Criticism

Winter Olympics 2006 (written 17 February 2006)

The Women’s Snowboarding Downhill Slapstick was particularly amusing. Small boys were pleased that a Swiss called “Nobs” was taking part and older boys were disquieted that Himmler was there as well.

The final four races were great, with competitors falling about all over the place. The sure-fire gold medallist won silver by showing off with a trick near the finishing line. Instead of gliding to victory, she had to get to her feet and watch a rival speed past. There could have been two more, but they had fallen over further up the course.

Well, if they were not crazy, they could not be snowboarders.

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Panto Season Over (written 28 January 2006)

Cinderella has won Celebrity Big Brother, with Baron Hardup in second place, Buttons third, Principal Ordinary Boy fourth, Wicked Queen fifth and Daft American Bimbo sixth. The Giant, the Villain, the Good Fairy and the Ugly Sisters were eliminated before the final stage.

Big Brother combines the best of science documentary and pantomime. I have learned some anthropology and abnormal psychology from it, and been thoroughly entertained into the bargain.

I am looking forward to the summer season, and wondering what they can possibly do to top Celebrity Big Brother 2006.

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Celebrity Big Brother 2006 (written 9 January 2006)

The funniest thing on television at the moment is Celeb. B.B. It’s been on for several days, so let’s see if I can remember the eleven inmates without looking them up:

George Galloway, MP, admirer of Saddam Hussein.
Michael Barrymore. Anyone who is still doing Frank Spencer impressions has severe problems.
Chantelle, the joke non-celebrity.
Maggot out of Goldie Looking Chain, of whom I had heard because they are funny.
A singer from the Ordinary Boys, of whom I had never heard. I thought he was another joke non-celebrity.
A six foot eight basketball player, Dennis Rodman.
An actress from Baywatch. Tanya something?
Rula Lenska. Good actress. Should stop smoking.
Page 3 stunna, Jodie Marsh, I think.
That’s nine and I’m struggling now. Two more.
Pete Burns. My poem, “Looking Good” could have been written for him, though it wasn’t.
Number eleven’s escaped me. (Eventually, oh, yeah, Faria out of the F. A.)

The celebrities themselves decided that the non-celebrity, Chantelle, was ninth most famous of the eleven of them. But this was because while George Galloway, MP, was shouting and arguing that Michael Barrymore was more famous than the Americans, Maggot went and stood at number 11 and was joined by the Ordinary Boy at number 10. Both genuine gentlemen, particularly Maggot.

They set a fine example to George Galloway, MP, of which he was probably completely oblivious.

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Big Brother 2005.

Final Night.

The desire for fame was prominent as the failed contestants took advantage of their last chance to be noticed. The Cockney geezer capered and grinned along the catwalk like a lunatic, the Turkish boy came as a Las Vegas showgirl, and the pretty girl with the teeth shouted something about her porn site.

I am glad that the very straightforward Anthony won the thing, but also glad that the vagaries of the game allowed the more intellectually gifted but socially inept Eugene to make off with half the prize money.

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Moral imbecility.

The Victorians used to put some of their unmarried mothers into insane asylums because they suffered from moral imbecility.

I used to believe that it was a condition they had made up, until I saw the antics of Kinga in the Big Brother house. Her illicit affair with the red wine bottle can hardly be explained any other way.

First impressions.

When Anthony entered the Big Brother house, he was a prancing fool, showing off with what he thought were seventies dance moves. He then told his fellow inmates that the security man was booed for trying to move him on. It was Anthony who was being booed, but he was too vain to realise it. What an idiot.

Vain, ignorant and shallow just about summed him up. But after nearly three months in the madhouse, he has come through as an example to us all. When the Cockney geezer and the Italian bloke were squaring up to assault each other, it was Anthony who physically kept them apart. He has put up with the gay hairdresser’s obsessive stalking with good-natured tolerance, although driven to exasperation by the hairdresser’s antics. His expression of horror while he watched Kinga with the red wine bottle made me laugh out loud.

There are worse things in the world to be than vain, ignorant and shallow. To come through the mental trial that is Big Brother looking like a decent human being is an achievement indeed.

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Modern Art.

Since the invention of photograpy, fine art has really gone down the toilet, a playground for preposterous poseurs.

Here's a literary equivalent of the works of the likes of Tracy Emin or Damien Hurst:

lampoon tanh differentiate non-technical tour epigram server tanka discord underbrush cold wave publicity
That will be a million pounds, please.

The scary thing is that the words were picked with an attempt at randomness, but the more I look at them, the more they start looking as if they mean something.

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Samuel Beckett.

I have just read that Max Wall had a special affinity for the plays of Samuel Beckett.

I must suffer from Samuel Beckett-blindness. His works appear to have no merit at all. I was once required to sit through two of his plays, one about an old man eating a banana, and another about an old woman being buried up to her neck. They were rubbish.

Some members of the audience were laughing, either because there was a joke going on which I didn't appreciate or they were mad.

Perhaps this is a mystery which will never be solved.

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Chaplin and Wisdom.

Two comedians I can't see the point of: Charlie Chaplin and Norman Wisdom. Chaplin's Little Tramp was an arrogant, smarmy, vicious little git. Norman Wisdom is ingratiating.

"Don't Laugh at Me Cos I'm a Fool". Okay.

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Franz Kafka.

Whe I was a student, I read "The Trial" and "The Castle" by Franz Kafka. These were supposed to be very deep, grim novels, so I was surprised to find parts of them very funny.

Years later, I heard some woman on a a BBC Radio 4 programme say that, according to witnesses, Kafka used to laugh while he was writing, and he thought his stuff was funny.

So I suppose I was right and the critics got it wrong?

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Would I Lie to You?

Strange how tastes can change. When I first heard the song, "Would I Lie to You?" by Charles and Eddie, I could not stand to listen to it. After several years, I saw the joke.

The unsung reply is "Of course you would." I now enjoy the song, and smile when I hear it.

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Going Through Changes.

When Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In and The Prisoner were first broadcast, I thought they were great, very funny and very entertaining respectively. My parents thought they were nonsense. Now Laugh-In just looks stupid and The Prisoner is interesting, but not great. The later Prisoner episodes look particularly ludicrous.

Similarly to what happens to most people, I am turning into my dad.

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Olympic Closing Ceremony.

Athens could not produce a star of the magnitude of Sydney's Kylie Minogue, but it was good of the Greeks to let some of their old people have a go at singing.

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Ally McBeal.

I watched the television programme, Ally McBeal, thinking it would be about a Scotsman and there might be beautiful Highland scenery, but discovered it was about an American skeleton.

Trivia

Grandeurs of Delusion. (written 15 January 2006)

In the pub, I told one of my chums that if, as a world-famous poet, I was invited to stay in the Celebrity Big Brother house, I would accept. Celebrities are granted privacy in the toilet and shower. They are paid a guaranteed £50,000 for a maximum three weeks work.

He said that I had “grandeurs of delusion”. I asked him if he meant “delusions of grandeur” and he said he did, but I like “grandeurs of delusion”.

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Sleep Singing. (written 17 November 2005)

People have been known to wake up crying or laughing, but this morning I woke up singing a song I had made up.

It went, “Love is doing far too much for far too few people. Sing it like you are a Beatle.”

Ah, the mysterious workings of the human subconscious.

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Karaoke Hell.

Things can quickly go wrong when one goes to karaoke pubs, like the night I ate Mad Drunk Laura's food.

There was a huge buffet laid out in the pub. The karaoke d.j. announced, "There's free food over there. Everybody welcome. Eat it or it will go to waste."

So I helped myself to a chicken leg, sanwiches, small sausages, and so on. Later, the d.j. announced, "Laura is leaving. Everyone who is eating should buy her a drink." Uh-oh.

Not long after, Mad Drunk Laura came to our table and demanded we should each buy her a drink. My suggestion that I had sung for her and that should be enough was ignored. But we managed to fob her off with vague promises of a future drink.

Then when I was at the bar, waiting to buy a round, she came up and demanded the drink she felt was due to her.

"You ate my food. You have to buy me a drink." In the background, I could hear the d.j. regretting what she had said, but Mad Drunk Laura was not listening.

When I suggested to Laura that she should stop drinking because if she drank any more she would fall over, she turned quite nasty.

She put her arm round my shoulder and said, "Right, I'm annoyed now. I'm stopping here until you buy me a drink."

She was distracted when some other customers brought drinks over for her. Three double vodkas with blackcurrant and lemonade.

I escaped back to our table. My friends already had their coats on.

"We'll be all right when she moves away from the bar," I said. "She's got three drinks now."

"She's just knocked them all over," said one of my friends.

By the time I had my coat on, my friends were out of the door. I hurried after them.

"Time Warp" and "Tell Laura I Love Her" went unsung.

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Dennis Dunaway, Marleen Gorris, Ron Vawter and I were all born on the same day in the same year.

Bass guitarist and vocalist, Dennis Dunaway, of Deadringer and the Billion Dollar Babies, has worked with Donovan and played on seversl Alice Cooper albums. What an excellent fellow.

Director, Marleen Gorris, has made some films in Dutch and "Mrs. Dalloway", which sounds vaguely familiar.

Actor, Ron Vawter, appeared in "Philadelphia", "Silence of the Lambs" and "sex, lies and videotape", all of which I have heard of. The reliability of the internet is indicated by two sites I checked, one of which gave his date of birth as 1949 and the other as 16 April 1994.

Ron Vawter is, unfortunately, deceased, which gives the four of us a 25% mortality rate so far. It is probably just as well that the sample is too small to be statistically significant.

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Anti-Sweating League.

Clementine Black (1853-1922) was president of the Anti-Sweating League. On reading this, I had visions of Victorian ladies campaigning against strenuous excercise and the wearing of excessively warm clothes.

I was a bit disappointed to read on and discover that their campaign was against sweatshops.

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Moral Superiority.

I share a birthday with John Milton, poet and puritan. We have a lot in common, then? Well, Milton's poetry is funnier than mine, and I'm not a puritan.

Whenever I am prompted to think about my moral character, I remember what I agreed to do with two bottle-blonde ladies I met in a nightclub not many years ago.

It was only the belated realisation that I was too drunk to be of much use for their purposes that prevented me leaving the premises with them.

So, unless they were planning to have their boyfriends beat me up and rob me, I got the worst of both worlds. No high jinks with my new friends and no moral superiority either.

Zhuangzi

I had a lucid dream this morning. I was aware of two existences, one of which was sensible and ordered, and one which was bizarre, surreal and irrational. Of course, I awoke to this one, the latter.

Yes, I certainly had a touch of Zhuangzi aabout me this morning. I still find it hard to credit that this is the real one.

A Conspiracy Against the Government

An MP is secretly recorded by the security services when he speaks to a prisoner. The prisoner is the target, not the MP, but the press and the Opposition start a huge fuss about the Labour Party creating a police state.

Some idiot civil servants lose some important data discs, as they do, and the press and the Opposition rant about Labour Party incompetence, as if a Minister is standing behind every civil servant, watching their every move.

There is a nasty element in the UK twisting and distorting all sorts of events to show the Government in a bad light.

The Opposition need to start putting forward sensible arguments and the press need to report real news, not a lot of nonsense.

It is a real shame that years of democratic government have created an anti-democratic press and anti-democratic politicians.

(All this was supposed to be in the same font, but the last sentence and this one have spontaneously changed. I will get the hang of this sort of thing eventually.)

Medical Breakthrough

Four mornings in a row, I was woken by my nose bleeding. Each time, I held my nose as I dressed and made ready to go to Accident and Emergency. Each time, it stopped before I needed to go.

On the afternoon of the fourth day, I decided to see if I could use Murphy’s Law to solve the problem. I went to my local sports shop and bought a swimmer’s nose clip. If Murphy’s Law failed to operate, I would be able to get dressed using both hands.

The following morning, there was no bleeding, and there has been none for several days since. Coincidence? I feel there is a rational reason for Murphy’s Law operating in this case, but I cannot quite grasp what it is.

A Bit of Philosophy

I’m anaemic at the moment, so in no mood to put up with nonsense.

A couple of old ladies knocked on my door to tell me about the Bible, so I told them it was rubbish and I had no wish to discuss Bronze Age philosophy.

I could have added that their imaginary friend, God, did not exist, that in an indifferent Universe all we have is each other, and most of us are scum.

But that might have put a bit of a damper on their day.

Another A and E Display

I cannot seem to go to Accident and Emergency without putting on a show.

Last time, I vomited blood over the reception desk, this time I fainted on the way out.

I had gone in with a nosebleed, had it cauterised, then got up to go home rather sooner than I should have done.

Coloured spots crowded in from the edge of my vision, I heard someone say “Are you all right, mate?” and I lost the ability to operate my legs properly.

Several people were round me, and I found that I was on a trolley, angled so that the blood flowed to my head.

They took my blood pressure, which was 70 something over 40 something, which is pretty low.

They wheeled me up to the ear, nose and throat ward and kept me in for 24 hours bed rest. The full length surgical stockings they made me wear were very fetching, with an interesting marbled effect caused by my hairy legs.

My bed was near the nurses’ desk, so every change of shift I overheard the nurses telling the newcomers about Robert Muir, who had been cauterised and fainted on the way out. I don’t blame them for laughing.

Everyone involved and the hospital food were great. There was a free hour’s bedside television between 8 and 9 AM.

The biggest revelation was that they now use thermometers that they draw across the forehead and down the cheek to take a reading. How does that work? It makes me feel like I’m living in the 21^st Century.