Room 101

Items I would like to see consigned to Room 101:

  • Cats
  • Pigeons
  • Cats amongst pigeons
  • People who feed cats and/or pigeons
  • People who say, “I’m more of a cat person, myself”
  • Dumfries
  • Children in pubs
  • Curtain tie-backs
  • Curtain-pulls
  • Shower curtains
  • Pelmets
  • People in front of you who walk/drive just too slowly
  • Long jokes
  • Fundamentalism (of any kind)
  • Clowns
  • Mass-produced sausages
  • Any sport done to music
  • Any sport where points are awarded for artistic interpretation
  • Any sport which is only ever participated in by women
  • Wind farms (i.e. wind power-stations)
  • Pseudo-science
  • Vegetarian food masquerading as meat
  • Pubs with fake Olde English names
  • Pubs with the word furkin in their names
  • People who change pubs’ names
  • Gazumping
  • Best of albums containing previously unreleased tracks
  • People who say question mark when they mean question
  • Offal
  • people who say ‘alternate’, when they mean ‘alternative’
  • Nitro-keg bitter
  • Shopping for clothes
  • Shopping for food
  • People on your side in an argument who can’t argue properly
  • People on your side in an argument who can argue, but who are dickheads
  • Astrologers and other soothsaying charlatans
  • The music of Phil Collins
  • People whose hi-fi systems are more valuable than their music collections
  • People whose cars are more valuable than their music collections
  • People who say CDs sound better than vinyl (they really need to listen)
  • Being told that my call is important while I’m on hold in a queue
  • Decorating
  • People who boast I never understood [X] at school, who still don’t
  • UHT milk
  • People without cars who think everyone should use public transport
  • Drinking good whisky from cheap glasses
  • Copper coins
  • The phrase the Home Counties
  • Software with far more features than it needs
  • Royalty
  • The Nobility
  • Fax technology
  • People with ridiculous theories who cite Galileo as a persecuted forerunner
  • Amplified music in pubs
  • Appending the suffix -gate to anything with even a hint of scandal
  • Appending the suffix -rage to a noun instead of simply saying impatience
  • People who put the stress on the first syllable of the word Birkenhead
  • Having your blood pressure taken
  • Tea from vending machines
  • People who use K as an abbreviation for thousand when talking about money
  • People who say grand instead of thousand
  • Cushions
  • Dog shows
  • Fast food which isn’t fish & chips
  • People who abbreviate the word and to ‘n’
  • Wimbledon fortnight
  • Band-waggon-jumper-oners [to use my dad’s wonderful phrase]
  • People who like 2 amuse U with their wacky spelling
  • Spam (in both its electronic and culinary forms)
  • Junk mail and unsolicited phone calls
  • Any telephone conversation which lasts longer than 60 seconds
  • Pogonophobia
  • People who use the word literally when talking figuratively
  • Continental-style toilets where you have to crap onto a ledge
  • People who use apostrophe’s to denote plural’s
  • The phrase he or she (what’s wrong with they?)
  • People who claim lager is much better on the continent (it’s still shite)
  • Sticky price labels which leave a mark when you remove them
  • Sticky labels on fruit
  • Safety matches
  • Lottery millionaires who say it won’t change their lives
  • Newspapers
  • Mowing the lawn
  • Mobile phone tunes
  • Adding anything to whisky
  • Housing estates named after the flora destroyed to build them
  • Cold beer
  • Motorists who use hazard warning lights to indicate illegal parking
  • Brass fixtures and fittings
  • Replacing swear-words with f__*ing asterisks
  • Bleeped-out swear-words on television
  • Coloured bathroom suites
  • Saturday evening television
  • Receiving personal emails from paedophiles [I write from experience]
  • Having to wear a tie to appear professional
  • Mild cheese
  • The expression too clever by half
  • CDs with a long gap before the final track
  • Spongey bread
  • Cryptic crosswords themed on extremely obscure subjects
  • Cryptic crosswords that hinge upon a single clue
  • People who say Cleese was the funniest Python (it was Palin, you idiots!)
  • Screws with slots, as opposed to cross-heads
  • Brass screws
  • Single sheets inserted into double-sheet newspapers
  • Letterboxes which are too small for the letters you want to post
  • Slugs
  • Mensa
  • Anyone who talks about IQ as if it actually means anything
  • Fish- and steak-knives
  • Chewing gum
  • The white powder that accumulates around the tops of milk bottles
  • Cyclists who undertake at traffic lights
  • Cyclists who go through red traffic lights
  • Cyclists who ride on the pavement
  • Background music on TV news bulletins
  • People who make sexist/racist comments in front of you, assuming you agree
  • Police cars driving at 68mph in the slow lane on motorways
  • English wine
  • The phrase post-modern
  • This colour
  • Flannel face-cloths
  • Dove™ soap
  • Baby On Board signs
  • Ironing
  • Soldering
  • Evangelical feminists
  • The smell of money
  • British pub licensing hours
  • Birmingham
  • People who make meaningless comparisons
  • Moths
  • Mixed vegetables
  • Christian fish logos on cars
  • People at the front of queues who haven’t decided what to buy yet
  • The new shrink-wrapped KitKat™ bars
  • People who get into the same segment as you in revolving doors
  • Wrapping presents
  • Self-appointed spokespersons
  • The word spokesperson
  • Radio 4’s Thought for the Day
  • 3-D bar-charts, pie-charts and graphs
  • Corporate sponsorship of social science research for cheap publicity
  • Patenting genes
  • The smell of disinfectant
  • The doctrine of papal infallibility
  • People who judge historical figures against modern moral standards
  • Customised scrollbars on web pages
  • Linkrot
  • Card games
  • People who can’t tell the difference between margarine and butter
  • Squirty cream in cans
  • Pre-sliced cheese
  • Breaking your leg
  • Mangetout
  • Baby sweetcorn
  • Dictionaries with thumb-indexes
  • People who say that should be thumb-indices
  • Tattoos [If you want to make a statement, wear a wacky tie]
  • People who try to make a statement by wearing a wacky tie
  • Graffiti
  • People who put advertisements under cars’ windscreen wipers
  • The way the TV’s volume increases during commercial breaks
  • Grown men with ponytails
  • Bald men with ponytails
  • Rolls Royce cars
  • Medleys
  • Royal correspondents
  • Whoever it is who puts all the water into bacon
  • People who think my driveway is a turning circle
  • Young pop-stars who issue cover versions of classic songs
  • Surround-sound hi-fi
  • Filling in expense claim forms
  • UK products that internationalised their names (Snickers™, Starburst™, Cif™, etc.)
  • Theme pubs
  • Filling up my car with fuel
  • Decaffeinated coffee
  • Unreliable builders (i.e. builders)
  • Being sober when everyone else is drunk
  • Standard legal disclaimers on emails
  • Having your mobile phone ring when you’re sitting on the toilet
  • Boxing
  • Roadworks (especially roadworks with nobody doing any work in them)
  • Southerners harping on about the M25
  • Having mice in your house
  • How’s my driving? stickers on the back of vans
  • People who let their kids press the buttons for them at cashpoint machines
  • People who walk in one direction and look in another
  • The jelly in pork pies
  • People who give considered responses to enquiries after their health
  • People who take pushchairs into shops
  • Colleagues whose idea of washing their mug is to leave it in the sink
  • People who find bottle banks full, but leave their bottles anyway
  • Deep pan pizzas
  • The run-up to Christmas
  • The fact that England’s Glory matches are now made in Sweden
  • People who forward jokes without removing the previous forwarding details
  • Collagen lips
  • Music shops that file Captain Beefheart under ‘C’
  • Having your clutch cable snap on a motorway approach-road roundabout
  • Shampoo and cosmetics commercials that use invented ‘scientific’ jargon
  • Baileys Irish Cream
  • The limericks of Edward Leer (they’re shite, basically)
  • Marzipan
  • Halloween Special episodes of The Simpsons
  • Hardback books printed on cheap paper
  • Putting trousers on hangers
  • People who wait for the lift to arrive before clocking off
  • Thin people who say, “I need to lose weight”
  • People who invent mythical genes
  • Being told off by Windows for not shutting down properly after a crash
  • Dogs’ pissing on your briefcase
  • Body studs that aren’t in ear-lobes
  • TV weather forecasters who don’t have degrees in meteorology
  • Weather forecasts that give percentage chances of rain
  • White rappers
  • Rap music (with a capital ‘C’)
  • Boy bands
  • Girl bands
  • Jamie Theakston
  • Ben Elton
  • Goatee beards
  • Paper clips that think they can write letters better than me
  • Moustaches (why not go the whole hog?)
  • Nudists
  • When a great TV programme suddenly goes To Be Continued…
  • Hercule Poirot
  • Hate lists

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *