Sucking Face

I’ve come to the conclusion that I am slowly turning into Russell Brand.

By this bold statement I mean that I have become hyper-suspicious of traditional news outlets and information that can in any way, shape of form be traced back to the Establishment (as opposed to sleeping my way around half of England, marrying Katy Perry and then divorcing her because my own incapacity for fidelity means I am unable to trust anyone ever to forswear all others in my favour).

To be honest, this healthy paranoid belief that we’re constantly being steered and lied to began decades ago. I haven’t bought a newspaper since the early 90’s. Well not to read anyway. Occasionally I have purchased a tabloid to get my hands on a free Lego set promotion but, model acquired, the paper is then dumped straight into the recycling bin without a single headline ever touching the sensitive ears of my conscious mind.

But of late I have even begun to doubt the veracity and the agenda of fly-on-the-wall documentaries and travelogues. Even those on the BBC in whose bosom I was once glad to place my trust without a second thought. I find myself asking: who has commissioned this programme? Why did they commission it? Why spend money on it? Just for my entertainment and to openhandedly inform my mind? I don’t think so.

Lord knows big global corporations, bankers and politicians have been playing commercial tonsil tennis for years but it really feels like the “free press” has become a fourth bedfellow. Information is just another currency to do dirty deals with whilst truth itself is a rare intoxicant who purity is besmirched the closer it gets to street level; something that can he withheld, diced, cut with talcum powder or cleaning fluid and then distributed according to the preferences of those in power, it's potency and power diluted and irrevocably lost.

Which leaves precious few outlets for the little man on the street to acquire credible information about what goes on in the world. Left, right and centre we’re being sold opinion – being told what opinion to have – but most of the column inches and sound-bites are nothing more than the conjectures and bigotry of a few mega-rich old duffers who seek to stroke the world into shape the same way they stroke themselves off in the shower. 

It’s got to the point where my main news source at the moment is Facebook. Or rather various third parties who use Facebook to disseminate information, satire and political criticism. As underground information networks go it’s hardly MI5. And it could be argued that pictures of kittens, half naked celebrities and fake Mensa IQ tests hardly constitute the modus operandi of an all-seeing, completely unbiased oracle. In an age of information overload I’m finding the modern world curiously information-lite.

And that scares me.

In fact there’s too much going on at the moment that scares me: the dangerous dehumanizing rhetoric applied to immigrants and Muslims that is like something out of 1930’s Germany; the war against the poor and the under-privileged that the Tory’s are currently waging under the self-righteous, self-justifying banner of austerity; and the banking crisis that has never gone away but has not ever been adequately looked into… that has instead been allowed to roll on and on over all of our toes if not our legs. Breaking us all with our own money. And then beating us some more with our own money under the guise of fixing the damage.

Who is pulling the strings and pocketing the cash?

Generally speaking it’s not the people posting pictures of kittens on Facebook.

And for that reason alone they’ll get my trust ahead of some faceless corporate mogul running a newspaper empire or a television news channel.

But that paranoid little voice inside my head keeps telling me that even unscrupulous mega-rich media moguls can post pictures of moggies on Facebook…

And they can even write blogs.

Like I said, I’m slowly turning into Russell Brand…

Does It Have To Be Bad?

I’ve steered away from writing about the forthcoming vote for Scottish independence because (a) I don’t consider myself to be an overtly political animal and (b) despite strong Scottish family blood a-swirling in my veins from my dad’s side of the parental tree I don’t really see how a nurtured Sassenach who’s lived in the heart of England all his life has any right to say yea or nay on the question of whether Scotland should be independent or not.

But it seems everyone has an opinion these days, especially those English politicians who’ve done eff all for Scotland over the years and up to this point haven’t cared a stuff about how it has fared. Geez, even J.K. Rowling has thrown a good wodge of her own money behind support for keeping Scotland forever yoked to the millstone of fake tradition that is British unity.

And I guess that paragraph hints at where my true personal leanings lie though I admit my arguments are purely emotional, possibly romantic, and wilfully have nothing to do with fiscal systems or the complicated bureaucracy of devolved governments.

To me Scotland has always been another country; always been its own country with its own identity and personality. The people, the landscape, the atmosphere are foreign. And I mean that as a massive positive. I like the idea of Scotland being truly independent. If for no other reason than the rather shallow pleasure I will get from the inevitable exoticization that will occur.

But that’s not the real point of this post. For me the central question is this: independent or not, does it have to be bad? All I’ve heard is various bad tempered politicians griping about what Scotland / England will lose if the yays for independence swing the day. And then other infantile politicians spitting their dummies and threatening to take their ball away and not play anymore if Scotland wants to be in charge of supplying their own kit. All blatantly ridiculous. It seems someone has to suffer no matter which way the vote goes and there’s going to be a lot of sulking.

But really? Does it have to be that way? Can’t Scotland have its independence and England and Scotland still work together for the benefit of both? Does it have to be miserable? Why can’t it just be good for everybody? Because at the end of the day life and trade will still need to continue. There will still be movement from across both sides of the border (even if it’s only the Queen digging out her passport before she enters Balmoral). We can all still play and work together.

As in any kind of relationship, a sense of independence is healthy and usually good for both sides. England needs to be less clingy and less possessive. That kind of behaviour always drives a partner away or into the arms of another.

Nadgers

There’s going to be a lot of hyperbole written about Rik Mayall over the next few days. Some of it will be ball-achingly official, most of it will be deeply personal. This will fall into the latter camp.

To oafishly paraphrase Shakespeare: "Alas poor [Yo]Rik… Where be your gibes now?"

The answer is everywhere: all over the internet; all over YouTube; in boxed sets in every entertainment store up and down the country and, most important and most relevant of all, on the lips and in the minds of everybody who ever loved “Bottom”, “Blackadder”, “Man Down” or any of the other amazing raft of comedy adventures that Rik Mayall indulged in.

My good friend Dave and I have been indulging in “Bottom quote tennis” since we first learnt of his death yesterday. And we’re still going strong. An endless rally where every return is still somehow an ace.

For anyone who loved “Bottom” these quotes are pregnant (oo-er) with meaning:

“My, that’s  a smashing blouse you’re wearing.”

“That’s £1.20 you owe me – I bought you that drink in good faith!”

"I'll just pop upstairs and scrape off the sheets..."

“And I promise Lord that I will come to church every day… you do still do that thing with the wine and biscuits, don’t you?”

“They’re all doing it and doing it and then sitting back and having a fag and then doing it some more… oh Eddie why won’t anybody ever have sex with me?”

And there’s hundreds and hundreds more. I could fill the entire post with them.

I never liked “The Young Ones.” I freely admit that. I never watched it when it was first broadcast but a kid at my school, Richard Saul, was plainly an early devotee and would come into class the next day and basically re-enact the entire show, word for word, and add in his own especial brand of teenage obnoxiousness (I’m sure he matured into a truly lovely man). I confess it ruined it for me and I avoided the show like a plague afterwards. I finally caught up with it years later after being indoctrinated into the world of “Kevin Turvey”, “Filthy, Rich & Catflap” and “The Dangerous Brothers”. I thought I’d give it a go but “The Young Ones” just seemed…very amateurish and, worse, unfunny. I could see its anarchic approach was ground-breaking but the comedy was lazy and very hit or miss. For me it mostly missed.

But hey, everybody has to start somewhere.

“Bottom”, however, did it for me. Down-at-heel, tawdry, disgusting, puerile, childish and obsessed with body parts, body functions and sex. Everything I look for in a wife. Wife? I meant to say sit-com. Honest. “Bottom” came along at the right time of my life. I was a late teen. I had a filthy sense of humour but no appropriate outlet for it. And I was a virgin and likely to stay that way forever. Or so it seemed. To say I identified a little with Richard Richard is to under-egg the milky pudding immensely. The best thing about “Bottom” was that it was gloriously un-PC. I lapped it up. Oo-er again.

After that I was into everything Rik did. “The New Statesman”, “The Comic Strip” – especially the “Bad News” episodes – “Blackadder”.

Things went quiet for a long while. There was Rik’s horrible quad bike accident. The “Bottom” movie – “Guest House Paradiso” seemed a bit flat and the 3rd series of “Bottom” felt like it had been a struggle though the Halloween episode is still a classic.

And then last  year Rik resurfaced in “Man Down” as Greg Davies’ dad. It was a performance of utter genius. Pure Rik Mayall. Filthy, cheeky and full to the brim with blue-eyed, manic-smiled malevolence. The wife and I were desperately looking forward to the second series.

And now Rik is gone. Just like that. Out of the blue. It feels surreal. I’m shocked by how deeply it’s affected me. Rik Mayall was hardly “cuddly” and yet there was just something about him that was loveable. He was naughty. Very, very naughty. And ultimately, I think we all like a bit of naughtiness. We admire those who get away with it, those who push things a little too far and then say, “Oh tish” when some pinch-mouthed puritan inevitably gets their knickers in a twist over it.

Rik Mayall exuded comedy. Actually, that’s too passive. Given his high-octane, high-energy performances he projectile-vomited comedy all over the audience, all over his fellow actors and production teams and then hawked up a couple of big juicy lugies or two to act as comedy chasers. To watch Rik was to be utterly immersed in his performance. He was the ego sublime.

And now that he’s dead all I can think to say is, bollocks.

Utter, utter bollocks.

Mother Russia

I don’t, I confess, have much in the way of political acumen so my grasp of the situation might be slightly awry but even I can see that the situation is at best tense and at worst explosive.

A country divided ideologically by the people who live there. One half wanting a split that defies geography, the other wanting to keep governance the way it is with a few tweaks for the better.

Foreign troops carrying out in-your-face manoeuvres on the sovereign soil of another nation; foreign soldiers right in the face of the native populace.

Centuries of bad feeling, grudges and old bloodshed threatening to bubble over into a whole new round of the same.

All the good – the partnership working, the shared achievements, the decades upon decades of neighbourliness which surely can’t all have been forced all of the time – on the brink of being swept away in a hysteria of media induced patriotism.

The politicians of the West giving forth disapproval and frowns, casting doubts on what is ostensibly a democratic process, voicing reservations about the abilities of the ordinary people on the street to know what it is they really want. David Cameron’s face is coming more and more to resemble the Lurpak butter man suffering from a bout of bowl bursting constipation.

But I can’t help thinking that it is really nothing to do with us or anybody else. Nothing at all.

If Scotland really wants to split from the Union and become part of Russia surely that’s their business?

D’ye ken, comrades?

Do Not Lend These People Your Ears

I managed to navigate most of 2013 without once having my existence bent out of true by the verbal crowbar that is Katie Hopkins. Sure I knew who she was, could surmise what it was she was working so hard to be and what she was aiming to become but she was as a gnat on the giant arse that is UK reality TV. And I make it my business to have as little to do with that particular arse as is humanly possible.

And yet, come the end of the year, with every web site, newspaper and chav mag producing a 12 month retrospective, Katie Hopkins is leaping out at me from photos, from sound-bites and no doubt from tomorrow’s fish and chip wrappings too.

Katie Hopkins said this. Katie Hopkins said that. Outrageous Katie Hopkins. Katie Hopkins, how could she? Kate Hopkins rent-a-gob.

The latter moniker – rent-a-gob – I’ve seen in more than one publication. If I were her I’d copyright it right now; she seems the kind of girl who’d be up for making a fast buck.

My initial response was probably akin to that of many people: revulsion, a knee-jerk reaction to dismiss her as just another transient sneery mouthed reprobate. The shrew equivalent of a one hit wonder in the Gallup pop chart. Someone mad enough (and hard hearted enough) to make some money out of being universally disliked and then forgotten about.

But then it hit me that the most revolting thing about this kind of media event isn’t the poor hapless individual at the eye of the storm but the storm makers themselves. The thunder and lightning of the newspapers and TV execs who book her on their shows and shovel the excrement that falls out of her mouth into their column inches. The howling wind of the glossy mag editors who deliberately provoke her with irresistible punch-line issues and un-PC bandwagons that she can’t stop herself from jumping upon. And worst of all the all-pervading insipid rain of the general public that read and watch and Tweet and Poke and Klout about all the immaterial, unimportant nonsense that Katie coughs up just so she can watch us splutter and retch in joyous outrage and thus feel justified in doing it all again and again and again (and then smugly listen to the chink of cold coins falling hollowly into her deep, deep, soulless pockets).

I feel sorry for her.

She plainly craves recognition. Craves “fame”. Wants people to know her name, to know her by sight.

But it’s a bit like accepting the job of village idiot just because you can’t bear to be anonymous.

I daresay she’ll make a killing. I don’t know what the going rate is for appearing on a TV chat show these days but I bet it’s easier money than a real job. There’s already talk of her being on the next series of Big Brother. I’m sure they’ll make it worth her while just as she’ll make it worth their money. And then there’ll be the inevitable fall from grace. Then the carefully planned radio silence. And then the abashed, contrite, redemptive return. The cathartic outpouring of all her issues and how horrible it was to be so universally reviled. There’ll be a book deal on that particular horizon. Maybe even a regular appearance on kid’s telly or a TV magazine show with plenty of conscience.

And of course her opinion will be sought and bought on the next poor rent-a-gob that the media people will have temporarily shoehorned into the limelight by this point. Because there’ll always be another one. It's a fast moving queue. Like the role of Master of the Dark Arts in the Harry Potter books, nobody stays in the job for long; it’s cursed:

“So you want to be the next village idiot? Fantastic! We’re the people who can help you do it and we’ll all make a lot of money out of it into the bargain…”

Lord knows I’m more than happy for the village idiot to be reformed and redeemed but do we have to go through the endless pantomime of salacious baiting and vampiric bloodlust first?

Can’t we quieten the great god rent-a-gob once and for all by just choosing not to listen?

Because at the end of the day, who’s the greater idiot? The idiot who shouts or the idiot who drops everything to listen?

Oi!

Did any of you lot actually hear what I just said…?

;-)

Crossing The Thin White Line

I've written frequent posts about Nigella on this blog. Originally because I quite like the cake-making queen of tease and then later because I was quite happy to acknowledge that she was good for my stats. Even now "Nigella Lawson hot" is one of my biggest referral terms and with her name once more in the headlines I'm receiving more hits than usual.

Are these new visitors seeking edification and information? Or just a nice picture of the curvy brunette spilling o-er her cups? I suspect the latter but that's by the by.

I kind of feel I owe Nigella's current predicament some kind of comment even though I'm sure she would rather I kept my nose out of it (no joke intended) as at the end of the day the accusations of cocaine abuse are nothing at all to do with me.

But of course this hasn't stopped the world and his dog offering a multitude of opinions on what are as yet unproven accusations by her embittered and estranged husband. Do you think he might be biased in his attempts to discredit her?

Part of me thinks that this story is not at all in the public interest. What goes on behind the closed doors of a marriage should stay behind those closed doors. But then I daresay Mr Saatchi would like to have used the same argument when the infamous throttling story hit the headlines. Though of course he did this in a public place not in the privacy of his own home. Or should that be "allegedly as well as"? And to be honest, domestic violence should never remain hidden away in the dark where it can be allowed to grow and spread like a virulent fungus.

But being a public figure, of course, makes almost anything at all that happens to a celeb "in the public interest". For me the idea of "public interest" has long taken on a moral dubiety but we'll leave that aside.

I hope the accusations of Nigella's cocaine use are false. I haven't read them, I must admit, or even watched the news. And yet somehow, via social media and gossip, the gist of the story has spread. I find it hard to believe that a ten year cocaine habit could have gone unnoticed and gone uncommented upon for so long. Mr Saatchi claims he has only just found out. What a truly dreadful husband he must be then. (1) Nigella turns to drugs (I surmise) to make life with him more bearable, (2) he's so dreadful he doesn't even notice and then (3) he increases his dreadfulness by bringing it to the attention of the tabloids and throws the kids into the mix at the same time. What a wonderful husband and father he must be. Even if we could waive aside the sundry acts of domestic violence.

Cocaine is a distasteful drug. It makes arseholes out of all who use it and bigger arseholes out of those who are already arseholes. Nigella has never struck me as being an arsehole. Of course, I could be wrong - I don't know her after all - and chasing the white rabbit could validate the myth of Nigella's constant munchie-runs to the fridge for midnight snacks as perpetuated by her many cookery programmes.

But I'm hoping Mr Saatchi just can't tell his icing sugar from his Esnortiar. Despite being married to Nigella for years he doesn't strike me as the kind of man who spends much time in the kitchen but would certainly have seen talcum powder being smudged across a glass topped coffee table from time to time. Any white powder at all is going to produce a big knee-jerk reaction from him.

Personally, next time I would recommend he try Tetramethylenedisulfotetramine.

After all, if Nigella has a rat in her kitchen, what's she gonna do?

When Will They Ban Facebook?

I used to loathe Facebook.

I'd sneer at it. Snarl at it. Use it sparingly, use it begrudgingly and know that I was being a hypocrite.

It seemed to embody the worst of social media: aggrandizing the trivial; making monoliths of minutia. It encouraged its users to market themselves as "social product" whose worth was tied into the value of their status.

I saw it as evidence of society's degeneracy; proof that any promise of revolution was being bought off with the sop of funny pictures, in-jokes, soft porn and distracting memes while Rome burnt beyond the little bubble of our individual internet connections.

Maybe though that was just me? Maybe I was only seeing the pretty lights on the surface; the Angry Birds, the Photoshopped pictures of celebs, the wool over my eyes?

Frequently when I log into Facebook now I am pleasantly surprised at how politicized it is. My updates are rife with international satire, news of causes, plights and global injustice. There are petitions. There is shared outrage. There is a sense of movement and speaking out. Of things not being allowed to be swept under the carpet. Illegal evictions in Kenya appear alongside stories of dodgy banking deals in the UK and the yet further developments of Operation Yewtree.

Somehow Facebook has become a news source.

Again, maybe that's just me?

Facebook, like anything I suppose, can be as trivial or an meaningful as the individual makes it.

I can't believe I'm going to say this but, thanks to Facebook - or rather thanks to those who use it - I feel a little more world-aware than I have been for a long time. I'm not saying I'm suddenly an activist with a balaclava and a wine bottle filled with petrol... but that little bubble of my internet connection seems wider and a little more all-encompassing than it once was.

As clichéd as it is: I feel connected. Connected with people who are as dissatisfied as me.

On Facebook we snarl now at a politicians. Take our celebs to task. Castigate lazy and misinformed (and misinforming) journalists. Share the traumas of people in far away countries that we will never meet but whose trauma touches us. People are speaking out. Shouting. Demanding.

Maybe society isn't as degenerate as I feared?

But I worry.

Despite the appalling behaviour of our journalists the conclusions of the Leveson Enquiry are, nevertheless, a blow for freedom of speech. Yes, there need to be checks and balances but the press also needs a certain amount of freedom to pursue those in power who are doing us wrong. I worry that as the gags start to be applied, where will it end?

Social media - our voice - is already no longer as free and unfettered as it once was. People have got into legal trouble on Twitter and elsewhere.

How long before the censors start carving up what we can and can't satirize on Facebook? How long before they stop us sharing information, our stories, our opinions, our Photoshopped pictures of David Cameron morphed into Iggle-piggle?

How long before the powers-that-be ban Facebook altogether?

Do we really want to go back to a blinkered life playing Angry Birds while the politicians and corporations stalk the streets outside armed with fire brands and petrol?

Call Me Mr Science

I've toyed with the idea of legally changing my name many times over the years.

E.Z. Rider. Ace. Salami Tsunami. Juswan Cornetto.

All these names and more were considered and discounted as not being quite right. Not quite the real me. But finally I've reached a decision I can live with. A name with very material benefits.

Mr Medical Science.

See, it was Professor Alice Roberts that gave me the idea. It seems that, according to a recent report in The Metro, the glorious Professor Alice has decided to donate her body to medical science because she "hopes donating her corpse will help doctors and students to develop their surgery and dissection skills."

Laudable as that wish is I personally think screw the doctors and students I'm a far more deserving recipient. And the added advantage is that unlike the medical fraternity I really don't require Professor Alice to drop down dead anytime soon. I'd much prefer to have her body on weekend loan while it is still living, breathing and pumping blood around her exquisite arteries. She can have it back for work days and documentary shoots for the BBC and things like that. I'm not unreasonable. We can devise a rota.

My only real concern is what I do with all the brains removed from idiots and psychopaths all over the world which are now suddenly going to arrive on my doorstep...

Because I already have one of those.

Pornification

So the Co-operative has issued an ultimatum to the UK’s lad’s mag publishers: cover up or push off.

Basically, the publishers of such literary gems as Nuts, Loaded and Zoo have until 9th September to start issuing their journals in “modesty bags” or risk a firm refusal from the Co-op chain to even stock the publications on its 4,000 shelves.

While part of me is smirking at the thought of the busty models on the cover of Loaded being forced into an opaque polythene chastity belt I can see that this is a complicated issue (unlike the content of the issues at the centre of the conflict).

I don’t think anyone would disagree that the sheer amount of virtual female flesh that is currently on display around the Western world is deeply disturbing in its volume. Bus shelters, newsagents, internet, calendars, television and computer games all over our technologically advanced hemisphere are awash with tanned cleavage and airbrushed thigh.

Time was when I was a kid you’d have to strain your neck up to the top shelf of a newsagent to see an exposed naval or the slightest hint of pokie action. Nowadays you have to shift aside glossy images of buoyantly racked soap stars and pop singers exercising their diaphragms by sitting legs akimbo just to get your hands on the latest CBeebies magazine for your children.

Now I am not a prude. I’m a normal, sexually dynamic bloke. If I see a picture of an attractive woman (doesn’t have to be a supermodel – in fact, personally, I have leanings towards the real woman end of the spectrum) I’m going to have the expected response.

But.

It’s a no-brainer that to commodify women and use them to sell product is morally, sexually and intellectually wrong. It’s actually worse when the product that is being sold is sex itself. There’s a weird kind of slavery ethos at work at that point that is worse because it is so insidious. Everyone is compromised by it. Everyone is cheapened.

I really don’t want my boys growing up in a world where one half of the human race is seen merely as a mass marketing tool and the other responds unthinkingly like the tools they undoubtedly are.

And yet I look at some of my blog posts – the last one is a good example – and it is plain that I’m not beyond throwing up a picture of an attractive actress to draw attention to my blog. Sure I don’t take the pictures and I don’t ask the models in question to pose so provocatively but I still use them to attract readers to my blog, to boost my stats.

I’m guilty as charged, milord. I guess it’s a good job my blog isn’t published as a glossy magazine because maybe it would be in a brown paper bag under the counter at the Co-op along with Zoo. Though I would hope that the articles contained inside mine would be a darn sight more thought provoking.

The issue at the heart of the problem is sex education. It hasn’t kept up with the march of progress. The hearts and minds of the young are ceaselessly influenced by the online world. And that world is, to quote shadow health minister Diane Abbott, completely pornified and the pornification has spread out into the real world too. This totally skews the attitudes of the younger generation towards sex, to each other and to themselves. Kids these days have far easier access to hardcore pornography than my generation ever did. Too easy access in my opinion. And it is barely regulated meaning that there’s a lot of nasty stuff out there being passed off as “the norm”. That is highly dangerous to an impressionable mind.

Sex education needs to catch up with this technological boom, catch on to what is happening and redress the balance. Because what is missing from this huge deluge of objectification and sex marketing is emotional content and emotional context – the most important aspect of any kind of sexual relationship. Without it objectification is inevitable.

With it the only thing that is inevitable is a just and righteous sense of outrage.

We need to teach people to re-engage with their hearts and minds – not just their genitals.

At best, chastity belts and modesty bags just sidestep the issue and make the whole topic even more fetishized. At worse they collude and allow the status quo to continue.

And surely nobody but nobody wants the Quo to continue?

Ho ho.

Prince Harry To Lead Native Americans In Open Revolt

The great thing about the modern world and social networking is that news can be delivered instantaneously in sound-bite form so that it is quickly and immediately digestible. I no longer need to wade through hours and hours of news channels or column inches of newsprint to get the gist of what is going down out there in the big wide world.

Some news today has had me smiling wryly and inflating with slightly irreverent pride for the latest achievement of one member of our Royal Family.

It seems that Prince Harry has qualified to become an Apache Commander.

I'm assuming that sometime over the last year he befriended a descendent of Cochise - maybe saved his life in a bizarre bingo accident on a reservation somewhere in America's mid-west - and that the relationship developed to that slightly awkward point where it was necessary for them both to nick the palms of their hands with a sharp knife and rub the wounds together so that they became blood brothers.

I guess after that it was just a small leap of ideology to thoughts of uniting all of America's scattered  Native American tribes. How Prince Harry managed to fit that into his Las Vegas itinerary without the world finding out, I don't know, but clearly the ginger Prince conceals many hidden abilities and skills the like of which his brother can only dream of. And by brother I mean, William, not his new brother Cochise who by now must surely be aware that Harry has heap strong medicine.

Once the First Nations were again re-established and as one behind their new leader, He Whose Hair Dances With Fire, the next step was quite naturally declaring war on the white European usurpers and taking back the lands and buffalo that they had stolen from their ancestors. I'm assuming that at this point traditional ties with Prince Harry's Germano-British family back home in the UK may have become strained unless Prince Charles has developed a sudden yen to sell Ye Olde Duchy Buffalo Mozzarella but Harry is plainly a man who likes to push his envelope out as far as it will go. And after all, blood is thicker than the monarchy especially when your palm is itching like buggery.

In the absence of John Wayne to act as an honourable counterpoint to the glory-hungry appetites of the US I fear this latest career move by the young Prince can only lead to bloody conflict and strife. The war on terror may have to take a backseat and bingo may have to be outlawed. It is unknown at this point whether Johnny Depp has abandoned his moderately successful movie career and his frequent on-screen liaisons with Helena Bonham-Carter to honour his Native American heritage and join the confederacy of First American tribes in their fight for emancipation under the gingery auspices of He Whose Hair Dances With Fire but it is certain that most of the cast members of Last Of The Mohicans are already paid-up blood brothers.

The tomahawk of war has been thrown, Obama. Or to paraphrase Shakespeare: the bow has been bent and drawn. It is time to make from the shaft of the ginger Prince.

Freedom Of Speech For All Or Freedom Of Speech For None

Deyka Ayan Hassan, the 21 year old student who stupidly tweeted that anyone wearing a Help For Heroes T-shirt deserved to be beheaded in the wake of the murder of soldier Lee Rigby, has been sentenced to 250 hours community service. She’d gone to the police herself after receiving hundreds of abusive Tweets in response to her own threatening to kill her, rape her and burn down her home.

The facts of the matter are simple enough but my gut response to it isn’t.

The whole thing makes me uncomfortable.

Morally the standpoint of the authorities and those who participated in the original Twitter exchange is on ropey ground. It is either a criminal offense to post / write / utter an abusive Tweet / comment / joke or it isn’t. And if it is what the hell has happened to the idea of freedom of speech?

Freedom of speech is something we very rarely think about these days. I possibly only think about it so much because I am a writer. For most of us it is like the air we breathe. We take it for granted because we mistakenly believe it has always been there and will always been there. It is part of this country’s genetic make-up.

It isn’t and never has been. It is a right that was hard won by our forebears and a right that is now slowly being wrested away from us under the guise of common decency; under the guise of protecting us and responding to our sense of outrage, disgust and, ironically, our sense of justice and morality.

Yes, Deyka Ayan Hassan’s Tweet was stupid and reprehensible. A joke that backfired and wasn’t really funny in the first place. The audience for gross shock-jokes is thin at best and very choosy even when it is at large – just ask Frankie Boyle. But are we really going to arrest people for making poor quality poor taste jokes? What common good would that serve? Protecting the rest of us from our own sense of anger and sense of disgust? Excuse me, but I don’t want Mr Cameron and the law courts inserting themselves so intimately into my sensibilities, thank you very much! I’m quite happy to process my own anger and deal with my own indignation. I just want to be protected from would-be murderers, thieves and rapists (and immoral politicians and non-tax paying corporations). I can deal with crap comedians myself.

Of course, in an ideal world everyone would always say nice things about each other. We wouldn’t have hate preachers, or racists or inflammatory orators. We’d all quote Wordsworth all day long and be utterly bored witless.

This isn’t an ideal world. But having the right to freedom of speech makes it not quite as un-ideal as it could be. We can mock our politicians. Satirize those in power over us. Challenge the law and the state when they behave ridiculously and fail to serve us, the people, as they’re supposed to. That is our TRUE protection. But freedom of speech also means that other people can disrespect us, our favourite band, our hobbies, our beliefs and our country itself. They also have the right to make disgusting jokes and be verbally offensive and utter absolutely any old crap that comes out of their mouths. There is no halfway house in this folks. We either can all say what we like or we can’t.

And it would be a much darker world if we couldn’t.

I’m thinking Hitler. I’m thinking Stasi. I’m thinking police state.

The most disturbing thing though about the Deyka Ayan Hassan case is the lack of consistency. Why were those threatening her with murder and rape - far more personally offensive attacks (with no chance of any of it being “a joke”) – not also condemned to community service? Why were they allowed to be abusive and Deyka Ayan Hassan not?

Because in this case the weight of public outrage was on their side?

Well, who decides how far and exactly when that particular pendulum has swung?

Because it certainly isn’t you and it certainly isn’t me.

Is freedom of speech now dependent on the opinions of the majority? Or just those that are in power over us? Do we now need someone else’s permission and approval to divine if what we want to say is in line with our peers and therefore acceptable to say?

When that happens freedom of speech isn’t worth the paper (or blog) that it’s written on.

And that is a true abuse.

Death By Beaver

When beavers were introduced to Knapdale, Mid-Argyll in May 2009 I cheered.

Being part Scottish I could only celebrate with my far-Northern cousins that finally, at last, their beaver needs were being met. It is a little known fact that there has long been a shortage of beaver in Scotland. Some blame the Highland Clearances, some the proliferation of Buckfast and deep fried Mars bars, most put it down to the hordes of midge flies that are attracted to anything warm and moist. After all an itchy beaver is an unhappy beaver.

However, as the classic beaver spurns any kind of fashionable depilation, it was agreed that a good full musky pelt would be ample protection against even the most determined of hormonally driven irritants and therefore the whine and nip of insistent little pests would be “nay bother” to the eager beavers waiting to set up home in the west coast of Scotland.

The beavers were duly released and allowed to run free and to this day thrive and prosper in Knapdale, Mid-Argyll.

It is a story worthy of the BBC’s Springwatch. A conservation success story to be shouted from the rooftops although we are yet to see Chris Packham get to grips with a beaver live on telly despite Michaela Strachan’s best attempts to the contrary.

All should be well. Beavers and beaver jokes have been resurrected in the British Isles to the glory of all.

And then comes the disturbing news today that a man in Belarus has been killed by beaver. The beaver population in Belarus is an eye-watering 80,000. I’m not sure what ratio that is to the male human population but surely there is enough beaver to go around.

Details are currently sketchy but it seems the man had attempted to capture the beaver in order to have his photograph taken with it.

Well truly, what man has not savoured the adolescent dream of being photographed running his fingers through the quivering fur of a beautiful, perfectly formed beaver?

It seems this particular beaver was having none of it though. It didn’t want to be tied down. It didn’t want to be posed. It didn’t want to be stroked. It wanted to be left alone and photo-shoots be damned. It was plainly the wrong time of the month. The beaver was not in season. The beaver bit and bit hard.

The poor man consequently died of his injuries.

Although “death by beaver” may sound to some a glamorous way to go I suspect my Scottish brethren are now twitching nervously beneath their sporrans and analysing growing beaver numbers in the Knapdale area with a sense of gnawing trepidation. Prime air-time on Springwatch is all very well but with a beaver population explosion on the cards it is only a matter of time before there is bloodshed in the Scottish bush.

After all, an angry beaver with teeth is not something you want erecting a dam at close quarters in your kilt.

White Bait

I've never eaten much red meat. There's no moral stance to that I just prefer chicken (no jokes about cock, please). I am suspicious of beef pies and stews - I invariably find that the one bit of gristle in the whole ensemble ends up on my plate - and the thought of steak just does nothing for me. Burgers I had a brief affair with when I was a teenager but as soon as I became socially conscious they went over to the dark side under the rippling banners of McDonald's, at least in my mind anyway, and thus my palate railed against them.

But I eat mince regularly. Homemade bolognese and chili. I do a lot of that kind of thing.

It seems a foregone conclusion then, the more that horse-gate unravels, that I have partaken of equine flesh at some time or other. Porbably enough that I ought to set up a direct debit to Redwings horse sanctuary to attone for my glutinous sins.

I can't help wondering though how long this cutting-beef-products-with-horse-products has been going on (at least they're not cutting it with talcum powder or Ajax). Probably years.

And I can't help wondering if it warrants the furore that has been grinding on and on about it.

Don't get me wrong. I love horses. I really do. Though in this context I'd like to state that, by choice, I'd much rather not eat one.

I'd like to live in a world where food manufacturers were honest and open-handed and listed accurately the ingredients in their wares. I'd like to live in a world where the constituent ingredients in a beef pie were simply beef and pastry. Or the constituent ingredients of a pork sausage was simply pork. Because to slip other stuff in there and not declare it is fraud of the worst kind. It is lies and deceit and leaves the backdoor open to talcum powder and Ajax and perforated septums.

But then again, have we not long lived in a world where chicken is pumped with water and chemicals to make it look plumper on the supermarket shelves? Have our eyes not surveyed rank upon rank of pork sausages that strictly speaking do not contain pork at all but in fact contain breadcrumbs, pig lips, pig trotters, pig arseholes and the stuff the farmer has wiped off his boots? How many of us have bought fishfingers thinking it was cod when in fact we have been slathering our mushypeas over generic "white fish"?

Unless you go out, hunt it, kill it and gut it yourself you have no way of knowing if the food on your plate is actually the food the supermarket label says it is.

We, all of us, could as well have eaten camel, kangeroo or Great Dane over the last few years and merely commented that for once the beef was exquisitely tender.

But of course this fraud is not right.

But who to blame?

All to easy to blame the abbattoir owners and their ilk - they, after all, are literally at the sharp end of the food production chain. Sorry, I say "all to easy" like they're being blamed unfairly... they're not. The guilty ones have committed a criminal act and must be punished.

But ultimately I blame the supermarkets. I blame the competition of super food corporations that push and push for cheap meat and cheaper meat that, yes, is kind of great for the consumer, but inevitably squeezes the meat producers and the farmers to the point where it does not make economic sense for them to produce the meat that the supermarkets want to sell to us with their own labels stamped on top.

Cheap invariably means dodgy and adulterated.

You get what you pay for.

Now if the supermarket labels merely said "cheap meat" we'd probably all have a much better idea of what it was we were eating...

Halo

So Prince Harry’s in trouble again.

He kept his butt-cheeks under wraps but was a might loose with an insensitive tongue. I haven’t read any of the offended write-ups or seen any of the worthy TV interviews with the usual round of for-hire-experts. I’ve caught a few newspaper headlines, caught the odd sound-bite and therefore deem myself as well equipped to offer an opinion as any UK tabloid journalist (with the advantage that I won’t hack your mobile phone – Lord knows I can barely get into my own).

From what I can glean Harry’s been taken to task for talking about how he, along with his army chums, have taken a few Taliban fighters “out of the game” and even compared the action he’d seen to playing video games.

Right-on righteous people the world over are up in arms (ironic) over his gross insensitivity and callous, off-hand dismissal of taking another human being’s life.

And they’re right. Of course they are. I can remember feeling outraged at hearing stories of American helicopter crews listening to loud rock music as they shot at insurgents and again, made comparisons to playing computer games. It was as if they were treating modern warfare as some kind of leisure pursuit which totally devalued human life until the people they were fighting impinged on their consciences no more than a pixellated sprite on a computer screen.

That is plainly wrong. Dreadfully wrong.

But who is at fault here?

Let’s look at it another way. We train our armed forces to do many different tasks – but no matter how you dress these tasks up politically, they are trained to kill. Their goal is always to kill more of the enemy than the enemy kills of them. They are trained to do it without thinking. Without breaking down and needing counselling five minutes into a fire fight or even five weeks. As horrible as it sounds conscience doesn’t come into it. And yes it is desensitizing. I imagine when you’re in a battle zone the last thing you want is to be feeling a bit sensitive. You would not be able to function and as such would be liable to get yourself and your colleagues killed.

We expect our soldiers to go out and kill. To kill with honour, yes. To kill “viable targets” (what a horrid expression), yes. To not kill children or innocents. To not kill for pleasure or needlessly. But ultimately, when the need calls for it, to kill. It’s a big part of soldiering in the modern world, alas.

I daresay the soul searching, the emotional breakdowns and psychological payback comes later. But at the time, when you’re in the theatre of war, you keep all that touchy-feely stuff as far away from you as possible and by using whatever means necessary.

That’s what I imagine Prince Harry is doing.

And then we have the video game thing. Heaven knows I have complained myself about computer games which purport to replicate the “real war experience”. My granddad fought in WWII, I don’t imagine he’d have thought much of his experiences being the basis for a living room based computer game which involves the participant sitting on their backside twiddling a few buttons on a handheld controller and staring at a TV screen.

But these games are out there and proliferating in huge numbers. Our kids, siblings, partners are playing them. They play them for entertainment. They play them for fun. The realism element is a selling point, a way of benchmarking the quality of the game.

This is highly questionable.

This desensitizes us all. Cheapens us all.

As a society we condemn warfare while at the same time making it a significant element of most of our entertainment choices – computer games, movies, literature. It has become enmeshed with fashion, rock music soundtracks and the way we gauge our own status.

Not all of us, I know. But enough that in any high street in any town you can go into a Game store (for example) and immerse yourself in the war of your choice.

Who is at fault here? The individual soldier or the society that equates war with play and then sends that soldier out to play for real?

Just think for a minute of all those people who help design and create those ultra-realistic computer war games... how much blood is on their hands?

Real, not salaciously imagined.

Just because you can’t see it, doesn’t mean it isn’t there.

I’m Going To Blow Up The Olympics

So Paul Chambers, the man who sparked a full-on security alert at Robin Hood airport (near Doncaster) when he Tweeted “Crap! Robin Hood airport is closed. You've got a week and a bit to get your shit together, otherwise I'm blowing the airport sky high!!” back in 2010 when the airport was temporarily shut during heavy snow has finally won his appeal against his conviction for “sending a menacing electronic communication” at the High Court in London.

I’m pleased for him in a kind of passive, passing, glad-somebody-finally-saw-sense kind of way. Mainly though I just feel hugely disgruntled at the amount of tax payer’s money that has been wasted bringing this case to trial, bringing it to appeal at a Crown Court only for that appeal to be initially quashed and then being brought to the High Court where it was eventually brought before someone with a brain cell who could finally see it for the ridiculously petty pile of shit that it actually was.

Apparently his initial appeal at the Crown Court was overturned because the judge said the Tweet was “clearly menacing”.

Clearly menacing? I’ve received begging letters from the RSPCA that were more menacing than that.

It is surely plain to everyone that the Tweet was a joke. A joke in poor taste admittedly and not even particularly funny but a joke nevertheless. The guy was cheesed off. His flight was delayed. It was snowing. He was stuck in Doncaster. It was an unthinking moment of heat and frustration. It was a little guy sounding off against a big corporate machine that had let him down. And can I just say again that he was stuck in Doncaster?

Even if he really had blown up the airport surely that alone would be a mitigating circumstance?

As it was, John Cooper QC last month said: “[the Tweet] was certainly not sent in the context of terrorism and it was wrong for the crown court to make such an association”.

Hallelujah.

Commonsense prevails at last. The Law is less of an ass than I thought it was.

But the staff at Robin Hood airport ought to hang their heads in shame along with all those who helped push this case along via the hard earned money of the likes of you and me.

Have we actually really reached an age where the average man on the street can’t cock a snoop at the big corporations with the only weapon available to him that is still free – i.e. his speech?

We have to accept here that there is a huge, clearly recognizable difference between “you have five minutes to evacuate, there is a bomb on your premises, die infidel pig-dog, the code word is kebab” and “your service is so crap you need a bomb put under you to get things to improve”. Real bomb threats are, after all, plainly not funny.

Real bomb hoaxes are also not funny. But “you've got a week and a bit to get your shit together, otherwise I'm blowing the airport sky high”, oh and by the way you can clearly identify me by my Twitter account and my 600 Followers is clearly not even in the same ballpark. That isn’t even remotely threatening. It’s someone throwing their rattle out of the pram and then having it taken to the police by a prat who then complains to the police that they felt frightened by the rattle - please lock them up Mr Policeman for I was very fwightened.

Honestly! Some people need to get a life.

Preferably before I blow them sky-high with the two tonnes of Semtex that I have rabidly secreted down my Y-fronts and packed into the hairy chambers of my armpits.

Go on. Complain about this fucking blog. I just dare you!

My finger is hovering over the button right now! One wrong move and you’re all going to die with the smoke of my singed underpants in your lungs!

The Grand Opening Of The Shed

As a race our expectations of life must surely be the single biggest contributor to our general unhappiness.

As adults we are well acquainted with reality and yet we constantly expect and hope for far more than we know can ever be delivered. This is idiocy and arrogance. We know how the world works, how much it costs and how people like to cut corners. A little thought and a little logic would rein in our runaway dreams and ensure that we are never disappointed again. No more will we be glass-half-full or glass-half-empty people. We will just be a people grateful for having a glass.

Take the opening of The Shard during the week. London's newest, biggest building. In fact it is the tallest building in Western Europe. For the time being.

According to news reports the general feeling was that people - i.e. the hoi polloi, you and me and your mama too - were a tad disappointed by the opening ceremony. It was something of a let down.

I must admit I didn't watch it but just caught the highlights on Newsround (I have kids, OK, what scope do you think I have to watch News24 these days?) - enough in itself to remove the high and the light from any ceremony.

I saw light displays from within the building itself and a laser show from the extremeties of the building. Admittedly there were no fireworks (that I saw) but I dare say they are stockpiling those for the Olympics.

The opening ceremony seemed perfectly adequate to my mind. It's a building, for God's sake. What were people expecting it to do? Develop rocket thrusters Autobot style and blast off to the moon?

It's a building.

Back when I was a kid a new building was opened by having a local celeb cut a pink ribbon in front of the doors and then everyone downed a cheap glass of Liebfraumilch in the foyer and that was it. You counted yourself lucky if you were presented with a sausage and a pineapple chunk on a stick.

It's a building. It doesn't do anything but stand there and gradually fall into decay by the unstoppable effects of entropy.

Be grateful for the coloured lights and the lasers.

Even if they'd installed nude can-can dancers on the top floor no-one would have seen them.

At the end of the day this building is nothing more than an icon and a trophy for the rich and smug affluent enough to live and work there.

Personally I have already re-christened it The Shed and I do hope you will all assist my attempts to see that this new monicker soon catches on.

As for the aesthetics of the building itself... well, I've seen worse. At least it doesn't look like a car park.

One thing does worry me though.

I'm sure London's newest erection has a twin somewhere in Mordor.

Should we be worried?

8 Out Of 10 Cats Pay Their Tax The Hard Way

It is a measure of how much I detest the Tories when David Cameron's slating of the devil makes me instantly have sympathy with him.

Unless you've been living under a rock, on drugs or just in a different country for the last few days you can't fail to have heard or read about the big hoo-ha involving UK comedian, Jimmy Carr, and K2.

Yeah, that was my first thought too: he hasn't exactly got the physique of a mountaineer.

But it turns out K2 is some clever-clever, smarmy, rich man's tax dodge. I'm not sure of the ins and outs because whenever I read financial information all I hear in my head is farting noises but the basic premise seems to be that rich bastards pay their money into an account in Jersey and then the people running the account pay the money back out to them as "a loan". And because it is classed as a loan rather than a wage these mega-earners don't have to pay the statutory 50% tax rate on their stratospheric earnings.

All perfectly legal as Jimmy Carr and other K2 members have been desperate to point out.

So 'legally' the UK has missed out on something like £45bn per year on missed tax payments because of schemes like K2. Or £45mn. Or 45 drachma. One of those.

This is not funny when the likes of you and me are struggling to make ends meet and the government and tax office and the banks seem set on nobbling the poor, the middle wage earners and small business men in general.

K2 would be a great idea if we could all take advantage of it. The unfairness lies in the fact that it is a club that only the obscenely rich can join.

David Cameron (hardly short of a few bob himself) has condemned Jimmy Carr as "morally wrong".

Now up to that point I was bitterly disappointed with Jimmy Carr. I mean, how could he co-present such politically satirical programmes like 10 O'clock Live, lampooning the misdemeanours of others, when he himself was effectively ripping the entire country off?

But Cameron's condemnation just sticks in my craw worse than the whole K2 bunch. Are we to believe that Cameron knew nothing of this? That all our deeply respected politicians had no idea that such schemes existed and have done so for years and years? Are we to believe that they themselves have never partook of such perfectly legal tax dodging shenanigans?

It seems to me that Cameron's comdemnation comes only on the back of the recent media coverage. Up to then he was happy to have us all ignorant. Isn't that morally wrong too?

Jimmy Carr has today apologized for a "terrible error of judgement" over K2. He was asked by his financial advisor if he wanted to pay less tax without breaking the law. He said yes.

Well, bugger me, but who wouldn't?

The problem isn't Jimmy Carr or even K2 or it's directors (who are surely more morally repugnant than everybody?)... the problem is the long standing loophole in the law that allows such schemes to exist and to flourish. These schemes and loopholes are not new developments; they've been around for decades.

And whose fault is that?

The politicians and the bankers.

Frankie Boyle Tweeted this morning that if he'd been called "morally wrong" by Cameron he'd put it on his [tour] posters. I'd be tempted to put it on a T-shirt and wear it with pride.

Pot. Kettle. Black.

I wonder if my employer would care to loan me next month's wages rather than paying me...?

Trouble is, with my luck, they'd expect me to pay it back...

With interest.

Me And Mr Clarkson, We're Like That

We love a bit of hoo-ha in this country. A little bit of brouhaha. A little bit of outrage and apoplectic armchair slapping.

A little bit of whoa. A little bit of ooh.

On some deep perverse level all those people who complained about Jeremy Clarkson’s comments on The One Show (that striking public sector workers should be shot in front of their families) must have secretly enjoyed Clarkson’s comments. Been secretly pleased that he’d made them.

Because it got them excited. Made them feel alive. Got the blood surging through their veins and got their moustaches bristling in a thoroughly British bulldog manner. Here is some meat we can savage, Goddammit, get stuck in lads!

But really. It was a storm in a teacup. It was stuff and nonsense. It was nothing.

A comedy grenade tossed into the crowd to see which fellows it would take out and which it would leave standing.

Before I continue I need to make it clear that I am one of those striking public sector workers that Mr Clarkson would apparently like to see shot in front of my wife and kids.

Am I offended?

No. Not at all. I watched the show and took it all with a punch of salt. It was plain – absolutely plain – that the comments were off-the-cuff jokes designed to illicit nervous chuckles from those watching. Designed to shock. Designed to both offend and entertain. Frankie Boyle uses a similar kind of shtick though to greater effect (i.e. Frankie Boyle is actually funny). My wife wasn’t offended by Clarkson’s comments either though I’m pretty sure she got straight onto the phone to our solicitor to see whether she could amend my life insurance policy to include “death by publicity seeking celebrity”.

See. I made a joke out of it. It really isn’t worth twisting one’s knickers up about. The whole thing was tongue-in-cheek.

And I have sympathy with Mr Clarkson. No. Really I do. I’ve got into trouble on this ‘ere blog by people reading posts that were clearly meant to be tongue-in-cheek and not-to-be-taken-at-all-seriously and then taking them very seriously indeed. And being offended. And, worse, seeking to be more and more offended by coming back for more.

Because, let’s face it, some people just like being offended.

So what are the alternatives?

Everybody is censored and is not allowed to say anything at all that could be construed as even slightly controversial? Well. We all better start wearing gags in that case and gimping ourselves up. None of us had better say another word. And where the hell do you draw the line anyway? Who decides what is offensive and what is not? Most jokes – even the genuinely funny ones – have a slightly offensive component to them. You could even argue that most things we find funny are built on someone somewhere being offended and offensive. Do we want to live in a world where humour is outlawed? Where no one can tell a joke because no one can take a joke?

I certainly don’t.

Get a sense of humour. Lighten up. Stop taking things so seriously.

If Jeremy Clarkson wants to drive past my house and take a pot shot at me from his Bugatti he is most welcome.

He won’t be able to get up my street anyway. The bin men were on strike on Wednesday and the roads are now chocka with crap.

Dangerous Roads

The way I’m looking at it, the BBC is a bit of a bungling would-be murderer.

For the last three Sunday nights I’ve greatly enjoyed watching Dangerous Roads, a celebrity based travelogue, in which the BBC pairs up a couple of TV celebs and then sends them out in a 4x4 to some exotic part of the world that these guys could easily afford to visit on their own wages and then makes them drive several thousand kilometres along “one of the world’s most dangerous roads” in the vain hopes of killing them off in a spectacular cliff edge crash.

That the crash never happened is a testament to the safe driving style of the chosen celebs and the fact that some idiot at the BBC quite plainly didn’t think to bribe Orla Guerin to bring back a landmine from Afghanistan.

A missed opportunity, BBC! We could have been rid of the boorish Charley Boorman forever. However, in the case of the lovely Sue Perkins I am rather glad that all Orla Guerin brought back with her were some After Eight Mints and a tin of weird liquorice sweets that nobody in the office actually likes.

But the premise of the show got me thinking.

See, I have a Flip camera (or rather my wife does, but let’s not haggle over ownership issues). I have transport. An old green mountain bike.

And Leamington Spa has some of the most dangerous roads in the county.

I could make my own version of Dangerous Roads and kill off the celebrities of your choice. And I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t need a hooky landmine (only one previous careful owner) to do the dispatching for me – the local flora and fauna would do that without batting an eyelid.

Here’s a quick sneak-peak at the itinerary:

After staying at one of Leamington’s many fine B&B’s your chosen celebs would mount up (one perched precariously onto the handlebars) and embark on their final journey.

The first leg would see them navigating the gum chewing wilds of Bury Road who’s broadly curving cul-de-sacs and St. George’s flag festooned garden sheds have seen many a careless traveller lost to the world – both body and soul – and, if not buried under a patio somewhere, then (a fate equally worse) married off to some 16 year old who's managed to get pregnant at the merest whiff of Lynx deodorant and who’s knowledge of foul language would make Roy Chubby Brown blush.

After that the timorous celebs must then negotiate a safe route through the competing Chav kingdoms of the Kingsway and Queensway estates who’s Burberry lined pathways have caused many a seasoned explorer to go blind and start shopping at Gap. They will need to watch out for roaming packs of hoodies, skateboarders and secondary school drop-outs who smoke like chimneys and who look like they’ve had the faces of World War I veterans grafted onto their pre-pubescent little skulls. If these savages don’t pop a cap into the asses of our erstwhile celebs then their 14 year old mothers surely will.

Finally – the coup d'état (or, more fittingly, the coup de tete) – our beleaguered celebs, by now bemoaning their D list status and wishing they’d stayed working for hospital radio, must traverse the marauding Mad Max 3 wilderness of the Leamington Spa High Street late on a Friday night. Auntie Entity, Master-Blaster and that weird geeky guy who flies the plane and has the face of a camel... they are all here waiting for some unsuspecting ignoramus to venture too close to their fag stained clutches. Steer your bike too close to the cliff edge of alcoholism and you will plummet forever into the churning morass of the gutter far below and find yourself forever more a citizen of Bartertown. Or, as it is more commonly known around here, Battertown.

And there you go. Job done. Job’s a good ‘un.

Charley Boorman is a goner.

Easy-peasy.

So. Which celebs would you like to nominate?

Censorship And Sensibility (With Apologies To Jane Austen)

“So, I said to her, I said to her, blue parasols are sooo passé. So last year. Only the lower orders go for blue parasols. You’re not much better than a milkmaid in your Sunday best if you carry a blue parasol around with you. So common. Well, I said it so loud she turned and fled red-faced and hasn’t dared to show herself here at Eastwick Towers again. Everybody who was there who saw and heard it thought it frightfully entertaining.” And with that Fanny dissolved into rather undemure laughter while her good friend and confidante, Jane, applauded her for her cutting-edged wit and prettily voiced cruelty.

It was at that moment that Mr D’Arcy presented himself to them both with his cheeks flushed and a little dappled with perspiration.

“Well, hello, Miss Fanny and Miss Jane, what splendid luck to find you both here. I confess I am rather ebullient in my sentiments today for I have just published my own pamphlet to sell to the good people of London. Pray take a look and tell me if it is to your liking.”

Mr D’Arcy forthwith inserted his glossy looking tome into the hands of the suddenly quivering ladies.

“Oh I say, what a jolly funny name,” said Fanny. “Put It In Your Pipe And Smoke It.”

“Indeed.” Replied Mr D’Arcy. “It has a certain ring to it and reflects my own personal viewpoint. It is merely my own opinion which thanks to the laws of this great and noble country, I am at liberty to express freely.”

Fanny began flicking through the pages and suddenly her face paled and fell. She looked suddenly distressed. “Oh Mr D’Arcy how could you? You have written a piece here attacking the red parasol. How could you be so brutish and cruel when you know I am never seen without a red parasol.” And with that Fanny waved aloft her parasol which was indeed red.

“Oh my.” Stammered Mr D’Arcy. “Madam, I had no idea you carried a red parasol, truly I didn’t. Besides my piece does not attack your parasol specifically only certain red parasols generally. And, at the end of the day, good lady, as my disclaimer clearly states, the views contained within this publication are purely my own personal opinion and are not meant to be authoritative.”

“Tish tosh.” Said Fanny. “That makes no difference to my case. I feel personally slighted therefore the slight is real and I have been most certainly slighted. What you have written there, sir, is slander and defamation and infamy. You have slandered my good name by my known association with red parasols in bold print, sir, in your infernal publication, and it causes me upset and hurt. Every court in the land will surely see it so.”

Mr D’Arcy composed his face a little after this outburst and strove to speak calmly and measuredly. “Come, come, Miss Fanny. Consider this: you yourself not two minutes before reading my pamphlet did speak uncivilly about blue parasols. Indeed you recounted how you sent the owner of a blue parasol packing with your cruel barbs ringing about her ears and you did so in full view of witnesses and furthermore have recounted the story to Miss Jane thus exacerbating the damage done to this anonymous lady’s name. You have made your views and opinions public in a manner which also caused hurt and upset. Is this also not slander and defamation and infamy? I wager every court in the land will most certainly see it so.”

And turning upon his heel forthwith Mr D’Arcy made his excuses and left Eastwick Towers for, despite the transparency and glassiness of its walls, the occupants within were wont to throw stones with appalling regularity in order to not be able to see their own reflections staring back out at them from the glass.

The End.