The curse of the Y chromosome

I HAB a code. I can nod feel my node and my head has been filled with quick-setting concrete.

It does not help that I am writing this on the day regarded by many as the most miserable of the year. My wallet is empty, the credit cards groan with post-Christmas stress, and someone’s polished off the last of the Newberry Fruits. Meanwhile the bills that didn’t get paid in the run up to December 25 form an orderly queue, the heating is on the blink and someone’s backed a shopping trolley into my car. Happy New Year.

My potentially fatal illness gets no sympathy of course. It doesn’t seem to register in the minds of women that those of us with a Y chromosome suffer colds far more badly than the female of the species. They can happily bash on with washing the sheets after the house guests have gone. We, meanwhile, are riveted to the couch with a bottle of Beecham’s All-In-One and a large Buckfast and Vimto.

At least the fridge is beginning to clear. The turkey carcass has been rendered down to stock that will be thrown away during a freezer clear-out in August. The remnants of the ham has been sliced and bagged, but the Christmas Stilton is still there, whispering sweet nothings to a half empty tub of brandy butter while simultaneously feeling up a cheeky bottle of mixed olives.

The excess over, we can now return to the simplistic security blanket of comfort food. Mashed potato. Baked beans. Spam. Sausages. Bacon, egg and chips.

“This isn’t just tomato ketchup. This is Heinz Organic tomato ketchup, with little crusty bits around the nozzle and a greasy thumbprint on the bottle from an early-November eggy bread-fest.”

It’s good to be back to normal.

THE TV adverts pick up on the mood. Nine out of 10 are for celebrity fitness videos. The other one purports to come up with a way for you to dodge paying your debts. I’m not sure which is more offensive.

A company called Debtbusters claims to have found a piece of government legislation that lets you avoid paying back money you’ve borrowed, stops all the hassle from your creditors and will see you debt-free “in just 60 months”.

Sounds great, doesn’t it? One small problem: it’s called “bankruptcy”. Mind you, imagine the consequences if every scrote in the country goes down that route. The high interest credit companies will go bust, their bankrupt customers will never get another loan again, sales of Pot Noodles, microwave chips and cheap fags will plummet and we’ll end up with a leaner, fitter underclass that might just manage to drag itself to work for once.

They certainly couldn’t afford to buy all those fitness DVDs. In the space of a couple of hours of daytime TV, I saw the following assorted “celebs” trying to flog exercise routines to desperate housewives: Jordan (no toe-touching), Kelly Holmes (like you could keep up), Jayne Middlemiss (yoga in Geordie accent), Angela Griffin (ex-soap star), Charlie Brooks (current soap star), Debra Stephenson (dyslexic current soap star), Martine McCutcheon (another ex-soap star), Kirsty Gallagher (my dad’s famous), Gabby Logan (I’ve had twins, you know), Ulrika Jonsson (I’ve had Sven, you know), Lady Isabella Hervey (skanky reality show bird) and Anthony’s 70s Disco Workout (out-of-work former Big Brother winner soon to phone Debtbusters and go bankrupt).

Mrs B’s contribution to this season of dance, diet and detox was to go out and buy a panini maker, although what eating foreign bread-based products has to do with losing weight I don’t know. No doubt it will soon join the foot spa, the juicer, the George Formby Grill, the toasted sandwich maker and the vegetable steamer in the Only Used Once cupboard.

We only need a Panasonic breadmaker to complete the set of useless middle class artifacts and I’m sure I saw her scanning the Lakeland catalogue for one last night.

I ADJOURNED to the Dog and Blunkett for a post-New Year livener (I call it “retox”, i.e. getting drunk again) only to find the local Hunt hardcore gathered in the back room sticking labels on bricks.

It turns out that the League Against Cruel Sports has launched a fund-raising appeal so that they can equip their legions of crusty agitators with video cameras to film alleged transgressions of the absurd Hunting Act. Fair enough, those lentils don’t pay for themselves and just keeping a rescued Beagle in fags costs a tidy amount.

To encourage bunny-huggers nationwide to contribute, they have generously set up a Freepost address so that they pick up the bill for anything posted to them. I fear they might not have thought this through.

Hence the large number of horny-handed, ruddy-cheeked countrymen gleefully addressing bulky parcels to The League Against Cruel Sports, Freepost SE 5087, London SE1 1BR. I won the contest for most expensive “donation”. I waited until my man Whitaker passed out, wrote the address on his forehead in felt pen and posted all 20 stone of him.

In other Loony Left news, animal rights nutters in Devon raided a farm before Christmas and “set free” 60-odd wild boar destined for the dinner table. Local farmers were not amused as the beasts can wreak havoc amongst the crops so called in the Dulverton West Foxhounds to hunt down the escapees.

As there is an exemption in the new legislation allowing the pursuit of escaped animals with unlimited numbers of dogs, a jolly day was had by all. I told you it was a stupid Act, didn’t I?

ONE WOULD have thought that Nottinghamshire police had enough to do, what with gun-toting Yardies running riot across their patch. No so PC Zahid Malik, who found time to write to a Home Office magazine complaining that Scotland Yard’s Black Museum was called the err … “Black” Museum. Apparently this is a negative and probably racist term and, despite being used since 1877 without complaint, should be banned forthwith.

Personally I’d just post PC Malik to Blackpool. Or to the League Against Cruel Sports.

O The views of Mr Beelzebub are purely personal and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Editor or staff of this website, of anyone not voting to evict Michael Barrymore from celebrity Big Brother before it even gets going, of anyone wondering what to do with their Wednesday nights now that Rome has finished or of anyone who doubts that it is better to give than receive: Mrs B. now has the cold.