Zak Asgard

Man on the television says you’ll never pay off your student loan. Lady on social media says the UK has the worst unemployment crisis since 1932. Politician says you’re off to war. Sally from HR says the company is ‘restructuring’ and fires you over a Microsoft Teams meeting. Science guy on Instagram says there’s a

‘Do you want to stream something?’ my girlfriend asked me. It was 5 p.m. on a Saturday and I’d had a horrendous week. I’d caught one of those mutant viruses that you learn about in nursery rhymes or at the London Dungeon. The cough was the worst part. It was the sort of cough that

If OPM had released an antithetical response to their 2000 magnum opus ‘Heaven Is a Halfpipe’, I’m certain it would have been called ‘Hell Is a British Service Station’. Had this song been made, I think it would have gone a little something like this: ‘If I die before I wake / I’ll spend eternity

Let me introduce you to the performative chef. The performative chef is a man. He is between 23 and 29 years of age. Both of his arms are covered in fine-line tattoos. His favourite tattoo is a quote from Philip Larkin that reads: ‘They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean

I’m 11 years old, and I’m crouched inside the broken shell of a former London bus. It’s my friend’s birthday party. He turns 12 today, and he has just been shot. Not by a real bullet, of course, but by a paintball. I look over at his father, who is busy reloading his gun’s hopper.

I’m standing at a bar in a car park on the rooftop of a shopping centre. I ask the bartender if the beer on draught is big or small. ‘That depends on your definition,’ he says. ‘What is big? What is small?’ The oonce-oonce of German trance music makes it hard to hear, and I’m

Visiting Ikea is one of life’s inevitabilities. There’s an Ikea on every inhabited continent, 487 across 63 countries. But Ikea is more than a furniture retailer. Ikea is an idea, an abstraction, a way of life. No other shop has captured the hearts and minds of the public in quite the same way, at least

Don’t get me wrong: London’s transport system is still one of the best in the world. I’d sooner have a backstreet dentist with jittery hands pry my right molar out with a rusty wrench than wait for a bus in Naples or attempt to understand the New York subway map. But that doesn’t mean Transport

I’ve been having this recurring nightmare recently that involves James Corden. The year is 2045. Society has collapsed and London is under quarantine. There is no transport in the city, so survivors get around on foot – though, for some inexplicable reason, TfL workers are still on strike. I live in a bin and survive

When I was a child, all I wanted to do was talk. In fact, it got so bad that my primary school teachers were forced to give me a ‘wriggle cushion’ – an inflatable seat designed to pacify hyper children. I’m sure there’s a diagnosis in that somewhere. And as the years went by, I

Hello and welcome to my podcast Are you a high agency individual? My name is Muscle McSteroid Face, but my friends call me the Beast for short. Please enjoy the next 135 minutes while I talk about myself and make you feel inadequate. I am a high agency individual. I was born this way, but

The regular’s stage is the fetid pub carpet, the creaky floorboards, the cramped smoking area where they can sneak a shot between rounds. Their audience is the jaded, spotty bartender, the unsuspecting family looking for a quiet Sunday lunch, and any poor soul too cowardly or inebriated to walk away. Regulars are the backbone of

The Michelin Man is in trouble. In fact, his job is on the line. For 125 years, the Michelin Man, real name Bibendum, has been the face of the Michelin Guide: a coveted series of publications that award restaurants for excellence. But last week, news broke that the guide is attempting to reinvent itself in

I can’t remember the exact date of my departure from university. It was sometime in the summer of 2021. My flatmates and I packed up our things, had a sombre pint at the pub, hugged, and then went our separate ways. I boarded the train at Bristol Temple Meads with a degree in English and

Tourists seeking to understand life in London often come up short. It’s not their fault. It is often said that London is a metropolis made up of city villages, each with its own unique personality and characteristics. Most tourists never make it past the invisible walls of central London. Why would they? No one flies

We can thank Herbert ‘Herb’ Cobb McDonald for the modern-day all-you-can-eat buffet. Herb first introduced Las Vegas – and later the world – to this gastronomical abomination in 1946. The Buckaroo Buffet cost one dollar and promised ‘every possible variety of hot and cold entrees to appease the howling coyote in your innards’. The coyote

As Sober October comes to an end and we turn our attention to two months of forced festivities, it might be time to ask ourselves if these month-long periods of sobriety actually do anything. In short, I’ve found the answer is that they do. This year, I attempted Dry January. Why? For one simple reason:

Snus is a smokeless nicotine product that you insert between your gum and your upper lip. Your saliva soaks into the pouch which in turn releases nicotine, entering the bloodstream without a million tiny pesky tar particulates. In the UK, it is illegal to sell tobacco-based snus, though the non-tobacco variant, also known as nicotine