Mirth and Woe: On Exercise

Mirth and Woe: On Exercise

As regular readers of these stories will know, I spent my teenage years as a member of the Air Cadets. We were essentially a bunch of spotty urchins roped into playing soldiers in the hope that at least a few of us might actually join the armed forces at some stage. Some of us did, some of us nearly did, and some were put off the military life for ever.

We were given guns, planes and loads of interesting stuff to do, and, as luck would have it, some of my most mirth-and-woeful memories were on Air Training Corps events, mostly involving unintentional nudity.

They were such good times that when I got too old to be a Cadet, I asked them if I could rejoin as an instructor. And the fools said 'yes'.

As a civilian instructor it was a completely different kettle of fish. I was, it turned out, expected to act like an adult, wear a suit, and certainly not hang around in the Other Ranks' canteen throwing penny chews as hard as I could at my mates. Mates who had to call me 'Sir' and stand up when I entered the room.

Worse, instead of going to the rifle range and firing off hundreds of rounds of ammunition at paper targets and any object we might have "accidentally" left in the butts, I had to sit and watch while some spotty cadet blazed away with the RAF's surplus shooters, having the time of his little life.

I also got an armband bearing the word "Instructor", which I never wore.

Clearly sensing the end of a golden age of skiving and cocking about, I decided to give it one final throw of the dice while my application for the Royal Corps of Signals went through the works. The squadron was to go on a weekend exercise in a large sea of mud just outside Aldershot, where we were to shoot at things and then blow them up.

Being an instructor and have a certain amount of expertise in this area, I was to 'supervise' one of the patrols, and be in charge of their health, safety and general blowing things up. I was given a cap gun, and told to guard it with my life.

I fired off all the caps within two minutes and dropped it in the lake.

We trudged off into the mire, map in hand to find our campsite. Somewhere, in an ocean of trees, we dropped our packs, rations and pretend shooters and found where we were to be sleeping for the next two nights.

It was a large hole in the ground.

In fact, it was a large hole in the ground that was slowly filling with water. We baled it out, put down a floor of sorts and added a couple of groundsheets for a roof, and it was a regular home-from-home. A home-from-home that was dark, stank of dead things, and was slowly filling up with water. And I was to share it with six other people for the next - oh God - how long? Three days.

We doled out the ration packs - all slightly out-of-date gear the grown-up armed forces didn't want any more, containing the obligatory years-old packet of Spangles.

This was supplemented, unsurprisingly, by our own stuff blagged from the tuck shop and unguarded parental kitchen cupboards. Boys will be boys, so, by-and-large, there were lots and lots of sweets, and cripplingly large quantities of Asda own-brand cola-flavoured drink. And Jez brought meat. Lots and lots of meat.

"Good God, Jezzer. Are you sure you've brought enough?" I asked as packet upon packet of sausages, bacon, kidneys and a pound of liver fell out of his rucksack. He was either planning to be incredibly hungry over the weekend, or he had recently murdered somebody to death and was getting rid of the evidence in the only way he knew.

"Oh, I'll be alright," he replied. It was all on the short-dated shelf at the supermarket."

"When was that, then?"

"Tuesday."

It was Friday.

We then did what any group of young men would in the circumstances. We got together as much flammable material as we could and set fire to it. Then, we put our food on sticks and cooked it. Cooked it until it was dead.

Jezzer's suspiciously out-of-date pork products still looked horribly pink.

"You're supposed to cook them longer than that, dude"

"Ah, I'll be fine. No worries. I like me food rare."

You can tell exactly where this is leading. It was only a matter of time and place.

And so, my leader's radio set crackled into life, and we arranged a rendezvous. A rendezvous where the several patrols on the exercise would accidentally-on-purpose meet up and kick the living shit out of each other. No cadet exercise is complete without one of these encounters, and hardly anyone gets killed.

We trudged through the mud in the rain, further and further away from our lovely fire and only slightly damp sleeping bags, for a meeting with the leather boots and fists of the opposition. All were quiet, brooding, hoping that they might escape with their face and/or clothing, the silence only broken by a hissed "It's left here, you Gaylord" as we struggled to find the RV point.

And then, the flare went up. We were there, and so was everybody else.

All tactics went down the toilet and it was just: "CH-AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGE!"

We legged it. Legged it across 100 energy-sapping yards of ankle deep mud, dodging flares fired at us in a way that would immediately invalidate the warranty. Your glorious leader, pensioned off from the joys of cadetting, sidled away from the action, slipping into the background like a short, round Harry Flashman, fully expecting everybody else to get hurt.

Jez, fuelled by extra pork rations, reached the enemy lines first, and unleashed a dreadful chemical weapon.

"Yaaaaaaaaaaaarch!" he went as a flare fired into the cloud-speckled Hampshire sky by Flt Lt Elphinstone revealed a scene straight out of Hell's foulest pits.

"Yaaaaaaaaaaaarch!" Right into a hedge. A hedge full of cadets.

There was a cry of surprise and alarm: "You... you... you utter CUNT!"

And: "You bastard! It's sausages!"

"Yaaaaaaaaaaaarch!" he continued, making sure everybody got some in the kind of spray normally seen coming from the back of a farmer's muck-spreader.

And, speaking of which: "I've shit meself."

The worst news of all. It was only Friday evening. We had a stenchy Jezzer living with us in a hole in the ground until Sunday.

"How much have you shit yourself?"

"All of it. And it's in my boots."

We were not, I am pleased to say, the only patrol to suffer minor disaster that evening. As the battle wound down and Flt Lt Elphinstone fired off his last flare, barely over the heads of the struggling masses, one of our particularly observant youngsters approached our glorious leader with a more-than-pertinant question:

"Mr Elphinstone, sir?"

"Yes Sergeant Walker!" he barked.

"You know you were firing off the flares like that, sir?"

"Yes, Sergeant, I was. I've got a mate in the RAF Regiment who..."

"Isn't that your tent, sir?", he asked, pointing to a particularly excitable fire in the middle distance.

"Fuck."

I never did join the Army in the end. The excitement, I feared, might have been fatal.

On becoming a Diet Nazi

On becoming a Diet Nazi

A few weeks ago, urged to clean the bathroom at the end of a long, pointy stick, I made a fatal discovery. The bathroom scales.

Hidden, they were, and for good reason. And the reason is this: my natural curiosity and the resulting scream of "Oh my chuffin' Christ! 13 stone six!"

Only three words could describe me that fateful 1st of June Friday: You fat bastard. And also: "No coach parties, plz. You fat bastard."

And the scales could not lie. I was indeed a fat bastard, the result of a) a lifetime spent parked in front of a computer screen writing mirth, woe and general jollity 23 hours per day, b) pie and c) cake. Cake and pie, mixed with half-pound slabs of Dairy Milk chocolate.

Back in the day, I tipped the scales at a sylph-like and frankly shexxxy 10st 6lb, and I vowed - out loud, sadly, so the whole house could hear me - that I would, by the time summer is out, achieve that weight once again.

Things started well will a case of the galloping squirts that had the weight literally falling out of my bottom, and from then on I haven't looked back. Mostly to avoid the dreadful spattering on the bathroom wall.

Out: Pie
In: Ryvita

Out: Half-pound slabs of chocolate
In: Ryvita

Out: Cake and a pint (or three)
In: Ryvita

Out: Illicit McDonald's blow-outs
In: Ryvita

Out: 24-hour internet wallowing
In: Three mile run to the Ryvita shop

I think you can see a pattern emerging here. Cardboard-flavoured meals are playing a big part of my life at the moment, and the exhaust gasses are solely to blame for the recent bad weather you've all been experiencing. Sorry.

So far, I've only been attacked by the same jogger-hating dog on three separate occasions, and my trousers have only fallen down in the middle of Kensington High Street - revealing thighs and buttocks criss-crossed with claw-marks - the once, in the kind of comedic spackery you've come to expect from me.

Total weight loss = 18 Earth pounds, mostly out of my bottom - either eaten by a Boxer dog called Billy, or the direct route courtesy of an all-Ryvita and fruit diet.

Alas, it has turned me into a Diet Nazi, and I find myself tutting at people in the staff canteen with armfuls of crisps and chocolate bars, and holding up placards outside chip shops urging the sinners huddled inside to repent before it is too late.

You would, if you are anywhere near normal, be best avoiding me for the next couple of months until this thing's out of my system.

But, God, it's working. Such is my new-found strength, stamina and general shexxxy manliness, I will soon be able to catch up with that bastard dog, skin it and eat it raw. I'm bloody starving.

On Hell

On Hell - The inevitable Big Brother post

For reasons to numerous to go into - but mainly revolving around having a teenage daughter - I am forced to be interested in Big Brother this year.

It is something I have managed to avoid in the past, middle-class sneering at Jade Goody notwithstanding, and having been drawn into the freakshow, have come to the following all-to-predictable conclusion:

It's awful. Really, really awful.

Fair play to the producers, who, knowing they are onto a winner, for scouring the country for every last mentallist and borderline psycho they can lay their hands on. But what's the point of having mentals in an enclosed space if you then refuse to arm them? Where's the fun in that?

The utter tedium of a competition that will last - so I am told - for three months, has me itching to go down to Elstree with a quantity of napalm to put the whole enterprise to an end as quickly as possible. Only my fascination at loud Welsh Laura's improbable chest is holding me back.

Yet I am drawn in, like Kate Moss to a big pile of white powder in a toilet cubicle.

I could jazz it up. Really, I could.

What are they thinking with knobbly knee competitions, and dressing up as fish? Where's the pain? Where's the woe? These people are carefully selected as mentals in the hope that they'd be interesting. Where's the mind-fuckery?

The winner is going to walk out with 100,000 of the Queen's pounds, and many of the contestants will be polluting our screens and glossy mags through big money deals for years to come. I want to see them work for their money. No. I want to see the bastards suffer.

So: some tasks which would a) get better value out of the contestants and b) be a right old laugh round the water-cooler.

* Housemates collect all their bodily excreta in a large tin bath. They will then be given food for the week at exactly the same weight. Constipated? Starve, you freak.

* The housemates are split into "guards" and "prisoners". The house then becomes a Boer War style concentration camp (a Best of British invention, you'll no doubt be proud to hear) of starvation, beating and bullying until Ofcom makes them stop. There is no reason behind this task. It's just for laughs.

* Two words: Death row. Two more words: Enforced nudity. And while we're at it: Compulsory baby oil (Teh Laydez only)

* A "Who can eat the most baked beans" competition, closely followed by a "Who can fit the most marbles up my bottom" contest, leading, inevitably to the violent and bizarre shooting deaths of at least three of the housemates.

* Wednesday's new housemate: Anthony Charles Lynton Blair, and a "28 Days Later" scenario involving blood-crazed zombies.

Or, I could just stove my television to death with a length of lead piping. It's for the common good. Then nuke the place from orbit. It's the only way to make sure.

On the Spawn of my Loins

On the Spawn of my Loins

Scaryduck Junior. Yu-Gi-Oh! enthusiast. Penguin fancier. Genius. At least, that's what I thought until this weekend.

Witness the following conversaion as we watched Dame S. Bassey's camper-than-tits performance at the Glastonbury Festival this weekend:

Scaryduck Jr: "Dad?"

Me: "Son."

SD Jr: "Which James Bond film is 'Diamonds are Forever' from?"

Me: "Goldfinger."

SD Jr: "Right."

Ten seconds later...

SD Jr: "Dad?"

Me: "Son."

SD Jr: "Are you sure it's Goldfinger?"

Me: "You're absolutely right. It's 'You Only Live Twice'."

Like putty in my hands. It was all I could do to prevent myself from giving him a shameless belming. I'm considerate like that.

Dame S. Bassey is seventy years old. It would be like humping a saw mill.


It is Scarysister's birthday today. Marvel, I say, at her photography.

On cheese-podding

On cheese-podding

My rather marvellous 40 gigabyte MP3 player contains somewhere in the region of 4,000 songs. I might even have listened to some of them, because my musical taste, like me, is excellent.

I do, however, have managed to acquire a number of songs which are, by any definition, not excellent at all. These are titles which earn me a "You saddo" sneer from my twelve-year-old daughter, and twelve is far too young an age to have a "you saddo" sneer for your dear old dad.

I care not for what she thinks, for I have two words to offer her in return: Lindsay Lohan.

Amongst the sadness that appears on my otherwise excellent player:

* Bananarama - Robert de Niro's Waiting

* Limahl - Never Ending Story (12" mix - eight minutes and 16 seconds of pure eighties cheese)

* Daz Sampson - Teenage Life

* This year's Eurovision entries from Georgia and France

* Abba - Dancing Queen

* The Divine Comedy - My Lovely Horse

* An obsessively collected complete Ultravox back catalogue including all released material from former band members Midge Ure, John Foxx and Billy Currie, including an almost sacrilegious extended dance version of 'Vienna' performed by a singer who is not Midge Ure. It's pretty bad.

I have deleted all the Coldplay. I might be a saddo, but I've still got standards.

You know what's coming: 'fess up, people.

On cliffhangers

On cliffhangers

Those of you who watch Doctor Who of a Saturday evening, will know that last week's episode ended on a good old-fashioned cliffhanger.

The Doctor, Bummy Jack and Martha are trapped in the year 100 trillion, The Master has stolen his TARDIS and he is about to take over the world. How, pray, are they going to get out of this one?

Here, stolen from the desk of writer Russell T Davis is an extract of the actual script, roger me to death with a Dalek's plunger if I am telling a word of a lie.


Doctor Who: Series 3 - Episode 12 - The Sound of Bums

D. Who: ONOZ! TEH MASTA has stolen the TARDIS!

M. Jones: Also ONOZ! We are trapped in the year 100 trillion! I'll miss EastEnders!

Bummy Jack: Also also ONOZ! Only the two of you to bum!

D. Who and M. Jones: ONOZ!

There is a blinding flash of light, and an American-style phone booth appears in the place the TARDIS was standing just a minute before. Two young men emerge.

Dude 1: Hello! I am Bill S. Preston, Esquire!

Dude 2: And I am Ted "Theodore" Logan!

Both Dudes: And together we are WYLD STALLYNS!

D. Who: Excellent! *air guitar*

Dude 1: We'll, like, totally take you back to the 21st century to defeat the evil Timelord dude.

D. Who: Excellent! *air guitar*

Dude 2: Plz to step into time machine. Soz that it is not bigger on the inside

Bummy Jack: All teh better 4 teh bumming. Bummy bummy bummy bummy TORCHWOOD! LOL

Both Dudes: Bogus!

D. Who: Have a jellybaby.

Mirth and Woe: The Dog Smiles

Mirth and Woe: The Dog Smiles

We've got a dog. She's called Lucy. Lucy Minogue, and she wouldn't say boo to a goose. In fact, she'd run away from a goose, or, in fact, away from absolutely anything at all. She is the bestest dog ever, and I will fight any man who says otherwise.

Before that, we had Harry. Harry Minogue. Harry was - if you'll pardon the awful, awful pun - barking mad. He still is, as a matter of fact. When the bouncing, barking and pissing-on-the-floor became far too much, we gave him to some friends who were quite happy to put up with that kind of thing. He still looks round the back of the TV to see where all the animals are coming from - Harry was never the sharpest knife in the drawer.

A long, long time before that, we had Snoopy. Snoopy Not-a-Minogue. Snoopy was a beagle-crossed-with-something-else that we got from a rescue home, and had gone the first six months of his life known as Shep. We had to do the decent thing, of course, and give him a proper beagle name.

Loveable that we was, Snoopy was also a dreadful, scheming bastard who spent his entire life planning ways of wrecking the house or trying to escape, tales which I have chronicled extensively elsewhere. Bad dog, indeed. We never quite got over the woe of the time he went on a one-dog wrecking spree that caused chaos, calumny and panic at a five-a-side football tournament, stopping only to diligently piss over the goal posts.

This scheming even took place when we were out of the house. Our family spent every summer on a two-week camping holiday, most of which was spent chasing the dog across fields, only to find him, hours later, back at the tent, asleep.

He was not, alas, the best of dogs to have with you in the car. He'd get far too excited, jump about all over the place and drench everybody in dog slobber, a substance now banned as a chenical weapon by the Geneva Convention.

We didn't have much of a car at the time. It was a 1973 Renault 12 saloon, designed for four reasonably well-to-do French peasants on their way to surrender to the local Germans. And not, it should be pointed out, best suited to a family of five and maniacal dog going to visit a chain-smoking great-aunt on the other side of London.

Fair play to Snoopy. We got all the way up to London with very little incident, as the cunningly-planned pre-car walkie appeared to have wiped him out somewhat.

It was just as we crossed Wandsworth Bridge into the dreaded land South of the River where no cabbie dares to drive, that he came to life. Before we knew it he was slobbering all over the windows at other dogs on Wandsworth Common, barking at the prison, and generally making a nuisance of himself across the back seat of the car.

And then: Tooting. Home of the legendary Wolfie Smith, revolutionary leader of the mighty Tooting Popular Front. He wasn't home, so we pressed on toward Bromley and the faggy fifty-a-day aunt.

Until:

"Dad! The dog's smiling!"

"So he is. Isn't that funny?"

"Awww, who's a cute ickle doggums, eh?"

Alas, my mother was far too busy driving to deliver her warning to us. She had always had dogs as a girl and knew that dogs, as a rule, don't tend to smile a great deal.

"He's not smiling, he's..."

Too late.

"Yaaaaaaaaaarch!" said Snoopy.

And "Yaaaaaaarch!" he went again, bowking the finest Pedigree Chum and Winalot mix all over Nigel's shoulder. Which he* then proceeded to eat, it being a shame to let good food go to waste.

Poor Nigel: "Yaaaaaaarch!" he said, quite understandably in the circumstances.

Well, if it was alright for them, I might as well get into the act.

Me: "Yaaaaaaaarch!"

There being no hedges in the middle of Tooting Broadway, I went for the next best thing: everybody else in the car. Alas, trying to hold it back only made it worse, and I sprayed my youthful chunder in what, in other circumstances, might have been described as a pleasing arc for maximum spatter.

And what a dreadful, vomit-soaked group early-evening passers-by witnessed emerging from a dark blue Renault that evening, scraping sick off our clothes and retching aftershocks into a nearby drain, a foul-smelling dog of indeterminate breed licking shamelessly at puddles of the stuff.

Then we went to Aunt Silk Cut's and she barely noticed the stench through the nicotine fog. In fact, we stayed the night, attempting to sleep on her floor as trains roared by, not twenty feet away.

We got an estate car. Alas, he quickly learned to be sick through the bars and onto the back seat. Bad dog.

* Who? Who ate the vomit? Nigel or the dog? You decide

On Blasphemy

On Blasphemy

Minor Historical Figures of whom you might not have heard - a not-as-funny-as-he-used-to-be cut out and keep guide

-------------------- cut here --------------------
No. 27: Dave Iscariot: Pathological liar, practical joker and younger brother to the otherwise angelic Judas, who made his name as best buddy to Jesus O'Nazareth, apprentice carpenter and part-time fisherman of Galilee.

Generous to a fault, the kindly Judas stumped up the best part of thirty pieces of silver to pay for a slap-up meal for Jesus and his chums - a bargain bucket from Judaean Fried Chicken - only to find the place turned over by the bloody Romans on the dodgy grounds that Mary Magdalene had organised the piss-up as a hooky pole-dancing event, getting the chief nailed to a tree for his sins.

Unfortunately for Judas, the whole bust was the work of one Dave Iscariot, who'd done it "for a bit of a laugh", before going round to have a word with the up-and-coming Jehovah Publishing Co, telling them it was his brother's big idea, getting him a bad press for the next two millennia in their newly published multi-billion selling work "The New Testament: Galilee Girls Gone Wild".

"For an extra fifty shekels", they told him, "you could have done it all official - throw in a Gospel of St Dave, guv", but the joker knew when to stop kicking the arse out of it, and left that particular job to Jeffrey Archer.

Instead, he donned his J O'Nazareth horror mask, and went knocking on doors telling people "WoooOOOoooo I have risen" until it got into all the papers.

And in his guilt he sayeth: "If me dad hears about this, I'll end up crucified"

What a scamp. And it must be true. It's on the internet.

-------------------- cut here --------------------

On Canada

And what we need after that is a good hard seeing to Thursday vote-o to determine which of my actually-quite-a-lot-funnier-than-he-used-to-be Tales of Mirth and Woe will appear on these pages tomorrow. Choose then, from this puke-tastic trio of tales:

* The Dog Smiles: Most European countries will now accept a photocopy of your genitals as a means of identification. However, you must first get the image certified as genuine at your local police station before you travel. Please allow 28 days for the certification process to complete.

* M. le Maire: English police officers are no longer called 'Bobbies'. They prefer to be called by the more modern term 'Twat Face' instead. Being asked "Hey Twat Face, is your head the same shape under that helmet?" whilst presenting a photo of your genitals for inspection always raises a laugh.

* On Exercise: Due to a clerical error at the United Nations, all citizens of Canada are legally obliged to email photographs of their genitals to everybody in their address book. Canada has recently been added to the Axis of Evil.

So, on that hopeful note, vote! Vote long. Vote hard. But most of all: get to know Canadians.

On Rubbish Celebrity 'Autobiographies'

On Rubbish Celebrity 'Autobiographies'

Recent email correspondence following my rubbish book reviews of rubbish books by Charles Bronson and Frankie Fraser ended up posing a few questions.

It was generally agreed that most celebrities are far too busy or far too stupid to actually sit down and write their own life stories, even the notional author of the illustration-heavy "Wayne Rooney - My Life in Pictures" might have had a bit of trouble with the text.

Mad Frankie Fraser's book being a case in point. It is abundantly clear that the real author and editor were far too scared of Frankie to change a word of the narrative, even where it made absolutely no sense at all, resulting in a dreadful dog's dinner of a book.

He should, we think, have asked Terry Pratchett in to do the job. It would have been reasonably funny, witty, set on the back of a turtle, and would have featured Death in all the good bits.

"What... what happened?" said Billy 'Lead Pipe' Smith to the shadowy figure that towered over him.

"YOU APPEAR TO HAVE HAD AN ARGUMENT WITH MR FRASER."

Lead Pipe looked down at the red mess at his feet, the fact slowly dawning on him that it was, in fact, his all-too-recently mortal remains.

"Oh dear. I don't suppose there's any way we can break his kneecaps?"

"NO. NO, THERE ISN'T."

That'll work.

My current reading is David Attenborough's "Life on Air", one man's story of a remarkable life spent recording the wildlife and flora of the world. If the following extract is anything to go by, employing Tarantino as his ghost writer probably wasn't the best decision he's ever made:

"The biggest problem of any wildlife film is trying to get the subject to behave for the cameras. Our crews would go to quite extraordinary lengths to ensure that we could get the shots we need with the minimum of fuss before moving on to the next piece of filming.

"There was this one time we had a puffin that wouldn't sit still while we were making a film on the nesting habits of North Atlantic sea birds. So I punched it, and punched it, and punched it, and punched it, and punched it, and right enough the message got through its thick skull. Then it fell off the cliff and got eaten by an albatross. We LOLed.

"Our BAFTA-winning crew found that the best way to get a decent shot of a small mammal or rodent such as a squirrel or a guinea pig is either to nail its feet to the ground; or simply to kill it, rip out its insides and make some sort of glove puppet from the carcass. Good eating, too. I put on loads of weight doing 'Life on Earth' - those rare breeds are just so damn tasty."

Who, then, we ask, would make an appropriate ghost-writer for any given celebrity?

"Jade Goody: My Life" should, we think, be ghosted by the recently-knighted and soon-to-be-martyred Salman Rushdie, then we'd get 600-pages on India's Bovine Nemesis that nobody would want to read and - on the bright side - get us two fatwas for the price of one.

Good Karma / Bad Karma

Good Karma / Bad Karma

You might already know that the world we live in exists in a delicate karmic balance.

While you might think that this cause-and-effect stuff is just a load of hippie bollocks (and you'll end up stepping in a dog turd on the way home for harbouring such thoughts), I can offer you the real life example that proves the existence of Karma for once and for all:


A Day in the Life of S. Duck (Genius)

Good: Losing ten pounds in weight in little over a week
Bad: Your trousers falling down whilst running for the bus to Olympia Conference Hall in Kensington High Street because they no longer fit

Good: Cutting a new hole in your belt to stop your trousers from falling down in the middle of Kensington High Street when you run for a bus on the way home
Bad: Cutting a hole in your thumb whilst undertaking said belt maintenance

Good: Nice first aid lady at Olympia Conference Hall with a superb cleavage under a tight, white t-shirt
Bad: Antiseptic wipe dowsed in ground-up glass and battery acid

Good: Invited for a one-on-one patching-up-the-hole-in-your-finger session in tight white first aid lady's first aid room.
Bad: Your trousers falling down because you haven't quite got found to putting that extra hole in your belt, on account off all the blood

Good: Expenses-paid rail travel for the journey home
Bad: Expenses-paid rail travel that gets stuck behind signal failures for four hours, in which the younger, juicier passengers are sacrificed to feed those in first class

Good: Surprisingly good cooking facilities in the buffet car to avoid getting food poisoning from undercooked standard class passengers
Bad: Having to hide your wounded hand, just in case we are to kill and eat the old and infirm next

Good: Handy clean-up wipes for blood, gore
Bad: Unable to pass water in polite company, reduced to drinking some else's urine to survive

Good: Arriving back more-or-less in one piece, with a free cooked meal into the bargain
Bad: Unable to get a refund on your former fellow passenger's ticket stub

And so, the world's karmic balance is maintained. FOR NOW.

This actually happened, may a vengeful hippy strike me down dead with a vat of hummous if I am telling a word of a lie.

Condensed Films: 4 - The Rise of the Silver Surfer

Condensed Films: 4 - The Rise of the Silver Surfer

Oh Lordy! It's another in our series which takes popular films, cuts them down to size and presents them in easy-to-swallow chunks for today's easily-bored youth. This particular night out - which also included a slap-up nose-bag at the local Wimpy - cost us the best part of fifty quid? Worth it? Oh yes. I done a LOL in all the wrong places.

4 - The Rise of the Silver Surfer

Prologue

Giant Space Minge: Om nom nom nom tasty planet burp. LOL

Rigel IV: Ouch

Silver Surfer: Yoinks! Now to completely destroy that blue planet over there, d00d!

End of prologue

R. Richards: Hello. I am R. Richards and I am excellent. You may remember me as 'Hornblower', which isn't what you think. I am also getting married to S. Storm, who is also excellent.

Army Bloke: Hello. I am Army Bloke and I shall be your ignorant authority figure in this motion picture, whose blundering actions will only make things worse. I shall also be doubling as the token ethnic and turning-point-of-the-film victim. Plz to save the world, R. Richards.

R. Richards: Soz. I am getting married.

S. Storm: whinewhinemarriedwhinewhine

R. Richards: marriedmarriedwhinemarriedmarried

S. Storm: whinewhinemarriedwhinewhine

Half an hour later...

S. Storm: whinewhinemarriedwhinewhine

S. Surfer: Rad! Dude! I have, like, completely wrecked yr wedding! LOL

J. Storm: Hello. I am J. Storm and I am excellent. I shall stop this surf bum and totally whup his arse. Oh. He appears to have whupped mine.

Some people in London: Gor blimey, strike a light, apples'n'pears. Someone appears to half half-inched the River Thames. Chim-chim-cheroo.

V. O'Doom: Hello, S. Surfer. I am V O'Doom and I am evil. Plz to join me and take over the world, or something.

S. Surfer: Die in a fire, d00d. LOLZ! I completely kicked him in the nads!

V. O'Doom: Ooyagh! Me plums! I'm off to join the good guys and then take over the world, or something.

R. Richards: OMFG! Army Bloke is making us work with our sworn enemy, V. O'Doom. I bet you, like, any money he totally rips us off by the end of the film.

V. O'Doom: LOL!

Army Bloke: W00t! He have - despite our own ham-fisted efforts - captured S. Surfer.

S. Surfer: WTF? Like, pwn3d, d00d.

S. Storm: ONOZ! I have realised that S. Surfer - despite his outwardly evil appearance - is actually one of the good guys, who is only following orders and forced to do dreadful deeds by an evil master. Also: whinewhinewhinewhine

V. O'Doom: LOL! I now have S. Surfer's surf board.

S. Surfer: Like, totally bogus, d00d.

Army Bloke: ONOZ! V. O'Doom was evil after all. What were the odds of that happening? Also: he has killed me to death.

V. O'Doom: Now to take over the world, or something. LOL

R. Richards: Plz to not take over the world, becos the world will end, killed 2 death by Giant Space Minge

V. O'Doom: WTF? Sez who?

R. Richards: My good friend S. Surfer...

S. Surfer: Norma. My name is Norma.

R. Richards: Errr... Norma here needs his board back, or Giant Space Minge will kill us all. Kill us all TO DEATH!

V. O'Doom: Die in a fire, asshats! Also: I have also killed S. Storm to death. LOLZERZ!

S. Storm: ONOZ! whinewhine - cough - whinewhine - dead - whine

S. Surfer: Woah, bogus! Here comes Giant Space Minge to totally kill us all 2 death. Plz to get my board back, d00d!

J. Storm: I'll get it becos I am excellent. LOL punchy punchy slap slap

V. O'Doom: Ooyagh! Me Plums! Although I am probly not quite dead as there may be a franchise in this.

J. Storm: LOL! Here is yr board.

S. Surfer: Rad! d00000000d! Now to kill Giant Space Minge.

Giant Space Minge: Om nom nom nom lovely planet burp LOLZ. WTF?!

S. Surfer: Although I have always had the power to totally kill Giant Space Minge, I have never used it until now, which makes me complicit in repeated acts of genocide, to be brutally honest. I was ...err... just following orders. punchy punchy cosmic slap slap

Giant Space Minge: ONOZ, that smarts! I also appear to be teh dead. Ouch, me chuff.

S. Surfer: Ouch. I am also teh dead. OR AM I?

S. Storm: whinewhine - cough - whinewhine. WTF? I appear to be no longer dead. w00t! Let's get married!

B. Grimm: Here we go again. LOL! Also: Why am I in this film?

TEH END, ROFFLE

Mirth and Woe: Carnival

Mirth and Woe: Carnival

Oh, the stupid things you do in youth groups to raise money.

With any excuse to get you out of the house a couple of evenings a week, and - Brucie Bonus - the odd weekend, your parents cart you off to join the Scouts and all the joys that membership brought. And once there, they have you trapped.

I can now tie any knot you care to name, fashion tent pegs out of scraps of wood and know all the verses to the National Anthem, including the ones about rebellious Scots and the dangers of squirting washing-up liquid up your bottom.

The problem came from paying for the whole experience. We paid a weekly sub for membership (which was, I recall, about half a groat per fortnight), and the rest came from what the troop could raise for themselves.

Sea Scouts could count themselves lucky on this front - they were able to hang around the docks and raise a fortune that way; while we, the poor buggers of 1st Hurst Air Scouts, had to shovel shit. We shovelled shit at the local stables and sold it to gardeners. We also - decades before it was fashionable - collected all the newspapers we could lay our hands on and sold it to recycling companies. And God, endless jumble sales and the terrifying grannies that went with them.

All for about ten quid a year.

God, we'd do anything for money. OK, almost anything - Portsmouth Docks were bloody miles away.

"Right!" announced Skip on summer evening, "Woodley Carnival."

Right. And?

"I've arranged a lorry for a float. Perfect fund-raising opportunity."

Oh, God, no.

The following Saturday would come around, and we were to design and build a carnival float, dress up like idiots and wave at the cheering masses of a small satellite town in Berkshire as we drove around the streets at five miles per hour. Begging for money, like a bunch of inverse kerb crawlers.

"And Mrs Skip's doing sandwiches."

Poor Mrs Skip - always doing sandwiches. I'm amazed they ever had any food left in the house.

Mrs Skip would also be supplying, it turned out, a vast bag of barely out-of-date penny chews and fizzy sweets she'd got on the cheap from a bin behind the local wholesale megastore. Sweets which we were to throw at the good people of Woodley in exchange for their hard-earned.

Completely devoid of any imagination - all the other floats would undoubtedly feature dancing girls and partial nudity - we decided what the carnival float of 1st Hurst Air Scouts was going to be about this: The Scouts.

The whole thing was supposedly a depiction - in the form of a flat-bed truck which stunk to high heaven of the animal feed mill from where it had been borrowed - of what kind of thing we get up to when we weren't whittling or shouting "Dyb dyb dob" at old ladies. Which wasn't a great deal, to be honest.

We set up a couple of tents, a first aid demonstration, and threw in the gym horse for a half-hearted display of physical jerks. And that, dear reader, apart from a bit of greenery cut out of a hedge (to demonstrate our back-woods skills, or something), was it.

Alas, it looked less like an advertisement for all that is good in the Scout movement, and more like a Prisoner-of-War camp from World War Two. And not one of those happy-go-lucky-let's-put-one-over-the-Bosch ones from war movies, either. One where they shot people, for laughs.

Foolishly, we had also started off a bit late, and had to rush from the Scout Hut in Hurst to the start of the carnival parade in Woodley, several miles away. This involved driving through a ford - y'know, where a road crosses a river and they've forgotten to build a bridge.

We arrived looking windswept, soaked and the POW camp was already looking a little the worse for wear. And late as we were, they stuck us at the back of the parade, behind the obligatory and terrifying martial arts demonstration.

Then, way, way ahead of us, someone blew a whistle and we were away, at the tail of a long line of floats with dancing girls, marching bands, floats with partial nudity, majorettes and floats with both dancing girls and partial nudity.

Everybody cheered and threw money, and in return, they got handfuls of sweets and other goodies.

They stopped cheering as we went past. Some mouthed the words "Wht's that supposed to be?" as they clapped eyes on what resembled a bunch of tramps on the back of a lorry. The miserable bastards didn't get any of our sweets, so we ate them instead. The lot.

We got 30p.

Eventually, we pulled into a field where the Lady Mayoress of Woodley to judge all the happy, smiling, dancing and partially naked floats. And our accurate representation of Stalag Luft 14, where the only partial nudity was a bare ankle in the first aid demonstration.

We stood smartly to attention as she eventually came round to our foul-smelling truck, swaying slightly as back-of-a-lorry sea-sickness and handfuls of blackjacks, Mojo chews and sharbert flying saucers caught up with us.

"And finally, your worship, this is 1st Hurst Air Scouts."

Her face fell.

"Oh."

And: "It's not very good, is it?"

The rancid old moo.

And: "What's that AWFUL smell?"

Greebo: "YAAAAAAAAAAAARCH!"

Ten out of ten for targeting from a lad that one day would be guiding aircraft into Heathrow Airport.

Lady Mayoress of Woodley: "Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh! Me chain! The little shit's puked on me chain!"

Skip: "Oh, you complete TWAT. Err... not you ma'am."

Greebo: "YAAAAAAAAAAAARCH!"

We didn't win.

They didn't ask us back the next year, either.

On Misadventure

On Misadventure

One of our regular contributors to these pages left a comment earlier this week offering the sage advice of not using washing-up liquid as a lubricant when engaging in The Acts of Venus.

"It hurts", she says, surprising nobody at all, and I'd wager good money that there'll be bubbles coming out of those most private of places for weeks to come.

This important consumer advice duly noted for future reference, and we also draw the reader's attention to the inherent dangers of misusing Glade 'Touch and Fresh' and Brillo pads.

I cannot laugh, however.

There is a moment, you see, in the sordid process of thrashing about in the Tournament of Aphrodite, where you might grab just about anything out of the bedside cabinet, hoping this it is KY Gel, and not, in fact Preparation H.

In the half-light, and with the bedside cabinet of a hypochondriac, you are engaging in one thing and one thing only: Pecker Roulette.

And, sadly, I have lost.

For what I thought was soothing, slippery, pleasure-bringing lubricant turned out to be Deep Heat. Deep Heat for my gammy knee.

I could, dear understanding reader, have boiled a kettle with my bell-end.

The wife: she LOLed, and our passion died.

Alas, I have found that whilst it is relatively easy to laugh a lady into bed, they're still too busy laughing when they get there. Can't think why.


May contain traces of vomit

And while I am getting this stuff off my pink oboe with a handy cheese grater and catering-size bucket of Mr Muscle oven cleaner, I offer you the lesser-spotted Thursday vote-o. Choose, plz, one of the following chunder-heavy stories for tomorrow's reading pleasure:

* The Dog Smiles - features vomit

* Carnival - features vomit

* M. le Maire - features vomit

A wide selection of subject matter, I think you'll agree. Get in!

On famous films you've never seen

On famous films you've never seen

I have been told by others on several occasions that the film Natural Born Killers - once the hype and the hyperbole has been stripped away - is actually a rather fine piece of cinema. How should I know? I've never seen it.

It's the sort of film I really should have made the effort to see, after all, it is a cultural icon of its day. With the likes of Thelma and Louise (never seen) and Pretty Woman (seen for the first time mere days ago) I've got a valid excuse insofar that they are bona fide chick flicks.

Natural Born Killers, a movie that has the word BLOKE stamped right through it, there is no such squirming out of it if I wish to redeem my reputation as a film buff and a geezer. A geezer of taste and, dare I say it, class.

Good Lord, I even took the fragrant Mrs Duck to see Platoon on our first date, and Spaceballs on our second. It's a wonder we ever made it. But Natural Born Killers?

Yes. Right.

I have an excuse.

One that I am not proud of.

It is this:

I was going through an ill-advised Eddie Murphy phase at the time.

It's not much of an excuse.

In the sort of splurge that hints at mental incapacity, finding I had the house to myself for several days, instead of wanking myself blind I went out and rented Beverley Hills Cop I and II, 48Hrs, The Golden Child ...and strike me down dead... Best Defense. Which I quite enjoyed. Then, on a bit of a roll, I ate all the Weightwatchers meals I could find in the freezer in one sitting. That taught 'em.

I'm feeling much, much better now.

Also on the IMDB Top 250 movies list, I have yet to see (amongst others):

• The Godfather II
• The Seven Samurai
• Goodfellas
• Saving Private Ryan

Yet, I paid good money to see Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. Y'know - the one where they sing "Row, row, row your boat", and once all the stars' huge salaries were paid, the special effects budget could only afford a wasp on a piece of string.

And Best Defense. God. Why?

Hate is...

Howard Jones: Not Dead

We were in danger of getting far too icky-lovey-dovey yesterday, and I am yet to be drawn into which one of the list was a dreadful true life confession.

But! We'll soon put an end to that nonsense, with a load of other crap I thought up, stuck on a train for an hour-and-a-half at Slough yesterday, which is more than enough to drive any man bat-shit insane, if I wasn't officially a mentallist already.

So, we find it in our hearts to fondly remember the music of High Wycombe's finest music artist, H. Jones, killed to death recently in a bizarre and tragic spacehopper accident.


Hate is...

... rubbing chillis into the crotch of his underwear the night before he runs the London Marathon

... a steaming, fresh Great Dane turd, sent first class to The Other Woman with a note reading "That's your face, that is"

... posting those photographs on the internet with the caption "OMFG! He is teh weenie! LOLZ!!111"

... moving to Slough

... tying him up, naked, in a room with a goat, Jade Goody's extended family and the collected works of Daniel O'Donnell

... hiding his car keys inside the cat

... waking him from a drunken reverie with a game of "Genital Darts"

... changing all the numbers on his mobile for a selection found on cards in phone boxes around Central London

... whipping up public disgust and a baying hate mob on the back of unfounded rumours of unlicensed spacehopper parties


Howard Jones: An Apology

In a post on the inexplicably excellent internet weblog "Scaryduck: Not Scary. Not a Duck", it was stated that Howard Jones, the popular 1980s singer-songwriter had recently died, the result a bizarre inflatable latex toy accident at an illegal "Spacehopper rave" somewhere, somewhere in a field in Hampshire.

We now accept that Mr Howard Jones is, in fact, alive and well and working as a lift operator at the Olympia Conference Hall in London, and that Mr S. Duck is a complete and utter liar*. Mr Jones would like to point out that a) this is a song for all of my friends and b) he has never knowingly done Spacehoppers, and will fight any man that says otherwise.

* May contain traces of lie

Currently listening: Never Ending Story - Limahl. Poor, dead Limahl.

Pudsey Hannan: A Life

Pudsey Hannan: A Life

I don't normally do two posts inna day, but our favourite scary Viking Misty has lost her number one companion, the bestest dog in the world Pudsey, who died at the ripe old age of 16.

Plz to go and say nice things to Tina, and if you've got a bob or two spare, slip some into the fund to help out with her vet bills. Don't tell her. It's a secret.

Happier times (stolen shamelessly from Misty's Flickr stream):

Love is...

Love is...

... particularly difficult without genitals

... kidding yourself that you haven't been caught eyeing up her mother

... frankly impossible in the office stock cupboard. People always need staples at the most inconvenient of moments

... a chemical reaction involving the increased release of testosterone and estrogen resulting in an emotional attachment to a person, object, piece of liver in a sock or inflatable woman

... saving Flossie from the knacker's yard, if only for old time's sake

... illogical, Captain, more to the left please

... filming her every move with a number of hidden cameras, following her to the shops and beating to a pulp any man who so much as looks at her, because nobody understands her the way I do

... ultimately more expensive than picking up slatterns on the Oxford Road, but without the genital herpes roulette

... asking what her sister looks like naked

... refusing to press charges, even though you are still walking with a limp

... writing her adoring letters featuring the words "cum-dripping browneye" and "I've paid a mate to hold the camera"

... respecting her enough not to draw attention to the piece of toilet paper stuck to her bum-hole whilst doing it doggy style

Help me out here. In the words of poor, dead Howard Jones: "What is love?"

Confession: One of the above is true.

A Short Story About a Boy Getting Hit in the Groin by a Cricket Ball

A Short Story about a Boy Getting Hit in the Groin by a Cricket Ball

As told to the author by his son, aged 11; and, as such, may contain traces of lie

Hello. I am Scaryduck Junior and I am excellent. I like penguins, Yu-Gi-Oh! and watching people getting hit in the groin with a cricket ball. Luckily for you, this story contains neither flightless aquatic birds nor collectable card games, but it does feature a small, red item of hand-stitched sporting equipment and the trouser parts of my best friend.

I am a member of my school's Friday afternoon cricket club. Mr West takes us all out onto the school field and we have a proper game of cricket. I like going because my best friend James Sherfield plays, even though he is a Tottenham supporter who is utterly wet and a weed who skip along saying hello birds hello trees hello sky becos he is a gurl chiz chiz.

Everybody else in our school plays rounders, or cricket with tennis balls, but Mr West gets out all the best equipment, so we have real, hard cricket balls with stitching up the side, heavy bats and pads. Mr West makes sure we all get a go at batting and bowling so nobody misses out.

My Dad (who is also excellent) takes me to play golf, so I know how to hit a ball a long way. When Mr West puts me in to bat, I know how to keep my eye on the ball, time my swing and hit the ball for six.

So, when it was my turn to bat, Jake came in to bowl, and I hammered the ball away over the covers for a big six. The only fielder in the way was James, who was standing there going "hello birds hello trees hello sky" while everybody is shouting at him to catch it.

"Catch! JIM! CATCH!" they all shouted, but when he woke up and realised what was going on, it was too late.

James put his hands up to catch the ball, but it was flying too fast and it hit him dead hard. Right in the plums.

"Ooyagh! Me plums!" he said, before falling over like a great big tree in a Tottenham shirt.

We all LOLed. Even Mr West done a LOL before realising that James might be hurt, and we all ran over to where he was curled up on the grass. He lay there, making strange high-pitched noises, which made us LOL some more.

Mr West tried to pick him up, saying things like "Run it off, lad", but he stayed in the same curled-up shape and fell over again.

We all LOLed even more, and some of us done a ROFFLE too.

Pretty soon, James felt well enough to play again, and Mr West said it was his turn to bat. He gave me the ball, and I did my extra-long run-up and bowled it as hard as I could.

It must have hit a stone or a lump in the ground, because the ball bounced up really quickly. James took a big swing at the ball, but he was far too slow to hit it.

Guess where it hit him!

"Ooyagh!" he said again, "Me plums!" and he fell over backwards and knocked over his stumps, which meant I got him out. Out for a duck. A scary duck.

We all LOLed, and ran over to find him making strange, high-pitched noises again.

"Stop your laughing," said Mr West, but he was laughing too, with big tears running down his face.

You are supposed to wear something called a box down your shorts when you play cricket, to stop the ball hitting you in the plums. James didn't want to wear one because "Urgh! It's been next to someone's willy! I might catch gaylord germs off it."

That taught him. He didn't get Gaylord germs at all. He got a case of the crushed nuts.

"That'll teach you," said Mr West lifting James to his feet.

"Yaaaaaaaaaarch!" said James, all over Mr West's best cricket whites.

He also went "Yaaaaaaaaaaaarch!" all over the bat, the ball, the stumps and the school's brand new cricket pads we'd just got with Tesco vouchers. I can't remember what James had for lunch, but it came out all pink and yellow, and there was loads of it. Skips, probably.

That was the end of Cricket Club. Forever, I think.

I am this: excellent at cricket.


Oh Lordy - Done a Poo's back.

Condensed Films: The Shawshank Redemption

Condensed Films: The Shawshank Redemption

Can't be bothered to watch another re-run of this supposed classic film on Channel Four? We don't blame you. It's two-and-a-half hours long, and barely a naked woman to be seen. What you need, then, is the whole film experience delivered to you in one-easy to digest lump. Or, you could just read this. Your call.

Now featuring a cameo appearance from a Spicy Brains regular! Will it be you? No. It is not.

The Shawshank Redemption

A. Dufresne: Hello. I an A. Dufresne, and I am excellent. I am, in fact, so excellent, I am just on my way home to tell my wife - on a scale of one to ten - how excellent I am. I fully expect to give myself a ten, and then I shall be giving her one.

Mrs A. Dufresne: I wouldn't bother if I were you, on account that some charming young chap has already been giving me one, and now we are both dead.

A. Dufresne: ONOZ!

The Cops: And you did it, guy. U R so PWNED!

Judge: Yes. I agree with my friends The Cops. U R so going to TEH PRIZEN - 4 EVA!

A. Dufresne: ONOZ! Not TEH PRIZEN!!

Governor: Hello. I am teh prizen governor, and I am not a crook even though I look uncannily like Richard Nixon. Do as I say coz I can have you all killed, just like that. Ha hahahaaargh! Err... nothing.

Red: Hello. I am Ellis Boyd 'Red' Redding, and I am excellent, apart from all those murders I done. I can get you anything you need in TEH PRIZEN.

A. Dufresne: OK, get me a rock hammer and a huge poster of Rita Hayworth. No reason. Ha ha! I'm not trying to escape by digging a big hole in the prison walls over several decades and swimming out in a tide of poo, or anything.

Red: Here you go. Don't try to escape by digging a big hole in the prison walls over several decades and swimming out in a tide of poo, or anything. ROFFLE!

A. Dufresne: I am getting bummed rotten in TEH PRIZEN. If only I cld get on the right side of the warders, or something.

Warder: ONOZ! WTF?! I am getting ripped off by the tax man.

A. Dufresne: Leave it to me. I can do yr tax. LOL.

Warder: Hey thanks. Have some beers, m8.

A. Dufresne: Result! I am no longer getting bummed. ROFFLE.

Warder: Also, plz to do the tax for all the prison warders plz?

Governor: Also also, plz to run my dodgy business empire. I will give you favours in return so you don't blackmail me or try to escape by digging a big hole in the prison walls over several decades and swimming out in a tide of poo.

A. Dufresne: OK. Not that I'm planning to escape on a tide of poo, or anything. LOLZ!

Tommy: Hey! I know who really killed Mrs A. Dufresne!

A. Dufresne: WTF?! Plz to tell governor. It will get me out of TEH PRIZEN.

Tommy: Hey, governor. I know who really killed Mrs A. Dufresne. Oh. I appear to be dead.

A. Dufresne: Oh, spoons. Time to go all silent and suicidal, then.

Red: Plz to not kill yrself, A. Dufresne

A. Dufrense: I ate all TEH PRIZEN POO. Yaaaaaaaarch! Oh. I have escaped. Also: Yaaaaaaarch!

Governor: ONOZ! A. Dufresne has escaped by digging a big hole in teh prizen walls over several decades and swimming out in a tide of poo! Also, he has handed all my scrupulously collated dodgy paperwork to the authorities, so I might as well top myself. Ouch.

Red: OMFG! They let me out of prison and now I shall make a film about penguins. There is a message in all this. I hope you were paying attention.

Dickie "Touch" Tingles: whinewhinewhinewhine not as funny as you used to be whinewhine

Red: No. No, that wasn't the message.

THE END

Angry House

Angry House

Fan mail! I've had genuine bona fide fan mail! Unfortunately it is not of the wanting-to-have-sex-with-me variety, neither is it from a large publishing house offering me a large pile of cash to cut-and-paste this website onto the buy-two-get-one-free shelf in WH Smiths. Bugger my luck.

"I'd love to see your play on that jumble of an Olympic logo", it said.

So would I, to be honest. Alas, my photoshopping sk1llz are neither l33t, nor are they any good; and those scamps at B3ta can - and have - done a far better job than I ever could.

Imagine, if you will, the heavily-copyrighted and trademarked Olympic rings with a heaving pair of bosoms, and you're getting pretty close to how my fevered imagination works. Or a crudely MS Painted version with a large, hairy phallus, and somebody being sick in a hedge. You're not missing much.

For those of you still desperate to see the quality of my photo-manipulating skills in action, I tossed of a little something that Harry Hill would have been proud of:


You're absolutely right. I'll stick to writing.

Condensed film tomorrow, anyone? Shawshank Redemption - The Empire Strikes Back - Doctor Who - Life on Mars. Your choice: vote-me-up, if you will; and yes, I am aware that two of those are TV serials.

Wednesdays are the new Thursday, you know.


Also: Kaptain Von's blog = excellent. And I shall fight anyone who says otherwise.

On voyeurism

On voyeurism

Pandemian - who once went under the name Green Fairy, but by being generally excellent she can call herself anything she damn well pleases - wrote not terribly long ago on the need to peep into other people's lives when soaps and reality TV simply do not fit the bill.

And with the car crash of Big Brother polluting the airwaves once again, we, the educated few, need our dose of genuine reality.

One sits on a train, or on the top deck of a bus, peering to people's windows as you crawl past, imagining what little drama their lives hold, what they're eating for their tea, and what's on their TV screen that night, praying that it's not Big Sodding Bruv.

Or, if you're lucky, you might get to see them in the nip.

Face like a slapped arse

Nine hundred and ninety-nine times out of a thousand, there is nothing to see. Row upon row of closed curtains, empty rooms. And God, it's not as if I actually go out of my way to look through windows. It is a natural human curiosity.

A natural human curiosity to see naked people.

There's this woman who lives three doors down from the in-laws, and every night she's there, black lingerie, face like a shovel of something they found in the lion enclosure at Marwell Zoo. It's hypnotising. It's a bloody disgrace. She ought to wear a hat, or a bag.

Total number of wobbly parts seen in the last twenty-five years: three. And lots of bottoms, for some reason.

I digress! There is, of course, a fine line that one should be careful not to cross. It is one thing to observe people who are too lazy to pull their curtains of an evening, it is quite another to be observed yourself. Especially by the subject of the voyeurism, or worse still, somebody whose vocabulary includes the words "Ello", "Ello" and "Ello".

Virgins

Cross that line, and you're one step away from stealing underwear from clothes lines and setting up a Bill Oddie-type hide in the grounds of the local all-girl finishing school for young ladies aged 18-21 (known locally as the Virgin Megastore, I am led to believe). And that would be wrong.

Thank God, then, that Jack Pandemian confessed. I thought I was the only one in Blogland. I spent years commuting by train, and got to know those houses as we bump-bump-bumped into Poole station like they were my own friends and relatives.

Friends and relatives who didn't know you were watching as they went to the toilet as you slid past on the 2030 from Waterloo.

I now drive to work, and it's just not the same. Take your eyes off the road and you're liable to run over some damn Peeping Tom.

On religion

On religion

You know, call me Mr Not-quite-grasped-the-whole-point-of-Churchiness if you like, but there's always been one thing that I've never quite grasped about Christianity. It is this:

How the hell are we going to explain all the crucifixes to Jesus when he comes back? Can you imagine how awkward the Second Coming is going to be?

He's going to have a hard enough time sorting out Whores of Babylon and the like, without the total embarrassment that will be his first meeting with the people he's left in charge for the last couple of millenia:

J. Christ: "Hey guys. I'm back, just like I promised. Have I missed much?"

Pope: "Oh, not a lot. Just two thousand years of war, death and persecution in your name. The Spanish Inquisition was fucking ace."

Archbishop of Canterbury: "We burned loads of Catholics for you. God, I LOLed."

J. Christ: "What? You did what?"

Pope: "Err... nothing. Shit. Nothing. Err.... Hey Lord - remember how you were killed to death on a cross in your last life?"

Archbishop of Canterbury: "Nails through the hands and feet. Speared. Crown of Thorns. Your suffering has been an example to us all. Not that I've actually done much suffering myself per se."

J. Christ: "It's not a memory I care to dwell on that much, to be honest. I don't care if I never see another cross in all my li... HELL'S BELLS! What in the name of parted buttocks are you wearing?"

Pope: "We've all got crosses, Lord - just like yours! Aren't they great?"

J. Christ: "Buh...?!"

Archbishop of Canterbury: "See? Mine's got a little Jesus on it. A little Jesus in his final, agonising death throes."

J. Christ: "Wha...?!"

Pope: "And look - if you press the little button on this one, it plays the theme tune to the popular TV series 'The Vicar of Dibley'."

J. Christ: "You... you... utter shower of BASTARDS! Just wait until my Dad hears about this, there'll be some right old smiting, I can tell you for nothing. You'll be going round calling the wife a prossie and a slattern next."

Pope: "Err..."

J. Christ: "Oh, FFS, that's the final straw. I'm off fishin' with the lads - you bunch of GITS!"

Pope: "Oooh, touchy!"

Archbishop of Canterbury: "LOLz! Thank Christ He's gone. Had any good choirboys lately?"

First class ticket to Hell, please.


Hello millions of new readers! Did you know you can buy a very excellent book inspired by the filth on this website?

Here endeth the plug.

Condensed Films: Jaws

Condensed Films: Jaws

Time poor? Can't be arsed to dig out the video of when this came on ITV fifteen years ago? Never fear - we take popular movies, boil them down, and deliver them here in easy-to-understand chunks. No need to thank us. Really. Don't.

This is my favourite one of the lot. Laugh, damn you, LAUGH!

Jaws

Naked drunk girl: Swim swim swim

Scary music: Wom-wom. Wom-wom. Wom-wom-wom-wom-wom-wom-wom-wom.

Naked drunk girl: Swimmy swim OMFG!

Shark: Om nom nom nom burp LOLZ

Chief Brody: Hello. I am police chief Martin Brody and I am excellent. We appear to have a bit of a shark problem in this otherwise bustling beach resort.

Mayor: No. No we don't.

Brody: Yes. Yes we do.

Mayor: No. No we don...

Brody: ONOZ!!!111 SHARK! Get out of the water! SHARK! Oh. Sorry.

Lightly-oiled women in postage-stamp sized bikinis on the beach: Screemz! ONOZ! WTF! OMFG!!!

Mayor: OMFG D00d - U R so fired

Guy in boat: Hey! I'm in a boat! LOLZ

Scary music: Wom-wom. Wom-wom. Wom-wom-wom-wom-wom-wom-wom-wom.

Guy in boat: ONOZ!

Shark: Om nom nom nom burp LOLZ

Guy in boat, plus several other victims: Oh, we appear to be dead. That was teh suXXor!!111

Mayor: Plz to kill shark

Brody: OK

Hooper: I'll help! I hav l33t shrk kllng sk1llz! LMAO

Quint: Me too, on account of my being a bit strange and having a big boat. And also l33t shrk kllng sk1llz.

Mrs Brody: Plz don't die! Even though I sucked off Hooper in the novelisation, I still love you!

Brody: What?

Mrs Brody: Err... nothing. I've packed sandwiches.

Scary music: Wom-wom. Wom-wom. Wom-wom-wom-wom-wom-wom-wom-wom.

Shark: Om nom nom nom burp tasty boat LOLZ!

Quint: Plz 2 get a bigger boat.

Shark: Om nom nom nom burp tasty mental guy LOLZ

Quint: Ouch, that hurts. Also, I am dead.

Brody: Plz to smile you sonaofabitch!

Shark: Ouch, that also hurts, and I appear to have exploded all over the place. Just wait until my mum finds out, U R going to be sooo PWN3D, d00d.

Brody: ROFFLE!!!111

Hooper: Although I let Mrs Brody suck me off and get killed to death by the shark in the original book, I appear to be still alive. Result!

Brody: What?

Hooper: Err... Shark! SHARK! LOL.

The End. Or is it?*

* No.



Condensed Pluggery

The very nice chap from the PR company that got me into the premiere of '300' has been in touch to ask me to plug their latest wheeze; viz the Fantastic Four sequel, which, from what I've seen so far is tons better than the original movie. Not that the bar was particularly high on that front, to be honest.

"Plz," he say, "Plz to mention our excellent wiki-fied movie website, plz."

Knowing which side my bread is buttered, and in the hope of continued shameless ligging in the near future, I said "Yes".

"Yes. Yes I will. LOLZ."

So: Official Silver Surfer site. ONOZ!!! It's a Wiki!!!111 LOLOL!

Also so: Coming soon - Condensed Silver Surfer. OMFG!