Rewind twelve months ago to 31 December 2005 in the Sir Alex household. Dumped out of the Champions’ League by Benfica; a double-digit points deficit behind Chelsea; having to play Silvestre regularly in defence; hearing the names of your potential successors touted on a constant basis. Football: bloody hell.

31 December 2006 in the Sir Alex household: Dumping Benfica out and drawing Lille in the first Champions’ League knockout stage; six points clear of Chelsea (but more like seven with our fantastic goal difference), sixteen points clear of Liverpool, SEVENTEEN points clear of “Premiership contenders” Arsenal (dream on, Professor); VIdic making Rio look like a world class defender and Silvestre the complete donkey he showed himself to be (again!) against Reading. Mourinho in meltdown; Wenger in denial. O’Neill in the Midlands; Sven on the dole. Football: bloody hell!

Likewise, twelve months ago I had a psychology research project effectively unstarted with a deadline weeks away; a poky flat with a Spanish jerkoff in the flat below making life hell; a job with the same amount of potential as a crewman on the Titanic; and a total shortage of quality headgear for winterlude (finding a hat in the right shade of black is never easy).

But here on 31 December 2006 I have a swish bachelor-pad flat (oh yes, ladies!) to move into at the end of January; my Bachelor of Science psychology degree certificate pinned to the fridge door; more black hats than Imelda Marcos in her nu-goth phase; a job that allows me to blog and write TV reviews during the day.

Plus my mother bought me a jumper for Christmas that I’m prepared to wear out in public. Who would have thunk it twelve months ago?

Ladeez: the shag-pad is go from January 30 2007!

Happy bleedin’ New Year!

And the Reds go marchin’ on!

One thing that has always put me off a career of serious criminal activities is the moment when you’re ‘brought in for questioning’ and your mugshot is released to the public. No one ever looks good in these pictures and it can’t be a coincidence that the most dodgy and shifty looking picture of a suspect is released. Take Tom Stephens, the man currently been questioned by police about the murder of five women in Ipswich. This is the photo that has been released and is currently being used on news bulletins across the world:

Dodgy looking geezer, or what? Now he may be innocent of the Ipswich murders, but he is well and truly guilty of looking dodgy as hell. I’ll bet he really wishes he’d put a decent picture up on his MySpace profile now.

So let this be a warning to all potential criminals: if you’re going to embark on a career of nefarious activities, get a decent headshot taken. Is it any wonder Lord Longford got nowhere when the public have this image engrained into their collective memory:

So before leaving the house each morning, make sure you have a clean pair of underwear on and a decent picture that is accessible to all responsible news agencies. This blogger would do well to take that advice:

A man with a mugshot like that has to be guilty of something.

For most women, a simple proposal is enough to make their lives complete, and for us fellas that’s a blessed relief (the not having to make much of an effort thing rather than the nuptials). However, there always has to be some tosser who makes the Polaris submarine of proposals, such as Lembit Opik, Lib Dem MP for Montgomeryshire. Opik drove the male population of Wales to drink (well, to drink even more) after announcing his engagement to Welsh daffodil Sian Lloyd. There was much howling in the valleys, not only because she was shagging a Liberal Democrat MP (traitor!) but such an weird-looking one at that.

Opik had proposed to the lovely Lloyd while piloting a light aircraft, 3,000 feet above Wales (already trying to steal her from the Principality!), but one suspects he ensured he was on terra firma when telling her the wedding was off because…

He was shagging a Cheeky Girl.

The news is guaranteed to earn him life-long entity from an area the size of Wales, and Sian is heartbroken by the news. "His affair is like something out of a pantomime," Sian told the Daily Mail, and here is the man himself with a couple of ugly sisters.

There is a moral to this tale, and not just to wear your best underwear if you’re in Wales this Christmas and New Year, lads, because Sian is back on the market. The type of man who proposes to you in such a smarmy flash cunt style is also likely to break your heart in an equally dramatic way. Opik is quoted as saying that he hopes Lloyd will “remember the happy times as we go our separate ways”, but methinks her lasting memory is going to be dumped for a Romanian hussy half her age with cracking abs, rather than the proposal in the plane bit.

And a quick 'separated at birth' feature, which’ll probably mean bugger all to anyone who didn’t grow up watching S4C:

Loverat Lembit in bed with another of his bareass bitches

Spotty from Superted

Uncanny!

Not so long ago I had a relationship with an Osakan lass, my experiences of which lead me to advise any UK lad considering a similar dalliance to stick to the copies of Asian Babes.

Why the negativity, TKK? Did steal all your money and screw all your mates? Not at all. Unless she was discreet. What really pissed me off during the relationship is that whenever we were out you’d always get some herbert who would insist on approaching you and using the one Japanese phrase he’d been taught:

Pillock on the street/bar/wherever: Hello! Are you Japanese?
TKK’s ex: Yes.
Pillock on the street/bar/wherever: Cool. [insert whatever Japanese phrase you’ve been taught here then stand back and expect a contract with Linguaphone]

Quite often they’d been taught something by someone who wanted to take the piss out of them, or their memory and mispronunciation led them to coming out with something bizarre like “My mother sucks donkeys and wears a yellow shoe on Sundays”. Or maybe it was true – I had my suspicions from time to time.

But why did they bother? I wouldn’t go up to a French girl and inflict my piss-poor GCSE phrases on her in the deluded expectation that this would instantly make her weak at the knees. But maybe I should be more adventurous and start saying “submarines are rusty when you dip them in Tabasco sauce” in various different languages when I'm on the lash and I meet da Eurotrash.

I think this was what some of these phrasebook chumps had in the back of their minds. My ex would hear them and then say “I’ve been in a settled relationship for some time which is going quite well, but obviously by coming up and saying ‘My mother sucks donkeys and wears a yellow shoe on Sundays’ in my mother tongue you’ve completely blown my mind. I will ditch this idiot, join your table and probably marry you by the end of the week.”

If you ever go out with a foreign bird and you get some multilingual div going through his phrasebook, ask him to say “goodbye” in whatever language he's bluffing his way through, and then on his cue walk away. Failing that, just tell the twat to FUCK OFF!

It’s the only language some people understand.

Today has not been all bad, as it’s spawned another Doofyism to enter the pantheon.

One of the junior doctors wanted to ring for a taxi, and after much unnecessary kafuffle over how to achieve this Doofy told her to ring switchboard:

Doofy: “You have to ring switchboard. To reach them you have to dial 0 on the phone. Would you like me to write the number down for you?”
JD: No. I think I can remember, thank you.

The day has also marked my continued attempts to tell her that she will not get a free laptop by clicking a pop-up screen which says “click here and win a free laptop”. She remains unconvinced, and told me that “I don’t see how they can make a profit. There must be strings attached”.

There certainly will be bloody strings attached if this goes on for much longer.

Having spent much of my ‘gainful’ employment in the NHS, I doubt whether there’s any other sector that can match the sickie throwing that goes on in the ‘elf service. Now I don’t begrudge anyone the odd Friday off or just waking up one morning and thinking ‘fuck this’ and going back to sleep, but the NHS seems to employ a disproportionate amount of the less robust members of our society.

Yet again I have to endure another teeth grindingly depressing day in the Doofus’ company because of two of my colleagues less than sturdy constitutions. Granted I knew one of them was going to be off today, being as she’s been signed off for the past FIVE weeks by her doctor. Frankly, she ain’t going to be back in work until 2007. Since April when I started back here again she’s been signed off sick for around three months+, which when you take into account the generous NHS holidays for long-term staff members (you can’t fire ‘em and they never leave) means she’s probably in work for around 60% of the year.

My other colleague is also off at least two days every couple of weeks with some ailment or the other. If she hears of some kind of bug that’s floating around it’s a safe bet she’ll go down with it within 24 hours. Medical science should be running tests on her, because her body is like a lightning rod for any kind of common cold that’s in the air. Right now I know she’s in bed reading the Guardian, drinking tea, listening to Radio 4 and pissing herself laughing because she knows I’ve got another 24 hours in this room wondering whether suicide actually is painless or not.

Doofus is never, ever ill. She would kick grannys and young children out of the way to ensure she gets a flu jab. She’s like the teacher in school you prayed would get sick but was always there, day after depressing day. If the Northern Line was blown up, bus drivers went on strike and cyclists launched a ride slow and set up blockades on Camden High Street she’d still make it in on time.

But hey, it’s already 9.35. Woo-hoo!

An entire day in the office with just the Doofus for company. It’s only 9.45 and I feel like I’ve been here for seven years. Already, the refrigerator hum is like my own pulse. The heat pipes just coughed and Johanna is definitely not here.

I’m so tempted to walk up to one of the psychiatric wards in the hospital and tell them I’m hearing voices in my head (it’s the only human communication I’m going to experience from 9-5 today), I feel like self-harming and I’m definitely displaying signs of suicidal ideation.

Hey, it's 10 am. That means only another seven hours to last out...

Returning to work this morning from my time ducking waves and catching dinosaurs in da Wales, the email at the top of my inbox in work was from London Jobs, helpfully enquiring how my search for new gainful employment is going. Aah. That’s what I’ve been meaning to get round to for a couple of years, the job search.

However, god bless Doofy and her spirited attempts to light a fire under my ass and get me where I belong amongst the BlackBerry toting go-getters. El Doofy has been in the Cotswalds for a long weekend with ‘friends’ (the Flanders were the first faces that came to mind). However, when I get fired a new job I will miss classics such as the following, when Doofy described a highlight of her trip:

“I went to a pub for lunch and had steak and kidney pie. It had a hard crust and gravy. [dramatic pause] It’s nice to eat well in the country.”

Fuck me. Watching Star Trek for the first time and eating steak and kidney pie (with gravy!) within a few weeks. Her endorphins must be high-fivin’ like mad right now.