An Englishman's Castle

July 4, 2012

Dear Hugh - The Video

An old friend of the blog at play.

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January 23, 2011

Reaching Rock Bottom with Geoff Baker

Rock Bottom: A Fanchild's Revenge by Geoff Baker

Some of you may remember him from the Dear Hugh letters , some of you may have a memory seared into you from the Chilli Cook-off (23rd July this year), others may have noticed him hobble-de-hoying with various notable wastrals and musicians (tautology alert).
This book has had painful and protracted pregnancy, lawyers were involved; it is sure to be a good read when it is released in two weeks time - pre-order your copy.

(I gather he will be also selling it directly - send an email to sales@ragabondpress.com to cut out the middlemen.)

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October 27, 2010

"Rock Bottom" is on its way..

Geoff Baker's Book Blog
Fuck a priest, I've just heard from the publishers and they said could I take out the vulgarities.
They said 'we are reserving the right to judge that your book may be offensive or pornographic to others and this may effect your royalties'.
Which others, I said.
People who might buy your book, they said.

So I got back to my editor at the publishers and said about this vulgarity business, may I run a few new words by you?
And she said 'what do you mean, new?'
And I said well, you know you said a lot of women readers won't like me using twat, what if I call it a doodle sock instead?
'No', she said.
How about a cock alley? I said.
'No, still too vulgar and you're making them up'.
I said no I wasn't, these were actual English alternatives from an official dictionary published in 1785 and how did she feel about 'box the Jesuit'? 'What's that?' she said and I explained it was wanking and she put the phone down.
So I called back and..
What about fart catcher, I said. 'What's a fart-catcher?' she said and I said it's what 1785 England used to call the personal assistant of anyone famous, because they walked so close behind their boss, and she said 'that's ridiculous' and I said, well actually, in my experi….but then I thought better of that.
And then she said 'look here, times have changed and our authors must be far more politically correct these days' and I said did that mean I couldn't use Irish beauty to mean a woman with two black eyes? Or a scratchlander to mean a Scotsman?
'I'm Scottish' she said and she didn't have time for all this now as she had to go to the hairdresser. You mean the nit-squeezer I said and she hasn't phoned me back yet.

I can't wait for the book to actually appear.

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September 5, 2008

A new Dear Hugh letter surfaces

The Diary Of A Madman: DEAR HUGH 21

Dear Hugh,

Well yes it has been a long time....

Old timers around here will remember the original series - linked here - new comers are in for a rude treat.

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December 24, 2007

Dear Hugh - Saving the Whale

Dear Hugh on Myspace reveals that the Japanese did require whales for scientific research - research into a complaint peculiar to Japan, known as "mame chin".
According to the delegation, the whales are hunted not to eat (using the flesh for food is a side-product of the exercise) but for a fatty chemical tissue found in the blubber.
"Mame chin", our reddening translator continued, is Japanese for "tiny penis".
Apparently the chaps of the rising sun are not quite the stallions of their counterparts in Europe and America - and that the demand for injections of this whale fat is led by Japanese businessmen who are planning trips abroad.
So miniscule is the average nob of Nippon that businessmen feel they will be humiliated if their condition is revealed on a business trip and that rather than risk losing face, they succumb to these injections, which have effect for up to a month, whenever working overseas.
Understandably, because they don't wish to wave this fact about, they call it "scientific research".
That's the truth.
And so basically if you want to save the whale, tell our whores not to giggle so much.
And I bet they don't tell you that on Newsnight.

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February 11, 2007

S.H.E.D - the S.P.E.C.T.R.E of our age.

An anonymous email arrives, obviously the agenda for some secret society. I believe it was found when they were tidying out Smith Square for the sale....

S.H.E.D BULLETIN

Happy New Year to all Sheddists. Must press on.

There has been a change. Nothing major but an emergency committee formed by me has changed the rules of S.H.E.D.

Due to Godknowswhat there has been only one S.H.E.D. meeting to date and I understand from one present that women were also there. A couple of slappers, apparently, but nonetheless outside of Association rules (unless the woman concerned has arrived dressed in a plastic mac and carrying a cucumber).

Anyway, all Sheddism is now to be done online, as there could be a book in this and also because I would quite enjoy e-mails other than those whom somebody has told that my cock needs extending.

Anyway, global warming. It is a bugger not least because it is interfering with the principal practice of S.H.E.D.; growing drugs.

At the snowdrops and quite probably the horse chestnuts are already out, what time of the newly-heated year do members think should be set aside for THE GREAT PLANT?

THE GREAT PLANT
After heeding the warnings of Member O, only 10 seeds were hatched last season and Member B killed 8 of them. Of the two which Mrs. B manages to resuscitate to the standing of a bush, one did a Danny La Rue at the point of budding and by the time that it was noticed to be shrieking "I'm a lady!" it was too late to unmask the roaring bender bastard.

Subsequently Member B only harvested two tobacco barrels, which is rubbish. So this year instead of 10 seeds, we shall be planting 40.
Due to the intended increase in cultivation, obviously the potential forest cannot be grown at The Shed On The Mount alone. Please complete the following survey. Return your survey to me we will get the results and comments up on so me form of website thing.

A: Do you intend to plant any seeds of your own this year?

B. If yes, how many are you prepared to rear?

C. Are you prepared to rear any seeds provided by another Member?

D. If so, how many?

E. Alternatively, are you prepared to join one of the 'commando units' , which will discover a good place in the wild where seeds can be planted and reared?

F. What else do you think we should grow?

G. Has anybody tried this salvia stuff that Member O proposed?

H. I've got a stack of it, dried. What do you do with it?

I. Is any Member interested in joining the Birch Sap Rape Committee, which will be raiding West Woods next weekend to drain the lifeblood of trees for an age-old elixir?

J. AOB

So who was that fresh faced Old Etonian whose membership card was also attached?

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July 7, 2006

A year ago - the "Dear Hugh" Responses.

An Englishman's Castle: DEAR HUGH (STATE OF EMERGENCY SPECIAL EDITION)

July 08, 2005

Go and read the great letter I was honoured to publish - I didn't write it, wish I could write that well!

And you may like to read the following Apology Edition and even GB's views on two minute silences

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March 10, 2006

Super-mad, me

Older readers may remember the Dear Hugh Letters I was given to publish (If you haven't read them please go and do so now! - the July 8th letter is a masterpiece).
The author has now started to publish more of his work over on a Yahoo group - along with some background - In 2004, after 15 years together, Paul McCartney fired me as his head of publicity because – or so he told the world in a press release – I had become “increasingly unstable”.

So in the interests of continuity I have stolen the first chapter and present it here - you will have to go and join the Yahoo group for the rest and all the background and gossip...

GeoffBaker : BOM CHAPTER 1

SUPER-MAD, ME

A personal study of instability,
how Homo Sapiens 2 are coming,
why life is a dress rehearsal and
other better ideas from
a miscellany of month of madness

BY
GEOFF BAKER

January 3rd 2006

In 2002, possibly 2001, I began to have a nervous breakdown.

A number of factors contributed to my breakdown; a then-angry marriage made angry by me, extreme misery in my job , as many as three grams of cocaine some days and no less than half a gram every day every day for three years, the habit of showing off my prodigious and socially-damaging capacity to drink more alcohol than others did and a nagging instinct that I was thinking differently from almost everybody I knew.

There were a number of other things and people responsible for me falling to bits, but I’ll out them later. What I want to explain at this stage is that the main cause of my breakdown was an awareness that I was mad.

By most people’s standards, I am still mad. By those same standards, I hope never to be sane again.

Like almost everybody, at first I thought it was bad to be mad and I set about trying out all those psycho charlatans who advertise their alleged ability to “right” your balance. I went to shrinks in Harley Street and to others in their cosy and quaint homes.

But it was a waste of time once I discovered that these all of these psychiatrists of varying qualification were useless to me, principally because they did not “get” my problem. In the end and with all of them, I wound up just telling them what they wanted to hear and never kept the next appointment.

For a long, long time this “it’s bad to be mad” hang-up which I had picked up from some idiot in my infancy crippled me. I could not get out of bed in the morning, or for most of the day, because life seemed to threaten me and my bed was my only safe place. I bored myself to the point of wrist-slashing by reading a lot of self-help (sic) books and paid as much heed as I could muster to a lot of stupid aphorisms that were predicated upon the “pull yourself together” philosophy.

For a long time I felt that the only person who made sense to me at all was my dog, Jimi. Sometimes he seems to me to be the spirit of a dear friend who died some years ago.

I only claim that because I am what is populistly known as psychic. This does not mean that I have constant flashes of the future – I have only had about eight of those in my life. By psychic, I mean that I am more sensitive to invisible changes in the moods of others, more perceptive and aware of the accuracy of my instincts. We shall return to this later as everybody has the capacity to become more psychic, if they want to. It’s all only a matter of letting yourself feel.

In 2004, after 15 years together, Paul McCartney fired me as his head of publicity because – or so he told the world in a press release – I had become “increasingly unstable”.

Leaving Paul greatly assisted my breakdown, not because I had been rejected but because it was plain to me and some others that even at my most “unstable” I was better at doing the job than the bulwarks of stability who replaced me; it was the illogic of getting fired that sent me spiralling into further depression, I fell right apart simply because sacking me was not the best idea.

When I was young, I studied Philosophy for three years at the Hatfield Polytechnic that some twat in Whitehall decided to rename The University Of Hertfordshire for the purposes of being pompous.

I enjoyed Philosophy because I had always loved ideas and had also always marvelled at how few people had any good ones. However, it was not until I began to near the age of 50 that I realised that the whole point of Philosophy was not to recite or remember things that Wittgenstein or that fool Descartes had said, but to use Philosophy to think for myself.

I realised that so few people think at all these days. Internets and computers and the spirit-shattering working for corporations supply your thinking and the most that is ever individually required of your mind is to deliberate which programme to watch on television and which ready-made meal to choose as a means of accelerating your obesity.

I began to wonder why it was that I thought so much and why others thought so little. I also became fascinated with wondering why it was that non-thinkers got so irritated that I was thinking all of the time – and how anybody with even the tiniest brain could defend the intelligence behind advice like “you think too much”.

To me, that is as nonsensical as telling me that I breathe too much, because thinking is what humans are meant to do. Thinking is what defines us as homo sapiens; it’s our gig.

Then, at the Christmas of 2005, the penny dropped.

I realised that not only was I mad but that if this was mad, then I had been mad since birth. Or rather, since I was old enough to understand that I did not see the world as most other people did and that I did not see the point of living in this world, mine or theirs, in the way that most people did.

My epiphany, aptly, came from a pulpit. I was sitting in the back pew of All Cannings Church, in Wiltshire, pretending to be Christian for the purposes of enjoying the village schoolchildren’s Nativity interpretation.

The service was one of those Nine Carols and Nine Lessons productions that people who do not have children believe will interest kids and stop them fidgeting and whispering to ask when this God-numbing charade would finish and would there be mince pies afterwards.

Brian Ball, churchwarden of the Cannings parish, got up to read a lesson and because I like him, I listened instead of pretending to look as if I was listening. Brian read a few paragraphs from Genesis, the bit about how Man got to be cast out of The Garden of Eden.

As he began to read aloud, I felt myself “talking” to God; just for the craic. At that point I was unemployed and with no hope of work. I had lost a job that had paid me between $180,000 and $210,000 a year, my wife appeared to loathe me, Christmas was not feeling at all Christmassy and if it had not been for the fact that I had recently discovered what it is like to be dead (more on that later too), I would have happily have ceased to be.

Correction (already); I did not “talk” to God and I do not want you to get the impression that I have become some form of irritating Bible-basher. What I meant was that I felt like I was communicating with God. And basically what I vibed Him was “give us a hand, for fuck’s sake, because I’m on the point of just giving up completely”.

By the way, I do not believe that it is wrong or bad or infringes that absurd concept of sacrilege to use the word “fuck” when dealing with God. I cannot bring myself to accept that anyone who created all of this will be offended by swearwords which, by definition, are actually His creation in the first place.

Anyway, having sent this thought to God I expected nothing to happen as usual. But then I heard Brian Ball reading this bit of Genesis, Chapter 3:

14: The Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, cursed are you above all cattle, and above all wild animals; upon your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life.

15: I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel”.

Now, looking at it like that – retyped verbatim from The Bible, it is clear that in verses 14 & 15 God appears to directing his anger and smiting at the snake and we know this because of where the speech marks (“ “) begin and end.

But, if you read it like that, it is utter balls.

Casting aside for one moment the natural inclination to wonder why it was that God felt that upon your belly you shall go was a punishment for a fucking snake – which to me is cause enough to ask if God had had a few – I puzzled over why Adam, Eve and The Snake should be especially bothered by enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed.

If you’re Adam or Eve, or The Snake for that matter, you’re hardly going to consider it to be The Greatest Punishment Possible to be told that you are not going to party together anymore.

It defies reason.

“What’ve you done?”

“Oh, we’ve broken the one rule that God told us not to, the absolute capital crime”.

“Shit! You’re for it. What did God say?”

“He was fucking livid; he said that as a punishment we would never get along with snakes”.

“Bummer. Err…were you planning to spend much time with snakes?”

“Not especially”.

“Hmm. Sounds like God’s doing his mysterious ways thing again”.

Thousands of years of received wisdom (sic) has been based on believing this crap. Entire religions and the ways of life for billions of people has been based upon weirdness like this. Wars are fought and deaths happen in droves because people believe it.

And then the penny dropped – hang about, God wasn’t talking to the snake at the bit when the Bible claims he was. He was talking to Adam, who wasn’t paying attention at the back.

Hearing the words read from the pulpit, instead of reading them with the assistance of the quotation marks, made me see what God was actually saying.

Never mind the bit about the snake; who cares what happens to snakes anyway? He was saying the important bit to Adam, to the Man. The “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed” bit is directed at the man, not the bloody snake.

Now, reading it like this, it’s a hell of a punishment; a real shit-kicker of a curse. And now, instead of looking like some bumbling idiot who just makes women and snakes hate each other, he’s really fucking up your day.

He was actually saying: “You have so pissed me off, so much so that I am going to punish you by making men and women antagonise each other; I’m going to make you think in completely different ways”.

And that, you will surely admit, IS a punishment – to inhabit the world with Men and Women, give them dominion over everything on the planet, but to fix it so that Men and Women piss each other off. To coin a phrase, Christ, that‘s a brilliant punishment; very God-like.

Anyway, in bed that night I began to think “how did this happen?” How had we, mankind, spent all these eras not realising that we had misinterpreted The Bible because of a punctuation mistake?

For those of you who don’t understand punctuation, what I’m saying is that there should have been speech marks ( “ ) after dust you shall eat all the days of your life to indicate that that bit was directed at the serpent and the next bit – I will put enmity etc – was not.

Again I thought, how did this happen? God is not by all accounts a cretin, so how did he misrepresent himself so enormously?

Then I realised, God did not write The Bible. Man wrote The Bible.

And as we know from two to three thousand years (and the rest) of sheer bloody misery, man gets it wrong. Over and over and over again, man (by which I mean humans) screws up.

Quite simply, whoever wrote or sub-edited The Bible got the dictation wrong or read his notes back incorrectly. It happens.

And what The Bible was actually saying was: Men and Women will never see eye to eye; they’ll need each other in order to breed and continue the existence of the race, but they will never get along.

Not only is that a great punishment, it also shows that God has a fantastic sense of irony. That and the fact that he’s a spiteful bugger.

Anyway, I then thought – well, how come I get this and nobody else has noticed it? Am I more clever than Abraham? Cripes!

And it was then that this and a bunch of other thoughts copulated and formed the theory of Homo Sapiens 2.

The theory of Homo Sapiens 2 is, like all that has previously passed for genius, very simple.

Life is all evolution, right?

We, Homo Sapiens, have evolved from fish by way of reptiles, apes and Neanderthal Man and various other sub-thinkers, right?

So, if Life is all evolution, we must still be evolving.

And yet we have had the ridiculous conceit to assume that evolution has stopped with us.

Bullshit. Why should it stop? Why aren’t we still evolving?

Why should Homo Sapiens be anything other than just another form of the evolution?

And then I thought – maybe Homo Sapiens ARE constantly evolving and developing.

OK, if that’s the case, how are we evolving?

It must be that we are getting cleverer. We, the Homo Sapiens of 2006 are generally cleverer than the Homo Sapiens of 26 BC, we can read and write for starters.

Then I realised that maybe we are evolving very, very, very slowly in becoming Homo Sapiens 2 – a new man that is distinguished by thinking deeper and better than the ordinary, non deluxe model.

Then I realised that evolution of a species does not all take place at the same time. We did not all of us cross a line at one point and cease to be fish all at the same time.

Evolution is gradual and that means that some of the species will evolve faster than others.

So I thought: OK, if we are evolving into a cleverer Homo Sapiens, as seems reasonable, maybe prototypes of this Homo Sapiens 2 have occurred over history.

If that is the case, how would they be noticeable? By their thinking.

OK, so what is Homo Sapiens 2 Thinking and how does it differ from Homo Sapiens Thinking?

And the answer came: It is a better idea.

By now I was seeing that I was not mad in the slightest. I was and am Homo Sapiens 2 and it was that which was considered to be madness.

Let me explain madness.

Madness is thinking abnormally.

Abnormally means – not normal.

What is normal?

Normal is the state common to most people, to the majority.

So madness is just not thinking like most people do.

So madness is not a mental deficiency, it is a social deficiency that over time we have been led to believe is an absolute.

Whereas in fact it is nothing of the kind, it is not an absolute like time or space, it is an entirely relative term (sorry to lapse into Wittgenstein but that’s what you get from sending your kids to college).

Basically, what I believe is that those of us who are considered to be mad and whom society has castigated over the centuries as mad, may actually just be people who think differently, think better, than the rest of the mob.

And that throughout history there have been early examples of Homo Sapiens 2 who generally have had a rough time because their Homo Sapiens 2 thinking clashes with the more basic thinking of Homo Sapiens 1.

Early examples like Jesus Christ, for instance. We’ll come on to him, later as well.

The more I thought, the more I realised that Homo Sapiens 2 looks at the world in a better way. That is the one certain distinguishing feature of HS2, we have better ideas. HS2 are more perceptive, more sensitive, and a lot more loving than HS1.

HS2 are not violent. HS2 do not start or fight wars. HS2 sees that consumerism and capitalism are each a really bad idea.

And a lot more else that will be explained later. Basically we’re just better thinkers.

Simply put, Homo Sapiens 2 are more humane than the HS1 mob.

And this book will tell you how HS2s think and why you are so wrong to still be thinking HS1. Not that you can help it, you haven’t evolved enough to be anything else yet.

You should also know that HS2 thinking believes in the possibility that this life IS a dress rehearsal.

And you ought to worry about that. A lot.

More NOTES (to be written up properly later but I can’t be arsed just now)

HS1 attraction to the physical is ridiculous. That doesn’t advance anything.

HS2 thinking – humans are like seedlings, a Divine Being seeds out the best of us for next stage. The most HS2 are picked. Because you wouldn’t want a bunch of angry, beastial HS1s running around Paradise spewing over everybody they weren’t already hitting.

HS2 thinking that HS1s are wrecking the planet and if HS2s don’t intervene, there won’t BE a planet for when, in millions and millions of years, all people are HS2. So in order to preserve the evolution of the race, HS2s are trying to save the planet and alter HS1 thinking.

So I thought, if I’m right – and the logic seems to me to suggest that I am – then I had better write this all down in the hope that maybe it might help to explain how HS2 thinks and for you to see whether you are HS2 or not.

By the way, you’re probably not; judging by the way you behave.

But you could be. I do know other advanced HS2s. I know two in particular; three if you count my youngest daughter. A lot of my friends and loved ones have HS2 in them, but these three are especially advanced.

Anyway, it’s a bit more complicated than that and it all connects with the HS2 view of Creation.

HS2 thinking

If, as I am quite prepared to accept in lieu of a better idea, that The Big Bang created everything, then that means that this cataclysmic explosion of 12 billion years ago created not only life, it also created consciousness.

That must be the case. Where the fuck else does consciousness come from?

So consciousness is a part of the universe that was created by the Big Bang.

HS2 thinking is that the universe must therefore be one big mass of consciousness and that after our bodies die the one thing that does not die is our consciousness.

Instead, our consciousness just goes back to the universal pool of it.

It gets a little bit more complicated but don’t worry, the racy good stuff is just a few more pages on.

HS2 thinking is that there are Good and Bad forces in the Universe and that the Universe is essentially things in a state of harmony. When the harmony is harmonic, all is Good. But

(NEED TO EXPLAIN/WRITE UP THESE NOTES, OR MAYBE NOT? DO IT LATER).

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July 22, 2005

Dear Hugh 20

Friday July 29th 2005

DEAR HUGH,

A few words on the latest terrorist attack in London:

Missed.

Missed again.

And again.

And now I feel a chant coming on:

“You’re crap and you know you are…”

This morning’s Independent has a front-page headline which comments on the situation thus: “CITY OF FEAR”.

I reproduce this merely to demonstrate why The Independent doesn’t sell that much. Had The Independent wanted to more accurately reflect public opinion over here, it would instead have headlined its front page so: “TOSSERS”.

Back in the loud old days of the Eighties, when you couldn’t catch a London taxi without the IRA blowing it up first, the Provos issued a slightly chilling observation after one of their bombs failed to go off. They said: “We only have to be lucky once. You have to be lucky all of the time”.

There is some resonance, obviously, in adapting the IRA’s comment of then to fit the situation in London of now. However, I prefer to believe that there is more weight in adapting Winston Churchill’s famed comment against spiky criticism:

“But in the morning, you will still be fuck-wits”.

And in celebration of the future now facing these frighteners, the celebrated chef Michael Stone has created the following menu of

(a) Bread and (b) Water.

Enjoy shower-time, boys.

Best,

GB

Posted by The Englishman at 10:16 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

July 21, 2005

DEAR HUGH 19

DEAR HUGH,

If I was the sort of ex-PR chap who had written or was writing or had a yen to write a novel that national newspapers had predicted would be a dark satire on rock stars and the cult of celebrity (I may have used the wrong consonant in “cult”), I would be very bothered by the story in Sunday’s Independent which revealed that the Government has banned books by spin-doctors. So I’m writing this under an alias.

Apparently the Government’s Cabinet Secretary has forbidden publication of the memoirs of former No.10 press officer Lance Price on the grounds that they are “completely unacceptable”.

Hmm. So I don’t suppose I’m going to have much luck with a tome entitled The Way-Hey Of Yesterday, then.

Not, you understand, that any such book exists, has ever existed or shall ever yet exist – as, under the terms of a confidentiality agreement the mere idea of the existence or non-existence of such I am not at liberty to allude to, let alone discuss, I of course do not have the slightest idea what you are, may be or will ever be thinking.

But just say, for the sake of argument, just pretending, that such a book did or might possibly exist – just playing, ‘cos it honestly doesn’t, really, I swear, really, you can look – then where’s the right in that?

I mean it’s all very well and OK for every bloody Prime Minister to publish his diaries and go tromping on tour across the USA lecturing about the time he pissed in the coffee when meeting the TUC, but if some poor assistant press officer wants to earn a bit of cash doubtless because he’s saving up to have his peculiarly-warlike forename changed by deed poll, then the shutters come down.

There’s New Democracy for you. Not, obviously, that this Draconian censorship will affect me; especially as I’m quite plainly writing just this, The New Gentleman’s Grumpy Old Cookbook.

Bit of a mouthful, I admit, but then I’ve been told that I usually am. But it has to be a long title because my book agent advises me that we have to get all the buzz-words in, like “new” – apparently “new” is good for the growing population of Alzheimer enthusiasts, it helps to persuade them they’ve not read it before. And of course “grumpy” and “old” is all the rage – in both senses of the word.

However, I think my agent is either not on the case or is on the gin because I don’t think people want grumpy old books anymore.

No, ever since The Da Vinci Code, god-bothering books are poised to be the new big thing.

You can scoff but I bet you a quid that following the claim in the papers at the weekend that Da Vinci author Dan Brown has earnt $140 Million from the 25 million copies that he’s flogged, as we speak there are novelists all over the planet rushing to knock up anything with a religious theme to it.

In fact I understand that Penguin is already repackaging Jack Kerouac’s On The Road To Damascus, Sebastian Faulks is editing up Bird Evensong and Delia Smith is filming a new series for the BBC to accompany her forthcoming guide How To Bake Communion Bread.

Even I consider it entirely prudent to re-title this here publication to

Christ! It’s The New Gentleman’s Grumpy Old Codebook.

I am fascinated by The Da Vinci Code. I haven’t read it, of course, but I take my Homburg off to Mr. Brown for having the inspired idea of claiming that Jesus somehow dodged crucifixion and married Mary Magdalene instead. I always thought there was something going on between them after I heard about that foot-washing business.

Mind you, I’m not so convinced by Dan’s other claim that the Jesus bloodline has continued down over the ages through Europe’s royal dynasties because if that’s true, then judging by our current lot over here there has plainly been a mix-up at the transfusion unit.

No, what fascinates me is the Catholic Church getting in such a tizz about the likelihood of Christ getting married. I don’t know if you’ve knocked about St. Peter’s Square of late but apparently there’s hell going on about this down there.

Call me a heathen, but I’m puzzled by this. How is it that the cardinals have a problem with Joseph standing up at the wedding reception and saying “As you can imagine, there was a bit of a row when Mary told me she was pregnant…” and yet they completely take it in the stride of their cassocks that there was this chippie who created a bit of a stir by walking on Galilee and caused havoc by interfering with the water at the Nazareth meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous?

I’ve always quite liked Christ. I thought he was what we used to call dead cool. Well, dead, obviously. But you know what I mean. For starters he pretty much inspired Our Look in the Seventies. In my teens, I fancied being like Jesus; all that healing with the laying on of hands stuff seemed fab.

In fact it wasn’t until I first put my hand inside a pair of knickers at the back of the cinema that I realised that being a healer possibly wasn’t the blessing that it was made out to be.

But, all in, Jesus was the guv’nor; he didn’t shave his head like some gods we’ve known and he didn’t seemingly over-eat like that permanently-squatting Buddha (it’s no wonder you’re fat, get up and walk about a bit). And, unlike some of his Indian equivalents, Jesus had the advantage of not seeming to possess an implausible number of additional arms and legs.

And I always found that him not having the face of a green elephant was a bit of a bonus too.

No, I’ve long had a bit of a quiet thing about Jesus; good with words – in fact, for a bloody carpenter, brilliant with words. Never sitting about just asking for tea or saying “you’ll be needing an RSJ for that”. No, it’s “Do unto others as you would have done to thyself” – top stuff! “Love one another with a pure heart” – good one.

In fact it has always irritated me that just as soon as some twat invented the Church as a haven for dodgy blokes who only want to get togged out in skirts on Sundays, everybody seemed to forget about the love and peace stuff. Shame, that; life could have been what I believe is popularly known as a gas if the men with rules hadn’t moved in.

They’re buggers, men with rules.

_________________________________________

But before we sort them out, can I just interject to make the say for common sense after just listening to a fucking idiot Home Office minister talking gibberish on Radio 4.

Cabinet member Hazel Blair was interviewed on the Today programme about the alarming new rise in the number of violent crimes and the association of the increase in the drinking of alcohol.

Not unreasonably, the interviewer asked her how this sat with the Government’s bizarre obsession with extending the drinking hours in Britain (currently 11.00 am to 11.00 pm) to 24-hour knocking it back.

This is what she said (and before reading, please contemplate that this woman is expected to be intelligent): “Why should the vast majority of people who go out to enjoy themselves, and who want to be able to get a drink after they’ve been out somewhere else, be penalised because of the behaviour of a small minority?”.

Cretin. The “vast majority” of people don’t drink after 11.00 pm because they have families to go home to/jobs to hold down in the morning. Twelve hours allowance of constant drinking is enough for the “vast majority”.

The only people who will continue to drink if pubs are open all day is this “small minority”. As a consequence of the extended licensing hours, the “small minority” will simply get more drunk (and therefore more problematic).

In other words Blair, you fool, by extending the licensing hours you are merely creating the conditions for the “small minority” to act even more anti-socially. 24-hour drinking is for nobody’s benefit other than drunks – because “normal” people don’t need/won’t want the facility.

It’s like leaving a pile of coke on the kitchen table at a dinner party; only the junkies will use it (well, I will).

But the point is lost on the moronic Minister because (get this, it’s classic) she claims that by extending the “flexibility” of opening hours so that you can drink around the clock, that will lead to “less trouble” (her claim) because it means that “not everybody will be leaving the pub at once, and it’s that (all leaving together at closing time) that causes the problems”.

No, it is not. It’s too much alcohol that causes the problem. And if you extend its availability you are merely exacerbating the problem.

Nobody “normal” regularly needs a drink at four in the morning. I would especially like to ask Ms. Blair (and, by the way, how come Tony is handing out Cabinet posts to his relatives?) and her mates in Whitehall , when was it, precisely, that you last felt the urge to go out to the pub at 4.00 am ?

And here’s another fallacy; I have heard Parliamentarians claim in the House that the British licensing laws need to be extended “in order to bring them in line with the opening hours of bars in other parts of the European Community”.

Crap. During the past three years I have visited Florence , Paris , Rome , Vienna , Moscow , St. Petersburg , Barcelona , Prague , Oslo , Copenhagen , Dublin , Stockholm , Budapest , Munich , Dortmund , Hamburg , Rotterdam , Lisbon and a bunch of Greek islands and lesser German cities besides, the combination of which is relatively representational of the EC.

With the exception of Barcelona (where they are mad) I have NEVER found bars open beyond 11.00 pm in any of these cities.

Yes, I am sure that if you ferret about for long enough off Broadway in Gdansk or scout around the housing projects of Tirane in Albania you can probably find some weasel who might grudgingly open a bottle of an ether-like local liqueur for you (if you pay enough and promise to marry his pig-looking daughter) but surely the drinking habits of a whole Continent cannot be represented in the anarchic practices of flea-pits.

As I have warned before, the Government is up to no good with this elastic licensing. They want more people pissed on the streets because that will cause public uproar and then they’ll be given the excuse to implement their real intention, which is to introduce identity cards.

And I think you’ll find that the Government’s fetish for ID cards is probably just because Gordon Brown and Blair have secretly gone halves on privately purchasing a factory that will knock out each card for a tenner. Got to think of the retirement, folks.

___________________________________

Mind you, this is all entirely academic because I learnt yesterday that there are moves afoot for Britain to be made a partially-dry state. This will be the consequence of calls, reported in The Independent, from the Luton Angry Young Muslims Association.

According to the leader of this group, an accountant called Sayful Islam, apparently, Britain should be made a Muslim caliphate.

The Independent did not bother to explain what a caliphate is, so I looked it up, as I prefer not to live in intellectual ignorance.

A caliphate is where things are run by a caliph. Caliph is the title given to “a successor of Mohammed as ruler of the Islam world”. In other words, the likes of the late (but honorary Grumpy) Ayatollah Khomeni.

Personally this does not bother me as I do not drink, virgins don’t offend me and I reckon chaps like us would have got on with King Khomeni like a house of fire because, as I say, he always struck me as being as grumpy as fuck. One of the club, then.

But I’m wondering how this move to institute a segregation of power is going to sit with the boys in the pin-stripes in Westminster . What sort of protests are they going to howl when they discover that they no longer have any jurisdiction over Luton , Leeds and the Ladybrook Road in Birmingham ?

To me, it makes perfect sense to extend assemblies much as we already have in Scotland and (risibly) Wales; everyone who is Christian (or at least trots along drunk to Midnight Mass at Christmas) gets to be ruled over by QEII and our esteemed MPs and everyone who is Muslim gets to be ruled by this Caliph chap.

But does this mean that those who live in Buddhist hotspots have to be ruled by Tina Turner? I’m not sure that would work because the State Opening of Islington (man) would be constantly delayed by her indecision of which wig to wear.

However, in celebration of Buddhism (which I like); here follows the epicure Michael Stone’s suggestions for a vegan feast. You may think this to be a contradiction in terms, but you’ll be surprised.

Best,

BG (blinding alias, eh?)

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July 20, 2005

DEAR HUGH 18

Wednesday July 27th 2005

DEAR HUGH,
Alif lam mim ra. In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful.

No I’m not on the turn, you cultural pig. According to The Koran, this is the correct way to address each other. Seeing as Allahmania is the new big gig, I thought it would be wise – or at least polite – to get hold of a copy as I want to find out more about this virgin business.

As far as I understand it from reading Her Majesty’s Press, the job incentive for all these nutters who are going about taping Semtex to their tools is that once you’ve got over the shock of watching your head fly off, you get to go to Paradise and shag virgins.

Two things.

One, ever shagged a virgin? I have; several. It’s crap. They have no idea where anything is meant to go and invariably they then go on and on about being pregnant. Which is not what you want to hear in Paradise; not when you’ve gone to all that trouble of exploding yourself and then spending bloody ages searching about in the rubble for your dick.

Two; forget virgins and them writing all about it in diaries that their mothers then read. No, if you’re on the stairwell to Paradise with all your bits gathered up in your arms what you want to be asking for is a single mum instead. Much more fun. They go like rockets and tend not to say “Sorry, I think I might gag”.

Anyway, this here Koran – or Cor-RAN, as I expect our American cousins call it – has an index. I looked up virgins. There is no listing for virgins. Maybe it’s a Liverpool edition.

But does this lack of chapters extolling the benefits of a tight fit mean that all of these Imploders have been wasting (a) their time and (b) TNT?

Well, not quite. If they turn up in the clouds asking for directions to the virgins they’re going to be looking for an eternity. Yes, I know they’ve got all day and all of the day after that ad infinitum, but it can get tedious. Ask old Moses; he packed it in after forty days.

But the smart zealot doesn’t waste his time looking for Mother Theresa and others of the untouched disposition (the type collectively referred to in my experience as “this is my friend, she’s got a lovely personality”).

Nope; Mr. Smarty gets to the celestial garden and follows the signs for “the high-bosomed maidens”, whom I believe can be found down past the bouncy castle and right at the maze.

I thought that would get your attention. According to page 417 of The K, as we shall snappily now call it, “as for the righteous, they shall surely triumph. Theirs shall be gardens and vineyards, and high-bosomed maidens for companions: a truly overflowing cup”.

A few observations here.

One, I presume that calling a maiden “high-bosomed” is a diplomatic way of avoiding use of the “sag” word. So what does that tell us – that Paradise is full of plastic surgeons?

Or are all of the 38EE ladies herded off to some isolation wing of the Aftergarden where nobody will see them traipsing about tripping over their nipples?

Two, what is all of this “vineyard” lark? Who are the vineyards for? I thought the Believers didn’t drink. Or don’t the rules apply up there? I only ask because if everybody’s pissed off their face playing with high bosoms in the vineyards, then I can’t see the difference between Paradise and a lock-in at The Kings Arms when that bird who’s now gone to Exeter used to run it.

Three, as you may know The Koran is the infallible word of God as revealed to Mohammed by the Angel Gabriel (who was obviously quite the gossip). So which one of those three was having a laugh by punning “a truly overflowing cup” on the high-bosomed business? Was the Angel Gabriel in fact Max Miller wearing a sheet?

Four, and this is the page (70) that The Imploders would probably prefer us to skip over, or at least to pretend that the pages got stuck together after somebody got excited reading it with maidens in the vineyard – this matter of “the righteous” needs examination.

Because page 70 makes it perfectly plain that there is absolutely fuck-all “righteousness” to be found in blasting anybody with an unpleasant flying cocktail of Semtex and your bits. And I quote:

“It is unlawful for a believer to kill another believer except by accident….He that kills a believer by design shall burn in Hell for ever”.

Excuse me for being dense but weren’t there a few believers on (a) The Bus and (b) The Tube trains?

Sorry, I think you’ll find that there were. Don’t you boys come moaning to me with excuses about how you’d left your spectacles in Leeds. I don’t care if you didn’t notice them, those were believers. No bosoms for you; it’s straight to bed in Hell for you, my lad. Consider yourself smoted.

By the way, can I just make it perfectly clear at this point that I, clearly, am a believer. I am, actually. I used to be an atheist until I realised I was God.

Hang on! I’ve found the virgins. They were hiding on page 378. OK, I take it all back; apparently there will be virgins Up There. Phew, thank God for that! For a moment there I was starting to think I might have to take a gerbil with me. Although judging by the explanation of what the virgins will let you get up to, it sounds like very little fun.

For a start, the virgins will be red. Yes, red. I don’t know why, I have absolutely no idea; maybe they’ve got a deal with the Native Americans or something.

“Therein are bashful virgins…virgins as fair as corals and rubies”.

Ever seen “fair” rubies? As I said, red. Great. Don’t fancy yours much. Have you got them in brown?

It gets worse.

“(The blessed of the right hand) shall recline on jewelled couches face to face, and there shall wait on them immortal youths with bowls and ewers and a cup of purest wine that will neither pain their heads nor take away their reason (my emphasis) and there’s shall be the dark-eyed houris, chaste as hidden pearls….we created the houris and made them virgins, loving companions for those on the right hand”.

OK, so now you’re probably thinking “did I keep the receipt?” How does that smoting thing work again? Does it hurt?

Exactly – because what is the point of wine that does not take away your reason? We all know what reasonable wine means; it means that German alcohol frei gunk that the misinformed believe reformed drinkers like myself will really enjoy.

Let me make it plain from my position of considerable authority and experience of the subject of being pissed, there is no point to drinking alcohol-free anything. You may as well shag a vir….

And there’s another point. How in Heaven’s name are we expected to chat up these houris (a houri is an alluring woman, by the way, dictionary-defined as “a nymph of Paradise”) if we can’t get the Dutch Courage up because the wine is crap?

Mind you, what else do you expect if you ask an angel, God and a prophet to organise a party? I bet they don’t do wedding receptions.

Also, if I’ve got to spend all of fucking forever lying on a jewelled couch asking some nymph what bands she likes, I’m going to need some heavy-duty vino, not least to numb the pain of all of those jewels poking me in the arse.

And on which subject, I’m not sure I like the sound of having all of these “immortal youths” hanging around with their bowls and spittoons when I’m trying to teach the houris what “nymph” is an abbreviation for. You can take the afternoon off, boys, I don’t even like Crocodile Rock.

Anyway, I think that 21st Century culinary developments can be called upon to give a make-over to Eternity and on this point the celebrated chef Michael Stone has created the menu below for men on the tug. The following recipes are especially designed for gentlemen planning A Seductive Evening and are guaranteed to please a houri girly. Hope you enjoyed this study of The Koran; next week: Understanding The Talmud Or 1,001 Ways With Chicken Soup.

Best,

GB

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July 19, 2005

DEAR HUGH 17

Tuesday July 26th 2005

DEAR HUGH,

Yesterday I thought that I might kill myself. For a number of reasons, really.

1. I am fed up with doctors ordering me not to drink alcohol nor eat anything that is much more interesting than old dog biscuits.

2. Because the proscribed prescriptions of 1. above do not appear to be having any material effect upon my weight.

3. The moto-x bike that I bought for my son three months ago has still not arrived, despite the promise on the website of the LYING BASTARDS who sell these “Diddy Bikes” of “next day delivery”.

4. World War III is coming (and it is, check out the small print in what the powers are now muttering about Iran).

5. Safeway has stopped selling vegetarian bacon.

6. I appear to have broken my left foot, or else gout is making its debut.

7. The CD that I bought solely because it features Burlesque among 18 otherwise-uninspiring songs, jumps on the Family track.

8. The substantial quantity of marijuana that I bought for research purposes is a bit weak; or at least I haven’t fallen over yet.

9. The Prozac which I have now spent six weeks kicking is at last wearing off and I’m finally getting delayed reaction to those events of a year ago which the pills had previously subdued and am consequently thinking “Sorry, sacked for WHAT, exactly?”

10. I need a new suit but do not have the body on which to wear it.

11. My brother just told me that taking cocaine in the past hardens your arteries and ups your cholesterol. Which means that I have to have a word with Mum about her claim that high cholesterol “runs in the family”. What else runs in our family, noses?

12. The existence of newspapers.

13. A general acceptance of the belief that we were born to be mild.

14. Because I made a list of Reasons to Love America but have now lost it. Although I recall that the list included Marlboro, Rebel Yell (the drink, not the silly song), Hunter Thompson, a national enthusiasm for fellatio and the songs of Steve Earle, particularly Here I Am.

14. Because I bought a bottle of vintage Amarone in Florence some weeks back but cannot drink on the orders of Dr. No-No.

15. Because the spell check on this machine indicates that Amarone has been spelt incorrectly (when it hasn’t) and I am not sure that I want to make a living utilising a machine programmed by somebody at Microsoft who does not know what Amarone is. Mind you, one look at Bill Gates should have told me that.

16. Because the Wiltshire Constabulary has sent me a summons informing that they are to prosecute me for the peace-threatening act of driving at 57 mph in a 50 mph limit. I’m actually going to court on this one; to make a stand from the box about how come it is that Wilts Cops can nick me for all of 7 mph but fail to do much more than fuck-all when they drove past my daughter in Devizes at the time when she was been punched in the face by one of the local yobbos whose residency around here is permitted by the county council’s rejection of my Compulsory Death For Thick People proposal.

17. Because a nationwide drought is apparently forecast for Britain in the next fortnight, thus adding water to the list of things I’m now not allowed. I expect air will be next.

18. Because none of the farmers I know are interested in utilising the Drive-By Ratting service that the son and I have instituted (we just park the Saab outside grain sheds and zap away from the comfort of our air-con Swedish suite).

19. Because I am fed up with hearing people talk about “Ee-rack” when the word is quite obviously pronounced nothing of the sort.

20. Because the wind blew over my potted fig tree, startling the dog and more importantly crushing the cucumber plant which until then had been promising to bear fruit that would have been a relative banquet to a nomnivore like me.

21. This one really gets me – flies that zip into my office and then whine buzzingly at the windows that they are too stupid to have noticed. Thus obligating you to incinerate them with a Zippo (oh, Zippos should have been on the list of 14. above).

But what a difference a day makes. All is now sweetness and lite ™ because when I was buying the dodgy Family CD, I also put my clutch upon a CD that features Eddie & The Hot Rods.

Hands up who remembers Eddie & The Hot Rods. Oi, Alex, get your hand up; I bloody know you do.

Anyway, on re-hearing the pertinent sense of “no-one tells you nothing, even when you know they know; but they tell you what you should do, they don’t like to see you grow” I cast myself back to when I first heard it.

Which was 1977, when I was 21 and full of hope and pep and, having just discovered Born To Run in a big way, I was out-thinking Jon Landau by concluding not that “I have seen the future of rock & roll” but that God had gone and sat on my face.

I now have Do Anything You Wanna Do on the boom-box beside the phone, so that when those fuckers from Indian call centres call up and say “Am I speaking to Mrs. GB?”, inferring from my tenor tone that Mrs. B is some sort of East European shot-putt champion, I can turn the music up loud. So that when they say “I can’t hear you” I can reply “Not my fault, luv; I didn’t ask you to ring”.

Anyway, playing Do Anything You Wanna Do now, but thinking of then (my youth) I compared my minds and wondered whether the GB of 1977 would be disappointed with the GB of 2005.

He’ll do.

And so all thoughts of suicide went out the window. And then, naturally, that got me thinking on what I should have played at my funeral. I think the Rods is a bit much and I’m thinking now that my previous choice, Steve Earle’s Jerusalem, is a bit worthy.

I certainly don’t want anything by My Ex – just in case the weirdo who owns the Northern Songs copyright turns up to try get his royalties by nicking the collection plate and then starts interfering with the choir boys.

I’ll admit that I’ll Be Seeing You has a nice lilt for the occasion and Keef’s Before They Make Me Run is neatly biographical, as is Paul Jones’s I’ve Been A Bad Bad Boy. Do you think the vicar at Lyme (I have to be buried by the sea) will object if I request The Drifters singing There Goes My Baby? Actually, scrub that; I’ve just played it and it’s atrocious. Truly bloody awful.

Found it, found it. Steely Dan’s (I’m Never Going Back To) My Old School. A bit obvious given the circumstances but I think the brass solo outweighs that and the “I was smoking with the boys upstairs” has a funereal resonance. Actually, no - let’s go for Gram Parsons leading The Flying Burrito Brothers doing Merle Haggard’s Sing Me Back Home.

As ever, I would appreciate the benefit of your sagacity on this if you can suggest better. You may think that I am being premature but 50 is approaching and as I appear to have cornered the market in coronary disease, you can never be too careful.

This brings me to the point of this missive; food for funerals.

I have noticed a gasping hole in the market with this. I was at a funeral the other day (my Gran) and it was quite obvious to me that the caterers did not have a clue. As well they would not because, let’s be honest, few of us have much experience in this department and subsequently we cave in and make do with sandwiches and sausage rolls.

Call me arrogant, but I do not want to be remembered with sausage rolls. I want the mourner (and his cat) to be given a feast; trebles of Scotch upon entering the church and afterwards Amarone served with good honest chaps’ food something like the delights that the chef Michael Stone will suggest below.

Anyway, that’s the easy bit – wait until they read the codicil in my will demanding that I have the inscription “sadly pissed” on my headstone.

Best,

GB

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July 15, 2005

DEAR HUGH 16

Friday July 15th 2005

DEAR HUGH,

As some of us are grateful to have known since the time that you took three and a half months to prepare that complex lasagne that I think Carluccio made up for a laugh, you are a noted epicure of omnivorous discrimination. Well, at least you are until you’ve had too much grappa.

Anyway, in your capacity as the Beau Nash of this gentlemen’s forum, I thought you might be interested in checking out the following restaurant that was nominated by Charlotte Rampling at the weekend for The Observer’s guide to The 100 Best Places To Eat This Summer.

According to the only good reason to watch The Night Porter, the next time you take your bucket and spade to Cannes you should dine at Club 55, which is apparently very good for sea bass.

Actually, I wonder if I could lean on your considerable marine experience and have you advise me on the subject of sea bass.

As you know, for more than a score of years I have eaten neither fish, nor fowl nor anything that arrives on a plate asking for its mother. And since my quack has recently discovered that I am a nesting-site for heart disease, no cheese nor eggs neither now. So I am hardly an expert on foodstuffs, even though I could cook better than Delia with my dick.

Anyway, what is this sea bass that has grown in international popularity during the past ten years? I may well be the animals’ new best friend, but I was born and raised by the sea and am not totally ignorant of the nature of a bloater. And when I was a lad, we used to fish for bass. And we called them bass. Just bass. Not sea bass. Just fucking bass. Like we didn’t call cod sea cod and as far as I am aware there is not much call either for sea sprats.

So what’s with this sea bass lark? Or, more to the point and as I once said to infuriate an especially pompous waiter (before reminding him that he, not I, was the one serving at tables on a Saturday night), what is a river bass? Or a lake bass?

This sea bass affectation is rubbish. Have you ever heard anybody order grape wine with it? Exactly, it’s just another example of the culinary class structure that I would like to see torn down and stuffed, with coriander and pine nuts, up the parson’s nose of Martha Stewart.

Another example of this pretension is found among The Observer’s list of 100 best places to eat. On page 20, column 4, to be exact. For there it is that we find The Observer advocating that you eat at La Columbe.

Ah, I hear you puzzle, I am not familiar with La Columbe. As well you would not be, chum, for La Columbe does not nestle next to the other Suffolk and Thameside eateries on The O List. That is because it is in fucking South Africa!

What possessed The Observer’s usually-excellent team of pot and pan-bellied food writers to think that among their three readers there may be one who picked up the supplement on Sunday and said “Do you fancy lunch down the pub, darling? Or shall we go for a quick bite in South Africa?”

As newspapers are very aggressive these days, I was not sure whether their listing of all these dining rooms meant that you are expected to eat at all 100 places this summer. As I calculate that there are only about another 60 days left of summer here, that means eating at a rate of almost 10 restaurants a week.

Besides the evident toll on your stash of air-miles, that’s an awful lot of waiters’ piss to unknowingly drink in your gravy.

Actually, I once knew a woman who looked like Charlotte Rampling. Just like the Francophile actress, she had a hell of a wide mouth on her. She could get two men in her mouth at once and still be able to say “Oh, you’re home early”.

Anyway, the Fourth Estate’s fetish with food reminds me that I must write to the BBC to request that they put more programmes on TV about celebrity chefs.

No, really; I mean it. I want to see more celebrity chefs cooking on television. But I’m not talking about foul-mouthed fuckers like Gordon Ramsay; that’s just him doing his job. I mean proper celebrities, celebrities who are chefs – not chefs who are (apparently) celebrities.

By celebrities, I do not mean those game-show hosts of transient talent who are forever getting pictured coming out of that China White club with the white bit of it running down their nose. I mean stars like Girls Aloud.

I do not know whether you have Girls Aloud in France. Take a tip and write to somebody important suggesting that you do. Girls Aloud are the best thing since The Beatles.

As you know, I am not one to make such an authoritative claim glibly. But Girls Aloud are TBTSTB because, unlike your Ulrikas and Davinas, they are among the few real stars who bother to actually look like proper sluts.

And I love them not least because they look (a) Normal and (b) Like they probably bang like The Beatles (read any biography to get the sense of that).

In other words, Girls Aloud share that magic that the Fabs had in that they appear to be believable and real. I like my TV trollops to at least appear as if they might let you; as the attraction of stardom is that it is achievable. I mean you wouldn’t try to cop a feel with Madonna, would you? You wouldn’t immediately suggest Taking It Greek on your first introduction to Barbra Streisand.

Well, you might; but I wouldn’t.

I think we have become far too stuffy in our global idolatry of the famous; unless the girl next door is in actuality the woman who owns Berkshire, it has become popular not to admire them.

And once again this snobbishness in our worship of the holders of the headlines reveals how out of step we are with the opinions of people who wash.

You can scoff, but a quick glance at the list of what’s best-selling in Britain will muzzle your cynicism. According to the Top Ten chart of best-selling non-fiction hardbacks, jolly Jodie Marsh’s autobiography is at #3, thereby outdoing both Bono On Bono and Geldof’s log of his trek around Africa in a hat.

This intrigues me but possibly puzzles you the greater because you, being half-French, are wondering “who is Jodie Marsh?”

A couple of years back, Channel 4 discovered that it was running out of footage for its usual listing of Foreskins Of The Famous and decided to dive into the batter of reality TV instead with a series called Essex Wives.

As you hail from that maligned county, you will already have anticipated that Essex Wives was a study of families who shouted over each other like thirty Jewish grandmothers locked together in a coal bunker. The wives showed themselves true to stereotype by forever cooking meals containing an abundance of chips and driving to shoe shops in Japanese cabriolets. Being a bit of a fan of the habits of the proletariat, I tuned in.

What became evidently captivating was not the opinions of old mother Marsh, but the sauce of her daughter Jodie; a bright girl who did things like go to Stringfellow’s night club dressed only in a belt. I do not mean a short skirt, I mean no skirt; just a belt. You know the sort, I expect.

I remember turning at the time to the tight half of my conjugal knot and predicting that Ms. Marsh would become a big star and complimented her ingenuity at giving a new meaning to the cummerbund. I may have made some additional mumbling about how it would not be the worst idea in the world for certain other people to follow Jodie’s lead in the waistband department.

Anyway, after I had found a packet of frozen peas for the bruise on my face, I made a note in that part of my brain that was not temporarily illuminated by the sight of stars to remember the name Jodie Marsh.

Damn me if I shouldn’t go into talent-spotting lark because within twelve months young Jodie was spread all over the shop here (well, at least her legs appeared to be) and a star was born. And yet talk about mucky; according to what I’ve seen reported, dear old Mrs. Rampling’s predilection for nasty room service don’t even come close. JM’s got a gob on her that could accommodate all of Wembley Stadium and still leave her room enough to clearly enunciate Abide With Me during the community singing.

Naturally, there are some within our homesteads who cruelly choose to compare her to the fused material formed during the refining of metals, but I question her deserving of their distain because she is, poor girl, merely the personification of chaps’ age-old fondness for the type.

Calibrate my claim by casting yourself back to when you were at school and therefore at your most atavistic – when you went to the 6th Form Disco drunk on Don Cortez, was it the scrubbers that you tried to dance with or the high-achiever prefects who looked like Thora Hird?

If you’re going to be difficult, I’ll ask you again…….

Right. Exactly.

So why do we now, in our dotage, get all high and mighty about girls who we used to wish had been in our tutor group? After all, it’s Jodie Marsh whose name is at #3 in the list of Britain’s best-selling books; I don’t see Professor Mary Warnock charting there in a hurry.

We shall return to this topic of The Importance Of Being Earthy at a later date, but I have to rush off now as I’m cooking lunch of Autumn Stew and Herb Dumplings (recipe below) for the new home-help that social services is sending me. She’s apparently called Nurse Titmuss.

Best,

GB

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July 14, 2005

Dear Hugh 15

Thursday July 14th 2005

DEAR HUGH,

I have to write this quietly because there’s a kind of hush all over the world in a sec; a Two-Minute Silence that takes place in half an hour for the poor souls who copped it from The Tubeway Army.

This is apparently not like the two-minute silences that you and I have been observing over the years on Poppy Day or in respect of stuff like Diana’s death or the end of Pan’s People dancing on Top Of The Pops.

No, this is a New Labour silence and, predictably, we here in the fields of England are therefore having to be instructed on how to behave appropriately. Call me dim but I would have thought that there wasn’t too much to learning how to master this silence lark; it’s not like studying Wittgenstein, even for people who wear trainers.

But once again my presumptions were wrong because it turns out that this here silence cannot be like any silence we’ve known before. The organisers are saying they don’t want any of that head bowed in quiet contemplation and prayer stuff.

No, this is a New Improved Silence with added extra display of public calm. According to all the newspapers and radio bulletins here, in order to mark The New Silence we have to “go out into the streets; leave your homes and offices and stand in silence with others”. If I sit here and pray for the souls of those who were murdered, then apparently that doesn’t count.

I expect that unless I go out and stand in the middle of the road, I’ll get busted by John Prescott’s Silence Detector Vans, who’ll issue me with an Anti-Social Behaviour Order signed by The Noisefinder General.

Well, they can fuck off. I’m marking the loss (in a few minutes’ time) by having a fag, thinking on the ageless tragedy of religion, composing a prayer in my head and then, doubtless when official klaxons sound to signal that we can all be rowdy again, getting the Les Paul out and playing along to Steve Earle’s Jerusalem; the pithy irony of which will be lost on the cretinism of The New Silencers (“well maybe I’m only dreaming and maybe I’m just a fool, but I don’t remember learning how to hate in Sunday School”).

Here we go. Back in a mo….

That was decent. There was not a sound, above the birds singing, across the whole of the village. There was not even the noise of planes in the sky like there is now; which is dead impressive, pilots being able to glide 747s like that for 120 seconds. Although I didn’t see anyone out in the streets dressed up in black bunting, so I presume we’re all for it.

What do you say when they knock on your door – “sorry, I was silent already at the office”?

Of course, you don’t have to have been the publicist for an international rock star for more years than you can shake a stick at to have sniffed nouvelle PR spin in The New Schtum - or the Gedenkminute as we should perhaps call it, now that we’ve gone global (* see below).

In this Slave New World of engineering perception to be reality, the powers want us out in the streets so that the cameras can see it. Come on now, hush for the birdie – because if it can’t be seen on Sky News then it didn’t happen. Probably that plane that just glid over was passengered by hordes of Fleet Street snappers, all taking aerial photographs for tomorrow’s front pages of “The Moment Britain Stopped”.

Because that, of course, will scare the breakfast out of the other suicide bombers who are sitting up on Ilkley Moor planning their next outrage. You can imagine the conversation that is going on as I write:

“What about the Old Bailey?”

“No, the Irish did that; we don’t want to be seen as plagiarists”

“How about a soccer match?”

“The football season’s over”.

“What about a cricket ground, then?”

“Nah, the crowds are dead already”.

“Hang about – look at this! Fuck! The Brits are all out in the streets, holding hands and saying nothing”

“Bugger me, they are as well. Well, that’s it; fuck Osama, I’m out of here! Tell him he can stuff his virgins in Paradise offer, I’m not bombing anywhere else if they’re going to get all mute on us. I’ve had that before with my deaf Granny; it’s terrifying! Ee up, pass us me ferret, you barmcake”.

Exactly.

Respect for the tragically dead is right and proper but if we think this “We Shall Not Be Moved” philosophy is going to stop anything, we’ve unfortunately got another bomb coming. As I’ve said before, the only thing that will work is application of the Hitler Theory of Retribution. In other words, sort out Pakistan.

And before anyone gets jumpy about that, look at today’s newspapers and their potted biographies of the bombers. In each case it’s “he changed after he went to Pakistan”, “he became very religious after a visit to Pakistan”.

Which bit of the clue don’t you understand, guys? Talk about dealing with fools who skip the bleeding obvious, it’s like going into a Tel Aviv travel agent’s in 1939 and the manager saying “Well, Germany’s nice at this time of year”.

Not that anybody is going to take a blind bit of notice of the Pakistan Problem in Downing Street or The Pentagon. I’m just pissing in the wind here; we can’t rough up Karachi because if we did it might damage our arms sales to the heroin warlords on the Kirthar Range.

I expect we’ll get hate-mail about that and I’ll have to do a Rushdie (which isn’t so bad, judging by the gorgeous women he gets to shag). I warn this because, as I alluded earlier (*) DEAR HUGH has now gone global. Hoist the daft Olympic flag that would be appropriate if only seven countries entered the Games; play The Internationale; hang out sheets bearing the felt-tipped slogan “WELCOME YANKS” – because we are now on the Web. By which I mean the Internet, not caught in my hedge.

It seems that somebody – and I suspect our good friend and excellent Englishman Timbo here – has slipped these here Letters To The Coronarians under the door of Stephen Hawkins, or whatever it is that you do to “post on the Net”, as the hipsters call it. I know this because somebody told me to check it out and, lo, up on Google and Yahoo! there is DEAR HUGH.

And beneath our scribblings there’s reaction like the review from hugely-sentient readers such as someone who lives under the unfortunate title of “Darulharb”.

“Darulharb” - whose peculiar conjunction of vowels and consonants makes me suspect him to be one of the cave-dwelling associates of the alarmingly-lipped Osama (Have you ever looked at his lips? Talk about Fish-Faced) – applied his A.J.P. Tayloresque analysis and came up with the acute observation that “You mother takes it up the ass, without Lube”.

Just so that me and Darulharb are on the same page here, he should know that my mother is 75 and, as such, would be very happy to take it anywhere – with or without the participation of his mate Lube, which I presume is an abbreviation denoting his pal as a resident of Lubeck. Or perhaps Lublin, in eastern Poland.

To tell you the truth, I’m a bit disappointed with the likes of Darulharb and Lube (whom I’m beginning to suspect might be Hall & Oates

re-launching themselves under a new moniker) because I would have thought that they could have done better than alluding to my Mum’s apparently cavernous bottom.

In fact, so pathetically “you smell, you do” is the attempted insult that I’m starting to wonder whether old Darulharb is actually just one of those New Labour Silencers who is too PC to write “fuck off, you cunt”.

Still, it takes all sorts. Even those who clearly should have been drowned at birth.

And there’s another lesson that the New Mob has failed to learn from history; there needs to be more of that Herod stuff in their anti-terrorism tactics. There’s nothing like a good cull of the infants to shake fundamental belief – or at least to get your wife on your case, which is pretty much the same thing.

Anyway, as we’re now global and you’re famous can I leech onto the back of your celebrity and ask all of our readers out there if anybody has found the little gold cow charm that I lost in Montserrat in 1988. Send it on, if you have.

Must dash as I’m dying for a piss, but before I go can I show a bit of solidarity with you there out in France by saying how gutted I am that London’s avarice has prevented the staging of the Paris Olympics.

Shame, that. I was really looking forward to live coverage of Ms. Hilton working her way through a long line of men. Maybe they’ll ask my Mum to step in instead. They can get old Lube along as the Polish entry.

And in celebration of that, here follows recipes for Borsch and something you can do with Blinis. And don’t get all pedantic, saying that’s Russian and not Polish; they’re all the same, women with bearded armpits and all that.

Best,

GB

Posted by The Englishman at 5:13 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

July 13, 2005

DEAR HUGH 14 (APOLOGY EDITION)

Wednesday July 13th 2005

DEAR HUGH,

There has been a number of complaints. Actually, has there fuck; but just in case….

I thought it may be worth making clear at this point that “Dear Hugh” is a fiction; a collection of letters written in imaginary character by a grumpy old chap that do not in any way at all represent my pristinely-correct and politically-balanced personal views. If these “Dear Hugh” letters have been taken seriously in any way, I unreservedly apologise for unintentionally adding any distress at a most saddening time following this dreadful atrocity.

Anyway, Muslim zealots; what a bunch of cunts.

And before anybody starts reaching for the number of the Race Relations Board, let me again make it clear that I am NOT talking about the vast majority of kind and decent Muslims. It’s the ones who holiday at Billy Bin Laden’s desert Butlins camps who piss me off.

After giving much of my highly-expensive time to considering this matter, I believe that the Government has only a few choices:

1. Bomb Pakistan (and thereby have the bonus of burning off all of the smack that they deny growing there).

2. Bomb Leeds .

3. Bomb Marks & Spencer (in the interest of political balance).

4. Sort out the twat who thought that the BBC News At Ten’s opening headlines on The Situation now need the aural accompaniment of persistent drumming in order to better represent the gravity of it all.

Al Mac has come up with another suggestion; the institution of Compulsory Loin Cloth Wearing for anybody who looks like they might be secreting explosives about their person. This may make tolerating the British winters a little harsh, but these are difficult times and we all have to make sacrifices. Besides, encouragement of the Gandhi Look would make body searches easier. On the other hand it could cause complaints because if The Suspects use up all the available stash of muslin, how are we meant to drain the fruit when we’re making our jams and chutneys?

The new evidence that the bombers were British nationals raises an interesting prospect. Although the UK outlawed capital punishment back in the early Sixties, the penalty still exists, actually, for crimes of Treason. And also for Arson in Her Majesty’s Shipyards, by the way.

However, threatening suicide bombers with the rope is fuck-all use when these blokes believe in an Afterlife and in all of that Yes! We’re Going To Barbados crap. The solution is plainly clear, then – a national call-up of all philosophers who can demonstrate a priori that Paradise does not exist beyond the same-named massage centre and knocking shop in Swindon ’s Old Town district. With Paradise thus lost, it will be interesting to see just how many of these young Yorkshiremen fancy taking their balls off just for the craic.

The attentive among you will doubtless note that I have a degree in philosophy; one of two things that I share with Ricky Gervais (the other being fat). Few, however, will know that I have evidence that there is no such thing as Paradise. The frequency of the broadcast of EastEnders is proof of that.

I wonder how long it will take the scriptwriters of this or any other soap to write, by complete coincidence of course, a suicide bomber into the cast of characters? Judging by previous displays of their obscene chase of ratings, I’d give it about a week until Dirty Bomb Den checks into Albert Square . I expect the BBC is already thinking of getting topical with a new, Leeds-based series of Ground Force presented by Allah Titchmarsh.

In fact, seeing as there’s going to inevitably be calls soon for immigration restrictions and all sort of reactionary backlash, I’m surprised that Durex hasn’t yet decided to do its bit for ethnic population controls by announcing the launch of the Osama Gossamer.

And here’s another thing that gets me as cross as fuck – poodles. I am especially on their case because they, or rather it, is the only animal that makes my dog Jimi bark like a seal taking it up the arse from one of those charming Canadian furriers (oh, come on – why else do you think that so many Cannucks isolated in the back of beyond volunteer for that vile work?).

Anyway, as you are a man of wide experience I thought you may have a few explanations of why my dog barks at poodles. Is it his natural irritation at owners who only have pets that they can shape like a hedge, or is there more to it?

Talking, as we were, about the ECT treatment that are soap operas, I am hoping that the one exception to these foul programmes, The Archers, will shortly react to the horrific news revealed on Radio 4’s bulletins yesterday.

Following the report that the EC says vitamins give you kidney disease (dead handy to know as it’ll stop all those nannies doing that “have you taken your tablet?” malarkey), The News With Brian Perkins announced that something called The Countryside Agency says that if more “urban people” get out into the fields then the national problems of obesity and high blood pressure will be considerably lessened.

Apparently this Agency wants “quotas” of “young urban, multicultural guests” to put that Cliffy track on their thieved car stereos and head out here.

Now hang on just a fucking minute. Where in the small print of the recent manifesto was that proposed? I have absolutely no recollection of voting to extend the hospitality of The King’s Arms to a bunch of Burberry-wearing Ford drivers. I didn’t get where I am today by socialising with people whose girlfriend Janice drinks rum and black.

Besides, the health-less urbanites whom the fretting Countryside Agency is so bothered about would hate it out here; there’s not enough people to rob and, as far as I am aware, none of the pubs around here do a Pot Noodle Ploughman’s. And the Jobcentre’s miles away.

No, as my good friend Prince Charles used to say before he was stitched up like a kipper by people claiming unfair dismissal because he wouldn’t make them Queen or some such, “everyone in his place”. Quite and the place of the likes of the Brothers Mitchell is not around here. They don’t understand country ways and they’ll get quite the wrong idea of what, say, all of that “Arab Breeding” over Newbury way is all about. They’d be out all night searching for the cages. Looking to feed them sheep’s eyes and dodgy hookers and that sort of thing.

No, it takes an English rural gentleman to appreciate that enjoying Cottage Pie does not involve hanging about in toilets. And for those few of us remaining, here follows the recipe.

Best,

GB

Posted by The Englishman at 3:23 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

July 8, 2005

DEAR HUGH (STATE OF EMERGENCY SPECIAL EDITION)

Friday July 8th 2005

DEAR HUGH,

(Language deteriorates below the fold)

Two things.

One ' Geldof's fucked, then.

Two ' I'll put a fucking bomb in London if Blair doesn't learn to speak faster.

Did you hear him yesterday? Jesus Christ; it made you want to catch a bus. What is the matter with this man and his brain-to-mouth impediment? Is it some form of elaborate stutter?

OK, I know he was at a press conference and reporters these days don't do shorthand but, for fuck's sake, even my one-armed thalidomide tortoise could take that dictation.

Did you hear him?

'I''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''
..am''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''
.horr''''''''''''''''''''''''..i''''''''''''''''''''''..fied
'''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''.by this shoc''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''king'''''''''''''''''''''''.atrocity'.

Fucking get on with it, you twat; Shameless is on in a minute.

As Robbie (12) pithily put it 'Maybe he's got Tourets, Dad, and he needs to think about what he says'.

As a patriot (which I am, actually; Elgar, green and pleasant, the sacred rite of conkers and all that) I am concerned that our Slo-Mo PM is giving the wrong impression to the towel head bombers. They must have watched him on the telly and thought that they'd scored a direct hit, because he plainly appeared to have concussion.

Actually, what is interesting is that Tardy Tony's first remarks to camera ' uttered before some half-wit decided to write a languid, cortege-speed address for him ' revealed his true feelings. And, God, wasn't he is a tantrum then? There he was, getting his moment of G8 glory trashed, and it was all 'This is jolly rude! These people are spoiling my turn to be king and it's not fair! Beasts!'

I hope they catch the fuckers; not just to keep them off the streets but so that somebody can tell them that as far as bombers go, they are really crap. Fifty, or whatever, dead, is dreadful, appalling, but it's still a crap kill-rate compared to what they could have achieved if, for instance, they had just stood in one of those long queues to brush past the Big Issue sellers and down the steps at Oxford Street tube station.

Or in one of the lines outside the Planetarium. Plainly, these bombers do not know their way about.

I noticed that unfortunately it took less than an hour after the blasts for the Americanisation of the tragedy to kick it. This began with unsolicited e-mails from people asking me 'Are you alright?'.

Of course I'm fucking alright, I live in Wiltshire. After about eight of these messages from masters of geography, I thought I might as well join in with the spirit of universal concern and phone my Mum to reassure her (just in case she was worried that times are so hard that I've taken to travelling by public transport).

I rang and said: 'Hi, Mum; I'm just calling to say that I'm not dead'.

She said: 'No, dear, it's Grandma who's dead. The funeral is on Monday. Aren't you coming?'

I said yes, I know, but there's been a terror incident in London and I was ringing to say that I'm not there. And then the idiocy of this struck me and I made a note to call her and say that 'I'm not there' the next time there's an earthquake in China or a flood in Pakistan.

As usual in times of emergency, the news coverage here was bizarre.

'This is the attack that we have long been waiting for', said somebody on Sky News. No, it isn't. The attack we have long been waiting for, and still are waiting for, is one from a dirty bomb. By which I do not mean a device that explodes by calling everybody a cunt.

Talking of which, which bright sub on the backbench of The Times was it who thought that we Brits needed the event to be described in the vernacular of Las Vegas? I don't know if you've seen The Times, but they've taken to describing it as '7/7'.

Ugh. '7/7', '9/11' ' has nobody other than George Galloway worked out that it's because of our bed-sharing with Americana that this has happened in the first place? We, being British, do not need '7/7', thank you. We, being British, are perfectly capable of enunciating 'July the seventh'. It's bad enough standing around waiting for a bus that never arrives without blowing up, let alone having to suffer a terrorism of semantics.

Talking of which, my suspicion that the people responsible are not some slick act was endorsed this morning when I read that the group claiming responsibility are called 'The Secret Organization Group Of

Al-Qaeda of Jihad Organization in Europe'.

That's really up there in catchiness with Pepsi, isn't it?

What sort of fuckwits are they? Who (other than a cretin with scant command of English) uses the snappy word 'Organization' twice in their title? And spells it with an irritatingly-inappropriate 'z'? It's with a fucking 's', you inarticulate heathens.

Anyway, I read the statement from the easily-remembered SOGAQJOE

and noted that among its claims, apparently 'Britain is now burning with fear, terror and panic in its northern, southern, eastern and western quarters'.

Once again, wrong. Speak to my Mum. She lives in the 'western quarters' and she was so 'burning with fear' that she knew fuck-all about it when I rang.

Our mate Al (as in Maclennan, not Qaeda) was not so fortunate. He was at Edgware Road yesterday at the time of the disaster but wisely decided not to hop onto the Piccadilly Line after observing smoke billowing from the entrance to the Tube station. Of course, this could merely have signified a Keith Richards gig in action, but thankfully Alex decided otherwise.

As you may know, Al has moved into the village here and his will be one of the homes that Robbie and I visit tonight in order to orchestrate the inauguration of the All Cannings Defence Corps.

You will have noticed that the ACDC is already a notch up on the SOGAQJOE when it comes to superior acronyms. We also have an air-gun. A .177. So nobody better come around here leaving their sarnies in a paper bag on the Wiggly Bus, or we'll take their eye out.

Anyway, back to the lysergic acid-style reporting. I knew that things were grim when the BBC Nine O'Clock News reported from outside New Scotland Yard that 'what the police have to discover about the bombers is were they foreign or were they home-grown British?'

Well, what the fuck do you think? Home-grown British? What does that mean? Are Home-Grown British terrorists the sort who bomb London because they're fed up that it's been raining a lot and the price of black pudding's gone up? And how exactly are these people grown at home? Under arc lights?

Inevitably, the local news bulletins made it all worse. BBC South West was spectacular in its optimism to be part of the gang. 'The bomb may have gone off in London but it felt as if we were ALL under attack', they said.

No. Wrong. We didn't feel under attack here. But then we've got an

air-gun.

Undaunted by their display of singular ignorance of the location of London, BBC South West continued 'The advice from police in the West tonight is 'be alert but not alarmed'. But although the region is a long way from London and few would expect a bomb here, none expected a bomb on a red double-decker bus to Hackney'.

Oh, right. That's up there with 'Although the tsunami was centred on Thailand, it could have hit Trowbridge, because that also begins with a 'T''

Then, as the Americans had not featured in our domestic news for all of a minute, we had to 'go over, live, now' to Washington where Condaleeza Rice was signing a book of condolence that some enterprising spark had opened at the British Embassy. Did you see what she wrote? She wrote 'they will not die in vain'.

What the fuck does that mean? Not 'did not' but 'will not'. 'Will not' implies a knowledge of future events; has she got some retaliation up her sleeve? And against whom, exactly? What's she going to do, have F1-11's take out Tottenham?

Talk about giving the game away; she may as well have signed the book with 'you'll be sorr-ee, luv and kisses, Condy'.

Perhaps I am being too harsh in my expectation that leaders (Blair, Rice, the BBC) should give some thought to their exhortations before spewing rubbish like drunks in a pub. But then their knee-jerkery paled in comparison with Bono's response.

Don't know if you clocked this but Bono was asked whether he thought that the attacks would shift the G8 agenda from aid for Africa and he said 'It's not a problem'.

Hello? Earth to idiot. 'It's not a problem'? That's up there with 'it's a drag', isn't it? Maybe he'll have to regroup under a new banner now, Make Pomposity History.

But the best coverage was kicked off by that guff from the Mayor of France with his 'maintenant, je suis il Londoner ici' nonsense. No you are not. WE are; you lost, remember?

Personally I don't like the sound of the French trying to muscle in on our gig with all of this 'ich bin eine chirpy Cockney geezer, ain't I my old Dutch' lark. Fuck off and get your own bomb; this is nothing to do with you.

Or is it?

We shall examine the French Connection in a moment. But I haven't finished with the Yanks yet. As I was saying, it's a damn shame that this atrocity has to be described through usage of all four pages of the American Dictionary, with terms like '7/7' etc. And just as it was after September 11th, so the newsmen here last night had to go into Americanised fits of description about the Blitz spirit and stiff upper lips.

Ignoring for a moment both the stiff upper and lower lips of our Prime Minister which prevent him from talking properly, I've not noticed any Blitz spirit. All I've seen is what you always see from us lot in times of dire emergency and national threat ' which is essentially a response of 'do piss off you bloody camel-shagger, you're making me late for the pub'. Blair could do worse than adopting a touch of this 'Oi, fucking keep it down' attitude and less of the hand-wringing feebleness.

Anyway, according to the way that the BBC's entire staff of reporters on work experience put it you'd have thought we'd never had problems on the streets of London before.

I remember the days of Scotland v England football matches at Wembley. That WAS a fucking terror, waiting for a Tube at Kings Cross with all that lot of peat-reeking pissheads in their cloaks of St. Andrew's cross and cans of Tennants Super Brew.

In fact, if I back up my memory by twenty years I remember a time when you couldn't walk down Fleet Street, Oxford Street and Regent Street without some bog brigader setting off a letter box without asking you first. And if it wasn't bombs on every corner, then it was bloody riots going on all over the place. And Millwall playing at home. I know all about ruddy terror on the streets of London; I remember the first royal wedding ' the sight of Barbara Cartland's caked-up face gaping out of one of those carriages was petrifying.

Anyway, having exhausted my interest in the BBC coverage, I switched to ITV because I figured that by now they would be proving true to type and screening 'Celebrity Bomb Victims'.

Oddly enough, this wasn't on. I expect the broadcast was delayed while lawyers negotiated with Ulrika Johnson to present it topless. But no matter because instead we had the highly-entertaining sight of watching Sir Trevor McDonald present an EXTENDED ITN NEWS by continually SHOUTING.

Just in case the gravity of the situation had not dawned on everyone, ITN made it evident by adding a headline to the left hand top corner of the screen during Sir Trev's FURIOUS REPORTS. This read:

'TARGET LONDON' and was illustrated with a graphic of three little FLAMES and implied EXCLAMATION MARKS.

After staring at 'TARGET LONDON' (snappy, evidently not from the same copywriters as those that SOGAQJOE use), I began to wonder whether this was an announcement ' or an instruction?

Was 'TARGET LONDON' a call to arms to all of the swarthy men in skirts who have been poncing about studying engineering at the University of Richmond (sic) since 1977? Was 'TARGET LONDON' the sign that they had been waiting for? Was ITN a sleeper front for Al-Qaeda and, come to think of it, where did Sir Trevor Bin Laden get that tan from in the first place?

But, as I have previously alluded, who says it's the men in skirts that are responsible? It could be the French.

You may scoff but look at the circumstantial evidence. First the garlic-munchers get stuffed on Britain asking pointed questions about the subsidies of the Common Agricultural Policy and how come every French farmer drives a Rolls. Then the brown envelopes that Seb Coe put about in Singapore pay off and Paris fails to get the Olympics.

You can see a pattern. Personally, I reckon Chirac got his over-eager secret service to get their Rainbow Warrior plan out again in order to provide a diversion that would get Blair the hell out of Gleneagles.

I reckon the G8 came down for coffee and biscuits and said 'where's Tony?' and Chirac replied that he'd had to rush to London about something or other but he'd left a badly-typed note which read:

'Dear Lads,

Sorry I've had to away nip. Agree pleaze with the French. They are bon!

Tonny xxx'

You can scoff but these are strange times indeed. Anyway, as I am not in the least bit xenophobic about it all, here follows a recipe for a Solidarity Supper of Towel-Head Cous Cous With French Beans.

All best,

GB

Posted by The Englishman at 1:40 PM | Comments (29) | TrackBack

July 6, 2005

Speakers Corner

Please find below some recent emails I have received - I neither associate or disassociate myself from the views expressed; I am just allowing this space as an open forum. If you want to express yourself feel free to add a comment. Do not read on if you are easily offended.
And remember I didn't write them....

Monday July 4th 2005

DEAR HUGH,

I thought The Stereophonics were good, REM were good, Madonna was good and so were The Scissors Sisters. I thought The Who were amazing; completely brilliant. Robbie Williams was fantastic; I mean, I don’t really like him but he showed incredible showmanship, he really got the crowd going, well, at least the women. Maria Carey? I know, what was she even doing there? I thought it was meant to be about big acts. Mind you, I suppose anybody who gets paid fifty two million by EMI just to fuck off must be pretty big. Velvet Revolver were rubbish; well, that singer was. What a prat. As my son said, not anything like as good as Axl Rose. Joss Stone was good. Pink Floyd were great, although it seemed like Gilmore still had a cob on. Ms Dynamite didn’t work. Pete Doherty was dreadful, really bad; you could see Elton thinking that was a really crap idea, asking him. The Killers were amazing, I loved The Killers; I loved his eye-liner. I’m going to buy their album tomorrow – isn’t that what it’s all about? Sting was clever, re-writing Every Breath you take like that; he did that years ago, on Spitting Image once, with all the puppets of the world leaders behind him like that. I didn’t think U2 worked that well, Bono seemed aimless singing Sgt. Pepper, almost like he’d walked onstage by accident. I thought Get Back didn’t work, the sound didn’t seem big enough; Helter Skelter was fantastic but why didn’t the BBC show that film when Macca did The Long And Winding Road? He’d said that the Live 8 people had done a new film, like updated The Cars’ thing or something, but the bloody Beeb didn’t show it, they just kept the cameras on Paul. Which seemed to defeat the purpose of the event, moving the viewers and all that. And what was all that starting Hey Jude on the na-na-na bit all about? I guessed that they’d done that because the cops or the parks people had complained that the gig had over-run and you can’t have people singing to stop starving when the good burghers of Park Lane are trying to get to sleep, so cut the verses and go straight to the chorus. That was a shame. And, anyway, they shouldn’t have been closing with Hey Jude anyway; they should have been closing with Do They Know It’s Christmas. Maybe they, the stars, don’t know Do They Know It’s Christmas; i.e. they don’t know the words. But I doubt it; everybody knows the words to Do They Know It’s Christmas. So why didn’t they end with it. Hey Jude was completely inappropriate. Whose stupid idea was that?

Anyway, we watched pretty much the whole gig. Interesting couple of things, though. One, I’ve got three teenage daughters, right? Only one of them watched Live 8.

And, two, you know Isabelle, Alex’s kid? She’s six. I gave her a Make Poverty History T-shirt on the day. She said to me “Uncle Geoffrey….what’s poverty?” So the schools are obviously doing their bit to get the message across.

But I thought the best thing, as it the most cutting comment on it all; twenty four hours after the gig, Bush does a TV interview and he says NO DEAL on any concessions on climate control. Unbelievable; all that protest and pop song singing, three billion people watching and it means absolutely bugger all to Bush. Nothing. The man is immovable. All that effort for nothing. I know Geldof quite well and weeks ago I sent him a message saying that if you want to shift the G8 opinion, you’ve got to shift Bush. Nobody else matters a toss. It’s the Yanks you’ve got to affect. They organise all of this and Bush says basically says “I don’t care”. What a joke. Presumably he draws no similarity between public lobbying to end hunger and public lobbying for a cleaner planet, he doesn’t give a damn for public opinion. He just cares about business opinion. I said to Geldof that if you want to affect Bush, the only way to make him react is to threaten a boycott against buying American goods. Sadly, I was right. Bush only cares about dollars. He’s a selfish cunt. Did I tell you that I have vowed not to go to America as long as he is in power? A complete cunt, that man. Only a man, like the rest of us, but the biggest cunt on the planet. And a thick cunt as well; presumably he hasn’t worked out yet that if you don’t sort out the climate problem, you won’t have a planet to even starve on. Personally I think Blair and the other G6 should treat Bush and Americans like Hugh Grant does in that best scene from Love Actually; when the Prime Minister tells the US that they are bullies at that Press Conference. We need more of that.

Actually, what we need more of is Ricky Gervais. Did you see him? I thought his wind-up over Blair and Bush agreeing to quadruple African aid was superb; the best thing of the whole day. Best as in the only really subversive moment. The rest of it was too safe for me. Good and well-meaning and important and good for Geldof, but too safe to really shake the politicians. I mean it’s not like Maria Carey’s going to worry anybody into changing trade policy, is it?

And talking of which, where were the really worriers, the warriors? Where was Keith and Dylan and Noel Gallagher? They’re the ones you need at this sort of gig, brooding bruisers who get you reaching for the number of the National Guard. That’s the trouble with charity like this, it’s too nice. To change the world, nice doesn’t work. You need Hitler up there saying feed the world, not somebody in Jimmy Choo heels.

And that, sadly, is the truth. Live 8 was wonderful but it didn’t frighten anybody. If you want to change bullies, and let’s face it the G8 is nothing but the biggest bullies in the playground, you’ve got to scare them. Hence my boycott argument. Bob’s a lovely guy but he’s not going to frighten them, because he hasn’t got the sort of eyes that make you believe that he’ll kick your head in. No, poverty and famine needs Hitler instead of Richard smiley Curtis; you need lads who look like they’ll rape your girlfriend in front of you and make her enjoy it. John Lennon would have done the trick. He got shit done. That’s why the Americans had him shot.

The other thing is that whoever does Live 8’s sums should be shot. Starvation is not just about Africa. The World Bank estimates that between 700 million and 1 billion people live in absolute poverty around the world. Yes, one in every four Africans is malnourished and that is a crime. But also one in every seven in Latin America goes to bed hungry. In Asia and the Pacific, 28% of people are bordering on starvation. In the Near East, one in 10 is underfed. According to the World Health Organisation, 1.3 billion people are chronically hungry.

One hundred and sixty million African are hungry. But so are 500 million souls in South and East Asia.

Basically, 25% of the human race is malnourished.

And what does that cunt Bush do? He presides over a damnable country in which 27 million metric tons of cereal, legumes and vegetable protein suitable for human consumption is fed to livestock in order to produce just 5.3 million metric tons of animal protein for rich human beings to consume.

You want an issue? That’s the fucking issue: make the world eat veggie and nobody will have to starve.

But of course they won’t, because meat means money.

Do you know that the world’s biggest meal money-maker is the Iowa Beef Processing company? In 1981 IBP was bought by Occidental Petroleum for $800 million. It seems odd that an oil company should buy into beef at such cost, but do you know why they did? Because, as IBP’s chairman told investors at the time “food shortages will be to the 1990s what energy shortages have been to the 1970S and 1980s”. In other words, “we can make money out of people starving”.

And you sometimes wonder why I’m a vegetarian. I somewhat doubt that Bush is. Cunt.

Anyway, here’s a few beef-less meals for all those selfless souls at IBP and the White House to chew over.

All best,

GB

---------------------------
Letter Two
--------------------------

In spite of falling crime figures, violent crime is
out of control. The reality is not reflected in
statistics because it goes unreported.

Even if members of the public do report it the police
will not investigate it because of political
correctness, bureaucracy, fear of "over reacting", the
empowerment of the criminal & his rights and sustained
undermining by the government.

Below is a list of murders commited by children and
teenagers.

If a parent slaps a child, they can may suffer social
services intervention. If a teacher dares talk back to
a child, they risk allegations and suspension. If a
policeman questions a teenager, they must fill out a
40 question form.

The yobs don't fear police. The innocent are unable to
defend themselves for fear of being prosecuted.

It is not possible to defeat an attacker. Equal force
in response to an attack has left the British people
victims waiting to happen.

We have Labour and their "upside down" logic to thank
for this.

Below is a list. It seems that there is one murder per
week. The list is incomplete. It may be higher.

Three teenagers have been jailed for life for hacking
a friend to death with two scythes in Sheffield.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/south_yorkshire/4337153.stm

===============================================

2/06/05

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/articles/19063357?source=Evening%20Standard

A girl accused of attempted murder after a
five-year-old was "hanged" by a gang of children is a
renowned bully. The 12-year-old is the prime suspect
for the attack on Anthony Hinchliffe in Dewsbury, West
Yorks. His family said he was taken from his mother's
garden and lured to a wood by the girl, who lives
locally.

=======================================
2/06/05

Gary Prescott, 16, killed Thomas Noble as the
52-year-old tried to save a girl from being beaten up

The court heard that just eight days before the
assault he had appeared before magistrates for causing
trouble in Sunderland, Tyne and Wear.

http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2005250509,00.html

15 yr old attepmted murder
A YOUTH aged 15 has been arrested over the attempted
murder of Phil Carroll,
49, in a yob attack in Salford, Greater Manchester, on
May 13.

================================================

Teens held over girl's death
8 June 2005
Four teenagers aged from 15 to 19 were being
questioned today
in connection with the suspicious death of a
15-year-old girl
whose body was found in a field.

Aimee Wellock, a dance academy student, was with her
boyfriend
and other friends when a gang of youths from a local
estate confronted them

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/articles/19164007?source=PA



=======================================
Girl dies following gang incident

A teenager has died after she was involved in a
disturbance with a gang of youths in the Falkirk area.

Following the incident in the Shieldhill part of the
town, the 17-year-old girl was taken to Falkirk Royal
Infirmary with head injuries.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/4084302.stm

=======================================
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/06/18/nslap18.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/06/18/ixnewstop.html

Boys held after 'rape of girl, 11, is filmed on phone'
By Marco Giannangeli and James Burleigh
(Filed: 18/06/2005)

Three boys aged 14 have been arrested over allegations
that two of them raped an 11-year-old girl and the
assault was filmed on a mobile phone, it was reported
last night.


=======================================

Barbecue man badly injured in gang attack
By Marco Giannangeli
(Filed: 20/06/2005)

A man attacked by nine teenagers as he walked home
from a barbecue was critically ill in hospital last
night.

Detectives mounted a hunt for the gang, some of whom
were believed to be as young as 15, after the assault
in which two of the victim's friends, a man and a
woman, were also injured.

The three found themselves surrounded by the gang, who
were "spoiling for trouble", as they walked along a
residential street in Poole, Dorset.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/06/20/nbarb20.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/06/20/ixhome.html

===========================================

Father dies after chasing gang who attacked his family
home
By Richard Savill
(Filed: 28/06/2005)

A father of five collapsed and died after he
confronted a teenage gang who repeatedly pelted his
house with eggs in the early hours.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/06/28/nbarr28.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/06/28/ixhome.html
=========================================
Gang beats father to death in street
By Nigel Bunyan and Richard Savill
(Filed: 29/06/2005)

A man was beaten to death yesterday after refusing to
give a light to a
group of teenagers as he waited in a pizza takeaway.

The father-of-three is believed to have been dragged
out of the premises
and attacked in the street.

Witnesses said Muglin Southerman, 43, was hit with a
piece of metal before
his head was kicked "as if he was a football''.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/06/29/nsout29.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/06/29/ixhome.html

======================================================================

4 held over man's death


By SUN ONLINE REPORTER

FOUR teenagers were today arrested after a man was
beaten to death, police said.

The 43-year-old victim was attacked shortly after
midnight on Oldham Road in Failsworth, Greater
Manchester.

The man, from Rochdale, suffered serious injuries in
the assault and was taken to Royal Oldham Hospital
where he died.

Two boys, aged 18 and 15, and two girls, aged 14 and
15, all from Failsworth, were arrested on suspicion of
assault.

http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2005290574,00.html

========================================================================
Father of two dies in 'gang attack'
4 July 2005

A father of two was beaten to death as he confronted a
gang of youths outside his parents' home.

Alan Fessey, 31, from Nuneaton, Warwickshire, was
attacked as he tackled the youngsters who, it is
believed had vandalised a nearby car.

A 15-year-old boy was charged with his murder on
Sunday night. He is due to appear before Nuneaton
magistrates on Monday.

http://www.thisislondon.com/news/articles/PA_NEWA11763641120430893A0?source=PA%20Feed

------------------------------------
Letter Three
------------------------------------

The Multicultural Mirage!

When was the first time I heard the term multicultural I cannot quiet remember! Perhaps it was in the mid to late 1980s anyway I think it came in to more everyday use after the Tottenham Broadwater Farm riots in 1985, where poor PC Blakelock was hacked to death by a howling black mob trying to protect the firemen on that animal farm 20 years ago. There were a few non-black animals with this mainly black mob of scum that had murder on their minds. However, these were not indigenous white Tottenham people, they were Turkish and Muslim sounding names from memory of those arrested with the infamous double or was it treble murderer Winston Silcott,

This killer who has subsequently had his conviction overturned for the murder of PC Keith Blakelock on that autumn night down on the farm where the wild beasts tore an unarmed British Bobby apart. I had a friend who was working in the mortuary doing a painting job. The word soon got around to that the poor home beat officer was torn apart with the same savagery that was inflicted on the British soldiers at Ishadwandi during the Zulu wars! The only difference was that although that was the worst massacre the modern British Army of the 19th century suffered, the soldiers there were armed but led by the incompetent Lord Chelmsford. The poor home beat officer and the British public would not have expected such barbarism a century later in a civilized country. Much of his injuries were played down in the media to protect this false multicultural image!

Anyway, what has prompted me to write this latest rant is the smug self-satisfaction of the Labour politicians and their ministers! Just heard one on the TV today (5-7-05) saying we should have the Olympics here in London in 2012. Why? Because he, can’t remember his name but another Scot who wants to see England sink! He stated that London has the most diverse and ethnic population in the world. Hurrah three cheers what a cunt, I want see all these foreign basteds (with their foreign values and habits and non assimilating ways) invading Scotland on the same scale they are hitting London. Anyway I personally don’t believe we live in an enhanced multicultural society in the same way these fucking traitors do. The foreigners move in and the white Englishman and his families move out! That’s what has been happing for the last four decades, even a blind man could see that very soon the white English will not exist, and the new darker version of the ‘New English’ will rule the roost.

A prophecy that Enoch Powell envisaged for us, but he was castigated by the traitors, where are all the real Englishmen and women? Do you not care that your race will in a short space of time be no longer around? We can’t all join the White Flight abroad that is still gathering momentum! Pity the poor soldiers, sailors and airmen and women and the civilians of WWII who suffered so dearly, if they had a crystal ball to show how Britain would sell their labour of war and victory so cheap, we would now be a German state instead in turning into a third world mongrel one!!!

Posted by The Englishman at 4:58 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

June 30, 2005

Dear Hugh 11

My dear, dear, American visitors please look away now; I love and value you but our correspondent has a slight downer on all things American today....
Comments welcome, as ever.

Thursday June 30th

DEAR HUGH,
Today I received your note seeking help for ideas of what to feed your imminent American visitors.

I quite understand your panic and I agree, what do they eat that can be freshly-prepared? Search me, son. I've always felt that everything Over There comes out a packet, including most of the people. I think it's because they don't like to waste time cooking as they need every spare moment for cribbing up at their night class studies of how to behave civilly like the rest of the human race.

If in doubt, as you clearly are, it's probably the safest bet to just point them towards your dog's bowl. Judging by my experience of American culinary habits, they will notice no difference from home cooking.

I'm not sure whether I told you this but I'm convinced that the events of the past five years or so have now culminated in the situation where there are only two Super Powers left on the planet. Super Power 1 is America, evidently. Super Power 2 is World Opinion.

And World Opinion (led by mine) now has it that America should be given an ASBO.

Are you familiar with ASBOs in France? Despite the frightful sound of it, this acronym does not in fact indicate some child in callipers, nor does it reference what used to be whispered about the preferred proclivities of my biology mistress at school. No, an ASBO is what those illiterate twats in Whitehall decided to dub a smack on the wrist, or in their parlance an Anti-Social Behaviour Order.

Basically, if you come home to your tower block drunk, beat the living daylights out of your wife and kids, shag the dog and then nip round to next door to set fire to their place and head-butt any firefighters dispatched to sort out your mess, then you are awarded an ASBO.

In essence that means that you get to have your name in the paper citing you as a local lout and then an ITV film crew pops by to make a reality TV series about you.

Although in grudging fairness to Whitehall, such leniency was not what they had in mind when they came up with the idea for ASBOs at four in the morning after smoking a lot of weed.

What it was meant to be was the society equivalent of one of those "this is your last chance" scoldings that wives terrifying dish out to us chaps whenever we do something as subversive as sigh when a bit of tentative Saturday morning fumbling elicits the announcement that can't you bloody see that she's still got that headache she's had since 1908.

The general point is that ASBOs do not work to deter loutishness any much more effectively than being told "you smell, because you do" in the playground. That, of course, is because Britain's politics and police departments are patrolled by pansies who fail to understand that the Hitler Theory Of Punishment ("you smite me, I incinerate your nation") is the only deterrent worth a shout.

But, unusually, I digress. What I am trying to suggest is that we in The Rest Of The World should all gang up and slip America an ASBO in a brown envelope (probably getting somebody dead thick like the Malaysians to deliver it) at the G8 pro-celebrity bash at Gleneagles.

After the Americans have called in Canada to read it to them, they will inevitably start squealing "why?" like stuck pigs and it is at that point that we push Belgium to the front of the line to tell them that we've had it up to the back teeth with their recent foreign policy because it is utterly anti-social. I suppose you could make a good case for just being American is sufficiently anti-social, but best not to complicate matters as immigrant nations such as the US tend to have learning difficulties and we'll be there all night if we have to get into that one.

Up until this morning, this was - as I am sure you will agree - a corking idea. But then I picked up The Daily Mail at the breakfast tableau and to my horror I read what I fear that any American lawyer (which, let's face it, means two thirds of the bloody country) would seize upon as a US defence against an ASBO.

The particular excuse that I suspect they will hit upon was that which the Mail reported was used by the lawyers defending one Brian Blackwell Jnr.

I'm not sure whether you are familiar with Brian Blackwell Jnr. - and if you are, I advise you to kick him down the stairs. Brian Blackwell Jnr. is a young tyke (19) who got straight A grades at A-level, was studying medicine at Nottingham University and was a general all-round clever clogs who slightly blotted things by killing his parents.
He duffed up his Dad with a claw-hammer before stabbing him 30 times (not with the hammer, obviously; the Blackwells were the sort of happy middle classers who commanded more than one utensil) and then set about thwacking and knifing his mother. He then left their bodies ("to rot" said the Mail with unnecessary detail) and buggered off to run up bills of $45,000 on their credit cards.

Quite evidently, the young Blackwell should spend the rest of his natural days in solitary with his balls caught in a vice. And so he surely would have done had it not been for his brief, who said that far from being guilty of the murder that is obvious to even a blind horse, he was answerable only to a couple of counts of manslaughter because of his "narcissistic personality disorder".

His what? Ignoring for a moment that the inspired luminary who thought up "narcissistic personality disorder" probably gets his gear from the same dealer who services Whitehall, what on earth is it?

Quoting from the Mail, I can tell you that this apparently excusable condition is a mental illness which makes you "obsessed with fantasies of your success, power and brilliance".

So who does that remind you of?

Exactly. What is the difference between doing in a couple of old souls with weapons from the shelves of Do-It-All and blowing their credit and invading with tanks to siphon off all the oil like the Yanks are doing in Iraq?

Logically, the crime is exactly the same and so is the delusion. And probably, just like Blackwell Jnr. (who will be out in seven years), the Septics will get away with their bludgeoning and fleecing too.

Naturally, the prospect of America remaining guilt-less depressed me to the level of one on a manslaughter rap, but that was until I hit on a better wheeze.

In attempting to study the American brain (with a microscope) I discovered the key to controlling their outrageous behaviour. Forget all of those diplomatic protests and not asking them to garden parties, the one thing that really gets to them is economic rebukes.

As anyone who has ever read Death Of A Salesman knows, Americans fear nothing except poverty.
And if we want them to stop decimating Afganistan and Iraq whilst eyeing up Iran and North Korea, the only way to do it is for The Rest Of Us to say "right, that's it, shift your troops home again or we're going to stop buying Marlboro, Miller Lite and all of those other products with names that you are incapable of spelling correctly".

That would do it, world peace at one stroke of the cheque book. If Americans thought that a global trade embargo would prevent them from owning the ludicrously-large homes that they seemingly need to house their ludicrously-large backsides and egos, they'd never bomb anywhere ever again.

And whilst we are on the subject of poverty, somebody ought to get a note up to the boys at the G8 to tell them not to stop giving Chinese Burns to the American delegates until they agree to what I hear that lickspittle Blair is calling "the climate question".

Apparently the inside word is that the US is quite prepared to cave in on cancelling Third World Debt and this making poverty nostalgic lark (as they can afford to, now that they've filtched all of that Iraqi oil) just as long as no Smart Alec pushes them on the ecology matter. My man in Bush's rectum (christened Anthony) tells me that there is absolutely no way that the World's Biggest Polluter will cut back on emissions etc. because that will cost them a packet in lost profiteering.

Has nobody the courage to inform these imbeciles that whilst allowing famine in Africa is nothing other than a mortal sin, the actual No.1 priority at the G8 should be refurbishing the Earth - because if we don't sort that out we won't even have a planet to starve on.

But what's the use? The Yanks will get their own way, just as they always had done since they managed to convince a generation that The Osmonds were a rock and roll band.

As to your plea for a recipe for your American guests, I can only suggest that you follow the following way of making Chilli Con Carne. But, given their nationality, I recommend that you add three extra teaspoons of chilli powder; in order to give them the s***s that they are.

Good luck with attempting with what they believe passes for conversation.
All best,
GB

Posted by The Englishman at 9:21 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

June 29, 2005

Dear Hugh 10

All is not white with our correspondent...

Wednesday June 29th 2005

DEAR HUGH,

Thank you for your note detailing what you and Marilyn get up to in bed with a packet of chocolate orange and for your consequent enquiry about recipes for slimmers.

But before I address that, you know that bint from Bogota that you were telling me about, the one who does a turn? Do you still have her e-mail? If so, would you kindly whack it over to me because I need to write to somebody in authority about the new cocaine problem and, being Colombian, I thought she’d probably know somebody in one of those cartels that every man Jack of them seems to be a member of.

As you know, until now I have never been known to have a problem with cocaine (my only problems having been with policemen and those Customs people who do work experience at Heathrow as part of their BNF training).

But now enough has come to enough and it’s about time that something is done about it, or at least that somebody writes a letter to The Times.

My new-found coke concern stems from reading about its widespread popularity, which is very unsettling. As you know, time was when cocaine was the drug of the elite, the Schutzstaffel of substances. And very appropriate those times were too; the Great Smell Of Brut brigade had their pints of mild and a Malibu on their birthdays and us lot, being gentlemen of the world, had our Charlie. All was in its right place; us in the lounge bar lav with a Mastercard and a rolled-up note and them in the snug puzzling out the difference between spots and stripes on the pool table.

All was white with the world and it is no coincidence, methinks, that during those times of correct regimentation the incidence of thugee behaviour in pubs was limited to the very occasional punch directed at pigs who greedily helped themselves to a handful of your cheese and onion crisps.

Now you can’t move around here on a Saturday night without getting your head caved in by some lout or other. And for this I blame the coke. Or rather, I blame the fact that cocaine has become so popular that now it’s The People’s Drug.

As I have argued before, it is a very bad idea to allow simple minds that cannot handle it to be within a furlong of any substance stronger than snuff. Marx was completely wrong when he wittered on about opiates for the masses; in my not-inconsiderable experience, masses should not be permitted anywhere near opiates. For starters, they can’t cope with the vividity of the dreams, let alone the constipation.

But anyway, this cocaine business has got completely out of hand because now everybody is doing it. I was listening to John Humphrys beat up some unfortunate this morning over new crime statistics which apparently reveal that one in every eight adults is snorting it and that it has become especially popular among what the BBC calls “urban youth” (by which they mean black insolents and white trash from Tottenham).

Of course, I saw this coming years ago and had anyone at the Home Office bothered to have paid any attention to my letters applying for the job as Drugs Tsar we wouldn’t be in this mess. But that’s by the by, the point is that everybody is now hunched over the mirror.

Besides the fact that I know of at least one current national tabloid editor (and many Canary Wharf executives) who has enjoyed a toot in my presence, it’s the point that his readers are doing it that is bothering me. Has nobody else worked out that you simply can’t go around letting these chavs get their hands on cocaine without expecting a giant leap in the number of dead common assaults?

As I have said before, the operative words in the chav acronym are not “council house”; they are “and violent”. We are dealing here with people who’ll put a lighted rook-scarer up a cat’s arse (you’ve watched Shameless) and they are certainly not the sort who should be introduced to the old nose whisky.

You may think I am uncharacteristically over-reacting but let me tell you that I have it on the authority of the Gazette & Herald no less that last week cops armed with some new form of electronic sniffing device discovered “traces of cocaine” in public lavatories in Calne. OK, I admit that this indicates that the drugee in question was possibly not a resident (as to most of that town’s feral populace using a public lavatory usually means peeing in a doorway) but you understand my issue that the sort of people whose diminutive minds are so already scrambled that they believe Burberry to be a good look should not be permitted to take drugs that will inevitably make them yet more weirdly recalcitrant.

I realise that we live in such grimly-egalitarian times that a full house for Blunkett: The Musical is entirely feasible but don’t you think the authorities could do something about preventing the oxymoronic working class from sliming too far up the social ladder by decreeing that anybody who calls a dealer must first sit a MENSA test?

At the very least, you’d have thought that The Powers would have blocked such blatant endorsement for cocaine as was the front page of yesterday’s Sun, which informed the nation that the mob’s very own madonna, People’s Princess Di no less, used to take coke during the period when she was fluffing arabs in the back of Mercs.

I mean that’s it, isn’t it. You can forget all about trying to keep the rabble off the gack now that they’ve gone and read that their bloody idol made her nose burn. Thanks a bunch, Rupert, for dropping that piece of veiled republicanism on us all. Now we’ll never get them back in their place eating Fray Bentos straight from the tin.

And on which foodie note, I come to your request for a satisfying, but slimming, meal. As you can imagine, I have given this a great deal of thought and there has been much consultation with Michael Stone, the chef. It is our conclusion that as you live in France you combine the ultimate in nouvelle cuisine with the ideal diet dish, as follows.

(SORT OF) SALATE TRICOLORE

(Per Person) Take one baby cherry tomato – measuring little more than the circumference of a late-season pea – and make a 45-degree slit in it about half-way up one side.

Insert the stem of a very small basil leaf into the slit.

Place the leaf-decorated tomato upon a bone-dry side plate and then very carefully arrange about half a gram of cocaine in a line beside the tom.

Serve immediately.

Although this meal seems radically insubstantial, you will find that that almost everybody who finishes it will almost immediately declare themselves to be feeling “absolutely stuffed”. I expect it was once popular at Kensington Palace . Or at least getting stuffed used to be.

All best

GB

Posted by The Englishman at 4:45 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Dear Hugh 7

The missing letter has turned up...

Thursday May 19th 2005

DEAR HUGH,

Do you have a phone number for Gordon Brown? I thought you might because I seem to recall that you said you met him on holiday once. Or was that Gordon Banks? Whatever, I just need to be able to speak to the bloke. I tried calling up Eleven Downing Street but they're a fat lot of use, apparently he can't be arsed to chat with such low-life who were the most important people on the planet when he wanted my vote a few weeks back.

Anyway, I need to talk to him because I've worked out a way by which he can keep the country afloat; and it's in his interest to listen.

As you know, everybody's in a bit of a tizz over here since Blair discovered that successive governments have been dipping into the Christmas Club box that was the national pensions fund in order to go spend it on ammunition for Iraq, gin and loose women. Or some such. Because everybody's been helping themselves to a tanner here and a fiver there, consequently there is not enough left in the kitty to pay out a pension for people like me who have spent all their life expecting one.

When the penny finally drops in the national psyche that there's no biscuits left in the tin, one of two things is going to happen. Either (a) there will be a run on the "bank" expressed through the act of people refusing to pay any more National Insurance (due to Gresham's Law that you don't throw good money after bad) or (b) there will be a bloody revolution.

Now although Old Shifty (Blair) has reluctantly muttered a claim that he will give up the Caesarism of his position during the term of this Parliament, I suspect there is not a cat's chance of him taking the Yale to No.10 off his key-ring until the very last moment - or at least not until the estate agents have rented his new gaff out at exorbitant rates to some senile Arab.

I reckon that Old Shifty won't shift himself until there is absolutely no money left in the tea caddy where they keep the pension dosh. Only when he can no longer afford new strings for his Stratocaster will he start telling the family to pack and not to forget about boxing up all the prezzies that they got from state visits.

At that stage he'll phone Gordon - probably from the jet upon which he will already be en route to his new post as the musical turn at Camp David - and tell him that he's left him the keys under the mat.

Brown, gurgling with delight at last, will nip next door to claim the throne offered him years back - only to discover that Britain's had the burglars in and there's no money left with which to govern. At which point, cue the start (b) above.

But I can save Brown (and Britain) the spilling of a lot of blood and not some little embarrassment when they pass around the envelope for Old Shifty's leaving gift. And to be honest, I got the idea off Blair himself (although best to keep quiet about that otherwise he'll send his missus round with a writ claiming copyright).

I was gently waking up the other morning to the Today programme as usual when I heard Old Shifty come on The News Read By Brian Perkins to discuss the shortfall in the pension funds and announce that "people must take responsibility for living longer".

Great, I thought, now it's my fault that I'm not already dead. Typical of this lot to try to make me feel guilty about that. So now it's up to me to provide for myself and all that talk of the last sixty years about the welfare state, well, that was just talk; nobody put any commitment in writing.

Then this really good idea - the one that could save Brown's backside - came to me. The Government's point is that because we are all selfishly going around refusing to die in our sixties, more people are eligible for pensions than they calculated for when they did the sums during the period of the Black Death. And this older population boom, coupled with some very bad investment in the nuthouse that is America, has resulted in the nation being, well, a little short.

Old Shifty's solution to this is for us to "take responsibility", by which I take him to mean that we should save more or, more likely, that he is going to quadruple the National Insurance subs. Typically, he's got it arse about face. What he should be doing instead - and this is what I want to tell Brown - is to turn the system on its head.

Instead of moaning that his aunts haven't pegged it and taxing them and us for the audacity of breathing, what he ought to do is reward people for perishing prematurely.

It's staggeringly simple economics. If there's a problem because there are more of us hanging about that there is money in the coffers to cater for, don't penalise us for living longer - encourage us to live shorter.

Instead of heavily taxing cigarettes and booze and other means of an untimely death, what they should do is provide tax breaks and incentives for all those who are making every reasonable every effort to pop off soon. We should get tax relief for smoking, boozing should be re-promoted as socially responsible, fatty fast foods should be subsidised, it should be made cheapest to live in cities where the pollution is vile and there should be Government grants for anybody death-wishy enough to claim in female company that there is more important things in life than new shoes.

By providing these early-grave incentives - and a few others imaginative schemes like benefit hand-outs for VC nominees who say "yes, your bum does look big in that" - the Powers could encourage millions to get their coats and thereby save the nation a packet.

So if you see Gordon, tell him.

GB

Posted by The Englishman at 6:51 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

June 28, 2005

Dear Hugh 9

Oh you lucky people - I have intercepted another "Dear Hugh" letter - get comfortable and read on...

Tuesday June 28th 2005

DEAR HUGH,

A slight problem has cropped up at home and I’m not talking about my on-going writ against Bob Dylan for his unauthorised basing of the lyrics of Like A Rolling Stone and Positively 4th Street on my life (and seeing as you ask, Bobsy, “it” actually feels rubbish and, by the way, it’s a drag to see you too). No, the problem du jour is that I’ve become a bit of a woman.

Obviously, I need your advice on how to deal with this; although by that I do not mean that I am seeking you to tell me that my bum does not look big in anything.

Naturally I realise that for your good self to be in receipt on an unsolicited confession from a chap ostensibly claiming to be on the turn is enough to send you screaming to the hills to thwack with sticks the courting Gerards who picnic there on salads and rose wine, so I had better explain my position.

It all began a couple of months back when my left ear fell off as a consequence of a squall of furious lectures from my Grand-Child Bride on the benefits of abstinence from the purple beads winking at the brim.

Following the curve of the philosophy of the G-CB’s deal-breaker (which essentially was condensed in the premise that she “won’t shag drunks”) I was persuaded by some forceful lobbying from my lower brain to select the squelching over the burping.

Disregarding for one second the fact that the small print of The Deal was not exactly what I had hoped for – or at least the frequency of the results of the aforementioned agreement has been somewhat lacking – I attempted to embrace my new sobriety with all of the enthusiasm of a lucky contestant winning a set of soup spoons on Sale Of The Century.

And thereby began this alarming process which appears to have brought on this gender exchange. The more I resisted the lure of my usual eighteen weekly pints of Scruttock’s Old Derigible, the more I found myself to be uncharacteristically grumpy and complaining.

I, of course, was fine with this and I explained reasonably that irritation and tetchiness was merely a side-effect of the teetotalitarianism that she had thrust on me and so shut up and get your knickers off and those stockings on.

Bizarrely, this line of argument failed to put her in a mood of anything approaching a state of oestrus. But as her lack of enthusiasm for the new bedfellows of Rampant Rabbits and lubricunt served only to further foul my moods, we had what women like to call “a chat” (which we men recognise as an extended period of uninterrupted berating).

During the course of this (one-way) chat it was illustrated to me that perhaps I should substitute a new substance for the previously-championed alcohol. As you can imagine, my eyes lit up at this prospect and I began to balmily enjoy looking forward to the prospect of towering hills of white powder littering up the home. At the very least, I mused, she must be suggesting that I take up speedballing.

You can, then, appreciate that my heart somewhat sank when she suggested that the gilded grape be replaced with…chocolate.

Exactly.

I mean, what good is bloody chocolate when you are wanting to gird yourself for a good night in or out? Or even, and indeed especially, for a good night of in and out? Yes, I know that cocoa butter is supposed to turbo-charge the libido, but just breathing usually does that for me.

But, being the sort of agreeable New Chap that I am, I decided to give it a walnut whirl and set off to Waitrose in search of dark chocolate (I am not allowed the milk variety as dairy products feature among the 142 single-spaced pages of proscribed products that my doctor forbids me on account of them worsening any of my 35 terminal conditions).

Being a chap, I had expected to find a bit of Bournville and, being a chap, had expected to find that perfectly disgusting and pointless.

But bugger me if I didn’t get that wrong. I had been expecting to pick up one of those red-wrapped bars that your Dad used to eat when he started smoking a pipe, lonely stacked in isolation amid shelves of the good Belgian stuff. But instead I found myself staring into a darkies’ cave of milk-less choc.

I’d heard that some people (women) have a bit of a fetish for the stuff, but did you know that these days they appear to make dark chocolate for every form of depravity? There’s lemon choc, blackcurrant choc, lavender choc (no, I have no idea why), orange choc, mint choc, and then there’s the really hard-core stuff like cardamom chocolate and, I am not making this up, cayenne chocolate. Why the hell any bird would enjoy something like that, both sweet and spicy, is beyond me; but then it never ceases to amaze me what women will put in their mouths these days.

Anyway, undaunted by which choice to make from this exotica – let alone undazed by the confusion of what is the point of difference between “70% cocoa” and “85% cocoa” – I made a purchase.

By the way, in the unlikely event of this Dantesque tale having the effect of in any way persuading you to follow my strange behaviour, let me warn you now that this superchoc isn’t cheap; one bar retails at around the same price as a small Japanese car (not, I know, that you would be seen dead in a ditch in a Japanese car; I’m just making an illustration).

Anyway, weighed down by my choice of pricey choc (for which I am hoping to find funding by applying to the G8 Summit for one of those debt write-offs that they hand out these days to anybody who can’t pay the water bill) I crawled home full of thoughts that it would bloody well serve her right when my eating of the stuff caused her enjoyment of EastEnders to be interrupted by projectile-vomiting.

As you can never be too careful with this sort of girly food, I took the precaution of having several good heaves on a roll-up of that Algerian herbal mixture that you sent me, in order to assist my appetite.

Well blow me vicar and schtump me with a trenching tool if I wasn’t as ill-advised as the Mayor of Hiroshima’s “Silent Sunday” campaign.

Never mind booze, this stuff is better than acid! Honestly. All that stuff that we thought was guff when the girls said it was more-ish and “gorgeous” and “better than sex” is spot on (not that I am currently in a position to calibrate the latter comparison, but you get the drift).

Anyway, this whole seeing it (or indeed anything) from the women’s point of view is, as you can imagine, more scary than going round to Alex’s gaff to hear his Yes albums and although I have yet to develop any other girly symptoms, like an unnatural interest in shoe shops and the inability to throw a ball properly, I am understandably concerned that without psychological counselling I might start to miss watching Sex In The Clitty or whatever it’s called and nonchalantly shaving my arm-pits and blunting the blade of something that is quite clearly marked “men’s face razor”.

God forbid that I might even start having telephone conversations that veer from the correct form of “Hello + the point of my call + goodbye”.

As you can read, I’m in quite a state over this; so please send lawyers, guns and money. And don’t, for Christ’s sake, even entertain trying any of the following recipes. Or you too might start agreeing with Them. And chaos lies that way.

All best,

GB

(CHICKEN IN CHILLI & CHOCOLATE RECIPE FOLLOWS HERE, TOGETHER WITH RECIPES FOR DAMN-EASY CHOCOLATE MOUSSE, CHOCOLATE FATHERS’ DAY CAKE AND CHOC & HASH BROWNIES)

Tuesday June 28th 2005

DEAR HUGH,

A slight problem has cropped up at home and I’m not talking about my on-going writ against Bob Dylan for his unauthorised basing of the lyrics of Like A Rolling Stone and Positively 4th Street on my life (and seeing as you ask, Bobsy, “it” actually feels rubbish and, by the way, it’s a drag to see you too). No, the problem du jour is that I’ve become a bit of a woman.

Obviously, I need your advice on how to deal with this; although by that I do not mean that I am seeking you to tell me that my bum does not look big in anything.

Naturally I realise that for your good self to be in receipt on an unsolicited confession from a chap ostensibly claiming to be on the turn is enough to send you screaming to the hills to thwack with sticks the courting Gerards who picnic there on salads and rose wine, so I had better explain my position.

It all began a couple of months back when my left ear fell off as a consequence of a squall of furious lectures from my Grand-Child Bride on the benefits of abstinence from the purple beads winking at the brim.

Following the curve of the philosophy of the G-CB’s deal-breaker (which essentially was condensed in the premise that she “won’t shag drunks”) I was persuaded by some forceful lobbying from my lower brain to select the squelching over the burping.

Disregarding for one second the fact that the small print of The Deal was not exactly what I had hoped for – or at least the frequency of the results of the aforementioned agreement has been somewhat lacking – I attempted to embrace my new sobriety with all of the enthusiasm of a lucky contestant winning a set of soup spoons on Sale Of The Century.

And thereby began this alarming process which appears to have brought on this gender exchange. The more I resisted the lure of my usual eighteen weekly pints of Scruttock’s Old Derigible, the more I found myself to be uncharacteristically grumpy and complaining.

I, of course, was fine with this and I explained reasonably that irritation and tetchiness was merely a side-effect of the teetotalitarianism that she had thrust on me and so shut up and get your knickers off and those stockings on.

Bizarrely, this line of argument failed to put her in a mood of anything approaching a state of oestrus. But as her lack of enthusiasm for the new bedfellows of Rampant Rabbits and lubricunt served only to further foul my moods, we had what women like to call “a chat” (which we men recognise as an extended period of uninterrupted berating).

During the course of this (one-way) chat it was illustrated to me that perhaps I should substitute a new substance for the previously-championed alcohol. As you can imagine, my eyes lit up at this prospect and I began to balmily enjoy looking forward to the prospect of towering hills of white powder littering up the home. At the very least, I mused, she must be suggesting that I take up speedballing.

You can, then, appreciate that my heart somewhat sank when she suggested that the gilded grape be replaced with…chocolate.

Exactly.

I mean, what good is bloody chocolate when you are wanting to gird yourself for a good night in or out? Or even, and indeed especially, for a good night of in and out? Yes, I know that cocoa butter is supposed to turbo-charge the libido, but just breathing usually does that for me.

But, being the sort of agreeable New Chap that I am, I decided to give it a walnut whirl and set off to Waitrose in search of dark chocolate (I am not allowed the milk variety as dairy products feature among the 142 single-spaced pages of proscribed products that my doctor forbids me on account of them worsening any of my 35 terminal conditions).

Being a chap, I had expected to find a bit of Bournville and, being a chap, had expected to find that perfectly disgusting and pointless.

But bugger me if I didn’t get that wrong. I had been expecting to pick up one of those red-wrapped bars that your Dad used to eat when he started smoking a pipe, lonely stacked in isolation amid shelves of the good Belgian stuff. But instead I found myself staring into a darkies’ cave of milk-less choc.

I’d heard that some people (women) have a bit of a fetish for the stuff, but did you know that these days they appear to make dark chocolate for every form of depravity? There’s lemon choc, blackcurrant choc, lavender choc (no, I have no idea why), orange choc, mint choc, and then there’s the really hard-core stuff like cardamom chocolate and, I am not making this up, cayenne chocolate. Why the hell any bird would enjoy something like that, both sweet and spicy, is beyond me; but then it never ceases to amaze me what women will put in their mouths these days.

Anyway, undaunted by which choice to make from this exotica – let alone undazed by the confusion of what is the point of difference between “70% cocoa” and “85% cocoa” – I made a purchase.

By the way, in the unlikely event of this Dantesque tale having the effect of in any way persuading you to follow my strange behaviour, let me warn you now that this superchoc isn’t cheap; one bar retails at around the same price as a small Japanese car (not, I know, that you would be seen dead in a ditch in a Japanese car; I’m just making an illustration).

Anyway, weighed down by my choice of pricey choc (for which I am hoping to find funding by applying to the G8 Summit for one of those debt write-offs that they hand out these days to anybody who can’t pay the water bill) I crawled home full of thoughts that it would bloody well serve her right when my eating of the stuff caused her enjoyment of EastEnders to be interrupted by projectile-vomiting.

As you can never be too careful with this sort of girly food, I took the precaution of having several good heaves on a roll-up of that Algerian herbal mixture that you sent me, in order to assist my appetite.

Well blow me vicar and schtump me with a trenching tool if I wasn’t as ill-advised as the Mayor of Hiroshima’s “Silent Sunday” campaign.

Never mind booze, this stuff is better than acid! Honestly. All that stuff that we thought was guff when the girls said it was more-ish and “gorgeous” and “better than sex” is spot on (not that I am currently in a position to calibrate the latter comparison, but you get the drift).

Anyway, this whole seeing it (or indeed anything) from the women’s point of view is, as you can imagine, more scary than going round to Alex’s gaff to hear his Yes albums and although I have yet to develop any other girly symptoms, like an unnatural interest in shoe shops and the inability to throw a ball properly, I am understandably concerned that without psychological counselling I might start to miss watching Sex In The Clitty or whatever it’s called and nonchalantly shaving my arm-pits and blunting the blade of something that is quite clearly marked “men’s face razor”.

God forbid that I might even start having telephone conversations that veer from the correct form of “Hello + the point of my call + goodbye”.

As you can read, I’m in quite a state over this; so please send lawyers, guns and money. And don’t, for Christ’s sake, even entertain trying any of the following recipes. Or you too might start agreeing with Them. And chaos lies that way.

All best,

GB

(CHICKEN IN CHILLI & CHOCOLATE RECIPE FOLLOWS HERE, TOGETHER WITH RECIPES FOR DAMN-EASY CHOCOLATE MOUSSE, CHOCOLATE FATHERS’ DAY CAKE AND CHOC & HASH BROWNIES)

Posted by The Englishman at 5:49 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

June 27, 2005

Dear Hugh 8

Monday June 27th 2005

DEAR HUGH,

Thank you for your letter asking for a good hang-over cure. Before I apply myself to that, I thought you ought to know that I’ve discovered where the Government has spent all that pension cash that everybody’s been asking them for - the ever-nannying Home Office has used it to buy Morrisons, or Safeways as we used to call it.

Odd, I know, but nonetheless true. And I have proof; I was in there (Safeway/Morrisons) this morning, mooching about with a list and trying to avoid those mums who hang around there bending over deliberately at the bottom shelves so that you can see their cleavage and get the hint that their old man’s at work, when the contents of my trolley were suddenly seized at the check-out.

Now before you start assuming stuff, don’t. Because whilst I realise that it is perfectly possible to buy magic mushrooms in Oxford Street these days (at the jeans store that is opposite Virgin at the Tottenham Court Road end), as far as I’m aware Safeway has yet to get in on that act.

No, my shopping was impounded because it contained aspirin and paracetamol. There on the conveyor belt behind the apples, San Pellegrino and dairy-free ice cream (sic), were four packets of 16 tablets of aspirin and four packets of 16 tablets of paracetamol. Each packet costing 19p.

I was just breaking into that forehead sweat that you get from attempting to keep up with bagging your shopping in tandem with the Mach III speed at which they scan it when the slip of a girl on the check-out said “You can’t have that”.

“Sorry?”, I said, confused.

“You can’t have that. I can only sell you two packets of painkillers”.

“But I want eight”, I protested.

“You can only have two”.

“Why?”, I said, knowing already that I was going to regret asking that.

“It’s the law”, she recited woodenly.

“No it’s not”, I reacted, being something of an authority on the varied legalities of substances (as you know).

The girl was plainly confused by this and appeared reluctant to argue.

“Who told you it’s the law?”, I continued but she didn’t want to answer that either.

“Hang on a sec”, I said and muttering “sorry about this, mate” to the bloke who was now knocked out with delight to be queuing behind this unexpected shopping jam, I belted off to the in-store pharmacy.

“Excuse me”, I mumbled to the chemist who was standing there glaring at me with eyes that said it’s eleven thirty in the morning, why aren’t you at work like proper men? “Your girl on the till tells me that I can only buy two packets of painkillers. Why is that?”

Immediately she clocked the long hair and earrings and, doubtless presuming that I was therefore planning to inject this gear, enquired “Why do you need more?”

“Because I have a wife and three daughters and they all get periods and because my son and I get headaches”, I said, not expecting the interrogation and not willing to disclose the input of hangovers here.

“Well, it’s the law anyway”, she huffed.

“Which law is that? Can you name me the exact Act?”.

Irritated by my retaliation, she changed tack.

“It’s so that you don’t overdose”, she said.

“But I wasn’t planning to overdose”. I admit that this was a bit of a lie; for whilst I had no intentions of suicide before this palaver began, the appeal of that was by now starting to grow on me.

“It’s meant to make it difficult for people to overdose”.

I fixed her with my best “Madam, you are a cretin” look whilst I computed that two-packs-only rule was ludicrous anyway, on account of 2 x 16 aspirin or 2 x 16 paracetamol or an exotic cocktail of one pack of either would kill you anyway.

So what was the rule for? To stop you killing yourself more? To prevent binge-dying?

Besides, what happened to the buy-one-get-one-free philosophy; does that only apply to catering packs of Kotex and other non-requirements like surplus tins of luncheon meat?

I was causing another queue now and the line of pensioners behind me were becoming arsey that I was holding them up from getting their prescriptions for surgical stockings, so I went for the throat.

“Let me get this right; you can only sell me two packets of aspirin in case I kill myself – even though those two packets would kill me anyway?”

“That’s right, only two packets”, she withered.

“OK. So how many bottles of Scotch can you sell me?”

“As many as you’d like, sir”, said the mouthpiece of reason.

I walked away, resisting the temptation to summon the manager for a good castigating on the matter of how dare he sell two-litre bottles of bleach, as that could kill me, or how dare he sell packs of twelve fish-fingers, as that could suffocate me if I crammed them all into my mouth at once and refused to chew or swallow, or how dare he not limit the quantity of Diet Coke I could purchase in case, in a suicidal bid, I filled my bath with it and held my head under the brown froth.

Come to that, how dare they sell bunches of bananas when it is perfectly feasible that I could stand outside the store stripping off the skins and deliberately attempting to slip on one, again and again until I managed to skid beneath a passing bus?

And I was just enumerating the myriad ways in which I suspected that Safeway was stealthily culpable of assisting my death when the reason for all this came to me.

Blunkett, this is his doing. Or else the doing of that fat bogger who stepped in as replacement when dear David got caught bringing a whole new meaning to Blind Man’s Buff, the one who looks like a pederast Father Christmas.

It’s the bloody Home Office, buying up Safeway/Morrisons in order to nanny us again with that restrictionist protestant logic that they never quite manage to think out much beyond the penetrating argument of “just don’t do it, OK?” I expect they’re going to re-name it “Homer’s”, probably in a bid to subliminally appeal to the Simpsons-like intelligence of their average supporter.

Anyway, all of this expansionism by the Home Sweet Home Office is just the tip of the ice-pick. As soon as their spin quacks get on the case we won’t even be allowed two packs of aspirin; not content with printing that “Smoking Kills” graffiti all over my Marlboro packs, the Government PR unit will have a field day with new slogans like “Tense, nervous headache? Deal with it”.

And this brings me to my point – if the Government is now set on preventing the use of pain-killers (either by this alleged “law” that nobody seems capable of detailing or else by state control of supermarketing), how on Earth are decent Englishmen like ourselves expected to cure our hangovers?

Are we to be called upon to do something ridiculous like just ignore the pain? Does Blunkett or Clarke or whatever he calls himself require that we don’t get drunk? Or maybe he’s hoping to fob us off with those herbal “remedies” on which it is impossible to OD for the simple reason that extract of camomile wouldn’t anaesthetise a newly-born ant.

The point is that the writing is on the wall and I seriously advice you to stock up now on all available forms of pain-killer otherwise the cure below will not work. Unless you know of a better cure, in which case send me the recipe.

THE GOOD MORNING-AFTER

* In a pint glass, pour in four fingers of near-frozen vodka.

* Add the juice and zest of one lemon + one finger of Tabasco.

* Add sprinkle of celery salt + one finger of Worcestershire Sauce.

* Add four aspirin or paracetamol + 1 teaspoon of Vitamin C.

* Top up with juice of 1 tin of liquidised plum tomatoes + ice.

* Drink rapidly, followed by chaser of half-pint of pale ale.

* If hang-over remains after 10 minutes, repeat all above.

* Do not bother to decorate with irritating celery stick as it invariably gets in the way and restricts the gulping.

All best,

GB

Posted by The Englishman at 7:20 PM | Comments (11) | TrackBack

May 13, 2005

The "Dear Hugh" Letters

I have been copied in on this series of letters which I thought you might enjoy:

DEAR HUGH

Is a series of letters written to a friend by a professional man approaching his 50th birthday. He lives in a small village in Wiltshire. He has four children; one 12-year-old rock guitarist son and three blonde daughters aged 18, 19 and 21. His wife has just turned 40 and is a generation younger than him. Having spent 12 years in journalism and then 15 years working as publicist for an international music star and British national hero, he is trying to find some income working part-time as an ideas originator of programmes for a small London TV production company, where his boss is a woman 20 years younger than him. Unfortunately, he is handicapped in this as he detests pretty much all modern television. Having been very slim for all of his childhood and all of his adulthood to date, in the last year he has been horrified to find himself putting on weight. He is now three stone heavier than he was last summer. He does not understand the Internet, e-mail, television scheduling or anything more technical than a wheelbarrow. He drinks, but is currently teetotal, he smokes and does not exercise. He is on treatments of Prozac and beta-blockers for the depression that led him to leave his famous former employer. He is grumpy, confused and writes from his shed in his garden, from where he is happy to receive comments to ycw56@dial.pipex.com, especially if they endorse his view that everybody other than chaps of his age needs psychiatry. His friend Hugh is five years his senior and lives in the French Alps near Evian.

Posted by The Englishman at 11:59 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Dear Hugh 1

Thursday May 5th 2005

Dear Hugh,

Well the good news is that today I am 13st. 10lbs. I realise that this entirely frightful statement is like claiming the good news to be that I only have cancer of the throat, but you have no idea what I’ve been going through.

For starters, did anyone ever warn you than a bottle of vino contains something like 2,000 calories? Exactly, nobody told me either. Consequently I’ve been merrily drinking my calorific RDA before I even get started on the crisp-breads and salad and all of the other taste-free muck that I’m forced to eat in order to try lessen the ballooning of the stomach that is identifying me as Britain’s first seven-months pregnant man.

Because of this suppressed fact that Shiraz is actually grape-flavoured golden syrup, my weight has gone not only through the roof but also quite probably through one of those myriad holes in the O-layer. It’s all very well for My Ex to go around singing how he’s half the man he used to be; lucky him – I’m thrice the man these days.

According to The Grand-child Bride, this is what happens to men of your age. Did you know that? You were a man of your age before me; did anyone say “Oh, by the way, when you get to almost 50 be prepared for your tummy to touch your toes”? Exactly, nobody says a bloody word; they just sit there and silently watch you inflate like a Zeppelin and when you wake up one morning complaining that you’re Johnny Piggin’ Vegas they say “I could have told you that would happen”.

Anyway, late middle-age and an ignorance of the liquid lard that is apparently alcohol has super-sized me to the extent that the only clothes that fit me are those dreadful claret and beige zipped cardigans that nobody wants to be seen looking at on the XXXXL rail in Oxfam. My face looks like one of those aquarium fish that puffs up when it gets frightened and I haven’t looked down and seen my willy for a good nine months now. I only know it’s still there because it wakes me up every three hours at night demanding a pee.

What is happening to my body? And, more to the point, whose fault is it, what is the name and address of their lawyer and where can I buy a gun?

But, as I said, it’s been worse. Although today I am an elephant-svelte 13st 10, up until last week I’d been over the 14 mark. That was a bloody horror and, I tell you, for a while there I had a good mind to spend a month doing the old Bogota body-plan that used to be so popular on rock tours I have known. Trouble is and as you know, the Gackins Diet only works if you keep on it all the time and I don’t have the money for that anymore.

So it was Diet Coke instead – and there was another problem; it may be sugar-free but all that carbonation….Jesus! You may as well have just deep-throated the air-hose at the local garage. Talk about blow-up, you could have tied a length of string to my leg and sold me to those candy floss-faced children who hang about sulking for another ride besides the dodgems at the travelling fair.

And so, after much thought, wheezing and reddening of the face, I’ve gone and done what no occasional member of Her Majesty’s Press is ever meant to do. Please don’t think badly of me for this as I had no choice. I’ve given up drinking.

Now before you get the duff end of the stick, don’t get me wrong. I’m not scuttling off to any of those church hall meetings where nobody appears to have a surname and where they say (chirpily) “Hello, have you got a drink problem? Well done! Have a biscuit”. I’m not doing this in order to spend the rest of my life sanctimoniously glum; it’s just a temporary measure until people on the 125 to Paddington cease to think I’m en route to a fancy dress party as the Michelin Man.

The weird thing is, though, it bloody works. Obviously Mum’s the word on that as I don’t want any mates to know that I’m putting it about that we should scotch the Scotch, but I’ve lost four pounds. As I say, keep this to yourself because, to be honest, I’m a little fearful that if Blair’s mob hears that I’ve discovered this new slimming trick they might send round a hit squad.

Call me paranoid, but I think the Government wants to keep it well hushed up that wine will make a Womble of you. This must be the case because otherwise they’d detail the calorific chaos caused by a bottle of Beauj in a warning on its label, a bit like they do with those “smoking makes your wonker weak” alarms on packets of fags.

I know the Blair Fair says it wants the nation to get fit, but I don’t think that’s the case at all. I think they want a stupefied nation, that’s why they keep declaring public holidays every time that the Queen buys a new hat, any excuse to cause a booze-up.

Why? Because a stupefied nation is a subdued nation, an unquestioning nation, a hang-about-who-said-we-should-go-to-war-nation. That’s why they are hell-bent on extending pub opening hours to the point when it’s almost compulsory to drink at eight in the morning; they know that boozing is bad for us – particularly for us Fat At Fiftys (FAFs) – but they don’t want to let on about it because if we all clean up our acts in the process of drying out we’ll get our wits back and people will start asking “who exactly voted for this tosser?”

Besides avoiding the squirming embarrassment of answering questions from a nation that is not permanently too pissed to think clearly, there’s good economic policy in all this hushing up and it’s exactly the same fiscal reasoning that lay behind their move to declassify cannabis to the toxic status of a Love Heart. Not only does the more boozed and spliffed up they can make us mean that the less we are capable of examining the trail of who said what when about top-up fees, this also has the bonus of fattening up the strain on our tickers so that more FAFs like you and I pop off before our time and thereby save the State a fortune on paying out those pensions from the account that they say they’ve forgotten the PIN number for.

This makes sense.

GB

Posted by The Englishman at 11:58 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Dear Hugh 2

Friday May 6th 2005

Dear Hugh,

Christ! Hell of a day. I don’t know if I told you but since I gave up the publicity game because I could no longer cope with newspapers calling to ask me to ask Him for a quote on who He was wanting to win Big Brother or some such, I’ve been attempting to apply the old brain to working in the wonderland of television.

Let me warn you now, it’s not the glamour world of cocaine canapés that you might imagine it to be. Tell a lie, it is – there’s powder all over the shop - but none of it is fun.

To recap; having done the Fleet Street stint in my youth and then the rock & roll PR trip, I thought that TV was ripe for a bash. I mean, it’s quite obvious from the slightest glance at The Radio Times that television these days is scheduled by and for the retarded and so I was easily convinced by the lads who encouraged me that a mind such as mine could think of better programmes than that.

Well turn again Dick Whittington because it’s all changed since my day (said day being the brief period when I worked as a showbiz correspondent on BBC Breakfast Time before I was sacked at the insistence of producer Julia Smith for giving away EastEnders’ Christmas Day cliff-hanger live on air to an aghast and then-slender Eamonn Homes).

Let me tell you that it’s got so dire that was I to partially shave my head and dress up as Jacob Bronowski, standing up to my knees at Auschwitz in a grey swamp of the ashes of my kindred with the script for The Ascent Of Man in my hands, nobody would want to broadcast it. I know everyone complains that TV is only worth watching for the late-night porn these days, but now I’ve discovered that’s because of these all-in-black herberts who laud it under the title of Commissioning Editor. Dealing with them is like hanging about with the Hitler Jurgund, and those few of them that aren’t dykes are just as spotty-faced.

Try to get them interested in a proposed programme of culture or comedy (God forbid drama that features anybody who can act in character other than exactly the one they played in a soap opera) and all they do is yawn and pick at their pimples and ask you fiercely if there’s a cleaning lady who features in it.

All they seem to want is this reality guff that bears no resemblance to life led by anybody we know and programmes with titles like Push The Cripple Down The Stairs.

They appear to be very big on that, by the way, that tormenting of anyone unfortunate; oh yes, they’ll buy any amount of shows that feature paraplegics from Catford. Especially if your programme can in some way demonstrate that your featured cripple went to school with a someone who became a celebrity. In fact during a recent pitch a couple of these Com Eds became very fevered about my suggestion for a 20-part series starring celebrity presenters with piles and they then got very frosty when I said that The Grapes Of Ross was only a joke.

They got a bit sniffy after that. Well, first they went off to the toilet together; then they got a bit sniffy. As my colleagues were not glaring because I wasn’t playing the popular pursuit of love the Emperor’s new clothes, I tried to make light of it all by suggesting the worst programmes that you could possibly imagine. How about, I joked, a one-hour special for Five called “The World’s Greatest Gold-Diggers”?

“We’ve done that already”, they said.

OK, what about Fifty Worst Celebrity Hair Days?

“We’ve done that too”.

God, you are feral aren’t you? Alright, how about “The Biggest Pricks In Showbiz”?

“Is that something to do with Newsnight?”, they asked warily.

No, I explained, I was thinking more on the lines of a doco about famous blokes with big schlongs; you know, like Colin Farrell and Frank Sinatra, or Chris Evans.

“Is Chris Evans blessed? How do you know?”, they said.

I used to know one of his girlfriends (hi, Suze), I said.

They considered this for a few moments in a huddle of sniffing.

“Nah, it’d only work if we could see the blessing on camera”, they concluded, “And we’re not sure of the ITCA ruling on ginger pubes.

“Nice idea, though; got anything else? We’re looking for something really key, a programme that evokes the zeitgeist of living right here, right now. Your Push The Cripple idea is sort of on the right lines, but we don’t really like the title – it should be called Kick The Cripple Down The Stairs; it’s more alliterative, easier for the viewer to remember”.

Do your viewers have problems recalling a programme about hurling paraplegics down a stairwell, I asked, don’t you think that it might somehow stick in the mind?. But they ignored me contemptuously.

Typical. Gits.

All best

GB

Posted by The Englishman at 11:57 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Dear Hugh 3

DEAR HUGH,

Well, that was a good start; I’ve been fired from the TV company. Well, kind of laid-off; not exactly Clear Your Desk, more of a We’ll Call You When Money Grows On Trees sort of thing. Apparently it had something to do with me calling ITV Commissioning Editors “cretins”. The office politic said that I should show more respect and I argued that it was somewhat difficult to respect people who believed that Celebrity Wrestling was the way of the future and then they said I wasn’t being a team player and it all spiralled downhill from there. I think the word “dickhead” may have come into play somewhere in the shouted confusion.

Anyway, for the second time in less than a year I’m back in the thrift shops and on the bread and potatoes diet again as I bemoan the lack of “high-paid writers wanted” in Marlborough’s situations vacant. I’m told that there is work to be found in a new factory in Devizes that prepares filled panini for an Italian food chain. Somebody suggested that I should work there for a while and then write about it but somehow I don’t have the confidence that there is a best-seller entitled A Year In Provolone.

Somebody else suggested that I try ringing around all my old contacts in the music biz to see if they had any work that they could toss my way but I’ve already tried that. It is quite astonishing to discover the widespread lack of interest from people who were ever-so chummy when they knew that I was close to My Ex. Still, to look on the bright side at least I know now that nobody will have to hire in outside caterers when it gets to my funeral; a couple of aunts buttering half a loaf of sliced Hovis should be sufficient.

A third benefactor from Bright Ideas Inc. urged me to try get back into journalism but I fear that much has changed there since the days when I got psoriasis on my hands from the newsprint, not least my willingness to knock at the gates of footballers’ gaudy mansions to enquire after the chances of a quote about what name Jordan should give to her forthcoming baby. Somehow I cannot find the conviction that there is merit in such celebrity obsession, but then what do I know? As has been already pointed out, I’m the trouble-maker who fails to appreciate Celebrity Wrestling’s entitlement to rank alongside Fawlty Towers and Roots. I don’t know what’s the matter with me but obviously I was off sick the day that the lobotomies were done at school.

GB

Posted by The Englishman at 11:56 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Dear Hugh 4

Wednesday May 10th

DEAR HUGH,

I now have a dog. No job, but a best friend instead. Nice to have at least one, if you excuse present reading company.

I realise that the fact that I have spent all of my 49 years to date being dog-less rather insinuates that I am not of the Crufts persuasion, but as Brigitte Bardot rather excellently once said “only animals and imbeciles cannot change their minds”. Besides, I had to get one. The quack advised it. She was evidently sick of prescribing in triplicate the monthly renewals of my one-man bid to ingest most of the Roche company’s manufacture and so she advised me to get this dog.

When I wondered why she told me that apparently dogs are good for depression. I pointed out to her (rather curtly) that according to her diagnosis I already had depression, severe depression no less, and so I didn’t need a dog to go fetch it for me. Then she said that what she meant was that “studies showed” that walking a dog was a good cure for depression. I said why and she said it was to do with the exercise, apparently having a dog made you walk more briskly and rapid walking was good for the blues. So I said that if that was the case maybe I could speed up the process of my mental recovery by getting a gazelle. She said she thought I was mad and I said we had already established that.

Anyway, I now am Daddy to this long-haired bundle of Prozac called Jimi. I didn’t name him that; that was the name that he came with from the rescue centre. They said he was a stray from Ireland and that his name was Jimmy. Naturally, to make him feel at home, I spent the first few days of having him practising a thunderous Ian Paisley impression by yelling hurl, Jummuy and sut! But he paid sod-all attention to that, so I presume that he is from the south. Although I’m not sure about this because when I play him some rebel music on my tin whistle he cowers and leaves the room. But then so does everybody else.

Anyway, in a bid to show that we are right-on and cool we have named him Jimi after the creator of the Voodoo guitar that emanates at volume ear-bleed for all hours from the room of my youngest chile.

You are possibly curious about the breed of this here Jimi. I’ve been going about saying that he is cross between a retriever (because he looks like one) and a red setter (because his coat is redd-ish) but apparently I was wrong. Apparently the correct definition of his mongrelism is that he is a retriever and Tibetan spaniel cross. I think that they may have got this wrong because I looked up Tibetan spaniel on the Net and the dog displayed looked like the Dalai Lama had backed his bus into its face.

So I’m sticking to my red setter claim, not least because you know what adoptees get like; they reach an age when they start demanding details of their parentage and the last thing I want in a few years’ time is a dog with a shaved head, wearing an orange dress and stinking up the house with incense.

Anyway he is very loving and I am rapidly discovering why I have not had a dog before. Aside from the fact that I am taking so many walks that I’m in line for the Duke Of Edinburgh’s Award, there is the problem with grooming.They said that he needs to have his hair brushed once a day. Of course I protested that brushing mine once a year had to date proved perfectly adequate but they argued back that I was not prone to getting ticks. I thought it wise not to enlighten them on that one and so off we went again to the pet shop to add to my already-sizeable donation to its proprietor’s pension plan.

As you can guess, I had to seek an assistant’s help on finding a hairbrush, as I have very little experience of what one looks like, but this done I returned home with a determination to groom him with all of the enthusiasm of Marie Antoniette’s handmaid.

Damn me if I didn’t find a tick straight away! After yelling that I had discovered something burrowed into the fur on his back, I called for help to hold him down whilst I fetched the tweezers. I plucked it off and was surprised that it came away without me having to resort to the traditional method of burning it off with a cigarette.

Damn odd-looking tick, I thought, examining the thing in the tweezers that looked as if it had some form of copper wire in its head. It was only later that I discovered that I had torn out Jimi’s micro-chip implant. Still, it’s early days and if this regime of five walks a day keeps up, I’m told that I’ll be out of this cell in no time. Shame, as I shall miss its padding.

GB

Posted by The Englishman at 11:55 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Dear Hugh 5

Wednesday May 11th 2005

DEAR HUGH,

As you know, there is little better than driving through a town with the windows down, playing Springsteen’s Rosalita so loudly that people in the street outside can’t hear themselves talk.

But I’ve noticed that this practice is sadly dying out among chaps of our age. Like the playing of Conkers and Cribbage, the noisy old man is becoming a thing of past and happier days as more and more tune safely instead to the cheap-amphetamine babble that is “Five Live”, the nation’s only radio station seemingly staffed by those on work experience.

Don’t get the wrong idea, I’m not saying the streets are quiet now. Far from it. But unfortunately the monopoly these days is held by teenage drug-dealers glowering along to the ding-a-donga rap booming from their uninsured BMWs. Which is perfectly fine for the deaf and for those who live in perpetual hope that one day a rap song will be written which includes the novelty of a melody. But although I’m up for free noise for everybody, I just wonder when did we middle-agers lose the will to make a din for ourselves?

Keith Richards, my style and health guru, once questioned why rock and roll “should only be the preserve of juveniles and adolescents” and, as he is with most things of a rebellious nature, he was right. Just because we can steer the car with our beer bellies these days, it doesn’t mean that we have to act our age.

As you know, I am forever bemoaning the fact that we baby boomers of the Sixties vintage should not be expected to behave like our fathers and grandfathers did before us, because we were weaned on far too much freedom of thought for us to get “normal” and conservative in our autumn years.

Like it or not, we are what David Bailey called “The New Old”, a generation that is distinct for not been replicas of its parents. We do not dress, vote, think or party like previous generations did at our age. Look at the statistics; 85% of the wealth in the UK is created by the over-45s, 62% of albums are bought by the over-40s, sales of Harley Davidsons are significantly highest to those of our mob, and I’ve yet to meet a menopausal male who does not hanker to own a Fender or a Gibson. Or at least an Epiphone copy. Even our drugs are better quality than our kids’ gear.

And yet popular culture treats us like lepers and because of their indifference we of Our Age feel so insignificant that we have taken to acting like dogs, curled up quietly beneath the table of the banquet of life.

Television, newspapers and especially Radio 1 gives scant regard to the massive disposable income that we collectively possess as they would far rather chase after the attention of the penniless pimple people simply because some drunk from the marketing department has told them that it is more cool to appeal to kids. It may be rubbish economics, but it’s cooler. So that’s alright then.

Of course, the world’s worst offender in this plague of ignoring Our Generation of chaps is ITV. I don’t know who is making the decisions there these days but they really ought to be taken out the back and shot for crimes against common sense.

The schedules are bad enough in the week, when you can’t move for programmes that all seem to need to feature a cleaning lady, but at least we miss most of them because we’re working late. But you’d have thought that there might be someone of CSE intelligence at ITV who could have worked out that there is no point screening programmes for teenagers on weekend nights because, on weekend nights, teenagers are out being teenagers and are therefore not watching. So of course the ratings are falling, idiot, because the target audience is elsewhere and the audience that is in cannot be captivated by the like of the grotesquely-puerile Celebrity Wrestling.

Just as a side-bar, by the way, how do you think the black-suited geniuses at ITV came up with Celebrity Wrestling? I mean, how many years did you have to spend at Cambridge to create that one? Personally I think the whole thing was just the result of somebody at the MIP festival getting hold of Howard Marks’s stash, because if ever there was a four in the morning idea, Celebrity Wrestling is it. As I say, shoot the beggars. But sue them first for conspiracy to destroy intelligence.

Anyway, back to the issue and the point is that unless we start making a noise for ourselves we will be further condemned to the dustbins of inconsequence that are our sheds. So get out in the car, wind down the windows, tune in, turn on and turn it up. I recommend Springsteen’s No Surrender. Or anything by Keef.

GB

Posted by The Englishman at 11:54 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Dear Hugh 6

Thursday May 12th 2005

DEAR HUGH,

It may not surprise you to hear that there has been a complaint. Frankly, I was astonished at the audacity of the moan and I was of a mind to write back and say “get stuffed” when the chaps in the legal department here explained that that everybody had to be PC these days. I said to them don’t start lecturing me about the meaning of acronyms, where I come from PC stands for “pushy coon” and what’s wrong with that?

Anyway, it has transpired that apparently I’ve upset BMW. Another acronym, which I believe stands for Bavarian Military Wanderlust or some such. It seems that the Kaiser’s Kin have taken exception to me recently suggesting in this column that their cars are favoured by pushers and gangsters.

Typical! So it’s my fault that hoodlums buy their cars. I said to them, don’t blame me; why don’t you just not sell to hooligans? And, of course, being clever, they said how should they go about doing that and I said they should put a poster up in the showroom saying “ACTUNG! NEIN RAP FANS” and they got all huffy.

Not that you’d catch me in a BMW. I mean, nice mountains and all that and the bier’s fairly good cop, but ever since BM made itself the Laurel And Hardly of the motor game by buying Skoda, how can you be sure that you’re buying a dream machine and not a disguised chunk of eastern gunk? I know they’ll say it’s legit but it wasn’t so long ago that they were saying “Oops! Did we go round the Maginot Line? Silly us! Oh well, seeing as we’re here anyway we might as well bomb you”.

By the way, some clever clogs on the subs’ desk has come over to say that it’s Volkswagen and not BMW that owns Skoda. As if that changes my point one jot.

Mind you, I do have to be careful what I write here because apparently these days you can’t go around suggesting that we resort back to thwacking skivers with sticks outside the Jobcentre. Apparently I’m not even allowed to call people skivers; according to the EC or something you can only call them Temporarily Unfulfilled Merchants of Labour or something as easy to remember.

And I’ve just been told that apparently you can’t call them “tossers” either.

So, as I say, I have to watch my words. Look at what happened to old Kilroy-Silk and I don’t mean all the offers of a shag that he gets. No, I mean all of that Arab malarkey when that bloke who’s obviously just got contact lenses, Quack Straw or some such, got all arsey about Kilroy daring to mention the acquired Middle Eastern taste of lopping a bird’s head off for charvering anybody other than her old man.

Naturally, it doesn’t take a genius to work out that if they didn’t have any oil, you’d be able to call them more names than you can shake a stick at. But perhaps it does take somebody of above the average wit to predict that the Saudis are going to really catch it in the neck when their wells dry up in 2025. Talk about letting it all out; everybody’s going to be on their case, especially about them wearing dresses to the G8 meetings.

Anyway, the point is that I’ve got to be damn careful what I write about, so the least said about the Arabs. Lovely people. Nice sand.

By the way, I forgot to thank you for your kind gift of that dried tea that you sent me with the postcard from Amsterdam . A slightly bitter taste, perhaps, but I rather like it. I’ve been having a drop while I’ve been writing this. As I say, odd tang to it. And it doesn’t half seem to speed up your sense of time; I feel like I’ve been writing for days.

Or is it slows time down? I can never work it out. Work what out? What time? Where? How did I get here?

Anyway, your tea is very pleasant – although I do find that it makes me utterly famished; if I’m dunking I need an entire pack of digestives. And some chocolate on the side. With a cheese and pickle sarnie and any crisps that are going spare.

Here’s another thing. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this but my diet does not appear to be working very well. Odd, because I’ve not touched a drop for almost four weeks now. They said that the weight would “fall off” if I stopped drinking. Curiously not, though. All that seems to happen is that I’m drinking a lot of tea. But I appear to be laughing a great deal more, so that’s something.

Must go; feeling a bit peckish.

GB

Posted by The Englishman at 2:38 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack