WOMEN'S ENGLISH:

Yes = No
No = No
Maybe = No
I'm sorry = You'll be sorry
We need = I want
It's your decision = The correct decision should be obvious by now
Do what you want = You'll pay for this later
We need to talk = I need to complain
Sure...go ahead = I don't want you to
I'm not upset = Of course I'm upset, you moron!
You're ... so manly = You need a shave and you sweat a lot
You're certainly attentive tonight = Is sex all you ever think about??
Do you love me? = I'm going to ask for something really expensive
How much do you love me? = I did something today that you're really not going to like
I'll be ready in a minute = Kick off your shoes and find a good game on TV
Is my bum fat? = Tell me I'm beautiful
You have to learn to communicate = Just agree with me
Are you listening to me?? = Too late, you're dead

MEN'S ENGLISH:

I'm hungry = I'm hungry
I'm sleepy = I'm sleepy
I'm tired = I'm tired
Do you want to go to a movie? = I'd eventually like to have sex with you
Can I take you out to dinner? = I'd eventually like to have sex with you
Can I call you sometime? = I'd eventually like to have sex with you
May I have this dance? = I'd eventually like to have sex with you
Nice dress = Nice cleavage!
You look tense, let me give you a massage = I want to fondle you
What's wrong? = I guess sex tonight is out of the question
I'm bored = Do you want to have sex?
I love you = Let's have sex now
I love you, too = Okay, I said it...we'd better have sex now!
Let's talk = I am trying to impress you by showing that I am a deep person and maybe then you'd like to have sex with me
Will you marry me? = I want to make it illegal for you to have sex with other guys
I don't think that blouse and that skirt go well together = I am gay

First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us. They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a tin, liver pate and didn't get tested for diabetes. Then after that trauma, our baby cots were covered with bright coloured lead-based paints. We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets. As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags. Riding in the back of a van - loose - was always great fun. We drank water from the garden hosepipe and NOT from a bottle. We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this. We ate cakes, white bread and real butter and drank pop with sugar in it, but we weren't overweight because...... WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!! We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on. No one was able to reach us all day. And we were O.K. We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem . We did not have Playstations, Nintendo's, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 99 channels on cable, no DVD's, no MP3's no surround sound, no mobile phones, no text messaging, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet chat rooms.......... WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them! We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents . We played with worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever. We made up games with sticks and tennis balls and although we were told it would happen, we did not poke out any eyes. We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just yelled for them! Not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. (Imagine that!!) The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law! This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever!

FROM A REPORTERS VIEW - WHAT IT'S REALY LIKE 3 hours ago

In Binge Drink Britain, bouncers are on the front line. Owen Amos spends a Friday night on the door in Stockton and discovers just what doormen put up with.

MARK Kidd, bouncer, has suffered a broken leg, a fractured skull and a smashed wrist at work. He's been stabbed in the arm, had a fingertip sliced off and been attacked by a madwoman with a stiletto. At work. Tonight, I'm with him outside a Stockton nightclub. At work. I pray for peace and keep an eye on girls in heels.

The leg, smashed in three places, happened while tackling a knifeman outside a Bournemouth nightclub.

"They jumped up and down on it," says Mark, matter-of-factly. "It could have been amputated.

They spent nine hours putting it back together." His right leg, packed with steel plates, is now a half-inch shorter than the other.

The fractured skull happened at the end of a night, after asking someone to leave. The guy responded with an ashtray, whacked across Mark's head. The stiletto woman, too drunk to stand, had also been asked to leave. She wanted to stay. Jousting with her Jimmy Choos, unsurprisingly, convinced no one.

Mark has, I realise, lived through an episode of Street Crime UK. That grey and green CCTV footage, starring street-corner scrappers, is familiar.

advertisementHe's been there. Does he not feel fear?

"Everybody will experience an adrenaline dump," Mark says. "It's part of fight or flight. What your body's doing is giving you extra speed, extra power, making you unable to feel pain. People mistake that for fear."

Easy mistake to make, I reckon. Does he get threatened?

"It runs like this," he says, smiling. "They shout You bald ****, I'm going to come back and get you, going to come back and stab you'. I have been in situations with rather large crime figures involved, but mostly I ignore it. If I had a pound for every time someone threatened to kill me, I'd be a rich man."

Tonight, thankfully, should be quiet. We're at Cellar 51, a nice bar with a band that plays Suspicious Minds and Ruby Tuesday. The punters are mixed: young lads wearing T-shirts, students wearing embroidered hoodies, women wearing too much hair spray and perfume.

I'M 6ft 2ins, so could pass, from distance, as a bouncer. On closer inspection, my clothes betray me. I wear a suit, black shirt and - for some reason - a red tie. I look like I'm off to a disco. In the 1980s. Mind, the tie's not all that betrays me. There's also my absolute absence of menace.

At 10pm, the punters stroll in, cheery and fairly sober. Mark greets them all. Not just good manners, I learn. "I'm gauging their reaction, their response,"

he says. "If they have attitude, or are drunk, they don't come in."

It's not the only precaution.

"All the time, I'm clocking everyone who's walking up and down the street," he says. "Are they fighting?

Are they p****** in the street? Are they throwing traffic cones? It's the easiest job in the world letting them in. It's the hardest getting them out."

Mark, 44, has worked doors for 19 years, mainly in Bournemouth. He's seen the social scene shift from terrace culture's tail-end, to raves, to the 1990s cocaine epidemic. Now, he says, more people carry knives. He could write a book.

On his first night, in Bournemouth, he stopped known drug dealers entering his club. "We knew who they are, and they weren't too happy," he says.

"We were in the firing line at that point."

But, Mark says, he immediately felt comfortable.

"You don't do this job on your own - you work as a team. When you try to do things on your own, it doesn't work. You end up in hospital. You don't see police officers or prison warders working alone.

"If there are two, three, five guys fighting and you go over to sort it out alone, what's going to happen?

They're going to end up leathering you."

Mark - whose colleague, Sean, takes the entry fee - will win more arguments th