Periodically I like to spend my evenings imbibing industrial quantities of fermented barley-based beverages followed by lengthy peregrinations through the metropolis' darkly stagnant streets. It was a Thursday night and my blood was approximately 20 per cent aftershave and 75 per cent Tennent's Super special brew. The rest being... well... haemoglobin I suppose.

In any case on this particular occasion I was accompanied by several other mendicants of ill-repute. I exuberantly decided to play a little trick on them.

I ran ahead some distance out of their view and spotted some railings on the side of the street, beyond which lurked sufficient undergrowth to hide in for the purposes of launching a scare attack. However it was a high fence replete with perilous looking spears on the top.

Fearless as ever I manouvred my size 11 right foot on to the top of the railing and attempted to haul myself over and catapult into the soft bushes beyond. Sadly one of my laces became caught on a spike and I swang forwards into the earth face first. My right foot was now tethered to the fence, as the laces had pulled tight and my foot could not be wrested from the iron grip of my boots.

In this position I was unable to see the street and listened grimly as my trampmates walked past noisly, singing a bibulous shanty and seemingly oblivious to my position. Perhaps my failure to vocalise my distress was due to the amount of intoxicants in my blood.

'Help, help,' I eventually stuttered. Nothing. It seemed this was a particularly quiet spot. I began to imagine myself trapped for days, surviving on nettle leaves and small worms clawed from the soggy earth. Eventually a beautiful, slim young lady would realise my predicament and initiate a daring rescue before offering me a share of her bed while I recovered - albeit she hardly allowed me much time to sleep...

I was just beginning to enjoy myself when an impossibly cheerful Australian male poked his head over the railings and admired my inverted form. 'G'Day mate!' he greeted me inanely. I pondered whether to tell him to fuck off, but alas, self-preservation won the day.

Perhaps my greatest blunder in life was in seeking employment as a manual labourer and member of the proletariat. My only excuse is that I was cruelly deceived by moustache-twiddling bourgeoisie types and the location of my work: The Cushion Factory.

Naturally I assumed that this would be a relaxing job, given the preponderance of sleeping material to hand. Of course I had failed to understand the precise meaning of the term employment.

No sooner had I arrived at the dust-swept establishment when I was initiated into one of the most pointless tasks which are not already the exclusive preserve of womankind. Namely the conversion of inside-out cushion covers into covers ready for filling.

I had just mastered this demanding skill when I was transferred to the vast blowing machine that transformed the flimsily-sewn cotton sheets into exciting, dynamic and brightly-coloured couch accoutrements.

Sadly, I knew my career was doomed as soon as my first cushion exploded in a shower of synthetic feathers to the cheers of my unsympathetic colleagues.

Not a week goes by without someone suggesting I take out my cock so they can remove my foreskin. It is getting rather stressful, particularly in these wintry conditions when frankly I could do with every layer at my disposal.

Sadly, I was perusing the news when yet again it was reported that circumcision was great, just right, a veritable boon to mankind. I'm starting to take it personally.

Over the last few years a variety of studies, perhaps religiously or racially motivated, have suggested that stripping off my foreskin will reduce my chances of contracting AIDS by 50 per cent. The reasons for this the studies do not supply beyond suggesting the fleshy material therein is specifically targeted by the virus.

Now they are telling me that removing this naturally-occurring sheath will not inhibit my enjoyment of sexual matters.

Well I've already had enough of people telling me how circumcision makes you cleaner, and how the Jews have been doing it since they started worshipping Yahweh in particular, and how it may even increase the size of your manhood. I could get dragged into a basic discussion about how to contract HIV at this point, but the truth is I was born with my foreskin, it has never caused me any problems, and no amount of pseudo-moralising hiding behind a so-called scientific study will deprive me of it.

Oh! Beard!
not as bad as I feared...
it is regrettably true,
I was initially not much impressed with you.
But now you have gone
I admit I was fond,
of you, untamed ghost,
that I could hardly call growth,
over which I would linger,
and think: Is that ginger?
But once I was over the seven-day itch,
you stood for more than an emotional glitch,
I was quite literally
attached to you, too.
Still, you knew, as soon as you grew,
that it would all have to end with the knife...

It took only seconds to cut short your life.

This tawdry tale began when a young lady invited me around to her establishment to view a film she had rented from the video shop. Predictably, the film was not only garbage but one I had seen before only too recently and vowed never to watch again. Thus it was only a matter of time before my overactive glands began focusing on more profitable activities. And so it happened that we began kissing on the couch, the natural precursor to my lips wandering below the equator. I was just embarking on my epic journey when she suggested we retire to the bedroom, as her flatmates had just walked in through the door. I agreed, having little desire to parade my abilities in front of an appreciative audience.

Upon the bed, things soon progressed under my direction until I began performing services to the female orgasm industry. I continued, proud of my unselfish devotion to the cause, when suddenly the lights went out. A power cut. I stopped my gesticulations to admire a happenstance I had never experienced before that day.

It was then the epitaph on our encounter was delivered. She said, moodily: 'Well that was crap.'

I am awoken every morning at 07:28:12 by Prokofiev's Dance of the Knights booming darkly across my wood-lined bedroom from an antique phonograph the size of a small elephant. The great bay windows are flung open and the ornate duvet thrown back to expose my smooth, moisturised body. My cock*, worn down brown like the head of a walking cane, springs up splendidly erect and twitches in the breeze until its needs are assiduously taken care of by the busty chambermaid recruited specifically for the purpose. Everything is timed perfectly to climax at precisely 7.30am. The trumpets blare and fade and I lie there in silence as I wilt, my ardour cooling in step with my expunged bodily fluids.

Too nice. The kind of person who dismounts from his horse to kiss lepers for no reason. Notoriously once gave a beggar all the money in his pocket, which usually amounts to about 32 pence. Unnecessarily popularised the occupation of Tramp, and fouled up the whole idea by bringing God into the equation.

Most famous for talking to animals, so quite clearly a bit of a halfwit. Also first to create 3D Nativity using real donkeys, oxen, sheep, horses etc, although many criticised him for exploiting living creatures for advertising purposes. Wrote poetry in Italian instead of Latin, possibly because he lost his dictionary. Received stigmata, the five wounds of Christ, almost certainly when he stumbled home drunkenly, forgot his keys and had to climb in through the downstairs window. Died, carelessly in my opinion, of starvation which Christians ludicrously celebrate by having a Feast Day. Made a saint two years later by a bloke in a big hat called Gregory.

The Franciscan order were later responsible for conducting the Inquisition, using sharp pointy things to torture and kill heretics.

One point in his favour: He thought Poverty was a good thing, a sentiment which puts to shame those who seek to rid the world of the poor by means of a cheap plastic wristband.

I was perambulating down the street when I began to notice the irritating ululations of a provincial orchestra announcing my arrival at the supermarket. Immediately the population surrounding me revolved to look nervously in my direction, each glance marked by the shrill downward surge of horsehair on violin. I stopped dead, and so did the musical accopmaniment. As I began to creep forward self-consciously, an invisible hand plucked at a taut viola. ''Ye Gods!'' I exclaimed, ''Leave me in peace!'' Kettle drums and cymbals clashed discordantly. Even my peremptory attempts at free thought were crushed by yet more whisperings from the massed strings. And so I turned on my heels, a beaten tramp, chased only by the frenzied pooterings of a three-hundred-lipped beast on clarinet, flute and trumpet.