Whilst browsing through the Tabloids, I find many amusing snippets. Today, 25 October 2000, I came across this one, in the SW supplement of the SUN, about what could become the Phobias of the 21st century, but to appreciate some of them you might need to be British or at least have good knowledge of Brit personalities, mosts of whom are currently hitting the headlines here, and also our way of life. It may also help if you are female! The article is reproduced in full.
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Confession time. I am an aerobicophobic - I'm pathalogically terrified of doing star-jumps in front of a sweat-soaked slave-driver called Sherri.
But what's your phobia? Modern life is fraught with horrors - no, not just Ann Widdecombe.
Here are just a few of the terrifying 21st century fears we have to confront:
- AEROBICOPHOBIA: See above.
- AGAPHOBIA: Fear that you will reach 30, sell your flat and move to a homely farmhouse where you will spend your time cooking roasts in your traditional Rayburn stove instead of buying them from M & S and kidding everyone you did.
- ALLEGROPHOBIA: Fear of being late and getting stuck behind an old lady on the M1 doing 12mph while keeping her left-hand indicator constsantly flashing.
- ALOOGOBIPHOBIA: Fear of not knowing how to interpret the menu in a tandoori restaurant and accidentally burning ones gullet as a result.
- ANGORAPHOBIA: Fear of being given horrible lemon-coloured woolly jumpers for Christmas by misguided but well meaning maiden aunt.
- CLASSTROPHOBIA: Fear of not knowing, when asked by an opinion pollster, whether you are an ABC1, a C2D2, lower-middle class, upper-middle class, working class, British Airways economy class, basket weaving class or remedial class.
- FAGROPHOBIA: Fear of workmates who become scarily neurotic for three days every January when they are trying to give up the Silk Cut.
- IRAQNOPHOBIA: Panic experienced after reading the latest depressing reports about the Middle East peace process.
- JAGGERAPHOBIA: Fear of being in wide-open spaces (such as Wembley Stadium) and getting chatted up by ageing rock stars with large, wide-open lips, who claim to be in supposesdly wide-open marriages. Frequently suffered prior to Viagraphobia (see below).
- KLOSTERSPHOBIA: Fear of going skiing and finding oneself in the same resort as the Royal Family. Or, in the case of Tara Parker-Tomkinson, fear of going skiing and NOT finding oneself in the same resort as the Royals.
- SNAGROPHOBIA: Fear of catching your tights on a rusty nail, getting a two-foot ladder and discovering that the Tights-Tampax-And-Durex machine in the Ladies is only dispensing Tampax and Durex.
- SAGROPHOBIA: Fear of suddenly seeing a large open space midway down your chest where your breasts used to be when you were ten years younger.
- STAGROPHOBIA: Fear of arriving at the church for your own wedding only to discover that the groom's "mates" have left him tied to a lamp post in Bangor with his genitals painted luminous green and a traffic cone on his head.
- TWOJAGROPHOBIA: Fear of being overtaken by a posh car, realising it was John Prescott and not having been quick-witted enough to flash him a two-fingured hand signal.
- POSHANDBECKNOPHOBIA: Fear of reading yet another article about Victoria Beckham and her half-witted hubby.
- QUACKAPHOBIA: Fear of going to a Chinese medicine clinic and finding out later that what you have been rubbing into your cellulite is the shrunken, dessicated penis of a giant panda crushed up in rhino spit.
- SANTA-CLAUSTROPHOBIA: Mortal dismay experienced when it gets to the second week of October and the shops start selling musical Father Christmases, thus reminding you that in justs over two months time you will receive from your maiden aunt, that horrible lemon-coloured woolly sweater.
- VIAGRAPHOBIA: Fear of being propositioned by any man over sixty. Rarely experienced by Ann Nicole Smith, Catherine Zeta Jones or any of Peter Stringfellows 3,000 ex-girlfriends.
- ZIGZAGROPHOBIA: Fear of being unable to walk in a straight line when stopped by the police for a breath test despite explaining that you were only doing 115mph because you had spent the previous 90 minutes stuck behind someone's gran in an Austin Allegro, doing 12mph.
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