Dear Bert,

I appear to be in a bit of a quandary of late. Everything is tickety boo, the work's going OK, the home stuff is cool, and crikes-o-lordy, my usual mainstay of angst, the mighty Blue army, are actually doing OK. Quite frankly I am concerned about falling into a state, of well, happiness. I fear this new mindset won't suit me (after all I've had 32 years of depression, I used to think my Action Men were talking behind my back). What do you suggest to try get me back on the Prozac track?

Yours Hoping,

Oscar.

If there's one thing that annoys me, it's unnecessary happiness. This world's full of people muttering about how happy they are, when they're invariably call centre drones with neither ideas nor opinions about anything at all, living in Barratt Homes furnished by IKEA, whose highlight of the week is a couple of blue WKDs down their local Wetherspoon's. What the hell is there to be happy about there? They should pack it in forthwith, and stop diluting the pleasure for those who actually have some right to claim to be happy, like, erm, that fella that won Big Brother, or whoever's shagging Heidi Klum, the bastard.

In your case, I'm sure you have plenty to be miserable about. It's just that you can't see it because your mind's full of all the good stuff. So any time you're feeling up, just try and think about some of these things. I mean, you're not getting any younger, are you? Your twenties are gone. All those pretty young things you see out and about are OUT OF YOUR GRASP FOREVER, the beer belly's growing inexorably, and you hair's falling out. Face it, you're an ugly bastard, and it's only going to get worse from here. Consequently, your wife hates you for not being what you were. You just don't know it yet. But you will. Oh yes, you will.

If you want to start easing yourself into the resultant depression now, go ahead, because it'll make for less of a slump when this becomes apparent, and everybody'll just think you're always a miserable fucker and won't be concerned about your alarming descent into despair. Which in turn will mean that you'll get even more depressed because nobody seems to care about you. It's a sure-fire winner. Before you know it, all you'll have left is the football, and she is a most capricious mistress, especially when Kevin Keegan's in charge. Mark my words, Citeh might be doing all right for the time being, but it'll not be long till they're making a complete spectacle of themselves once again, signing up over-the-hill shysters who proceed to cost them the game on a weekly basis.

Oh.

Yours piously,

Bert