I Blame Kerry Katona

The other day a slow period at work gave me the opportunity for a tea break. So I headed into the staff room, made a brew and sat at the tables that were, as usual, adorned with innumerable tacky magazines.

None of the titles are my regular reading material. There is He*t, N*w, B*lla, B*st and probably ‘Gutter’ and ‘Cr@p’ as well for all I know. The pile consists of browsing ‘rubbish’, picked up and thrown back down by the numerous women in the department (no offence ladies, and I’m sure you don’t all love this stuff – just all the ladies I work with). Over the years I’ve got sick of the sights of airbrushed images of Cheryl, Sienna, Jeri, Peter, Danii, Paris and the like (they are so ubiquitous they don’t even need surnames) grinning at me like inane airheads.

So imagine my surprise when, poking out from behind a nausea-making picture of Jordan’s painted plastic pout was something that looked like it belonged in the world of athletic rather than celebrity. There were muscles. And running shoes!

Barely daring to look for fear of the usual disappointment (of seeing Jordan’s most recent ex-husband) I reached out, pushed Richard and Judy out of the way, and found myself holding a copy of Men’s Health. Where on earth did that come from? Barely believing my luck at having found something I might be half interested in, I started to browse.

Naturally, most of what I read was still rubbish, but a couple of things caught my eye:

A Six-Pack in Sixty Seconds! (Yeah, right!)

“Ah,” think I, “I’ll tear that article out and send it to Batrunt”.

How To Drive Your Woman Wild.

“Hmmm! Mrs RTS is already pretty wild. That wouldn’t be a long drive.” I decided to come back to that article later.

Then I saw something about developing loads and loads of stamina to help with endurance exercise. Just as I was turning to the relevant page the telephone rang. Urgent work had arrived. Tea break was over. I hid the magazine back at the bottom of the pile to rescue later, and headed back to work.

The following day, I found time to return to the staff room, and with unprecedented enthusiasm walked over to the library of cr@p. I slid my fingers to the bottom of the pile and pulled out the glossy.

The HORROR! Instead of what I expected, I was faced with a stomach churning, sickly sweet, butter-wouldn’t-melt grin-under-a -peroxide bob. Kerry Catatonic had done away with the fitness magazine and taken root in its place. The one I was after was nowhere to be seen.

Nooooooooooooooooooooo!

It never reappeared. I was left drowning in a sea of celebrity garbage.

So, if Batty fails to ever get his six-pack, and if I don’t win the Thunder Run 24-hour race, it is all Kerry Katona’s fault!