I have absolutely no figures to hand but would hazard a guess that golf is by far the most dangerous pastime in which you can indulge.
Bing Crosby is the most famous casualty of this absurd hobby but he is by no means alone. My uncle went West on the fairway and I'm fairly sure that every weekend, some red-faced freemason curls up his toes somewhere between the fifth and sixth greens.
I once have an argue with my friend,
John Peng because of golf. I,ve told him that golf is usually played by old, fat people who have not done any form of exercise since living school back in the days when they had diphtheria and Hitler.
You heart, when you,ve spent 50 years sitting at a desk eating chocolate, is a fatty, amorphous blob which cannot be expected to cope should you suddenly decide to take up golf. And it certainly won't able to cope the first time you catch a glimpse of yourself in those stupid strides.
Remember this: exercise of any kind is dangerous. Even horizontal jogging can be hazardous.
Time and time again, people with a predilection for wearing yellow lycra tell us that we must look after ourselves, that we must give up smoking, that we must run everywhere and that red meat is evil.
And who is that man who jumps up and down on breakfast television?
Look. During my younger years, i smoked 78,000 cigarettes and drank perhaps 8,000 cans of coke. I rarely did anything strenuous - except that - and here i am in 2010, fit, fat and happy, though i will admit that in a morning, I do sometimes produce the most enormous docker's oysters.
Now, compare this state of affairs to my more agile and sporty friends who, throughout our younger years together, jogged to school, trained twice a week, went to the gym and play rugby. And all of them ended up injured in some unpleasant way.
This meant they couldn't carry on being sporty and, as a result, all their muscle has turned to fat. They still have broken knees, wonky spines and jogger's nipple.
They don't smoke so they're on edge. They don't drink coke as much as i am so they're dull. And pretty soon, they're all going to take up golf and die of a heart attack.
In my past life i have skied occasionally and each time some part of me was working has stopped. Once i broke my thumb. And most of my right knee is still in Val D'Isere.
I have done some karting but always, always, always end up headbutting a wall. Which hurts.
I once went fishing and just when we were about to come home, a 30 kilogram stingray took a fancy to the plastic octopus I'd been dangling in the water and it took me six hours to land the damn thing. My hand were bleeding and i was sick twice.
Just recently, i'm thinking about to learn how to scuba dive. But after quite sometime 'Google'ing i figured out that it is not a sport, as all you do is hang around, weightless, looking at the fishes and coral. Apart from the bit when you jump off the boat, it's completely effortless, and furthermore, you can't possibly hurt yourself under water, unless a shark eats your leg.
Unfortunately, I was wrong. After a bit more 'Google'ing, i found out that there are currents which are pretty handy for moving you away from the boat but a damn nuisance when you want to get back. Ideally you wait for the tide to change but as you will getting through a tank of air in 15 minutes, this was not an option.
Also, you maybe will ended up cutting your foot and bled like a stuck pig. And you will have bruises on your knee because of your effort getting back into the boat and your ear which even after three weeks, still thinks it's 75 feet down and won't pop back to one bar.
Now, I would not never ever hurt myself when i'm sleeping or slouched in front of the television. So that, from now on is where you'll find me.
And to make sure i always take the car, even when i'm popping down to the corner shop for more fags. I have bought one of those American traffic light things to hang over my front door. It says, simply, Don't Walk.
I understand that as a result, I shall die earlier than might have been the case if I'd spent every waking moment down at the gym, grunting.
But i shall have had a happy life and i shall toddle off before Alzheimer's sets in and before i'm humiliated with the need for an incontinence bag.
