Stag Nights.

I've attended two this year alone.

Oh God, the bloody Stag Night. A test of human endurance that would make even the most hardened al-qaeda suspect whimper “can you please just make it stop now” if used as an interrogation technique. It’s rarely even a NIGHT, but the dreaded stag WEEKEND – 48 hours in the company of burping, vomiting, farting buffoons so horrendous that the stag practically RUNS down the aisle to get the hell away from the horrorific Clockwork Orange–style aversion experience.

Two days in a strange city in the company of men-children who think igniting their own flatulence is 24 CARAT and you would give anything to share the bulk of your life with an actual woman. Because men are idiots and stag nights are horrible.

It starts with the cut-price chain hotel so anonymous and homogenised that your very soul shrinks a little and progresses to some horrendous identikit Yates’s filled with badly-dressed dole-hounds and ageing alcoholics all of whom would think nothing of giving you the full benefit of the thick end of a pool cue after you discover that the door staff of the more salubrious establishments are reluctant to admit large groups of yowling, drooling, stinking men wearing specially-printed t-shirts emblazoned with the slogan ‘Pussy Patrol’

There’s no point sneering at the dolts in the party who spend the evening informing you of their intention to ‘destroy’ any of the ‘blart’ they espy, as you will several days later shamefully recall your own unsuccessful attempt to win the affections of a trainee beauty-therapist from Sunderland named Kylie with the generous offer of a ‘clattering’ behind the bottle-bins.

Staggering around the streets at an early hour asking innocent passers-by where “tha strippas are, like” is not an uplifting experience, nor is finally gaining entrance to Madame Choo-Choo’s and watching the youngest member of your party lose a small fortune to a young lady in underwear and high-heels in the belief that she “actually fancies me, like” Of course she does, mate.

Trying to get back to the hotel despite having forgotten it’s name and location, possessing no phone numbers of any local taxi firms and lacking the ability to single-handedly lift a twenty-stone inebriated imbecile is also a barrel of fucking laughs.

If you’re lucky you wake up in the dreadful room you share with at least three other men in a scene that would make Hieronymus Bosch balk, to the wilting prospect of using a bathroom still echoing with the noise and stench of several horrendous bowel movements.

Then you do it all again the next day, secure in the knowledge that everyone you encounter hates you.

The very worst thing? If you’re the stag, you’re statistically very likely to get divorced and to wish that your mental and emotional anguish would JUST END whilst you tragi-wank your way through the rest of your hollow life and wish that you could just see your children.

And if you’re not the stag, are unmarried and have attended a few of these things, it means you are inherently unlovable and have a stark future of solitary drinking and crushing loneliness ahead of you.

Enjoy your night.