Scabbing fags, making you laugh when you’ve been ditched and Saturday night boozing. For these and indeed hundreds of other reasons, your mates are absolutely top-notch. But just occasionally they can turn, like the proverbial worm, and become the thorn in your side, the stone in your shoe, the sand in your undercrackers…

When Ashley brought her new man to the pub we were all a tad over–excited. You see Ashley’s been single for a good long stretch. Not for any sensible reason, her breath doesn’t smell like she’s keeping syphilitic hamsters under her tongue or anything like that. She’s just a bit…picky…

Then out of the blue she announced that some bloke called ‘Chris’ was coming to the pub with her and that she’d been seeing him for a month?! Holy Jezebels she kept that quiet. No wonder she’s spent the last few weeks walking around with a smile like an elephant in a bun factory.

Well when the pair arrived it was a right old to-do. Anyone would have thought the cast of Hollyoaks had just walked in. All eyes were on them.

Turns out this Chris is a thoroughly good egg. No problems there. Polite. Good teeth. Clean shoes…all the usual ‘must-haves’. So once we’d established his credentials we all just relaxed into the evening. But you know how these things go, a couple of drinks and everyone is relaxed, a few more and the brain cells go out of the window. Daniel, a chap who can afford to lose brain cells fewer than most, decided –albeit good-naturedly- to tell Chris all about Ashley’s lack of recent activity. Not in a mean way, Heavens no, just in a ‘it’s so good she’s finally met someone, none of us can understand why the lads have been steering clear of ‘her’ type way.

Well-meaning it might have been, but stupid on a whole other level. Telling anyone – let alone a new man- that guys have been avoiding her like the plague is going to convince him that it’s perhaps because she actually has the plague – or something equally icky.

Fortunately Chris got so blind drunk it turned out he couldn’t remember a single word any of us had uttered, phew.

I always think that the best thing to do is to attach any potential ‘problem chums’ to a long piece of elastic. That way the second they open their chops to unleash some hideous piece of embarrassment you can peeyoyong them back to your side whereby you can Sellotape their mouth shut before releasing them back onto an unsuspecting world. It’s worth the cost of the elastic, believe me.

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