Black Friday – another step along the road to madness.

So in previous years, it seemed to me that Black Friday and all that it entailed was an American thing. I could always enjoy stories of fights in queues and punters being maced all for the sake of grabbing the last 50-inch plasma TV in the shop for a third of the usual price, and then feel slightly superior in that typically English way that makes so many others hate us.

But this year, the UK press and UK retailers have managed to induce Black Friday madness in earnest in our fair isles. There goes my snobby smugness – we in the UK are now as possession obsessed as those ‘Mericans ever were. It’s another step along the road to spelling colour without a u, allowing any inbred mook to own a gun and shoot black people, or voting for the party actively trying to be the dumbest in elections (although with UKIP's recent frightening gains, we might already have that one in the bag).

All hail our headlong rush into oblivion!