The Guardian Really Really Really Hates Me (Well perhaps not)

[Update. So it turns out that they'd thought I'd nicked the picture! Which is ironic when you think about it. Most photoshops are produced by people nicking their source images. It's why I stopped Photoshopping and why I started to cartoon and spent the last four years learning the craft. Only, now my pictures aren't getting published because people think I've nicked them. I owe an apology to the people at the Guardian Witness. It's my fault for using an email account to catch SPAM.]

Okay. So, confession time. If you've read the blog for any length of time, you might have guessed why I was so utterly pissed off yesterday. And, yes, it had to do with The Guardian.

Let me go back 48 hours to the moment something caught my eye over at my favourite daily newspaper / the paper that occasionally just rubs me the wrong way. The Witness section were asking for alternative election posters. Well, you know me (I hope). You'd know I wouldn't be able to resist and indeed I couldn't. I immediately decided that I'd draw them a poster about my disgust at the way that David Cameron has treated Scotland, threatening the long term stability of the Union for a short term electoral gain.

I knew what I wanted to draw so I sat down early Tuesday evening and I started pencilling in some shapes. After an hour, I had the rough outlines of the cartoon fixed. Over the course of the evening, I then began to refine the lines as I normally do. It's a long process but I find it relaxing. I then started in on the cross hatching and by about midnight the pen work had been done.





Next morning I did the colour work. Then I captioned it and did a final clean up to remove any remaining marks. It was a cartoon that had taken me about four or five hours to finish because, as I keep explaining, I'm not a natural. I have to work hard to get anything looking half decent and that means dedicated all my free time in an evening to drawing a single cartoon.

Yesterday lunchtime, I posted the cartoon here. Then I tweeted it (it got one retweet, I think), put it on my Flicker account, and then on my yet-to-be-finished 'showcase' blog.

All that done, I submitted it to Guardian Witness.

Two hours later, it hadn't appeared so naturally I thought my submission had gone wrong. So I sent it again.

Nothing happened.

By 8pm last night, it still hadn't appeared.

Wasn't there by midnight.

Wasn't there by this morning.

Then around 11am, there was an update! Dozens of images started to appear. The entries had obviously been submitted over the past 24 hours.

The update lasted about half an hour, at the end of which: my cartoon was still not there.

So I sent an email to Guardian Witness. They didn't reply.

As I publish this around 12.30pm, it has still not appeared.

Now, I know you could say 'probably a technical fault'. You could say 'mere oversight'. None of that matters. All I know is the effect this has on me. It's why I was so utterly depressed yesterday. This situation is so symptomatic of my life. I just don't 'get it'. I think many of the things I do are of a reasonably high quality. My cartoons are not as good as I'd like but I'm still learning. I'm so much better than I was three years ago. Hopefully not as good as I'll be in another few years. Yet as I exist in the here and now, I don't think the cartoons are shamefully bad. What's more: I think they're a hell of a lot better than the puerile and (frankly) amateurish stuff you see over on the Guardian's Eyewitness boards. Yet please don't get me wrong. There's some good stuf over there. There's even some sublime work. I noticed that the great Beau B'Dor has even been posting there. Yet this morning there was nearly a full page of work by XXXXXXXX and, no offence intended to XXXXXXX but can you really tell me that this:

[Image removed. I shouldn't be picking on a guy just because my cartoon was (initially) rejected.]

Is more publishable than this?




It's a bad place to be. Frankly, if my work isn't good enough to give away to a page that publish nearly everything sent to them, I'd rather not shame myself producing third rate cartoons. This is why I'm not drawing today. My confidence is absolutely bloody shot to pieces. I think I might even need more doughnuts...

Election Notes

Okay. Today's cartoon finished and posted. Now time to write some words...

Another of the many frustrating parts of the election coverage is the way the media seem to be giving the most attention to the generally slack jawed and indifferent. I suppose it's  'news' that some people have no interest in politics but I'm not sure it's really important news. It's certainly a fact not worth repeating in every single news item.

The always excellent Emily Maitlis spent a good portion of last night's Newsnight wasting her quality heels wandering around some London hotspot asking smirking idlers about the party manifestos. It reminded me of being back in school when the teacher would ask the snot-nosed gibbon at the back of the room if he knew the name of the title character of 'Macbeth'. They would give the same shrug, the same creeping smile, eyes looking to friends for affirmation that their stupidity was admirable. And last night the exercise was similarly pointless and taught us nothing except that David Cameron should stop turning his beady eye towards the north when he starts talking about the shiftless.

There is, of course, a difference between wilful ignorance and ignorance that comes naturally. I believe only one guy had read a manifesto, which doesn't surprise me or, at least, surprised that Maitlis found at least one. I haven't read a manifesto and I don't intend on reading a manifesto. Manifestos aren't meant to be read. They're meant to be brandished like a holy book, waved above the head as though you're holding Dumbledore's grimoire or, as Maitlis correctly explained, finally opened but only when you want to prove that your government has gone back on its pre-election promises.

At this election, the manifestos don't even amount to any of those things. The manifestos are written by parties who don't believe they'll get into government and therefore are promising us the earth because they know that the juicy parts can be knocked out as soon as they enter into coalition negotiations. I imagine the first words out of David Cameron's mouth the morning after the election should he win a majority would be the words 'Shit... What did we promise!?'

Which takes us back to the news.

Today The Guardian are in the nation's most apathetic constituency which, surprisingly not, is up here in the North in Manchester Central. I sometimes wonder whether these reporters are setting out to find the story they've already written. I'm constantly depressed that the media in London talk about 'ordinary' folk being turned off politics. I'm not sure how I'm not myself 'ordinary'. I know a lot of ordinary people who talk about the election. It's just that the media never turn a microphone in their direction.

There can be no real surprise why so much of the nation is turned off politics and it has nothing to do with a person being ordinary or not. It goes to the heart of why Scotland has turned so much in favour of the SNP, which I'm certain should try to get the word 'independence' into their title, if only so that we'd be able to call then SNIP. Supporters of SNIP (for that's what they effectively are and what they effectively want) are clearly a generation tired of rule from Westminster and feel particularly aggrieved when their vote does not dramatically alter the government. Last time, Scotland voted in favour of Labour but got a Tory government delivering austerity. Yet the same is true of much of northern England and Wales. One Nation Toryism really has disappeared and the last government produced a Two Nation Toryism. It's everyone south of Birmingham and then the rest of us.

What you get is a sense that large portions of the country simply don't matter in this election. Where I live, the seat was decided generations ago. I might as well not vote or vote for whoever I like because the result will be the same. I suppose it's liberating knowing that you can vote Green or go Monster Raving Lunatic without any consequences but it's also pretty depressing. It means that there's no real campaigning going on. Nobody visits us and we are left with that familiar feeling that the election is being run by people who really don't care about the people. Tonight, I notice, David Cameron won't be attending the leaders debate. It's what he wanted, of course, and he clearly didn't want to attend the two 'debates' (or pitiful excuses for debates) that have already been held. This is the first time I've thought an election was being run by politicians some of whom are even less enthusiastic than the bloody listless public. In a way, I find my opinions hardening around those attitudes rather than the policies. I want to vote for politicians who show the passion and engagement with the public. Not politicians who slyly creep around the country meeting their loyal activists and sticking security personal in the face of some brave soul who dared put a little spice into the general election sing a slightly risqué song on his ukulele.

The St Vincent Tattoo and Other Erotic Thoughts

I suppose it's as seasonal as the migratory herring but I continue to find myself drifting away from The Guardian as my paper of choice. I still visit it every day for the cartoons, especially those by the incomparable Martin Rowson, but I'm increasingly clicking off it without any regard for of the articles. More often than I've realised until today, I find my mouse pointer moving towards the new link on my browser which takes me straight to The Independent.

One of the problems I continue to have with The Guardian is the amount of content written about (or often written by) sex workers. Not that there's anything wrong with sex workers who, I'm sure, are a friendly bunch of wayward souls, even when you get to know them on a non-profit basis. But unfortunately I'm one of those prickly snobs who prefers his prose written by trained (and preferably gifted) journalists. That's not to say that a high class call girl can't write a good paragraph about the global situation but they probably have ideas about the 'Russian position' that aren't for my breakfast table. It's like asking an economist to write a review of the latest sex toy and being surprised when they don't tell you about the size, shape and horsepower, but instead explain the market fluctuations in the global price of pink rubber.

My reticence about talking about these things might be simply my excessive English reserve. It might also be a generational thing, though I suspect it's more about my northern working class upbringing and the world of my youth. Sex was, in the words of Larkin, '[a] shame that started at sixteen / And spread to everything'. Somebody brought up in a middle class bohemian household might find the business neither quite so sordid nor quite so silly. And they might not find The Guardian's obsession with the sex trade so ultimately boring.

Take the headlines from today (I write this at the well-spanked end of Friday). The Guardianistas are getting heated about the 'face sitting protest at parliament'. Now, I'll admit here and now that I've never really fancied sitting on a person's face and can honestly say, with my hand on my naked heart, that being smothered by a woman's ample buttocks doesn't really appeal to me. I just can't imagine a scenario that might change my mind. In fact, let me indulge in a male vice for a moment, just for the sake of this blog... Let me remove the shackles from my usual English reserve and imagine a scenario by which The Guardian actually responds favourably to one of the cartoons I occasionally send them. Let's imagine the cartoon becomes an instant hit and it's spotted by my favourite blue-haired alternative diva of the moment, St Vincent, aka Annie Clark.



Sigh...

Fantasising on: Ms. Clark sees my cartoon and decides that it's perfect for her impressive right shank. She also thinks there's only one man who can ink it for her and that man's initials are Yours Truly.

'Dear Waywell,' she writes in an email. 'Sending you plane fare and costs to travel over here to Brooklyn to ink a tattoo on my upper leg. Very busy writing new album (Japanese spoons & brass bands) so haven't time to lie down. Can you work on your back as I write poems at my desk whilst sitting on my favourite comically wobbly stool as made for me by David Byrne? Yours. Annie.'

Now, obviously, I'd reply with an emphatic 'no' and explain why she shouldn't deface her perfect thigh with a tattoo. However, this is also the illogical stuff of an erotic dream so off to New York I go and I'm soon hard at work tattooing my cartoon onto one shapely upper right leg. However, mid cartoon, the tattoo gun leaps from my trembling hand, bounces off her Albanian banjo and hits the aforementioned comically wobbly stool made for her by David Byrne. Typical of Byrne, he's used cheap recycled wood and the stool breaks apart. With a pitch perfect scream (a la 'Digital Witness'), St Vincent begins to fall, her perfect posterior crashing down onto my face. What am I to do? How would I feel as I begin to struggle for air? Would I feel blessed by my current state or desperate to live so I might warn people about the dangers of tattooing cartoons on the underside of a favourite singer/songwriter/shredder?

Now this is far from scientific but, as I'm writing this, I am trying to detect any carnal stirrings from down below and I can honestly say that I can't feel a thing. It's as dead down there as a yard of Russell Brand's prose. Of course, it might be because the room is cold and my feet and legs are numb. Perhaps I simply damaged myself down there by blowing my school recorder too hard many moons ago. Yet the fact remains that the thought of my favourite screech rocker landing on my face does absolutely nothing for me and I still struggle to see what pleasure anybody could derive from such a strange practice.

Yet it's not just their current obsession with face sitting that turns me off The Guardian. Nor is it the articles with deliberately provocative headlines written by their odd looking dominatrix. Again, I'm sure there's a world for that sort of thing but the idea of being whipped into a frenzy by a plump woman in gimp mask doesn't sound like fun. I have better things to do with my evenings.

No, the reason I'm drifting away from The Guardian is because they seem to think they we should all be open about every aspect of our lives and, as we say here in the North, sod that for a game of soldiers (also 'a thing' down in sophisticated parts of London). Not only is a person's private life none of anybody's business but they should have the good sense not to bore me with the details. Since when do we all have to be open about our tastes, our private lives, our urges and desires? I sometimes realise I'm being vulgar when I express my lust for a Microsoft Surface Pro 3 (the i7 model with a heap load of memory) but what would people think if I started to write out every lustful thought I have towards, for example, the blue-haired member of Pussy Riot. Have you heard the way she says 'blue chicken' at 1:07 in this video? Now tell me it doesn't drive you crazy despite your ice cold feet!

The Guardian still has some sharp writing talent yet I drift further away with every shock headline, deliberately provocative statement, and sexually explicit detail they publish. Their business still makes an annual loss despite their immensely popular website but the people who'll eventually make the paper a success aren't people like me. To become popular you need to embrace the mainstream and, apparently, the mainstream is comprised of face sitters. That wouldn't be so bad but alongside the real journalists with fire in their pens, The Guardian employ slow lane grifters who are good for nothing more than click bait. Bring the two together -- the sitters and the grifters -- and you have a newspaper that's left me far behind. Very far behind with my fantasies as private as they're also very very dull (stockings, Norwegians, frogsuits).

Alan Rusbridger Reveals New Editor of The Guardian

Why I'm Intolerant of the Intolerance About Intolerance

It always amuses me to spot the cracks in the non-prejudicial facades that supposedly exist in the world's more enlightened places. We live in a society defined, in many ways, by people's intolerance to intolerance. The three big intolerances that we're not allowed to entertain are religious, sexual and racial. This last week, Mario Balotelli has been charged with the third by the FA, who accuse him of posting a racist cartoon on his Instagram page. The fact that Balotelli left Italy because he was himself the subject of racial abuse carries no weight. Nor does the fact that Balotelli is himself highly vocal about stamping out racism. There's no allowance being made for the fact he clearly made a mistake and didn't realise what he was posting. In any sensible debate about intolerance, the Balotelli incident would be quickly dealt with. However, so paranoid are the authorities that they must be seen to be highly intolerant towards intolerance, they must make a case out of every transgression. They have to be seen being as intolerant as the very people they're charging with intolerance.

The Guardian has a similar policy. The ethos of the paper isn't simply to reflect the diverse makeup of the nation. It seeks to redress decades of intolerance towards minority groups by skewing the news agenda in favour of those groups. There's nothing wrong with approaching a news agenda in this way. It helps define The Guardian and its readers and you can approach the website knowing that you will be condemned if you dare question that new status quo. It is not the place to defend masculine culture or any element of the white Western imperialist patriarchy. The assumption over there is that all people are equal but a few people are more equal that the rest. Don't make a comment which might be read as insulting towards women. Never express an opinion from the centre ground dominated by white middle-class men. It's hard to leave a comment which doesn't run afoul of somebody. Sneeze too much CO2 and you upset the environmental lobby. Quote the Bible and you're suddenly a Christian apologist. Mention the fact that you stand up whilst urinating and you're part of the phallocentric problem that is eroding civilisation.

And like I say: this is all generally to the credit of the newspaper.

Yet, as they attempt to be balanced towards all people and try so hard to be modern and progressive and liberal, sometimes they can't even see their own deeply held prejudices.

I read a comment on The Guardian a day or so ago which I just can't stop thinking about. It's been nagging away at me all weekend. It was a trivial comment to an even more trivial news story and there's a small chance the comment was meant to be ironic .Yet it's much more likely to have been written as it reads and, if so, then it makes me despair about the country at the same time as it perhaps even panders to my own prejudices.

The title of the story was 'Snow forecast to call in UK' and the comment read:

It'll all be up North.
Nowhere that matters.

It's interesting to see how one person's prejudice is another person's 'funny' joke. The comment was uprated and wasn't deleted. Yet I'd like to know how that kind of bigoted prejudice is any different to what Balotelli reposted. Had he tweeted something about 'It'll all be in Israel. Nowhere that matters' or ' It'll all be up Ethiopia. Nowhere that matters' he'd be rightly condemned. So what is the difference?

Now, I know I'm being prickly because I'm from the north and I tend to defend northern people and (as far as they exist) northern values. However, there's clearly something going on that isn't simply about one person mistakenly posting something to social media. The response of the authorities is overblown, hysterical, and without much sense. The same is true of the Dave Whelan story, in which a poor fumble mouthed bugger tries to dig himself out of a hole and ends up even deeper. Anybody with half-a-brain of common-sense can see what's happening. Yet there's some reason out there that these things can't be dealt with in a proper manner. What is that reason?

I think answering that question would start to explain the nuanced politics going on in the background of these very public displays of outrage. Perhaps if we could all be honest about our prejudices of class, race, gender, and privilege, we might actually be able to have some honest debates around the subject. Only then might we start to make a difference about our hopelessly unfair and deeply prejudiced society.

 

How Nigel Farage's Penis Ruined My Day

Damn it. Bollocks. Shit.

I'm swearing because I can. I'm also swearing because Google think this blog might be unsuitable for a family audience. Well, too bloody right. It's not family friendly now and never will be again. Arse. Nuts. Engorged flanges.

You might have noticed a yellow block at the top of the blog yesterday and this morning. I had big plans for that block. I'd hoped it was going to be filled with blonde women advertising bra sales and canoe weekends. I was hoping that advertisers might interest you in their knitted vests and you would click to buy yourself enough woolens for winter and that I would receive a nice commission on that sale. In other words: I'd finally relented and added Google ads to the site. I thought it would generate a little bit of revenue and every penny counts in these hard days in our frigid economy.

Only, I stupidly requested Google Ads on the one day that I'd drawn a penis on the blog and they have now rejected my application on the grounds that this isn't a 'family friendly' site.

I don't think I've ever drawn a penis on this blog in the nine years I've been writing it. I might never draw Nigel Farage's penis again, though, as soon as I type those words, I realise that will now have to draw Nigel Farage's penis again. In fact, I might as well make this blog about nothing other than Nigel Farage's penis. Hell, I might give its own comic strip.

The irony is that wherever I travel on the world worst web, I see many things more disturbing than a tiny drawing of Nigel Farage's penis. Football websites often have Google Ads alongside women fondling their breasts, which I don't take to be a 'bad thing' but certainly not 'family friendly'. However, I have run foul of the Google censors and now I can't even earn a few pence to make this blog feel like a viable concern.

So, like I said... Damn it. Bollocks. And shit.

 ***

If that wasn't bad enough, Nigel Farage's penis is also behind the second reason why I'm having a bad day.

A friend emailed last night to say that he thought I was desperate for popularity and I replied that I doubted if that's true. Beyond managing to sustain myself, my real ambition for writing and cartooning isn't popularity but simply to be read by a certain intelligent crowd who are cynical, sceptical, but good natured and broadly humanist. I'd like to know that there are a few loyal people who enjoy the things I do. I'd much rather be cult than mainstream. I'd rather have a few people enjoying most of what I do, rather than everybody enjoying just one thing.

However, some days, things like this happen to me.

It was hubris, I know, to post that cartoon but I'd thought it quite good. I didn't think it would be the best thing on the site but I definitely didn't think it worthy of being in (almost) last place.



Not to disparage another person's efforts but I have to really rethink things if my cartoons are getting ranked lower than this effort.



My friend is probably right. He's one of life's immensely wise and intelligent beings. Perhaps these dumb little 'Recommends' mean more to me than they should and I should shout, 'Screw them! Screw them all!' I should let people come here looking for me than searching for an audience whose idea of satire is something like that.

Needless to say: I now regret drawing Nigel Farage's penis but I know I'll now have to draw it again. I'll have to draw it again and again just so the bastards don't think they've won.

From Steve Bell to My @MartinRowson Moment and then Nixon’s The One

I drew a cartoon for today but I liked it so much that in a moment of deluded arrogance I sent it off to The Guardian’s Comment is Free hoping the catch the attention of the cartoon editor. Had I the email address of the cartoon editor, I might feel I had a slim chance of a reply but, as it is, I launch into this adventure with blind optimism. I was inspired to do so by today’s cartoon by Steve Bell, which used a similar ‘Cnut’ joke I used yesterday. They say that great minds think alike and all that or perhaps it’s just vulgar minds that think alike.

Speaking of truly great but vulgar minds, the wonderfully vulgar Martin Rowson followed me on Twitter yesterday. It might not seem like a big thing to you but when you’re stuck here in the north, far from the epicentre of world events and you’re struggling to keep your brain from going into sleep-mode whilst you edit a ten minute video of still photographs of a Nigerian housing estate, the fact that you’re followed by one of your favourite cartoonists just keeps the dark thoughts from the door.

I’ve written many times about Rowson and how his panels on display at the Cartoon Museum would have been the highlight of the day had that same day not included the chance to meet Ralph Steadman. Meeting Steadman was amazing but it was my trip to London that made me a true Rowson fan. I loved his Tristram Shandy and Gulliver’s Travels (though I preferred the pages where he used ink rather than paint) and I have some of my favourite panels scanned and hanging from my walls. One of my favourite TV shows of recent months was on Sky One when Rowson was in a particular savage but eloquent mood during his In Confidence interview with Laurie Taylor.

Anyway, my day will be more mindless video editing but checking my inbox every two minutes to see if The Guardian have replied. If they’ve not replied by late afternoon, I’ll post the cartoon here and you can appreciate the crazy level of optimism I had during the moments I sent it and just seconds before the self-doubt began to creep in.

Finally, a reminder to myself as much as anybody to watch Sky Arts 1 at 9pm tonight. It’s the second part of Nixon’s The One. The first part was simply the best thing I’ve seen on TV in a very long time.

Okay, I have an inbox to check…

Yet another pointless debate about social immobility among the very people causing it

Listening to David Cameron talk about social mobility is like listening to Elton John discussing deep sea welding. I sense that he realises this himself but Cameron wouldn’t be Cameron unless he’s aligning himself with some popular opinion. He’s the consummate ‘me too’ politician of our day and will undoubtedly be the first sitting PM to get himself a tattoo sleeve when he deems it politically shrewd to do so. The latest popular trend will always have him spittling his lips with unctuous words. ‘Of course, the public have spoken and I for one am not going to stand here and say that red hot pokers aren’t a suitable punishment for the work shy if that’s what people in Britain have decided. As Prime Minister, it’s my job to support these public driven initiatives and that’s why I’m also throwing my weight behind Mumsnet’s campaign to ban all knives with sharp edges and any stick that doesn’t have a rubberised tip. Yes, it might mean that we chop down a few trees but that’s a price we need to pay if we want to protect our children’s eyes.’

Of course, ‘social mobility’ is a problem that goes to the very roots out of culture and, much as I hate to say this, I’m not sure that Russell Brand is entirely wrong in what he recently said about revolution. Just look at the Tory’s current motto: ‘For Hardworking People’. It’s code, of course, for ‘we’re no friend of scroungers’ but, as with all things, the reality on the ground doesn’t conform so neatly to their quasi-Thatcherite ideology. Are they for the disabled who might not be able to work? Are they for the old, the poor, or the underclass? Are they really for the person working every hour to live on something much less than the minimum wage? It’s easy to talk about social mobility from a position where social mobility is a given. It’s easy to be hardworking when there’s an abundance of work, especially though family connections, but are they also for people on zero hour contracts and writers who don’t get paid for their work?

In modern politics, the only game that matters is the game that brings in the most votes and the current Conservative plan is to cauterise the places where they traditionally don’t do well. That only increased the problem of social mobility in areas such as my hometown here in the North. After seeing investment under Labour, it’s places like this that are now taking the brunt of Tory cuts.

Of course, they try to argue differently. The whole thing has a bowel knot of familiarity about it and Cameron has already addressed social mobility by leaping to discuss the racial makeup of the Tory Party, as though social mobility is only synonymous with race. Indeed, this new awareness of social mobility will no doubt lead to the usual round of positive discrimination which pretty much ignores the majority of people suffering from the lack of social mobility. I sometimes think that the worst thing you could be in these enlightened days is a white, heterosexual male stuck in a no-name northern town and not suffering from any serious but TV-friendly disability. I’ve never been asked to stand behind any Prime Minister as he gives a speech. In fact, no Prime Minister ever visited this town. The closest we came was Michael Heseltine flying over in a helicopter and arbitrarily deciding where the local boundaries would be drawn, completely oblivious to the regional allegiances on the ground.

I don’t know any celebrities and I don’t know anybody who knows any celebrities, except perhaps for one person I’ve spoken to online who is from Oxford and whose children were friends with a star of the Harry Potter films. Look at the profile of the average celebrity and they will have been school friends with other celebrities or their families or connected through marriage or their parents would have been famous in their own right. Look at that Claudia Winklewoman and tell me that she deserved to host the BBC's premier film show.

The problem I’ve argued for a long time is simply that there are huge areas of the country where chances are few to none. The country is run from London, with nothing much of note happening outside the major cities. All the major newspapers no longer cover news outside London with much conviction. A year or so ago, we were ravaged by a huge storm which barely made the news. A similar storm hits London and it's 24 hour coverage. Entire regions of the country are now covered by (at best) a single reporter, a fact highlighted by the sadly unambitious plans mentioned in this article from earlier this year. Compare The Guardian’s push into North America with their plans for northern England and, indeed, the area where The Guardian originated as the Manchester Guardian.

And that's what all this hand wringing comes down to. If the most liberal media in our country can’t be trusted to care about social mobility, then is there really any hope?

Deliberate?

Some Heartfelt Thoughts About Cheryl Cole’s Horrendous Bottom

There aren’t many blogs that have stayed in my blogroll from the very beginning but Bryan Appleyard’s ‘Thought Experiments’ is one. It’s always certain to get my brain working in ways that are helpfully tangential to things I’m already thinking about. Today, for instance, the reinvigorated Bryan is talking about ‘people who care’ and, naturally, that immediately made me think about the bottoms of attractive young women in their mid-twenties.

We live in a society where we are routinely expected to adopt positions we might not instinctively support. ‘Caring’ is one example. Even though it makes me sound hammer callous about the truly poor, I’ll be honest and admit that I never really cared all that deeply about ‘feeding the world’. I never went to any ‘Live Aid’ concert but I bet that many who did and bought the t-shirt weren’t actually all that interested in famine or food economics. They furrowed their brows and spoke in platitudes but, deep down, where all our bestial motivations snout around for brushed chrome phones and comfortable underwear, they were just there to see Bowie and Jagger perform.

That isn’t to say that I’m insensitive to suffering but growing up surround by media hype about films, bands, and national celebrations, it tended to make it difficult to recognise the actual reality of the world or to understand the true levels of hardship. I doubt if I’m alone. Once something exceeds the brain’s ability to comprehend scale, it’s as if the brain retreats to failsafe positions: ‘surely the government should do something’ or ‘isn’t it terrible…’ It is bystander apathy on a global scale and totally understandable because to fully commit yourself to the cause would mean changing your life, altering your routine, and sacrificing your comfort.

It’s just one example of the casual hypocrisy we’re taught to exercise between our schooldays and the Pearly Gates. We say we want to see businesses run ethically but the capitalist fat slides thick and heavy though our veins. What we really care about is the price of the new iPhone or the quality of our socks. It’s like people who declare that Michael McIntyre is funny. They don’t really think that but the BBC has filled them with a conviction as solid as slimed drivel nailed to a door.

The worst example of this quasi-doublethink is ‘political correctness’ which often applies a thin veneer of tolerance over more deeply held forms of intolerance, prejudice, and conviction.

I was reading an article in The Guardian yesterday about the horrendous Cheryl Cole’s bottom. On the horrendous Cheryl Cole’s bottom, the horrendous Cheryl Cole has had a large horrendous tattoo of flowers inked by some American artist who probably has a side line in wallpaper design. Jane Martinson, the writer of the piece, suggested the tattoo might be read as a feminist statement, as if to say: ‘men might think I’m ruining a very attractive bottom but I’m showing that my bottom belongs to me, the horrendous Cheryl Cole, and I can do with it what I like.’

The implication in both the article and comments that followed was that I’m not allowed to think that the horrendous Cheryl Cole had a rather nice bottom or that she has now ruined it forever. That would be an example of my being sexist and patriarchal about bottoms that are none of my concern.

It’s a hard slap to take. Even before I read this article I would often find myself wandering around in life and occasionally looking at an attractive female bottom before an inner voice would start to shout Guardian propaganda at me. There I was on the train into Manchester just a week ago, leaning slightly into the aisle to admire the rear of the departing guard (female), when the voice of my inner Toynbee began to bark and I fell ruined back into my seat. I live wracked with all kinds of guilt about my attraction to female bottoms, which I swear isn’t abnormal. There’s nothing illicit about these bottoms, which are usually in their mid-twenties and fully clothed, possibly in tight denim. Think Jacqueline Bisset in ‘The Deep’ or Emmanuelle Seigner in ‘Frantic’ and you’ll know what I mean…

Yet it's this discrepancy between thoughtless actions and thoughtful reflection that makes hypocrites of so many of us. It is partially why political rhetoric is so shallow in this country. There are too many things we cannot say, cannot admit, and are prevented from addressing. Politicians are forced to issue the most jabberingly stupid of statements on subjects which demand more nuanced debate. They lie to us, not because they are deceitful, but because we as a collective have allowed these lies to take on the appearance of moral truths in the hope that at some point everybody will begin to believe them.

For instance, it’s increasingly hard to insult Clare Balding these days lest people intuit that you’re insulting her sexuality. But Clare Balding isn’t annoying because she’s a lesbian. To say that 'she’s an annoying lesbian' should register exactly the same as if one has said that 'she’s an annoying commentator'. You wouldn’t interpret the latter to mean that commentators are inherently annoying and in a proper liberal society that should be also true of the former. The prejudice exists the moment you infer anything else about the statement.

Language mirrors thought, not always as succinctly as we wish, but in a way that we can usually presume it has a basis in a person wishing to communicate what they think. What advocates of political correctness fail to acknowledge is that merely changing the language does not change the underlying thoughts. To pretend that it can is, at best, hypocritical, and at worst, creating a generation of men who feel deeply conflicted about the horrendous Cheryl Cole’s bottom and its hardy perennials. And, as much as I'm sure you'll be shocked to hear this: I don't like them. I really don't...

My Penis Writes...

I was going to write something else this morning but found myself absorbed in writing this response to yet another miserable man-hating article by Suzanne Moore over at The Guardian. In many respects, I still prefer The Guardian to other newspapers but lately it has been testing my patience and I do find myself reading it less than I used to. Its feminist agenda has become quite virulent over the summer and probably needs to be pruned back to let in a little daylight and some rational thought. 

Another day and another nasty man-baiting article on the front page of The Guardian… Congratulations, you rich London middle class liberals. I find myself reading your newspaper less each day. Your tedious feminist agenda might be attracting the audience demographic you crave but you’re losing the one you already have. Perhaps your new North American readership loves this new direction. Yee haw! I’m just from the North of England, where this newspaper once originated, and you are increasingly less relevant to my life. Up here, having a penis doesn’t seem that significant even when we are sticking them in toasters or forgetting to wash them. We have other fun games to play such as dealing with government cuts (remember them?) and the increasingly brazen divide between the north and the south.

And to think I used to send my articles to The Guardian with the hope of publication. Oh, such typical naïve penis-led optimism! It never happened so I thought my comic prose might be at fault. Now I see it was my comic penis. There it limply hangs, ready to be ridiculed because obviously that’s all I am, all I amount to. You say The Sun demeans women by publishing Page 3 but, if I’m honest, I can’t see much difference to the way you routinely demean those of us damned by the meat. Whatever abilities I bring to this world mean nothing because of this precious piece of nothing between my thighs. My entire being is routinely reduced to the worst stereotype. Yesterday Polly Toynbee implied that because I’m a man, I’m part of that misogynistic culture that apparently pervades our country. Perhaps I am. Perhaps I have no right to reply. I’m just another of those slobbering would-be rapists, Twitter abusers, craven women haters in that big solid ball of ugliness you’ve created and labelled ‘men’.

So, thank you Guardian. You’ve put me off reading anything else here today. And thank you Suzanne Moore. You’ve earned your monthly stipend by again lowering the standards of a once great newspaper and proving that in an already shallow world there is always room for a little more crass vulgarity.

I would say more but I must stop typing. My penis is getting very sore from hitting all these keys.

So has Twitter finally shown the middle classes that the world is ugly?

Back when I was still one of those blue-skied optimists who smiled at kittens and sang Abba hits when walking jauntily down the road, I used to enjoy Twitter as an intellectual game. Writing a funny one liner in 140 characters or less was an enjoyable routine for a year or so. It was akin to doing the daily Sudoku but with a generally funnier outcome. Then the celebrities took over. Twitter was suddenly full of every hacking newspaper columnist, unfunny comedian, and chirpy radio DJ filling the timelines with their awfully privileged banter.

With the arrival of the celebrities, Twitter lost its largely formless state. Before it hit the mainstream, Twitter was like a page of blank paper sprinkled with iron filings. There was still a sense of equality across the Twittersphere. Quality tweeting could attract an audience. After the celebrities landed with their marketing people, PR consultants, and professional social media teams, the situation was magnetised and every individual aligned themselves towards these powerful points of attraction. Twitter was suddenly another version of the real world. There were those people with power and those without and the popularity of the former had nothing to do with the quality of their tweets. Katie Price (aka Jordan) demonstrated that and still does. Her Twitter account is hugely popular, currently approaching two million followers, all waiting for her gems of wisdom such as ‘Yummie full fat milk and cornflakes 3 bowls can't be normal lol but lasts me till lunch time’ (© 2013 Katie Price).

I understand the attraction of celebrity and I guess I’m as susceptible to it as anybody, even if I like to think the people I admire have more about them than plasticised glands and ghost writers. That’s why I also understand the frustration and urge to write something biting towards celebrities I dislike. I would occasionally launch a sharp taunt towards a celebrity such as Peter Andre. Was I trolling? I never saw it that way and if my barbs were sharp they were never needlessly cruel. Yet I can see (and saw) how some unstable characters out there lacked the wits to engage in humorous taunting and took things to an extreme. For some people, violence, threats and intimidation are the only way they can express themselves. I’ve been victim to that plenty of times myself. Comments coming to me through this blog have often been foul, spiteful, and distressing but after a while I guess you become somewhat immune to them.

You might guess, then, that the current furore over Twitter doesn’t surprise me in the slightest. Before Twitter got rid of the ability to watch the public Twitter timeline, I’d often sit and gaze the world’s tweets in real time. It’s no wonder they disabled that function because it didn’t take long before you would see how truly bestial we are as a species. I don’t even mean that small percentage of people who are, for want of a better word, ‘bad’. I mean huge segments of our population who demonstrated how illiteracy and stupidity prevail. I began using Twitter believing it a novel way to confine language, encourage pithy expression. I grew to realise that it’s actually the perfect way of expressing our piggish grunts, our infantile nature, our utter slavery to branding, marketing, and celebrity. Reading Twitter’s public timeline was like being trapped inside the mind of one enormous planet-sized imbecile.

Certain self-satisfied middle class commentators now want to censor Twitter because they don’t agree with what Twitter allows people to say. They are suddenly shocked about the world and our human nature which they, as columinists, are supposed to understand better than the rest of us. The debate has quite prominently been about threats of rape, which is understandable. The threats were clearly distressing for the victims. Yet these rape threats have channelled the nature of the debate into a familiar and not so helpful territory. Over at The Guardian, it’s turned into the familiar feminist bell ringing as the usual cowled figures wander the streets crying ‘bring out your misogynists’. The arguments sound tired and familiar. There’s barely an acknowledgement that men find these comments as offensive as women and that women are sometimes as guilty of posting ill-considered and sometimes offensive tweets themselves. (As an aside: the offensive comments left for me on this blog were mainly from women who wished me dead in a variety of unpleasant but imaginative ways. Hard lesson learned: never make jokes about Daniel Radcliffe.)

And that’s the point I wanted to make in my slightly rambling way. This debate shouldn’t be about gender. It’s about who we are as individuals and what we become in that silent inner world we inhabit when we’re sitting at our keyboards and are annoyed by something we read. Twitter is a pure expression of humanity at its very worst. It is the world’s inner monologue in written form: a shameful indictment of what we can be and what we’ve become.

Talented Eggs and Lou Reed's Kidney

Two uncomfortable truths I’ve discovered this week: that Lou Reed is apparently one gnarly old arsehole and that you can never find a woman a strong arm and calm nerves when you need one.

Picking up the newspaper from virtual stoop this morning, I noticed that last night was the finale of ‘Britain’s Got Talent’. I’ve now done my background research on Youtube and watched the highlight of the evening as an imposter leapt to the front of the stage and pelted Simon Cowell with eggs. Unfortunately, the excitement of the moment seemed to have affected the poor girl’s aim. Months of throwing lead-filled coconuts clearly didn’t pay off as she repeatedly missed her target. However, as memorable moments go it was certainly one of the better things to come out of that buzzard of a show in a very long time.

It did get me thinking about Lou Reed. In an article this week, journalists reflected on the worst interviews they’ve ever conduction and Lou Reed, it seems, has something of a legendary reputation for being truculent, rude, and downright offensive to his interviewers. I’ve also read of instances when fans have approached him in coffee shops only to receive a snarl in exchange for their good wishes.

I’ve been a big Lou Reed fan for a very long time, though I’ve also had to dodge the odd egg he’s thrown my way. His recent album, ‘Lulu’, made with Metallica was brave, experimental, and unfortunately utterly unlistenable. In fact, in discovering his music, the only egg I’ve had to dodge that had a more stinking yolk was 1975’s double album (yes, double album) ‘Metal Machine Music’. I admit I’ve not heard the whole album but I defy anybody to get through the first part without needing to self-harm.



Now that Lou Reed has a new kidney, I sincerely hope it changes his attitude towards fans and journalists who have only ever wished him well. But if it doesn’t, then we’re hardly any worse off. Reed’s last truly great album was ‘Songs for Drella’ (1990) or ‘New York’ (1989) if we’re talking pure solo efforts. Since then, he’s spent twenty years exploring strange barren roads where his audiences have been reluctant to follow. I admire his dedication to his art even if I think there’s a sadistic streak to any artist who enjoys trying to out intellectualise (or out aestheticise) their listener.

Reed’s music has always trod a thin line between musicality and atonality. He found an absolute perfect place with ‘New York’, often boasting that nothing was better than guitar, bass, and drums, only to then head back off into the avant-garde. ‘The Raven’ even had a hurdy gurdy listed in the instrument, for Christsakes! Lou Reed acoustic would, of course, be the way to go. For a man so into Tai Chi, I would have thought he would understand the concept of minimalized effort for maximum result. Experimentation can be a kind of artistic impotence – indeed, it is often used when artists feel stuck and unproductive. I don’t personally hold the line that artists or their art must be difficult to be great but I do think that sometimes it helps fill in the gaps when the talent is lacking.

It helps in the way that our friend the egg thrower showed that if you can’t sing, write, dance, or otherwise perform, then you can still be artistic if you are simply spontaneous, liberated from the rules of the form, and indistinguishable from a wild-eyed lunatic. [Since I wrote that line, I've discovered that the egg thrower is a BAFTA-nominated viola player, which makes her actions even more impressive since they express something about the frustrations of true musicians in an age dedicated to superficiality.] Had I been voting for ‘Britain’s Got Talent’, the egg thrower would have got my vote [This is doubly true give the new revelation]. There was something crass about what she did but at the same time she revealed a more important truth about life than any of the bland acts that made the final. The same is true about Lou Reed, even at his difficult moments. He lives it how he sees it. I understand the vision and I think I understand the man even if I don’t think I would want to meet him.

Michael Douglas and Sex Addiction: A Thought

Marina Hyde writes a funny little piece about Michael Douglas and sex addiction over at The Guardian, to which I wrote a quick reply that was hastily deleted by the moderators. I have no idea why or which of their community standards I broke but since it was a self-contained little bit of writing, I thought I might as well post it here. Of course, if anybody can spot my faux pas, I'd be grateful. Perhaps it was the bit about the 'sniff'. 

Whatever happened to the nice Michael Douglas from ‘The Streets of San Fransciso’? I can’t imagine Michael Douglas circa 1974 doing a stakeout to catch some guest star from ‘Happy Days’ whilst sitting in some old Chevvy discussing oral sex with Karl Marlden. Now there are words I never thought I’d ever type: ‘Oral sex with Karl Marlden’. Sounds like a self-help video complete with rubber toy the shape of the great man’s nose…

Sorry. I get a little excited just thinking about the commercial opportunities.

But my point is that whilst it’s all very good of Michael Douglas to warn us about the dangers of sex addiction and the rest, you’d think he could put all this expertise into some useful manual, perhaps printed on glossy paper with full colour photographs. Most celebrities only need to have a passing sniff of a subject before they have a book out and it sounds to me that Michael Douglas had more than a passing sniff of an interest in sex (pardon the image).

I speak only from an academic interest, of course, having studied ‘Basic Instinct’ on VHS for much of the 1990s. Why, I feel like I know Michael’s buttocks almost as well as I know my own, perhaps even more than I know my own since I rarely get to look at them.

Anyway, that’s my idea. Thought I’d share.

Luck

This morning, bad luck hounded me. I could smell its feral breath and feel its bloody teeth brush my heels as I tried to stay one step ahead of the snarling beast. You probably know the sort of morning: you get up and drop the soap, put on your t-shirt backwards, pick out odd socks... They are small inconveniences which warn you that some rampaging evil is about to fall into your path. Well, all those things happened to me yet I still thought it would be a good idea to make the bike ride into town I’d had planned.

The problems began when I grabbed my bike and discovered that the back wheel was flat. Deep sigh. Last week some local devil had been spreading two inch nails over the pavements and I’d found one embedded in my tyre. Clearly my repair hadn’t held. I pulled off the tyre and inspected the inner tube only to discover that last week’s patch was fine but there was a patch I’d put on some months ago which had peeled loose. I’d been trying  a new kind of pre-glued patch and it was clear that the heat of the morning sun on the bike had softened the glue. So, off with the old patch, fixed the hole with traditional rubber solution and patch. Tyre back on and inflated. 75psi. Looks good. Off I go...

All way going well for the first fifty yard. That was before there was one almighty explosion. I felt myself jump about half a foot in the air followed by the concussion of a pressure wave that knocked me off my bike, made pedestrians leap for safety into bushes, and red lights flash on some NORAD early warning command console. It became quickly apparent that my back tyre had blown like I’ve never known a tyre to blow.

Chagrined, teeth clenched, ears still ringing, I wheeled my bike home. Some builders working next door were talking about the noise and wondering if they should get on their mobile phones to say goodbye to loved ones. They asked me if I’d heard the explosion. I said it had been my tyre. They laughed, clearly relieved that they weren’t about to enter into a Mad Max scenario in which builders are doomed to roam a world where the skills of the plasterer are not in demand but there pale chubby bodies are. I also laughed like the poor naïve bastard I am…

I pulled off the tyre to find that the inner tube now had a one inch split. Deciding not to risk it again, I grabbed a brand new tube, reassembled my wheel, inflated it, 75psi, but decided that I wanted a coffee before I set off again.

I was sitting with my morning coffee, taking a moment to reflect on my bad luck, when a second explosion rocked the house. This one was even louder than the first. Doors rattled. Birds fell from the sky. I spilled coffee down my shirt. I ran out to discover that the brand new inner tube had gone the way of the last and I knew then that there was something going on that had nothing to do with punctures.

That’s when I found it. The wall of my rear tyre was shredded. This tyre was barely six months old and I’d bought from a proper cycle shop instead of the cheap wheels I usually buy from local supermarket. The weakness in the wall had probably been caused by the first explosion and then caused the second. Perhaps I’d had a pinched inner tube earlier that I hadn’t noticed…

So, now without a tyre and needing a new inner tube, I set off on the long walk into town, spend £20 on a new tyre and inner tubes, did a quick bit of shopping, thought of a few cartoon ideas (a relief since I hadn’t had any in days) before I walked all the way back. Hot and tired, I arrive home and finally repair my bike.

But this story isn’t about tyres. It’s about luck.

Despite my general atheism, my belief in rational things, there’s a part of me that believes that good luck and bad luck often come together. I want to think that we have bad luck so Fate can also gift us with some good.

Imagine my delight, then, when I look at my inbox and discover an email from ‘The Guardian’ asking if they can publish one of my comments in their weekend edition. ‘Great!’ I think. ‘Something I’ve written is actually going to get published! Doesn’t this prove that sometimes bad luck is what you pay in order to get some good luck?’ And it was immediately obvious to me which comment they’d want to use. I’d written 2000 words in the discussion on Frank Lampard’s new book. I was proud of the way I’d defended my position and it had been a genuinely interesting debate. They were obviously going to use some of my scathing one-liners, my well-reasoned defence of author’s rights…

Just to be sure, I checked the link they’d sent to the comment they wanted to publish.

That’s when I had the fourth puncture of my morning. I felt a small hiss as excitement departed my body. My shoulders sank. The comment they’d picked out is possibly the single blandest comment I’ve written in my entire life.

‘Great article and wonderfully written. This is why I read The Guardian.’

Ye gods! Why do you mock me?

Frankie’s Magic Bollocks: The Lampard Effect in Publishing

[caption id="attachment_1823" align="aligncenter" width="480"] Click me[/caption]

The blood boils. It sizzles in the veins and steams from the ears.

No, not the situation in Syria or the government’s austerity plans. I’ve been reading about Frank Lampard’s new children’s book, Frankie’s Magic Football.

What kind of hellish state are we in when these swine can appear in a quality newspaper publicising a book with such crass indifference to the poison-tipped spikes they are driving into the foreheads of struggling writers everywhere? I don’t know what’s more insulting: that these celebrities don’t seem to care that they’ve not written their own books or that these shallow bastards actually think that skills elsewhere should transfer effortlessly into having some skill with a pen.

Isn’t there some law in the land we can invoke demanding that the ‘author’ of a book must have written at least 51% of the words or drawn 51% of the illustrations? Because otherwise, how can we judge them or call them an author? We don’t accept horsemeat instead of beef so why should we accept this literary horsemeat posing as Grade A Rowling or Pullman? He might have had a few meetings with his ghost writer to hammer out a few ideas but let’s cut the bullshit: the only significant contribution Frank Lampard will make to this book is by allowing his name to be used. It’s marketing scam. It’s a publicity wheeze. It’s a sick indictment of our celebrity-obsessed culture. For make no mistake, it's not the grim-faced tyrants that will destroy us as a free society but the smiling celebrities who, in a very slick and clever way, make us think less and consume more. That they're selling their names to children worries me in the same way I've always been suspicious of McDonald's clown.

Perhaps I overstate my case but there is a generally ignorant and indifferent section of the public who will buy into this type of onerous deal, not thinking what it does to the publishing industry. Because that is the bottom line: if it makes money, publishers will invest more into other celebrities having fiction ghosted under their name. How long before Beckham has a novel out? Jordan’s done it with some success though, between her breasts and fingernails, I don’t see how she could have got within five feet of a keyboard.

Publishers will argue, of course, that the money they make from these celebrity deals will be reinvested into new authors. Perhaps that’s true. Perhaps that’s one possible future where writers live like parasites feeding around the anus of some greater unthinking host. But I wish quality newspapers would expose the lie instead of treating their readers like fools. They shouldn’t bow to the celebrity, give them an easy time when they should be ashamed to be in the room without asking hard questions about these odious little books. Make them feel the shame that they should feel for passing themselves off as an author. If I ran onto the pitch at Stamford Bridge and tried to dribble around Frank Lampard only to fall flat on my face, he’d rightly laugh at me. Then I’d be escorted from the ground with a lifetime ban and the media calling me a fool and a lout. Except for the bit where I get chased by overweight men in luminous jackets, how is that any different with what Lampard is doing here?

Yet, of course, it doesn’t matter what I say. In fact, people tend to disagree with me for picking on dear Frank. They say that the man has a right to make a living, that he's an intelligent business man, that the book might be good, and aren’t I just a bitter under-published writer with an axe to grind. And, of course they are right. It is sour grapes and some jealousy. But what’s wrong with that? I love words and laud people who write well. The high horse I’m currently riding is called Righteous Indignation. It might not be the favourite in the field but he’s a stubborn plodder.

I also find it remarkable that anybody could consider my defence of literary talent objectionable. I don’t support Chelsea but I’d be the first to admit that Lampard is one of the finest footballers of his generation who deserved every penny he’s earned from his skills. However, I reserve the right to criticise him, along with any other celebrity, who dabbles in publishing merely to make a few quid off the back of their name.

As to Lampard’s book: does it even matter if it is good? My point is let the true author of the book take the credit, do the interviews, and become a household name. I am interested to learn about them, not to read yet another tedious retelling of how Frank’s scored a disallowed goal at the World Cup. Tell me about the illustrator too. I admire their talent but I’d be surprised if both author and illustrator don’t feel some deep resentment that somebody else takes much of the credit for their work. I want the ghost writer to earn the royalties and have an advance as large any Lampard received.

Simply, what’s wrong with wanting to give credit to the person whose talents have created the book? Anything else is simply pandering to the people who believe that marketing, spin, hype, and branding are more important than depth, quality, passion, and individual talent.

This was rewritten from the comments I wrote as ‘UncleZippy’ beneath yesterday’s Lampard story over at The Guardian. You will probably disagree with most of this, as some people over there also disagreed. I don’t give a damn because I know that I’m right.

The Verbal Diarrhoea of Russell Brand

Written very late last nightas a response to the sensible people criticising Brand for his inability to write and the fools who think he’s some kind of literary genius.

Avast, ye scurvy naughtlings! What bilious envy do you pontificate over the writings of that fine mustard of a man? Why, Mr Brand’s idiomatic yarns are but the simplest to unpick. Like a flea in th’codpiece, it is but a scratch and a wiggle before the meaning ‘tis squished between finger and thumb. Consider: ’tis one part fine manly prose, loquacious with an ear for the rambling uppings and downings of our linguistic land, another part which devolves thusly into a kind of streetwise strutting of the ordinary, you know, speech, winkle-picked and ready for the shell-like, with bits that just hang, like, off the drooping end…

For each questing for the lingual Jabberwock, as if to demonstrate ample learning of the English vernacular, we shall have one mention of a wookie, won’t we, and of sagely Alec Guinness, using the Force, giving it a good old go for Blighty and all that. And with this light-sabre thrust of pop culture, we show like Russell is one of the lads, which he is, ain’t he?

That odd old bird Anthony Burgess would have trilled most lively at words put into most periphrastic utterances of bubbling froth. Ah, sweet Russell, so long as the dirty rozzers don’t feel your collar for suspected homicide of the mother tongue, you shall find much riches, like dosh, in this handbill, this flyer, this chip wrapper of the morrow’s morn! Like a modern Beckett (Samuel) or Joyce (James), you shake the tree and the most chucklesome fruit does land on your bonce and having read ‘A Clockwork Orange’ one too many times, words spring forth like large ladies in Spandex doing interpretive dance in aid of the lactose intolerant. Does anybody see your trick? Do they bonkers like for ’tis a merry jest signifying, like Dame Bonnie last week, nil points or as near to nil as make a good old bird warble!

Lastly, The Guardian should be lauded for giving use to you in these meaningful issues of the day, for employing a geeza who sprachen our language, know what I mean? Well it is, aint’ it? The ladies love him too, his tight pants swollen hot like some well-busty member of Corrie, which I don’t watch but you’ve got to mention to inculpate one’s loyalty to soapland. But I fear I ramble on too far, though that too is the charm of our liege lord of the ringlets and curls, for he writes at lengh cos it’s a protracted old trajectory from Beverley Hills, swimming pools, movie stars, a reference, if you were twigging, to that old TV periodical, ‘The Beverly Hillbillies’, which (note to self), Russell should remake, but Cockney-like, perhaps playing young Ned in tight white jeans, sexy full of the honey for Miss Jane Hathaway, who was a proper plain bird but he wouldn’t mind having a go if it were played by Keira Knightley who he of course fancies.

But enough! Unlike some bewhiskered types I could eyeball, this humble player is not paid a dime a word. Nor can he find favour in the right places to put his skills to use. Alas, alack, and cor blimey!

 

So The Maplin Catalogue Arrived...

Every time I buy something from Maplin (click here for my latest Maplin update) they ask for my postcode. ‘So we can send you some vouchers,’ says the chubby dreadlocked guy who looks like a Game of Thrones extra. But what Olaf the Pieeater really means is: ‘So we can send you yet another of our sale catalogues.’ And the most twisted part of this whole deal is that I actually look forward to the bloody thing arriving.

The catalogue never varies, of course, which is perhaps why the Rainman part of me quite enjoys it. There are always bargains to be had on solar panels to power your caravan and glitter balls for your mobile disco. The last page will always have great deals on AA batteries and that satisfies me in a way that’s really so psychologically deep that I can’t really explain. It’s like looking at pictures of the early Bardot sunning herself naked on the Cannes beach. I know the reality will eventually become either a far-right cat woman or my Sky remote packing up after only a couple of weeks but I love both with the same inexplicable passion.

This month’s exciting addition to the Maplin lineup is a Mobile IP Spy-Camera Tank. Why the hell I would want a Mobile IP Spy-Camera Tank I’m not sure except, perhaps, to recreate those scenes from the Moore-era Bond films when Q usually locates 007 lathering up a tall blonde Russian spy in a bathtub. However, since I’m lacking a blonde Russian spy, £109.99 seems a bit extravagant for a camera on wheels that would probably end up being used to annoy the neighbour’s cat. I wouldn’t pay more than £70 to annoy the neighbour’s cat. Maybe £75…

Apropos of nothing: I notice that they've got a new male model in this month’s magazine. Facially, he’s a bit Ross Noble but in the waistline he’s more Peter Kay. What message does this send out? I’m not sure except I think they’re acknowledging that the people who shop at Maplin might not spend very long hours in the gym, which makes the obsession with disco equipment all the more surprising... I just can't imagine this guy dancing disco.



And apropos of something else: I still see they have the cheap Ultrasonic cleaner on sale. I sure fell for that ‘better buy it before the sale ends’ line that Sven the Pimpled sold me a few months ago. Not that I’m complaining. It’s been a godsend unblocking my Rotring Isograph nibs and clean my dip pens… Sorry. That did sound a little too enthusiastic and I don’t want to put you off from coming back... And I was doing so well disguising the fact that, yes, I have very little of interest to talk about today.

I’m actually a bit 'written out' having dashed off 1,300 words with accompanying cartoon about the new Xbox One which was unveiled last night. Tomorrow, I’ll post both the article and cartoon which this morning I sent to ‘The Guardian’ for possible inclusion in ‘Comment is Free’. I really don’t know why I put myself through that ordeal… Why do I put myself through that hell? Thoughts, please, in the comments below. As long as it doesn’t include the word ‘penis’, ‘pill’ or ‘pump’, I’ll publish them. Hell, I’ll probably publish them anyway… In the meantime, he's a old cartoon from my notebook.