BoyzGone

I know I'm rising to Badass's bait of Grump but I don't care.

This pretty-boy Gately youth - whom God take to His bosom - who he to hog my headlines day after day and clutter my TV news and get the sort of blubbing to rival la princesse  Diane of saintèd memory?

Gorgeous looking chappie, I admit, but what a team of nancy boys, for the nones (Actually, see Comment. I believe I stand corrected).

Still, I love it that the reptiles of the press got it so wrong about the drugs bit.

And didn't that Jan Moir take a drubbing? She was right, of course, but tell that to the populace and, more to the point, to her populace panting editor.

Rather her than me and it could well have been  me if the subject had been of the slightest importance or interest.

Grump grump.

I checked with the Spitfeuer and she's not aware of them on the hot radar either so I'm sorta safe in asking why the fuss fogging media moping ...

Well that's it, innit? Media manipulation.

Bah humbug.

"Closure" ~ bringing the Ashes home.

20,000 Moir moans - Yawn. Gateley schmately. So she got it wrong. That's showbiz.

PCC Populism ~ Moirgate turns ugly

Enter Stephen Fry (groan, twitter) - End of legit whingeing as Moirgate descends to farce. See also here for further foppishness from Freedom Fry. Now there's Nancy Boy behaviour for you: thinks his blog is readable, wimps out over a bit of bashing, trades on his depression to explain away his hobblingly boring style and content. Yes, indeed - and such a good actor and writer and everything else. Just not much of a Lifer.

Gratuitous gay bashing

Ομοφοβική καταιγίδα σε ένα φλιτζάνι καφέ

Too much already. Run the song and clear the air.

Twat twitters from Wanker Fry

Caption to that vigorous cartoon, right:

"You'll have to excuse Nigel. He has deeply-held religious views."

Dancing on Graves ~ the ever-entertaining and thought-plumbing Rod Liddle right on form in the 2nd November Spectator  in re  MoirGate.

I scribble down his cooler lines to use in the taverna when debating 'Disgusted of Drosato' but they never come out right.

Rod gets reptile journos and the Lately Gately brouhaha bang to rights:

"I have to say that I don’t particularly like newspaper and magazine columnists, as people.

Smug, not terribly bright, usually cowardly, lazy, always self-obsessed, self-important and narcissistic — forever brimming with themselves, a collection of mass-produced ornamental thimbles overflowing with foaming vomit.

I don’t excuse myself from most of these character traits, by the way, so I suppose you can add self-loathing to the list as well.

My argument isn’t that columnists aren’t good at what they do — some are very artful indeed, although it can be a thin and vapid art, not even a ‘half-art’, as Orwell rightly described photography. It’s just that personally I don’t like them very much; on the increasingly rare occasions when I am required to mix with people who do the same job as me, I experience the peculiar and frightening sensation that I am being eaten alive by mice.

The good stuff about journalism — reportage — has been left behind, bullied out of existence by the internet (which, ironically, is actually useless for accurate, intelligent reportage, but that’s another story). Instead we have this moronic inferno, a high-pitched fugue of endlessly self-referential squeaking, the sonar of a thousand bewildered but nonetheless blithely confident pipistrelle bats, all mothless. And so we have the Jan Moir affair.

Hell, all those complaints, whipped up by Twitter and Facebook and the infinity of bloggers — amounting to a massive 0.4 per cent of the Daily Mail’s readership. The PCC will need to re-evaluate the way in which it takes action, because these days a roll call of 22,000 complaints is very easy to amass, as Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross (via the offices of the Daily Mail!) will tell you.

... Moir had suggested that there might be something more to the death of the boy-band singer Stephen Gately than the ‘sugar-coated’ encomiums which had appeared in every morning newspaper. She was right about the sugar coating; as always, when a minor and not terribly talented celebrity dies, we had all that fatuous stuff about his incredible, life-affirming genius, how out of the blue it all was.

I suspect there was not one person in Britain who, upon hearing the sad news about Gately, did not — even if the thought were quickly banished to the back of their mind — think likewise. I suspect that most of the columnists who complained about Moir’s piece — and these include some of the most fabulously stupid people in Britain — will have had that idea at the front of their minds immediately. But it remained unsaid, apart from by ordinary people.

Moir’s article provoked swift and misplaced allegations of homophobia against the author; but her comments were homophobic only if you subscribe to the homophobic view that all homosexuals have the sort of lifestyle enjoyed by a minority of homosexual celebrities.

The Guardian’s Charlie Brooker — so funny and acute when writing about television, so sententious, dull and out of his depth when writing about anything else — suggested that Moir was ‘dancing on the grave’ of Gately ‘for money’. As of course, by extension, was Brooker himself.

Dance away, Charlie, mate: it’s what we do. Those twin pillars of British journalistic idiocy, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown and Janet Street-Porter — the latter of whom has never yet said or done anything for the benefit, enlightenment, amusement or entertainment of the human race — weighed in with their polystyrene cudgels."

Don't you love the bit about those wets including "some of the most fabulously stupid people in Britain"?

Anyway, read it for yourselves. I hate quoting at such length when all it takes you is a click.

Comment Alert: Anon-K taking time off to keep me honest and straight.

"I think you will find that all 4 of the remaining band members are definitely straight! ALL Married with children."

Glad we cleared *that* up, and goodness now that I look at them they do look superbly muscular and manly. No danger there of being asked what they've got in their sponge bags (remember that wonderful song by Cyril Rumble, 'what's in your sponge bag, Terry?' - straight up the charts, thanks to all those mums and aunties flocking to buy.)

But i digress - as i responded, the married ~ straight ~ kids ~ cortina in the garage bit is un peu dull and straightforward for my jejune tastes and style. But i'm beginning to scent a new euphemism ~ 'Married with children'. It always gets wheeled out as definitive refutation of suspicion that someone's homosexual, when in fact I know a number of stalwarts who married and sired and then came out and everyone lives happily ever after and the other bloke is pals with the kids and helps the wife over the curtains.

My current euphemism - and i really dont need one, it's just to get a laff - is "Good with colours".

I shall now retire that and move on. Next time some lady ogles a hunk who i happen to know bats for the other side, i shall wag a sympathetic finger and murmur into her ear, "sorry, darling - 'married with children'" nudge wink flutter of fingers as she pouts in disappointment.

Carla the 'new Marie Antoinette'

Society rag Point de Vue slams the fragrant Carla Bruni as a "daffy multi-millionaire socialite who does very little real work and is completely out of touch with ordinary people."

Ma foi! That's it. The jealous pansies.

I'm canceling my sub.

PRINCE PHILIP

circa 1930

Words and phrases men shouldn’t utter

~ According to Esquire ~

. Natch, I will draw from this list of cool words whenever possible and use them willy-nilly to show what a mixed-bag vocab I draw from.

Ljiljana may choke on her vino but, going forward, she'll see I'm not just wingin' it.

[Joke is, I was drafting a paragraph trying to use all the words and Theo asked what 'derring-do' meant and, when I told him - no, not daring -do - decided to name the new potion he was concocting as the "Derring-Do Daiquiri", which we all agreed was très clever as well as being très Esquire.]

Clink the link and see what you come up with.

Lad stabs burglar

Charged with murder

I have always  sympathised with anyone prosecuted for taking out a burglar.

In the very early 1970s, around 4am, I heard a scrabbling outside my fourth floor Finchley Road flat and when I'd silently opened the window wider, saw some punk fiddling with the kitchen window of the 2nd floor premise.

I was directly over him and he hadn't looked up so I took one of the bricks supporting my makeshift bookshelf and - very unlike me - judged it spot on right so that it hit him dead centre on his thieving bonce sending him like a dead weight straight down and - get this - the brick having done its job, proceeded to the ground where it smashed and scattered into too many pieces to be much use for forensics.

I then left very quietly and walked around Swiss Cottarje until I reckoned the fuss would be over.

But I digress: back to enterprising Omari with the skill (and presence of mind) to plunge his poignard into the bizarrely named Tyler Juett,

I mean, fark ... just look at the creep. If ever I came face to face with a freak that so closely resembled the banjo picker in Deliverance, I wouldnt mess around with the cutlery, I'd go the Full Monty Harry and waste him with the Magnum.

A four-letter fart to whether the varlet felt lucky or not.

INTESTACY

Der deutsche Weg zu trinken

I am a 'totally insular imperialistic English arsehole'.

She delivers this while we are sitting up with the ashtray between us.

Later as I pour the Prosecco, "You don't even know the German way to drink:

"Raise your glass, like so.

Look into my eyes - that is always.

Drink

Raise glass again

Look again

Allow some silence to put down glass

Think serious on our moment."

WILDLIFE PHOTOS

Wal-Mart fires employee for chasing after thief

Walmart in the UK is ASDA, am I right?

What a blithering bunch of eedjits.

If I managed a company anywhere in the USA, I'd get on the phone to ... where the fuck IS Ocala, ffs ... yeah, I'd call up Marion County and tell them to get Josh Rutner on the blower pronto.

I'd tell him,

"Hey, Cowboy, what's up?

Dude! You need to get yer ass outta Faggot Marion before someone rules it's illegal for a man to go to work packing balls.

Yo! Heave your rustler-chasing rump onto the next stage to Main Street Ariel, Mirandaville USA and I will escort you to your corner office in Tempest Towers to park your hide in a baadass Spanish leather chaze longew as V-P Asset Protection and my personal  Director of Security.

Anytime you want to mosey down to the shopfloor and duke out some punk shoplifter, be my guest.

Knuckle dusters and switchblade, second drawer down."

Sharbat Gula

Who was not stunned and captivated by Steve McCurry's portrait of Afghan refugee, Sharbat Gula, as it appeared on the June 1985 cover of National Geographic magazine.

Years later - and after much searching and red-herring boning by the natives - they tracked her down.

Married, mothered, lined and worn, of course, but the eyes ... the eyes still there.

HORNÈD VIPER

Vipera ammodytes: In our garden, we call this one Vipera Οχιά

Going about my gardening business and this handsome fellah slithered out of the barrel of leaves and branches I'd gathered to put thru the mulch shredder.

Lucky it didn't nip my bare arms.

They're poisonous, couldn't risk it getting away to sink fangs into Maman or the animals, so I had to prong it there and then.

Huge pity to put it down: one thinks of all the ugly mugs like me stamping around and this beauty has to cop it just because I'm afraid that one of us will trespass on his territoire.

Damn'd if he was gonna go gentle ... you should've seen his expression as I cornered him and we dueled it out.

Also ace opportunity to run my favourite snap of Frog and Snake in impasse situation.

SNAKE OIL BLUES

"TRY TO LEARN OUR WAYS"

Wonderfully funny, preening piece by John Humphries in the Expat section of the October Oldie.

As we recall, JH is famed for that Peloponnese property pratfall.

Anyway, this month's strutting is all about how he bawled out a camper-van-driving Kraut for filming a local funeral.

Humphreys writes unclearly so I'm not sure who did what or when or wherever, but there's a pivotal sentence about,

"The liturgy droned on, the day grew hotter and eventually I wandered back to the house feeling more than ever that the village was home."

Do you hear that familiar alarm bell?

The one that sounds when foreigners start mouthing off about feeling more than a lowly speck on the landscape or mote in the eye of the locals?

Loipon, red alert for the punchline and Humph doesn't disappoint.

He's strolling around the village expecting to be praised for sending Jerry packing.

Neighbour Petros comes up and tells him he should have "stayed and followed old Michaelis to his grave with the rest of us - it's the custom."

Wait for it ... to Petros is ascribed the hackneyed bogus money line:

"Try to learn our ways, my friend, or people will say you're a foreigner."

B'boum! How we love to trot that one out.

Can't you see the faux modest smile as the locals wink and giggle to each other with patronising mirth.

I showed the article to Γνήσιο το άρθρο and much derision was there for the 'Try to Learn our Ways' claptrap:

Having clasped Humphreys to their collective bosom to the extent of actually recognising his foreign ass as a foreign body in the landscape, why would they then waste further time wildgoosing him with impossible fantasies of aping their ways?

Dept of Try to learn you'se a for'ner: Only a non-Grik imagining how a Greek might speak could cobble up such a tin-eared phrase.

As for the bit about being mistaken for a foreigner - gasp! Surely not?

Totally blank looks and bafflement. Only a foreigner would entertain the laughable idea of being anything BUT a clunky foreigner.

Do try to track down the piece - page 70 - and read it in full. It's like a clever parody of every Wannabe Expat-craves-Native article.

That it's set in Greece makes it even more amusing and poignanter.

Kommentaria:

Cool Sinbadian link leading to this

Branestawm Time: Sinbers indulging his 'complicated passion' full fathom five here and here.

Somebody chip in and tell him wot any fule kno.





.

Oldster test-drives car over cliff

I've never had patience with elderlies behind the wheel - so I've  got it coming to me.

But ever since my elder gal was knocked down at a Bellingham pedestrian crossing by a stoopid stripling fart of mere 70 ("But I never saw you, honey", as she's lying there with cars whizzing by her head in the oncoming lane), I've been particularly bitter and vengeful.

(She's OK, thanks. Our attorney got her a beeg settlement, some of which is going on visiting her old man. Ill wind.)

So where was this lady driving? Round the car park of a caff.

The name of this caff? The Cliffhanger Café

Address? Highcliffe, Dorset.

Gotta giggle.

Dept of Word Eat: On the other hand ... altho' I dont know what an absence of tickets is meant to signify.

TWITTERATURE

Marvelous winners in the Oldie's excellent competition to reduce a well-known novel or play to not more than 140 characters.

Othello (in rhyme, to boot)

Old black guy weds younger chick,
Speechifies, gets jealous quick.
Old black guy kills young white wife,
Speechifies and ends his life.

(Does O top hisself? Gad, I don't remember that. Shame on moi)

OK! "Othello commits suicide with a dagger before they can take him into custody. At the end, it can be assumed, Iago is taken off to be tortured and possibly executed."

What also can be assumed - so puleez, no one tell Doctor Lonsdale - is that at the next Balliol ballyhoo he glides up and strips me of my Broad Street oak leaves and cloister.

Madame Bovary

French medic's wife who has read too many cheap romances, bored by provincial life, gets off on shopping and fucking, pays the price.

David and Goliath (which only the Spitfire et contemporaires will understand)

phat boy trying to spread fud. nimby! imho hes a troll. not p2p fight. omg wywh 2save me. hes down. omg u did. aas tnx vm. im da king! agabt! gotta psalm this! cya l8r. david

King Lear

(Not particularly good effort but it enables me to re-run my Spook King non-ecdote.)

Son sees Ghost Dad.
Ghost says King bad.
'Kill King!' says Ghost.
'Will do!' King toast.

Yes. Well. I suppose there is some minute merit to it but it does pale in comparison to the Spook King winner.

"DID I TELL YOU BRIAN HAD SPLIT FROM THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND?"

DYLAN'S XMAS ALBUM

I know .... words fail.

Know what? No one has offered to shove it in my stocking and nor have I hinted.

It will of course - like everything His Illuminescence croaks - be a killer and I will suddenly be raiding my memories of school hymns to be dans la vent

GAY ~ HATE ~ MURDER

What is this ridiculous 'hate' prefix to 'crime' or 'murder' or all the other obvious words of evil and violence?

Where were these ludicrous qualifiers in days of yore?

I grew up with crime in the streets and in the homes of Hong Kong, my dad fought a war to stem it - crime was and still is crime.

Why do we have to nancy pants it with these idiot additions.

Tell you what, I bet Sinbad sends in another of his killer explanation rationales and I'll be able to simmer down and concentrate on fitting Monica into my siesta fiesta fumblings.

Bellucci

See how your eye was immediately pinned to this page?

No idea what the Evening Standard piece is about and I don't care.

Nor do you.

One picture worth a 1,000 wet dreams in la bella Bellucci's case.

I'm not reducing the photos by a single pixel, so live with it.

Or, if you're Vincent, with her.

Τυχερό κάθαρμα

Killer Komment from Badass, totally owning me.

Vaut lire, the wag.

'Delicate negotiations' ~ à la Grècque

Drinks with long-time pals of maman - gardening types, no interest to me and nor I of use to them except to co-ordinate visit to Pagoda Corfuchsia and keep the dog at bay.

Met a splendid old buffer out here to co-ordinate some property deal for his over-bonused cityslicker son.

Quink on quill, everything ready to sign - suddenly the lawyer calls up with a last minute hitch about the owners wanting more money.

Quoth l'Avocat:

"This will require delicate negotiation"

Buffer:

"I don't do 'delicate'.

Tell them they sign within the week or the offer decreases by €10,000.

Another week, the whole deal's off.

Think you can get that across with sufficient delicacy?"

A face-retaining three hours later, it was a deal. They'd sign.

Tabloid sting: Sleb plastic surgery hoax

Interesting story.

Give it a read and above all play the video.

Some of those phone calls and reporters ... hoo boy ... they won't be happy to've been filmed.

Pay Peanuts ~ Hire Monkey

I'm now too jaded to worry about
'Speaker' of the House of Commons John Bercow being nabbed to pay back £1,000 for 'wrongly' claimed expenses.

They're all up to it. Enuff, already.

What I do object to is his resemblance to an ape.

Singer slugged at signing

Yikes - poor Leona Lewis.

Punched out of nowhere by a nutter.

I don't know what I would have done if something like that had happened at one of my signings as a bookista PR hack.

It wouldn't have mattered if it had been our 'enery Cooper, but Erica Jong? Margaret Forster? Angus Wilson? Carlos Fuentes? Ugh.

What would have been way kewl would have been this oddball duking out Katie 'Jordan' Price during one of her  book sessions.

Oh poh poh ... can you picture it??

Dja think any of the security guards woulda held back cage-fighter Alex Reid?

The mugger woulda been onna floor being stomped on. Then hauled back on his feet and biffed around a bit more before being sent flying again, this time into the cookery books section and all those Madhur Jaffrey showcards.

Then encore smackings before into the pile of Hilary Mantels; then a bit of footsie kneezie inna balls ... gahd it'd've been a Youtube hit.

Katie could have done her heaving-breast "My hero!" bit - another million hits on 'Tube.

Cage Boy could've risen again to the occasion and lammed the loonie some more - all six foot of him, I gather - this time into the remainder shelf of Melvyn Bargs before bouncing off into a stack of Harold Evans.

That's what I should have set up for dear Kyril Bonfiglioli (RIP), swordsman and martial arts fiend of the dirty brigade. *That* would've made the Sunday Express's clever book supremo Graham Lord look closer at the brilliant "Don't Point that Thing at Me".

Or Harry Crews when he was over to plug 'Karate is a thing of the spirit'.

Perhaps not.

Carnage is carnage but Harry was a one-man army.

Phone socks: Oopsie daisy ~ that Miss Peter better watch his tongue round Big Al.

And here is Big Al at Katie's signing - in drag.

Lensman Limb Lammed by Limo

Of course Robbie Williams has to appear wild-eyed and weepy over the idiot clicker who got too near and went underwheel - they're his fans and he has to show gratitude and concern and all that other stuff that shores up the bank account.

But really the truth is that these pests who shove their lenses in yer face are a ruddy nuisance and a few hi-profile 'accidents' and bust bones will send a good signal to the rest of the pack.

I don't know how these drivers keep their patience with these ninnies crowding round and the guv'nor telling them all the while to skedaddle the heck outta there.

Anyway, Roberto was ready with the crocodiles and the rest of the giggling paparazzi were right on cue to snap the après-larmes.

A successful gig followed by a short sharp lesson to the whipper snapper.

A good night's hunting.

PAKI SMACKIE

AKA Racism at Tiffany's

Lovely earnest piece in The Times about Brek at Tiffany's being 'racist'. Yawn.

In the same way that those Health & Safety buffoons sit around thinking up new ways to nanny us around, journos like Satham Sanghera (a name and a half if e'er was one) also tap their teeth and scan the horizon for new and unlikely paths down which to raise a 'racist' ruckus.

But I do love the idea of a nipponed-up Mickey Rooney coming out with,

"O me so sorry! Me love you long time!”

I don't think the lowliest of our gardeners in Hong Kong ever spoke chinglish that basic.

But I tell you what, back in those fragrantly harboured days , my bro and I - together with our Cantonese servants - used to sit without a trace of irony and watch with rapt glee every episode of Charlie Chan. He was of course played by a whitey with angled brows and slitty eyes.

Unspeakable acts on your mother! Can you imagine that happening today?

Can you imagine Peter Sellers goodnessing and graciousing over Sophia in that wonderful accent?

Ditto for the B&W Minstrel show - golly, I wish they'd bring it back to the melon patch ~ or at least play Spike Lee's Bamboozled once a year.

So, back to Tiffany's and well done Sanghera-sahib waving the rascalist card at Massa Capote and risking our groans and mockery.

We have a copy in the guest wing corridor - one of those lovely old Penguins that bookshelves of the Orient still groan under - so I must dust it down and give it the once over.

BEAK & ASS: Good old Beeb, coming to my rescue just when I thought I'd have to resort to gratuitous posting of babes of un-gratuitous tans simply to bulk out and racianise this posting.

Believe me, I've never heard of la bella Laila Rouass but now I see her foto, I rue nothing.

She looks comely enough to hail from Pakistania but who can tell these days?

In the interests of fairness - and adding even more pics of sari sirens, I googled Indian and South Indian actresses and could not tell the difference between them and the alluring Pakistani Puellas.

Anyway, Anton 'Beak' Du Beke seems to think that Laila looks Paki, or why else would he be in such current eau chaud?

Good lord! No sooner do I comment on Sanghers racism sulk than I see the self same play reviewed. Quel coincidence - and what good publicity for book and play.

Groan - now Bruce Forsyth is poking his formidable chin into the Beak/Ass affaire. 'Move on, indeed' - why are folks so obsessed with rascialism? Is there a gang of them who sit waiting for the slightest excuse to ring the racial gong?

According to this article, it seems that Beaky thought Laila looked like a 'Paki'. Well, he's clever to spot the difference. All that matters, surely - and Brucie is right - is that La Roue is a corker. Duhh - all that fuss for nowt.

But as punishment for Forsyth sticking his beak in, I'm running a pic of him and his sizzling assistante.

Jackson Jive skit ~ hells bells, rascialism is suddenly all the craze. Harry Connick is rightly suspicious of a silly black-faced skit in my Down Under birthplace of Oz.

What tickles me is the reaction of those involved with the show: in true ocker style, they have not the faintest idea why anyone should be offended by those blacked-up faces and are floundering around to come up with a suitable reaction.

"Indian ancestry" - now i've heard it all. What a pathetic lot. Tip-toeing around the subject. She's Indian, she's Pakistani, she's whatever she is ... good god what a farce in a cup of قہوہ.

Paki Row: Forsyth forced to apologise. Bleagghh! (Not to mention Golly!) I'm changing this posting to Paki Preen, maybe 'Paki Posturing', maybe whatever I can think up that tramples this whole idiocy into the Indus mud.

Wilnelia - I know that sounds like a flower or one of those weird names plonked on gals "of African ancestry" - like Tyshonda or Beyonce - but it is in fact the name of Mrs Bruce Forsyth who has waded into the Strictly Come Racist brou-haha.

Mrs BF is Puerto Rican and the hilarious point about her shoving her oar in - for which we all thank her - is that *she* has more of the Paki about her in her au naturel look than darling Laila did with all the make-up she slathered on to punjab up for the cameras.

Great PR for the show and, I imagine, great publicity for the ladies of Pakistan whom we're all now googling in the light of La Rouass's rueful beauté.

Marvelously racialicious Monty Khyber sketch complete with incomprehensible but offensive indo-paki accent that would never have passed the Peter Sellers test.

The crawling waiter is Michael Palin and note his skiful application of Baluchistan 'bronzer', the very same donned by Laila that lured Beaky into mistaking her for a Paki.

Pop the frock on back to front ~ Oh dear !! Beaky goes squeaky again. That boy's for an early shower - but I do like La Roue's cute friend, Tessa Whoever.