Expensive Watches Are Completely Pointless

Due to an overwhelming global push towards total tasteless peasantry, watches are increasingly being built with computers inside them and touch screens on their faces. This is so guys who still gel their hair and women with giant handbags filled with nothing but soiled tissues and Benadryl can contort their wrists onto contactless machines and Oyster card readers. It's fucking pathetic.

It doesn't even make any sense, when you think about it. You have a phone for all the things a computer watch does. Is the end game here that we're all just going to end up covered in screens? Screen on my legs, screens all over my arse, all able to answer calls and pay for meal deals? Where's the class? What’s happened to my beautiful country?

As tacky as your "smart watches" are, however, they are not a patch on some of the grotesque monstrosities the luxury watch market is capable of producing. Money, famously, cannot buy taste – and for the individuals buying these watches, long a status symbol and as good an indicator of someone's general vibe as their shoes, embarrassment ensues. But how painful is embarrassment to someone who can afford to spunk £50,000 on a piece of jewellery? I'm going to go out on a limb and say: not very painful.

To someone so liquid, buying an extravagance like this is a drop in the ocean. Maybe they hate their money and want to get rid of it as quickly and as stupidly as possible. I'm a bit like this, but instead of buying luxury watches I gamble and drink and eat expensive pasta dishes and dry aged steaks day-in, day-out until my bank account is coughing up blood.

So just for a blinkin' laff, here's a list of unimaginably disgusting luxury watches, and how long it would take you to afford them on a minimum wage job. Prepare to be upset.

Tissot aren't really known for making watches that look like they're worn by divorcees, but their T-Touch line is classic Clarkson fan fodder. Mostly they're like the spy watches you'd see in a 2000s James Bond film, the kind of thing you'd see a garrote wire pulled from, or a poof of neurotoxin shot out of.

The above piece of shit, however, holds none of this time-and-place charm. The garish orange strap combined with the digital clock below the hands is enough to make you vomit.

Hours Worked in a Minimum Wage Job to Be Able to Afford This Shite: 97

Hello, fellow sailor! Looks like La Rochelle has got her swimsuit on today, doesn't she? Beautiful weather, and the sea, Oh, calm as a sleeping baby. Chartering this boat was the best thing I ever did. Trish, my ex, she'd say, "If you buy that F-ing boat it's the last straw. I can do the watch, but not the boat" – but the heart wants what the heart wants, doesn’t it? Plus, this has a smaller "hull" than her, if you know what I mean!

Yeah, she was some woman, but out here – I mean, have you seen them? I think the bikinis get smaller every year. Not sure how I'd feel if I saw my daughter in one, to be honest, but she's not here, wink-wink. No, she's actually at uni at the moment. She's got a boyfriend, but she won't tell me his name – I think because he's a whatsit and she knows I'm not so into that. Lucky bloke whoever he is, though; proper beauty, my girl is. Takes after me, you see! Your girl is a looker, too. How old is she?

Hours Worked in a Minimum Wage Job to Be Able to Afford This Shite: 595

Mercifully, only 200 of these abominations exist in the world today. They seem to be aimed at aspiring or pro-golfers. When I want to tell what time it is, I like to look down at my watch – whose design is modelled on the velcro Sketchers of a child with psoriasis and a bandage over one eyeglass – and see the words "18 HOLE", to remind me that I've let the game of golf influence me to the point of spending £26,000 on the world’s lamest timepiece.

Hours Worked in a Minimum Wage Job to Be Able to Afford This Shite: 3,277

I can't quite explain it, but this watch looks exactly like James May. When I look at it, I see no dials or hands, numbers or straps, cogs or buttons; I see only the lax eyelids and old dog hair of the Grand Tourist himself.

It's the watch for a man who wants a Ferrari but doesn’t own one, perhaps has done the Ferrari driving experience on an abandoned airfield somewhere, the sonic boom of the engine drowning out all the dribbling hum of a lifetime of disappointments. The watch is a technicolour reminder of time slipping into the well, a bucket on the end of a terminally frayed rope resting precariously on the edge.

Hours Worked in a Minimum Wage Job to Be Able to Afford This Shite: 427

To be honest, this entire list could just be Hublot watches. Their website is a Frankenstein's lab of deformed clocks and bewilderingly tasteless nonsense. This thing, however, takes the cake. Look at it. What the fuck is it? What are they going for? Is it… Jamaica-themed? I look at it and my mind fills with dry ice. I look at it and everything I thought I knew about the world, about love, about time itself, melts away. If you stare at the sun long enough, this is what will appear where your corneas used to be. This bile-inducing obelisk, which has always been and always will be. Tastelessness as religious experience. It’s quite beautiful, in a way.

Hours Worked in a Minimum Wage Job to Be Able to Afford This Shite: 5,470

@joe_bish