How to Worry Friends and Inconvenience People

Walk up to the altar in a church and try to blow out all the votive candles in one breath, like it's a birthday cake.

Shout "Goodbye cruel world!" as you step off the kerb when crossing the road.

Tell people that in her heyday Margaret Thatcher's nickname was "The Iron Maiden"

Create a Bernie Clifton tribute act with a real ostrich and a fake man

Roll your own tampons

Say “sweet enough already” when someone offers sugar, and “white enough already” when they offer milk

Never go on a date with a dancer. They always try to pay for things “with a dance”.

Tell people those stickers you get on fruit are actually edible

When you see people feeding pigeons in the park, pretend one of them is yours. Give it a name and with increasing frustration, keep calling it back.

Tell people that Stan Laurel’s last words were “Kiss me, Hardy”

Cheer up the grieving. Make two bluetack eyes and a smiley mouth and stick them to gravestones.

Tell people that the button must be pressed once for each person who intends to cross at the pelican crossing so it knows how long to beep for.

Tell people that the numbers on the buttons inside a lift tell it how many passengers there are, so it knows how hard to pull. So if there are three passengers, you press number 3, etc.

Tell people that Oscar Wilde’s last words were “I told you I was gay”

Ask commuters at Euston station where you can find the champagne bar

After you ‘doff’ your hat to the Vice-Chancellor at your graduation, don’t forget to place it gently back on the Vice-Chancellor’s head

If you are fourteen, and into the supernatural, spell your age like this: “Fortean”

Help yourself to one of the free dogs that people leave outside shops

At a wine-tasting event, remember you should never swallow the wine. Always spit it out onto the floor.

When driving slowly down hills in residential areas, always remember to shout “NO BRAKES!” out of the car window

Get on a bus on a hot day and ask the driver if he’s got any Callippos

When the automated voice announces your tube stop, say “right, this is me” loudly to other passengers before leaving the carriage with an equally matter-of-fact “thank-you, driver”

Tell children that, just like military men, dinner ladies are traditionally buried in uniform

Frustratedly try to unlock the door of a burnt-out car

Write “please don’t go” in the leaving card of a colleague you barely know

Only see the last film in a series, because it’s the least buggy version

Phone to book a table in a restaurant and mention discreetly that you’re intending to propose marriage during the meal

Ask for sandwich fillings while pointing at other ones

Say your mobile phone number when you answer it

Describe people going out with much more attractive people as being “20,000 leagues under the sea”

Sit next to the only other person on an otherwise empty bus

Describe people who are pointlessly proud of things as “whyumphant”

Get in behind someone on a revolving door

Live your life in alphabetical order

Put on cardboard 3D glasses when you sit down to the computer in the morning, at the cinema… or simply at home watching TV

Think of yourself as a “Galaxy Defender” without ever mentioning it

Measure the difficulty of games and puzzles in units of the cubic rube

Become “known to the police”, but for good things, like handing in keys frequently or getting your valuables tagged

Hide in someone’s car boot for a medium length journey

Take insulin as a recreational drug

Act as someone else’s eyes and ears when they already have perfectly serviceable ones of their own

Interpret real life events as if they are part of a dream

Pretend that you’re carrying out background Google searches while on the phone by laboriously spelling out key phrases and then interjecting random facts into the conversation

Use sausages instead of those special “construction” balloons

Refer to zoos as “captivity parks”

Hassle the Hoff

Call your home your “shell”

Try to work out where the imaginary face would be on various inanimate objects

Use the comments section of someone else’s blog to start your own hypotaxical micro-blog

After taking money out of a cashpoint, wave it around and exclaim loudly “I won!”

End an exam essay with “The End”, or “Fin” if it is a French exam

Refer to white people’s dreadlocks as “wedlocks”

Refer to your flatmates as “flo-mos” and your housemates as “ho-mos”

Imagine that the titles of novels are the titles of sitcoms, and invent a plausible corresponding plot concept

Only aspire to jobs which have a particular accent attached (police, farmer, pirate etc)

Zigzag down escalators like you’re on a moving stairway in a musical

Only like animals which come in pairs (tortoise and turtle, rabbit and hare etc)

Loudly clap and cheer with recognition and delight when a film mentions its own title: “We’ve got to go back… to the future!” Yay! *clap*clap*clap*clap* Wooo!

Mutter the words “you cock” at the end of every telephone conversation just after you’ve said goodbye

Make chastity belts with Rubik's Cube locks on them, so that only the most intelligent can reproduce

Write “take care — you are our future” in leaving cards of people less than four years younger than yourself

Help young people across the road, because they are “our future”

Send Valentine’s cards to people who have recently interviewed you for jobs

If you call a TV a “gogglebox”, call your computer the “googlebox”

Address letters to a pillarbox

Pretend you are a robot, but one so lifelike that you pass as human — only you know the robot truth!

Insert extra syllables into words, as if you are an old person: “escialator” “Holland & Barnett”

Describe daydreaming as “going to commercial”

Take calls with a weary note in your voice, saying “Hello telephone, who are you pretending to be this time?”

Spend a whole day in a shop trying to work out who the security guard is

Shout camply “I’m the king of the road!” at everyone you pass in your car

Impress future employers at interview by demonstrating how well you can ride an imaginary horse

Ask the hotel staff if you can put the twin beds in your room together, then put them end to end, and lie across the gap

Treat everyone in uniform as a stripper put there for your entertainment

Practise Shipmanship, the art of resembling Harold Shipman

Refer to music that sounds a bit like The Prodigy as “prodigious”

…or “prodigal”

Describe people as “unconventionally ugly”

Mime asterisks with your fingers to emphasise a word in conversation

Call a ladder that isn’t yours, but belongs to a close relation, your “step ladder”

Look through one eye at a time

Start an exam essay question with “Ooh, I was hoping you’d ask that”

Attempt “predictive speech” by finishing people’s words based on the first syllable you hear

Only eat animals which are capable of giving sly looks

Prise apart the limbs of anyone you see with folded arms

Refer to wages lost due to flu as the “congestion charge”

Put your Oyster card in a sandwich and scan that

Become Avid Merrion’s celebrity stalker

Give up your standing place on the tube

Erect another statue of Nelson on the fourth plinth

Call the London Eye the “London Eyesore”

Put a “London Nose” on the fourth plinth

Refer to all public clocks as “Big Bens”

Put Big Ben on the fourth plinth

Put your Oyster card in an oyster

Put facial tic sufferers at ease by flirtatiously mirroring their affliction

Answer the questions up to £1000 on “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” out loud

Wave back at people on television

Buy a relative progressively cheaper Christmas presents, then, one year, spend five times as much as the year before

Refer to MySpace as “Rupert Murdoch’s teenage mass observation project”

Refer to getting up in the morning as “greeting the day”, e.g. “What time do you have to greet the day?”, or “I take my showers when I greet the day”

Yell “I’m fine, I’m fine” every time you sneeze

Play “Where’s Wally?” on the Tube instead of Sudoku

Stroll around Underground platforms looking at the adverts as if you’re in an art gallery

Look through a different person’s window each day of advent

Type and write using the letter “f” instead of the letter “s”, like people did in the 1700s

Tear up strips of paper as quietly as possible throughout a public lecture

Swim to shore and ask the kids on the beach “Is this France?”

Pronounce “octopus” with the emphasis on the second syllable

Dress in workout clothes and use a department store’s escalator as a Stairmaster

Paint a white line down the middle of a country road

Hide bubble wrap under your doormat to surprise guests

Stand in a lift facing the back

Close your eyes and repeat to others that you like the food every time you take a bite

Hide in the clothing rack at a department store and, the moment someone walks by, wave the arm of a shirt hanging there and yell “Pick me! Pick me!”

Go into a chippy, ask if there is any cod left, and, when told yes, say “you shouldn’t have cooked so many”

Make a point of openly writing down corporate buzzwords in meetings, then, when it’s your turn to speak, consult your list and use one of these words before looking around for approval, smiling and nodding

Like people who are clever, but not those who are “clever clever”

Call up McDonald’s and ask to reserve a table for two

In KFC, complain about the food and ask to speak to Colonel Sanders

Drink chocolate by putting it on a spoon and melting it with a cigarette lighter (explain that you’re a chocaholic)

If you take your own bags to the supermarket, why not your own trolley?

Carry around a whiteboard marker and wiping cloth with you when you travel on the tube to edit Travel Update notice boards. You can offer more creative and understandable reasons for delays and line suspensions than the usual batch of signal failures and staff shortages. E.g. “No Service on the Bakerloo line North of Stonebridge Park today due to….[obvious change in handwriting] dinosaurs once again walking the earth”.