The king who died on the toilet

I am aware that my blog is neglected. My current excuse is that I have been giving evidence in the long running inquest into the death of Ann Boleyn, now entering its four hundred and sixty second year. I have been demonstrating that the only logical explanation of her death is that she was running too fast down the corridor at Hampton Court, trying to escape from an over-eager portrait painter, when she ran into a pillar and her head fell off. It is ludicrous to suggest that King Henry had anything to do with her demise. What did he have to gain, apart from the expense of another wedding?

So, in order to make amends, I have made some sexist remarks on Pam and Ziggi’s blogs, been very rude about dear Dave (although Richard, bless him, claimed not to understand me) and am wondering whether that qualifies as my midweek quota.

This evening I watched the televisual entertainment “City of Vice”, I think it was on channel 4. It is based on the formation of London’s first, small, police force the Bow Street Runners. I am not familiar enough with the history of that time to comment on how accurate it is. Suffice it to say no-one said “We’re the Runners, and we haven’t had our breakfast” - there were no sedan chair chases, although there was the usual amount of police brutality. I know very little about George II, who was the monarch at this time, and I expect that the same is true of the non-historians (i.e. the whole fucking lot) among you. He was king for quite some time, but is less famous than his predecessor, famous for not speaking English, and his successor, famous for being mad, but not too mad to see the sense in getting shut of the most troublesome of the colonies. George II was even overshadowed by his utter cunt of a son, the duke of Cumberland, and Charles Edward Stuart, who was also an utter cunt, but not quite so utter as Cumberland. I suspect that, in consequence, the TV series will be dull. It would be nice to have a really top class cop show on TV again. Who remembers “Strangers”?

Apart from all that only the Pope is in the news. He has been upsetting the good folk of some place or other who don’t want him to visit because he once said that it was quite right for Galileo to be tried for heresy (you couldn’t make it up, could you? Unless you were a physicist or pontiff, then you could make any old shit up and there would be thousands dumb enough to believe you). He has also got some of his friends to condemn Harry Potter. Poor old Harry, got to 18 and never got his end away (or is that one of the chapters I missed?). The Torygraph is asking its readers whether they have been done harm by Harry Potter. I still have an itch from the last encounter, but am not sure whether that counts.

I bet the majority of comments are about underage sex, rather than my deep insights into history. See what I mean, Tom?