Author: Mark Bittlestone
Mark Bittlestone is a stand-up comedian. He is also very gay man. Just a very gay man, doing a lot of straight-up gay stuff.
Alright then, if you’re new to this column (the posh word we’ve started using to describe it because it’s better than a “blog”) you should know the following it is a) gay, and b) not to be taken seriously.
That being said I think I dispense genuinely brilliant advice and should be President of the World. If you take umbrage with anything I write you can DM me @poofsrus. Overwhelming chances are that I won’t reply but it’s just nice to have a full inbox, ygm xx.
Here are my top five tips for surviving January…
1) Try doing Dry January.
I used to be a DJ sceptic (Dry Jan, not Disc Jockeys, I love them, especially hot ones you can have sex with) and I still hate the moralising that some Dry Janners will engage with, BUT I’ve done Dry Jan for the last couple of years and it’s actually been surprisingly good. Goodbye wasted Sundays spent being incredibly horny (because hungover) on my sofa, and HELLO weird Sundays where I do totally unnecessary home improvements.
2) Don’t do Dry Jan.
Equally, fuuuuuuuuck Dry Jan. January is shit enough as it is, so have a bit of fun. Like any Nigella recipe book will tell you: if you have leftover booze from Christmas… Just use that. And just get drunk whenever you want. You are, in general, better off adopting a year-round healthy approach to alcohol (but wait we’re gay so is ‘healthy approach’ to anything possible?) rather than the feast-and-famine routine in which I engage.
3) Be busy.
This is a good way to get through Jan. If you’re busy, you can’t think about the fact that you have another year of waking up and getting out of bed and the existential crisis of existing and climate change. So account for every hour of every day: e.g. 7am wake up, 7.05am masturbate (just me?), 7.20am shower (is 15 mins too long? To masturbate, that is, not to shower), etc you get the jizz-t 
.
4) Screw loads of guys.
This is a really healthy way imo (I’m gonna start ‘ime’ for ‘in my experience’ – frequent readers of my column will be rewarded for remembering this new acronym in the future, while others will have no fkn clue what I’m on about) to forget about the rest of life. If your only thoughts are about who you’re fuc*ing next then it’s really hard to worry about work or relationships or the world or anything. I accept as well that this is potentially destructive behaviour but, like, whatever?
5) Pretend it’s not January.
This is a really good one. Just pretend it’s a month that you do like, like August. Go in really deep as well, like wear summer clothing, look confused whenever anyone grumbles about the weather or the month, sunbathe in a local park and call someone a c*nt for looking at you weirdly. YOU’RE WELCOME.