[Real Life] Spring!

I’ve just spent four days writing and as far as this blog is concerned I have absolutely nothing to show for it. It’s almost as if I really don’t care anymore. But that's not the case, honest. It’s just other stuff. And it’s just a phase, I swear.

People have sent me lots of stuff to review as well. Lollipops that combat autism, AIDS and cancer. A vibrator that synchs with your iPod (not sure what I’m supposed to do with that exactly – I could shove it up my bottom but… well, we'll see). Plus a book about kissing and a book about men having very little imagination.

If you sent me any of those things, fear not, I’ll almost certainly get round to writing something about them sooner or later, but for the moment, reviewing things is really just slightly nauseating. And reading books takes ages, especially when you’re working 40-hour weeks and trying to write something you care about in what little free time you have.

I’ve been trying to write a novel, since you ask. It’s about families and secrets and lies. I've been working on it for quite some time now, on and off, and I’m about 200 pages in. I think it might be crap.

Did you have a nice Easter though? I do hope so. I hope you did something excellent like build a large Christ out of cheese. I had a nice Easter but I spent it in absolute isolation, writing and drinking Bloody Marys and writing and eating pizza and writing and smoking cigarettes and writing and eating sardines. Lots of writing then, which is good, I’m sure, unless it all comes to nothing, but even then, it’s better than spending money on drugs. (I tried to spend some money on drugs on Sunday in a moment of weakness, but everyone was away. It’s been about six weeks now. I’m not sure I approve.)

I've really got back into smoking cigarettes again though, sometimes whilst simultaneously wearing a nicotine patch for extra Stupid Points. It's utterly shameful. And the last pack of tobacco I bought featured this delicious health warning:



Whoa! How many cigarettes do you have to smoke to get a scarf made of meat? And if that doesn't stop me, what will? Maybe the moustache.

Anyway, I’m joining a gym tomorrow – again! Will I never learn? No, it’s good. It’s spring! Fresh start! I’ve actually got into a bit of a routine over the past three weeks. I get up at 6, make sandwiches and cycle to work in the West End. I get there by 7.15, just in time for the office to open, then I get changed, put talc on my bum and mess around with my own stuff till I have to start work on other people’s stuff around 9.30. Then I cycle home and have a bath. It’s a 25-mile round trip approximately. I reckon once I throw in regular gym visits, I’ll be buff as a bastard by the time the paperback comes out.

Speaking of which, what do you reckon to the cover? Oh, and the new dumbed-down title?



Don’t tell me the cover’s pants, please. Resist.

By the way, while I have your ear, anyone have any idea where I might hold this gathering on June 4th? I want somewhere a) free (or at least with a not outrageous minimum spend) b) for anywhere between 10 and 100 people (I'm guessing) c) preferably in Soho or at least somewhere central. Any thoughts, you people who know London better than I?

Right, on I get. Speak your thoughts in the comments...

[Book] Snake Oil

I’m pretty sure there isn’t a week goes by in which my body doesn’t do something to surprise me. Something unpleasant I mean. More often than not there’s a reason for this. Sometimes there isn’t. At the moment, for example, my left elbow causes me great pain whenever I touch it, and I think there’s something loose moving around under the slack and gnarled skin. Similarly my knee is rather sore and wearing the small hat of a large scab. These pains, however, are quite clearly the result of my spectacular fall last weekend, when I slipped on a rogue CD case whilst sprinting for a bus in Camberwell and bounced along the wet pavement, landing in a heap in a puddle in considerable pain. Then there’s my anus. At the moment my anus seems constantly angry and when I poop it bleeds. This of course is merely a reflaring of my haemorrhoids, which occurs every few months and which I put down to poor diet. Too many Wispas and pizzas, not enough spinach and bran. So far, so logical. Every now and then, however, I get a pain I can’t explain. Like the gut-stab that came a couple of years ago and still occasionally recurs. The doctors I saw couldn’t explain it either and in the end I put it down to stress. I reckon it probably was stress too. I’m a great believer in the power of the mind to make manifest physical unpleasantness. I also believe that the mind can cure things, merely by thinking positively. I also believe in telekinesis and spoon-bending. Fuck it, why not? In for a penny…. So recently, when a reader of this here blog with whom I’d been in email communication offered to send me a copy of a book which, she promised, would be good for everything that ailed me, I said sure. I said of course. I said why the hell not. Heal Your Body by Louise L Hay arrived in the post last week. In the foreword to the book, Ms Hay writes the following:

‘This little book does not “heal” anyone. It does awaken within you the ability to contribute to your own healing process. For us to become whole and healthy, we must balance the body, mind and spirit. We must take good care of our bodies. We need to have a positive mental attitude about ourselves and our life. And we need to have a strong spiritual connection. When these three things are balanced, we rejoice in living. No doctor, no health practitioner can give us this unless we choose to take part in our healing process.’

Now I don’t know about you, but I like this kind of rot. It appeals to the old hippy in me, to the white witch who wants to strip naked and run through dew-drenched glades scoffing mushrooms and rubbing dock leaves on my farmers. She continues:

‘I suggest you make a list of every ailment you have ever had and look up the mental causes. You will discover a pattern that will show you a lot about yourself. Select a few of the affirmations and do them for a month. This will help you eliminate old patterns you have been carrying for a long time.’

So, that’s what I did. Affirmations by the way - or 'new thought patterns' - are stock phrases which, through repetition, help to instil positive mental attitude. When I’d made my list of ailments, I discovered there were quite a lot. Here are a few, together with probable cause and appropriate affirmation, of the most choice: Now, at this point you’re either nodding to yourself and thinking, ‘Yes. Yes I can see that kidney stones are most probably caused by undissolved anger’, or else you’ve got an IQ of more than four and you’re thinking, ‘This woman is nuts’. Well, that’s probably your resentment talking. When I first dipped into this book, I was amused. Then I grew furiously angry. Then I calmed down a bit and just felt bemused. I don't think she's nuts though. Louise Hay is actually an enormously successful, enormously wealthy self-help guru and self-publishing sensation. She’s sold tens of millions of books through her own publishing company, Hay House. Her life story has been made into a film. Millions of people love her and credit her with having – through her words and her philosophy – helped them to heal themselves. To the cynical eye, however, just about everything about Hay smacks of charlatanism. From her unconfirmed claims that she cured herself of ‘cancer of the vagina’ to the free audio download available on her website, which is entitled ‘Receiving Prosperity’. From the life-coaching and spiritual learning centers to the fact that she studied under notorious transcendental fornicator Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Charlatanism, however, is in the mind of the charlatan, and therefore only Hay herself can know if she actually believes that which she preaches. If she believes it, then she’s genuine. If on the other hand, she doesn’t believe it, then of course she’s merely a thoroughly bad egg, lining her pockets with the gold of the gullible and desperate. Or is she? Even if that were true I mean, even if she were making the whole thing up and laughing all the way to the bank – if people still find comfort in her teachings, does it actually matter? Just like God, you may not approve or believe, but if it works for people, you can’t really deny or begrudge them that, sad simple creatures though they clearly are. But then there’s this: This is difficult to come to terms with. Being told that blackheads are ‘small outbursts of anger’ is one thing. Being told that the human immunodeficiency virus is caused by self-denial and sexual guilt is quite another. Because it’s not. It’s a virus. And Hay’s take on it smacks of homophobia...

...

But is it? If you would like to read the rest of this wonderful review, Stan recommends you go here and purchase a copy of The Little Book of Shame. Not only does it contain the article you're currently reading, it also contains around 50 others, and all for the incredible price of whatever price it happens to be at the moment. You lucky thing you. 

[Self-Promotion] The Qype Interview

A little while ago I received an email from a man called Cedric. Cedric works for Qype and wanted to do some kind of partnership thing wherein I would plug Qype, and Qype would interview me and link to my blog or book or something. As it happens, I'd just started using the Qype Radar app on my phone and had been very impressed by it. Also - fortuitously - I do enjoy talking about myself endlessly, so I thought, why the hell not. So here we are. Here's the interview here...

...

My God, it's not here. It was so good, it found its way into a book. If you would like to read the interview, which you would definitely love more even than you love your own mother, Stan recommends you go here and purchase a copy of The Little Book of Shame. Not only does it contain the article you're currently reading, it also contains around 50 others, and all for the incredible price of whatever price it happens to be at the moment. You lucky thing you.

[Film] Bad Lieutenants

Contains mild spoilers... Werner Herzog’s Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans is a joke. And I don’t mean that necessarily in a bad way. I mean, that’s the only way to explain it. It’s not a comedy – not exactly – but it’s Herzog’s joke at the expense of Hollywood. It must be. Herzog, of course, is mad. Not mad in the same way that Lars von Trier is mad – not bad mad. He’s just a wild and crazy guy who rails against Bonanza and eats shoes. And now he’s remade one of the most disturbing films of the nineties as a Hollywood pisstake. Unsurprisingly, Herzog’s Bad Lieutenant has very little to do with Abel Ferrara’s Bad Lieutenant. It has a corrupt, drug-addled cop at the centre of it, but that aside, it's more like a wildly distorted echo than a direct remake. Ferrara’s film is genuinely shocking – still shocking, almost 20 years on. In it a nun is raped by two men. They also use a crucifix. Harvey Keitel’s lieutenant meanwhile is genuinely disturbed. Aside from the drugs, the sex and the gambling, the cursing of Christ and the standing around naked whilst whining like a wounded dog, there is also the infamous masturbation scene, which brings a whole new meaning to the term 'carjacking'. The man is a moral train-wreck and the film as a whole is uncomfortable and difficult. 

...

If you would like to read the rest of this article, Stan recommends you go here and purchase a copy of The Little Book of Shame. Not only does it contain the article you're currently reading, it also contains around 50 others, and all for the incredible price of whatever price it happens to be at the moment. You lucky thing you.

 

[Real Life] Snooze

When I was first offered this job I'm now doing, one of my primary concerns was that I wouldn't be able to find the time to write anymore. I had to take the job, and part of me almost even wanted to, but I knew that it would mean big changes. So I immediately decided that what I would do was this...

When the job started, I would wake at 5am every weekday. I would slip into my Slanket and make myself a pot of coffee. Then I would write my diary till 5.30. This would mean starting a diary again. This I would do. Then I would write something else until 8 o'clock when I would turn off my computer and do twenty minutes of vigorous exercise, stretching like Armstrong and saluting the sun like a militant yogi.

When I informed certain friends of my intentions, they were doubtful. Some of them mocked me. I was furious. 'O ye of little faith,' I chided, believing wholeheartedly that they would be laughing on the other side of their filthy faces when I slipped silkily into my new routine.

So. This is my third week and sadly I have not once managed to get out of bed more than ten minutes before I have to leave the house, often ten minutes or so after. It seems in fact that I am incapable of getting out of bed, even at 7 or 8 o'clock, let alone 5. Now I come to think of it, I have always been incapable of getting out of bed. What I'm wondering now is, why did I ever think I'd be able to do it? Am I an idiot?

Idiot or not, the fact is, I still genuinely believe myself when I make myself these promises.

For example, back in May 2008, I decided that I was going to run the London marathon the following year. I believed that too. Someone at work is doing the marathon this year. I was talking to them today and I was thinking, 'I'm going to do that. I'll do it next year.' And I believed myself then too. I believe it now. I really will do the marathon next year. You see if I don't.

You see? I'm incorrigible.

When I finally got an iPhone a couple of weeks ago, I was really pleased that I could download the app that would monitor my sleep patterns and wake me up when I was sleeping lightly, thus enabling me to greet the day feeling refreshed and wide awake. Really pleased.

It doesn't work.

BALLS.

The thing is, when I absolutely have to, I can do it. When I had to write my book in a very short period of time, I got up every day at 6am and I did it. Mind you, I wanted to do that. My heart was in it. My heart isn't in this poxy fucking job, thinking up shitty puns and being treated like a fucking prawn by people who clearly consider themselves vastly superior to me.



Seriously, for 200 days I have to tolerate this? That's over 93,000 minutes essentially wasted. Must I? Really?

Yes. I must.

With that in mind, very genuinely I beseech thee, do you know, is there anything I can do to instill in myself a little self-discipline? Or more simply, how the fuck do I get out of bed in the morning? I would really appreciate your advice if you have any. Please bear in mind, however, that I have already tried the following: hiding alarm clocks; laying out clothes next to alarm clocks; sticking abusive notes to the wall next to alarm clocks; going to bed early; going to bed late; drinking heavily the night before; visualising a successful awakening; bullying myself; loathing myself. And none of it works. Not even close.

So. How do you get up in the morning? What's your secret?

Please help me. You're my only hope.

[Sex Toy] Rubber Jenny

So a couple of weeks ago, I wrote about how I was growing increasingly tired of masturbation. Then last Friday I received an email from a sex worker. Is that what they’re called? Women who work for sex toy companies? Anyway, Carly works for LoveHoney.co.uk and by way of solution to my problem, she offered me free sex. In a can. Specifically, this one: As you can see, it’s quite odd. For one thing, it has a mouth. Now I know I’ve not seen that many vaginas, but I’m sure even Seymore Butts hasn’t seen one with an infranasal depression, or - it always takes me ages of fruitless head-searching then a quick Google search to remember this word - philtrum. (Hmm. I just spent ten minutes checking Wikipedia’s etymology of the word philtrum against the entry in volume two of The New Shorter Oxford. Interesting. Veeeery interesting. And they say masturbation ruins your vocabulary. Paff.) Anyhow, in the words of the popular song, any hole’s a goal. Now, before I go any further – I think I should just … one moment, please. Right. I have to say, having used the thing twice now, it is really very, very good. Which is to say, it feels excellent wrapped around your engorged Johnson and it does facilitate some splendid and relatively powerful sensations on fruition. I did find it much easier to use, however, when I removed the superskin flesh-sleeve from the can. The reasons for this are twofold. Number one. It’s a bit tight in the can. Out of the can, the superskin flesh-sleeve is able to expand to take your girth. In the can, it’s like trying to fuck a frighteningly robust moth. I think you know what I’m saying. Also, out of the can … … the superskin flesh-sleeve becomes eerily animated, almost lifelike. It flops about in your hand like a dazed rat, freshly shaven, or like the panicking infant of some alien animal species, lost and frightened and helpless.

For the rest of this remarkable and educational review, Stan recommends you go here and purchase a copy of The Little Book of Shame. Not only does it contain the article you're currently reading, it also contains around 50 others, and all for the incredible price of whatever price it happens to be at the moment. You lucky thing you.

[Special Product] Vulva :: Old Man

I thought it might be funny to write an account of a date I had on Valentine’s Day - a date with myself and a bottle of Vulva. It would have been a silly thing, you understand. I was going to pretend that I had someone over for a cosy dinner. I would tidy the house and cook a meal - fish pie maybe, or a nice New England clam bake. And then I was going to make a clumsy lunge at myself after the coffee and hopefully go all the way. But not necessarily.

There is every chance I might not have put out at all. After all, I’m a sensitive not to say needy individual and it might very well have taken a good deal more than the scent of synthetic nethers to bring me to fruition. More important still, I feared that if I got into that whole self-love thing again, there was every possibility I might actually disappear right inside my own bottom.

Thankfully, the Vulva didn’t come till Monday. (I would normally have used the word arrive in that sentence, but I am a sucker for a vagina gag.) (!)

So, in order to fulfil my end of the bargain – to wit an honest review in exchange for a free sample of the product – I was forced to go to the hustings. Is that what I mean? Let’s say yes.

On Monday night, I held my first woefully unstructured focus group, telling my guinea pigs exactly what I was smearing on their hands. I asked them to score the product out of ten for vulvacity, arousal and overall pleasantness. The results were not good.

For vulvacity, Vulva was found distinctly lacking. Which is not a good sign. A product called Vulva, describing itself as a vaginal fragrance really ought to smell like vagina. If not, it can only be considered a failure. But then again, as a few of the people with whom I have engaged on the subject have pointed out, surely not all vulvae smell alike. Well, in my limited experience, I would say yes and no. Of course every foo-foo has a different odour, just as every Johnson has a different odour, just as every human being has a different odour. However, it's surely also true to say that there is definitely a ball-park smell.

Anyhow, here are a bunch of thoughts from the first session:

'It smells like wee.'

'It's a bit toilet.'

'It smells a bit like fish and chips. A bit musky … It's not unpleasant. I wouldn't want to smell of it but I wouldn't be really upset if I did ... It doesn't smell of my vulva, but does my vulva smell of everybody's vulva? Is my vulva everyvulva? … That doesn't smell anything like a vulva. Oh, maaaaaaybe – maybe there's a tiny hint. It's too perfumey though. It's got that kind of Copydex quality … I feel like it's burning my wrist. It feels simultaneously hot and cold … It smells a bit of honey as well.'

'So you put this on and masturbate? And it's meant to help, is it?'

'It smells a bit like cardboard.'

So there you go. 'Not unpleasant' is about as good as it gets. Personally, I don't agree. I think it's very unpleasant. For me, it does smell of vulva, but it smells of a vulva that's been trapped in a chemical toilet for six days. It has ammonia front bottom notes, reminiscent of those awful pineapple chunks you find it men's urinals.

Anyhow, on Tuesday night, I did a blind test in a pub with three new rugged male friends. They weren't impressed. The best quote came from Paul, a 45-year-old man from Macclesfield. 'It smells like old man,' he said.



That's not good.

So there it is. Vulva is basically a novelty item that no one in their right brain would ever buy twice.

And let that be an end to it.

In other news, I'm almost finished my first week of proper work, and yesterday, I got an iPhone.

I feel like an adult.

I'm not though.

Have a super weekend.

The Royal Mail Stole My Vulva

I hate the way that the only way you can complain to a lot of institutions is by filling in prohibitively long-winded and poorly-worded forms on their website. Never a person to speak to. Without wishing to sound cynical, or wildly paranoid, I must say I fear the non-user-friendliness of these forms might actually be deliberate. There’s nothing more likely to make a griping punter shut their traps and forget about it than a website that keeps logging them out. But I was determined. This was a serious issue. This was theft. And I didn’t see why the Royal Mail should get away with it. So I persevered, and in the section asking me to describe my grievance, I wrote the following:

‘The item in question was a small bottle of Vulva, the erotic vaginal scent of a desirable woman. This is apparently a feminine, tantalising, intimate scent and I was very much looking forward to it enhancing my increasingly dull fantasy life.

This is actually the second time that my Vulva has disappeared whilst in the care of the Royal Mail. The first time the entire package went missing, this time merely the Vulva itself. You must admit, it doesn’t look good. Take a man’s Vulva once, and he’ll put it down to carelessness. Twice and frankly, it starts to smell fishy.

Please investigate this matter at once and if you cannot find my Vulva and return it to me intact, I would like to know that the postman in question has been thoroughly ticked off. It really is a sad state of affairs when a man’s Vulva is not safe in the hands of a humble postie.

I am dismayed and seek immediate reassurance.’

The Royal Mail replied, and fairly promptly, but with a stock response. It's all ‘robust processes’ and ‘appropriate action’, and the concluding paragraph pretty much sums up their attitude toward my missing Vulva.

‘Once again, please accept my sincere apologies on behalf of Royal Mail for the problem you've had, and our thanks for taking the time to make us aware of this. Please be assured that we take letting our customers down seriously and will use this information to make further improvements.’

Yeah, right. Meanwhile, down at the sorting office, two bottles of prime Vulva are changing hands like schoolboy pornographs.

Sniff your letters. And never trust a postman. Or woman.

Sick Of Self-Love (I'm Waiting For My Vulva)

I need to spice up my self-love life.

There. I’ve said it.

And when I say self-love, I don’t mean cutting myself some slack, thinking positive and giving myself a pat on the back whether or not I deserve it. I mean wanking. Unless of course, I’m being jolly clever and using one as a slightly sticky mirror for the other. Well, I’m not. I’m just talking about wanking.

I’ve fallen into a rut, you see. I just don’t put any effort into the act of making love with myself anymore. You know? I just don’t pleasure myself with the same outlandish vigour and rigour as once I did.

It’s an unpleasant truth but it’s come to pass that in this period of my life, my self-love lacks verve. I do it of course, and relentlessly, but the joy is gone. The sense of urgency is gone. The spontaneity that was at times jazz-like. That’s gone too. All that’s left is a tired, asthmatic glimmer of desire and a dulled sense of weary obligation. I go through the motions: a text-book moribund shuffle, like a dying man rooting through a pile of garbage. There’s no romance. There’s not even any real sense of pleasure. And as for foreplay? Forget about it.

A lot of this is connected to technology, of course, and the proliferation of fat-pipe porn. Erotic images were incredibly scarce when I was young. This meant you had to put a lot more work into your relationship with yourself. It also meant you had to take opportunities as and when they arose. Songs of Praise. Your friend’s mother’s bra and lipstick. Every inappropriate erection was a new, distinctly seedy adventure. These days there’s none of that, and recklessly I have allowed my imagination and impulsivity to become saturated, and desiccated, by porn. As a result, I’ve turned into a lousy self-lover.

And don’t think I haven’t noticed. If you want to know the truth, it’s tearing me apart. I’ve tried talking about it but I just won’t listen. I’ve come to resent myself. Literally. And when I remember how I used to be, back at the beginning when it was all fresh and new and I couldn’t keep my hands off myself….

So, in the absence of the ability to split up with myself, which is what I really want to do, frankly, I’ve decided to make a concerted effort to get myself back on the right track. I'm staging a kind of self-intervention, before any really irreparable damage is done.

My first move was to check out the clever articles you find in magazines and newspapers, the ones full of advice for couples who don’t really like one another anymore because of years of mind-numbing repetition. But they didn’t really work out. Spontaneous hugging met with a limp silence. Surprising myself with chocolates was a lovely touch but then watching me eat them all and calling me fat afterwards was just awful. That was an angry wank, that one. And not in a good way.

Then I thought of buying myself some knickers. It would be deceitful of me to claim that having the sexual smorgasbord of my nether regions coddled in the stretched silk of a woman’s undergarment is not something that gives me a terrific itch in the belly. For it is. Even the mere thought of it threatens to cajole some twitch of appreciation from Cupid’s torch. Having said that, the thought of actually purchasing a nice pair of knickers for posh-wank purposes – and they would have to be very nice – just feels a little sad. Sad as in pathetic. Lamentable. Borderline deplorable. That’s the problem with all of these masturbatory aids: they just seem so fucking desperate. Toe-curling in their desperation. And yet, still, in arid times, in a cold climate, when one’s very soul feels like it’s running to seed, if you’ll pardon the pine nut, it can be very, very tempting.

I mean, there are all kinds of self-sex accessories out there that, when you first hear about them, your mind just boggles and you think, no. You think, that’s just wretched. That’s pitiful. And then some time passes and maybe your circumstances change and maybe you think about it a little more and your mind stops boggling quite so much. I mean, is it really any less wretched and pitiful for a grown man to penetrate a synthetic vibrating vagina in a tin can than it is for a lady to krunk herself giddy on the shaft of a synthetic vibrating lovestick or rabbit-themed pleasuring device? Is it?

Well, it shouldn’t be.

And yet, somehow... I don’t know. Maybe it just isn’t for me.

This, for example:



This is ‘Sex in a Can’, from the same Captains of Cock that brought you the industry leader, the classic, Fleshlight.

I mean, good luck to you if you can grit your eyes and get into that, but I really don’t think I could. I should probably add, however, that I am willing to try, so if anyone’s got one they’ve finished with, do get in touch. For now though, even with the extreme nunliness of the vulva, it just doesn’t inspire me.

In fact, I can think of only two pertinent things less appealing than pushing my roaring jack into the fake plastic undermeat of a pair of canned quim nuts. One is filming the same act and putting it on YouPorn. (I just can’t bring myself to watch those things. It must be the saddest act of pornography in the whole world.) The other is splashing six thousand US dollars on a real doll.

Having said that, one day, when my boat comes in, I’d quite like to run away with this one.



There are of course men who reject outright the easy commercialisation of self-love. These men prefer to bore an unsexy orifice into a watermelon or pumpkin and root out their pleasure that way. Sometimes they layer bacon around the bore-hole.

Although I admire the spirit and inventiveness of these men, I can’t really imagine myself making love to a melon. Not at my age. I'd rather make love to a chicken, to be honest. A dead chicken, obviously – I’m not into kinky stuff. Just an everyday dead chicken from the supermarket. Maybe a bit of bacon around the bore-hole.



I can imagine that quite easily. You know, if I absolutely have to. I can imagine that the feel of the chicken skin, mottled from plucking and sliding back and forth across the cold white flesh of the legs might actually be quite erotic.

I don't intend to do it though. These are just thought experiments. I actually find it repulsive. Honest.

So instead of fucking a dead chicken, I’ve hit upon something else. Something definitely less vile. An idea. A business idea for a new product. Something to enliven the - let's face it - the chore of male masturbation.

I call it FISTMUFF.

Essentially it’s essence of fresh vagina, applied to the back of the hand. A bird in the hand, you might say. But no bush.

Simply apply FISTMUFF to one hand, take your old chap in the other and you’re away. With your eyes closed you sniff at the FISTMUFF, breathing in the erotic fragrance of the mouth that speaks no words, and you imagine that you’re anywhere but where you actually are, doing anything but what you’re actually doing.

Of course I’m joking. Where am I going to find a fresh vagina to tease and milk? Or indeed any vagina.

Unless… unless I reread Perfume with terrifying zeal, master maceration and enfleurage and then launch myself on a murderous yet delectably redolent rampage. Hmm... No. I don’t think so. Important though it is to spice up a dead date with Fisty Palmer, rampant carnage just wouldn’t seem right so close to Valentine’s Day.

Anyway, what kind of madman would deign to distil the bouquet of the bower of bliss? Surely not even a man with a smell camera would be so arrogant as to seriously attempt to simulate essence of vulva. It’d be like trying to recreate the roof of the Sistine Chapel in a bus shelter in Basildon.

It'll never happen.

Or will it?

I'm afraid all of that guff about me inventing FISTMUFF was a bit of a red herring. I was pulling the wool over your eyes, if you’ll pardon the poon. For the fact is, FISTMUFF exists. You may, of course, already be wholly cognisant of this fact; you may, in fact, be drenched in the stuff as we speak, pleasuring yourself to a dervish, spitting hot liquid on the keyboard, rolling on the floor, your tongue lolling from your mouth like a single sad mitten lost in the rain. FISTMUFF exists! Only it’s not called FISTMUFF. It’s called Vulva.

Vaginal scent. For men.

Watch the video and just marvel for a moment if you would, at the wonder of the world in which we live…



Mmmmmm, yes. Finally, a scent to keep the scourge of saddle-sniffing gusset-gannets off the streets and out of the gymnasia.

I’m figuring Vulva could be just the fillip I need to get me through this miserable mizzling month to the sappy spring that awaits. And more importantly, it can help bring me closer again. To myself. I'm convinced of it: essence of vagina will get me through this unpleasant patch.

So, my third consignment of Vulva is in the post. The first two, I should explain, went missing in transit. I swear.

I'm just hoping it gets here in time for Valentine’s Day. I don’t want to be alone again this year.

In the meantime, I'd appreciate a little feedback. I can't be the only one for whom wanking has become a depressing, devitalising experience. Can I? Singletons! Speak to me. What do you do to keep your self-sex life alive?

[Television] A Disappointing Evening With Jonathan Ross

My grandmother thinks Jonathan Ross is obscene. That’s the word she always uses whenever he comes up in conversation. ‘I don’t like that Jonathan Ross,’ she says, the slits of her eyes oozing dry contempt, her scowl stabbing like shit-hooks into her jowls. ‘He’s obscene.’ What gets her goat of course, is the bad language, the kneejerk infantile sexualisation of absolutely everything and the wilful, pervasive inappropriateness. Basically all the good stuff, all the cheeky stuff that makes other people watch. But then my gran is from a different time, bless her, and consequently she's rather old-fashioned. She’s still not entirely happy with the idea of homosexuals adopting children, if you want to know the truth. But she's a good woman despite that, and I love her very much.

Also, I like Jonathan Ross. He can be overbearing at times, of course, and childish, and self-indulgent, and, frankly, borderline creepy - but Jesus, who can’t? He’s still on occasion well worth watching though, and that’s saying an awful lot. At his best, his lack of respect for propriety and showbiz protocol can be jaw-dropping. I will love him always, for example, for asking this country’s next Prime Minister whether or not he pleasured himself to thoughts of Margaret Thatcher. I think it’s actually testament to the gargantuan irreverence of that question that all traces of it have been removed from the internet. (Fiver to anyone who can find it for me.) (Video, that is - not mere mention. Tsk.)

For these reasons, when I was recently offered the opportunity to go see an episode of Friday Night With Jonathan Ross being recorded, I thought about it for a moment, then I took it. After all, if I were lucky, something amazing might happen, something magical, or at the very least something temporarily memorable.

I would have to be very lucky though, because, let’s face it, not only are chat shows in the main horrible worthless bilge, they are also, in essence, evil. With no pretensions to artistic endeavour, they are powered one hundred per cent by PR. They’re essentially live adverts, relying entirely on the public’s bland acceptance that celebrities are, by their very nature, interesting. However, even without someone as potentially unseemly as Jonathan Ross at the helm, chat shows can occasionally deliver wonderful moments of human nonsense. The various drunk appearances by Oliver Reed stand out. Serge Gainsbourg
insisting to Whitney Houston’s face that he wanted to fuck her. Muhammed Ali’s idiotic paranoid meltdown on Parkinson. Barry Gibb’s humour bypass on Clive Anderson. Tom Cruise on PCP on Oprah. David Icke giving Godhead to Wogan. These moments probably just about make the format worthwhile, but naturally, sadly, they are few and far between. Realistically, it was probably unlikely I’d be there the night Matthew Kelly shot himself, for example, or Mel Gibson revealed the new Hitler tattoo across his back, but maybe I’d be lucky and bag a devastating raconteur.

I wasn’t lucky. If you happened to have caught the show last week, you’ll know by the fact that you’ve already forgotten who the guests were, that the guests were crap.

They were, in order of sheer pointlessness, Kim Cattrall, the pubescent cast of something called Misfits and fucking Jedward. (It is, I believe, now a legal requirement that whenever John and Edward are mentioned in the showbiz compound, their name must be preceded by the repulsed intensifier fucking. Like Gregory F Peck.)



Before the horrific torture of the guests, however, there was the ignominy of queuing outside for over an hour in the drizzle. Then there was the unpleasant awkwardness of the warm-up guy. I was hoping for some budding stand-up. Instead there was this monstrous mediocrity who had members of the audience removing articles of clothing in exchange for prizes which never arrived, whilst all the while leching really inappropriately, and deeply unamusingly, over a beautiful girl in the audience. He was like a combination of redcoat reject and charmless Ted Bundy.

Embarrassing and incompetent though he was as an individual, however, it was his role on the show as a whole that was really depressing, bringing home as it did what an unmitigated crock of excrement television really is.

I remember thinking, 'let me get this straight, you’re telling me that when fucking Jedward, this pair of empty-headed showbiz suppositories walk onto a gaudy set, you want me to stand up and applaud? But that doesn’t make sense. We shouldn’t be screaming and shouting our approval at these arse-candles. We should be pelting them with effluent.'

Speaking of effluent, before Kim Cattrall’s extraordinarily dull interview, we were treated to a screening of the trailer for Sex and the City 2, which is, it has to be said, truly truly amazing. I honestly never thought I’d ever see anything that would make the original film of Sex and the City look like anything other than the celluloid tumour that it is, but this trailer actually makes it look remarkable.

So even though Ross repeatedly professed great fondness for the cast of Misfits and fucking Jedward, surely he would let Kim Cattrall have it for her part in the atrocity that the Sex and the City franchise has become. Surely.

Nope. Not a bit of it. Renowned cineaste Ross claims to love the crime against humanity that is Sex and the City, part one.

It was at this point that I properly gave up. I had been hoping for a glimpse of the no-bullshit Ross I’d seen in the past – the same man who tore Kevin Smith a new pimhole for the execrable Clerks 2 - but he seems to have moved on. He’s probably content to just sit out his BBC contract, hyping every piece of cack that comes his way and even sucking up to fucking Jedward when necessary. Well, I'm not. I'm done with him. I know, I know. He'll be gutted.

Finally, after a suitably crap performance by The Editors, it was over.

When I shuffled back out into the drizzle at around 9 o’clock, my hands buzzing with shame from all the fake applause, I actually felt good. Mostly I felt good because, apart from Nick Griffin’s appearance on Question Time, I haven’t watched a single TV programme actually on television since I moved back to London in September. Good for me.

It really is crap.

…

And you?

Have you ever seen a TV show recorded live and if so, was that crap too?