An Englishman's Castle

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.

Posted by The Englishman at 4:17 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

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?

Posted by The Englishman at 7:52 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

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

Posted by The Englishman at 2:55 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

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).

Posted by The Englishman at 9:08 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

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