In Which I Am Lessening

So it turns out that Sir Jimmy Savile OBE is an anagram of A Bossier Evil Jimmy, but I'm not touching that one with a barge pole. Next we'll be finding out that Tony Hart used mulched up Rwandan war orphans for paint, or that Paul and Barry Chuckle used to spitroast Gordon the Gopher. To me, to you! Oh dear, oh dear.
 
HAPPIER THINGS TO WRITE ABOUT. Or different things, anyway. So I might have to see the doctor about the medication I've been taking, because a few times after taking the pills I've felt very odd indeed. I'm beginning to think the doctors don't know their stuff, so I'm not following the instructions on the pack. As it is, I feel tingly and have a swimming head and find it difficult to focus. I'm sure it'd be even worse if I followed the instructions in the packet and didn't use them as suppositories. HA! But seriously, I'm dying.

That might be a tad melodramatic. I may have a wasting away disease type thing though. I weighed myself yesterday and found out I've lost eight pounds. No, I've really lost them. No idea where they went. It's not like I took the most massive bum busting shit before I weighed myself. I haven't been following the patented Get-Vaguely-In-Shape-Exercise-Program, either. It was the 10th of September when I determined not to be such a fatty-boom-boom, according to the blog, and for those with decent memories I DO fit more comfortably into the t-shirt now. The weight loss surely can't be due to the lack of gluten, because I've cut that out since the 25th of July. If I'd been losing weight since then at the same rate, I'd weigh nine and a half stone, so we can safely rule out a change of diet being the cause. Have I been exercising more? Not really. Have I been eating less? I don't think so. Hmm. I'd rather be a fatty boom-boom to be honest if it meant I was able to give myself a muffin top with, well, muffin tops.

Here's a thing, though. You know how some people have an oh-shit-I'm-going-to-die experience and then time slows down and their life flashes before their eyes? Well I have experienced a slightly different thing, and I don't need to be in a potentially fatal scenario. I HAVE actually been in one or two potentially fatal scenarios, and as I recall, I just thought "shiiiiiiittttt....", rather than getting to see myself score that amazing screamer in uni-hoc that secured the bronze place for a certain Roman Catholic primary school again. People who saw it and remember it will say it was a fluke, but it was MY fluke, dammit. Anyway. What happens to me is that apropos of nothing, I will suddenly have the most vivid recollection of something in my past- no, recollection isn't strong enough. For one tiny moment, I'm at that exact moment in my life feeling exactly how I did then, and straight after it's like being suddenly woken from a dream. I'm not a spiritual person (I've burned down churches of all the major denominations of the world) but it has occurred to me that these piecemeal sharp shiny shards of memory might be what I get instead of the down-in-one experience of others. The thing is, I seem to be having more of these lately. Co-incidence? Or merely chance? Regardless, I still intend to use my brain melting as an excuse if I lose to D at Pro Evo. As it is, he already dismantles my controller when I'm gone and replaces the insides with weevils. I have no idea where he gets them from.

Today's Tune

In Which I Am Forced to Develop a Gambling Problem

Still with me? So D and I were watching an episode of the Crystal Maze, more or less chosen at random. Here is an explanation of the Crystal Maze and its rules. The thing about D is, if it can be bet on, he will bet. He is an idiot in this regard, because although he has an unnatural prescience in tennis, he'll bet on all manner of things that he's got no idea about. If we're watching a football game he has to bet on it to "make it more interesting". It certainly seems to send him into an unusual mental spriteliness. You might be able to see where this is going. "Right, the order that our competitors will run is _____________." "What?" "Whoever has the ____ challenge has the _____ and _____ and  so on." (I can't divulge our supersexysecretsystem.) "Are you going to make me-" "Yes, we're betting." "W-" "Most crystals wins." "What i-" "If your challenger is locked in you lose a crystal, regardless of whether they're bought out again." "How m-" "50p." "Fif-" "Alright, two pounds." "How do we determ-" "Toss of a coin, heads you go first, tails I go first." "You know what we're doing here is betting on something that's already happened? WE'RE BETTING ON THE PAST!" "Yeah, but we don't know the outcome." "What, so you're saying this is some sort of Schrodinger's Crystal Maze?" "What?" "...Doesn't matter". The actual order we'd worked out is probably the fairest as it spreads the automatic lock ins about. It also means that it's the most likely way that we'll have even male and female challengers- this is very important for D as he's a massive mysogenist. The coin was tossed... And drama occured. I won't bore you with a blow by blow account of the whole show, though you can watch it here if you want:

 
The upshot is, the team managed to get a measly total of crystals. Who won the £2? I probably wouldn't be blogging if it wasn't me (I have been curiously quiet about our more recent trips to the driving range), and let me tell you it was a heavy loss for D. I can't stress enough how frustrating it is to watch utter idiots fail simple challenges, and that frustration rises exponentially when those idiots are your horses, so to speak. I suspect D wanted to break their legs so he had an excuse to shoot them. "Millions of years of evolution produces THIS? Die in a fire" was my favourite of the many nuggets of abuse that he shouted at his challengers. The amount of times his face went as red as his hair when his guys got locked in was more than none, and the amount of smugness on my face as my guys breezed through was palpable. D finished on a score of none, which was quite impressive. I pointed out that he had initially offered a stake of 50p, but then effectively quadrupled his debt. This was met with a measured response of "FUCKTHECRYSTALMAZEWE'RENEVERWATCHINGITAGAIN".

Just to give you an idea of how frustrating it can be watching idiots from the past who you have bet on, watch this:

 
D'you see? Even Richard O'Brien, who is normally a placid fellow is driven to drag the man back into the room, which NEVER happens, and point out to him that he is a biological wonder as he has three types of chromosomes- x, y and fuckhead. D had understandably started crying blood by this point, so I suggested we watch another episode from another series, but if you'll remember from yesterday's blog, D doesn't "have the mental capacity to pick a series." So I pointed him in the direction of Deadliest Warrior. This is a series even D has the mental capacity to cope with. Essentially some history buffs compare two fighters (or two teams of fighters) from history, working out their weaponry and demonstrating how it could explode/slice/crush through flesh. They basically talk a lot of bollocks and one side of expert talks smack with the other side for about forty minutes. The programme culminates in a re-enactment with a decent budget (an enactment, actually, because the point is that these two sides have never battled each other) based on who a "supercomputer" (which is essentially a glorified excel spreadsheet) said would win. The first episode we saw was The IRA versus The Taliban. Again, I know what you're thinking. D was practically frothing at the mouth, screaming

"WEHAVETOBETONTHISWE'LLTOSSACOINHEADSIGOFIRSTTAILSYOUGOFIRSTLET'SDOTHIS!!!"

I had to lie at this point, and say "D, we can't do that for this episode because I've seen it and I know who wins." He was upset, but wanted to see the episode to see if the next one was worth betting on, and he reckoned it was (of course he did, it's a thing, and things can be bet on). So why did I lie about having seen it? Well, D gets quite enthused about his bets and I really didn't want people in adjoining houses listening to him screaming "Come on the IRA! Fucking kill those sons of bitches! Yeaaahhhh! One nil, to the IRA..." So we watched another one, Viking vs Samurai. The toss of the coin meant that I got Samurai... I won't bore you with a blow by blow (quite literally) account of the whole show, though you can watch it here if you want:

http://clips.team-andro.com/watch/e5ee2f3b311fe4f145ae/deadliest-warrior-viking-vs.-samurai

The upshot is, it was very close but my Samurai stabbed his Viking into a state of non-being-alive-anymoreness. I suspect this is because it was one of those second rate Danish vikings rather than a deluxe Norwegian viking. Anyroad, D was more graceful about giving me my winnings this time because he had thoroughly enjoyed the show. "We will have to bet a lot more on this." There are three serieseses of this so my wallet may well take a hammering if I'm unlucky, and we've seen who is pitted against each other in the first series alone. Spartan versus Ninja? Pirate versus Knight?!?

Today's Muthafuckin' CHOON

In Which I Set the Scene for Tomorrow

For those of you who don't yet think I'm a sad mentalist, let me point you to what happened to me the other day. I was around D's, and I was beating him at Pro Evo 8 again, despite me being Deaf, Dumb and Blind XI and him being the Every Superhero Who Has Been In The Justice League Ever, which was doubly unfair as instead of the regulation 11 players, he had 84 (plus another five for substitutions, natch). Anyway, I still managed to fight the good fight until D suggested that "We never ever play that fucking shit game again." I suggested that we watch a film, but he said "I don't have the mental capacity to pay attention to something over an hour." I suggested that he pick an episode of a series for us to watch. "I don't have the mental capacity to pick a series." So I suggested we watch an old Crystal Maze episode. For those of you who don't know what the Crystal Maze is, up yours, because it involves a longwinded explanation, which follows here. In fact, I'm going to have to furnish you with the rest of this article tomorrow because thinking about it, the concept is somewhat complex. Below is a simplified and shortened explanation.

The Crystal Maze is a- what the buggery would you call it? A defunct game show, but game show doesn't do it justice.  For a start, four out of the six serieseses are presented by Riff-Raff from the Rocky Horror Picture Show, who is delightfully mad, and the others are presented by a man who is less delightfully mad and so has faded into obscurity.

Each episode there is one team comprising of three males and females. They are plonked into a labyrinthine setting in which there are four zones- the Industrial, Aztec, Futuristic and Medieval with Oceanic replacing Industrial in later serieseses. These sets were pretty nice, by the way, they all interlinked in an area the size of a couple of football pitches. I even noticed some live parrots scattered about the Aztec zone in the episode we watched- you know, just for shits and giggles. Here's a clip I managed to find of a team being fucking terrible whilst merely moving from one zone to another, which is an achievement in itself- the host quite rightly mocks them for it.

Anyway, in these four zones are a total of fourteen challenges, each one against a set time that could be anything from one and a half minutes to three minutes. The categories of challenge are mental, physical, skill or mystery. Each challenge has to be attempted by one person, and for each challenge they compete in they gain a crystal. A crystal? In a maze? Hmmmmmm. We will come to the significance of the crystals in a second.  One excellent thing about the show- if a player doesn't make it out of a challenge, they get locked in the room. It's quite easy for someone to get obsessed with the task to try and get the crystal and /or be too far from the exit to leave the room, to a chorus of "Run, you truculent fanny! Oh, you're locked in now... You fat-handed twat" from their adoring teammates. Those locked in can only exit the room when bought out with a crystal, but the teams are reluctant to do that (I'll get to why in a second). And some of the rooms are automatic lock ins- that is to say, if you fail to get the crystal, or breach the rules specific to that challenge then you have no chance to exit. Anyway, each crystal represents five seconds for the team members to be inside the Crystal Dome, which is slap bang in the middle of all the zones. In the Crystal Dome, there  is an industrial fan blowing gold and silver tickets all over the place, and the team have to throw the gold ones down chutes, BUT NOT THE SILVER ONES. One silver ticket down the chute means minus one gold ticket. The team have to get 100 gold tickets, which means they have to get 100 more gold tickets than silver ones. Couple this with the fact that the contestants quite often had brains made of custard and that the challenges were fiendishly difficult so they never got enough crystals and so they would never get enough time to get this stupidly large target and that it was very hard to grab the relevant tickets in hurricane force winds and that it was very hard to tell the gold and silver tickets apart anyway because the gold ones were silver ones with gold paint on and the paint had a habit of being blown off and it was a bit hard to beat the Maze. This is what normally happened when they got to the Crystal Dome:

Of the 83 teams who took part in The Crystal Maze, only 17 won, and plenty of those didn't count because they were the Christmas specials with a team of six kids who were told that whilst they inevitably didn't achieve the target needed for the grand prize, it's Christmas so we've let you win. I suspect that Channel 4 made it so hard to win because they'd pumped in £250,000 in 1990 (which in today's money is about £170,000,000) on constructing the maze alone, and could probably not afford to give out prizes. The Crystal Maze is the tempting stall at the carnival that's rigged so you can't win. I am not exaggerating when I say I remember an episode where the team trying to beat the Maze ended up with something like -54 tickets. The Crystal Maze may as well have been called the "Fuck you, you're not going to win anything Maze."

Today's Tune

In Which I Do Much the Same as Yesterday

Here's a thing you might not know- the SAS had Bin Laden cornered and ready to ambush him and CAPTURE him in the Tora Bora mountains in 2001. The American high command ostensibly were worried about U.S casualties as there were some of Delta Force present (who Google tell me are a U.K based paintball game company), but the high command were really a bit antsy about the idea of the British getting the credit, probably due to a Navy Seals commander saying "Please let us do it, I'll be your best friend and you can come to my birthday party" or "If you don't let me, I'll tell your mum on you and get you done". The American high command refused to let the SAS off their leash, and consequentally Beardy McHaterson slipped away, but it's alright as the Navy Seals managed to kill him. Now I'm sure they have a better idea of covert and military operations and intelligence gathering than this writer. I do think though that it's just a bit odd that they shot the head off the man who would be the most knowledgeable in the world regarding Al-Qaeda. Wouldn't you want to ask him a few questions (and I'm not talking about "What the fuck have you been doing all this shit for" and "How d'you like the taste of prison ass")? Nevertheless, it's fine that the Americans didn't let the SAS capture Bin Laden in 2001 as they managed to kill him a mere 10 years later. Hurrah!

 

To be fair to the U.S, we've all been there.

Just to give you an idea of what a stupid idea it was not to let the SAS in Tora Bora do their thing, two of them were going to be given the Victoria Cross, Britain's highest medal for combat, for operations conducted around that time and in that area. However, they were denied it by a technicality, because we do like our silly rules like passing the port to the left and making sure that war heroes aren't recognised. Here's what you have to do to win a VC. The warrant for the VC makes only two immutable stipulations: that the recipient shows "conspicuous bravery or devotion to the country in the presence of the enemy"; and that there should be "conclusive proofs". Also, it has become accepted wisdom that the recipient must have faced a 90 per cent risk of death and materially affected the outcome of the battle. No superior officer saw the action that these men were in that got them recommended for the VC. They saw the piles of bodies around these two men, and I reckon the superior officer had a strong idea of how they came to be corpses. Nevertheless, they couldn't be awarded a VC, despite having done enough in everyone else's eyes to deserve it. Here's a fact- America's highest medal for combat is the Medal of Honor- they doled out 135 of them in the Korean war alone. Seriously, they toss them about like peanuts. There have only been 9 Victoria Crosses awarded to British Armed forces since 1945. For both of these guys to be so brave and competent at fighting to almost get them, despite not having a superior officer to sit there and validate how fucking awesome they were, indicates that they were very hard. I think that goes to show that if they were allowed, they'd have caught Bin Laden in five minutes and then whipped out the primus and brewed up a cup of tea- maybe even had a game of cricket. And that's why the SAS are the best special forces in the world. The Navy Seals don't even play cricket on the battlefield, let alone have a spin bowler. Rubbish effort.

Not quite Today's Tune 

Today's Tune 

In Which I Marvel at Proper Hard Special Forces

A very short article today due to apathy/time constraints.

*EDIT I liked what I was writing about, so I lost track of length- often a problem*

In fact, this article might owe a teensy debt to Wikipedia (other unreliable publicly edited encyclopaedic sources are available). So. The Norwegian special forces, or the Beredskapstroppen, Marinejegerkommandoen, Forsvarets Spesialkommando, Minedykkerkommandoen and the Hærens Jegerkommando, as you know of course know they're called.  They are proper hard- they train the SAS in Arctic warfare and are generally considered the best soldiers where it's a bit on the nippy side. They also venture south of the Arctic Circle to blow stuff up occasionally, despite the fact they're almost exclusively vampires and as such do not react well to the sun.  If you see some soldiers in Afghanistan or Iraq who are inexplicably wearing skis and putting on the factor fifty, that'll be the Norwegians.

...going up hills is a bit of a bugger.

As I've said, they are proper hard. Granted, they were on their own turf, but in an international Special Force exercise in 2007, a single Norwegian Special Force unit destroyed the SAS, the Navy Seals and a French unit. One night they infiltrated the Navy Seal camp. The Navy Seals are the U.S's special forces, and they are whiny bitches. There shall be an example of this in tomorrow's blog. Now I should add some background here- to a Norwegian, a backpack is an icon. In fact it's a kind of portable shrine to the God of Useful Things, Stor Funksjonalitet-Ryggsekk. An Englishman's home is his castle, and a Norwegian's backpack is his spiritual portal to Valhalla or Fólkvangr. 

ANYWAY. These proper hard Norwegian special forces tippytoed into this Navy Seals camp and they did the equivalent of an Arab throwing their shoe at someone- they defiled the U.S rucksacks, and by defiled I mean put bricks in them so that the next day these Americans were exhausted and had broken backs. I love the idea of stealthing around just to dick with people. I suppose if I was in the SAS and wasn't allowed to capture Bin Laden, I'd have approached unnoticed at night and drawn a cock on his chin while he was asleep.  Also, when the Navy Seals were supposed to be guarding an American warship in another exercise, Norwegian frogmen swam under it and wrote "Greetings from Norway." The Americans were left with what was estimated to be a four egged omelette on their face. These Norwegians are ICE NINJAS.

 

Google image search says Hærens Jegerkommando= this

Did I mention that they're proper hard? One of the reasons that one of these units was set up is because Norway owns most of the North Sea oil and as such were mindful that oil rigs and platforms might be targets if Norway actually managed to annoy anyone in the international community. Actually, I seem to remember that there was a jihad declared on Norway, which they were most confused about. It may have been something to do with Denmark publishing that image of the Prophet Mohammed. In the Middle East, there were more than a few instances of muslims burning Norwegian flags by mistake, but hey, that's understandable. I'm sure if flag burning was one of my fetishes I could burn Yemen's flag when I meant to burn Syria's. Though I WOULD make sure that if I were to declare a holy war, it would be declared on the right country. Imagine the paperwork in trying to get that annulled.

Right. Got distracted. So. Norwegian Special Forces. Proper hard. One of their jobs is to be a rapid response unit in case of trouble on North Sea oil platforms. Now presumably one of the commandos tasked to do this thought he wasn't able paid enough Norsk Kroner to buy enough lutefisk (cod or ling soaked for days in a jus of kerosene) or designer rucksacks- this would explain why he broke ranks and testified in court that some of the training that they did was an ickle bit dangerous. Their training had previously included parachuting onto helicopter pads platforms at sea. Now here's a thing. Where these platforms are is not exactly windless, so the parachuting will be tricky. It's not exactly cloudless, so they'd often have to jump from a low height. And if they landed in the water, well, that's all she wrote. There is a reason that the SAS considered this a suicide mission. I've saved my favourite until last, and I'll just give you the direct quote from Wiki:

In the past, the training has included "sitting duck" exercises, where a soldier had to sit still while live rounds were fired, missing the soldier's head by only a few centimeters.[19][17] The stated purpose of the exercise, if any, is lacking from records.

Comments made about the exercise include "There probably is a reason why one does not conduct this exercise today."

Today's Tune

In Which I Am Not the Queen

Sure enough, Tim Key was amazing. I envy him his memory, his improvisational skills and his bath. He looked directly into my eyes at one point, then a few minutes later ran over to the guy one seat forward and to the left and frisked him. What a fucking tease. So.

It's a good thing that I'm not the Queen. For one thing, it would mean I'd have to have a sex change. But that woman... I mean, for a start, she's in cahoots with God, as He decided to pick her to be the leader of the one true faith, the Church of England. I would be a force to be reckoned with if I had God and church bake sale funds on my side... It's not just what she is, though, it's what she can do, and if I were her, I'd do so much. 

*EDIT At this point I started wondering what I would do with her power, and it turns out I have quite an imagination so this might drag on a bit*
  
Where to start? I could get rid of the Civil Service... But I wouldn't want to do that, as I also have the power to bestow honours on everyone, and they would need a LOT of paperwork for that- I would make everyone in the country a peer or peeress. Apart from Hugh Dallas. And I've never really cared for Brighton, so... I suppose I would give a pardon to all the prisoners in the country and send them on a train there and build a bloody big fence around East Sussex and let God sort it out. West Sussex can stay unmolested, because Hove has a few good charity shops where I acquired a few vinyl LP's... And how would I fund this venture, I hear you ask? The Royal Family doesn't have THAT much cash to be able to build such a massive wall and move 90,000 people at short notice. Good point, but I've got it all sorted out. You see, I OWN all the prisons, and if we work under the assumption that all the new criminals will be sent over the wall into the Mad Max wasteland that Brighton will become, then we won't need them any more. I could rent them out to be paintball arenas or for some deranged sex festivals or perhaps even as prisons for foreign countries (I don't know, they commit crimes somewhere else and then come over here so we make money out of them, what's the country coming to?). I'd keep some of the money, natch, but I'd let the Government and the populace have some, because I'm nice like that. After all, people need some readies to be able to buy accouterments that befit a peerage. But seriously, I love the idea of "Brighton" being a deterrent for crime. It would be like in Judge Dredd when someone gets exiled from the Megacity into a crimey wilderness. I'm telling you- crime would go right down.



 

Can't break the law, apparently

I'd also own the courts and the police and this would mean I could be utterly corrupt. I could go over to Hugh Dallas's house and take every property of his and have the entire constabulary of Lanarkshire pop over to protect me as I did it. Again, this is reminiscent of Judge Dredd: "I cannot break the law, I AM the law!" And I couldn't be sued. I wouldn't murder Hugh Dallas though I could get away with it, I don't believe in killing unlike him murdering Norway vs Slovenia in 2000. I would go around saying lots of litigious things. Actually, they would technically be slander because I couldn't be sued! So if I was the Queen I would... D'you remember that media furore over those people who had superinjunctions? We found out that Ryan Giggs, Jeremy Clarkson, and Andrew Marr were three of them and then we sort of lost interest. If I was the Queen, I'd slander Hugh Bonneville and say he paid £195 to a prostitute to use a sex toy on him. You know, because he wouldn't be able to sue IF it wasn't true. Which it isn't. There is literally no reason why I've been so specific about the £195. In fact, let's make it more specific, again for no reason. Let's call the hypothetical prostitute Helen Wood.


 

Ooh. The research for this article seems to indicate that I can send letters for free because they'd be sent with the Royal Cypher- presumably all mail sorting offices around the country have a Royal Enigma machine. A shit history joke for you there... Hmm.

Now we move onto the meaty stuff. I'd have control of the armed forces, which have been made a teensy bit smaller over the years (see picture below right). That's a little unfortunate seeing as we're asking (telling) them to participate in more conflicts than ever. So I'd beef them up with all the new revenue streams coming in and then I'd invade the bit of the Antarctic that the Argentinians declare sovereignty over.

This is a trend that will be reversed when I am monarch.

I'm sure the irony would warm the cockles of the army and navy's hearts as their extremities dropped off from frostbite. But hey, I'd just buy them new ones. I'd also invade San Marino. I wouldn't kill anyone, because, you know, benevolent monarch and all that, but it'd be nice to have a war that we can win quite easily. Britain actually holds the world record for war won most quickly, which is probably because Zanzibar are the holders of war lost most quickly. For some reason we gave them an ultimatum about them not having the right puppet governance and they were all like "Fuck off, you can't boss us about with your gunboat diplomacy. Oh, you're actually shelling us to buggery with your gunboats. Despite my words not being particularly palatable, I shall have to eat them." If you don't want to know the result, look away now... Thirty eight minutes later, Zanzibar had 500+ dead and Britain? Well, Britain had one Petty Officer who made a full recovery. If this war were a compilation album, it would be called Now That's What I Call a Drubbing. But it's alright to trivialise all of this nastiness because it didn't happen in living memory, true story. ANYWAY. I would invade San Marino as revenge for them scoring the fastest goal against England. 8.3 seconds? That's embarrassing, considering it's the fastest goal EVER in World Cup competition, and this from a country who have a population smaller than that of Colchester. Also, it would be nice to win a war without there being any unpleasantness afterwards, and with the good old-fashioned motive of just wanting more land, rather than this new-fangled oil contract business. I know I've seen something about the fact that their national orchestra is bigger than their armed forces, but there's nothing on the interwebs about it so I shall have to offer you this titbit instead- THEIR ARMY'S EQUIVALENT OF A TANK IS A FIAT PUNTO. We would steamroller the bastards. Though it might hurt our chances in the Eurovision song contest... 


 

You and what army?

Ah. Serious point now. I would sell off/dismantle our nuclear deterrent because we can't physically fire them off without American say so, and they've already got enough missiles to blow up the world several hundred times, so they can do all that. It would be nice if the Soviet Union or whoever "the enemy" is nowadays noticed that we weren't a threat and didn't nuke us. I could do all that scrapping because I own the military and they swear an oath to me. Also, the cost of the fucking things! If we scrapped them, by 2065 we'd have saved £83,000,000,000, and I could spend that all on my crack habit reinvest it in the country. Yes.

And the national anthem? Yeah, it's a bit dreary, it's not cheerful like the Italian one. It's short too- when we win things and the national anthem is played for our victorious sportspeople, it's over too fast. I reckon I'd buy the rights to the back catalogue of Foreigner and have a lottery machine (complete with independent adjudicator, OFC) that dispenses balls for Cold as Ice, Urgent, Hot Blooded, I Want to Know What Love Is, and Waiting for A Girl Like You. Whichever ball comes out will be our national anthem for the week. This might actually be the best idea I've ever had, and I've thought to combine Chili con Carne and Shepherd's Pie- I call it chili beef mash goodness (you come up with a better name, then). Seriously, if you take anything away from this article, let it be random national anthem cheesy 80's songs idea.

Yes. So that's what I'd do if I were the Queen, which is why I probably shouldn't be. So when it comes to the Queen elections, don't vote for me, or however it's done nowadays. Actually, do vote for me, because I've just thought of the alternative. At some point that big eared idiot is going to be King, and his stupid face will be on our money and on our stamps and everyone will leave the Commonwealth and everyone will rip it out of us and quite rightly. Nightmare. Mm. So yeah. Vote me, because Charles is a useless shower of shite. God save the Queen!

Today's Tune

In Which I Advertise a Performance Poet

With a hey nonny no and a ho nonny Knights of Ni, I'm off to see performance poet Tim Key. With R, but I couldn't put that in the previous sentence or it wouldn't have rhymed, and as all eight year olds know, if it doesn't rhyme it's not a poem. No, don't go, this isn't a blog about poetry, and Tim Key's actually bloody hilarious.

This is an unrelated hilarious comic who you also haven't heard of.

This does mean that today's blog will essentially be an advert for Tim Key. He was one of a foursome in obscure-didn't-make it-anywhere Radio 4 (then BBC 3) sketch show Cowards, and watching and then listening to Cowards was what inspired me to start on the-project-that-dare-not-speak-its-name... But no-one ever has seen Cowards. 

*EDIT The following would be embedded in this blog but it hates finding the right videos even if you cut and paste the titles, the stupid bastard non intuitive rassafrassin' grrrrr* 

I'm not even sure if Key's seen or listened to Cowards. So here's a Cowards radio sketch of his...
 
And here's a Cowards television sketch of his...
 
He was also on obscure-might-get-a-third-series-unlike-any-other-whimsical-quiz-show We Need Answers, which you can see an example of here

And the people involved in that gameshow invented a game to be played amongst friends called "No More Women", of which you can see here and be furnished with a better explanation of the rules than I can give.

And finally, here he is doing some of the sort of poetry stand up he will do for us tonight.
 
R and I have seen him once already, and R was very willing to come along then. He'd actually seen We Need Answers independently of me, which is very impressive because, as you may have understood by now, there's very little fanfare for Tim Key. When we last saw him, the evening ended with him climbing over a crowd of people (another word for them would be the audience) standing on their shoulders and extremities, and for why? Because he was pretending the floor was hot lava, when an audience member bade him stop. "Oh?" he enquired. Muttermuttermutter. "It turns out," he explained to the audience, "that this woman's friend is very heavily pregnant, so I shall have to modify my route to the stage somewhat significantly." Muttermuttermutter. "But it turns out her friend doesn't want to be any trouble and she's up for it!... Which is why she's pregnant in the first place, I suppose."  

So. Tim Key has done lots of good things. He basically wrote this article, and I love him for that, and many other things. Now you can too.