Marriage seems like a very bad idea. It is a self-enforced prison sentence, trapping you in solitary confinement with your chosen partner, where your only chance of parole is a messy divorce or untimely shanking in the showers. Yet millions act upon this bad idea every year, their logical faculties destroyed by promises of life-long love and happiness, delivered mostly in the form of God-awful Hugh Grant romantic comedies. Although I imagine most people watching those films didn't have many logical faculties to start with.

The most excruciating part of the marital process has to be the proposal. I would personally consider this the biggest obstacle to getting married myself, although the bitter, soulless, loveless personality I'm demonstrating right now is a fairly close second. The classic act of proposal involves the love-stricken couple indulging in a candle-lit supper or walk in an autumnal park, whence upon the man suddenly kneels down like a landmine just blew his leg off, all floppy hair and foppish charm, waxes lyrical about love and destiny, and presents to the misty-eyed woman a piece of overpriced and somewhat rudimentary metalwork. Then some nosey losers in the background applaud as she predictably accepts his offer of undying love and the expensive finger-ornament, the two embrace, and that's the end of your shitty Hugh Grant romantic comedy.

The whole scenario is too devastatingly clichéd to be effective in the real world. A proposal needs a spark of originality if you want any hope of your life together not being as predictable as the way it started. One of my friends recounted a proposal in which the would-be bride and groom were grocery shopping in Asda. The guy proposed over the Tannoy system, presumably whilst they were in the cheese aisle. Needless to say, that relationship hardly lasted longer than an Asda Price Guarantee. That's an example of the pendulum swinging too far the other way - you need originality, but you don't want it to be quite so fucking awful.

I was discussing this problem with another friend earlier today. (Yes, I have at least two friends, and I can prove it). Her original idea involved some nonsense about the wedding ring being planted in the sand of a tropical beach, and the groom-to-be arranging an impromptu metal-detecting expedition, retrieving the ring in a romantic act of novice archaeology. This idea might work if you plan to spend most of your married life watching Time Team, or maybe if you're Indiana Jones and you're combining your trite matrimonial advances with a frenzied hunt for cursed Nazi gold. Otherwise, it sucks.

I thought no more of the proposal issue until I encountered this video by chance on the Guardian website. It is by turns both incredibly nauseating and, even I must admit, sickeningly impressive. Only watch it if you're a hopeless romantic or a misanthropic loner with a patent disregard for your own blood pressure and sanity.

Is such flagrant exhibitionism really the best way to kick-start one of the most intimate and personal things you'll ever do? (Or never do in my case). I wouldn't have thought so, but these kind of stunts are depressingly common. Not only is the well of original proposals drying up at an alarming rate, but that guy just set the bar for future endeavours higher than it is at a fat camp's limbo competition. But worry not. I've had some ideas.

The Bank Robbery

Picture the scene. You and your dearly beloved are in a local bank, opening up a joint savings account. This is both financially prudent and strangely arousing for both of you, maybe because your girlfriend is wearing one of those remote-controlled vibrating egg things. Suddenly, your kinky fiscal activities are brought to an abrupt halt by a gang of ski-masked robbers smashing a van into the front of the bank.

"NOBODY FUCKING MOVE," shouts the masked, shotgun-wielding ringleader as he emerges from the crumbling masonry. "THIS IS A ROBBERY!" He turns the gun on you and your loved one. "GET ON THE FUCKING FLOOR!" You stand firm, refusing to yield to his criminal intentions. "GET ON THE FLOOR OR THE FUCKING BITCH GETS IT!" He points the gun at your girlfriend. By now she's probably pretty terrified. You drop to the floor, but it's too late - BANG! - the gun is discharged right in her face.

But the shotgun wasn't loaded with ammunition; it was loaded with a heart-shaped bean bag. Your girlfriend is far from dead (but she probably has a rather nasty bruise on her face). It was all worth it. "Open it," you implore her. Encased within the beanbag is a wedding ring. "Will you?" you ask. She says yes. The people in the bank cheer. The robber reveals himself to be your best mate, Baz, and he looks on contentedly as you kiss passionately.

I think this one is by far my best idea. Not only is it memorable and original, but its highly traumatic nature is likely to inflict deep emotional scars on your fiancée, making her dependent on you for lifelong psychological support. You might have some problems persuading the bank and the police that it's a good idea, but once you do, you're golden.

The Binge Drinking Disaster

The traditional Anglican marriage vows have all sorts of off-putting stipulations. For better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health. For every romantic evening spent snuggling on the sofa or walking on the beach, there'll be an afternoon spent sat in a waiting room at the local colonoscopy clinic whilst your spouse's bowels are routinely checked for irregularities. This idea plays on the "sickness" part of the "sickness and health" clause by reminding your lover that, even if the marriage lasts for years, you're both going to end up infirm and incontinent and, at some point, at least one of you will shit the marital bed.

OK, so you're going out for a night of frivolity with the future Mrs You. Steal a convenient moment to swallow the wedding ring you bought from Argos earlier. You'll need it later. When you return, proceed to drink. Drink a lot. Drink like you're listening to a Morrissey song and don't want to be able to hear it any more. Drink Carling if you have to. The objective is to get yourself more trolleyed than a Tesco car park.

Indulge in that sort of behaviour for a few hours and you'll probably be feeling pretty queasy. Your stomach is getting ready to reject all that binge-water, so quickly call a cab and drag your partner home. As soon as you're in the most lavishly-carpeted room in the house, chuck it up. Spew everywhere, over upholstery, over your disgusted spouse, you name it.

When you're confident you've completely emptied yourself, invite her to examine the puddle of puke you just emitted. She might require some gentle physical persuasion at this point. "What's this?" you exclaim with faux-surprise. You know the rest. Wham, bham, will-you-marry-me ma'am. It's the most romantic use of vomit ever conceived, and not only have you successfully charmed the girl of your dreams, but you've also set up some conveniently low expectations for your standards of behaviour during the marriage.

The Ultimatum

A fear that must plague the mind of even the most cocksure proposer is that of rejection. It is generally expected that a woman being proposed to will swoon lovingly, smile sweetly, and, after a dramatic pause, whisper 'yes' through quivering lips. But they can do other stuff, like say 'no'. Not only will such an outcome not make the best finale to your perfectly-choreographed YouTube debut, it might also shake up your self-esteem a bit, and leave you looking like a complete arse; a hopeless romantic in the literal sense of the phrase.

They say the course of true love never does run smooth. So give it a rocky start with 'The Ultimatum'. The objective here is to contrive a situation in which you can threaten to commit suicide or some equally ghastly act unless your proposal is accepted. Ideal locations which are both romantic and suitable for the suicidally inclined include cliff tops, high suspension bridges and any Tube station which is not on the Northern Line (I don't want your bodged proposal affecting my commute, thanks). What choice does your sweetheart have but to agree? If love is a game then you're simply fixing the outcome.

Hopefully my ideas will provoke a slew of both inspiring and criminal proposal techniques and put an end to all the atrocious romcom clichés which plague the romantic corners of our modern culture. And maybe, one day, when society becomes more tolerant of facial disfiguration and I work out how to sneak rohypnol into an IV drip, I'll get to use one too.

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Posted: 6/6/2010 - 8:52pm by Pete

When I was young I was prone to occasional bouts of misbehaviour, the devilish little scamp that I was. Of course, childish naughtiness is hardly a rare trait for children to exhibit, and although the youth of today have abandoned scrumping for apples and digging for worms in favour of stabbing or raping each other, these petty misdemeanours shouldn't really come as a surprise to anyone. My mother, however, would often despair at my infantile stupidity. Reprimands and sanctions were imposed, usually involving solitary confinement in my bedroom or deprivation of chocolate. It was perfect preparation for my inevitable future as a violent imprisoned criminal or tin-pot dictator.

However, these punitive measures did not sit well with me, so I would seek to escape from them. The easiest escape route often seemed like a simple apology. "I'm sorry, Mummy!" I would opine. Sometimes this worked. Other times, it didn't. "Sorry is just a word," she'd respond, coolly. "You're not really sorry." This response threw me off balance. Sincere or not, surely the best way to convey regret was with the word itself, my immature mind thought to itself. "Sorry" was the magic bullet and my mother had donned a magic Kevlar vest, obstructing my passage to freedom and chocolate. The canny bitch!

Sorry may just be a word, but it's a bloody useful one. A lot of senior Christians have been using it over the past few weeks. First up to the apology pulpit was the Pope himself, who was a bit sorry about all that systemic child abuse stuff in the Irish Catholic church (or, according to him, 'petty gossip'), not least because it was partly his fault. Then the Pope's preacher 'accidentally' pissed off the Jews, so out came another sorry. Then Rowan Williams, seemingly jealous of the great PR the Catholic Church was getting from all this kiddy fiddling and anti-Semitism, stuck his Anglican oar in before retracting it just as quickly. The only major Christian figure missing from this sorry spectacle was God Himself. I half expected him to descend from heaven and reel off a multitude of apologies on subjects ranging from famine and pestilence through to the existence of Robert Kilroy-Silk and the unacceptable dearth of Malteser bunnies in my local Sainsbury's.

Apologies must roll off your tongue very easily if you're Catholic, especially a priest. It's practically their state of mind. Most sins will 'wipe clean' after a good-ol' confessional and a few dashes of repentance. Be sorry, and God will forgive you. But you have to be TRULY sorry, mind you, lest you wish to be condemned to an eternity of damnation. In retrospect, my mother's attitude towards apologies was very similar to the Catholic Church's. Maybe she WAS the Catholic Church. No wonder I got such a bollocking when I etched a pentagram into my brother's forehead with a compass.

Of course, those aforementioned God-botherers hadn't sinned in a traditional sense. Well, apart from the paedophiles, assuming paedophilia counts as a sin in Catholicism rather than a prerequisite for ordainment. Their sins were far more contemporary: saying something stupid to the media and subsequently looking like a massive arse. The God of News is an angry God, a God who has a hundred different means to smite you, on rolling news channels and news websites and blogs and tweets, before you've even woken up and had time to splutter into your Cornflakes whilst listening to the Today programme. This God has a quick turnaround time: Rowan Williams took about three hours to go from tit-headed statement to grovelling apology. And he hadn't even said anything particularly objectionable (as you can tell, I don't find slagging off Catholics to be particularly objectionable).

The Pope and his pals weren't sorry for what they said or did. They were sorry because it made them look like idiots, exacerbated by the spotlight of media exposure. Their apologies weren't penance, they were a face-saving exercise. Tiger Woods was likewise incredibly sorry for his recent sexual misadventures. He'd spent the best years of his life earning millions of dollars and fucking supermodels. I don't think he felt sorry for doing that. He was sorry because he got caught. He begged the media God for forgiveness, checking himself into a sex addiction rehabilitation clinic. As if we're supposed to accept sex addiction as a genuine medical condition. If someone proclaimed to you, "I'm such a chocoholic!" would you sit there, mouth agape, and persuade them to seek urgent psychological help? No. They're not addicted to chocolate. They just like it, probably because they're fat and greedy. Chocolate is not heroin, and sex is not crystal meth (although it is ecstasy with me, ladies, wink wink).

Tiger's apology didn't fool me, not that I remotely cared. It didn't fool his sponsors either, unfortunately for him. The damage was done. 'Sorry', even coupled with a stint in sex rehab, was not enough. But maybe it's not his fault. 'Sorry' has been devalued by persistent misuse, often by those who, like my younger self, believe it to be a super glue which magically patches up the effects of past misdeeds. A while ago, the Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd apologised to the Australian Aborigines for their long history of suffering at the hands of the colonists. But it wasn't Kevin Rudd's apology to make. To me, it seemed hollow, an apology on the behalf of perpetrators long-dead who probably, in their jingoistic mentality, would not share the sentiment. But a lot of people seemed to appreciate it. The media God was thusly pleased. Job done, eh, Kev?

I've not stopped apologising since I got older. In the infancy of this very website I wrote a few choice words about my then-current employer, who to my amazement discovered them, and, to my greater amazement, didn't see the funny side. It was probably the line about razing the entire shop with a busload of pensioners inside. Regardless, I was dragged into a disciplinary meeting. "What are you going to do about this?" asked an irate superior. "Well," said I, hearkening back to my younger days, "I'll make an apology..." Of course, I wasn't really sorry. If I was I wouldn't have republished the article when I left. Or boasted about the event in anecdotes or subsequent blog entries. The apology was a tactical manoeuvre to prevent my CV from reading along the lines of "dismissed from last job for making idle threat of arson on the internet". It was, to coin a phrase, a Papal apology.

My mother's admonishments, which I once considered to be little but the ramblings of a chocolate-depriving crone, now have a bit more clarity. Sorry IS just a word. True regret is actually pretty hard to come by. The question becomes, then, how do you know when an apology is a true expression of regret for the deed itself, or just regret for the discovery of it and consequences thereof? My mother seemed to know. Unfortunately, I don't have a fucking clue. Sorry about that.

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Posted: 5/4/2010 - 7:02pm by Pete

Believe it or not, some people actually complain that I don't write enough blogs. Whilst I secretly allow this moaning to massage my damaged and frail ego, I am outwardly dismissive. Truth be told, the creative centre of my brain is a desolate place, fleetingly populated by an occasional derivative or plagiarised idea, which is in turn reliant on my incredibly lazy nature to transcribe it into some sort of coherent text.

This is a sorry state of affairs. I am essentially committing an intellectual crime by depriving the world of my considerable and valuable insight. To remediate this failure I have decided to dedicate part of my site to a kind-of public service. I intend to provide objective, balanced and well-thought out opinions on places I have been and things I have experienced, with a view to bettering people's lives by allowing them to make informed judgements. The first of my Objective Reviews focuses on Infernos Nightclub in Clapham, South London.

Infernos Nightclub in Clapham is almost certainly one of Dante's circles of hell. I wasn't in there long enough to work out which one, although, to be fair, the name of the place is a dead giveaway. The word 'inferno' surely conjures images of a towering blaze from which there is no escape and death is merely a matter of choosing between burning or suffocation. Quite why anyone would wish to associate such an image with a venue supposedly designed for enjoyment escapes me. But then again, I don't think I'm in the target market.

In the interests of full disclosure, it should be known (and has probably been guessed) that I am not always the biggest fan of nightclubs. They are dark, dingy and loud places and about as much fun as being trapped down a well with a ghetto blaster blaring out hours of Kanye West music for days on end. In spite of this, I will happily visit a club provided I have consumed a suitable catalyst (alcohol). However, no amount of alcohol could have possibly persuaded me that Infernos is an enjoyable place to be. If I'd died from an alcohol overdose and my lifeless corpse had been dumped inside and dragged around I'd still have found a way to actively detest it.

There is nothing for a conscious, self-aware being to like about Infernos. The sticky floors, tacky decor and general air of soullessness should set alarm bells ringing in even the most idiotic brain. But the true hell of Infernos is revealed in its clientele. Never before in my short and insignificant life have I witnessed such a sprawling mass of complete and utter cunts. To describe them as people would be laughably generous. Surely they are of a separate species; a distant evolutionary relative of humans which palaeontologists long believed to be extinct.

But they are not extinct. They are alive, and they are procreating. Or at least attempting to. Their mating rituals are unsubtle and unsophisticated. After forming a thronging hive of flesh on one of the two huge yet inexplicably overcrowded dance floors, the males stalk out a suitably attractive or inebriated companion, strutting through the crowd, their cocksure swaggers punctuated by sips of disgusting bottled lager. For their part, the females flaunt their wares through the medium of spastic hip gyration, devoid of rhythm or grace. The floors are awash with a unique ooze; two parts sweat, one part hair gel and one part fake tan. When the lights come on at the end of the night, those who have successfully paired up find themselves either disappointed with their companions or too pissed to care. Either way, they spill out onto the streets and return to their dwellings to have rubbish sex.

Of course, no objective review could truly be objective without including some pointless vox pops from random people on the Internet. So here is a selection of some of the things the good users of qype.co.uk and viewlondon.co.uk have to say about Infernos:

• I'd rather be elbow dropped in the face by macho man Randy Savage than spend one more waking minute in Infernos. This is probably one of the worst clubs in the world." - A Hunter
• "Infernos would only be good if it was actually burning down."- Anonymous
• "Hi my name is Duncan and I love Inferno's, if i could only do one thing for the rest of my life it would be to go there, constantly. Me and my pals James and Sam went there and we all pulled the same girl! it was incredible! We all then ate nuggets and went home. The best nights of my life have been spent in inferno's. 10 outta 10!"- DuncanMadden

The last comment is obviously someone trying to be amusing. But don't let that realisation dilute your horror of the place, for out there in the bowels of South London, there are thousands of beings who genuinely have that opinion. They're just too stupid to be able to type it out and put it on the Internet.

To juxtapose the overwhelming negativity of this Objective Review, I've striven to find something positive to say about Infernos. And it is thus: if you want a front-row seat to the complete collapse of humanity, framed within the context of an anarchic, alcohol-fuelled sex zoo, Infernos is well worth the price of admission. I'd heartily recommend it to anyone who is scared that the human race will be destroyed by a nuclear bomb or flu pandemic. Infernos will provide them with a terrifying preview to the truly impending armageddon.

In summary, then. You know that scene in Event Horizon where they view the ship's logs and see flashes of a deranged hell, replete with gruesome images of bodily mutilation and disgusting, disfigured people performing acts of abhorrent carnal viciousness? Well, Infernos is like that. Except with a ten pound entrance fee and overpriced drinks.

My next Objective Review will focus on the Israel-Palestine conflict.

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Posted: 21/2/2010 - 7:23pm by Pete