Bertie Bassett’s Licorice All-Sports

PITCH #641 - A football pitch about Sir Alex Ferguson.

Howdy, sports fans. In little old Britain, they care a lot about sports.
And everyone, the world over, knows that above all, they have a passion for soccer.
Soccer, you know. It’s not the same as football. They use a round ball and don’t wear helmets or shoulder pads. Now, British soccer fans love successful soccer clubs. The really successful ones, like Manchester United, Arsenal United and Chelsea United. These are the teams with the most money and the best players, so they are loved by everyone in the country.
The smaller clubs don’t have any fans. Or at least, if they do, we haven’t heard of any.
So it would make sense for a company like ours, with all its non-relevance to sport, to look at a new market. Somewhere we can emulate our other sports/insurance successes, a bit like we did with football in the US. We can put ourselves about and really use the English love of soccer for our own gain. Not to mention the chance to get Rooney’s autograph.
We’ve had our money department on the case for two years and they’ve dug up some interesting facts. It turns out Chelsea United have some Commie billionaire pumping dollars into the club. We could do the same, in a kind of uneasy alliance. But I'm an 80s American man at heart, so I don’t think we should go for Chelsea United. Commie bastards.
Arsenal United have just splashed out a bunch of green on their new stadium and will be raking back the cash from the start of the 2006 season.
Which leaves Manchester United.
And, fortunately, our money investigators have found out something rather useful. The club, for all its success, is in a lot of debt. A lot of debt.
I felt I needed to say that twice, for emphasis.
We could, quite easily, cough up something in the region of £56m English pounds for a huge stake in this club. I know Murdoch pulled out, and you may well be thiniing he has as much money sense as us. But I’ve just got a feeling this will be a good move for the Glazers.
Manchester United have been selling club credit cards for a few years. Now, we can offer something a little bit more special for the fans. We can insure their £500 club shirts in case they spill brown sauce on them. Or pie.
So, I’d like to ask you for your expertise, and the backing of the board of GlazerDragons, for a £56m investment, in return for a 51% stake in our venture. I thank you, and if you’d like to ask any questions, I’d be more than happy to answer them.

Q: You say Manchester United are the prime choice for the GlazerCorp to pour in their dollars. What do we get in return?

A: Well, thanks for that question. The great thing about soccer is that no football teams, despite running like a business, advertise for fans. It’s an untapped market. You don’t get billboards screaming “Support Scunthorpe” or anything even remotely like that. The only way British soccer fans choose a club is either through blood loyalty, local loyalty, or gloryhunting.
Manchester United are a prime target for glory hunters due to their recent successes in the Soccer Championships in the UK.
We can capitalise on a market no other UK soccer team has cracked. We can start advertising Manchester United on the telly. The TV. The tube. The box.
Imagine, if you will, this: Our insurance company, AIG, can get a sponsorship deal with Manchester United because we own them. So, AIG will be emblazoned across the team’s soccer uniforms this season.
Problem is, many UK soccer fans don’t have a clue who AIG are, or what they do.
So, we put the letters AIG onto a football pitch. They kick the ball about for a bit, before slotting it home into the soccer net. It makes AIG look like soccer fans, and, hopefully, make soccer fans like AIG.
Then - bam! - we cut to scenes of Manchester United playing soccer. We can use grainy footage to give it that British nostalgia feel. To make people want to play in that soccer team.
Then, simply, and this is the real killer, we say: “AIG, sponsors of Manchester United soccer team”, with a link to our clever, doubled-headed website.
Of course, there’s fuck all link between insurance and soccer, but soccer fans won’t know this. Thinking they’re clicking online to get more info about their favourite soccer stars, they will instead be lead to our corporate website.
Here, they will be offered the chance to buy a Manchester United soccer shirt for £100, and then take our AIG insurance in case they spill brown sauce on it.
Before being able to leave the site, soccer fans will have to sign up for a lifetime of AIG insurance products, because if they don’t, they can’t be considered real soccer fans.After a couple of seasons at a debt-ridden, mismanaged club like Manchester United Soccer Club, we can move on to Fulham, Portsmouth, Wigan, Crystal Palace and Charlton. From there on in, we buy up seven UK soccer clubs every season, stick AIG on the front of their uniforms, and make them change their websites to include our company name.Then we move all the teams to the US, and start new teams in the UK. Names we’ve come up with so far include: Glazers United, Malcolm United, Bush United, Mississipi AllStar United and Complete and Utter Bollocks.For more on our final advert, please click

Sorry you're leaving

The brown envelope schlepped its way around the newsroom and finally landed with a jangle on my desk.
Inside were coppers, a few minor silvers and the odd pound coin, all poured out of poorer people's pockets for the editors' leaving present.
"Make sure you give generously," was the plea from the sycophantic underlings, still eager to impress a drunken Scottish tightwad with a penchant for the sensational.
"At least two pounds."
At least two pounds? Let me see.
It wasn't too long ago that I spent almost three months waiting to speak to the Old Hacker. Three months and not a single word. Not one utterance for an editorial employee who sits slap bang in the centre of the newsroom. Not even a "Sorry, can't talk now" or a "I'm going to be honest, this is the situation..."
No, wasn't offered the pleasance of that.
Instead, I had to threaten to hand my notice in to get any kind of response.
And even then, I was told my meagre wages, out of scale with everyone else's, were absolutely fine as they were.
So that £2 I was asked to give, let's see, works out at about 20 minutes work. So, in order to contribute to his collection, I'd have to give up my precious earnings from 20 minutes. That 20 minutes would've been spent sweating, swearing and thinking of ways to get out of work tomorrow, while balancing a handful of community-based leads, forward planning lists, and phone calls from angry readers with no intellect.
So, £2 is it?
That's what I should give back to the man I hold single-handedly responsible for ruining my career.
I resisted the temptation to write "Eat my fucking shit" in his ridiculous leaving card.
Others hadn't resisted the temptation - with two personal highlights from the garish ball-point blanket of comments: one, curled like an affectionate tongue in the starfish: "Thanks boss."
The other, "Thanks for everything" - from someone in a similarly shit job with similarly shit wages to me.
Thanks for what, eh? The man we're talking about almost let two serial killers get away with murder in eagerness for headlines and sales.
So needless to say, I didn't put my £2 in the envelope.
Just a short note saying: "Hello, I've never really met you, but I work in your department for 10 hours a day for fuck all money. Sorry you're leaving. Thanks for nothing. I would've given you some money but you've done fuck all for me, mate. I've busted my ass for two years and haven't had so much as a thank you. So consider my pay rise your fucking leaving gift. I know you're going to get a glorious company pension, complete with free golf for life, so £1,000 might not seem that much to you. But believe me, it is a lot of money. The difference between a motivated, enthusiastic member of staff and a jaded, demoralised hatefiend. So take that money as part of your retirement deal, dude. You've clearly been skimping on everyone's rises so you get a better financial reward. And that's why I haven't given you £2, you fuck."

Meanwhile, somewhere in London, a crane tips over ...

Actually it's not "somewhere". It's Battersea, and I know where that is now because Sky News fashioned me with a handy map graphic.
"We can't have the hinterlands mongoloids thinking there's cranes flopping over in Waping or Earl's Court! Dammit Stephens, WHERE'S MY FUCKING LONDON SW8 GRAPHIC! ..."
But that's the sort of ace provider they are of that most relevant form of journalism, 24-hour television news.
Team Sky, in its attempt to poo out onto the air every piece of information that passed through the bowel that is its newsroom, also let me know that "one of the people killed in the crane accident is believed to be the crane operator."
Well played, Sky. Maybe for your next trick, a little historical investigative journalism would be in order - there's a rumour going around that all seven people killed in the Columbia space shuttle disaster were astronauts.

This story alone makes my license fee worth it

"Government officials," says Nancy. "Two of them upstairs. They're having the penis hotpot."

Sticking it to Righty

Wouldn't it be swell if any Labour politician, much less one of the really influential big guns, went to the Sun or the Daily Mail and, instead of rolling their flaccid cock around in his mouth until it got somewhat hard, did this?

This shit's important, people

Occasionally when bullshit stories are the order of the day and there's some fun new rumour about how corporate just knows it can get profits up to 30 percent by utilising synergy in the form of fewer warm bodies to put the pesky thing together, it's probably worth noting that this can still be an exceptional, brave, important profession. Two things to take from this story are that:

A) every journalist should know this journalist's name, and most don't;
B) Yahoo's a bunch of douchebags.

EUnity

Much has been written in the preceding 72 hours about the team spirit of the European Ryder Cup team and how the efforts of those 12 men and one midget brought the peoples of nations usually at loggerheads with each other together as one. You could argue that with the Yanks on the opposite side, there must be far more nations than just the UK, Ireland, Spain and Sweden queuing up to join the battle for the Sam Ryder trophy.

Still, for all the hopes as to what long term significance this might have for the Continent (none), the antithesis presented itself to me this afternoon in the most unlikely of places. I popped into my local barber's for a long overdue snip only to find that the owner (who quite clearly uses the frequently empty shop to launder money he makes from his extra-curricular activities) was not in. In his place were two dizzy bottle blondes. It transpired that the one not cutting my hair was the dead-eyed mate of the other, there to reminisce about the two-week cultural exchange they had just returned from in Ibiza.

Our illuminating conversation left me pondering many questions, such as, 'Was the dead-eyed friend's husky voice the result of:

a) too many fags
b) too much drunken shouting, or
c) handing out too many throatjobs to passing strangers.'

The answer is clearly d) all of the above and more.

The other questions were generally variations on a theme, that theme being: "Is there any hope for humanity?"

Why? Well...

Cunt 1: "We went to loads of the clubs there - Manumission, Pacha, Amnesia. They were well wicked."

Cunt 2: "Yeah, except for Amnesia, especially on weekends."

C1: "There were too many locals there on Fridays and Saturdays."

C2: "Yeah, you felt like you just didn't belong."

Then mere seconds after this insight in the crashing death of civilisation, this:

EB: "So is it just Brits that go to Ibiza these days then or do you get people from all over the world?"

C1: "Oh, you get people from all over, not just Brits."

C2: "Yeah, there were loads of people from Wales."

Hand me the razor blade.

Yet they weren't finished there, oh no...

C1: "We saw someone die."

C2: "Yeah, when we was in one of the clubs."

EB, eagerly anticipating an E-overdose, frothing at the mouth, end of season spaz attack story: "Really?"

C1: "These guys were fighting and it spilt out to the entrance of the club."

C2: "Yeah, one of them who was getting kicked in fell down the stairs."

C1: "He banged his head on the bottom step and it bounced up really badly, like."

C2: "Yeah, and there was this pool of blood all round it."

C1: "Someone picked up his head, but it dropped straight down again and we said, 'I bet he doesn't make it'."

C2, chuckling: "Yeah, so we decided we'd had enough and went home."

Ain't you glad they're back.

Plane stupid?

You don't like Big Meeja and, lord knows, you've got some excellent reasons for that. So what do you do, little buddy? You pull yourself up by your internet-savvy bootstraps and you become the media, man. Fight the power! Take it to the streets! Et cetera!
Trouble is, your journalistic crap is also just that, crap. Oh sure, it smells different from theirs. Maybe it has more corn in. But it's still crap.
Witness the following grafs from actually quite worthwhile www.indymedia.co.uk:

A group of 21 protesters have breached security at East Midlands Airport this morning (24th Sep 0755am) and occupied one of the operational taxi-runways. The group 'Plane Stupid' says it 'wants to see airport expansion plans scrapped, a tax on aviation fuel and plane tickets, and an end to short haul flights.'
The group has occupied the runway by being chained to each other and have set up tents saying 'Climate Camp 2'. Baptist minister Malcolm Carroll is taking part in the action and is leading a memorial service for the victims of the effects of climate change. Spokesman Joss Garman of the group says: 'an estimated 150.000 people die of the effects of climate change each year, that's the equivelant of a 9-11 every week.'

Once we get past the crap-tastic writing (the tents are saying "Climate Camp 2"? Are they special anamatronic Disney tents? Do they perform a jaunty tent dance, too?), we find a bit of heartfelt advocacy attempting to tart itself up like journalism. Sometimes real journalists take quotes from spokespeople and slap them into print without much thought, but usually not when said quotes feature statistics that were quite clearly derived from the University of Planet Moonbat. 150,000 climate change-related deaths every year? 9-11 every week? Holy hot flashes, Batman!
Issues like climate change are serious, and they deserve a responsible treatment. This report, which endeavours to be journalism, makes a joke of the subject for which it so earnestly stumps.
Not that the mainstream media always get issues like this right.
So again, criticise your local paper, the nationals, the BBC all you want. Your litany undoubtedly has merit. But just remember that the phrase "the media's biased" can usually be translated to mean "the media's not biased enough towards my biases."

Dangerous Hoodie

Anyone who follows the news will know by now that kids in hoodies are the next revolutionaries. The single-biggest threat to the finely-balanced infrastructure of British society.
No-one knows why these kids wear their hoods up.
This young man, Davey Upstart, has just been given an Asbo for swearing at a gran. He did, apparently, tell her to "Shove her cunt," after drinking four bottles of red wine after the Tweenies on Tuesday, March 23. The case has taken so long to get to court because Davey is also on a charge of murder, for stabbing a fellow child to death with a 14inch samurai sword he bought off eBay.
What complicates the case even more, is that Davey is still technically four-years-old.
His parents, Dwayne and Sharun, both 16, bought him a hoodie for his third birthday and it hasn't come off since.
There are many conspiracy theories on the Internet, whatever that is, about implanted chips being put into hoodies to control children's behaviour.
Two top robotics experts have written a report trying to blow the whistle on this, but it has been largely ignored due to a lack of evidence.
But defence lawyers in Davey Upstart's trial are to argue that a four-year-old cannot murder someone, or swear, because they are only four. And they will seek to blame hoodie manufacturers for controlling his behaviour, like the thousands of other hoodie wearing, innocent little children with Asbos and life sentences.
Yeah, good luck. Everyone knows it's the kids in the hoods who are no good.

Porridge meets Hi-De-Hi


Turns out, then, that prisoners get treated like hotel guests in prison lock-ups. It costs £135 for the cops to pay for their stay in custody. What a surprise that is.
So, the policeyman says, they should be charged £200 for the expense of their stay in HM's pleasure.
Perhaps it would be a more pertinent idea to charge them a lot more money for their crimes, eh? It's not particularly just or socially healthy to charge someone because the police have detained them overnight. It might turn out in court that they're innocent. Would someone detained overnight still have to pay £200 for the prisonhotel stay with no minibar or jacuzzi if proven innocent in court? Doubt it... So it's not going to work on a charging policy like that, is it, dickheads?
Perhaps putting up the ridiculously meagre fees paid in £5 a fortnight installments by proven guilty, huge-knuckled brusiers with absolutely no respect for the courts would shock criminals into not breaking the law?
Perhaps.
But then, perhaps playing every episode of Hi-De-Hi over and over again in the cells would teach them a lesson and scare them off crime for life instead.
If you're in a position of authority and have an absolutely fucking ridiculous suggestion, please waste everyone's time by writing to someone in a position of even more authority than you demanding that it be taken seriously. Don't worry how daft it is, the media will still present it as a very straight news piece.

Advertorials
To advertise on reallyhackedoff, please threaten massive redundancies, violent cost-cutting measures and removal of company cars and credit cards.

Don't chuck the chips
by Janine O'Doyle
Health Correspondent

With all the stuff in the news at the moment about bloody Jamie Oliver and his quest for everyone to eat healthily and the lack of any other news, healthy eating is in people's minds more than ever before. Of course, by 'ever', we mean since the corporate boom eminating from the later part of the 20th Century.
"Eat good meat!" the media cries in it's own mockney accent. "Eat salad!" "Fatty junk is bad"
"EAT VEGETABLES".
Yes, that's what they say.
So, you'd be forgiven for being confused about what to eat. A life of McDonalds and Birds Eye reconstituted shin-meat stuck together with men's spit is a difficult one to reverse.
It's a good thing Tony Hammond runs the High Street Chippy then, isn't it.
Open every night from 4pm til 11, Mr Hammond, who has two daughters, serves up nutritious fish - well known for its proteinous brain-boosting powers - and chipped potatoes, a vegetable.
Fish and chips is actually the healthiest food you can buy. You can get a large portion of chips with a mini fish, saveloy (also meat and good) and some peas (vegetable), for £3 on a Thursday, enough to feed your kids, and then get the adult super-healthy combo, of doner, any 12in pizza, a bottle of coke, chicken wings, quarter-pounder, two large chip, half a lamb and a nice bit of cod for a penny less than six quid.
One nutrition expert, who asked not to be named, said for money: "Fish and chips are actually a very good source of vital energies - the excellently healthy mixture of meats and vegetables can only help your heart, digestion, skin and stomach. So make sure you eat your five portions of fish and chips a day."

Steve - here's the fish and chip copy for page four's lead. Advertising are checking it with Tony for copy approval this afternoon - they've also sold ads around it to Harry Ramsden's and Jimmy's Coronary Fry House

Readers' Poems

We're always interested to hear people's views in rhyming form. Send submissions to talentlesswankers@poems.showoffyourlackoftalent.com

I phone newspapers

Hello, I'm Colin...
or Derek, or Paula
I'm a regular caller
Got problems with my boiler
false hip, bad chest
and my youngest granddaughter
Condemn the NHS
the council and courts
and the asbo kids running the estate where I've just bought
a bungalow
with a nice picket fence
I remember when England was just full of my friends
And 'they' hadn't come over and made it all weird
With their threat to religion and funny headgear
I don't know better, you know
I'm too set in my ways
To try to change
So I'll blame
And, in my loneliest way,
Call someone every day
And try to lay waste to the time
A delay
Before Countdown comes on
"Hello," I say
"Is that a reporter?"
I should stop, I ought to
But I go on and talk to
Whoever's on the line,
For a good half an hour
Because I'm owed it
For 33p a day,
You're all mine.



Applying for a job with an AdMag
by Horatio Smalls, Canary Wharf

Someone’s on the phone
Another one
Alone at home
Bored to bits and old and prone
Can’t talk to themselves so it’s onto the phones
And the call-charges don’t count
One-bed flat is the world
and the door’s always chained
I hope this won’t be me at Old years
Because it's fucking annoying
bored of MySpace, and my peers
Get up early morning, yawning
dressing gown and slippers
crouched over a Zimmer
TV channels are four best friends
But won’t fit in the room in one go
So they get an hour each
rotation til five
drink one. strong. Always a spirit at five

and then hit the phonelines

pretend I’m alive

when the air that I’m breathing is my last gasp at life

and the door’s always chained – live or die

I’m trapped in a one-bedroom flat with the news

And one day it’s niceties,

The next it’s abuse

And this is the life I choose

I’m growing old alone
Talking to pensioners who’re sitting at home
Thinking “how sad a death for someone”

When my friends are all liars
the writers of facts
The embittered hacks and the pap-pap-pap packs

With their lenses on stun

They like pointing the gun

Presumptuous puns

And sentences dumb

A truth run by business – that’s surely unwise
The facts get mixed up with the money-men’s cries

“Read all about it, it’s all in tonight!
There’s a woman gone missing and a Friday night fight…
The dish that ran away with the spoon is there too!
Read all about it on page 22!”

And it sticks to your hands with free-gift superglue residue

from the CD with more front page space than the news

The adverts, the adverts, the adverts

On Looking Upon Autumn Once Again
by Carlito S Way

Oh God,

he’s called

his poem

Autumn something

I’ve read

about

autumn

before

It will be

coloured in

brown

and

old newspaper yellows

and

gold

And he’ll

talk about

granary floors,

like Keats in his

Ode

or

he’ll write

about

The leaves

Decorating

the trees’ shoulders

a decaying dandruff

like R S Thomas

wrote

I’ve read

about

Autumn

before,

he’ll just say

‘the days mould,

the mornings are too cold’

As he

walks home

his breath

leaks spectres

who float

He won’t

look

at the presence

Of sparkly bushes

All gift-wrapped in cobwebs

And glittered with dew

And say

that he’s

warmed by their

silvery glow

no

This is why newspapers suck

Northcliffe
Northcliffe Newspapers continues to experience tough trading conditions.

UK advertising revenues for the 11 months to August 2006 were eight per cent lower than the same period last year. Excluding recruitment revenues, which have declined by nearly 17 per cent, advertising revenues are five per cent lower. Property (up six per cent) has continued to grow, but motors has fallen by 17 per cent and retail has fallen by five percent.

However, revenues from digital publishing are 18 per cent above last year.

The extended Aim Higher programme of organisational and structural improvements continues. Despite increased newsprint and energy costs, operating costs for the 11 months to August 2006 are seven per cent lower than last year.

Annualised cost reductions from the programme are currently running at around £33 million. Northcliffe remains on target to achieve its announced £45 million annual cost reduction by the end of September 2007.

Communal grieving, part 2

I sense a series looming here.

With the Hamster continuing to make a recovery - keep away from the radicalized wing of your family, though Richie-poos - it would appear the inhabitants of Grief Britain are desperately seeking some other cause on which to pin their misguided outpourings of lunacy.

To wit, as I was returning from asking the mother and sister of a man who had only been buried yesterday if they would like to tell the world how he had fought for his life for two years after falling over pissed and banged his head (I love my job, I love my job, I love my job, etc), Jo Whiley introduced Friday's "Changing Track" over the in-car stereo. A bit like Simon Bates' "Our Tune", it features a song that soundtracked a special moment in someone's life. Usually it's Angels, I Will Always Love You, or something by Alec Empire. Today's choice was no surprise, Sir John's Your Song. The story was a tale of a mother who'd suffered post-natal depression and rejected her first kid until he suffered a minor accident and had to take him to A & E. Leaving the hospital, Your Song came on the radio, she looked at her baby and burst into tears, finally falling in love with him.

Now, she was suffering from a temporary mental illness, so her behaviour (i.e. feeling an emotion other than unbridled, directionless anger when listening to one of the queen's musical cumfarts) can be excused. What followed surely can not.

People. Who were driving their cars. Or were at work. Or entertaining themselves at home. Stopped what they were doing. They picked up their phones. And texted Jo Whiley.

"Hi Jo, I'm a 21-year-old hard-drinking rugby player from Southampton and even I shed a tear to that Changing Track." Worrying.

"I'm a 17-and-a-half stone bloke and listening to her story and that song has left me in floods of tears." What the fuck?

But, best of all:

"I was just driving along with my daughter and we both started crying when we heard that..."

Wait for it...

"...It's now our song."

How fucking empty is your life? How fucking pointless is the grey matter between your ears?

How have these people escaped death through self-inflicted accident for so long?

It must stop.

Is MeccaDonald's bad for your health?

A city council is planning to change the way graves are laid out in cemeteries.
Christian and Muslim graves are likely to be put together - with the corpses of Christians laid uncovered over the graves of Muslims.
The Christian corpses will be fed with string and then used as puppets by mourning Muslim families.
And all the graves will be moved to face Mecca one year, then moved to face Mansfield the next.
The move has been roundly condemned by newspaper readers, who all appear to love the BNP.
Floods of phone calls about "us and them" prove the small-mindedness of the city's pensioners - who, let's not forget, like to talk about the war they fought against the racist Nazis, as well as their own calls of "I'm not a racist, but.... those Muslims are all terrorists."
Well, here's a note to anyone, of any religion.
I'm not sure how far up your own arse your head is, like, but the last time I checked, Britain had kinda given up on religion.
Everyone sprang Christianity as a hoax - we're no longer a nation so stupid that we believe a blatant load of guff based purely on fear of death and torture (although I was disappointed so many people originally backed the Iraq invasion).
Personally, and I'm sure I speak for the vast majority of under 30s nowadays, we don't believe in any God in the UK.
And, as if the premise of heaven wasn't daft enough, Muslim terrorists get a hareem of virgins to do bad things with when they become martyrs.
It would be a much better idea to ban religion full stop - unless you can prove truth in it - until the bigots and terrorists - Christian and Muslim alike - realise they've been had.
How embarrassing.

McDonald's - Bad for your health?

Read Fast Food Nation or watch Supersize Me (as I did eating a large portion of takeaway fish and chips, leaving me feeling slightly nauseous and chastised for - ooh - ten minutes) and the answer seems pretty damn clear. Dig a little deeper, however, and you'll realise they don't know the half of it.

Their employee benefits programme must be pretty smart, as today 20-year-old Shane Freer starts a prison sentence for stabbing his former boss at a West Sussex branch to death in a "horrific, frenzied and crazed" attack just days after she fired him for punching a female member of staff in the face. "I just can't go on without my staff discount McFlurries. That bitch must die!!!" he might have been heard saying. In his defence, the female member of staff had just fired a piece of carrot and wet napkin at him from a straw (which makes you wonder where she got the carrot from - the pile of vomit left in lieu of a tip by another satisfied obese?).

The saddest thing about this, however, is the standard of reporting. Despite the source material, it's straighter than Benjamin - yes, straighter even than the tall palm tree. Such a shame, particularly as it evoked memories of a week spent in the States back in February when I had the good fortune to pick up a few copies of the Boston Herald, which in the face of the Globe's success at become a globally-recognised brand has aimed for standards of reporting even our redtops might baulk at. Yes, even the Sun and it's "Elton takes David up the Grand Canal" would think twice about reporting a multiple shooting outside a McDonald's restaurant like the Herald.

To the best of my recollection, a fight had broken out in the drive through section of a Boston Mucky Dee's. One group of men pulled out guns and sprayed the other group of three with bullets. At the time of the report, the victims remained in a critical condition in hospital. The story began:

"THREE men got a supersize helping of lead when a fight broke out in the car park of a McDonald's restaurant yesterday evening."

Now the rats have guns in Assassination City
written by a stoned man. published by actual twats

It creaks. The city bulges - the force of the rodent-tumour growing in its heart is too much for its tired and fragile shell. A shot rings out… but no-one hears it.

Because it's underground.

Farrarrrara the Rat is only the size of an otter, and a rodent, but he oversees a network of foul browns, who sling AKs and Glocks to their otterat mates.

No-one hears their crazy war, but its echoes are clearly visible in the flapping chaos above, as two-hundred startled pigeons swirl to the top of the church architecture.

The cold stone, our pavement, their ceiling, now, after In Bloom's done, sadly floats dying flowers and a few other bad ideas. And now it's now supporting me.

But it's not all bad. Investigating gun-carrying rats the size of otters sells papers. It's amazing what the nationals will print. There was a guy at a weekly parochial I knew who wrote rat stories every fucking week. So my concentration drifts a bit. And I’m staring at the lions - ferocious, threatening statues which howl across the steps of the Council House – trying to keep my gaze unnoticed. It’s been four hours since I finished work, but my mind’s ticking. I gotta get the scoop. The rats. The guns. The headlines. Imagine the 'ad rev' from pest control companies.

There’s no rest in the centre of this distressed mess.

I’m waiting.

I wish the fountains were splurting again. They were always either empty, or full of washing-up liquid, a lavaneous ooze fluffing up the faucets, caressing them like pole-dancers. It's surely a good bath for a massive rat.

Trams glide in, from all angles. They spit hollow bells at blind pedestrians. Lifeless, digitised and sullen, they ping - yes, the passengers pour onto the platforms. And the tram bell rings. It’s like the computer game of Life. Sound effects are the commuters’ salute. The students are back, you know.

I have to turn away.

Again I face the sneering lions. They’re jeering (twice!) at my leering eyes, and, and I can’t fight it. I have to look.

Then the shot clears my thoughts. It’s a miracle no-one was hurt.

Except Granpappy, lying in tiny pieces on the floor, being eaten by pie-eating rats. Some the size of otters.

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Communal grief


Yesterday, a 36-year-old Top Gear presenter going by the name of Hamster crashed a drag racer trying to break the British land speed record. He is now in intensive care in a critical condition. As Paul Calf might say: "Poor fucker."
As I scanned the pages of the Sky News website I noticed they had put up a page for people to place their messages for the Hamster.

Hundreds, possibly thousands, of people have put messages on there.

Why?

OK, there's a tsunami, bomb attack, hurricane, war, etc and people need to try and contact family or friends by posting messages online or through a major news source. That makes sense. But this? I just don't get it.

When the news broke that a British man's wife and baby had been found shot dead in their home in Massachusetts in January this year (while I was drinking free red wine on the opening night of Nottingham's new Hooters), the media soon found out that the alleged killer, Neil Entwistle, had his own website where he posted pictures of the once happy (and bullet-free) family. It had a page where their friends and family could leave messages, like an arrogant version of letter-writing or email: "Hey, why keep these things private when I can show the whole world what people think of me!" (I was going to write that he probably regrets giving people that option now, but on reflection, it's probably pretty low on his list of regrets)

After the killings, this soon became swamped with random people opening their (stunted) minds and (lonely, deluded) hearts for, well, for two dead people to read. Bear in mind 50% of their intended readership was aged just nine months and was going to struggle, even without taking into account all the bad spelling.

Anyway, I thought "Why?" back then (before emailing the posters to see if they knew the Entwistles and could provide some input to the stories I was writing, of course). The mind boggled, Bruce Gold-stylee, even more when that site was taken down and some complete stranger (American, obviously) took it upon themselves to create another website where people could continue posting messages. Which they did?!?!?!?!?!


Oh well, here goes:

Dear Richard (aka the Hamster)
I don't know you beyond the fact you were the chirpy one on Top Gear. You don't know me at all. What you were doing at the time of your accident was a risk you were willing to take as part of your job. This message will make as much difference to your chances of surviving as all the others posted by your fans. Gary
PS Love the show!!!!!!

Best example from the list, by the way, is this:

"Don't go and do an 'Irwin' on us.

Posted by: Phillip Forsyth, Hong Kong"

Is John Travolta a Twit?

You see, I'd long wondered what possible purpose was served by the massive dimple in his chin. But then I heard that he'd been spotted kissing another man ON THE LIPS as he boarded his private plane. Clearly, according to opinion in the quality press, this makes him gay.
Anyway, this (now somewhat old) news got me thinking about his oversized chin-dimple. Which, ultimately, led me to think about Mr Twit, in Roald Dahl's The Twits. Now, the one thing that always stuck in my mind about Mr Twit, other than his total lack of observational skills and getting glued to the ceiling of his house, was that he had a big bushy beard. And that big bushy beard had a habit of catching food in it - like cornflakes, I think - which he would then be able to eat later in the day when hunger pangs struck.

Sounded like a pretty clever idea to me, aged six, but, lacking a beard, the closest I could manage was to stick pieces of bread to my face with honey.

So, piecing together the evidence in front of me the other day - JT's alleged rampant homosexuality, Mr Twit's beard and Johnny-boy's dimple - it dawned on me. After he has finished enjoying his friend's company, the dimple acts as a little receptacle for when he gets peckish (or wants to be reminded of the in-flight entertainment) later.