Just when you think the stupidometer is at its limit...

...along come two who have pushed the dial all the way up to 11.

I saw this first one earlier today but was too gobsmacked to know what to say. There have been three tips to it by Email too, each tipster equally astounded by the stratospheric level of idiocy it contains.

If you are drinking anything, put it down now.

Ready?


Smoking can make your nipples drop off.

I warned you, didn't I? Encouraged by those twenty gazillion deaths per minute from passive smoking or whatever today's number is, widely believed by the terminally gullible even though the real figure is actually zero, the brains of the antismokers are just freewheeling now. The gullible will accept even this. Comments show that some of them already have.

If you want to prove yourself a non-smoker, get a peephole bra or shirt and put your nipples on display. You can prove you don't smoke because you still have those bits. Be aware that prospective employers, landlords and council officials might want to tweak them to check they aren't latex fakes.

No need for expensive blood-testing, because aside from a tobacco stench detectable (and still toxic) fifteen miles away, a tangible cloud of fumes announcing their arrival like John Carpenter's 'The Fog', teeth like a moonshine hillbilly, a cough that rattles the plates on the shelves and yellowed skin that looks badly in need of ironing, smokers have no nipples.

Makes you wonder why they need all those expensive cotinine tests, doesn't it? Those who can't spot a smoker from a mile away must be dim creatures indeed. Just listen for the foghorns and hide in the church.

I have never heard of anyone's nipples dropping off and I've read and watched everything by Spike Milligan and Monty Python. The nearest I can think of is the 'Belgian phrase book' sketch that included the line 'My nipples explode with delight' and to be fair, John Cleese was buying cigarettes at the time. Maybe that's where the idea came from?

Maybe it came from 'The man who fell to Earth' in which David Bowie plays an alien with detachable nipples. He was smoking in that film. The link between smoking and spontaneous nipple loss is therefore a matter of record, even if only in fiction. Fact, fiction, it's all the same to the medics these days.

In real life, I have never heard of it happening and if it had it would definitely have been in the Daily Mail. My own suspicions, faced with nipple atrophy after breast surgery, would tend more towards a botched operation - but then, the medical profession blames smoking for everything else, so why not for chronic nipple decay also?

The Dawn of the Zombie Nipple is joined today by Death by Shandy.

In a drive to encourage teenagers to give blood, a company gave away bottles of shandy. Not just bottles, but whole cases of the stuff. Enough to distil into almost a pub measure of vodka if your distillation apparatus has 100% recovery.

The medics are Outraged as usual.


A spokesperson from the health authority said: 'Donating blood is a completely altruistic act and NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT) does not welcome or condone this sort of promotional activity in association with the generous act of donation.
'There is also an inappropriate general health message conveyed through this promotion.

It's shandy. Not pub shandy, not half beer and half lemonade. Bottled shandy. The stuff real people used to let five-year-olds drink, back in the days when adults were in charge.The stuff that had no effect on anyone at all, ever, throughout the whole of its existence as a drink, other than to hasten the next trip to the toilet. Liver damage by shandy? Only if you swim in it after having nine-tenths of your liver removed.

They are giving this shandy to students who routinely drink shots of some luminous stuff washed down with the deadliest beer they can find. Shandy will no more encourage them to binge drink than would lemonade.

Lest we develop the notion that the local people are rolling eyes and tut-tutting at this ridiculous over-reaction from the Health Police -

Local residents have also slammed the manufacturer for encouraging binge drinking in Leeds which has one of the country’s largest youth populations.

The locals are fully indoctrinated and have been correctly de-brained on the NHS, and smokers' and drinkers' taxes have paid for it. Surely, encouraging shandy drinking can only be a good thing? Compare it to, say, whacking down gobfuls of barley wine or chugging vodka from the bottle. Wouldn't these people be happier if the students went out on a Saturday night and drank nothing but shandy?

As for the company, surely, surely they must have said what Buckfast said to these nannying simpletons? Surely they responded with 'Git awa' tae buggery, ye daft wee gobshites'?

Last night, Turbo Drinks company spokesman Nigel Tarn, who has previously worked on the launches of Red Bull, Peroni and Crabbie's Alcoholic Ginger beer, admitted the promotion had been a huge error of judgement.
He said: 'We employ numerous freelance staff and require them to create their own promotions.
'One of them naively thought that by doing the promotion they would be highlighting the shortage of blood and ensuring new donors. 
'We now recognize this to have been in poor taste and have terminated the campaign.

Nope. They caved to the Righteous. Idiots. There will now be another push against this company, now that they have shown weakness.

Wait for the whines from the NHS that their blood donor rate has plummeted as all those students take a rather different line from the shandy-sellers. I would like to thank those Righteous for the useful tip they gave in the story too. If you've had a drink in the last 24 hours, they won't suck the blood out of you. Useful to know in case one of the mobile vampire trucks rolls into town.

I am happy to report the single malt flows here this evening thanks to the generosity of donors. It's the Singleton this time and there is enough donated booze-money for more tomorrow. Shandy? Hell no, that's against health regulations so I won't be touching that stuff. Besides, that shandy is made by girlie men who roll over and bleat at the behest of the Righteous. Drinking that stuff will turn you soft and dilute your mind.

I'm smoking too and let me just check - yes, both nipples are in place and there is no sign of blackening, loosening or flaking. So far, so good. Not that I have any real use for them anyway, other than as cold indicators.

Ah, smoke and whisky, twin islands of sanity in a world gone utterly bonkers. My blood is no good to the NHS. It's got sense in it.