This is the full text of a ‘To the Lassies’ speech I wrote and read out for a Burns’ Night my friend held at his house two years ago. Most of the assembled laughed, and understood it was all in the name of tomfoolery; one middle-aged woman sat and stared at me in the hope that she could make me die with the power of her mind. 

Toast Tae the Lassies

Women. Pffttt…

That’s all I’ve got. 

‘Does my thought-pattern look fat in this?’

That certainly won’t shock you, because traditionally men are more taciturn than women. That’s a polite way of saying that they never fucking shut up. A woman can talk for three days without getting a dry throat, without threat of an empty mouth, and on subjects as diverse as ‘blah blah blah’ and ‘shoes’.

Women don’t transmit on our frequency. That’s when they bother to speak in our language in the first place. Science has proved this. A study was done comparing communication and language between the sexes, looking at what we say, how we say it and how we are received and perceived, and it found that what a woman says, the content of their speech, isn’t NEARLY as important… as the size of her tits.

‘Do you know how hard it is to get four comfortable pairs of Jimmy Choos?’

Women project their voices like missiles. Let’s put it this way: if the female black widow could talk, it wouldn’t need to murder its mate after sex. In fact the human female’s recourse to conversation appears, to the black widow, an unspeakably savage act. A woman won’t so much argue that black is white, but that both of these are wrong, and who do they think they’re talking to?

It wasn’t always like this. We never used to have to listen to women speak. It used to be legal to hit them with a frying pan, or water-board them in a vat of warm piss. We miss those days.

For some enlightenment on the subject we have to journey back to pre-Enlightenment times, and to a man named Institoris who wrote a medieval guide to identifying and prosecuting witches. I’ll quote the preface in the Malleus Maleficarum, which reads:

Wooooooooooooooo Bo-dy Fo-horm, Body Form for yoooooooooooooo!

“Why is the treachery which leads to the practice of harmful magic and all that entails found more frequently in women than in men? Institoris lists women’s usual weaknesses – they are backbiting, vengeful, lascivious, impressionable and intellectually inferior (those are the GOOD ones) – before saying that wicked women (the qualification is important) are particularly ruled by three moral failings (just three?): infidelitas (defined as a lack of adherence to the probable truth of the reality of things invisible – you know, like men’s faults) ostentation and lust.” 

I don’t think there are many here tonight who would disagree with those sentiments. Most of this can probably be attributed to hormones, with the emphasis on moans. Yes, hormones, and the dreaded ‘P’ word, that only five men in the history of the planet have been brave enough to utter. 

Periods are like the Kaiser Soze of biological processes. The greatest trick that women ever pulled was in trying to convince the male world that periods didn’t exist. So when a woman, light and electric from blood loss and mood imbalance has stabbed you through the heart, ripped it out and fed it to you – recognise this, men: it’s your fault. 

‘Flesh, chocolate. It’s all the same to me! Nomnomnomnom!’

Anyone who’s ever worked with a group of women knows that, as a group, they’re a deadly force to be reckoned with. Throw a puppy into their midst, and get ready to make dog soup with the bones. Women working in packs are like piranhas, but with better shoes.

And then there’s the connected danger and mystical horror that is cycle synchronisation. Like when the planets align and some evil wizard uses the formation to open a Gateway to Hell. Cycle synchronisation is like a Mexican wave of hatred.

‘All this fuss over a few fucking shepherds?’

Western culture has fooled us about women. We’re raised with the image of the nurturing, peaceful mother. The kind with big loving bingo wings that would make a flying squirrel grey with envy, and a pendulous, blobby bosom that could double as a wrecking ball. A lot of people, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, believe that if women were to rule the world it would be a happy, fluffy, lovey-dovey place with no war, struggle or strife. Then along came Margaret Thatcher. Lacking a heart, Thatcher was all cunt, and the monthly blood flow was suitably redirected. The Belgrano was torpedoed, in a metaphorical sense of course, by Thatcher’s tampon. 

Women cry. This has also fooled men, who equate crying with caring, and also see crying as a last resort, like suicide, or films starring Renee Zellwegger. But crying does not equal caring, because women, rather alarmingly, cry when they’re confused, startled, hopeful, ambivalent, guilty, ticked off, jealous, happy, furious, clumsy, dopey, sneezy and horny. Maybe that last one’s just me. They never actually cry when they’re sad. No, that’s what shouting’s for.

So how did women become so powerful? What went wrong? Women’s faces not being as soft as the hands that do their dishes? Women NOT doing the Shake and Vac to put the freshness back? 

John McCririck’s favourite wanking picture.

We can trace alot of it back to the suffragette movement. Back at the turn of the twentieth century, one woman’s desire to be heard was so strong that she hurled herself under a horse. If only more women would follow this example.

They burned their bras. Why? Didn’t they realise that their resulting bad back would have to be treated by a male chiropractor?

They started to play sports! The cheek. A little tip: stick to gymnastics, or naked jelly wrestling, or we’re not fucking interested.

And now there are women in the military. Great. Whose smart idea was it to teach them how to kill? And will somebody please ask Gordon Brown much it costs to produce Kevlar vests that can accommodate pairs of breasts? Not to mention the expense of military-issue tampons. No wonder they can’t afford any fucking helicopters over there. 

‘Want to see my big vessel, Punk Space Whore?’

They’ve been in space, too. How long before we see a fatal accident due to a woman shuttle-pilot trying to reverse park behind the Mir space station? Women have no business being in space, unless it’s to get shagged by Captain Kirk.

A lot of people say that women are just good for cooking, cleaning, shagging and gestating young. This isn’t true. They’re quite good with curtains, too. But it is true that the new power that women hold, especially in employment, is dangerous.

Allow me to expand.

• A chick Doctor in Harrogate lost a false fingernail in a man’s lower intestine, causing his bowel to fall out.
• A female bus driver in Darlington caused a twelve-car pile-up reading Woman’s Own while negotiating a roundabout. The drivers of the twelve cars hadn’t the time to react, as they were all doing their make-up at the time.
• A female pilot lost control of a Boeing 747 because she was crying about a hungry cat she’d seen in her garden that morning.
• A female soldier shot half of her own battalion as she stumbled across hostile terrain wearing stilettos.
• In France, a bint can kill you if she can prove to the court she was on her dabs.

Sobering stuff.

I hope you don’t think I’ve been chauvinist or misogynistic tonight. This is not misogyny. It’s self-defence. Because although we love women – those deliciously mad, sexually-sociopathic Hell-dogs with tits – we must handle them carefully – like bombs, or rabid ferrets. We must love them like blow-up dolls filled with sixty per cent cotton wool to forty per cent sharp but rusty potato peelers.

Let’s raise a glass to the fairer sex.

Here’s tae ye!