“Huge if true.” - me to my bathroom scales, 27 December.

"I don't care if it's fake" will be the phrase of 2026.

Podcasts is it? Ok, try mine: they’re short (20 mins), scripted, funny, full of surreal misleading writing advice, and, best of all, you don’t have to look at me or anyone else. No visuals, pure audio. thewritertype.podbean.com/e/episode-on...

The first bin collection after Christmas is known traditionally as Judgment Day as we pass judgment on our neighbours based on the number of bottles in their recycling.

The opportunity for a period of quiet, sober reflection between the excesses of Christmas and the revelry of New Year’s Eve can easily be avoided by continuing to drink.

Im addicted to cold turkey but I don’t know how to quit it.

Breaking: scientists confirm that the human body is now entirely composed of meat, chocolate, alcohol, guilt, cheese, and apocalyptic dread.

Santa finally gets home. The elves have left and the wife is at her book group. Everything seems flat. He goes to see if the reindeer would like another spin in the sleigh, just for the hell of it, but they're playing poker. Santa has a couple of beers and falls asleep on the couch watching porn.

Boxing Day hunts are happening, and while bellowing wankers gallop through the shires in search of creatures to slaughter, I hope entire families of urban foxes stroll through the tranquil town streets, gorging on post-Christmas delicacies scavenged from their upturned bins.

What to do with Christmas leftovers? All the wrinkled grey meat and old vegetables? I admit that’s not a very nice way to refer to your elderly relatives, but at this point tempers are fraying.

Not all heroes wear capes. Some of them don’t even wear pants. Come on heroes, put on some clothes and sober up for god’s sake, you’re embarrassing yourselves. Think of the children.

Just caught up with the Pope's Christmas message. The guy seems totally obsessed with Christianity.

Watching King Charles listening to the national anthem and thinking “you’re so vain, I bet you think this song is about you.”

Santa's been! He's had the sherry and mince pies! And he's eaten the pizza from the fridge, drunk a bottle of my Scotch and stolen my trousers. And I hope he'll find time to apologise to my neighbours for parking my car on their lawn as I'm too hungover for some reason.

The night before Christmas. No mice, thanks to my humane mousetrap idea: the mouse is lured by a trail of cheese into a tiny cinema showing "Stuart Little." It sees Stuart Little wearing trousers and comprehends its own nakedness. Overcome by shame, it flees to a distant land and never returns.

So I finally find time to go out and buy Christmas presents, and now I have to battle my way through crowds of total idiots who’ve left all their shopping until the last minute! Unbelievable.

I’m old enough to remember when "You won’t believe what happens next!" was clickbait, not US government policy.

6pm: Well, I guess these Christmas presents aren’t going to wrap themselves. *starts drinking* 9pm: Or ARE they?

Dear Santa, for Christmas please give me the wisdom and maturity to accept, finally, that you don’t exist, so I can stop writing to you. And a new iPad.

There is no subject under the sun so fascinating, intricate or challenging that it can’t be made less appealing by a pair of wankers with a podcast.

My favourite moments of 2025 so far have all been naps.

Then they came for the sarcastic people and I was like oh great that's exactly what we need right now well done to all concerned.

Thank you to everyone who bought my books or stories this year. If you enjoyed my work, please find time to post a review. If you didn't, please remember how busy you are. Season's blessings and jingle all the way, holy saints and sinners. X. thewritertype.com

Trump will never win a war on drugs. It's hard enough to win a war even when you're not on drugs.

Very pleased to have won third prize in the Hammond House international Literary Prize. What a lovely Christmas present. Congratulations to the top two.

It’s lucky the shortest day is immediately followed by the longest night, otherwise there would be too much time and nowhere to put it.

It’s absurd to treat Druidism as a legitimate religion. It hasn’t killed nearly enough people. #Solstice

Feeling festive? I can soon fix that. Read my misanthropic seasonal blog. Includes a lament for Scrooge and obligatory reference to Hitler. Enjoy! thewritertype.blogspot.com/2017/12/chri...

People talk a lot of garbage about Stonehenge and the secret wisdom of the ancients who constructed it. If they’d had any wisdom they wouldn’t have built it so close to the A303, which has always been terrible for traffic.

It’s the shortest day. Mind your head.

In the rightwing version of A Christmas Carol, Scrooge gets a good night’s sleep, wakes up refreshed, and goes to Bob Cratchit’s house to cancel Tiny Tim’s medical care and serve an eviction notice on the family.

2025 Quiz of the Year! 1. What the fuck? 2. Seriously, what the actual fuck? 3. Shall we put more brandy in the eggnog?

I must say Donald Trump is looking much better since he had his face redacted.

Home Alone isn’t just a Christmas movie. It’s also a secret app used by delivery drivers to confirm that you’re waiting for them alone in the house, and you can’t hold out any longer and you’re taking a shit, so it’s the perfect time to ring the doorbell.

Anthony Joshua vs Jake Paul wasn’t fair. Nobody stood a chance against such a merciless onslaught of relentless advertising, cynical promotion, and rampant greed.

Parliament is now in recess, and it's the MP's mums I feel sorry for, trying to find activities to keep them occupied during the Christmas break.

“There was once a boy named David who wrote books for kids (his name was on them, anyway) about smelly grannies and bottoms and any old stuff he thought kids would like but it turned out he was a very naughty boy and now nobody wants to play with him but he’s got all the money, so fuck everyone.”

If any kid of mine started singing about walking in the air and thought they were friends with a flying snowman, I'd be taking a very close look at the list of ingredients in their cough medication.

Santa Claus isn’t coming to town after all. Turns out he’s in the Epstein files.

I’ve done some things in my past that I find difficult to talk about for example there was the time I picked a peck of pickled pepper.

On this day in 1843, "A Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens was published. It’s a cautionary tale, and if only Scrooge had kept his nerve Christmas would be a lot cheaper for all of us.

OUT OF OFFICE CHRISTMAS MESSAGE: I am away from my desk until the whole ghastly business is over. If your call is urgent, please be consoled by knowing that it will soon be irrelevant.

Do you need to wrap a gift that's awkwardly shaped with sharp corners or protrusions? Try this tip: 1. Use thin cardboard, adhesive and bubble wrap to construct a rudimentary time machine. 2. Return to the moment right before you bought the fucking thing. 3. Buy something different.

It’s Edvard Munch’s Home Alone

I was "narrator" in my school nativity play. The story was meant to last ten minutes but I was so nervous that I raced through it in three minutes, so the shepherds and wise men and sheep all had to rush on and off the stage, gabbling and colliding as they tried to keep up with me. Chaos.

Amazing to think Keith Richards is 82 today. No idea what that is in human years.

Late stage capitalism is over. This is early onset armageddon.

An old school socialist is the new head of Unison, the UK’s biggest union, and it raises an important question for Labour's front bench. They're all asking each other what a "socialist" is.

My nativity tableau features Joseph's son from his first marriage arriving back for Christmas with no money and a big bag of dirty laundry after spending his gap year backpacking in Southeast Asia, and asking to crash in the stable until he, like, gets himself sorted.

It's the American dream that anyone can grow up to become president. Now it’s evident that someone can become president without even growing up.