Hey, cheer up: we're unhappy, not depressed

Published on Tuesday 15 May 2007 00:44

DEPRESSION. You've got to laugh. According to a top report, Prozac is being dished out willy-nilly to both Britons and Scottish people. More than 31 million prescriptions for all antidepressants were pushed into the hands of the unhappy last year. And, believe me, these people are unhappy. Don't believe the medical guff about depression and unhappiness not being the same thing.

I'd a friend who'd made two suicide attempts; went to a new GP who didn't have his notes and told him he wasn't depressed, just unhappy. Then he was lectured with the usual mythical nonsense about "clinical" depression, which is apparently only for true gods, the elite of unhappiness.

This GP boasted that she was one of these herself. Bizarre. There is, it appears, a hierarchy of unhappiness. I mention this not to belittle the condition. I suffer from it myself, but I never let it get me down. Once you discover that God is evil and your fellow humans are schmucks, it's hard not to get depressed. Despite this, I've never taken any of the rubbish prescribed by GPs over the years. Nearly all of these turned out to be dangerous.

Interestingly, or otherwise, the same study looked at non-pharmaceutical ways of saying sod off to despondency. It showed that a trip to a shopping centre made 45 per cent of people less depressed. Significantly, though, for those of us who prefer dwelling on the negative side, it made 22 per cent more depressed. Part of the blame for this lies with the music. Supermarkets, in particular, go in for melancholy pop that can often reduce the sensitive to tears.

Then there's the whole business of making purchases. If you buy things that only half-interest you, then you just end up worrying about your bank balance. Nowadays, all of us, except the absurdly over-organised, have at some time returned with CDs or DVDs that we've got already.

The comfort of the plastic bag hanging from the hand is transitory. Its contents - a worthy book, say, that you know you'll never read - are illusory. Instead of this conspicuous consumption, the University of Essex boffins behind the report recommend stravaiging aboot the countryside as the best means of reducing depression. But it depends how you define countryside. Mincing through a peatbog with midges clamped to your earlobe might only make things worse.

I've an unpatented cure for most depression, which involves wine, chocolate, the novels of PG Wodehouse, and getting out in green places. Indeed, if you can arrange things so that you are sitting in a sunny garden with a glass of wine in one hand, a bar of chocolate in the other and a butler turning the pages of your Wodehouse, I defy you to be unhappy. Mind you, knowing my luck, the wine will be corked, the chocolate melted, the butler a Hearts supporter with halitosis and, no sooner will I have found my reading glasses (on my head), than the rain will start chucking it down.

It's curtains for the takeaway Labour gals

OH MY giddy aunt. Could you imagine anything worse than watching Jackie Baillie dribbling black bean sauce down her chin while Karen Gillon pokes her sonsie phizog into a carton of crispy noodles? The image is a distressing one. These giants of the political world were just two of half-a-dozen female Labour MSPs who gathered for a Chinese takeaway in the so-called "sweet 'n' sour conspiracy" to oust Jock O'Donnell as leader.

Of course, the gals deny it all. One said: "The laugh is that the biggest debate wasn't about Jack or the leadership, but about which rooms we wanted at Holyrood." Burdz, eh?

Even at the heart of a political storm, all they're interested in is curtains.

The historic meeting - I use the word in its original Etruscan sense of "meaningless; of no account whatsoever" - took place in the hacienda of Pauline McNeill, best known for her country-and-western howling. Also skewering spicy prawns with a greasy chopstick were Margaret "The Nag" Curran, former minister for stairheid rammies; Johann "Laughing Girl" Lamont, the grim feminist with the de-gonading scissors in her top pocket, and Wendy Alexander, the wee aromatic duck who quackth with a lithp.

Ludicrously, one of them told this newspaper: "It is quite insulting to Margaret Curran to suggest this was some kind of leadership dinner for Wendy. To suggest we were there for Wendy would be to disregard the chances of Margaret." They're bitching already!

Honestly, you couldn't have any of that lot as leader. Get a grip. Wee Wendy talking phoney thtatithticth in her obsession with talking down Thcotland. Margaret, as easily wound up as a clockwork toy, losing the nut and screeching at the top of her voice till the stretcher arrives. Johann making voters wilt at the knees with a grimace. If the Samaritans are ever desperate for more customers, they could just put her coupon up on billboards.

To be fair, these Chinese occasions are a longstanding political tradition. Adolf Hitler used to gather his cabinet for some Chow Mein Kampf. But the lasses will have to think of something different next time. Chicken Vindaloonie, anyone?

Scowl together now - welcome to Broontoon

WHO, in the name of Larry, would want to live in Broontoon? Gordon B, the future PM, has hatched a loony scheme to build five new toons on broonfield sites. There's always a whiff of The Prisoner (remember Patrick McGoohan, pictured?) about this sort of thing, conjuring up images of a citizenry dourly blunderin' aboot in dark suits, scowling at each other. The local newspaper headline reads: "Broontoon not fit to run its own cooncil."

At the local shop, Prudencestretcher, you could buy a selection of ties in red, scarlet or vermilion for 1.99 and a reduction in your pension. On Friday evenings, the populace would gather in the public square to hear a tape-recorded message from Broon talking vacuous bilge such as: "Every single individual in this country should have the chance to realise their own potential." No, you don't say? This was the extent of Broon's "vision", spelled out in Kentshire at the weekend.

Meaningless flannel. When presented with this sort of guff, try turning it round: "Every single individual in this country should be denied the chance to realise their own potential." Nobody's going to say that, are they? Broon is a grade-one chancer. He's as shallow as a puddle in the desert, as principled as a priest in a bordello. He will make a great prime minister.