Читать книгу Work! Consume! Die! - Frankie Boyle - Страница 15
ОглавлениеHaving travelled a wee bit, I’m convinced that Britain’s sense of humour – the sheer scope and breadth and complexity of our piss-taking – is unique. That’s what I hate about these various joke scandals. They have at their heart the idea that the public won’t be able to decode what was meant by the joke; that even if you understand, other people might not, when everyone here has a PhD in wind-ups.
People are struggling with the whole idea of comedy at the moment. I think comedy is probably a descendant of shamanism. The comic is some guy or gal covered in shit who’d live out in the desert and come roaring into the settlement every so often to tell everybody what was up with how they perceived life. Of course, this made them a pariah.
Comedy is a fictional space. Some of the things the shaman says are true, even heartfelt. Sometimes she says things she doesn’t mean; sometimes she says the opposite of what she means. And, admittedly, she isn’t always good, but nobody is. Sometimes you end up watching Peter Kay, but sometimes it’s Bill Hicks and sometimes it’s Loki.
There are a few problems. One, you get the soul-grinding mill of television, which sees that it can use a few laughs to keep people dumb and distracted. It likes to employ shamans with their eyes poked out. Two, you get some well-meaning types who would like the status of the shaman without the whole pariah bit. They could maybe skip the drugs and keep the status – or even just the cash? Sorry, those are all false paths. The shaman knows that the route to enlightenment is to lose the ego and, what with one thing and another, she’s going to get too much attention to get very far with that. So the joke is on her. The price the trickster pays for her existence is to be, ultimately, the butt of her own joke. Glad I managed to explain comedy to y’all before I died [tips hat].*
* I don’t believe any of this. The idea of the comedian as shaman is simply a different way for a practitioner to gather status and feed the ego. In man’s original nomadic tribal state, the role of social critic would have been vital in deciding when to move on. Comedians are just the descendants of the guys and gals whose job it was to say, ‘It’s fucking shit here,’ and moan until everybody upped sticks and headed west, into an ambush prepared by a rival tribe, or a barren wasteland.**
** This is all bollocks. Comics are sort of the opposite of shamans really. Shamans, poets, priests are all people whose role is to power-up symbols. In our scientific reality tunnel a hallucination might be a manifestation of the unconscious mind. In a shamanic one it might be a fairie, in a religious one, an angel. The comedian is actually there to de-power the symbolic world. With Lenny Bruce, cancer goes from being this big demonic taboo to being, well, just cancer. The best comics are really trying to wake you up from the symbolic world; they’re desentimentalisers, pointing out that those First World War soldiers who had a truce to play football at Christmas probably killed each other the next day, and not even remorsefully but muttering, ‘That was never offside, you cunt.’***
*** Of course, none of this is really what you would call accurate, but between these viewpoints there is something close to the truth. I think that by constantly undermining and subverting himself a comedian might be able to communicate quite profoundly, by a kind of triangulation. You can’t really ever defend a joke because at the point it’s getting dissected it’s not a joke. Is a dead butterfly in a case still a butterfly? Even a mermaid wouldn’t look too beautiful during an autopsy. This is as close as someone like me can ever get to explaining himself. Do you get it? [smiles hopefully with a brittle smile].****
**** Look, it’s not supposed to be analysed. You can’t create a space that asks what would happen if we abandoned all the rules and then start saying things are outside of the rules. There aren’t any fucking rules. OK, here’s something that should stop you dissecting comedy, something I could prove scientifically if I could be arsed. Do you know the main factor in whether you find something funny or not? The kind of day you’ve just had.
So, the Tories are back. If you don’t remember them, they were big in the 1980s – like dungarees and white people getting AIDS. The British people spoke, and they conclusively shrugged their shoulders and said, ‘Whatever. I’m not bothered. Him. You. Or the other one. Britain’s Got Talent’s coming on, you sort it out. See you in five years.’ So, we’ve got a new prime minister and, unlike Gordon Brown, this one was actually nearly elected. Obviously, Cameron got straight down to work while Samantha got all of his forehead polish into Number 10. Can Cameron really manage to create social cohesion? I mean, his head has only just managed to create some semblance of a face. Cameron is the youngest prime minister for nearly 200 years, which is odd, because he’s also been alive for far too long.
People who say we shouldn’t have royalty and an elected representative seem to be missing the fact that we have royalty as our elected representative – both David and Samantha Cameron have royal ancestors. In fact, now William is married to Kate Middleton, we actually have an elected first family that have more royal blood than our future king and queen. Do you get the feeling that Sam Cameron is one of the few PM’s wives to consider Number 10 a step down on the property ladder? It comes to something when our prime minister regards his trip to Buckingham Palace as part of his gritty contact with working-class people. He’s descended from King William IV and his mistress. Why did we vote for him? Even King William knew he didn’t want to take him on permanently.
It was claimed that Cameron has a fortune estimated at £30 million. Do you really believe he really gives a flying fuck as to when your bins get emptied or where your rat-faced children go to school? Does he even know how to use public transport? I can see him now, queuing at his nearest helipad, clutching an Oyster card.
For a while, Cameron was on the board of the company that owns Tiger Tiger. This is his idea of how Britain should enjoy itself? Rows of spandex-clad women trying to work out which former reality TV star they are least terrified of accepting a drink from?
Not long after the election, David Cameron and Barack Obama had a historic meeting in Washington and Obama rolled out the red carpet for Cameron. A lovely gesture, but Cameron really should not have tipped him a dollar for doing so. It was a low-key welcome. I feel a bit sorry for the PM. It can’t be good for your self-esteem, seeing a cabbie at JFK airport with a bit of cardboard with ‘Mr Macaroon’ written on it in marker pen. When Cameron first saw a black man standing in a white mansion he thought they were remaking The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.
The PM met with the president face to face, after breaking free from the White House tour group when they passed the door to the Oval Office. Apparently, Obama and David Cameron ‘swapped anecdotes’. That must have been fascinating for Obama. After telling David all about his rise to become the first black president of the most powerful nation on earth, he then had to listen to Dave tell a rather amusing story about going to Waitrose and buying chorizo instead of salami.
Reports also said the men were on ‘Christian-name terms’. Dave calls him Obama and Obama calls him Nick. When David’s in Obama’s company he always has a very serious, concerned, concentrated face – like he’s desperately trying not to fart, but knowing that only minutes ago he ate four catering-size tins of pickled cabbage. He flew to meet Obama on a standard BA flight, to save money. If he really wanted to save money, he should have flown Ryanair. During a recession, it would be inspiring to see the PM pissing into an empty Fanta can, just to save a quid.
Ah, the Big Society. Does Cameron really believe Britain would be a better place if it were run by the public? Have you seen the public? It’s hard enough to get through the laboured and tedious process of getting a pair of trousers dry-cleaned by someone who has been in the dry-cleaning business for 20 years. How’s it going to work when your lollypop man is in charge of a prison?
George Osborne said, ‘Everyone in our society has had to make a contribution.’ And Osborne’s contribution is to destroy our society. Everyone’s going to muck in. First, you can make up for the lack of police by doing a citizen’s arrest, and then – due to the total lack of nurses – attempt to stitch your face back together.
If we really are genuinely all in it together they should disband all political parties and run the country in a true democratic manner. In the past the Greeks used to run their parliament in a similar style to jury duty. You were called up to serve and you did your time. There were no career politicians. It was part of your civic duty. And at least that way everyone in Britain would get one year to do their house up, employ their relatives, make some extra cash on expenses and find out what it’s like to live like a fucking king.
Sir Michael Caine helped the Tories promote their National Citizenship Service, a plan to help youths experience being a citizen of the UK in a non-military national service. Kids don’t need to have their own brown shirt to join, but the names, addresses and occupations of all friends and family are an essential.
The prime minister announced plans for private firms to run more public services. Clearly a good idea. You only have to look at Southern Cross care homes to see that. Thousands of OAPs may be kicked out onto the street after the care-home giant said it was closing. It’s a really distressing thing and my heart goes out to all those unfortunate people who must be worrying that they’ll have to let their parents move in with them. Staff said they’ve been kept in the dark. Something Southern Cross previously only did with residents, having them suckle a sedative paste until their direct debits ran out.
Cameron says he wants to give charities and community groups more power to run organisations such as youth clubs. Exactly how much power do you need to run a youth club? I’d have thought a Sony PlayStation and a box of biscuits, and you’ve pretty much covered all the bases.
Conservative MP and Education Secretary Michael Gove has announced that teachers will be allowed to discipline unruly pupils outside of school. This should allow teachers to be assaulted even when they’re not at work. They’ll end up getting their heads kicked in, and probably their assistant heads too.
More than 100 state schools failed to enter a single person for GCSE history in 2010. Which sounds like a shocking statistic, but bear in mind in just a few years’ time it will have been completely forgotten. Along with the Holocaust and slavery. A report said there’s one bad teacher in every school. Of course there is. They can’t cut PE out of the curriculum altogether.
A teachers’ strike hit over 5,000 schools. Gove wants teachers to work an extra eight years before they retire. But look on the bright side, teachers – you’ll be on holiday for four of them. Maths lessons will be interesting with a teacher who’s nearly 70. ‘If there are two milk bottles on my doorstep and they are joined by another twelve milk bottles, how long have I been dead?’
Luckily, on the day of the strike they also shut the job centres and the courts, meaning Glaswegians could spend the day with their kids. Civil servants, court ushers and teachers – we couldn’t have had more ineffectual strikes if the dead had decided to stop decomposing for a day. But it’s nice for British teenagers to have the day off – watch some Jeremy Kyle, find out what all those girls who left at 16 are up to. The Sun interviewed a teenager from Gateshead who was worried that the teachers’ strike would ruin his future. How will he sign on if he can’t spell his name?
There’s controversy over the ballot, with the government saying that many who voted for the strike were simply marking the fact that ‘Yes’ was spelt correctly. How can it be a 24-hour strike when these people only work until 3.30? Or did they also take the evening off when normally they’d have been getting drunk in the local pub while trying to grope ex-pupils?
Teachers don’t have my complete sympathy. I remember turning up without my kit and saying, ‘I suppose I have to do it in my pants?’ and my PE teacher whispering, ‘That was last time … you’ve raised the stakes. This time you’ll have to do it in my pants.’ The cross-country run was much easier, but I confess the whole arrangement did make me feel a bit like a baby kangaroo.
That strike went against everything the Big Society is all about, which is ‘work constantly for free until you die’. I love the way the media pretends that the erosion of workers’ right to strike is some kind of advance. In the 1970s, we’re told, strikes were the British disease. I guess we’re supposed to be proud that it’s changed to chlamydia. I still remember the last miners’ strike, when a shortage of coal led to a terrifying winter of blind snowmen. Still, it’s clearly ridiculous for teachers to go on strike for a better pension. A teenager will have stabbed them through the heart ages before they reach retirement. Some people defended the strike by saying that it was only one day. Unfortunately, it was the day all the private-school kids got taught how to run banking software and pass the Oxford entry exam.
The General Election was a surprising result for Nick Clegg – he was bounding around Parliament with the joy of a bullied child who’d just changed schools. His first action as deputy prime minister was to make sure Jeremy Beadle was still dead. Never has someone so mediocre been so fought over – he must feel like girl at a Star Trek convention.
The Lib Dems found it very hard to decide whether they were Labour or Tory supporters, mostly because they’re Lib Dem supporters. I mean, had most of them agreed with one of the major parties they would probably have applied to join those parties, rather than spend their career standing at the back of town halls looking disappointed.
Clegg said he wants the British to experience a taste of the Lib Dems in government so that they will be confident to vote for a fully Lib Dem government. I know that reasoning. It’s similar to when you bring home someone for a threesome who smells like a goat.
During the coalition a few compromises have been made. The Lib Dems have had to agree to Tory policies on taxation, immigration and policing – but they will be presented in a nice yellow folder. The Tories have dropped their cap on immigration, but have axed £150 million from the local government housing budget. You can’t get rid of immigrants while you’re cutting social housing – who will we blame? Horrible to see Child Trust Funds have been scrapped. By the time they are 18 our current generation of babies will need that cash to forge their papers and bribe a Chinese camp official.
Of course, the Lib Dems didn’t even get the voting reform that they sold their souls for. The problem with the Alternative Vote was that it wasn’t a real alternative. They should just make the candidates do an It’s a Knockout-style course with their last year’s expenses in 2p pieces in a rucksack on their back. My idea of an alternative vote would be having the option of electing someone who isn’t a cunt.
The coalition is also proposing to cut benefits to heroin addicts. Surely it would be better to send them to Afghanistan. If the Taliban are between them and those opium poppies we might just win. And when Al-Qaeda blows up the Olympics there won’t be a TV left in the country for them to watch it on.
The Lib Dems aren’t totally comfortable with a new deterrent being ordered. But in this new spirit of political cooperation they’ve been given some options by their coalition partners. They can either shut up or piss off.
The Lib Dems say they want to give everyone in Britain the chance to fulfil their potential. What potential does Britain have? If you’re talking about young people, then it means they’d all get the opportunity to release a single, be on Page Three or finger Cheryl Cole. And when it comes to old people, think about your parents. What potential do they have to fulfil? As long as they get their two weeks in Lanzarote and can afford wafer-thin ham they wouldn’t care if the country was run by a military junta of humanoid gorillas.
‘It should be what you know, not who you know,’ said David Cameron’s mate, Nick Clegg. Mr Clegg admitted he feels ‘quite miserable’ that he does not see enough of his three kids. I suppose someone has to work to pay for them to get through university. He’s also admitted he doesn’t want his kids to see him smoking. Luckily it doesn’t bother David Cameron at all. Apparently he’s even put a little ashtray in Nick’s hutch. David Cameron has suggested patches. But Clegg wants to stick with the name ‘Nick’.
Clegg says he and Cameron wander into each other’s offices to chat. Well, Cameron wanders into Clegg’s to chat and Clegg wanders into Cameron’s office to be greeted with a tuft of black hair bobbing behind a desk and some giggly shushing.
Nick Clegg’s popularity’s slumped to just 18 per cent, but David Cameron leapt to his defence, saying he’s a great politician and work colleague. Good move, Dave – never slag off the guy who brings your coffee. Especially if you have froth on the top. Clegg’s even been getting flak for doing the morning school run. I certainly take my lad to the school gates whenever I can. Then whisper in his ear, ‘See all those laughing children? Improve your stitching around the instep and maybe you can join them.’
Energy Secretary Chris Huhne isn’t faring any better in the popularity stakes after he allegedly tried to get off a speeding ban by claiming his ex-wife was driving. I guess he’s got to switch to plan B – claiming that a bomb would’ve gone off in his Vauxhall Nova if he’d dropped below 80. I suspect he was just confused by events. As a Lib Dem Euro MP, when the camera flashed he would have had no idea what it was.
If Huhne really was the one behind the wheel then it could have a devastating effect on the country. Just imagine experiencing the uneasy feeling that maybe MPs can lie. If Chris Huhne deserves any points then surely it should be for dumping his wife for a bisexual woman ten years younger than him. Bisexuals are really attracted to senior Lib Dems – as they’re both a man, and a great big pussy.
The cabinet performance of Vince Cable has definitely convinced me – to have my parents’ euthanasia documentation rushed through. Only kidding. I’d vote for Vince Cable. I did at this year’s EuroPorn Awards.
His speeches about Unions have been peppered with aggressive language, which is odd because he normally saves that sort of thing for his home help, who he thinks is stealing from him. Cable plans to sell off a portion of the Royal Mail but also to hand over a significant chunk of the service to employees. When he does hand it over I hope he does it in the style of a Royal Mail employee, by creeping up to the front door, pretending they’re not in when they clearly are, quietly slipping a ‘Sorry you were out’ card through the letterbox and making them go down to the depot to collect it for themselves.
The business secretary said that by giving them 10 per cent of the company this would be the largest handover to employees attempted in the UK ever. Really? I’m sure almost every employee has stolen more than ten per cent of the business they work for. If the plan for privatisation goes ahead, postmen will get regular performance-related payouts. As opposed to the current system, when they only get a bonus if they hold a torch up to an envelope and can make out a tenner wedged in a birthday card.
The Post Office is launching an evening delivery service. So now there’s a chance you’ll be interrupted while you’re trying to get drunk, as well as while you masturbate. It’ll mean no more postie-leaving-parcels-with-a-neighbour. At a stroke trebling the cost of my Christmas shopping.
Is it too much to ask that we have a fucking opposition in this country? Ed Miliband against David Miliband was the most titanic battle between brothers since Wimbledon 2009, when Serena played Venus Williams. Ed’s victory was wonderful news. We now have a choice of three interchangeable suited drones come 2015. With David and Ed being successful, I wonder if there’s another Miliband brother to come out of the woodwork? Jethro Miliband – he’s got an IQ of 70 and is defined by sexual jealousy, but Mummy Miliband insists he has a role in the shadow cabinet. What’s the future of the party? The only thing we can say for sure is it’s going to be a grim family Christmas round the Milibands. Bit like the one at the Minogues.
Ed Miliband looks like someone who’s talking while having dental surgery. His cum face must look like a widow’s vagina hitting G-force. There are a lot more cheap cracks that can be made about his appearance but I won’t be making them. Not after the trouble the last Down’s syndrome joke got me in.
It was announced that Ed had won and then the next day David made a speech, then the day after Ed’s speech David held a press conference – this is basically the political version of repeating everything your little brother says in a mocking voice. David was the first politician to resign so he can spend less time with his family. He looks like Mathew Horne being slapped in the face with a hammer. As do most of my fantasies. Ed now faces the huge challenge of trying not to look smug in front of his brother. Which won’t be easy, as it will mean having plastic surgery.
Diane Abbott said there was a plot to get rid of Ed Miliband, but I hardly think you can call the next election a plot. Miliband is now so invisible NATO wants to use his skin to cover stealth planes. Embarrassingly, he polled lower than Nick Clegg. That must be like your wife telling you she’s leaving you for an occasional table. Miliband’s approval rating would have been even lower if people had recognised his name.
The Scottish Nationalists had a huge result at the Holyrood elections. If we go independent all the beggars in London will have to be reclassified as refugees. The most persuasive argument for independence is that ‘We’ve got all the oil.’ Have you seen what happens to small countries that have oil? We might get independence but that will quickly be followed by pilotless US drones attacking Edinburgh Castle, being captured by the locals and reprogrammed to find Neil Lennon. Within six months, Alex Salmond will be hanging on a gibbet as David Cameron announces a plan to introduce democracy to Scotland.
We’ll finally have our own customs officers to check that we haven’t brought more than our personal allowance of 18,000 litres of alcohol into the country. Even if we did go independent, what’s the biggest change going to be? There will still be dog shite in the streets. Scottish dog shite. Our pubs will still be full of pricks. Scottish pricks. The only difference I can envisage is that on Saturday nights we’ll watch a TV show called Scotland’s Got Talent. And the winner will be a lassie who can mark a bingo card while having a heart attack.
The population of Britain is projected to grow by almost half a million people every year until 2032. Most of them will be immigrants from Eastern Europe, and a good thing too, as I can’t see anyone from here wanting to give me blanket baths and change my adult diapers for a few pounds an hour. Actually, I’m not talking about the future. That’s just what I’m into.
Iain Duncan Smith gave a speech demanding British jobs for British people. Where did he deliver this speech? From a balcony in a sports stadium shortly before Jesse Owens ran the 100 metres. Asking employers to consider British people for British jobs contravenes EU human-rights laws. Which has upset many Tories. Listen, when your policies are the direct opposite of human rights, it might be time to take a long, hard look at your soul. I confess I sometimes employ foreign labour to write for me and they do a great job. OK, some of the references may be a little off, but if you don’t like it, go whistle at the clay mountain, dragon shoes!
Theresa May says she’s going to cut immigration by 5 per cent, by standing on the cliffs of Dover with no bra on. In future, applicants will have to have a degree, private health insurance and a sponsor, or be able to do at least 50 keepy uppies in front of officers at Heathrow. There will be no restrictions on highly skilled professionals who create wealth, such as entrepreneurs and employees of multinational companies. That’s a weird one, isn’t it? Entrepreneurs are allowed in, but teachers and nurses aren’t. So, if you can work an X-ray machine, it’s a ‘no’, but if you’ve got an idea for Dragons’ Den about a biodegradable chair made out of cheddar, it’s a ‘yes’.
May is also cracking down on foreign students. Because we don’t want intelligent immigrants coming here, just the ones willing to sell us chips and sex. She also hopes to have more police out on the streets. Bad news for muggers, car thieves and blokes not in the best of health who’ve had a few pints and are wandering past a march.
Every time I see Theresa May I can’t help thinking that she looks like a woman going out on the town the first night after she has just finalised her divorce. She’s made way too much of an effort and there’s the very real sense that in two hours’ time she’s going to be crying in a toilet and wearing only one shoe. She admits that tackling immigration is her toughest challenge. Really? I’d have thought her toughest challenge was finding a foundation to match her skin tone that wasn’t solely available for wholesale to funeral parlours.
The BNP have voted to allow non-whites to join. They now look set to have their first Sikh member. What’s he going to do? Move house because he doesn’t want to live in a street with him on it? At least the turban will soften the blows to his head. He said that joining the BNP won’t change him. Although he’s stopped using the toilet and now craps into his own letterbox. Yes, I find myself forced to agree that ‘There ain’t no black in the Union Jack.’ But to highlight the counter-argument for a moment, there aren’t that many red or blue people.
I’ve finally worked out why Nick Griffin is so hated. It’s not just his policies, it’s his face. In particular, the big, mad eye. It makes him look evil. Like a bogus caller as viewed through a pensioner’s security peephole. Simply put, Griffin permanently looks like he wants to steal your granny’s pension and beat her to a pulp with a tin of soup. Look at him closely and you’ll see that he wanders around as if he’s gawping through an invisible magnifying glass – as if looking for clues that might lead him to an Asian’s lair.
After his piss-poor appearance on Question Time I suspect he’ll receive sack loads of hate mail, which will be delivered sometime around Easter. Host David Dimbleby tried to assure the audience it would ‘not just be the Nick Griffin show’. Although I’d love to see The Nick Griffin Show. ‘Tonight’s guests are Carol Thatcher, Ron Atkinson and the restless spirit of Jade Goody.’
Griffin’s political ideology is so confused I can’t wait for the next party political broadcast. He associates so closely with Churchill but is far more in tune with Hitler. Picture the scene. Griffin is made up as Adolf but he screams his speech in a Cockney accent, while thousands of Chelsea pensioners goose-step down the Mall singing ‘Knees Up Eva Braun’. There are Spitfires overhead, emblazoned with swastikas. Finally, we see Griffin, made up now as Churchill, talking to a young Jewish girl. Churchill takes a deep puff of his cigar and says with a terrible German accent, ‘Madam, I might be drunk. But you are ugly. However, in the morning I’ll be sober. You, however … will be dead.’
After Griffin compared Britain’s military generals to Nazi war criminals, he said that the party’s website attracted 77,000 unique visitors. Not that unique, I suspect. I’m willing to bet they all had a couple of things in common. Like the IQ of cat shit and a very scared black neighbour.
A British Muslim who wants to enter Miss Universe has received threats. Perhaps she could just compromise and ask if she can appear once in an evening dress, and once under a big pile of stones.
It turns out we’re all eating Halal meat without realising it. Basically, the animal has its throat cut with a sharp knife. Either by a butcher or, if it lives in South London, it might just have popped out for fags. It can’t be stunned, as followers of Islam are forbidden to consume blood. A revelation that’s pissed off the Daily Express, just as they were about to run their ‘Dracula Was a Muslim’ headline. The advice seems to be if you’re not sure about your meat’s origins, ask supermarket staff. That’ll work. ‘Erm … I’m usually on bread … Mr Richards. Mr Richards! There’s a man here don’t like sausages or somefin’.’
It’s also been revealed that chimpanzee meat is being sold in Britain to eat. Chimpanzees – could they get any more amazing? Are we to believe that they can add being delicious to their other qualities, like being funny and sexy? Before you ask, no, chimp meat doesn’t taste like chicken. It tastes like bananas and tea. I could see this catching on – imagine at Christmas. Instead of arguing over who gets a drumstick, there’ll be enough for everyone to have a finger.
Tesco plan to introduce the country’s first drive-through supermarket. Actually, that’s something Paul Gascoigne tried out when he lost control in the car park of Morrisons after knocking back a bargain bucket of Listerine.
Takeaways are to have their hygiene rating stuck on their doors in stars, from one to five. You put one star on a takeaway door – the rats will just think it’s their dressing room.
The boss of Burger King reckons British women are ugly. I’d like to disagree, but he is an expert on disappointing lifeless baps. How can he say that? The guy’s a clown. No, wait, that’s the other lot isn’t it? He also said the UK was terrible. Yes, some of it is. Burger King, for starters.
Last winter it got so cold that at one point a Geordie was spotted wearing a coat. It was later proven to be a hoax. It wasn’t a coat; it was simply a tattoo of a coat. The freakish snow conditions came as a total surprise to the authorities, for the third year in a row. Philip Hammond, the UK transport secretary, said that he had learned some valuable lessons. Next time he’ll just phone in and say he can’t get to work ’cause of the snow.
There was total travel misery, with thousands of train passengers attempting to reach Scotland and succeeding. Norfolk proved impossible to get to, bad news for anyone needing to bury a body. If you are supposed to be visiting relatives this Christmas make sure you check conditions of the relevant roads. If they’re clear you’ll have to make up another excuse for not going.
People waiting for the Eurostar had to queue for eight hours in the freezing cold, treated with no respect or consideration. Making their planned holiday at Disneyland Paris unnecessary. The queue for the Eurostar stretched for over a mile round St Pancras. Some passengers eventually abandoned plans to go to Paris and had to fuck their secretary on the pavement. The Eurostar was cancelled? Doesn’t it travel in a tunnel under the ground? Are the tunnels crowded with nomadic populations migrating from the new ice age?
Some people waiting for Eurostar became hysterical. How bad is the UK now when people cry because they can’t get to Belgium? Stop bloody moaning. What is more true to the original story of Christmas than taking a highly difficult journey, which puts your wife and child’s health at risk, and ends up with you having to sleep on a filthy floor because all the hotels are full?
Conditions at Heathrow were described as ‘Third World’. ‘Every day little Mr Alan Thomas has to walk 500 yards for water. Down to the gents past Tie Rack and Garfunkel’s.’ Can you imagine being one of those families stuck at Heathrow on Christmas Day? Waking up your 5-year-old to tell him that Santa has been, and he’s brought a ploughman’s sandwich and a pair of socks. Heathrow looked less like a Third World country and more like Heathrow airport exactly 12 months ago.
Apparently a flight to Newcastle was cancelled seven times – although that may’ve just been because the plane itself simply refused to go there. One passenger said it was ‘absolute mayhem’. Weird – my idea of ‘absolute mayhem’ isn’t a load of people sat around looking grumpy. It’s an astronaut indiscriminately firing a custard gun in Debenhams. I was upset that all those flights were cancelled. Anything that slows down the approaching death of the planet is a tragedy in my opinion. The snow caused quite a few injuries round my way. Apologies, but if you will keep saying ‘So much for global warming’, I’ve got no choice but to punch you.
My favourite Christmas game is hide and seek – last year I was undiscovered until New Year’s Eve. People worry about the elderly being lonely at Christmas, but the old woman next to me got loads of cards. They’re piling up on her doorstep since the letterbox got full. People were unable to buy presents due to online stores shutting down delivery. Mainly because people confused ‘some snow’ with a deadly stream of radioactive lava preventing them from walking further than their own door.
It’s definitely worth a deliveryman risking his life on treacherous roads so my missus can get Sex and the City 2 on DVD. Royal Mail postmen did their best to clear the parcel backlog – helping themselves to a couple of packages whenever they knocked off a shift.
Why does everyone always say there’s no grit? I saw loads of grit – granted, it was all in a van surrounded by bewildered council workers. They couldn’t find enough salt in Scotland? Surely they could have flushed the inhabitants of the motorway services onto the roads and opened a few arteries? I’m pleased they haven’t gritted the pavements; sliding into strangers is the only physical contact Glaswegians get.
A great-granddad nearly froze to death when passers-by ignored him after he slipped on ice and lay on a city street for nearly five hours. It’s hard to believe he lay there all that time and nobody stole his shoes. Happily, he got back home, where he’ll spend the next three months being ignored before freezing to death.
The head of British Gas said their profit margins are smaller than Marks & Spencer’s. I think the difference that he fails to recognise is that thousands of old people don’t die every year because they can’t afford to shop at M&S. Despite making £2.2 billion in profit this year, British Gas executives say they have been forced to pass on to customers some of the rising costs of heating their country mansions.
So, farewell then, News of the World. ‘Thank You & Goodbye’ was the final headline. Apparently, ‘You Can’t Sue, We No Longer Exist!’ wouldn’t quite fit onto the front page. If Rupert Murdoch had been allowed to take full control of Sky, it would’ve been great. You could’ve pressed the red button and it’d have given you 24-hour coverage of Gordon Brown’s bins. The whole Murdoch business reminds me of Grima Wormtongue from The Lord of the Rings. Formerly a tenacious-looking, sharp practitioner, whispering poison into the ear of power, suddenly this arch manipulator looks like a fucking Tequila worm.
The politicians, of course, are more like Denethor, whom Sauron drove to despair with images of his swelling armies. Looking deep into the palantír of the media, our leaders thought it showed them reality, when it actually only showed what Murdoch and his like directed their gaze towards.
I’m so disgusted with News International that I refuse to read anything they print. Including my own column in the Sun, which is why I write it with my eyes closed. I say ‘write’ – I mean, I let my cat run across the keyboard and then clean it up with the spell check. If it’s good enough for Dan Brown, it’s good enough for me. Just to be on the safe side, I’ve never given the Sun my mobile number. In fact, every week I dictate the column onto the voicemail of a random victim of crime. Of course, it’s easy to learn the precise details of people’s mobile-phone messages. There’s the high-tech procedure where you hack into their SIM account, and the lower-tech one where you somehow lure them into a giant imitation train carriage.
The hacking story took an explosive twist when it was alleged that the News of the World hacked into Milly Dowler’s phone. The police are investigating – which shouldn’t take too long. Officers, flick back your diaries to 2002 and see if any of the entries read ‘Helped News of the World hack Milly Dowler’s phone’. Some policemen were so sickened by the News of the World that they refuse to even line their budgie’s cage with it. Instead, they are using used bills with non-sequential serial numbers.
Ford cars halted advertising with the News of the World when the Milly Dowler story broke. Nice showing solidarity by ceasing to advertise the one thing that kills the most UK teens every year. Orange and T-Mobile also pulled their advertising. Makes sense – the News of the World had shown their products to be a little flimsy, security wise. Mumsnet cancelled £30,000 worth of advertising with Sky. Money they raised by selling their collected bile to the Chinese medicine industry.
Glenn Mulcaire, who’s accused of hacking Milly’s phone, asked the press to leave his family alone. I’m guessing he then went to look up the word ‘irony’.
Does anyone else think Rebekah Brooks looks like the exhumed Milly Dowler? It’s so sad that the mobile phone of a murdered teenager was hacked into – a life cut short before her natural death from a radiation-induced brain tumour in her 30s. Listening to a murdered girl’s messages. It’s a new low. Whatever happened to the traditional methods of tabloid journalism? Nicking stories from regional papers and doing Select All/Copy/Paste from Britain’s Got Talent press releases.
We celebs must take precautions. I urge any I meet to follow my example and make themselves a carrier-pigeon runway hat. The only tricky bit is training the mouse in the control tower. The News of the World hacked Lembit Öpik’s phone messages – after six months of waiting, they rang him just to check he was still alive. Apparently, Chris Tarrant’s phone messages aren’t very interesting – it’s mostly just people saying ‘Sorry I was out. I don’t know what the capital of Ecuador is.’ At least I know the newspapers will never listen to my answerphone messages, as no one ever calls me.
Rupert Murdoch appeared at a parliamentary select committee and some very important questions got answered. Such as, how hard can a Chinese woman punch a man in the face? Rupert said he’d never felt more humble – which is saying something. He owns the TV channel that shows Fat Families and Gladiators.
The committee room was full of searching questions. Well, apart from ‘Why are you carrying a plate of foam?’ The amusing thing about the incident is that normally, if you want to see an old man, a younger Chinese woman and a cream pie, you’d have to turn to channel 973 on Sky TV.
After the fight, the MPs missed an opportunity by not asking Wendi what her surname was. She’d answer and then they should’ve asked her to repeat it. ‘Deng. DENG!’ And then Tom Watson could have shouted, ‘Seconds out. Round two.’ Shaving foam in the face. What’s the big deal? If you read the side of the can, that’s the manufacturer’s exact recommendation. I could understand the outcry if it were toothpaste.
Before this incident the rest of the world only associated the Brits with Benny Hill. This won’t have helped. We might as well have ended the proceedings with Murdoch pulling his trousers down and chasing his wife around the room while intermittently being slapped on the head by Tom Watson MP. Jonnie Marbles (which isn’t even his real name by the way, it’s Jonathan Marbles) said that he wanted to shove a pie in Murdoch’s face, ‘for all the people who couldn’t’. Well, Jonnie, after your piss-poor attempt, you can now join the ranks of those people who couldn’t.
Of course, Jonnie Marbles should’ve stayed perfectly still – Wendi’s vision is based on movement, just like a Tyrannosaurus rex. After the attack it was difficult to tell if the white stuff on Jonnie Marbles’s face was shaving foam or if Wendi had slashed all the way through to the bone. Everyone’s lost interest in the hearing now and just want to see a UFC cage fight between Wendi and that other high-profile bodyguard, Sinitta.
I actually think Murdoch made quite a good impression. Of a garden gnome in a hospice. I’m starting to wonder if we’re actually dealing with the ghost of Rupert Murdoch. In the select committee I expected to see him starting making a clay pot with Rebekah Brooks. Met police chiefs resigned and Rebekah Brooks was arrested over the allegations. Talk about the pigs and the vultures being thrown to the wolves.
Sir Paul Stephenson was Britain’s most senior policeman – he’s so important he even invented the phrase ‘Evening all’. With Stephenson and Yates having quit, it means a dinner lady called Trisha is now the country’s highest-ranking officer, outranking Rav Wilding and the guy who does the funny noises in Police Academy. In Sir Paul’s defence, on his watch crime in London fell – well, apart from among policemen. After the stress of resigning, Sir Paul probably needs somewhere to relax for a few days. I hear Champneys Health Spa is quite good. What? Oh.
I liked former Assistant Commisioner Andy Hayman’s reaction in the select committee when asked if he took money – ‘I can’t believe you’ve suggested that.’ The fact that it came as a shock to him to be asked if he’d done something wrong gives us some insight into how the investigation might have fallen down. John Yates admitted that he didn’t investigate thoroughly because he had a lot on. Come on, mate, you’re not redecorating the back bedroom – it’s a criminal investigation. Not exactly Columbo is it? Just one more thing – I can’t be arsed to read all of that.
Surely the easiest way for the Met to prove they weren’t being bribed by the tabloids is to point to all the newspaper sellers they’ve killed.
Strange times. If you can’t trust the police, politicians and journalists, then who can you trust? Police officers have been resigning, politicians have been compromised and journalists are being arrested over the phone-hacking scandal. So it’s reassuring to know that their conduct is being investigated by the police, parliamentary committees and the Press Complaints Commission. There really needs to be an inquiry by a less corruptible group, though, like FIFA. David Cameron said the hacking inquiry will widen – or in other words, he shouted, ‘What’s that over there?’ and ran off.
Of course, let’s not forget that Murdoch’s decline will largely benefit the Mail on Sunday and the Daily Mail. Papers whose worldview could best be summed up as mentally ill. I also catch a slight air of monied celebrities and critics telling poor people what they should be interested in. Inequality in our country is so rampant that a big chunk of what was the News of the World’s circulation isn’t literate enough to read a broadsheet. Also, broadsheets are partly about consumption. Who wants to read about box sets, holiday homes and beauty routines they can never afford? Much as the whole thing was hugely enjoyable, I feel a slight prickle on my scalp wondering who might replace Murdoch as an owner, and how many decent billionaires there are around.
It would be great if the tabloids went back to being investigative, campaigning papers, but I think that muckraking and perverse nosiness are actually part of their function. Maybe the tabloids are a kind of Jungian ‘shadow’ of intelligent inquiry, addressing the wearying and disappointing part of ourselves that wants to see who Rio Ferdinand is fucking. The newspaper proprietor William Randolph Hearst pursued a vendetta against Mae West because of the forthright sexual confidence of her work and because he was appalled by how much money she made. Meanwhile, he had affairs and built a business empire. Perhaps we just project hatred onto things we see as embodying what we hate about ourselves, and perhaps tabloids simply embody the worst of us.
