Manually inserting links into the sidebar

I have a custom sidebar using the following code:

<div class="sidebar">
<ul>
<?php if ( function_exists('dynamic_sidebar')&& dynamic_sidebar()):else: ?>
<?php endif; ?>
<?php wp_list_categories('exclude=1,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,17,18&title_li=<h2>Categories</h2>'); ?>
</ul>
</div>

this works well and gives me just a “pages” list(via a widget) and a custom “categories” list (via the code above). I want to add a custom “links” list. The widget pulls up a bunch of stuff that I don’t need unfortunately.

Does anybody know the code that I can add to make a custom list of links?

The Codex gives the following code but if I had it to my sidebar code nothing shows up on the page.

<?php get_links(2, '<span>', '</span>', '', TRUE, 'url', FALSE); ?>