HUMOUR

ARE you unsure if your colleagues are genuinely sad to see you go? If you received any of these leaving presents, the answer is ‘no’.

The cheapest bottle of Tesco wine

Warm. Cheap-looking label. Plonked onto your desk without the basic courtesy of being in a gift bag. It’s a clear sign your colleagues regard you with the same affection as the cleaner who shows up at 6pm. Less, in fact, because they at least give him an awkward nod because he does a good job. Unlike you.

A Colin the Caterpillar cake

In the world of office politics, Colin the Caterpillar cakes are reserved strictly for birthdays. Presenting one to a colleague as a leaving present is either an embarrassing error or a veiled insult. Whoever organised this gift knew exactly what they were doing, and that was sending a massive ‘f**k off’ in the shape of a chocolate roll. A chocolate roll they hope you choke on.

A tenner in a card

Cheap as well as thoughtless. There are a dozen people in your team, which means everyone chipped in less than a quid. And you’re fairly certain this is the same note you donated to Nikki from HR’s birthday present fund. At least you’re not a tenner down any more, but even a HMV gift card would have been better.

A pen from the stationery cupboard

A monogrammed fountain pen is up there with carriage clocks when it comes to well-meaning but rather old-fashioned leaving gifts. Being handed a biro from the stationery cupboard means your colleagues forgot you were leaving or simply couldn’t give a shit. If anything, your boss will be more upset to see a useful pen go than you.

A round of applause

This is a gesture of appreciation, not a gift. They’re probably clapping in an insincere way too, like at a school play or when someone drops a pint glass. If they look happy it’s only because they’re glad to wave you off. Don’t kid yourself they’re trying to put on a brave face, their happiness is genuine as they enjoy this glorious moment they’ve been waiting for for years.

A 40-YEAR-OLD man has insisted that quitting his job, moving his stuff into storage and going travelling to find himself is definitely not a sign that his life has quietly derailed.

Digital sales co-ordinator Julian, not his real name, claims his decision to cash in his entire life in favour of living out of a backpack in locations where nobody knows him shows his questing, independent spirit, not that he has nothing to lose. 

He said: “I’m selling everything I own to fund the trip. Who needs a lifetime of accumulated possessions, anyway? Not me. 

“This has nothing to do with my still being single, or failing to get promoted, or not being able to get a mortgage or any of that materialist stuff. I just think there’s more to life, you know? 

“I’m going alone for spiritual reasons, and because it’s more free, and yeah, I suppose that means I can reinvent myself and my past and tell bronzed Aussie surfer girls I’m called Coyote, but that’s not the point or anything. 

“It’ll be great. Wind in my hair – what’s left of it – sand between my toes and there’s no way a random desperate drunk Englishman on the verge of middle-age will get robbed or conned.

“Hostels are downright luxurious now and I’m so young at heart that all the 18-year-old backpackers will be delighted to hang out with me. They won’t judge like women here do. Also the locals will love me, not least in countries with a low GDP.”

“This isn’t running away, it’s reconnecting with who I really am. I just hope that’s not who I am now, only sweatier, poorer and wearing elephant-print trousers.” 

A MAN who cannot be bothered to read the lengthy text his girlfriend sent him has gambled on replying with the tears-of-laughter emoji.

Faced with a dense block of text running the entire length of his phone screen, weary boyfriend Tom, not his real name, decided to take a chance on a stock response and get back to the pornography he was very much enjoying.

He said: “Odds are it’s an anecdote about what’s happened to her today at work. I’m not skimming that. What I’ve done is kindly acknowledge her need to express it.

“Could be something serious, however, so it’s a casual but high-stakes game of chance, like Russian roulette. If I’m lucky I’ve saved myself precious minutes and brain power with a few simple clicks. If I’m unlucky? The next message will be double the length.

“Is it my fault she’s never learned to break up the message with paragraph spacing? Ideally, she’d send over a succinct bullet-pointed list of key details but that’s not how women work. I guess I should be grateful it’s not a sodding voice note.

“Anyway, here goes nothing! If it goes sideways I can always backtrack and say I accidentally clicked the wrong emoji. She won’t believe it but it’s a solid distraction.”

Girlfriend Nikki Hollis said: “Fair play to Tom, he’s taken it very well. I thought he’d be livid about being dumped over text.”

A MAN who has no time to himself due to his three children is jealous of victims of the male loneliness epidemic.

Despite media concern about the growing number of men who are socially isolated, solitude-starved Julian, not his real name, feels endless loneliness would be a massive lifestyle improvement.

He said: “Quietly drifting through the years without having to watch Moana hundreds of times? Where do I sign up?

“When I read about these neckbeards starved of human contact and intimacy, I can’t help but wish I were in their position. Imagine how incredible it must feel to get a full night’s sleep and then do f**k all. It’s like some crazy dream.

“I used to be like those guys, desperate to get laid and thinking a girlfriend would solve all my problems. Nope. Now I have to drag myself to kids’ football practice every Sunday and watch my bank balance nosedive.

“I get that it’s a serious social problem, but so is paying £60 just to go to the cinema. And it’s not like I’ve got time to make friends, either. Those sad bastards don’t realise how good they’ve got it.”

Julian’s son James said: “With that attitude, dad might get what he wants soon. At least that’s what mum says.”

SEXY girls in their early 20s looking for rich men two decades older to give them luxury lifestyles have nothing but disappointment ahead.

Attractive, work-averse young women planning to trade their looks for financial stability are finding any man within an acceptable age range does not own a house, has not paid off his student loans and asks to borrow money on the second date.

Aspiring influencer Hannah, aged 21,not her real name or age, said: “I was fishing for London townhouse, Dubai apartment and Soho House membership. Instead I’m lucky if they’re in a flatshare.

“Tradwife TikToks are making finding a suave, booted-and-suited man in finance seem easier than it is. My last date does evening shifts at Tesco and wore a T-shirt with an anime character on. He was 45.”

22-year-old twink Josh, not his real name, said: “It’s no easier being gay. Once, these looks would buy me an international financier with a stocked wine cellar who flies me to the Basel art fair. Not a 38-year-old who expects me to put out after a backie on his Lime bike.”

Cash-strapped millennial James, not his real name, said: “I’d love the kind of relationship where everyone looks at the girl I’m with and says she’s just with me for my money.

“But you know who’s only interested in me for my money? My landlord. And I have to pay him to sit around doing f**k all before I can pay some hot young piece to do the same thing.”

A MAN unable to interpret what a call centre worker in a different country is saying to him is clearly a thoroughgoing racist, colleagues have agreed.

Rubin, not his real name, call to his energy supplier to correct his bill, in which he is suffering some comprehension difficulties, proves he is despite all previous impressions basically an EDL footsoldier.

Co-worker Hannah, not her real name, said: “I’m not one to judge, but that’s the fourth time in a row he’s asked her to repeat herself. Is he trying to humiliate her?

“He claims he’s a liberal Labour voter with progressive views on immigration, but he’s basically shaming that poor woman, who’ll be on very much less than minimum wage, by asking her if she knows the phonetic alphabet. True colours? Shown.”

Boss Kah Heng, not his real name, agreed: “There’s no place in my business for a man who shouts ‘Hayes! Hayes! Like the Hayes f**king car manual!’ down the phone to a woman whose first language is not English and is doing her best. Can he speak Urdu? No.

“In this situation, the onus is very much on Rubin to do the work and break this linguistic stalemate. Instead he’s losing his temper much as Hitler or Nigel Farage would. Monster.”

Hayes said: “I accept I’m in the wrong here. And when I get a revised bill for £55,442 for the quarter it will be my own bigoted fault.”

EVEN when idiot parents deign to give their child an ordinary name they cannot get it right, for there is no spellcheck in the registry office. The bearers of these are marked for life:

Aimee

A misspelling so commonplace it’s now deemed acceptable, this like everything unacceptable began in America. Presumably the parents knew the word ‘aim’ already from time in the armed forces and/or first-person shooters, and had never got far enough into the alphabet to be familiar with the letter ‘y’. So two Es it is.

Michalle

Lends a little continental sophistication, the parents comfort themselves after realising their error. Meanwhile the child spends her life on the phone to call centres saying ‘no, it’s actually C-H-A-L-L’ to her own humiliation. She won’t ever forgive her mum and dad for what they’ve done. Nobody ever could.

Steaven

Faced with two choices, Steven or Stephen, these parents chose a third way. A wrong way. A f**k up, or a purposeful decision? What was the goal? Uniqueness? Originality? Annoying his teachers so much they refuse to say his name, giving him a free ride on all manner of developmental issues? Sometime normal people can be as abhorrent as celebrities.

Leesa

You know instantly that these parents spell ‘lose’ with two Os. So daft or lazy they’ve gone with phonetic spelling, they’ve inadvertently come up with something almost acceptably middle-class. Coupled with a double-barrelled surname will mean this child almost certainly grows up to have a credit score she doesn’t deserve.

Stefany

These parents do know the letter Y, to their child’s detriment. They’ve f**ked her over twice with first an F and then a Y, creating a name that seems more like a newly-coined adjective meaning ‘a bit like Stefan’.

Micheal

There is a silver lining here in that if you’re hanging with the uneducated, they’ll swear this is the correct spelling. To the point of laughing at and/or fighting those who dare correct it. Stick to the lower of society’s strata, this name is saying, and never dare to dream. A message which will be heeded.

A WOMAN has made up a feline scapegoat to blame for any personal noises or interruptions when in meetings with co-workers.

Recruitment consultant Carolyn, not her real name, created the entirely fictional cat after colleagues on her weekly team catch-up check-in workflow management session queried excessive gurgling, munching, and swearing coming from her.

Carolyn: “It’s an excuse for everything. Farts? Cat. Sighing? Cat. Laughing when Darren can’t work the slide deck? Cat. That clattering? That’s not me doing the washing up. It’s the cat adorably knocking stuff over.

“My manager can bollock me, but no one can berate an innocent animal unaware of quarterly targets. One time I took a meeting on the toilet and blamed it on the cat throwing up.

“It provides me with a bulletproof alibi. I even claimed the cat was named ‘F**ker’ – I said I named him after my ex – to give me an excuse to suddenly exclaim that during company town halls.

“It really is invaluable. This is nothing to do with me wishing I had a cat but not wanting to be known as a cat woman.”

Manager Tom said, “We know Carolyn doesn’t have a cat. No real cat owner would ever have the willpower to go this long without showing the rest of us at least twenty photos of it, all of which look the same.”

By White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt

THE president has the greatest bruised hand in history, and the liberal media’s speculation about it proves what liars they are. This is how he got it:

He punched through a foot of steel

The wall between the US and Mexico, the greatest wall in history, is 18 feet of solid concrete with a core of US steel. It is also a mile high. Nevertheless, the president was unhappy with it. ‘I could punch through that core,’ he said, and proceeded to do so. ‘Make it titanium,’ he said, and it was done. No immigrants will enter the US ever again.

He spends nights working for ICE

Not content with being the most important president since George Washington – a verbatim quote from Washington’s ghost – our president is out there on the streets of Minneapolis every night rounding up illegals. One murderously drove an SUV at him at 115mph. He swatted it aside one-handed then humanely arrested the driver.

His body is spontaneously generating gold

So rarefied and wonderful is the president’s anatomy that he has now begun to generate 24-carat gold from within his very bloodstream. To benefit the nation this is being extracted and placed in the US gold reserve at Fort Knox, which because it has his blood in it is now 100 per cent owned by the president and legally his to do what he likes with.

Europe did it

Europe, which is the culmination of the world’s total evil erupting like a volcano of bitterness and spite, needed to be set right by Trump this week. He went over there and he told them how it was going to be. Sadly, their stale decadence sets off his allergies, manifesting as a bruise like allergies do.

Biden in a mech suit

Sleepy Joe Biden, the worst president in American history who rigged the 2020 election, smashed into the White House wearing a Neon Genesis Evangelion mech suit to kill the president. He did not succeed, and lay beaten, broken and bleeding at the end of the savage encounter. The president suffered slight bruising and disturbed sleep.

A REFORMED character has admitted he cannot bring to mind the last occasion when he exposed his bare buttocks to the world as a statement.

Martin, not hos real name,, aged 38, is now so far removed from his mooning youth that he is a Lib Dem councillor but misses the clear, forthright communication that was dropping his trousers and pressing his bottom through the rear window of a moving car.

Bishop said: “It was an accepted gesture of non-compliance when I was young, much more effective than the middle finger or V-sign. I’d call it performance art.

“I did it at school, Mr Bishop never catching me because he couldn’t positively identify it was my arse. I did it in Magaluf against a bar window, and then successfully chatted up the woman I’d mooned at. I did it off a motorway bridge.

“I even did it after being dumped by a girl once, at the end of her garden path with her parents watching. I like to think they still talk about me from time to time.

“God, when was the last time? Maybe Warren’s stag do, when I pressed these now-hirsute buttocks against a minibus window and mooned a whole nightclub queue to the applause of the men? Years ago.

“Do men still moon? Or have smartphones killed this cheeky form of self-expression, like everything else good in this world? I hope so. I hope so for their sakes.”

A 21-YEAR-OLD who has never mentioned it previously is suddenly saying he spent a month in Nuuk during his gap year.

Jordan, not his real name, studying PPE at King’s College London, has over the last few days begun talking about the ‘life-changing’ experience of staying with an Inuit family for a month in 2023 and the ‘appreciation of their rich culture’ it gave him.

He said: “Yeah, there’s all these people talking about Greenland but have they actually been there, like I have? I’ve never mentioned it before? I probably skipped over it.

“It was meant to be a stop-off on my flight to Paraguay but when my luggage was lost a family took me in, and the month I spent in their simple wooden hut has resonated with me ever since. Their warmth, their emphasis on family, their diet of smoked fish.

“I earned my keep by cutting blocks of ice and transporting it on dogsled, their trade since time immemorial. It also happens at the beginning of Frozen? I wouldn’t know, I eschew Western cinema.

“The patriarch gave me a seal fur and told me I would always be his irniq, or ‘son’. So I understand Greenland better than anyone and might fight for them, if I’m not more useful co-ordinating the resistance via my podcast.”

He added: “That’s where I got this iron arrowhead I wear around my neck always. I told you it was my ayahuasca retreat in Colombia? That was a different arrowhead.”

A MAN who has sworn off drinking this month has clarified that it only counts as drinking if it is in the pub, for God’s sake.

Martin, not his real name, has proudly told everyone he is laying off the booze for the month but was flabbergasted to learn they expected that meant at home as well.

He said: “You can’t not drink at all, can you? In January? I’m not superhuman.

“I will keep my promise not to set foot in the pub all month, even on quiz nights. Not a pint of Guinness will pass my lips. If you don’t think that’s an accomplishment you don’t know me.

“But at home? That’s my own business. You can’t stop me and you’ll never even know I’ve been drinking unless you see through the kitchen window where I don’t have a blind because it caught fire.

“It’s still one hell of an achievement. Drinking without the camaraderie, the warm haze of shared intoxication, the fruit machine. I tell you, I’ll be bloody glad when John’s pouring me a pint again. Don’t tell me that’s not hardship.”

He added: “Actually, I’m getting to quite like drinking alone at home now. You can start earlier.”