It's hard to believe that a decade of our lives has flashed by, that wars have raged, prime ministers have come and gone, tens of millions of people have been born or have died, there've been two world cups, a tsunami, the extincition of hundreds of species, the invention of hundreds of new types of technology, numerous genres of music come and gone from the cultural radar, and still, like some reluctant lawn sausage lingering in the toilet bowl, or hardy cockroach surviving world wars, Fat! remains.

Most of the original fan base may be too fat and old to be allowed into nightclubs any more, but Paul Arnold, the Peter Pan of the genre-formerly-known-as-breaks, king of the K-Hole, master of ceremonies, personality cryogenically frozen somewhere in Suffolk, is still winching his creaking ass into DJ booths week in week out.

To celebrate, this special tenth anniversary Fatmail gives little information rather than a few lists of ten things.

I'd like to say it's been a fantastic ten years being at the very arse end of the dance music revolution, but frankly, it hasn't. But read on anyway.

////// Ten things you can expect to experience Chew The Fat's Tenth Birthday at the End this Friday

1. Paul Arnold's bovine thousand yard stare
2. A hirsute, muscle-bound European tourist leering at your girlfriend on the dancefloor
3. Stern-faced men playing dreadful records
4. Receiving a Fatmail the day before that is no longer amusing and uses all the same jokes again
5. Seeing a 17 year old from Croydon marching on the spot
6. Being ripped off for a piss-weak spirit and mixer
7. Losing your dignity
8. Leaving in a taxi, still chewing your sweaty face off, back to a miserable cold bedroom to endure 48 hours of self-loathing as the ketamine wears off, you brace yourself to endure another week of mind-dumbingly humdrum work before next weekend
9. Dancing without rhythm
10. Hearing a breakbeat DJ who no longer admits playing breakbeat play a dubstep record and casually claiming they've been "into it since the beginning, you know"

///// Ten things we could have done rather than spending the last 10 years running awful breakbeat nights and releasing pointless records

1. Bred enough children for a basketball team
2. Researched a cure for cancer
3. Solved the Ripper Murders
4. Trained to become an astronaut
5. Written Nelson Mandela's memoirs
6. Built a house single-handedly
7. Constructed a statue of Jim Rosenthal using only matchsticks and glue
8. Married, divorced and had a midlife crisis involving red sports cars, 18 year old girlfriends and clip on-ponytails
9. Become the world's most notorious serial killer with over 2500 victims
10. Masturb*ted incessantly

///// Ten more fun things you could do than go to Chew The Fat's 10th birthday this weekend

1. Visit your mother
2. Read the collected works of Edgar Allan Poe
3. Listen to the new Radiohead album alone, in a dark room, howling, weeping and self-harming
4. Drink some petrol
5. Construct a home-made set of gallows in the garden
6. Flay your own genitals with a leather tie
7. Kill yourself
8. Kill everyone

////// Ten things Paul Arnold can't remember about the last ten years

1. His age
2. To pay the tax man
3. How to run a business
4. What love is
5. The number of times he had to make an emergency appointment at the VD clinic
6. September 11th
7. Releasing any decent music
8. Playing any decent records
9. Paying anyone
10. His name

////// Ten things my mother would rather me have done than become a chinless marketing ghoul writing rude emails for a forgettable record label and club night

1. Become a solicitor
2. Helped the starving poor in Africa
3. Got a decent job in the city
4. Got into classical music
5. Signed on and been poor yet happy
6. Lived on the streets giving reacharounds in return for drugs
7. Become a mercenary
8. Become a serial killer
9. Hung myself
10. Been drowned at birth

///// Ten lists I couldn't be bothered to write

1. Ten most lecherous DJs ever to play at Chew The Fat
2. Ten most irritating Australian breakbeat DJs
3. Ten of the world's most facile pieces of dance music that have actually been released on Fat
4. Ten baldest fat men still getting paid to play records
5. Ten different genre bandwagons Fat has shamelessly leapt upon
6. Ten reasons why I'm underpaid
7. Ten occasions when I have seriously considered mutiliating myself rather than writing another Fatmail
8. Ten most frequently repeated "jokes" used in a Fatmail
9. Ten most insulting references to Krafty Kuts or Lee Coombs in a Fatmail
10. Ten guesses at when Paul Arnold will finally turn into a pumpkin

///// Ten things you could do to never have to read another Fatmail

1. Unsubscribe
2. Ignore your emails
3. Unlearn your ability to read
4. Move to the hills and shun society
5. Bomb south London
6. Self-induce a coma
7. Gouge out your own eyes
8. Kill Paul Arnold
9. Kill yourself
10. Kill everyone