Yule have to forgive me for being a bah humbug

I’M penning this week’s article in the dead zone between Christmas and New Year.

Very weirdly, I feel like I’ve been kidnapped and held against my will by people I actually know and love!

Moreover, they’ve force fed me a diet that documentaries about the First World obesity crisis warn us about.

In me heed, I’m only another bowl of turkey curry or selection box away from tabloid fatty status; indeed I fear the council or fire brigade will soon have to knock down a partitioning wall for me just to go to the nettie.

Oh it gets worse! I’ve been spending like a Greek finance minister pre-2008, or an ASBOdodging scally who has just scooped a record lottery win!

No expense spared, me pets, as I run around splashing me cash like the born-again Scrooge after his Christmas Day epiphany.

“My wonderful boy, what day is it?” “Why sir, forgive as I’m not sure because it’s that endless twilight zone betwixt Yuletide and Hogmanay.”

“Wey hadaway and gan and humbug yersel.”

Now, post Christmas, it’s like after a night oot clubbin’ back in the day. In dawn’s harsh light I’m awaking and slowly wondering why I’ve only got a handful of coins on me metaphorical dressing table when I had a wad of notes the night before (wey, I say a wad – in reality I’ve seen me do a pub crawl, club entry, kebab and a taxi hyem for £10-£15!)

Where has it allll gone? I’ve spent all this to feel like an apocalypse survivor?

This festive madness reached its peak on Christmas Eve – I nipped oot with me lovely lads to buy the turkey.

I’d gone to a proper, old-school local butcher in an affluent market town up the Tyne Valley.

This gadgie had a collar and tie, rosy cheeks and fists like hams.

His banter was pure cheeky Geordie gadgie and the posh clientele loved it – “So authentic yah?”

This lad, however, wasn’t daft; he knew how to play his upper middle class, happy valley punters. By cleverly inserting the word ‘artisan’ in front of the noun ‘butcher’ on his shop front, he could increase the prices like the inflation in 1930s Weimar Germany where a wheelbarrow of banknotes bought a loaf of bread (which was probably not even artisan!)

When I came to pay for me turkey, black pudding, bacon and chipolata sausages, I realised I was a boy in a man’s game.

How much? Had I bought shares in the shop and a year’s supply of Sunday roast?

I felt like I was adrift in one of those clothes shops or kitchen showrooms for the posh people.

The ones you wander into by accident and only realise your error when you realise with horror that they don’t show prices cos money don’t matter in their world.

Gritting my teeth, I paid the man with a trembling hand – trying to appear as nonchalant as the affluent professionals who were happily stumping up the premium prices.

As I stumbled back to my ancient VW, I’m sure I heard the warning voice of an old university colleague – a working-class lad who’d studied ceramics. He once tried to sell his pots at a very upmarket arts and crafts market.

Neybody bought owt, and he couldn’t understand why ... until another artist had tipped him off that his pots were too cheap. The Jesmondistas who made up his target customers simply wouldn’t buy ‘cheap tat.’

So he cannily tripled his prices and began to slip in words like ‘bespoke’, ‘artisan’ or ‘street’ to his stuff, and sales among the chattering classes rocketed.

I vowed to return to my own kind next year, where the words ‘bargain‘, ‘reduced,’ ‘sale ‘ or ‘closing down’ were what brought the punters in! Still tempted to try out flogging some ‘artisan’ comedy though ...

n Mike is performing his own, all new one-hour show at The Stand comedy club on Monday, April 29.