The lungs are holding a peaceful protest, the occasional crackling coughing fit being the only real sign that things could get unpleasant. I am the evil dictator, attempting to silence them with smoky abuse, ignoring their pleas for clemency as I suck on yet another burning stick of crap. This isn’t going to be easily resolved.

Why don’t people get addicted to things which aren’t bad for them? Like fresh air, or spinach? I wonder if it’s possible to smoke spinach?

Things have got a little out of control on the smoking front this week because I’ve been in Dover again, at the No Hope Hotel. The budget for what is tastefully referred to as the ‘overflow project’ is beyond pitiful. What overflow boils down to is a place to keep everybody they don’t really know what to do with, and are hoping will just go away. We ended up making bingo cards out of scrap paper to keep everybody entertained. I had to keep going outside for a fag and a discrete kick of an inanimate object every twenty minutes or so, to avoid handing out kerosene and matches to the boys and advising them to burn the place down.

Interestingly. I met the head of Kent Social Services at a conference this week, the woman clearly thinks she is shit hot. I’d say part of this assumption was true. What we need is Anneka Rice and her super keen team to come on down and renovate the entire place. She must have a window, last time I saw her on the telly she was dressed as an elf and being poked fun at by Ant and Dec. Does anybody have a contact number?

It was a slightly muggy evening in late August. Mjohnson and Esmerelda, his primate companion for the evening, were sipping cocktails on the terrace of the exclusive Pomme de Terre restaurant in central Soho. Johnson was admiring the way the fading light had softened Esmerelda’s chimpy features. In profile, she resembled a young Billie Piper.

This was the all-important third date. Johnson swilled tequila nervously round his mouth. He knew that, if he was able to maintain the pace and wit of his conversation, Esmerelda would be coming home with him tonight. He watched fondly as she used both paws to lift her glass to her protruding lips, drained it and fished the fruit garnish out with her fingers. She sucked on the slice of orange noisily, before throwing it at him. He felt his loins twitch.

‘Shall we get the bill darling?’

After quite a nasty argument with a taxi driver about Esmerelda gnawing a large hole in the back seat of his cab, pulling out the foam interior and trying to stuff it down Johnson’s trousers, the mood was somewhat stifled. But once inside the house, he rectified the situation with a blast of Barry White, a quick flick of the dimmer switch and some Penguins he’d found at the bottom of the biscuit barrel. Another argument ensued as he tried in vain to persuade Esmerelda to remove the wrapping before consuming the chocolate but she began to shriek and beat her chest in a frankly arousing manner. Christ, he loved strong women.

‘Shall we take these upstairs?’ he murmured in her bristly ear.

A night of sublime and all-consuming passion followed. There were screeches. Nibbles. An orchestra. Afterwards, Esmerelda lovingly searched through Johnson’s hair for parasites, as he lay back and planned a honeymoon in the Maldives, a ski season in Aspen. Body popping down the local disco on a Friday night, Sunday morning browsing at B&Q…

But reader, should you think this tale has an unrealistically happy ending, then think on! For it’s all turned sourer than a pickled egg after a day in the sun. It seems there was some sort of dispute between the pair over the last Rolo. Insults were hurled. Faeces was flung. Esmerelda has launched a vicious smear campaign against her former lover, who now faces up to ten years in jail for acts of bestiality. How low can a chimp go? Pretty fucking low.

We know that Johnson is innocent. He has never shown anything but the greatest respect for the simian population. To accuse him of taking advantage of a member of a group of animals he has only ever sought to learn from, to emulate, and occasionally, to romance, is frankly, an act of deep and shocking cruelty.

Something must be done! The madness must be stopped! Johnson's trousers must be returned to him, and he should be released back into the wild without delay. We shall not rest until justice has been done.

Yours sincerely,
Mildly disgruntled mob

N.B. In response to this article, a spokeswoman for Esmerelda made the following statement:

I am mildly pissed on wine bought with the company credit card. Just think how many flip flops we could have bought with that same amount. And we've both got executive suites. Why are we not housing these children in the Ramada Dover?

My sister is planning a halloween party. Being one of these performing arts types, she's not satisfied with some crepe paper pumpkins and a few bowls of Haribo Monster Mix.

There will be a halloween party mix, consisting of 'The Monster Mash', 'Thriller', 'Ghost Town' and urm, well we ran out of inspiration at this point, so any suggestions gratefully received, and taken full credit for.

She is going to smear cat food up the banisters, plant a sheep's head in the fridge, and possibly pay somebody to squat naked on top of the fridge, dressed as a bat.

There will be themed rooms. I am going to be dressed as Crocodile Dundee, complete with blow-up crocodile that I will wrestle at various points throughout the evening. Hence the bathroom is being turned into a swamp. The towles will have to go into storage.

Olly has been persuaded to come as a beautiful, mysterious gypsy, and will cast magical predictions and read horoscopes direct from the Sun inside a tent, pitched in our bedroom.

Cath is coming as Boudica, the (allegedly) Celtic warrior-ess. So the front room is presumably going to be some kind of mud hut. Towards the end of the night, she is going to perform a mime act, based on the ITV drama series of Boudica, starring Alex Kingston. Powerful stuff.

We haven't quite decided what to do with the other room, but it may morph into some sort of OAP area, seeing as my dad has promised to make an appearance, festooned in a curtain.

And Johnson is coming as a bedsheet with an enormous blue nose. He's my hero y'know.

Yesterday saw me do something that I had never previously considered. I went to Primark and bought a set of towels, carefully chosen to match the bath mat back at home. Then I went home, and arranged the towels on the rails. Then stood back with tears in my eyes.

NOBODY is permitted to use the towels. We have plenty of faded rags suitable for such towel soiling activities as drying hands or smearing make-up onto. Use those if you must, but don't you touch my show towels.

THESE towels are a statement. They say yes, life here is as soft, fluffy and generally perfect as the bathroom accesories I will not permit you to touch.

In fact, I may progress to making the entire bathroom look but don't touch, and requesting that visitors defecate in the bin.

Unless of course, they come bearing gifts of a tea-cup sized pig variety:

Adopt a pensioner. Sponsor a dog. Do some bloody work. Iron clothes. Find a way to stop mascara from smudging. Eat more green leafy vegetables. Write to local MP. Do 100 stomach crunches every night whilst reading Kafka or James Joyce.

And all whilst presenting an aura of calm, peace, benevolence and purity.

I am taking a child to Croydon on Friday. The child was sent a travel warrant by her social worker, which she gave to me to look after, as we both know she can be a wee bit forgetful. Leaving her key in the lock with the door wide open sort of forgetful.

Anyway, guess who gets back from holiday and can't find the travel warrant? Yes good reader, it is I, Tit For Brains.

So now, a choice presents itself. I can pay for the tickets myself, bearing in mind this will probably cost me around £40, which is not an unreasonable price to pay for avoiding professional humiliation.

Or I can call her social worker, 'fess up, and get a new warrant sent out, bearing in mind that any respect she may have for me will leave the building.

All of our holiday photos got deleted on the last day. Therefore, I am having to steal other peoples.

So. We stayed in a resort called Son Bou. This is a view very similar to the one we had from our apartment.

There was a small yappy dog that needed a bloody good ASBO just up the road, but apart from that, it was as peaceful as it looks.

Here is the beach at Son Bou.

Yes, the weather really was that colour. Those people coming out of the sea are, urm, Rod and Shirley from Huddersfield

The resort boasted a junior disco, several Chinese restaurants, and the only British bar on the island. Yer, we didn’t spend a whole lot of time there. Instead, we went to Binibeca, the oldest village in Menorca, obviously built when people enjoyed lugging their shopping home through very narrow spaces. Or perhaps it used to be some kind of treatment centre of anorexics:

And up this mountain, which is called El Toro, and although it looks like there’s nothing but a BT tower on top, there is also a sanctuary, built by monks way back when tourists didn’t exist and they thought they might get some peace:

We went to lots of other places, but I can't find photos of them.

What else? Ah, here is a typical Menorcan sink, which somebody felt the need to include in their holiday snaps. Well, you can see why:

As this photo shows, I went a few shades darker than caramel, which was a great surprise to everybody:

That’s Bob by the way. Oh, we did have some laughs! He's promised to write, once he's learned how.
I have a feeling we went to that beach actually. Sophie told us a great story about how she was chasing fish underwater, and one looked back over its shoulder at her.

As official navigator, the map I had to follow was similar to this:

They don’t seem to feel the need to number the roads on the island. What they obviously need is a damn good invasion, get some sort of system in place.

I attribute the 'map', the confusing road signs and the unreasonable expectation that you should drive on the wrong side of the road to our almost colliding with another car on the last night of our holiday.

Happily, there was plenty of this to calm things down: