A follow up to popular TV show ‘Don’t Tell the Bride’ has been cancelled after the first episode of ‘Don’t Tell the Groom’ failed to generate the same sort of emotional tension.

The pilot episode of the new show saw bride-to-be Amy Phillips from Chester given £15,000 to organise her wedding with no input whatsoever from her future husband John Dunlop. As Amy struggled to organise everything in just three weeks John moved in with his best man, drank heavily and spent hours playing Call of Duty on the PS3.

The producers finally decided to pull the plug after the big reveal of the suit Amy had picked out for John, intended to be the pivotal moment of the show, saw him react by shrugging and saying ‘That’ll do.’ However, the wedding still went ahead. John’s final verdict on the job Amy did putting the wedding together was ‘Yeah, it was alright wasn’t it?’.

Look at it this way: if you were running a marathon, would you just pitch up on the day with some trainers and a sense of enthusiasm? Not unless you want some career-ending blisters and roadside CPR, you wouldn’t. Any responsible athlete will tell you to prepare for it with a long-term training programme that culminates in several lengthy practise runs. Several exhausting, acrimonious, spirit-sapping runs. You’ve got to build up for the big one, and with the hard yards of marriages one to four in my legs, that’s exactly what I’ve done.

Of course I didn’t realise that when I was getting married the first, second, thrid and fourth times. With the confidence of the rookie, I thought I had what it takes for the long haul. But looking back today with the wisdom I have now, I can see those early-season outings could never have ended in success. And thanks to a closet lesbian, a back-stabbing best friend, the vigilance of the staff at the Vietnamese embassy and another lesbian, that’s exactly how things panned out.

What’s important, though, is not falling into the trap of being too hard on yourself. It would be all too easy, with the benefit of hindsight, for a lesser man to blame himself for the recurring marital themes of profound sexual inadequacy, consistently unreasonable behaviour and prolonged professional failure leading to intractable financial problems – especially if this is topped off every time by in-laws and spousal friends prone to rushing to unfavourable judgements. That would not only be wrong, it would be oversimplifying things. And where would it get you – certainly not down the aisle for a fifth pop at the cherry.

Life is a complex business, and so you mustn’t underestimate the role played by downright bad luck. There’s only a one in three chance a marriage will end in divorce. Those are pretty good odds, so you can imagine what a run of bad cards you need to end up with a royal flush of four consecutive decree absolutes in your hand. That’s a one in 81 chance! I thought I’d had my fill of bad luck at the roulette wheel where I spent much of my second marriage, but it turned out not. Little did I know that Fate had lined me up with eighty other guys, marked me out for special attention and then let every other single one of them walk away before wife numero quatro could take their home, their car, their pension and their masculinity.

But what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. (Nice try though, Cathy, if you’re reading this.) The important thing is always to learn from what life throws at you, and you don’t get hitched a third of a dozen times without picking up a few pointers along the way. There are simple lessons, lessons like it’s always worth making an effort to scrub up on your wedding day and not drink till after the service because you can count on some joker bringing along a camera. Lessons like make a note of the date you get married because you’re expected to remember it next year. And lessons like never suggest an ex-wife as a bridesmaid. These are little things you can only learn from experience, and I’m more than happy to share them with you.

But there are also bigger lessons, lessons like it’s important to have shared interests (but not your best friend Geoff), like you should always show each other respect (even if one of you has just sold an irreplaceable family heirloom for £50 or made an obviously ironic pass at your sister), and like – and this is crucial – not marrying evil, manipulative bitches who thrive on your misery like a vampire on your blood and will screw you for every last penny you have.

Most of all, though, as I approach the altar with hope in my heart for another honest shot at marital bliss, what four marriages have taught me is this: if things don’t work out you can always try again later with someone else, so you mustn’t put yourself under any pressure to succeed. They tend not to make a big deal of this on the day, but it’s well worth remembering for future reference.

‘I joined an online dating site and listed my criteria as a good sense of humour and caring nature,’ said the pretty 28-year-old brunette. ‘Almost immediately I was paired with Alan, who described himself on his profile as a 34-year-old man with ‘an encyclopaedic knowledge of Monty Python’ and who also ‘works part-time in the local Sue Ryder shop as a condition of receiving Jobseeker’s Allowance’. I knew immediately he was the one for me.’

The pair agreed to date after a string of emails in which Alan wooed the successful doctor with lengthy verbatim extracts from the films The Meaning of Life, The Life of Brian, and on one notable and spontaneous occasion, The Jabberwocky. Meeting ahead of a date to see cult movie the Time Bandits, the couple instantly hit it off and shared stories of the challenges of introducing modern surgical techniques in an underfunded NHS, while agreeing that it was unreasonable of Alan’s mother to charge him quite so much rent for living in the bedroom that has been rightfully his for the past three decades.

Suzanne was also struck that there was more to Alan than a razor-sharp wit. ‘I knew he was a real joker, but he does have a serious side,’ she explained. ‘For example, it turns out he wasn’t kidding in his emails about fitting into children’s clothes and having two lazy eyes and a hump, but it’s about so much more than appearances. Between you and me, he could easily have laughed me into bed halfway through his ten-minute monologue about the old Pearl & Dean music.’

Suzanne later confided to close friends that Alan might be ‘the one’, and was eagerly awaiting their next date at a sci-fi convention that Alan had mentioned and saw as an opportunity to show off his home-made Red Dwarf costume. However, immediately before the event her hopes were shattered when Alan stopped responding to texts and emails. The reason for his loss of interest in what was only his second recorded date is unclear, though he was observed to comment in an online Terry Pratchett forum that ‘her tits weren’t big enough.’

Re Pete

‘When we first did this study 50 years ago, women were barely 60% as capable in the same jobs as men, and they only achieved 70% effectiveness in the mid-1980s,’ said Gallup analyst Dr Colin Thomas, who co-authored the report. ‘And remember, 88% is an average figure. In some areas, women’s performance is almost as good as men’s. I take my hat off to them, as I do anyway as a matter of course.’

However, some analysts fear that women may be nearing their natural limits and, even given time, will not be able to go on and match their male colleagues. ‘A minority of women keep on with their jobs after they get married and this has led to some temporarily rising to the middle of their professions,’ explained Professor Keith Barnes of the Institute of Policy Studies. ‘Of course, that’s not for everyone.’

But optimists like Dr Thomas believe that the sky is the limit for women in the workplace. ‘Some women are out-earning men already,’ he said. ‘Only in modelling and porn, admittedly, but it’s a start. If things carry on getting better at this rate, there’s no reason why one day there can’t be a woman running the line at a football match or even a woman Prime Minister.’

There was, however, some bad news for men from some related research also conducted by Professor Barnes. ‘Exhaustive testing has shown that men continue to average only 17% of women’s efficiency in menial tasks in the kitchen,’ he said. ‘And it’s difficult to see how we’ll be able to up our game given we already have to pull more than our own weight in the office. I’ll think we’ll just have to accept defeat on this one.’

Women Who Want More spokesperson Jasmine Hancock commented: ’They must be on drugs or something. Who do they think they are being happy with what they’ve got when they could be miserable about not spending three months in the Bahamas each year or not being married to David Beckham?’

One of these so-called ‘happy’ women, Sharon Edgerton, explained that she need never go hungry, has a clean home and is very fortunate not to live in, say, Afghanistan. However, Hancock retorted: ‘Rubbish. At least in Afghanistan a burqa doesn’t make your bum look big.’

Nick McCarr

'Don't let my fat arse put you off that doughnut'

Dawn Franklin, a 34-year-old size 8 from Bristol, admitted yesterday that her references to insecurity about the size of her bum were ‘less about womanly solidarity, and more about reminding my friends that there’s such a thing as self-control – or at the very least Weightwatchers.’

The skinny cow also confessed to using the expression ‘I wish I had your curves’ as a passive-aggressive term of abuse, and revealed that when she says the media promotes unrealistic images of women, she means unrealistic for most of her acquaintances, ‘many of whom would benefit from puking up the occasional gravy-drenched dinner or two.’

In defending her actions, Franklin stressed that she rarely mentions her small and neat behind in mixed company, and when in front of the opposite sex only ever complains about being miserably flat-chested. She then threw back her shoulders, setting her 36C breasts gently jiggling, before moaning to girlfriends that blokes never look you in the eye.

By DrTurmoil

Men poor at shopping foreplay; just like to get in and out

Scientists have found that a man presenting his credit card in exchange for shoes, clothes and handbags can do wonders for a woman’s sex drive.  The experience of ‘shopping’ can be further heightened by the male periodically offering comments such as ‘Definitely the Jimmy Choos’ or ‘No, your bum looks great in that’, but men were delighted after trials showed that not lasting the duration did nothing to reduce the woman’s pleasure.

‘Shopping’ was discovered by a male researcher when his wife forgot her purse on a trip into town. ‘When we got home it was as if she was a different woman – the exact same fantasy, in fact, that I’d been using to help me get it up.’

However, doctors have warned men that their partner’s side effects, such as an increased tolerance of time spent in the pub, are likely to wear off quickly and require further treatments.

‘I started to discuss the plot and characterisation and the atmosphere soured as if I’d committed a war crime,’ said Vikki. ‘Then Sue just started shrieking: ‘You’re not supposed to read the bloody thing, Vikki. The idea is we all get together with a few bottles of Andrew’s Cloudy Bay and we slag off anyone who isn’t here.’ I didn’t know where to look. Nobody else had read it.

‘I felt so low I went home and sat in the kitchen till David came home from work, so we could talk about Ulysses, a book he’s always going on about and which I’d just finished. He just laughed and said he’d never got beyond the first 100 pages, but it made an excellent doorstop. Well, I guess it looks like turkey twizzlers when Sue and Andrew come round for my gourmet evening David promised them.’