Have a drink on me

The World of Bollocks doesn't often get moralistic, but it's time to talk about a poison in society today that eats away at the very fabric of, erm, society. Ruins people who can't control themselves with it. Destroys families. Leads kids to make stupid mistakes, and is rightly illegal for them to partake in. Giving it up for a month? Ye gods, it should be given up for ever. I can only support calls for it to be banned, and soon.

That's right, I'm talking about rooting.

Dry July. Fucking meh. How about No Sextember? Why is giving up the turps for a month in any way worth celebrating? Why is denying yourself pleasure or happiness a worthy exercise, given we're only here for a good time not a long time and no fucker can prove conclusively otherwise? Why are we in a headlong rush to out-smug each other in a race to the bottom to appease the punishing twats who want to run their lives and yours by actuarial tables or religious rote? How is Dry July any more worthy than the fucking Jonas Brothers peddling Disney-approved chastity and abstinence to hormonal teenagers? Or the Taliban cutting people's fucking heads off for not agreeing with their world view? It's all just different means of trying to compel behaviour change, after all.

Let's face it, people - everything fun in life is under permanent attack from moralistic nimrods. Drinking will kill you. Smoking gives you cancer. Sex gives you syphilis, AIDS and teenage pregnancy. Red meat makes the Earth cry. Driving cars more than 100km/h will make you explode spontaneously and catch fire, unless for some reason that the RTA haven't entirely explained, you're in Europe. The inter-google is full of sex-offending lolcats who want to steal your identity and sell it to Nigerian scammers. Everything you love will kill you.

You can give in to those people, and life your life the way they want you to. Or you can tell each and every peddler of this Dry July bullshit to go and fuck themselves with the blunt end of a Grolsch swingtop.

Some people, of course, need to get off the grog. But if you need to give up the drink for a month to prove a point, you probably need to give up the drink, full stop. You're not cut out for it, clearly. You need to retire from international drinking. You, Olly Reed and Freddie Fittler. But if you need peer pressure and celebrity bullying to stop you doing something that's not doing you any good, you're probably incredibly stupid. You don't need or deserve applause for giving up something that was fucking stupid to carry on with in the first place. 'Erm I've stopped putting me dick in the blender...' *golf clap* I think it's a sign of people who were praised too much for their toddler-age potty movements. Suddenly they think that every little turd they extrude is deserving of canonization.

But, of course, it's for charity! And that makes it alright, of course. How can I say any of this when it's for charity? You can do whatever the fuck you like for charity and no bastard can complain. To steal (another) line from Alexei Sayle, if Hitler had invaded Poland for spina bifida, it would have been no fucking problem would it?

It's July on Thursday. Drink, or don't drink. Your call. Just don't expect smug backpats, handshakes or reacharounds from the rest of society. Nobody cares about your self-denial, your self-delusion or your self-abuse. You might say it's a bit of harmless fun. I say it's the thin end of the fucking wedge. The line in the sand lies before us, scratched into the earth with the point of a well-worn corkscrew. Make your choice. Make your stand.

Me, I'll be at the bar, making up for the rest of you dead weight.
Chin chin.

The Doctor is OUT.