In creative and artistic terms, it’s best and healthiest to create for creation’s sake. To paint, to sculpt, to write, to rhyme, to sing, to act, because you have to, because you need to, because something inescapable and unquenchable in your very being won’t take ‘no’ for an answer. Not because you expect to make money out of it. Not simply to sell yourself. Your very soul. Otherwise there’s no truth or purity at the core of your work. You’re corrupted. You’re click-bait. You’re art for the Amazon warehouse generation.

As someone who makes next to no money from his writing, the previous paragraph is what I keep telling myself so I don’t start carving tattoos of Jeffrey Archer’s face into my chest with a Stanley knife, while shouting out the window: ‘LET ME BE YOUR SEXY WORD WHORE, YOU FRIGID BASTARDS! LET ME FUCK YOU RIGHT IN THE MIND FOR CASH! COLD HARD CASH! WANT MY FUCKING KIDS TO STARVE, DO YOU? OH COLD HEART! OH, CRUEL, CRUEL WORLD!’

Of course the next best thing to money is recognition. I’m not talking fame, or anything gaudy like that, although I don’t see why my big whiskery face doesn’t deserve to be beaming out from even just ONE lousy billboard. I just like the thought that someone, somewhere out there, is hanging on my words; that someone might be looking forward to the next thing I write. That’s the important thing: to know that I’ve made someone smile, or laugh, or cry, or think. Or even just really, really, really pissed them off.

You, you lovely sons of guns, have made me feel all that and more. Well, most of you. Definitely a lot of you. You know… some of you. OK, GREIG. OKAY? GREIG. GREIG’S MY ONLY FUCKING FAN, OKAY??? ARE YOU ALL HAPPY NOW??

But seriously. All of you – especially Greig – have made me feel like I’m doing something worthy. That I’m not just hollering into the void, or ejaculating thesauruses into the wind – or is it thesaurii? No. No, it’s not. The wavy red line knows all. All hail the wavy red line!

You’re a great bunch of…. I hesitate to say fans… you’re a great bunch of… em, disparate group of people, many of whom… have… liked or read, like, one thing I’ve written, and just… haven’t got round to ‘unliking’ the page yet… em… and lonely people? Lots of really sad, lonely people. Thank you. Thank you so much. You’ve made this hellish, insecure, border-line narcissistic wreck of a man weep a little less in his bed at night.

The site – and its Facebook page – is taking a break for Christmas and New Year. I’ll be back at some point in early January, so until then you’ll have to find somewhere else to get your fix of horrifying stories about my sex-life, passive aggressive rants about my children, sociopathic outbursts of hatred towards the world, and reviews of TV shows you don’t watch.

Thank you again for your support – for being here, for noticing, for getting involved. I hope you have a marginally tolerable festive season, and find some way to self-medicate yourself through the season. And resist the urge to kill your gran. I know she gets smashed on sherry and goes on and on about brown people, and how much she really likes that lovely Piers Morgan, but don’t do hard time on her account. She’ll be dead before you know it.

Merry Christmas everyone! See you next year!