M.E. Tipps’ M.E. tips!!!

Like an increasing number of people in Britain, my new wife Magdalen Ermintrude suffers from Myalgic Encephalomyelitis. This is often known as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, M.E. or the rather glib “Yuppy ‘flu”. Whatever you call it, and whatever it is, the upshot is that my dinner is always bloody awful!! After a hard day tipping in my tips study – I’m currently researching a book on top tips written in hyieroglyphs in ancient Egypt (Tutankhamun advised keeping your false teeth embedded in a grapefruit by the side of your bed! Good tut tip!!) – I often come back to a half-hearted plate of slops and croutons or a reeking tomato sauna! ‘Patrick,’ I said to myself, ‘Patrick, surely you could turn your tipular brain to the problems of someone with only very limited energy, and come up with an easy-to-follow series of easy yet delicious recipes, so as to stop having to eat such utter filth‘.

The answer, was yes.

As such, in the coming days and weeks, I’ll present the quickest, simplest and most delicious recipes you can produce if you’re a lazy cow who really can’t be bothered to lift a bloody finger. Or if you have Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, of course!!  Stay tuned!

A gifted tipster!

What can make your life better than a gift to put a smile on the face of a loved one? Nothing, that’s what! Hahaha – that was a RHETORICAL QUESTION! My wife, Tonya-Ho-Lin, often complains about the soap and toiletries that I make from leftover fat and my habit of recycling tea bags. So what better way to say “I missed you” after my trip away than a gift basket of toiletries and beverages? And why waste your money at the Body Shop or at Whittards where you can only get tea OR soap! Get the maximum value for your money from an expensive stay at a hotel (well, the Crown Prosecution Service’s money in my case, but as I haven’t yet found a tip to avoid taxes I think it was partly my money!). Make beautiful gift baskets by filling the free cups in a hotel room with the cutlery, beverages, stationary and toiletries provided and wrap it all up in one of the soft fluffy towels. If it’s an extended stay, you will find that the stocks are replenished every day – that’s christmas sorted in the Tipps household! Tonya-Ho-Lin’s skin has never been less pitted!

The very tip of human experience!!

Every week really begins for me on Tuesday. I rouse my new wife Yootha-Trilby from her blustery slumber at 3.30 a.m., with promises I’ll make her favourite breakfast – roast chicken – if she goes down to Mr. Singh’s newsagents and waits to get the latest copy of LOVE IT! MAGAZINE, still warm off the presses. She can’t help but agree, once she sees my gravy jug (which I fashioned from an abandoned traffic cone!) she’s anyone’s!!!

I’m particularly excited to blog my regular “Cut-out-and-keep-tips” review this week, because yours truly, Patrick Gareth Tipps, has the STAR TIP!!! You’d think that a man who makes a living through helpful tips and hints in a variety of magazines and publications would be a wise old hand, but seeing my name in a new magazine always makes me bounce with glee. My doctor even warns me against getting too excited, in case the shrapnel moves!!

My location on the tip give you some indication of why I’ve been a little lax in posting my tips of late. I’ve been staying in the seaside paradise of Hove with some friends, doing this and that, keeping some appointments and looking up some old flames. I’ve not been pointing fingers in ongoing police investigations, is basically what I’m saying.

Normally, I’ve been fairly critical of Carly’s choice as Star Tip in these pages. However, I can’t help but see now that she is a kind, gentle and brave woman. Her previous choices may not have been that helpful to me, but to some other soul, they would have been a lifeline. She is a wonderful human being.

However, my thrill at being STAR TIP is only amplified by the competition I beat off! The star amongst them was this wonderful tip from young Aalia Latif of Warrington.

Another useful toenail cutting tip: do it out of the window of a moving car. This way, you get no irritating and unpleasant trimmings in your home, and also the nubules and shards on the roads form a grippy carpet. A clean house and social responsibility! Happy tipping!!

An Eggceptional Tip!

Look at those spendthrifts wasting money on expensive ice cube trays! Don’t they know they’re made of plastic which is DESTROYING our planet. Leave those idiots to it, I say! An egg box (empty of course!) makes lovely big ice cubes with the carbon footprint the size of an ant! Until I invented this tip Sandy-Poliver, my beautiful but somewhat delicate and sickly wife, always struggled to get the ice cubes out of the plastic tray. The beauty of using an egg box is, you can simply rip the ice out of it!

From root to tips!!

Male Pattern Baldness! Words that can strike fear into the heart of any male! Luckily for me, the Tipps family lineage is filled with robustly-haired men and women, so my own coiffure is (moustache aside) something to be admired in shop windows and when they used to have video cameras in the shop windows of electrical retailers (see also my tip “Who needs mirrors?!” in Women’s Own magazine, March 1992)! Lots of other people are less fortunate, of course, my new wife Tiphanee-Frutiger amongst them! This tip is especially for you!!

Not every man, you’ll, like me, have noticed is as worried about losing their hair as others. Some of them think it gives them a distinguished, mature look (here’s a bonus tip – it doesn’t!!!). Engage these balding fellows in pleasant conversation when you see them, gain a new friend. It’s good for people to have nice friends anyway, but also you will need them for the next step of my tip! Simply fill a swimming cap with a strong adhesive and put it on their head! After a few weeks – by simply removing it and trimming off the excess skin and dried blood and bone – turning the cap inside-out will give you a verdant, bushy crop of natural-looking hair! A wig at a tenth of the price!! No more pretending you’re a Sikh to hide your bitter shame and feelings of isolation at your shiny, depilated nut!!!

Happy combing!

lean, mean, cash-savin’ tippin’ machine!

How I love my George Foreman Grill. No wonder I’m so healthy when George’s magic grill removes all this sort of thing from my pork chops – no wonder my urine samples keep coming back clean! But it does make me sad to think that anything, even unhealthy fat, might go to waste – so I don’t let it! Because this fat is as versatile a household lubricant as WD40! Just use it wherever you would usually use expensive brand name WD40 – creaky doors, stiff hinges. Literally EVERYWHERE. Esmerelda-Lou complains that it encourages stray dogs in – she doesn’t worry about that when we use it as a more personal lubricant though!

Top tips round up – a cautionary tale!!!!!

I find it hard to feel anger towards Love It! magazine – it brings so much light into my dismal life! However this week I spotted a tip that made my blood boil. We are all aware of the ever present threat of the sun, thanks to some particularly graphic pictures of cancerous moles in last week’s Love It! magazine. But I’m afraid if you follow this tip submitted by Lynne Newton of Spennymoore – awarded star tip of the week, no less – and try to skimp on the sunblock by using an old roll-on deodorant container to apply it you’re going to end up as burnt as a crisp and riddled with tumours. This is the most irresponsible tip I have ever seen (well, the second most irresponsible if you count my idea of creating an apiary in my pants, but that hasn’t been published in a top-selling glossy magazine yet). If you really want to save money on sun protection, what you need to do is wrap yourself up in tin foil.

Now this tip is not only irresponsible, but I am very sorry to have to tell you that it is also impossible. I have tried on many occasions to open up a used roll-on deodorant container and refill it. I have attempted this many times in an effort to create a time saving method of spreading margarine. I can therefore only conclude that this tip was FABRICATED.

Meanwhile none of my genuine and non life-threatening tips were published, yet again. Perhaps Carley let the work experience girl edit the tips page this week? Perhaps she was bribed by the mafia? Maybe she’s been hitting the bottle again?

 

Now this is more like it. Ally Stewart of Dunfermline is a tipper I can do business with. Having gotten over my rage at the false and downright dangerous tip above, the very second I saw this tip I was in the freezer pulling the Findus crispy pancakes out of their packaging. (For the record, I find a good old tommy tank to be an excellent and free outlet for my anger – and why waste the jizz when it makes excellent pastry glaze or wallpaper paste? So versatile! There’s no need to be ashamed of saving money!).

My freezer now looks more decorative and interesting than ever thanks to the new traffic light food labelling system and I can fit ten times more more turkey twizzlers in there – boy do you get through a lot of turkey twizzlers when you’ve got 7 sets of triplets on your hands! Nowadays, I don’t even need to open the freezer to see what’s in there when I’m doing the shopping list ahead of our weekly visit to Iceland. And what’s that? You don’t have any fridge magnets? Why not use sellotape!

 

Sore finger tips!!!

We’ve all been there!  A lovely succulent goose breast sizzling on the grill, ready for your tasty supper.  You want to serve it up right away, so you and your new wife Chloride-Mae, can enjoy it!  But ow!  Ow ow ow!  That burns!  I’ve burnt my fingers trying to carve!

What to do?  Some people swear by expensive solutions such as meat forks or a great big spike.  These people are throwing their money away!  In the corner of your house is something which is the mortal enemy of heat: ice!  Simply fill a sandwich bag (or a handkerchief made into a bag with some sewing!!) with water an hour or two before you carve, plunge your hand in and put it in the freezer!  The heat will never penetrate your fortress hands of ice!  Happy cooking!!

The power of tips could save your life!!

Some of you might have been wondering where I’ve been for the last week! Some of you may even have been a little concerned and emailed me. Thank you to all those who did. When I think of a tip for remembering my email address I will reply personally!

Basically, the last week of my life has been fraught to say the least! I won’t be so presumptious as to think you want all the details, so I’ll just get on with the tips!!!

If you ever get stung on the glans by a bee, don’t rub it! Instead, go to a doctor. That way, you save yourself all the hassle of prison, a trumped up Public Indecency charge and having to administer an epi pen to yourself when your airways shut off at 11pm in a holding cell at Colchester Crown Court!

Rubbish tips!!!!!!!!!

Plastic bin bags!  They are always a problem, you’ve probably noted.  You always run out at inopportune times and I’m always being told by my environmentally aware new wife Wanda-Ermine that they are bad for the planet!  All these plastic bags flying around makes for an unhappy world, so I put my mind to a tipular solution to both problems!

Instead of using the disposable black bin bags so often associated with crime, litter and the pleasurable sex of bagging, simply use a bed sheet sewn up at the corners!!  This re-usable, highly absorbent binbag will save our world and save you money!  The man in the petrol station who sells me all my Magic Tree air fresheners is now a convert to the system, and after their initial objections, my local bin men have stopped setting fire to my tree!