Are the feather boas in your wardrobe starting to escape? Is your bookshelf starting to collapse under the weight of second-hand copies of Camus, Sartre and Plath, some of which you have actually read? Use this checklist below to find out whether your Manics obsession is getting out of hand. Be honest now, how many of these apply to you?
You know you're a Manics fan if...
1. You read a passage from Simon Price's Everything every night before you go to bed, and memorise sections of it with religious zeal.
2. You are the only person in your comprehensive school who has actually read a book.
3. Every day when you wake up you wish to God you were Welsh.
4. If you need to remember a telephone number and don't have a pen and paper to hand, you carve it into your forearm with a razor blade.
5. You have a bigger collection of eyeliner and mascara than the average Avon lady.
6. You insist that Patrick Jones is the greatest poet in contemporary literature, and he is NOT FAT, OKAY?!?!
7. You once had a dream about finding Richey.*
8. You have sent death threats to anyone who dissed the Manics.
9. You once went to a job interview in a leopardskin coat, fishnet tights, feather boa and tiara. Why you didn't get the job you'll never know.
10. You have a copy of Elizabeth Wurtzel's Prozac Nation, and you make notes in the margin.
11. You used a map and compass to align your bed so that you sleep facing the Severn Bridge.
12. You are the only person with a well-thumbed copy of Catcher in the Rye who doesn't also own a sniper's rifle.
13. If you meet anyone Welsh, you look at them like they're a disciple from the promised land, rather than just some bloke from Merthyr Tydfil.
14. You once wore so much leopardskin that the police tried to catch you in a net and drag you back to the zoo.
15. You have ever been sexually molested by Simon Price.
16. You keep a shrine to Richey in the corner of your bedroom, and you pray to Him every night.
17. You will buy any CD by the most tedious indie dullards on the face of the planet so long as they wear eyeliner. (Oh, hello Rachel Stamp)
18. You are currently plotting the assassination of Craig David.
19. You spend so much time in Waterstones Books that they've offered you your own parking space.
20. You write ludicrously tortuous poetry, and once bought a thesaurus because you were running out of obscure words to use.
21. You will buy any CD by the most tedious indie dullards on the face of the planet just because one of the Manics endorsed them. (Oh, hello Northern Uproar)
22. You hang around the Cardiff branch of C&A hoping to catch a glimpse of Nicky Wire.**
23. You bought Andreas Johnson's 'Glorious' just because the opening riff sounds like a Manics song.
24. There are so many pictures of the Manics on your wall, you're not sure what kind of wallpaper is underneath.
25. You tried to develop anorexia, but gave up when you discovered your love of chicken and mushroom pies was stronger than your instinct for self-destruction.
26. You can recite at least three Sylvia Plath poems off by heart.
27. You think wearing leopardskin, glitter, a tiara and a feather boa makes you look like Nicky Wire, and not like Margarita Pracatan.
28. You have written at least one poem rhyming alienation with masturbation.
29. Your e-mail ID contains a quotation from a Manics song.
30. You once tried to firebomb a Robbie Williams gig.
31. You continually deride the obsessive nature of Manics fans, while regularly displaying those same obsessive qualities yourself.
32. You find it impossible to talk about depression without repeating the sacred mantra "self-disgust is self-obsession".
33. You paid for your last holiday with your loyalty points from Wilkinson Sword.
34. You have considered studying geology and vulcanology in order to work out a way to make Ibiza do a Krakatoa.
35. Your last holiday was in Normandy, but you tell people it was in "The Abyss".
36. You dismiss as amateurs all those shallow people who didn't get into the Manics until after Motown Junk. You followed them right from Suicide Alley.
37. You sign every letter and e-mail with the words "stay beautiful", even when sending them to someone who looks like the bastard offspring of Bernard Manning and Anne Widdicombe.***
38. You keep getting thrown out of the smoking section of restaurants, not for smoking but for the way you stub your cigarettes out.
39. You think wearing eyeliner and combat gear makes you look like a rock'n'roll guerilla art terrorist, and not like a panda who's just joined the SAS.
40. You can achieve orgasm simply by repeating the words "James Dean Bradfield" over and over again in succession.
41. Your parents called Rentokill to deal with an infestation of giant caterpillars that turned out to be your collection of feather boas.
42. You regard people who think Everything Must go was their debut album as being a lower form of life than plankton.
43. You recently petitioned the Pope to make Richey a candidate for sainthood. Funnily enough, he hasn't replied.
45. You regard the Millenium Stadium as a shrine of great beauty and significance, and not as a weird, ugly edifice that makes the Cardiff skyline look like one of those freaky Japanese sci-fi movies where a giant metallic spider is attacking the city.
46. You are in a band that claims to embody the distilled essence of Richey, if only because it's comprised entirely of people who can't play for toffee.
47. Your last order from Amazon arrived in a container lorry.
48. When in Cardiff Bay, you navigate by using Richey's flat as a reference point.
49. Your idea of having a sense of humour about your Manics obsession is to write a condescending Sean fan website making excessive use of the phrase "aww, bless".
50. You keep a voodoo doll of Liam Gallagher, and you stick a pin in it every night.
51. You are contemplating using plastic surgery to disguise yourself as Nicky Wire's wife.
52. You consider the culmination of Twentieth Century science and technology to be the Dyson hoover.
53. You are so used to all your clothes being covered in arty literary quotes that you have come to believe that "50% ACRYLIC, 50% POLYESTER, DO NOT TUMBLE DRY" is a quotation by Camus.
54. You are lobbying Parliament to have a bypass built over Glastonbury.
55. You scrutinise every passing stranger to check he's not Richey.
56. You tried to grow a Nicky Wire hairdo, and wound up looking like a woolly mammoth's bell-end.
58. You spend hours agonising over whether Rimbaud is pronounced Rimbored or Rambo.
59. You are incapable of telling someone to fuck off without preceding it with the words "why don't you just..."
60. You insist on telling everybody that Newport is "the new Seattle", which it is, in the sense that it's a grey, ugly, rain-sodden city that's awash with crime and drugs.
61. You've knackered the pause and rewind buttons on your video recorder, not by watching porn movies but by watching and rewatching the freakier scenes from Apocalypse Now.
62. You went on a pilgrimage to Spilllers Records in Cardiff, expecting a treasure trove of hitherto undiscovered great records with Nicky Wire browsing in the corner, only to discover a crappy little record shop the size of a cupboard selling limited edition 7-inches by obscure Welsh bands that have remained obscure for a very good reason.
63. You were going to put a horse's head in the bed of the last person who told you that James Dean Bradfield was fat, but at the last minute you decided it was cruel to horses, so you stuck a packet of Quorn burgers in his bed instead.
64. Your affectionate nickname for Jenny Watkins-Isnardi is "the Whore of Babylon."
65. You went to Blackwood to visit the sacred Shrine of Shrines, and were amazed to discover they have electricity there.
66. When people ask you where you live, you say, "Urban Hell. I destroy rock'n'roll." Actually, you live in Doncaster.
67. You are the first person since 1989 to ask your local pub if they serve Babycham.
68. You are the first person recorded to have cast yourself adrift in the Gulf of Mexico on a leaky car tyre in an effort to get to Cuba.
69. Every February 1st, you wish your friends a "Happy Richey Day".
70. You insist that Neale Howells is a bold contemporary artist leading the current avante-garde, and not a Jackson Pollock wannabe with a poo fixation.
71. You think King Adora and Rachel Stamp are crap, but you go to their gigs anyway purely to hang out with other Manics fans.
*This is based on a straw poll I did that showed that just about every Manics fan I know has at some point had a dream in which they found Richey.
**I've actually spoken to someone who said he met Nicky Wire in Cardiff C&A. Harvey Nichols my arse.
***If this entry has caused you to conjure up a mental image of Bernard Manning and Anne Widdicombe having sex, then I am deeply, deeply sorry.
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