“AWW, you’ve got a case of manflu, have you?”

I’ve heard this question too many times this week.

I’m poorly, and have been for a few days. I have been a snivelling wreck, sneezing, coughing, and generally feeling sorry for myself.

It is neither flu, nor is it exaggerated. So it is most certainly not manflu.

The term ‘manflu’ is a thinly-veiled sexist insult, reinforcing negative male stereotypes. That we cannot deal with minor illnesses and that we take full advantage of the situation.

It’s absolute tosh. One, if I had flu, I wouldn’t be functioning. Not many people do. The flu is a serious thing. When people say they have the flu, it usually means they don’t.

So no, I don’t have manflu. I’ve got the sniffles. And I’m not asking for sympathy.

I never used to get poorly, but that never used to stop me from taking sick days, in my younger days (before I became all responsible).

Pulling a sickie was like using extra holiday entitlement. Why return to work after a bank holiday weekend when you can stretch it out to Wednesday with a simple phonecall to work, putting on your best poorly voice to say you can’t come in?

I once did that at a music festival. My boss wouldn’t give me the time off to go so I pulled a sickie, and checked in on the first morning of the festival, making the phonecall from inside my tent.

I was getting away with it until my tent-mate decided to open a can of lager, which, at 8am, was a dead giveaway that I wasn’t cooped up in my bed at home with a Lemsip.

Needless to say, I never returned to that job.

NOTHING says Merry Christmas like having a good old-fashioned fist fight over a discounted television set.

Those were the scenes we witnessed yesterday, as Black Friday – a 24-hour flash sale, mainly of electronics - made its way to the UK.

It’s an American thing, which kicks off the day after Thanksgiving. It’s their version of the January sales, which has entered the British consciousness owing to companies like Amazon and Asda, American-owned businesses that saw a gap in the market.

Police were called to ten supermarkets overnight which led to arrests and the closure of one store in Manchester.

Various videos on social media showed packs of bargain-hungry shoppers climbing over each other to grab televisions, taking two or three at a time, clambering over escalators. Flailing limbs. It was like a scene from a zombie movie.

I can see the reasons for it becoming a “thing” over here. For one, it’s the penultimate payday before Christmas for a great deal of the UK population. From now until Christmas Day, the footfall in our shopping centres will multiply. It’s the start of retailers’ busiest period of the year.

For the customers, well, it’s their money. They can do what they want with it. If they felt it necessary to buy two 40” TVs in the early hours of a Friday morning, then that’s their prerogative.

But come on. Fighting over it? Is it acceptable that a normally law-abiding citizen can suddenly turn feral at the sight of a bargain? No, it’s not.

And for what cost? Research suggested yesterday that many of the items on sale yesterday were advertised at a lower price than they were on Black Friday.

I’m all for being savvy and digging out a bargain, but if you have to do so at the detriment to your fellow man, then this country is more broken than I thought.