6: Cocaine

Since the age of 20 I've been completely teetotal. I used to try and claim that I was straight-edge because of my strict no drinking, no smoking and no drugs policy - but it seems the straight-edge police from California get a little bit pissy if you fancy a shandy on a summer day, or you take painkillers when you hurt your back slipping on a broken toilet seat. It happens, ok?

I'm teetotal out of choice, but that choice is questioned on a daily basis. Friends will constantly try and encourage me to drink, like the fact that I choose to not imbibe alcohol makes me some kind of untrustworthy bastard. They all cast unapproving glances at me drinking coke as they drink pints; at me matching their white russians with a McDonalds milkshake. I miss smoking a bit although it's been quite some time now. If my daughter ever asks me whether smoking is bad my genuine answer will be as follows:

"It'll kill you. But it makes you look really, really cool."

Because it does, you can't deny that. I always want to have my publicity shots done with me smoking, aping my heroes: Bill Hicks, Mark Lanegan, Dot Cotton.

Drugs are a different issue. People don't tend to offer me them, they merely believe I'm on them. Or that I can provide them, from my mythical suitcase full of powders and pills that I keep in a secret compartment in the boot of my car, covered by tatty carpet and a Tesco shopping bag. If I'd have had a pound for every time I've been asked to provide drugs just because people presume I have an enormous stash of them... then, well... hang on. I'd probably have made more money if I'd have actually started selling drugs. Although I did once sell some Vim to a lad I didn't like at university and told him it was cocaine. I think he lived.

I must stress that in the same way that I'm far from anti alcohol or tobacco - without drunk people I would be considerably less funny, and without the smell of smoke gig venues now smell of boys and beer - I'm really not anti drugs. Your body, you can do what you want with it. Without the influence of narcotics the world of music and film would be without so much genius. And admittedly, without non-talented cocks like Pete Doherty. I'm a big believer in everyone trying out whatever they can in life. If your buzz comes from shoving a powder up your nose then fine, that's ok with me. After all, I'm cripplingly addicted to going up onstage to get my buzz.

My issues with cocaine are twofold - and that's without getting into the politics of how it gets to us, whose pockets it is lining and the masses of people who are killed in the wars over who controls it. My gripes may seem slightly less important.

Firstly, I despise the press attitude towards cocaine. The biggest pusher of the stuff in this country are lads mags, not some dude called Darren in a leather jacket in the corner of your local. You could read about a rockstar doing lines off the backs of sweaty whores during recording of a legendary album and you still read about the music. You view him as a quirky celebrity doing something out of your reach. It's when magazines like FHM, Maxim, Vice and so on (the latter being particularly bad about this) start talking about coke prices, where to get the best shit and so on. Because that's not providing a service to anyone. That's merely letting impressionable idiots know about something that people have been sampling and not harping on about for decades now, and making something break the chav barrier.

Breaking the chav barrier is what happens when something that is perceived as remotely cool is ruined by attention from Britain's ruling underclass. For example - Lyle and Scott knitwear, Fred Perry shirts, everything Burberry have ever made - the list is fairly endless. It used to be so much simpler: Cocaine was enjoyed by rockstars and the wealthy. Now Gaz, Daz and Baz can cap off a good week of driving a white van with a gram of coke and live the high life. This is all the fault of the press reporting on the drug in such a way - that's why the drug is getting more prevalent.

I wouldn't have an issue with more people than ever doing what is (in theory) an non-addictive drug if it wasn't for people constantly harping on about it. That's my second point and the main bone of contention. It's a drug that makes you mildly more sociable, chatty and confident. I'm fine with that - like I said before, I do comedy to get my buzz.

If you're drinking a beer I have no interest in what it cost you, where you got it, how many you can consume in a day, what the name was of the person who sold it you and so on. Just because something is in powdered form, then cut with baking soda by one dealer, then with icing sugar by another, then with shake and vac by another, then sold at an overpriced rate by someone who doesn't fully understand inflation and the global economic dive, then you shared a line with someone you just met in a dingy toilet and you considered it glamorous and classy... it doesn't make it any more interesting.

The one saving grace of cocaine is that it hurt members of Status Quo when they were showering, and helped me learn what a septum was.

And who the fuck Daniella Westbrook is.