‘Tis the season to make lolly

SADLY, now it’s new year, it’s statistically a peak period for couples to end their marriages.

The pressure of alcohol-fuelled confinement that is supposed to be “fun” with somebody whose very breathing now jars with you is often the final straw.

Indeed, thanks to recent changes in the law, couples can now file for divorce online at any time of the day or night.

So, according to official HM court service’s figures from this government website, 455 people filed for divorce over the festive period – including

13 on Christmas

Day itself!

Givowwer! How bad must your other half be that you have to excuse yourself from an extra helping of turkey and decline a game of Fifa 19 with your bairns in order to radge up to the spare room and use the very smartphone that the soon-to-be-ex bought you to start the wrecking ball rolling? Couldn’t it wait? Even the Germans stopped fighting on Christmas Day! Surely to necessitate such a frenzied termination of the relationship you’d have to catch them “in flagrante” in the kitchen among the wishbones and uneaten sprouts, wearing a zip-up rubber mask/suit while snorting illegal substances off an exotic dancer’s derrière. Nevertheless, as January bares its own bleak derrière at us, lawyers will gleefully be thumbing through their Caribbean or Tuscany holiday brochures in anticipation of the increase in trade (this is not fantasy but straight from the mouth of an old classmate who joined the legal eagles).

You know it’s gonna hurt! My Marriage doesn’t always pan out like you expected legal source says a contested adultery case is like a lottery win for their lot – each side’s counsel will basically act like the skinny worky ticket on the edge of a fight who goads big daft lads into chinning each other.

“Are ye gannin’ to let him gerraway with that? Do ye knaa what he’s just called ye?”

Kerching – that’ll be £500 for a fancy letter telling your other half what you tell them for nowt most evenings anyway!

I always smile when somebody announces: “I’m off to see my lawyer, Giles, in Jesmond”, as if such a location is a surprise.

I would register far more disbelief if they it said: “I’m off to see my lawyer; he’s known as ‘Daft Davey’ and operates out of the back of his sister’s hairdressing and spray tan salon in Killingworth. They’ve called the place ‘Legally Blonde,’ classy eh?”

The people who split will usually be spitting feathers cos, despite the myth, there’s never a nice way to split up, even if there’s nobody else involved.

Not all partings are as extreme as one lad I knew of.

He woke up to a frying pan full on the mush as he slept, proper Tom and Jerry style!

As he sat up in shock and agony, with a face as bruised as a one-legged can-can dancer’s backside, his wife completed her master stroke by lying there pretending to be obliviously asleep. Ouch. (Female readers are all tutting at this point and saying he must have deserved it!)

As one who knows, it’s not easy, but perhaps society could help the people who are now finding themselves in this predicament.

Firstly, the songs! The magic of falling in love has so many songs penned about it that it is impossible to even list them here.

Similarly, being lonely or missing a loved one is equally well covered by composers – Adele even wishes nothing but the best to her ex.

What about those newly entangled in the legalities of the divorce process? What songs could we have? Maybe the Proclaimers could alter their classic 500 miles: “Now I’m gonna charge 500 poond, then I’m gonna charge 500 more, just to see the one ye canna stand turn up twice weekly at your door..

“Bahamas, Bahamas – your misery will send me there three times this year.”

Or maybe Sir Paul could step in? “Yesterday, litigation seemed so far away, now I’m at my lawyer’s almost every day, Oh **** knows how I’m gonna pay.

“Suddenly, I’ve got no house and sold my left kidney, still, there’s a bailiff coming round at three – he’s coming for me car and plasma screen TV.

“There’s a restraining order hanging over me...”

To all in this situation, we salute you – free of charge!

Mike is performing his own, allnew, one-hour show entitled: “On yer bike Mike – Giz a job” at The Stand Comedy Club on Monday, April 29.