For ILTV - our mission to educate

My dear friend introduced the idea of including cultural references in this blog.
I give you Wilson, Keppel and Betty.
Wilson became Labour Prime Minister.
Keppel changed his name to Dave and entered the ministry.
Betty shacked up with Geoff.

World population increases by 100

"George, you prize anus, I told you not to light that fire."

The mass media are reporting a “lost” tribe in Brazil being found. I regret the use of “lost”. I wonder how much their lives will be improved now that they have been “found”. Some twat will teach them English so that they can watch “The Price is Right” or “The Jeremy Kyle Show”. Some twat will try to get them to mortgage the fine dwelling we see in the picture. Some twat will introduce diseases they had never come across. Some twat will make an intrusive documentary about them. There are already queues of double glazing salesmen, Jehovah’s Witnesses and canvassers for New Labour on their way to irritate the crap out of them. Some twat will sign them up for broadband (at least I might get some interested readers here). They are, to use an anthropological term, fucked.

Welcome, brothers and sisters, to the great mass of humanity. Fucking up the planet faster than George Bush can talk bollocks.

I hope those nosy bastards at NASA don’t catch any Martians. They all moved to the other end of the planet when they saw the launch of the latest mission. They all have a morbid fear of that arsehole Frost asking “who lives on a planet like this?”.

What a silly girl I am.

When I lived in Crewe, not much happened. That is the kind of place that it is, and the residents, by and large, are fairly happy with that state of affairs. It is the sort of place to which one goes in order to do nothing. To be inconspicuous, anonymous and not given to displays of public excess.

How things change!
When I was there, not once was there an occasion where the Leader of Her Majesty's Most Loyal Opposition was fellated by a high court judge in the town centre. At least during daylight.

In fact, I do not understand what has become of the good inhabitants of the town. Any suspicion of such behaviour would have resulted in political rejection in my day. I suppose that I must be getting old.

I shall not be watching the news on television or reading newspapers until after the next general election for fear of being presented with a picture of Mr Milliband being buggered by a squirrel or Norman Clegg of the Liberal Democrats being recognised by someone. It is more than my delicate constitution can tolerate.

When I lived there, most of the things that were done to offend the sensibilities of the locals were perpetrated by me or my friends. I did not last long.

I would not like to give the impression that Crewe was some backwater. Tom visited once, and found it much too exciting, and quickly returned to Talke Pits.

Without wishing to be over judgemental or hasty, it appears that Crewe has elected the sort of representative that it deserves.

Heard it before, but this is quite articulate.

Countdown to the Royal Divorce - Part 19

You will all have been in sympathy with me these last few days because of the enormous pressure that I have been under to attend today’s event at Windsor. The telephone has turned white with constant ringing, the air has turned blue, and my face is bright red through constant bellowing at various members of the family. “Fuck off, Anne, you daft bint”, I exclaimed, “I am not going, you know why I am not going, and I will not go even if you run out of Union Jacks”.

Some prize tosser gave the idiot father of the groom my number. I had sincerely prayed that I would never have to spend time talking to the buffoon again, but no such luck. The first time he called I affected to be the proprietor of the “Curry Favour” restaurant in Datchet. The twat called back two minutes later to order a beef Jalfreeza and a Peshwari naan. I told him the only meat we served was Welsh lamb – a reference to his ancestry that I have mentioned before, and that did the trick for a couple of days, until those memories had fallen off of the stack. When he called back, I followed dear old Bron’s advice and whistled down the telephone: that worked, “Sorry old chap”, he muttered, “got to go for a pee”.

Autumn joins in the frantic search for the sun-glasses.

Of all of the grand-offspring of Liz, I have always been strangely fond of Pete. He is totally harmless, and is quite good at filling up a room – I always counselled them to get him a career as an item of decorative furniture, but do they listen? Naturally he wanted me to be best man. “Sorry, Pete, my old flower, but haven’t they told you? Protocol demands that you get a professional", and I gave him the number of a gentleman called 'Jeremy Twink', who, apparently not only gives an interesting speech but concludes with an unusual dance.

I heard the bride-to-be in the background during several of these calls. She is a colonial management consultant. I had always hoped that Canada was populated by citizens too intelligent to allow this sort of role to be adopted. It probably cost them a fortune to find some gullible foreigner on whom they could dump her. “We need to synchronise our synergies”, I overheard on one occasion. “She’s really good with hors d’oeuvres” was Peter’s explanation. Daft sod.

Autumn continues to wear her portable satellite dish, so that she can keep up with the hockey scores. Today, the Moose Knob Sealclubbers are playing the Calgary Mincers.

Out of kindness, I finally managed to persuade Peter that he should record the Cup Final and watch it later, rather than listening on an earpiece during the ceremony. His team, Cardiff City, are the underdogs, and he is prone to join in with the chanting of the crowd particularly when things are not going well. I told him that the exclamation “Who’s the wanker in the black?” would not be taken well by the Right Reverend Fortescue, and nor would “You’re not singing any more” be viewed kindly as the Windsor Mountbattens struggled through remembering the words of the National Anthem.

Ronnie and Mildred

After a somewhat tiring journey into London today – and Boris has made bugger all difference – I was delighted to return to a nice present from my dear friends, Mr and Mrs Ginn. It was a copy of their delightful book based upon their blog, describing their trip around the world, which I have told you about before (pay attention at the back, that boy, and put that away). To read the blog, I think that you have to be a member of myspace. You certainly do have to belong in order to comment. I realise that the majority of the readers (aMToNW) are too sophisticated for that particular network, but the Ginns have some nice stories to tell.

Anyway, in short, they spent several months circumnavigating the world, sponging off of some of the world’s poorest communities, taking unsavoury diseases to new places, gate-crashing some private functions and setting back international relations by several millennia. They have, wisely, chosen to include the comments made by those caring individuals, such as Tom, Donn and a Mr Scurra of North East Hampshire, to help them through the most trying times.

None of you (apart from Tom who shares my woeful lack of discrimination when it comes to selecting friends) will be able to read it and see the lovely pictures, because it is not for sale.

So many of you seem to be in print, that I feel strangely moved to produce a book of my own. But I won’t, being bone idle.

Open your wallets and repeat after me: "Help Yourself"

For those of you who would like to contribute to the latest disaster appeals, then the site in the UK to get your funds converted most quickly to the appropriate place is the Disasters Emergency Committee.
They concentrate on the latest appeals, and quickly get a specific fund set up within hours of a disaster. Having said that, there is nothing on line for China at the moment, but I expect that they have a fund if you want to pay over the telephone.
They work with all of the leading relief charities.
I made the mistake of donating through my favoured charity last week, and my credit card has still not yet been charged.
DEC accepts on line donations, is a registered charity so that you can add gift aid to your donation if you are a UK taxpayer. My guess is that is fine for non UK donators as well - you will need to quote a sterling amount - and may be the best international collection point.
Happy donating.

I've fallen off of my chair again, Brian.

A quick sporting note, while it is still the weekend when no bugger reads this.
A heartwarming end to the football league season here, where the team with most flair, skill, entertainment and vastly improved sporting behaviour won. The current Manchester United team are among the best teams I have ever seen, and quite possibly the best club team. It would be silly to try to be objective about it.
It may not be very sporting to deride the runners up, but it was very heartwarming to see Chelsea fail. Never can a man have wasted so much money as Roman Abramovich, no matter how many trophies Chelsea go on to win. They are dull, unadventurous and mechanical. Never can so much talent have been assembled with the result being such a highly forgettable team. I wish they would bugger off and play in Italy where their style would fit in. To borrow from Mr Shankly, if they were playing in my back garden, I would close the curtains.

Phew! What a scorcher!

I am feeling remarkably sanguine, against all the odds you may say. I look at it this way, one of the bastards is going to be the death of me, so I am wasting my time concerning myself about the identity of the specific individuals.

I am likely to die of heart failure, brought on chiefly by those caring people who have offered me work during my adult life, and included stress as part of the package. Their insistence that I work at a desk with a computer screen on it for long hours, instead of gaily skipping down the lanes of North East Hampshire, further compounds their guilt.

I may suffer an aneurism of some sort by venting my ire on those fellow beings who annoy me. There are not many of them, and they have no lasting impact, so that is unlikely.

I am perhaps likely to contract some tumour or other brought about by pollution created by the running dogs of capitalism whose greed outranks all concern about humanity and the future of the planet.

None of these options are particularly attractive. There is little chance of my dying peacefully while caressing the buttocks of Goldie Hawn, and even less while watching Tom Graveney compile a beautiful not out 120 at Worcester, as the saintly man’s playing days are almost certainly over.

There is an element of irony, however, in the possibility that we will all perish together when Professor Gonadwit and his team of nerds in Geneva put a shilling in the meter and activate the Large Hadron Collider this summer.

To digress briefly. I do not know whether it is the Hadron or the Collider that is large. I don’t know how big a typical Hadron is, nor a Collider for that matter, so have no clue how to distinguish a large one from an average one. I do not know what a Hadron is, what colour it is, what it likes for dinner or whether it supports Arsenal rather than Spurs. I understand the concept of collision. Collisions are things that, all things being equal, I prefer to avoid. Some twat has spent several fuckillion dollars building a device to encourage collisions. Obviously not acquainted with the concepts of love and peace.

They continue to reassure us that the creation of a black hole that will consume all matter with which it comes into contact is a very small risk. That’s OK then.

What still, kind of, baffles me, is why someone has given all of this money to these people. (I used the qualification “kind of” there because it does not really baffle me. The propensity of our race to act with the utmost stupidity is so obvious that only a very naïve person would be baffled.) These are physicists. They are revered because they speak of things that no one else understands. When I was young, speaking of things that no one else understands was called 'being mental'. Would you give a physicist limitless amounts of money for experimentation? Think back to your physics teacher at school. Try to form some idea of how much you would trust him/her/it. Would you allow them to run the country? No? How about being head of a large business? No? Would you let them teach physics in your Alma Mater? No? Would you lock them in a room and never let them out?

We had one chap at school (there may have been more, who knows?) who showed an aptitude for science. I will call him “G”. He was very bright, and was suspended from school for a time because he had “borrowed” some equipment for an experiment. This experiment (and I am very hazy about the details) involved a very loud noise (heard a mile away perhaps), a garden shed, and a hole in the roof thereof. Or something like that. I am happy to report that G is no longer a physicist but a computer professional. Those of us who belong to the group (loosely, in my case) of IT professionals, have a deep common understanding that what we do is of very little consequence and mostly harmless.

So, how shall we celebrate the end of the world? We have already elected Boris to be Mayor of London. We are celebrating the epitome of sporting fairness by staging the Olympic Games in the back garden of one of the world’s most totalitarian regimes. We are quibbling about what we should do about our poisoning the planet, and will do anything to stop that process as long as we can drive there to do it.

I shall continue to record all of this in Kaliyuga Kronicles. I expect that, in several billion of our years, another civilisation will find my writings, introduce them to the school curriculum, and use them to educate their young, but also to provide endless hours of bowel emptying laughter at the antics of homo sapiens.

Bozza up and running

It had been some time since Boris had used public transport, and was puzzled to find that there were now conductors on the underground. WPC Golightly tried hard to suppress her delight - she had bet £10 that PC Williams would break at least 2 of Boris's fingers.


*****

The Torygraph reports that Boris is taking advice from the LA Police Commissioner on how to cut down on crime. Excellent! No doubt he will be taking advice from the mayor of Delhi on how to cut down on poverty and homelessness, the mayor of Mexico City on how to reduce pollution and the mayor of Tehran about equal opportunities.

Clarification

Another kick in the testes for progress

I have been quick to congratulate our old friend on his wonderful success, at his web site.
Bugger me, Boris, it wasn’t a joke after all! That’ll show the Americans eh? They’re not the only ones able to voter bunglers into high office. As a regular reader do I get a free tube pass or will the handouts only be for the rich, corrupt and Tory voters?
For a more measured political analysis go and see Reg. He seems very cross for some reason.

In the very temple of delight

I am often asked by readers here (aMToNW) where my writing career began, and who were my influences.

Laurie Lee.

A man who wrote such utter sentimental twaddle that I was forced to abandon my usual surly teenage response to being asked to write a criticism – usually variations on a theme of “boring” – and write a parody.

It began something like “I remember, as a boy, running home through the village beating up old ladies, the way that boys do.” I may even have taken care to avoid repetition of the word “boy”, but I suspect not, as I only got an A-.

Inspired by this, I was driven to contribute to our school underground magazine. The magazine was called “Juggle”, due to this monstrosity that some vandal had glued to the front of the school. The culprit was an “artist” (artist in the sense that Laurie Lee was a writer) called Peter Peri. A working title for our magazine was hence “Perineum”, but this was later abandoned as being a little too close to – you know what I mean. It was here that I honed my style of lazy juvenile trash, and I have clung to that style these forty years. I have not become more sophisticated, intelligent nor wise in my writings. Of this achievement I am very proud.

One of the targets of in almost every issue of “Juggle” was Keats - always referred to as “The poet Keats”. I do not know why this form was compulsory, I suspect it derived from observation of the linguistic quirks of one of the English teachers.

I have never understood why Keats is so admired. He had little to say, (and when I say 'little' I am erring on the side of generosity) and said it in a dull and verbose way.

“A thing of beauty is a joy forever”. No it fucking ain’t. It will crumble and return to dust like all things, including us. Impermanence is our condition, and a concept with which we never seem to be able to come to terms. Even I, sitting here in this perfectly honed and glorious frame, the epitome of evolution, if you will, will one day be fertiliser for a beech tree or chrysanthemum. So, bollocks to the poet Keats.

The poet Keats? Boring in 1967 and still boring today. Will that do, Miss Turner?

Bozza for mayor? Laugh, I nearly went to London.

Until I get back into the flow of writing again you will have to entertain yourselves.
Today's competition is to post an entry here, and to get it published.

Prizes for anyone who can make sense out of this.

I hope that none of you missed the rather bizarre new episode of “Lewis” that was on at the weekend. Intriguingly they have moved it to Sky Movies. I think this is a good thing. There are less advertisement breaks. This means that the fucking thing is finished more quickly.

Anyway this episode was almost surreal. It was called “Becoming Jane”. Hathaway went undercover to infiltrate a group of loonies, one of whom thought she was Jane Austen. This poor deluded woman (played by an actress called Hathaway – what the fuck are they doing?) may have dressed as the silly old trout Jane Austen (she is a neighbour of mine, as you well know) but had none of the wit or dexterity with words. Poor Hathaway was meant to get into her knickers, (in the usual rather than the literal meaning of that phrase), but obviously failed, as he was pining for Lewis. It must have been agony for him. I am not sure where Lewis was in this episode. Perhaps he was so deeply undercover that I failed to spot him. However as no one was murdered (the majority of the action took place in North East Hampshire, after all) there was no need for him. Had I been the director then that is one thing that would have been remedied. There are few scenes less likely to have me yelling for a serial killer or a troop of psychopathic Samurai than a circa 1800 country house ball. What a bloody dire scene that was, a bunch of upper class twats moving around exchanging meaningful glances. Either a troop of psychopathic Samurai or Sid James would have done the trick.

I have a slight suspicion that the splendid Kevin Whately may actually have been the female lead, although, if this was the case, then the relationship between Lewis and Hathaway was very strange indeed. I give up. My reason for suspecting this is that the loony who thought that she was Jane Austen often lapsed into an accent that I could have sworn was Geordie. Even stranger, Hathaway’s undercover character was called “Wisley”, which is almost an anagram of Lewis. In one scene, the lead female, who may have been Lewis, joined in a game of cricket. Had she managed to get into the England team, her nickname would have been “Lewisy”, which would have been an anagram.

I really don’t understand what was going on. Perhaps one of you more familiar with the homosexual lifestyle would care to comment and perhaps remove some of my confusion.

I am sorry if all of this is less than lucid. (Not that anyone would have noticed the difference).

Anyway, the episode also featured Maggie Smith and Ian Richardson, and managed to completely avoid using their thespian excellence – quite an achievement.

One of the main threads of the plot seemed to be a conceit that suggested that Jane Austen had a bit of a shagless affair with that bloke out of “Shameless”, and drew on this relationship in order to produce her literary works. What a load of bollocks. They will continue this theme with Shakespeare bumping off his missus in order to find inspiration for Othello, Dostoevski murdering old women and Dickens being guillotined.

More worryingly, if this experiment proves successful (and who is to say what criteria equate to success when we are presented with such dire entertainment) then the next episode of Lewis might find him and Hathaway relocated to North East Hampshire. I suppose that they have already bumped off every academic in Oxford, so why not. If they do move down here, then I shall be more circumspect about my home security – evidence suggests that no one is safe with those two clowns in senior positions in the local constabulary. Please be vigilant. If anyone does manage to bump off Ms Austen, then I am the obvious next in line. I have often considered a career on the stage or screen, but don’t really fancy playing a decaying corpse while Lewis and Hathaway mince around discussing my soft furnishings.

Is it possible for scientists to co-exist with normal people?

Yes, apparently.
This takes just under 20 minutes.

I bloody nearly got him that time, didn't I?

Before I launch into an attack on the padre, let me first mention that I know that he has been less than well, and I wish him a speedy and complete recovery.
Wishes also to Sharon, who has been in hospital, and is not yet back on line.
Similarly, Pamela has been overdoing it, and consequently been more than a little run down. Best wishes to the dear, lovely old ratbag.
Zoe is also back up and posting, nice to see her getting better, if not better-tempered.

(that’s enough good wishes. Ed.) So the rest of you can just bloody well pull yourselves together.

I have grown to rely upon Dave to point out important dates in the calendar, so you can imagine my shock when he failed to report the first day of summer, which fell on Wednesday.

For those of you unfamiliar with saint’s days and so forth, I probably need to remind you that the first day of summer is marked by the arrival on my doormat (or, in this year’s case, in a slightly non-conformist manner, in my garage), of Wisden. This year I have opted for the new(ish) large size, partly to show that I am not so far a victim of old age that I am afraid to flaunt convention. Let me be even more controversial by saying that there are parts of it that I never read in full, and seldom refer to. The section on the laws of cricket is fingerprint free in every copy that I have. I do not have much time for religions that are full of “do”s and “don’t”s.

Whether cricket evokes memories of glorious June sunshine at Grace Road, or 98 gallons of rain on a cold April morning in Chesterfield it is the True Faith that unites us all. No one who ever witnessed a Tom Graveney cover drive can seriously question the nature of the Almighty or fail to understand the meaning of life.

Music, words and parrots.

Have I told you how much I like my ipod? (That was a rhetorical question, you moron, I am going to tell you anyway). It is lovely.

One of the many advantages is that it cuts out external sound. Let me be specific. If there are good earphones, and you put the appropriate end in your ears, and attach the other end to an ipodic device, having taken care to switch it on and play some sounds on it, it means that the telephone conversation of the vile old ratbag 7 rows of seats away in the railway carriage will no longer be audible. You may consider that not knowing how long it will be before he/she reaches home, how well the presentations went and what Anthea said to her in the office might be detrimental to the completeness of your collected knowledge, and I would defend your right to this view, however misguided, but, so far, I have managed to get through the day furnished with ignorance.

I have two thousand nine hundred and eight tracks of music on my ipod. That will get me to my office and back about a thousand times before I need to start again. I use the shuffle feature, which means I never know what is coming next. It is always very exciting, because I have chosen all of the music and know that whatever comes next is something that I like. (User tip – don’t add any music that you don’t like.) So far I have avoided singing along. I wouldn’t mind singing along, but amongst the many traits stored in my genes is a mild form of tone deafness, which means I will never be a professional singer and, unlike Barry Manilow, choose not to inflict my vocal talents on the rest of humanity. (Most of my mother’s family possess/possessed this defect. My mother was profoundly tone deaf and dumb. She could not recognise any piece of music. I had an uncle who was a minister, and he had to hold his hand over the microphone while hymns were being sung in case the congregation took flight.) I also suppressed, today, the desire to get up and do an idiot dance on the 12:53 to West Byfleet when Hawkwind suddenly began to play one of their charming ballads.

However, I recognise a slowing down in my desire to collect the latest boy’s toys. This is a welcome relief. It would be awful to have as one’s last regret the lack of the latest entertainment device among one’s possessions. As it is, I look forward to spending many years at the “Sunny Catheter” retirement home with only my ipod, the complete “One Foot in the Grave” DVD series and a slow internet connection allowing me to keep abreast with the latest news of the health of the Rev. Dave.

Rol has been naughty of late, trying to provoke me by mentioning “Morse” among his top ten UK television series. Not only did I not join in, I even fought away the temptation of doing my own top ten. I have to confess this was not only due to my declining number of “bloke” cells, but also because I realised I would have to list at least 25, and would never have managed to put them in a satisfactory ranked order. Anyway, Rol has a little competition that requires only six words, so most of you will be able to join in with that. (Tom, the aim of this is to sum up your life in six words. I can lend you four if you are struggling.) Please go and join in.

Finally, this highly reliable news source has an amusing little tale. I urge caution in believing everything here, though, because they have got the caption wrong in the first picture. The parrot is on the left.

Coming soon - rhino wrestling from Alice Springs

Following on from the recent tale (brought to you by the leading provider of human interest stories on the net (that's enough self-glorification. ed.)) of the snake-punching Sheila from south Queensland (that's enough strained alliteration. ed.) I now introduce Mr Norm Moreen, a typical self-deprecating Aussie bloke, whose idea of a fun night out is to jump on a crocodile and poke it in the eyes. I'm not really sure why this made the news. I have chased many a cat - including toms! - out of my garden, but I don't get the fucking Grauniad coming round with a posse of photographers.

Those of you misguided enough not to read his complete twaddle every day may have missed the alarming news that Scaryduck is doing a charity run.
Your choice is to either attend the event and give him an intimate massage when he collapses from exhaustion, or to sponsor him, you tightfisted gits.

Go here to sponsor him.

Fed up.

I have spent a good portion of this day proof-reading a report/dissertation for a friend. To be asked to be a pedant is a joy, the equivalent for most of you would be to be asked to view the fine collection of erotic images available, I believe, on the internet.

I then glanced at the BBC news page, and noticed a scrolling headline proclaiming that the contents of the BBC costume department were being “sold off”. Why? Why not simply “sold”?

Now look, you bastards, will someone please tell me, once and for all, what this part of speech is called, which dullard invented it, and why it has not yet been outlawed.

Because (and yes, Dave, I can begin a sentence with any word that I choose, your school rules are outdated) it does not just stop there. It suddenly spreads so that the populace feel obliged to qualify every verb thus, which leads to obscenities such as “revert back”.

And (ditto Dave) while we are on the subject, do we fill in, fill out or fill up (mainly in North America) forms? Can we not just fill them? Or not fill them if we don’t feel like it.

That’s all. I am too tired to proof read this, so you can fill (out/in/up/through) the comments section with corrections. I am going to exit out of my computer, climb up the stairs, lie down on my bed, and sleep up.

Didn't he have a dream about the King of Sweden?

He isn't very funny, and I have taken issue with him in the past, but here is one UK politician who writes very little with which I can take issue.
I mean by that, for the pedantic among you, that I can take issue with very little of what he writes, rather than that his output is minimal.
He isn't very funny, but don't hold that against him.
Go over there and see if you can leave a comment.

Man of the Year

Arthur Craddock

Good news

The time has come to produce here an anecdote about a gentleman who may, or may not, have been a relative of mine.I am prompted to do this by dear Lin, who has been visited by some nice young people who are under the impression that holidays are related to religious festivals. Strange.

One fine morning, he was sitting at home, pondering the deeper mysteries of the universe, when his reverie was disturbed by a knock on his front door.
“Good morning”, said the young lady who was the knockee, “I’m from St John’s Church”.
“I’m particularly pleased to see you”, was the response.
“Really?”
“Oh yes, you see when I moved in here, I had a little bet with my wife, I was sure that it would be your church whose representative was the first one to call. She said it would be the Baptists.”
“That’s very pleasing, when did you move in?”
“Forty eight years ago”.

Drink your coffee.

Today, sadly, marked the passing of two fine actors, very different in style and the roles that they chose. One of them was the outstanding acting talent of his generation, and so none of you will have heard of him, the other was less elevated, but nevertheless a great professional.

Paul Scofield was most famous for his role as Foggy in “Last of the Summer Wine”, the world’s longest running sittrag. Alongside John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson he was part of a trio of aging single men faced with the bleak prospect of retirement and being sidelined by society. His catch phrase “Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks”, usually uttered while staring balefully in the direction of Huddersfield, will stay with all of us who saw it. Even in the company of such great thespians as Dame Judi Dench as Nora Batty and Antony Sher as Eli, his talent stood out.

The highlight of Brian Wilde’s career came in his role as Thomas More in “A Man for All Seasons”, where he starred alongside Bill Owen as Henry VIII and Peter Sallis as Wolsey. Who can forget the scene in which they rowed off down the Thames in the carved out corpse of Ann Boleyn and sank at Isleworth, or the episode where they all made fun of Thomas Cromwell’s wrinkled tights.

It won't stand up in court

This week’s “Lewis” appeared to be following the path for which I have been campaigning. It began with Lewis and Hathaway getting sweaty together, and Lewis’s opening remark was “Knobs game”, which I took to be some sort of invitation to participate in homo-erotic activity. This was followed by Lewis wincing in pain. I was disappointed. This scene took place on a squash court (not an environment with which I am familiar, so forgive me) and this was as close as the two got for the whole episode. No sly winks, no delicate massaging of extremities, no tongues. Nothing. Indeed, I believe “Knobs game” should have read “Knob’s game” and was indicative of Lewis’s opinion of this sport. At least he has one redeeming feature.

There followed another plunge into the depths of inanity, depths which, if the evidence is anything to go by, are infinite. I believe the series has ended. This prevents us from seeing the next episode in which prince Michael of Kent is bludgeoned to death by a reincarnation of Harry Worth. I am considering taking up the ingestion of narcotics rather than watch any more of this tripe, particularly now the love story has burnt out.

I shall only watch detective movies where there is a love interest between the leading heroes. This means that “Miss Marple” must be put aside, unless she trades in her vibrator for one with considerably more functions. I shall eschew “Dixon of Dock Green”, apart from where Lauderdale gets to use his truncheon. “No Hiding Place” is out, until we get high screen as well as wide screen, and see what is going on in the back of the car below waist level. I shall not be watching “Softly, Softly” again, except for the brief interlude where Charlie Barlow whispers “Who wants shagging next?” and his deputy says “What?”. (Yes, I know you are all too young for this - that is not my fault).

If you think she is tough, you should meet her sister

Loathe as I am to reinforce racial stereotypes, I feel compelled to draw your attention to Ruth Butterworth. Ruth is a snake boxer and Brisbane housewife.

Love and peace

A few carefully crafted words in response to lord Goldsmith and his proposal to have schoolchildren pledge an oath of allegiance to the queen, and to have a British national day. I say all of this with concern and love.

Fuck off you complete dumbfuck tosser.
Take your fucking proposals and shove them up your tory arse, you twat.
Fuck off you dozy bastard.
Oath of allegiance? To a bunch of thick, overblown, throwback parasites? Stick it up your bollocks you motherfucking asshole.
National day? That’s just what we fucking need, a bit more jingoism, nationalism and division you odious conglomeration of camel turds. How fucking stupid can you possible be, you shitchewing goat molester?

I hope that this helps.

Up until midnight writing this crap. Still better than "Lewis"

Even I am surprised by how quickly ITV have picked up on my suggestion that “Lewis” should be transformed from a cop show to a man-on-man spectacular. This week’s serving was so preposterous that it is scarcely worthy of my spending time describing it. However, being worthwhile has never been a criterion that I have embraced. Let me just say that the plot was just about the most ludicrous to have ever appeared on television, even outdoing the disgusting deceit that in the 1980’s we had Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister. As if.

Having run out of dons and tutors to bump off in Oxford, the scriptwriters have turned to the clergy as the latest victims of crime. Oxford will soon become a place devoid of pedagogues and priests. There will be no culture left, nor any spirituality. Good.

When I saw a red hot poker being withdrawn from a fire, and being prepared to be used as a murder weapon, my heart leapt, believing that our old friend Edward II was about to be invoked. But no, the poker was (off camera) pushed through a vicar’s eye and into his brain. If you think this was silly, you should have seen the whole programme. It also featured a transsexual This transsexual had been known to almost all of the characters prior to her bollockectomy, but none of them recognised her. She had no male characteristics, as ridiculous as the transsexual on Coronation Street – Deirdre or whateverhernameis. This one was clearly female, apart from a slightly deep voice, but never mind, it was so obvious that this is what the scriptwriters intended us to believe.

The writers have also been struck down with a severe case of Bradley Hardacre, having the protagonists verbalise all of their thought processes. The writers obviously suppose that we are as dumb as they are. The “as you well know” included an explanation of what the Garden of Gethsemane was, just in case there was anyone watching who had been to school later than 1970 and had therefore failed to be taught anything.

Fucking hell.

We are also back to the old Morse days where all of the characters bar one have to be murdered before the brains of the fuzz work out who is the culprit. One suicide and three murders in this one. If you are planning to move to Oxford, take out some comprehensive life insurance.

Anyway, to move on to the gay thing, as it were. I should, at this stage, point out that I do not think that I have a particular gift for writing gay porn. I am at a slight disadvantage in imagining the sight of Norman Tebbit being anally penetrated by Clint Eastwood to be more funny than erotic. Maybe I am wrong, and a new career awaits me, but for those of you wanting a meaningful description of what is to follow, I suspect that I need to apologise. Many of the characters in this episode were gay. I suspect that this device was used to prepare the viewer for the moment were Lewis and Sergeant Hathaway actually get it on. In one poignant scene, Lewis asks Hathaway if he is gay. It is early days yet, and the question was asked in a decidedly non-camp way. No protruding tongues nor any hip gyrations. I am sure this is to come next week. Lewis then has an entirely meaningless involvement in a sub-plot about allotments. In this he is advised by a fellow allotmenteer that it is no good attempting to grow peas or marrows on his plot. Carrots get the nod of approval. We all know what that signifies, don’t we children? Meanwhile, Hathaway begins a sexual relationship with aforementioned transsexual, probably just to make Lewis jealous. It is of course, quite common practice for HM Constabulary to conduct affairs with mass murderers. You will all have heard about Harold Shipman and James Anderton. In the end (no pun intended) Lewis rescues Hathaway from a burning house. “James!” he cries seeing his loved one unconscious in a smoke filled room. He slings him over his shoulder (despite being 20 years older and three feet shorter) and carries him down the stairs, carefully caressing the pert buttocks. We then see him lying atop Hathaway as the house explodes (some sort of metaphor) in a way that would qualify for “up the arse corner” in Viz.

The programme ends with them both back to pretending to be butch, but the viewer is left in no doubt what they are thinking.

I will give you an update next week unless the action gets too graphic. I really don’t fancy that.

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For the benefit of those of you without access to what passes for British culture, here is a brief description of some of the items mentioned.

“Lewis” is a third rate detective show, taking over from the series “Morse”, whose lead character died of incredulity some time ago.

Edward II was king of England. He made the mistake of asking someone to keep his seat warm.

Coronation Street is a long running soap opera, with which I have a passing familiarity as it is watched by Mrs S. while I twat about on the computer.

Deirdre is a character in Coronation Street so hideously ugly that not even Tom would shag her.

Bradley Hardacre was a character in a sublime British comedy series called “Brass”, one of the running gags in which was to have one character explain to another a plot for the sake of the viewers, suffixed with “as you know”. The best use of this was the line (something like) “she went to Llandudno, as you did know”.

Harold Shipman was a doctor who prescribed unusual remedies.

James Anderton was the Chief Constable of Manchester, who believed God was talking to him. He was correct in this, but mysteriously missed the repeated requests from God to “shut the fuck up, you asshole.”

Allotments – plots of ground rented by local government authorities for the purposes of gardening.

Viz is a high quality British newspaper.

For those of you concerned about revicide, I should point out that Oxford is a safe distance from Norfolk.

The Garden of Gethsemane is a night club in Hereford. You daft bastard.

Margaret Thatcher is a fucking fascist twat. Where’s that red hot poker?

Countdown to the Royal Divorce Part 18

You will be distressed, and rending your raiment, (I can write that but don’t ask me to say it), to hear that I have been less than well these few days. Nowhere near in the Dave league of biblical plagues, but enough to interrupt the rhythm of my life to the extent that I have had my computing perambulations somewhat curtailed. Today, having failed to sleep much last night, and been woken by a cough every time I tried to sleep, and with a headache and other symptoms, I resorted to watching daytime television. I am happy to report that it is wonderful. I saw, for the first time, the whole of the episode of “Whose line is it anyway” with Richard Simmons, having only seen clips before. It was almost worth becoming ill for.

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I have been reluctant to write much about my old friends, the Windsors, because of the news embargo, and not wanting to step out of line, but I know that some of you are keen to be kept up to date.

I knew that something monumental was afoot when that silly tart Camilla telephoned in November, in a bit of a state about what appeared to be a packing dilemma. “Just theoretically, of course”, she began, “what do you think the correct number of pairs of underpants would be required by a young chap for, say, 4 months in Afghanistan?”. I told her four, but put an extra pair in to be on the safe side. I am always surprised at how gullible the silly buggers are. One would think that they lived constantly surrounded by sycophants incapable of being anything other than totally subservient. I heard nothing more about it, and I have to confess that I was a bit bemused to see all the fuss about Charlie’s youngest in the news, because I could swear I found him hiding in a cupboard in St James’s Palace in January, and in February I had what I assumed was a misdirected text asking if he could come out yet. I replied that he would have to wait for Edward.

It is nice to see Liz taking it easy at last. Most Wednesday afternoons she nips out to the Bingo at the old Bermondsey Gaumont. It is surprising that she has never been found out, but generally the population of London are so up themselves that they notice nothing. A few years ago it fell to me to escort her on this venture – and what a bloody waste of time that was. Not made any more pleasant by her antics, I might add. One time the poor old love got a tad confused, and mistook the passengers waiting to board the train at Westminster tube station for a trade delegation from Paraguay, and went along asking them all “What do you do?” and “Have you come far?”. Generally in London there are more than 50 nutters to the square foot, so one more went unnoticed, but it wasn’t very easy for me to extricate her. Once she got inside the hall it was no better. It took her about 2 years to learn the rules, and then on the odd occasion when she managed to get a winning line she would yell out “Palace!” I eventually pointed out that this was not the accepted norm, but even when she changed to “Hice!” it was little better.