My wife and I are alone at home, the children are tucked up in bed and there's a nice pot of tea brewing in front of us. So what do we talk about? Well naturally, we talk about how much we hate our friends. Obviously, after all these years together, we have very little to say to each other. A long time ago we used to discuss each other: I learnt about Carol's troubled childhood and she learnt about mine. But now we've pretty much exhausted that topic.

There are times when I get amorous and there are also times when we discuss the kids. But our major topic of conversation is our friends and how much we detest them. And believe me, most of them are pretty vile!

For example, there is the friend who drinks too much. Last time she came over I opened a bottle of red wine and within 35 minutes she'd finished it – all by herself. There's another friend who is absolutely charming until he has a drink: after a few beers, he'll start arguing with people, banging his fist on the table and threatening them with violence.

There is the friend who talks constantly about her life, her husband and her children and how marvellous they all are. Her children are all in their school's 'able and gifted' group, her husband is making an awful lot of money and – I'm not joking – she also tells me that he has a big member. Personally I hope he goes bankrupt, his penis drops off and their 'able and gifted' children are reduced to sweeping the streets.

There are a couple of friends who are permanently depressed. One of them rings up Carol every two weeks and cries down the telephone. The other comes over, weeps constantly. Every time I walk into my living room, she is in floods of tears, holding Carol's hand and wailing. Of course, I feel really sorry for these people. But I wish they'd go away and leave us alone.

Some of our friends are complete psychos. I try to avoid the couple with the kleptomaniac son who tries to steal our mobile phones and regularly exposes himself to our daughter. There's a friend who seems to have a bit of a chip on his shoulder and, when he sees us, is forever making snide comments about journalists and all the lies that they tell. Then there is the woman who is always terribly empathetic. Whenever we mention any problem she says, 'I know. I know. I understand. It must be so awful,' and she always puts her hands on our shoulders, so that we know that she really does care. She makes me feel like crying – smug cow!

We also have a couple of new age friends, but we don't see them any more, not since they announced that they were spending the next six months at home – 'prioritising their relationship'. The wife, incidentally, told us that she really liked Carol's aura. I've got no idea what she meant, but we thanked her profusely.

There are plenty of friends who bore us to tears and others who are hopelessly selfish. Others feel obliged – for some reason – to tell us how to live our lives. And there are others who insist on making some political point, even when I've told them that I am going to disagree with them. So they drone on about how the war in Iraq is justified or how Mrs Thatcher was the greatest thing that happened to this country, while I try to find a polite way of telling them that they are talking out of their backsides.

Yes, it's true our friends are rubbish and we hate almost all of them. So if you're reading this, and you think we're talking about you, you're probably right. It feels better now that I've got that off my chest. And, in any case, writing this column will give Carol and me something else to talk about. Over the next few weeks we'll probably spend a lot of time talking about all the friends that we've insulted so publicly and discussing how to get them back.

Now read Carol's side of the story...

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