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For anyone who is fed up of being told what to do with their time, or made to feel inferior because they don't want to fly half way round the planet on the off chance that a dolphin might swim somewhere their vicinity, this is the perfect book. A slacker's bible, it is the anti-list book in a world where we are surrounded with too many lists - '101 Things to Buy', '50 Things to do in Keighley' - offering us all too many very avoidable treats.Who has the time to read all these lists, let alone follow up on the suggestions? Is it really such a good idea to touch a tiger? All these ludicrous suggestions should be treated with the contempt they deserve. In short, this is a very funny rallying call for common sense and dignified indolence rather than wasteful over-activity. Now comes the final and best list book of all time, easily trumping those books with 100 or 101 things to do, as Life's Too Short comes up with the top 103 things not to do. You know it makes sense.
Christmas comes but once a year, and that's precisely one time too often. It might be good for capitalism, but it isn't good for anything else. Let's face it. The whole thing is a hollow sham. As Richard Dawkins has conclusively proved, there's no God. Celebrating the birth of His son each year is therefore very silly. Of course, it's a good excuse to have a day off work and get quite drunk in front of the TV, but why go to all the expense and trouble of buying presents and being nice to your relatives when you can achieve the same desirable results by taking a quiet sicky? What's more Christmas TV is near-impossibly bad. If it were worse, it would break one of those laws of science Richard Dawkins is so keen on. The Queen may be good at avoiding paying taxes, but she's no broadcaster. After 10-minutes of her moaning a day dominated by Noel Edmunds and Bruce Forsyth really does come of light relief. So too does switching the box off and going to eat. Or at least it would if you didn't have to eat turkey. This is a bird hopeless in all respects. It's ugly. It can't sing. It can't fly at all well. It tastes like cardboard. Does nobody ever question why it never gets eaten for the rest of the year? It's because, actually, chicken is far nicer. Turkey is at least more enjoyable than Brussel Sprouts.At Christmas more than 80% of the population eat Brussels Sprouts. The misery of this statistic should tell you most of the things you need to know about this sad day. Under normal circumstances no one would eat these foul creations. We might be told that the cabbage's smaller, poorer cousin is a very good source of many essential vitamins, fibre and something called folate. Sprouts have also been shown to have some very beneficial effects against certain types of cancer and for years nutritionists have been urging us to eat more of them for the good of our health. Defenders of the sprout proclaim that most of the unpleasant sulphurous smells associated with them come as a result of overcooking. If steamed correctly, they say, sprouts actually have a delicate nutty flavour. This isn’t true. They not only produce farts but taste like them too. The traditional Christmas dinner does at least have the advantage that it sends half the nation off to sleep, but their snores and splutterings should only be taken as a judgment on the interestingness on everything else about the day. At this point, I should note that I'm very sorry, I don't really mean it and that actually I'd like nothing better for everyone in the UK to have a very enjoyable Christmas. Not least because I'm very keen for them all to run out and buy copies of my book for all their friends and families. Reading it will give them something to do while the Queen's droning on, anyway…