Long since dismissed as a "phallacy", this is a SCIENCE FACT. If you are male and partial to solo sex, be warned. A bishop bashed by your own fair hand till red raw is a sure sign of imminent blindness, as Ray Charles found out to his cost. Here's why:

Your body is an intricate network of nerves and hormonal feedback systems. It is more intricate than the most intricate of intricate Persian rugs. If you were to lay all your body's nerves end to end they would stretch around the earth four times, make a trip to the moon and back, and go around the world again via Venus. Twice. Yes, there are that many of them. So it's hardly surprising that they may conflict with each other from time to time, as they do in every male's body at two crucial junctions: the hand and the penis.

Friction on the penis alone is harmless and often pleasurable, unless it involves sandpaper. Friction on the hand alone is similarly nothing to worry about. But friction on both at the same time leads to an involuntary hormonal relapse in the optical tactillian cerrebremumum nodenols in the brain (more commonly known as IHRITOTCNITB syndrome) and triggering this too often send a message to your retinas telling them to slowly melt. And thus gradual blindness sets in.

So all you men out there, beware. Next time you're fit to burst, keep that overactive wrist away. Instead get someone else to satisfy your needs, or rub up against a bit of cloth or something. I know someone who used to get imaginative with his erection, his cat and some potted meat. Whatever you decide, remember this: next time you're randy, don't get handy. It's just not worth it.

2) Isaac Newton was wrong about gravity...

...but so nearly very right. As everyone knows, he claimed to have discovered this mysterious force by freak chance. One day, while masturbating under a tree, the soon-to-be-blind scientist was diverted from his sordid hobby by an apple falling on his head. 'Ouch!' he cried, but his anger soon gave way to inspiration. 'Eureka!' he cried, shamelessly aping Archemides. For Newton saw an apparent blinding truth: that something was pulling the apple earthward. And this something he named 'Gravity', after his dog. All scientific thought since has revered Newton's theories - but he was wrong about one crucial thing. The apple was not a symptom of gravity. It was the cause of gravity itself.

Oh yes. So why, for Pete's sake, did such an insightful if slightly depraved man not see this? Well, Newton never much cared for apples. He preferred pears. He liked their juicy ripeness and took an almost fetishistic delight in their soft, giving flesh. Had a pear landed on his head all might have been different. However, this was unlikely. Pears aren't as common as apples, and who can blame them? Pears are not entrusted with holding mankind to the ground. But apples are. Yes, they are. Apples ARE gravity.

Why, then, should apples fall at all? Ah, because at any one moment there are more apples and the remains of apples on earth's ground than on trees. So everything, including other apples, is attracted to the ground. There are only a few apples on the moon, which is why you can bounce around on it like a prick. Jupiter, on the other hand, is crammed full of apples, and mainly strong varieties like Orange Pippins at that. The gravitational pull on Jupiter is so strong it beggars belief. Indeed, its famous 'red spot' is thought to be a dense cluster of bruised apples. But black holes take the piss. Each molecule in these scary things holds 30 000 ultra-condensed apples. The gravity here is so strong that no light can pass through, not even apple-light.

We owe much to apples; without them we would float of into space and cough and explode, one by one. The dinosaurs were here long before apples, which accounts for their massive girth. The creatures had to be lardy-arsed and heavy enough to anchor them to the ground. Alas, this was to prove their eventual undoing, for when apples came along they became too heavy and the force of the fruit pulled them underground where they suffocated and died. This explains why you never find dead dinosaurs just lying around on the earth's surface.

It is inadvisable to eat apples. Ingesting pure gravity can cause nausea and diarrhoea, before leading to chronic obesity and death. This is why people from Somerset are fat, sickly and short-lived. Stick to peaches, that's my advice.

3) Bacon is good for you

Bacon is great for you, possibly the most nutritious food known to man. As my grandfather used to say, before he died at the ripe old age of 52, "a rasher a day keeps the doctor away". And he was right, got bless his diseased heart.

Consider the logic. Poisonous foodstuffs always taste horrible - for example toxic berries or bananas. It is nature's way of saying 'don't eat this shit'. Conversely, healthy foods, like bacon, smell and taste lovely. Sadly, the health-police wish to stigmatise bacon along with other culinary gems (eg blackpudding, bellypork, beef dripping) as a fattening, artery-furring, heart attack inducing food of Satan. These are lies, or should I say 'porkies'. It's good to have furry arteries - it staves off hypothermia in winter and exercises the heart by forcing it to pump blood faster.

The notion that bacon - or that fat - is bad for you is the result of an evil collusion between powerful, land-owning arable farmers and the government, who allegedly receive a cut of the subsequent profit and state subsidies. Many a brave scientist, seeking to expose this conspiracy, has subsequently died in 'mysterious circumstances'. Those in the know can only sit in silence while the rest of the nation poisons itself with lentils and All-bran.

Don't worry about the ethics of eating bacon, or indeed any part of a pig. The pig is there to be eaten by man. It's the most natural thing in the world to artificially breed, feed and then slaughter pigs for consumption, and like most natural pleasures - e.g. sex and defecation - it has become a taboo in some cultures.

For peace of mind though, avoid 'free-range' or 'outdoor-reared' pork. Always buy meat from animals that have been cooped up together in tiny sheds for most of their wretched lives. You can then eat without qualms, happy in the knowledge that for the pig death came as a great relief.