Some of that good safe lovin'.

Google Image search result for 'JLS Durex'.

So it seems that popular teen beat combo JLS have teamed up with Durex to release their own brand of JLS-themed condoms. Yes, that's right; you, I, we are living in a society where you can walk into Superdrug and exchange actual money for boy-band branded prophylactics. I'm past the point of surprise over this sort of thing - other products with unlikely celebrity endorsements include David Beckham and fish fingers, Jackie Chan for Woolworths and, most damningly of all, Iggy Pop hawking car insurance. That last one made want to lie down and weep for the world that once was; by comparison JLS rubbers are a walk in the metaphorical park. It is a bit strange though, wandering along the aisles and seeing the lads staring out at you from the front of a packet of three.

I was secretly hoping that each condom would have a picture of the relevant JLSer's face on the end for comedy effect. Or, even better, a full body shot along the entire length - with a bit of practice and a degree of muscle control you could have the little fella grooving and body popping like nobody's business. Then you could get together with three mates and re-enact one of the band's signature dance routines while your mum films it for Youtube. Best. Tuesday evening. Ever.

Alas, it is not to be. The condoms themselves are pretty standard, described on the Durex website as 'slightly thicker' (a prime example of a joke writing itself) with 'extra lubrication' (and I've already drawn a couple of slightly grotty conclusions from that that I'll be keeping quiet for now). The main point of difference is that each condom comes in the chosen colour of the relevant band member - blue, yellow, red or green. I'm not a fan of coloured condoms; the male member looks ridiculous enough at the best of times without it being green. So what criteria would you use for picking your JLS johnny? Would you pick your favourite band member? That's a bit of a weird tribute. Would you pick her favourite band member, in the hope that some of their life force, their JLessence if you will, rubs off and makes you more like him in the sack? You know she's probably thinking of him the whole time anyway, so why not try to make her happy? You do want to make her happy, don't you? Of course you do. So put on the green condom and pretend you're in JLS.

I've been trying to come up with other cross-promotional musician/birth control link ups, with little success. My best one so far is 'Pulling out and jizzing all over her boobs - in association with Motley Crue!', which is pretty distasteful. And that, my friends, is why I'm not in advertising.

Vertigo

Quick, find something to hang on to immediately. Lash yourself to a lamppost. Smash the passenger window of a parked car and seatbelt yourself in. Crawl on to the floor and wedge yourself into the gap under the sofa, which shouldn't be too hard with the size of arse you're dragging around after you - you look like you've got a dead armadillo stuffed into each back pocket. Do something, anything, and do it now because the whole chuffin' world is made of mist and fairy piss. It's flimsy and insubstantial and approximately 99.9999999% not there. Turn your back for a second and you'll find that it's changed beyond reckoning, and not in a good way. It'll likely have gone evil.

Evil is sexy.

I'm acting like this because Christmas scared the living shit out of me. Or rather, my parent's house did. In retrospect it was just a touch of culture shock. Coming from London, where I live a spartan, hand-to-mouth existence here in my cold damp flat, reusing teabags and wiping my arse on an spring/summer 2006 Argos catalogue, to the relative luxury of the parental semi, where it's all new ipods and 4-ply Andrex, left me in a bit of a tizz. My Mum and Dad are not, in the grand scheme of things, particularly wealthy. They're certainly comfortable but they're hardly Flava Flav and one of his bitches.

Worse luck.

Still, the jump, small as it was, left me feeling dizzy and uncomfortable. A walk around the Williams homestead is a tour through a ridiculous level of luxury. An antique oak table here, a massive flatscreen telly there. Enough food to feed the Chinese army and a shiny new Virgin HD box. Scented, disposable toilet wipes instead of a foetid, stinking turd flecked bog brush. An insane level of affluence, unimaginable riches unheard of for most of the span of human history.

And good for them. They've worked hard for it, they deserve it and they are, as I said, not especially rich people. There's no Lamborghini on the driveway, no heated swimming pool nestling in the grounds. There aren't even any grounds. My problem came thanks to one of those sudden moments of clarity, like when you're out and about and abruptly realise that you're standing on a planet rather than just walking around on the ground, and you become aware of the whole dancing, whirling majesty of the universe and so on. Mum and Dad's place became like the Total Perspective Vortex in Hitchhiker's Guide:

When you are put into the Vortex you are given just one momentary glimpse of the entire unimaginable infinity of creation, and somewhere in it a tiny little mark, a microscopic dot on a microscopic dot, which says, "You are here".

Except with more in the way of doilies and kitchenware fashioned to look like chickens, obviously. But the maths are brutal and unyielding - six billion people, all in desperate need of shoes and granite work surfaces. One planet with a finite and dwindling amount of resources. So where's all the stuff coming from? Who's watching the stuff? Is there a Council of Stuff? A department? A board? Anything?

It seems the unfortunate conclusion is that, in the very near future, the only way to secure that new espresso machine will be to literally kill a man to get it. Admit it - you'd be more than prepared to suffocate a stranger with a rolled up magazine if you thought there was an ice cream maker in it for you. You'd happily stomp on someone's trachea, feeling it rupture and pop beneath your boot heel, leaving them boggle eyed and purple and expiring on the floor, before you laugh in their dying face and make off with their Sopranos DVD box set. I know what you're like. I see you.