These days it’s all the go to compete on fluctuating levels of personal misery. We all have a friend who if you’ve broken a leg would somehow have broken theirs worse. If you’ve got a cold, they’ve got the flu, et cetera, et cetera.

Relating the story of an unfortunate German man who was mugged repeatedly in the space of one hour, surely even that whinging friend – gnawing at their sore throat like it’s a cancerous tumour – even they would have to admit that’s a pretty miserable evening out.

Oberhausen resident Reiner Hamer, just twenty-seven years old and now feeling like God’s chosen spitbucket, had his first mugging of the night when he was jumped by three men in a nightclub’s toilets.

The Ahab-hard gang stole Hamer’s mobile phone and wallet containing £120’s worth of local notes.

Using a friend’s mobile Hamer decided to phone the police from outside the club and got mugged yet again. On this occasion another group of so hard they must travel in threes men stole his watch and packet of cigarettes.

Took his cigarettes? That’s downright mean. No sweetly mellow rescue from a bin bag of evening, and no opportunity to even pull a cool Steve McQueen (DVDs) smoky pose when the police arrive.

The final insult came when Hamer leant up against a wall to recover from this second ordeal and it happened again.

Five men (was Hamer like The Rock’s double or something?!) wandered over, nicked his jacket, threatened him, then took the last of the small change gathering sweat in his pocket.

Possessions gone? Check. Dignity in tatters? Check. Death Wish looking like a good dvd rental? Gotta be check.

If there’s a moral here it’s past us to salvage. Maybe it’s never leave the house. Maybe it’s never go to Germany. Quite possibly it’s that wherever you are, whatever you’re doing, there’s always somebody worse off than you.

Reiner Hamer, you poor sod, we thank you for being that somebody.

[story by Chris Laverty]