I Pity You If You Welcomed In The New Year With The Moronic Gemma Cairney

33 minutes into 2015 seems like a good time to wish you all a Happy New Year. Well, I say 'all' but I really mean my regular readers. I also wanted to say that one of my resolutions for this year was to remain upbeat, non-judgmental, less critical of our culture, and stop insulting anything that I feel is too lowbrow...

Except I started the year watching BBC1, presented by the deeply irritating Gemma Cairney, all inverted snorts and open mouthed excitement,  who told me to 'grab somebody to snog' and to 'carry on drinking'. How much do the BBC pay this witless oaf to come out with this stuff? Is this what we've become as a nation? It sometimes feels like we've handed New Year over to be produced by the brassy and brash, presented by the loud and guffawing. Village idiots are in charge at the BBC and they're earning a bloody fortune.

It's a shame because the fireworks in London were spectacular but they always are. Yet every year my first thought is: does actually find this hyperactive looped XFactor shite bearable? Why is our national celebration run by the US Army's psychological operations group, clearly trying to get some South American dictator out of a church? Wasn't there a report recently saying they shouldn't be allowed to torture innocents? So why do I end up having to watch the fireworks with the TV muted just to stop the looped abattoir sounds from inflaming my auditory nerves?  Why must we endure such a deeply depressing example of our national mediocrity at the start of the New Year? Has the entire country been taken over by the zombified acolytes of bad ITV talent shows? Are we all spray tanned orange or wearing muscle vests? Or in the case of the slack jawed Cairney, a jacket made from the blue plumage plucked from the arse end of Rod Hull's emu.

Speaking of the crass and unnecessary: I never much liked Queen when Freddie Mercury was alive but this reanimated version feels like something dreamed up in hell by Jimmy sodding Savile comiting his last crime against humanity. Why does every national event have to involve Brian May doing his splay-legged whining 24th fret bollock fiddling?

The point is: tastes are diverse so why not aim for something relatively neutral? I'd never subject people to the music I enjoy. Nick Cave belting out a murder ballad might not be for everybody enjoying New Year.  PJ Harvey might not be very festive. Yet why can't other people be as considerate? I'm not a huge fan of classical music. I own, maybe, five or six albums which I rarely listen to. Yet classical music is widely accepted as being neutral. A few pieces were even written specifically for firework displays, and, here's a crazy left of center idea: perhaps, they might distinguish London's celebrations from every other city so paranoid about their history that they're all desperate to be seen as young and vigorous. The only vigorous thing I felt this evening was the need to shake the TV whenever the gormless Carney opened her mouth wider than it already was.

Sadly, I remember when New Year TV was witty and topical and just a little bit intelligent. What's happened at the BBC? Why must these witless bastards subject me to this hell every year? Why do they have to assume that everybody is already paralytic and in the mood to grope? Why do the BBC act as though the whole nation is involved in an extended Caledonian remake of Caligula? Why do the BBC have to put me in such a crap mood only minutes into a New Year?

And yes: bang goes resolution Number 1.

Happy New Year.

A Bonfire Night Cartoon

‘Remember, remember the fifth of November; the Gunpowder treason and plot…’

I often wonder how many people actually remember why we have bonfire night or realise that it’s effectively a prolongation of the anti-Catholicism of sixteenth and seventeenth century England. In Lewes, they actually burn an effigy of Pope Paul V, or at least, I assume they still do.

Not that I’m for banning Bonfire Night on the grounds of religious intolerance. 99.999% of people lighting a banger tonight won’t be screaming ‘papist’ or shaking their hot dogs towards a burning cardigan and slacks topped with a Jimmy Savile wig. Bonfire night has become the one night of the year when the health and safety police are forced to cower behind their sofas as the rest of us express our personal freedom to stick a couple of sparklers down our underpants and wear a Catherine wheel as a hat. Not that I advocate sticking a couple of sparklers down your underpants or wearing a Catherine wheel as a hat. In fact, I’d probably recommend that you don’t do either. Leave that to the experts, as they say, or at least the guy who lives at the end of your road and has a glass eye due to a previous year’s larking about with incendiaries. As for myself, I’ll be indoors. I’ve not actually bought fireworks since I was a kid. ‘A fool and their money are easily parted,’ is a phrase I associate with November the fifth. All through my formative years I’d hear it muttered every time a particularly loud explosion shook the house.

I suppose the only reason we should ban Bonfire night is because of the injuries caused to innocent victims by local yokel types suddenly excited to rediscover fire. Tomorrow the news will no doubt have the usual reports. ‘Somebody thought it funny to set off a roman candle in a phone box but it took out the entire street…’ ‘He threw petrol on the bonfire but it set his trousers alight…’ ‘They tired bangers to the dog but it ran in the house and ignited the curtains…’

However, here’s a cartoon I drew last night whilst rewatching ‘God Bless America’ but with the commentary track enabled (highly recommended). If I’d had time today, I might have redrawn the kid and the parent but I don’t have the time.
I’m going to be on the 12.25 into Manchester where I intend to buy some new spokes for my bike and enjoy a coffee in a hopefully quiet and banger-free Waterstones.It's just started to rain so I'm stuck at my desk editing video.