I have a photo of you riding me like a horse, please?” He must get cunts like me coming up to him with this kind of shit all the time.

TOP FIVE REQUESTS MADE OF PROFESSIONAL DWARF

1. Can you ride me like a horse please, like I am a big proud horse
2. Can I knock on your overhanging forehead please, I want to see whether it’s like a block of wood or an aquarium
3. Please can I stand you on the handle-end of a fork, then slam my hand on the stabbling end, and you go flying through the air
4. Can I see your teeth please, I want to see if you’re adapted for an omnivorous lifestyle
5. Get your cocktail sausage hands off my tits please, this stopped being charming some minutes ago and I can see your erection

But I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I got up a few times and moved backwards and forwards, but I got nowhere near actually saying “ride me” to a dwarf. Annoyingly, this is because I respect people in real life, getting my kicks instead from being a dick on the internet.

The problem is, this leaves me without a photo of me being ridden like a horse by a dwarf dressed as a Hobbit. Which I really, really, wanted. God, I can’t explain how much I want that photo.

The theme I will be taking from Chapter Two to Chapter Three is “lost opportunities, and a lingering preoccupation with being ridden like a horse”.

CHAPTER THREE
RICHARD ARCHER FROM HARD-FI

I’ve met Richard Archer from Hard-Fi before, when he was in less popular bands like Contempo, Parachute, Transitional XHTML, Richard Archer And The Randy Binmen, and the extremely unpopular Jewstabber. He’s a friend of a friend, but I’ve always been a bit too dazzled by him to ever say anything other than “OH WOW A SONG ARE YOU GAY”. This was certainly the first time I’d met him since he became an international superstar, and toast-chomping spokesperson for the underclasses, or whatever it is the NME thinks he is.

Because I’m concentrating on not saying anything too obvious, my brain turns into an ale-fuelled tumble dryer. He’s not being a prick at all, like I’d expected. Like, pretty much, I demand of my reputedly-cunt celebrities.  He’s responding to questions without holding court, and being unassuming, modest and aware of the madness - but all I’m really thinking for two hours is “I wonder if he’ll let me take a photo of him riding me like a horse”.

He’s got more to lose than a dwarf dressed as a Hobbit, who - it could easily be argued - has nothing to lose but a life of punishing introspection and sex offences. Richard Archer’s enough of a celebrity, and any photo of him riding me like a horse is going to look so much like doggy-style sauciness that it might compromise his position as an available lady’s man.

Driven by the lost opportunity of the morning, where I swore to myself I’d never not ask someone to ride me like a horse ever again, I asked him if he would do this one favour for me. Did he comply? HOW, SIR, DO YOU LIKE THESE APPLES?

Richard Archer from Hard-Fi, thank you for riding me like a horse. And may I take this opportunity to reassure any of his fans that it isn’t going in. It’s just sort of sliding around the small of my back. OH SHUT UP LOG