Welcome to our first monthly Cunt of the Week retrospective. Below the ugly mugs of last month’s guest writers are their names and their nominated Cunt. Click on the picture you want, and prepare to be transported to their rants.
Tam Wotherspoon – NORTH CAROLINA
Rik Carranza – MATTEL
Fraser Edwards – REAL ALE DRINKERS
Richard Hunter – ARGYLL AND BUTE COUNCIL
We just don’t do carnivals, fairs or fetes with as much aplomb or on the same grand scale as the Americans. Maybe it would help if we smiled occasionally, but we’re genetically incapable of such a facial contortion. We Scots would only smile if God proved his existence once and for all by a) reaching a thumb from Dover to Berwick and squashing the English like woodlice, and then b) rounding off the miracle by replacing the North Sea with heroin.
Or, at a pinch, we’d smile if there was a special episode of ‘You’ve Been Framed’ in which each and every video featured David Cameron being stabbed in the balls by a different angry dwarf in a kilt.
Yes, the Americans like a good smile. If the Grangemouth Gala Day was held in California, USA, (which would be rather unlikely, I’m forced to admit) it would be a non-stop, 24-hour, noisy orgasm of vim, streamers, colour, mariachi bands and pomp, featuring half-naked back-flipping pom-pom girls – with smiles so blinding they could down aircraft – jiggling their breasts with the enthusiasm of a force 4 earthquake. There would be a 50ft-tall animatronic Mickey Mouse shooting fireworks out of its bell-end into the hungry, gaping mouth of a robot Pluto, as sixteen million children wept with joy. And somewhere, somehow, there would be guys in red bell-boy jackets playing trumpets on the backs of motorbikes – upside down and through their arses.
This year, in Grangemouth, Scotland, the Grangemouth Gala Day looked like… well, it looked like exactly what it was: a procession of miserable cunts in anoraks shuffling through the rain in search of the most suitable cliff for an act of mass suicide. It looked like there’d been a delivery of crepe paper and face-paints to a funeral march. If you haven’t visited Grangemouth before and find yourself wondering what it looks like, have a gander at the drug-riddled communities in HBO’s ‘The Wire’, but imagine that everybody’s white.
So What is the Gala Day?
Well, it’s technically a Children’s Day, which makes me a bit of a cock for slating it. It’s not really meant to be enjoyed by the likes of me, childless interloper that I am. What’ll I be doing next? Telling you how shit I found the latest episode of Sesame Street because it wasn’t nearly as good as One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest?
The galas themselves started off as annual celebrations for miners and mining communities, but the focus of the celebrations was shifted for the following wonderful reason:
In the late Nineteenth century, some Miners’ Gala Days were given over to children in order to reduce drunkenness.
Resources for Learning in Scotland website
And we all know how successful a strategy that turned out to be. Here’s the zinger:
Gun Terror of Oilman
A teenage thug pointed a gun at the head of a man who told him off for breaking bottles in a kids’ play area.
Gary Martin told 45-year-old oil rig worker Jim Kelly: ‘You’re dead.’
But Mr Kelly grappled Martin to the ground and got the air pistol off him, Falkirk Sheriff Court heard yesterday.
The terror attack happened on Grangemouth Gala Day in June.
Lawyer Andy Bryson said Martin was ‘exceedingly drunk’ at the gala day.
www.thefreelibrary.com
Ah, yes. The only flaw in that plan was that by 2012 all of the children would be alcoholics, too. Alcohol does indeed still play a huge part in the Grangemouth Gala Day. Like they say of the 1960s: if you can remember what happened, then you weren’t actually there. Grangemouth has other things in common with the 1960s, in that it’s full of incredibly racist people with shite haircuts taking drugs and having unfussy sex with strangers.
(actually, a joke I used to tell on-stage about Grangemouth is that it’s a lot like Amsterdam: in that it’s completely flat, and filled with drugs and whores.)
So What Happens ‘an That?
No smart alec remarks: this arch is pretty fucking cool. And The Muppets was the only TV show that made me shut up as a child.
What happens is this: each year a ‘royal family’ is assembled from one of the local primary schools, a different school having the honour of doing this each year until it’s back to the start of the cycle again. Kids at the year’s chosen school are then asked if they’d like to volunteer themselves to be one of the gala’s persons of special significance. Those who do are then whittled down by their schoolmates by means of a popularity contest, until each of the main roles are filled: Queen, Ladies in Waiting, Paiges, a Flower Queen etc.
The girl elected Queen (Republicans take note) then has the arduous task of selecting just one of her classmates to be sealed inside a BMW and slammed into a wall by a drunk driver. OK, I made that bit up.
There’s no King of the Gala Day, but one lucky boy does get to be the Prince, whose role it is to follow the Queen around muttering increasingly unhelpful racist remarks. OK, I made that bit up, too. But they should introduce that role. It’d be so easy to find viable candidates amongst the people of Grangemouth.
Dustbin Beaver is actually slang for a Grangemouth girl.
The parents of ‘the royals’ then have to spend £80 million trillion pounds building an arch display over their homes. If they’re poor, they simply steal the necessary materials, or just selotape bits of A4 paper that read: ‘ALL HAYL THE QUEAN’ to their windows. Some of the displays are incredible. You know, fairy-tale castles, enchanted forests, 1940s cinemas. And some of them are shit.
On the day itself – where it’s usually raining despite the event taking place towards the end of June – trucks filled with children (that makes it sound like a pogrom: no concentration camps are involved), and floats prepared by other schools and local businesses, and pipe bands, and brass bands, and veterans, and such like, all form a long procession through the streets, before arriving in the central park for the crowning ceremony. And, as we’ve already established, lots of people get drunk.
Oh, and there are lots of flags everywhere. Or bunting, as they call it. Which sounds to me a little too much like a sex act. And a jolly good one at that.
In closing, as I’ve already stated, it’s actually a grand day out for the folks of Grangemouth, especially for those with relatives taking part in the procession. And some of the arches have been super-awesome in this and previous years, as you’ll see from the pictures below. (OK, part of this, like with the Skinflats article, is life-insurance, but I mean it, too, honest!) Actually, my niece was in the procession this year, and she was awesome, so get that roond ye.
GALLERY
Graceland in Grangemouth, circa 2008.
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And, of course, this happens at the Grangemouth Gala Day shows every year, and must be shared with the world:
BEHOLD… COBO! Urban dance legend of Grangemouth! Enjoy the video…
My girlfriend and her aunty baked some cupcakes in honour of my birthday. Most of them had some connection to my likes, hobbies, wishes or personality, which I thought was disgustingly adorable. The way I see it, either my girlfriend loves me or she wants me to perish from a diabetes-related heart attack. Whatever the truth, those cakes are getting scoffed. Look out, blood, it’s cholesterol time, you red motherfucker! Happy birthday to me, etc. etc.
A microphone cake. Because I do stand-up, see? It's a good job I'm not a urologist, or this picture would've been a little indecent.
A cake with £50 notes coming out of it, because I'm a capitalist pig-dog who wants to amass great wealth in order to put my boot on the neck of the common man and push down on that neck until it snaps. And then shit in his wailing mouth. Whilst wearing a crown, obviously. And laughing. It's as if these cakes know me. Oh, and top-right there's a wee jobby with eyes, because I enjoy the thought that one day science might endow our faeces with sentience; perhaps even allowing them to rule the world. Actually I think it's supposed to be the wee flame guy from that advert, but an intelligent poo works for me, too.
Aw, cute. Well, there's the microphone again. Remember it from the first picture? And also a platoon of love hearts, because the chick digs me; and who can blame her? A podgy, hairy guy with fucked lungs who shouts abuse about society's weak into a microphone for the benefit of drunks, and doesn't get paid for it, is quite a catch for a young lady! And there's the masks symbolising tragedy and comedy, again in honour of my rantings, and artistic leanings. Top-left? That's a cocktail shaker, because there's a pina colada story mixed into our courtship. Bonus? The cocktail shaker also looks a bit like my nose-hair trimmer mentioned in the previous post. And look: top-right. That's a gummy version of the snake I murdered in Turkey! Awesome. I like to revisit my killings through baking.
This is a cute one. ABC for my writing, but also linked to how I met the missus. A rat? Not because I am one, although some people might disagree with that, but because we keep rats together. Yes, that's right. Cute little pet rats. Because nothing says I love you more than bringing the creatures who spread the black death into your shared home. There's some cheese on the cake next to it (not real cheese, a chocolate representation of cheese, motherfuckers), because I like cheese. Smoked applewood, cheese with cranberry in, soft cheese, hard cheese, processed cheese, French cheese, Greek cheese, Italian cheese, hell, Slovakian cheese, feta cheese, pizza cheese, gouda, edam, Babybell, Boursin... name a cheese, any cheese. (apart from knob cheese, although the idea of eating my own seasoned with some pepper isn't entirely abhorrent to me, although - unfortunately - I keep my cock too clean for that. Maybe once I become incontinent though) Let's put it this way: if it's come from a cow and been bacteria-ed to fuck into a great stinking lump of artery-clogging yellow-and-white tastiness, I'm having it. But not the stuff with the blue veins. That's just disgusting.
I think this one speaks for itself. Me with two cakes, dreaming of the big time. In the meantime: I got cakes, fuckers. Lots of them. Which makes me the richest man in the world.
If you haven’t already read it, here’s a link to my thoughts on turning 32: http://www.jamieandrew-withhands.com/2012/06/13/happy-birthday/
Me, and how I stay youthful.
I just turned 32.
This is a strange age. It’s the age where people start dying; or at least the age where it starts to become less of a surprise when your friends and acquaintances keel over like pit canaries.
‘They were so… young,’ we say, not quite believing the words as they stagger uncertainly from our lips. It’s almost framed as a question. ‘They were so… young?’
I’ve always been certain that a heart attack will serve as the final sentence in the book of my life. I’m not psychic: just Scottish. At death, most pasty-skinned Celts will find the Grim Reaper holding their engorged heart in his bony hand, bouncing it like a blood-filled happy-sack as he points to the fat-smeared hole in their chest and says: ‘Looking for this, you fat bastard?’ Yes, there’s no doubt in my mind. Jamie Andrew’s heart is destined to burst like a rotten peach under the treads of a tank.
Fuck you, Murphy. You're shite at living.
I become filled with anxiety when I hear of a celebrity dying in their early 30s. As if their premature death somehow makes my own more likely. Brittany Murphy, Heath Ledger: they both gave me palpitations. When a celebrity dies young I always chant inside my head ‘Please be drugs, please be drugs, please be drugs, please be drugs,’ and when it’s drugs I fist the air and shout ‘YES!!’ Which is pretty horrible of me, but then I never claimed to be anything other than a deeply, deeply horrible human being. They die of drugs, I don’t die of a heart attack. Yet. That’s the deal.
I guess I am still young, though. I look young, so I’m told, despite the rainforests of hair that seem to sprout from every available orifice. What’s with that? So much hair grows from my ears that I could pleat it and join Aswad. No joke. Bed bugs could abseil from my ear lobe down to my shoulder. This shouldn’t happen until I’m in my sixties or something, right? I don’t want to look like my grandfather just yet. Well, he’s dead, so of course I don’t want to look like him. I meant I don’t want to look like he did during his twilight years. Not at 32, anyway. His ears looked like they had boom mikes coming out of them. And the ears themselves were all waxy and gnarly, making him look like the head Ferengi from Star Trek.
My nose is no different, over-abundance-of-hair-wise. I always notice the hairs in the mirror when I’m driving, and then spend about five minutes yanking what look like wires from my nostrils. So if you’re on the roads in Falkirk, look out for a big tall guy clawing at his face and screaming in horror at his reflection: that’ll be me. So much hair dangles from my nose that it looks like a tarantula is trying to escape from my face. Honestly, it’s like steel wool. I could headbutt a pot and scour it at the same time.
It's the Argos Nose Hair remover I've got, if you're interested.
Which is why my mother gave me an electric nose-and-ear-hair remover for my birthday. No shit. She did. And do you know what the worst thing is? I was grateful. It’s something I need. At 32? Next year it’ll be a Noel Edmonds’ sweater and a brochure for a SAGA holiday. And bring on the socks and pants. I love getting socks and pants now. I wish I’d been more grateful to my grandparents when I was younger, and hadn’t just sneered when I ripped open the wrapping paper to find yet another 5-pack of Asda’s-own boxer shorts. I didn’t realise what a valuable commodity they were back then. Thank you, grandma and grandpa (X2). I sometimes think they were trying to tell me, in some hush-hush yet none-too-subtle grandparent code, that growing old is pants. I think they were on to something.
Anyway, here’s to the next 32. Well… maybe.
‘You did whit, Blakey?’
‘I sold the car, maw.’
A sharp slap echoed across his hollow cheeks.
‘Whit did ye sell the Escort fur, ye wee bugger?’
‘Fur a load ay magic beans, maw.’
Another slap clapped across Blake’s already stinging cheek.
‘I didnae ask whit ye goat fur it, ah said whit did you sell it fur!’
‘Fur money, maw. This guy at the market said he’d gee us loads ay money fur it.’ A sliver of snotters sniffed their way back up Blake’s nostrils and a grazed knuckle rose to sweep away a clove of tears. ‘Yer aye sayin’ yer efter a holiday, ah thought I wid get ye the money for yin, cheer ye up, like.’
Whoosh. Slap. Oyah!
‘Cheer me up? Whit holiday am ah gonnae git wae magic bloody beans, ye wee toley? And noo I’ve no goat a car!’
Blake’s mother slumped her plump frame into a chair and began to sob her woes out over the kitchen table. Blake felt helpless. He sunk a clammy palm onto her shoulder. Sensing his guilt and sadness, she rammed her elbow into his stomach.
‘Bugger aff!’ she wept.
‘But, maw,’ whined Blake, glad that the elbow hadn’t sunk any lower, ‘we kin sell the Magic Beans. Guy at the market says we kin make a killin’, like.’
The sobs clicked off. ‘The only killin’ around here’ll be dun by me, ye wee tyke,’ she spat, ‘An ah could caw ye worse than that, the way am feelin’ the noo, ye wee useless cunt!’
Blake reached into the pocket of his jeans and took out the small, clear plastic pouch containing the beans. He waggled them in front of his mother’s face.
‘Let’s sell them, maw, let’s sell the hings. Ah’ll get the money back, promise ah wull.’
Blake’s mother shot to her feet, grabbed the packet of beans, stormed over to the open window and tossed them down onto the grass below. She pirouetted in a whirlwind of rage to face his downcast head, and laid down upon it a demand for exile.
‘First thing the morra’s mornin’, you’re oot o this hoose, or ah’ll bloody fling you oot the windae!’
***
And so, as the moon revolved into its night-time slot, knocking the sun down below the horizon, the nocturnal denizens of Grangemouth scurried out from the back of supermarkets, from bus shelters, from alley ways and from play-parks, to gather in the flickering lamp-lit streets like zombies from Michael Jackson’s Thriller video.
As if driven by some deep, buried instinct, they found the packet of Magic Beans lying in the grass at the foot of Blakey’s flat. A circle of baseball caps peered down, before a cygnet-ringed hand scooped them up and held them aloft. A cry of feral triumph whooped into the air.
In the morning, the magic beans were missing: presumed gubbed.
Outside the kitchen window, twelve baseball caps saluted skyward from the grass, attached to twelve bleary bodies in varying states of consciousness. A ghetto blaster, powered by a length of extension cable, bang-thud-jerked its techno-menace over the still-sleepy street.
A lone ‘dancer’ – the term applying loosely – shuddered violently to the beat of the bass-line, a carnival of jutting, punching limbs. His pupils shifted from big to small, like some demented camera lens, and sweat lashed his exposed skin.
‘They beans are magic, sir!’ he exclaimed with ecstasy, lost in the dance.
The kitchen window of the Blake household flew open on its hinges and the curler-clad head of Blake’s mum burst out.
‘Ho, John Travolta!’ she yelled to the ‘dancer’, ‘Shut that bloody racket aff, wake up that pile a’ deed ducks on ma gress an’ bugger aff the lot o’ ye!’
The slam of the window acted as a gunshot to the frightened herd of ravers. Twelve sets of heels pelted down the street, ‘John Travolta’ dancing after them as fast as he could. The wail of an encroaching police siren only encouraged him to dance harder.
‘Tha’s magic, sir!’ he exclaimed, ‘Ah didnae ken they’d released that tune yet!’
One of the fleeing mob ran back and dragged him kicking and dancing around the corner to safety.
***
The street was quiet again. Somebody had already stolen the ghetto blaster, but then it had been stolen in the first place.
Blake sat on the pavement outside of his flat, head in hands, rucksack slung over a bony shoulder. With all of the beans gone, Blake had a mammoth mission ahead of him: find a way to make back money for both car and holiday or… he didn’t even want to think about the ‘or else’ part.
The odds seemed insurmountable. Not to Blake, of course, simply because the boy had no idea what ‘insurmountable’ meant. Blake’s ilk juggled with a few balls less in their vocabulary, but perhaps their stripped vernacular was more efficient in its expressiveness.
‘Fuck,’ he sighed. ‘Fuckin’ shite.’
As if sensing his heavy heart, the magical powers above granted some hope to Blake in liquid form. Pouf!
‘Did some cunt just caw us a poof?’ snapped Blake.
The boy noticed quickly that an object had appeared next to him from thin air. He was bright that way.
‘Where’d that come fae?’ whispered Blake, puzzlement ruffling his brow as he eyed the newcomer. He reached to his right and clasped the ancient-looking glass bottle in his hand. Someone, or something, had scrawled ‘Drink Me’ in the film of dust covering the green bottle. Blake obeyed.
The magical brew tasted to Blake like a mixture somewhere between cough syrup and paint stripper. With a bit of piss thrown in for good measure. It did not take many gulps for the hope-shunned youngster to fall under its spell. A few gulps more and he was entranced. Half the bottle, and his eyes became windows to worlds of magic, his stomach slosh-pit to the ebbs and flows of wonder. The tonic – health-giving though it seemed – was not enough to quell the anger that had built in him since the evening before.
Just then, a gaunt old man shuffled out from a neighbouring block of flats and made his sure-but-steady way towards him. A shell suit hung on his rag-and-wrinkle body and a silver-flecked moustache obscured his top lip. Various species of crumb made the hairy monstrosity their home.
It was Jack the Alike. No one liked him, but he always seemed to be everywhere, rather like Gok Wan. ‘Whit’re ye drinkin’, Blakey son?’ he croaked.
‘Dinnae ken,’ hiccuped Blake, ‘Whit’s it tae you, ye auld fanny?’
Instantly bored by ‘Jack the Alkie’ and agitated by his unwelcome presence, Blake distractedly rubbed at his magical bottle. Dust smeared his palm.
‘It’s guid tae share, son,’ smiled old Jack, a mossy tongue licking at chapped lips, ‘gee auld Jack a swally, noo.’
‘Ma maw aye says that ah’m no supposed tae talk tae strange auld men on account that they might turn oot to be dirty peedos like yersel, ken?’
Jack’s top lip trembled beneath its hairy camouflage. His burst-veined cheeks flashed crimson.
‘Ye ungrateful wee bastard! Efter aw I did fur this country… If it wisnae fur the likes ay Auld Jack, well, you’d be a lad in trouble, that’s fur sure! I did time in a POW camp fur wee shites like yersel’!’
Blake took another teasing swig from the bottle.
‘Ken whit, Auld Jack, I wish the bloody Germans had kept ye.’
Pouf! Old Jack seemed to implode to the size of a marble in seconds, leaving a brilliant white flash of light and a veil of smoke in his wake. As Blake recovered from this optical onslaught, blinking and cursing his sight back to 20/20, he saw before him, through a grey, choking cloud, a bearish, blubbery gent, skin the colour of rust, with a large, blue turban writhing and teetering on top of his head. A giant pair of arms was folded against his massive, shining chest.
‘THAT WAS YOUR FIRST WISH,’ he boomed.
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TO BE CONTINUED
PART 2 COMING LATER IN THE WEEK…
I was going through all of the old documents stored on my laptop looking for more content to cannibalise – because my brain isn’t in the zone for creating original content today – and found this. The following is a letter I sent to Loaded in 2005, pleading with them for a job. I know it’s jokey in tone, but it wasn’t a piss-take. I rather naively and pathetically assumed that if I could make the powers-that-be at Loaded laugh then they’d think to themselves, ‘I know this guy’s had no experience of writing whatsoever, but I snorted air out of my left nostril at one of his jokes, so I think we should put him straight onto the staff of our national magazine.’ Needless to say, it didn’t work. Oh, and I genuinely sent them a bag of plant cuttings.
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Jamie Andrew
(address edited out to reduce chances of an horrific murder happening)
Ms Lisa Wallis
Loaded, IPC Media Ltd
London, SE1 9LS
22nd of September 2005
Dear Lisa
Allow me to introduce you to some Glasgow vernacular: Go on, hen, geez a joab.
I have always wanted to write for a living. I penned my first major work whilst still ensconced in my mother’s womb. Perhaps ‘penned’ is a slightly inaccurate description. I actually scrawled my first novel in the placenta with my finger. Sold for a paltry £1 to publishing giant ‘FANTASTIC FOETALS’, it was simply entitled: ‘Gargumphaaagag.’ Certainly it was far ahead of its time.
A handsome young child, I was described by many as ‘a young Brad Pitt’. This was long before I knew what the phrase ‘Cockney rhyming slang’ meant.
Unperturbed by the taunts of others I embraced my calling as a writer. My first journalistic scoop came when I exposed my uncle’s infidelity in the May 1985 edition of ‘The Local Church Gazette.’ Even then I was aware of sinister and powerful forces at work. There was a cover-up of the scandal and in the dead of one night two masked intruders broke into my room and destroyed all of my crayons and wrote ‘Bastard’ across every sheet of paper they could find. Apparently my uncle was at it with the entire congregation, the organist (we always wondered why she played James Brown’s “Sex Machine” of a Sunday service), the cleaners, the caterers and even the minister and his dog.
My new career looked set to end before it had even began; but the call of the truth was too loud for me to ignore.
Since the age of twelve I have published no less than eighty-seven novels, ten-thousand short stories (some of them only a sentence long), brought down communist regimes across the globe armed only with my sharp tongue and acid pen (and acid-proof paper), won the Pulitzer prize (well, I stole it) and dressed as a sexy woman every night for the last ten years (which has nothing to do with writing, but I’m especially proud of it all the same).
So, I repeat: geez a joab.
Especially since I assume that I am the only applicant for this position eagle-eyed enough to have spotted the loopholes in your Guardian advertisement. You state that I need to have two years’ experience. Well, I do. I have two years’ experience of having experienced the passing of two years. And as for the cuttings: in absence of more clarification my assumptions have led me to enclose the best bag of cuttings I could find at this time of the year. I do hope they blossom well for you. Please consider these my gift to you in hope of a permanent position; or even just the kind of hot, steamy sex I enjoyed viewing (so many times) in Monsters’ Ball.
I enclose for your entertainment and delight my five feature ideas.
I love you.
Yours sincerely
Jamie Andrew
Cunt of the Week
My nomination for Cunt of the Week this week is… the entire population of North Carolina. They recently made law in their state constitution that marriage between a man and a woman would be the only legally binding agreement of its kind. This backwards and hateful step was taken by the scum of a redneck society gone mad; thumping out inspiring lines like, ‘It’s in the bible,’ and ‘god made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.’ I mean, congradu-fucking-lations for making something rhyme, you cock-eyed, slack-jawed, sister-fucking idiot. We’ll get back to why it’s not a good idea to base a modern society on a piece of political propaganda written thousands of years ago in a minute. For now, we’ll let them think that the bible should be law, and have a little look at how that might work:
I could do this all day, really I could. Come on, you cherry-pickin’ motherfuckers. If you can turn a blind eye to some of the rules in your holy fucking book, then surely you can let two people who care about each other – and want to sample the suffering fucking hell that is marriage – to at least get the nightmare that they desire. Also, those knuckle-dragging morons messed up the language in their writing of this law and null and voided every civil partnership, including those between men and women.
THIS WEEK’S GUEST WRITER His name is Thomas, but you can call him Tam. He’s normally an easy-going person, but can turn into a Hulk-like, angry, and shouty bastard when he sees idiots about to open their mouths: as he lives in Central Scotland, Tam spends most of his time green. An uber liberal, Tam thinks you’re entitled to your own opinions… unless they’re wrong.
I entered into this email back-and-forth with Greggs’ customer service a few years ago after I visited one of their Falkirk stores and discovered that all of their in-store pictures featured only white people. My original email to them included phrases like ‘I don’t want to think of the Third Reich each time I bite into a Yum Yum’. I wish, with every fibre of my being, that I still had a copy of it somewhere, but I don’t. It was submitted through the Greggs’ website. Never matter. Every other part of the exchange is here, from 2010 onwards.
Enjoy. This is real. Emails written by Greggs are signposted by an appropriate Greggs-related picture. Emails written by me are signposted by a picture of me eating a crab whole.
Greggs
From: GreggsplcCustomerServices@greggs.co.uk
To: jmascot@hotmail.co.uk
Date: Wed, 18 Aug 2010 07:00:09 +0100
Subject: Thank you for getting in touch with Greggs
It’s always great to get feedback from our customers and we do appreciate it. We wanted you to know that we’ve got your mail and will reply within the next 3 working days.
Kind regards
Greggs Customer Care Team
________________________________________________________________________
Please visit our website www.greggs.co.uk ________________________________________________________________________
Me
Hello there.
I recently submitted a query/complaint to your feedback forum through your website. As you can see from the below message you did indeed receive this, and then assured me that your reply would be forthcoming within three working days. I have not yet received said reply.
Although you may have found the phrasing of my initial message a touch facetious, I can assure you that this is only due to the passion I feel for the subject matter.
Affirmative action is an important concept to embrace in any forward-thinking, civilised society, and I find it abhorrent that Greggs does not subscribe to this philosophy. To recap, there are several images on display in the Larbert (Scotland) branch of Greggs, all of which depict white caucasian people enjoying Greggs’ products. Not one of them is from a different ethnic group. How do you imagine this makes people of other ethnic groups feel when they come in to buy a chicken sandwich or similar?
Offering brown bread is not enough of a compromise towards multiculturalism.What would Rosa Parks or Martin Luther King have made of your devil-may-care stand?
Please assure me that you will take steps to be more inclusive in the images you use in your stores, so as to minimise hurt to your paying customers. I expect an immediate response.
Kind regards
J Andrew
Greggs
Subject: Greggs – Call Reference F0770901
From: GreggsplcCustomerServices@greggs.co.uk
To: jmascot@hotmail.co.uk
Date: Tue, 24 Aug 2010 09:12:00 +0100
Dear Mr Andrew,
Thank you for your comments. I would like to reassure you that Greggs is a company that respects and supports diversity in modern day Britain, Our shop imagery is in no way intended to exclude any groups on the grounds of gender or ethnicity nor to cause harm or offence to any of our valued customers.”
We would like to thank you Mr Andrews for your feedback and we have taken your points on board.
—Remember to quote your call reference number F0770901 in any correspondence, as this will assist us in providing you with a quick response.
Yours sincerely
Christine Robertson
Me
Dear Christine
Thank you for taking the time to reply to me. I know some might think I’m making a mountain out of a molehill, but I see these exclusions, subliminal or otherwise, as the thin end of the wedge in a society that is already struggling to accomodate peoples of all different creeds and ethnicities. Your words were comforting, but words aren’t always enough. You may have ‘taken my points on board’, but how does this equate to action? Are you going to update the images in your Larbert store to reflect a more inclusive image of the kinds of people who enjoy pastry products in modern Britain, and if not, why not?
Kind regards
J Andrew
Greggs
Subject: Greggs – Call Reference F0770901
From: GreggsplcCustomerServices@greggs.co.uk
To: jmascot@hotmail.co.uk
Date: Thu, 26 Aug 2010 11:40:51 +0100
Dear Mr Andrew,
Just to assure you we have taken your comments seriously following your initial e-mail, we have taken the following actions:
– we have discussed the concerns you raised with our People Director and Customer & Marketing Director to make sure that future imagery in the shop captures these points on diversity and inclusion.
– In regard to the Larbert shop, the imagery was our previous in-shop design as part of the refit done in 2006 Our latest design shop imagery that is currently being rolled out around the business shows our products and doesn’t in fact show any people. Based on our capital program, the Larbert shop would not be due for a refit for a couple of years yet. Any future imagery that we roll out will take into account visual representation of the diversity of our staff and our customers. We would like to send you examples of our internal communications that demonstrates we do take this issue very seriously if you would be willing to provide a postal address.
Regards
Me
Dear Christine,
Thank you so much for taking the time to address this serious issue. I’m glad that you and your company have afforded this matter the gravity it deserves.
It would be a highly responsible move to replace the images of people with those of your products, so as not to offend any customer or visitor to your stores. However, I am a little dismayed that people living in Larbert who come from different ethnic groups than those represented on the walls of their local Greggs will come to remember the years 2006 – 2013 as the ‘pastry apartheid years’.
I had a long look at your corporate website to see if the theme was repeated on a national scale. I’m heartened to see that the pictures and photographs on your website truly do reflect the diversity of your staff and customers, although I’m not so sure about the video uploads of your TV advertising campaigns. There are only two black people featured, both in the February 2010 ad. Bravo, on the face of it, but I feel this would have sent a more positive message to the country had the black staff members in question not been glimpsed mirage-like in the background, and hidden like a guilty secret behind a squad of merrily dancing caucasian people.
I don’t want to appear too critical since you have taken this matter seriously and provided me with reassurance. This is a very important step, to my mind. I’m still a little dismayed that you are content to promote social exlusion in Larbert for a further, indeterminate number of years.
I would prefer it if you could send me .pdf or .jpg attachments of your internal communications. It may not surprise you too greatly to learn that I am also a keen and ardent environmentalist, and abhor the unnecessary wastage of paper. Besides, I am quite a peripatetic individual and prefer to receive electronic communications owing to how infrequently I’m based at home.
Regards
J Andrew
(the following, concluding emails were sent in the past week)
Me
Dear Christine
(if indeed Christine is still functioning in her old role – if not, please identify yourself so as not to besmirch her memory)
It’s almost 2013. Several years ago you promised to look at the issues raised by my complaint, namely that there were plenty images of white people enjoying sandwiches on the wall of your Greggs in Larbert, but none featuring any other ethnic group. Not an African, an Indian, or even an Eskimo. Just the white man. Highly unacceptable in this day and age. Your solution was to suggest replacing pictures of people with pictures of sandwiches, so as not to offend anyone. Has this now been done, or are your Larbert customers still buying their bakery products from a BNP paradise; as if Nick Griffin had invented a time-machine and used it to catapult Larbert back to 1947?
I do hope you took my points on board and didn’t dismiss them as unimportant. Remember Mandela!
Kind regards
J Andrew
Greggs
Subject: Greggs – Call Reference F0770901
From: GreggsplcCustomerServices@greggs.co.uk
To: jmascot@hotmail.co.uk
Date: Fri, 1 Jun 2012 10:42:39 +0100
Dear Mr Andrew
Nice to hear from you.
I’m still here and still working hard with our customers. The Larbert Shop has not had a re-fit since we last corresponded but we’ve removed some of the old point of sale and replaced it with our new stuff.
Your feedback was sent through to the Marketing Team but I believe we changed our way of thinking and haven’t used this type of material since.
I think the shop is due for a re-fit shortly as we’re trying to update all of our estate.
Thanks again for getting in touch and I hope this has answered your query.
Remember to quote your call reference number F0770901 in any
correspondence, as this will assist us in providing you with a
quick response.
Yours sincerely
Christine Robertson
Customer Care Team Leader
Me
Hello Christine
(You called me Mr Andrew in your previous message, but I feel we’ve graduated beyond such formalities after our long history together, Chris)
Greggs
Subject: Greggs – Call Reference F0770901
From: GreggsplcCustomerServices@greggs.co.uk
To: jmascot@hotmail.co.uk
Date: Thu, 7 Jun 2012 15:21:21 +0100
Dear Mr Andrew
Thanks for your further email to Christine. As she’s not in the office currently, I’ve replied on her behalf.
It would be inappropriate for us to be associated in any way with your dissatisfaction with any other baker. In fact, we are really concerned that by referring to Greggs you will bring our good name into disrepute. Therefore we ask you not to refer to us in the way that you suggest.
Best wishes for the future.
Remember to quote your call reference number F0770901 in any correspondence, as this will assist us in providing you with a quick response.
Yours sincerely
Lynsey Kelly
Customer Care Team
Me
Hello Lynsey Kelly
It’s exciting to be corresponding with a new team member. You seem a lot more prim and formal than Christine. If you were a teacher I could well imagine you administering the belt to my wrist, whereas Christine would probably just smile, throw her hair back over her shoulder and call me a scamp.
This will be my last message, as I do not wish to swallow up any more of your time. Anyway, I’m sorry if I have contravened guidelines on what is deemed acceptable in terms of Greggs’ association with other companies. I was only trying to help out, as I felt I owed it to you after the superb way you handled my concerns. This worries me a little, though, as I have already published a newsletter in which Greggs is mentioned. I decided against the text mentioned in the previous mail, but I took some liberties with the new idea. I didn’t think you would mind, and I was only trying to promote your company. Here is the copy that is printed and ready to be distributed to a few hundred people in my local community:
“I would like to encourage all in the local area to visit your local branch of Greggs in Larbert. There you will find not just bakery products, but an admirable humanitarian stance on brotherhood. As Christine from the Customer Care Team said herself, ‘Unlike Mathiesons, Greggs cares about ethnic minorities. In Second World War terms, Mathiesons are like Norway, maybe at a pinch Vichy France, whereas we at Greggs pride ourselves on our Churchillian spirit. All are welcome to enjoy our products, not just white people. We would strongly urge an immediate boycott of Mathiesons’ products to send a stern message that your community will not tolerate such behaviour.'”
I don’t deal with distribution, that’s handled by a gentleman called Duncan Semple, who’s also the treasurer of our community group. I’ll get on to him straight away and hopefully stop him from handing out any copies. If any have slipped out, I’ll make sure they’re gathered up and burned.
Many apologies and kind regards
Jamie Andrew
———————————————————————————————————————–THE END
Is Teresa a cunt?
Who’s yours?
You can pick anyone – with the exception of me, as my cuntiness is a matter of public record – to be your Cunt of the Week (COtW – or, tell you what, let’s shorten it to COW so we don’t have to be all vile and C-wordy every time we mention the feature): a politician; a celebrity; the guy who keeps blocking your driveway every morning; an historical figure; a cartoon character; hell, your own grandmother if she’s cunty enough!
So it needn’t be topical. Although the feature is called COW, your See You Next Tuesday doesn’t have to be someone we’ve seen in the news that week. It’s just that every week we’ll have a different person, or a rotation of persons, telling us about their particular **** (I’ve not gone all sensitive on you, I’m just bored of writing ‘cunt’).
Be angry, be passionate! Convince us in 300 – 500 words why your man, woman or character deserves to be crowned the CUNT OF THE WEEK and send your mad, depraved rantings to theotherjamie@hotmail.co.uk. Send them by a Friday and I’ll post them on a Monday.
I’ll put the best few (or indeed the only few, or most probably the ones I’ve made up and published under a false name because not a single fucker out there has bothered to submit anything) up every week, and we can all have a good, old-fashioned weekly hate-a-thon. And the great thing is: we’ll never run out of cunts. There’s too many of them!
Happy cunting.
I never doctored these, or came up with the idea, but I just had to share them. Very funny. The theme is ‘Jesus is a Jerk’, and I suspect the images are from Christian materials that have been subverted/raped by cheeky wee scamps the world over.
A true account of snakes and death.
The road where it all happened...
George Orwell once wrote a short, heart-wrenching essay about the death of an elephant. This won’t be like that. And it won’t be as exciting as ‘Snakes on a Plane’. This is ‘One Snake on a Road’, and I don’t think Samuel L Jackson would’ve starred in that movie:
‘Get this motherfucking snake off this motherfucking road.’
‘OK, Samuel, that’s me shifted it.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Anything else I can help you with?’
‘No, that’s fine. It was just the snake I was concerned about.’
‘Cool. You going to be OK now?’
‘Yeah. So long as there aren’t any motherfucking toads in that motherfucking grass.’
I was walking down the side of a rural road in Turkey with my girlfriend when two guys zoomed past us on reasonably shit-looking mopeds. I say zoomed. Imagine the noise of a coin-operated hair-dryer from a cheap motel passing you at the speed of evolution. One of the guys, who was rather fat – a reasonably irrelevant observation, but I just wanted you to be able to picture him; he had a moustache too, if that helps – made a sort of ‘Ahhhh-ooooop’ noise as he realised he’d ran over something. It was the noise of guilt, but a half-assed guilt. After all, he quickly discovered, he’d merely run over a snake. It’s not like it was a mouse or a puppy. ‘Fuck snakes,’ his ooooop seemed to say, ‘I actually found its maiming quite funny.’ If any crippling was to have its own pompy, trumpet-based theme-tune, then this would be the one.
The snake after its moped incident. Not a happy snake.
We walked to the middle of the road to check how much damage had been done to the poor fella. He was a thick, long and black snake, his head, tail and body immobile. I got down on my haunches to look deep into his tiny snake eyes. They were red-rimmed and staring. His little forked tongue, still and silent, was poking out from his open jaws. Blotches of blood and bits of brain stained the concrete. I prodded his body with a stick I found near-by and watched as his length pathetically swished, curled and twitched from side to side; not knowing whether his movements were caused by some posthumous reflex, or indicative of a last-ditch fight for life. Whichever way I looked at it: that snake was fucked.
The ideal method of reptile euthanasia.
I used the stick to push it to the grass at the side of the road. So what to do next? I’d never put a creature out of its misery before. I understood the noble inevitability behind the act of animal euthanasia in cases of extreme injury and illness, but always hoped I’d never have to administer it. Especially since this was no cosy vets’ surgery with a sterile needle and a panpipes’ tape. I was at the side of a Turkish road with a snake and a bunch of rocks.
So I picked one up. It was slightly bigger than the palm of my hand, and felt hot from the sun. It wasn’t terribly heavy, but heavy enough to turn a snake’s head into bloody mashed potato. Was I really going to do this?
‘Maybe it’ll get better and be able to slither away itself,’ worried my girlfriend. ‘Or grow a new head or something.’
Deep down, we both knew that this snake wasn’t going to dust itself off and belly into a hedge to gub a shrew. It had chomped its last rodent, terrified its last sandal-wearer. Still, the thought of pulverising this wounded creature made me feel uneasy, despite the mercy aspect.
‘You’re going to kill a snake?’ my girlfriend asked.
‘I think I’m going to kill a snake,’ I replied.
An old Turkish peasant woman. Not the one I met, in fact this looks nothing like her. She was fatter and less buckled looking.
At that moment an old Muslim woman – head covered, and dressed in peasant apparel – approached us on her way up the road. She didn’t speak any English, but I decided to cross the language barrier by way of mime. I pointed to the snake’s unmoving body, making sure she noted its injury. Then I pointed to the spot on the road from whence I’d flicked it, making sure she saw the blood. I then mimed a man on a motorbike running over a snake. This was the strangest game of charades I’d ever played (sounds like ‘ooooooooop’). I showed her the rock in my hand, and then mimed me bashing in the snake’s head, but made sure to keep a sad expression on my face to let her know that I wasn’t relishing the prospect. After every mini-mime along the way of the long dramatisation of my intended snake-kill she shrugged her shoulders and nodded, a look of nonchalance on her leathery old face. She finally walked off, still nodding and shrugging, leaving me feeling vindicated. After all, this woman was as close to a resident expert on snakes I was likely to find. And, being Muslim, of course she was going to be supportive of a good stoning. The decision was made. I was going to kill that motherfucking snake.
The snake's stomping (or slithering) ground.
Fine in theory, but I’m the kind of guy who doesn’t even like squashing spiders, hideous nether-beasts though they are. I clenched the rock in my hand, felt its hardness dig into the base of my fingers. I imagined what it would feel like to drive this object through living flesh, but couldn’t, having no frame of reference with which to compare. Maybe it was just resting. Maybe it was in shock, collecting its thoughts, watching its little snake life flashing before its blood-darkened eyes, waiting, just waiting, for some spark, some scintilla of strength to carry it swishing and bobbing back to the safety of its home in the long, lulling lengths of grass and swaying reeds; back to the snakestead; back to its little snake babies, and its anxious snake wife, who’d been so worried about her husband’s absence that she hadn’t even prepared his daily dinner of half-regurgitated rat, and was instead hissing a soft, sussurating lullaby to all the little baby snakes as they cried and cried and cried and cried for their SPLATT! THUD!! BIFF!! KERSPLURGE!!
Like 60’s Batman, but with more snake-blood.
I couldn't find a picture of a smashed snake, so I chose this one of a bludgeoned woman instead.
By the time I knew what was happening I’d hammered its head about six times with the rock. Then I placed the rock on top of what was left of its skull and stomped down about another six times. Goo was on the roadside, and blood speckled my fingers. My girlfriend said I looked like a maniac. I just wanted it to be dead – medically and incontrovertibly dead – to deliver it from any further agony. The aim was to euthanise the snake, not subject it to a Guantanamo Bay-style shit-kicking.
Mission accomplished: it was dead. It now looked less like a formerly-living creature, and more like the end of a flex of cord that someone had dipped in tomato sauce. And the act of killing it had felt no more unpleasant than slamming a paperweight into a block of warm butter. Those are the kinds of sentences that serial killers smuggle out of prison when they’re writing their memoirs. ‘It all started with the snake. From there, hitch-hikers were easy…’
A German couple walking down the road saw me do it. I approached them, bloodied-rock in hand, shouting: ‘I’m not a snake murderer!’ and then attempted to explain my actions to them. They didn’t speak very good English, so I’m not sure what impression of British people I left them with.
A little farther along the road my girlfriend and I encountered a stray dog, hobbling and panting in the heat.
‘Poor beast,’ I said. ‘Looks on its last legs.’
She looked at me and smiled, ‘You’re not going to bash its head in with a rock, too, are you?’
‘No,’ I laughed. ‘No, of course not, no. Certainly not…’
‘no…’
‘…at least…’
It was a very poorly dog.
‘…I don’t think so…’
Culture Jamming emerged as a response to the dominance of brand advertising on our streets and in our culture. It’s basically a form of politically-motivated vandalism, through which the often false sentiments and claims promoted by ads and logos can be manipulated to reveal the horrible truths that lurk beneath.
The most popular targets of this sweeping movement are those large, ruthless, multi-million-and-billion pound corporations that permit sweatshops to operate in their name; that put children to work making gaudy trainers and stitching logos on T-shirts for 20 hours a day for a pound a week; that ignore human misery, hardship and death so long as their cash registers sing and their shareholders can buy second homes; that despoil and pollute the environment; that support fatally-corrupt regimes and brutal dictators; that silence, threaten and sue those who attempt to expose their callousness; that lie, cheat, swindle and pillage their way to the top of the FTSE in the name of liberal capitalism and expect us to be grateful for their efforts: and that will attempt to obscure their evils with an innocent shrug, a reassuring smile, a slick slogan or two and a dazzlingly colourful ad campaign.
And sometimes, just sometimes, it’s simply funny vandalism. Here’s a selection of some of my favourites:
I’m going on holiday next week, acutely aware that the odds of dying increase exponentially the farther you venture from your own fart-stained sofa (despite what all of those ads from the 80s told you, which featured old grannies being immolated by their plug sockets and big, fat guys with beards being cooked alive in chip-pan fires).
So this is my plea to fate, in which I don’t believe. Really, this is just a pointless ritual to make me feel better.
1) Air Disasters
None of that, please. I’ve been keeping an eye on recent news reports featuring crashes – thanks to @bigmarkdavies for his research assistance – and found evidence of at least 5 major incidents in the last fortnight. That should be plenty. You’ve had your fill, Fate. OK, the victims mostly have been Asian, but you don’t have diversity targets to hit. It’s all about the numbers, baby. Leave me out of it. By my reckoning, travelling after 5 crashes I should be virtually indestructible. Hence I’m going to remove my seat-belt mid-flight, send people texts from 20,000ft and run from side to side in an attempt to tip the plane.
2) Terrorism
I checked out the Foreign and Commonwealth Office website, and read up on Turkey. The PKK, a Kurdish separatist group, announced in March that they plan to unleash a wave of terrorist atrocities on various parts of Turkey, including resorts popular with foreign tourists. Not a bad plan, chaps, and I’m not questioning the effectiveness of your terrifying campaign, but at least wait until the English school holidays. You’ll only get one shot at this, and you’ll want to ensure a large, broad selection of targets. And nobody would really give a shit if I died, so I’m a poor choice of victim. Plus, do you really want to take the chance that John Smeaton’s on vacation in Turkey? He’d fuck your entire organisation into the ground with one swift banjo. That man makes Bruce Willis look like Willis from Diff’rent Strokes. Thank you.
3) Highly contagious disease
Hello, pathogen. Skip me, please. I don’t really go out that much, so your chances of bringing down the species by infecting me with a highly contagious, incurable disease are slim. Plus, Swine Flu already came to Falkirk, and we kicked its porcine ass. Did you kill a single person, Swine Flu? No. All you did was give publicist Max Clifford work, and allowed a young Falkirk couple to cash in on their ‘We were infected on our Mexican honeymoon’ fame so they could get a new conservatory. You failed. Spanish Flu pissed itself laughing when it heard. And Bird Flu thought to itself, ‘At least I fucked over a few swans, and made some farmers shoot themselves.’ Here’s an idea, Fate: send giraffe flu to Swansea instead.
It took a while for Al Jolson to get it right.
Broadly and historically speaking, the Labour party is the party of the working class. Unfortunately, there’s no longer a working class. All of the coal-miners and their descendants are now working for Scottish Power, working eighteen hours a day in cramped conditions down t’call centre, just waiting for George Orwell to write a book about them.
That’s if they work at all. Now that the steel, maritime, coal and gas industries have gone the way of the Dodo, Labour’s traditional supporters – people with tattoos who enjoy cheese sandwiches, swearing in polite company and beating their wives – are now mostly to be found signing on the dole, or having their bollocks shot off in Afghanistan.
'The next woman who takes me out is gonna light up like a pinball machine, and pay out in silver dollars.'
That’s why Labour was forced to advance and embrace the ideology of New Labour, which merged Thatcherism with a commitment to giving free money to work-shy scumbags who wanted operations for nothing, White Lightning, drugs and fags. Tony Blair was the first face of this brave new way of thinking. He was posh enough to appeal to Tories, but he called people ‘mate’ and had an ugly wife.
If John Smith was still alive, he’d definitely be bitter. Ed Milliband is the next generation of Labour leader. He was created in a laboratory by splicing the DNA of a 12 year old boy with one of those psychic aliens from Star Trek with the gigantic throbbing skulls. His vocal and oratorical capabilities were modelled on Sylvester the Cat after a horrific brain injury.
The Future
There’s been a radical re-think in recent years. Most labour supporters want to go ‘more literal.’ That’s why the existing politicians and councillors will be replaced by women who are actually in the process of child labour. Work has already been commissioned to fit hundreds of stirrups into the parliament building in Westminster.
‘Yes, the entire Labour Party will consist of women, and specifically women who are just about to give birth,’ said some guy who I think said his name was Andy, ‘This will ensure that we remain a fresh political force with a constant stream of new ideas and policies, because once one of our MPs actually gives birth, it’s out the back door and another one gets wheeled in. By a smiling Eric Joyce.’
Cherie Blair lending her support to the new initiative.
The new leader of the opposition, who will be a different person every 3 – 36 hours, will spend her time in parliament screaming abuse at the Prime Minister, and demanding morphine. ‘Do you think David Cameron will be so keen to come out with his usual smart-alec remarks when the grip of just one of these deeply hormonal, pain-ravaged women would be enough to crush the neck bones of a rhinoceros?’
Prime Minister’s Questions will now involve the speaker sitting ashen-white with terror as the hundreds of women surrounding him wail like dying animals; ‘THIS IS YOUR FUCKING FAULT YOU BASTARD DON’T FUCKING TOUCH ME – ESPECIALLY YOU, ED BALLS!’, the only phrase decipherable through the tumultuous din.
I wrote the piece below about four or five years ago. These days, Jeremy Kyle styles himself on a waxwork of a waiter from the Titanic, and has taken his hectoring talk-show to the States, its spiritual home – Jamie
Jeremy Kyle has become what many of his studio guests need: an institution. He is a mainstay of modern British media culture, along with Richard and Judy, Rolf Harris and Howard from the Halifax ads.
His long-running show serves us up a daily dose of poor, stupid and ugly people with which to satisfy our voyeurism, and generally make us feel better about our own pathetic little lives. Jeremy and his production team like to pretend that each edition is a sort-of pseudo trial, designed to expose dishonest behaviour before a furious Jury of the People, an act that will surely take away the need for any real social work, and possibly save the world. It’s all about reclaiming lost dignity, punishing the sinful, mending fences and repairing lives. Is it? Is it really? Then why does it seem that all Jeremy – and, by extension, we the viewers – are interested in is humiliation on a grand scale, with the added bonus of the threat of violence?
The typical guest is from the north of England, or Scotland, possesses little in the way of teeth or intellect, and has usually been – despite resembling a walking tumour – shagging their entire home town. Paternity and lie detector tests are the order of the day. The results of the latter wouldn’t be admissible in a court of law, but anything goes in Jeremy’s daytime Kangaroo Court. That’s why there are so many big, bald men with tattoos on stand-by as security; just in case any of the big, bald men with tattoos featured as guests decide to pop Jeremy’s head off and use it as a football.
The episode I watched featured the usual slideshow of human sputum, tears and tantrums. One of the segments told the beautiful story of an adolescent male who had met and ‘romanced’ a young lady, only to find out after their brief relationship ended that his ex-beau believed herself to be pregnant with his child. He disputed the accuracy of this claim, and thus demanded that she submit to a DNA test. Once his neckless, feckless, and dietarily reckless ex-partner thundered out on to the stage, I too was pretty eager for a DNA test: to prove she was human.
The ex instantly endeared herself to the audience by free-style swearing, and nervously yet aggressively hitting her shoe. I know it’s become something of cliché to describe an inarticulate, chavish girl as being like Vicky Pollard, but this lady really is the closest match I’ve seen; in looks, speech and mental processing abilities. She couldn’t see any connection between her outright refusal to submit to a simple test that would prove she was telling the truth about her pregnancy, and Jeremy Kyle’s mounting disbelief at her story. As guests often do on the Jeremy Kyle Show, she stormed off backstage. He followed her, changing his tone from hectoring, Hellfire Baptist minister to wise, understanding uncle. ‘Never mind them out there, it’s just you and me, now,’ he said to her, or words to that effect, refusing to let the fact that millions of eyes were on them both destroy the sense of intimacy he was cultivating.
‘Why don’t you want to take the test?’ he asked her softly. Her response almost had me rolling on the floor. ‘I’m not going to go down to his level,’ she said, rolling her eyes and continuing to batter her shoe.
Some might say that once you’re sitting on Jeremy’s backstage sofa it’s a little too late to worry about dropping a level or two. This is it, Neckless. This is rock bottom.
Let’s put aside our role as collaborating spectators for a moment (yes, I’m talking to you) and ask ourselves why anyone in their right mind (I think I’ve just answered my own question) would want to appear on Jeremy’s show. I see it as a venal circus, from which few emerge with even a shred of dignity; and that’s true even of the protagonists who initially approach the producers to get their pound of flesh from someone who’s done them wrong. Why don’t the guests see it that way? I can perhaps see why a cuckolded husband would want to see an angry audience screaming at his scrawny, cheating wife; but why would the wife want to subject herself to this treatment, and vice versa where the sexes are reversed?
Who gets a phone call from the Jeremy Kyle Show and thinks, yes, yes, I do want to have a middle-aged man shouting at me in-front of two hundred people, who will also be shouting at me, while the people watching at home hiss ‘scum’ at me.
Well, perhaps you would consider going on the show if you were dirt-poor, trapped in a life you couldn’t escape, ill-educated, desperate and sincerely believed that the Kyle show was an institution primarily concerned with helping people and not with exploiting and humiliating them for advertising revenue. Or if you were getting an all-expenses-paid trip to London, and the chance for your fifteen minutes of fame, however grisly.
Certainly one thing you won’t see on the Jeremy Kyle show is a top-hat-wearing male doctor arguing with his Gucci-clad lawyer of an ex-wife about who’s going to get custody of their Shih Tzu, Phillip. Funny that.
How do the producers sleep at night? I’m sure the Nazi doctors salved their consciences by assuring themselves that their work was for the good of mankind. Maybe that’s what they do.
Our society, and care industry, must be in one Hell of a shape.
Ah, Marmaris is beautiful. Nearby Turunc is beautiful. Everywhere I went was beautiful. On a jeep safari I saw sweeping, dusty fields, lit by the sun like the Benicio del Toro bits in Traffic; lush green forests winding over rugged rock; the snaking mountain roads skirting panoramic views you would be happy to fall towards to your death, spending your last moments snapping like some demented Japanese tourist. Out on the boats there were beautiful bays (to call them sun-kissed would be a cruel underestimation – the bays were sun-fucked); gently swaying palm trees planted in hot, jagged sand; giant, hazy-green hills standing guard over the coast-line in the distance; and water at the beach so pure, clean and clear you’d have thought it was invisible.
Tequila Islam-er
Turkey has a secular government, but culturally it’s predominantly Muslim: although you won’t find much evidence of this in Marmaris. Unless the Qu’ran’s been rewritten to include passages like this: ‘Blessed are they who cut about with their lips hanging out of their bikinis and drinking alcohol until they projectile vomit in each other’s mouths’.
You’ve got to love the woman on TripAdvisor who raged about her experience in Turkey, drawing particular attention to ‘the bloody singing from that mosque at half four EVERY morning!’ Love, I’d be annoyed if I had to put up with that racket outside of my window in Grangemouth, Scotland. Multiculturalism or no multiculturalism, I like my sleep, and if it was disturbed by a recording of some bearded Brian-Blessed-alike booming out holy shite even before the seagulls had started their daily wailing, then those speakers would be getting chucked into the River Forth. (so too, probably, would my dismembered, headless corpse, but at least I’d meet my death after a half-decent night’s sleep) But you’re on holiday in an Islamic country. Thomas Cook can’t make the Muslims renounce their religion and stop praying for a week just so you can have a nice, quiet holiday getting drunk and reading Jackie Collins’ novels by the poolside with your tits out.
Och Noo the Aye
On my first night in Marmaris, a Turkish tout asked me where I came from. ‘Scotland,’ I replied. He then made a particularly eerie noise. ‘I’m sorry?’ I asked. The penny soon dropped: he was trying to say: ‘Gonnae no dae that.’ Excellent. He then implored me to ask him, ‘How no?’, whereupon he ejaculated: ‘Just gonnae no!’ (allow me to make it clear that I’m using ‘ejaculated’ in the sense of ‘issued forth’, rather than suggesting that the poor little man was so excited by the prospect of imitating Ford Kiernan that he shot his bolt).
Another chap could tell me all about Falkirk, as ‘one of his ex, ex, ex, ex, ex, ex, ex, ex, ex girlfriends (his words)’ was from there. As usual, the Marmaris definition of relationship is stretched to its very limits.
In the idyllic, sun-soaked bay of Turunc I encountered a man who could do a more impressively accurate Glasweigen accent than anyone of non-Scottish extraction in the history of the world. I wanted to take him home and place him in a circus somewhere. These people had done their homework. But you know why they’d done their homework, right? Correct. Every one of those cunts was trying to get money out of me. Which leads me to this next section…
The Real Hustle
Yes, Marmaris – and I’m sure all of Turkey itself – is beautiful. And, despite it being a relatively poor and horrendously corrupt country (if this piece was on Wikipedia, this is the point at which it would say: citation needed), the people are generally nice. But they do want your money: all of it. And the ingenuity they display in trying to part you from it is breath-taking.
It begins at the airport where you have to hand over an English tenner to a highly-uninterested and award-winningly grouchy customs officer. This is a down payment on all the rest of the money you’re going to have to spunk away over the course of your holiday.
My coach driver stopped off at a small café bar about an hour out of Dalaman, where I experienced my first taste of Turkish creative accountancy. Gambling correctly on me being a clueless first-timer with no idea of New Turkish Lira’s value, the little boy behind the till (well, nobody seems to use tills – they rack up your bill on a calculator) lovingly sold me two cans of juice, a large packet of crisps, one packet of chewing gum and a bottle of water for the equivalent of 7.50GBP. So much for Turkey proving dirt cheap, as I’d been promised by all who’d been before.
Then there’s the constant touting, more bloodthirsty than anything you’ve ever experienced before. One typically sunny day, my then-girlfriend and I decided to eat at a restaurant by the marina. By the time we’d downed our hideously expensive Cokes, we were being frogmarched to a jewellery store by a wee guy who spoke no English. This was after listening to a long, eloquent speech by the proprietor about how in this small world, this global community, we must all be brothers and help each other out – ostensibly by buying hideously expensive Cokes from him, and then diamond rings and leather from some dodgy cunt mate of his in town. We managed to get free glasses of water from the jewellery store owner before he sussed out we were paupers and swiftly sent us packing. I think the look in my eyes that said ‘How fucking much?’ tipped him off.
Speaking of tips, there are tip boxes everywhere. On the sides of buildings, in the backs of taxis. I wouldn’t be surprised to find them in the backs of Turkish ambulances. ‘That’s 7.50GBP for a fractured wrist, and an agreement to buy a diamond bracelet from my dodgy mate for a broken leg.’ It’s like Turkey’s handed over the responsibility for its economy to Ryanair.
If things get out of hand, Scottish people, you can always phone 'The Polis.'
Although most of the bar workers are genuinely friendly people, you won’t remember – or care about – this after day three. Certainly my tolerance to touting underwent a radical transformation. I went from cheerfully engaging in banter with every touter who chanced his luck, to imagining their sweet, sweet collective deaths at the bottom of the ocean.
People, Turkish jaikeys presumably, even crashed roll-ups from me as I walked down the street. Not that such occurrences are unheard of down Falkirk high street, but still. Which reminds me: if you can find it over there, which I managed to do, don’t buy any tobacco. The packet may say Golden Virginia on it, but you can bet your bottom dollar (it’s all you’ll have left after a week) that the contents have been swept up from a barber’s-shop floor and cut with desiccated camel shite.
The cannibalisation of old material continues. Here’s a few thoughts I jotted down after a trip to Turkey a few years ago. I’m going to Turkey with my girlfriend later this year, a different part, but I enjoyed looking over old notes and reminiscing about all the beauty and sleaze the Turks have to offer holidaymakers in Marmaris – Jamie
Marmaris is a holiday resort in the south west of Turkey. It’s geared towards tourism, but the public transport is accessible enough to allow you to venture forth and enjoy towns, trails and villages off the beaten track. Also, the many excursions on offer by boat, jeep and camel are extremely good value for money, and well worth your time. That being said, it’s time for a bit of horrid honesty, and we’ll leave the wanky travelogue stuff to the late Jill Dando.
Driving Miss Daisy – Off a Cliff
The Turks have some simple, nifty ways to revolutionise the ordinary things we Scots take for granted. For example, Turkish traffic lights don’t bother with all that abstract ‘red, amber, green’ shit. The lights display a timed countdown from red to green. This innovation would be an extremely helpful stress reducer for British drivers, but the Turks seem to use it to measure how many seconds-worth of law they’ve just broken, so they can high-five their mates with the appropriate level of gusto. To say that Turkish drivers are a bunch of maniacs who care nothing for the rules of the road, health and safety, or human life, would be entirely accurate.
Turkish drivers like a bit of anger on the roads. Turkish cars must have four pedals as standard: gas, brake, accelerator and horn. And I’m sure it won’t be long before they fit Bond-style mini-missiles to their front bumpers. It’s little surprise that in 2006, according to data on the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office website, there were over fife-hundred-and-eight-five thousand car accidents in Turkey. This must be a conservative estimate. Perhaps three million of the people sent to survey dangerous driving were killed by dangerous drivers before they had a chance to submit their findings.
Turk in, my son
The sexiest cunt in all of Turkdom
Turkish men walk a fine line between charm and sleaze. The bar folk are undeniably friendly, but in a tourist resort like Marmaris, this could have something to do with their commission-based pay.
Do be prepared to have your girlfriend fawned over in a way that would have you reaching for your knuckle-duster back home. And, yes, it’s true that you’ll see an enormous amount of young Turkish guys ‘courting’ gorgeous young blonde girls (for ‘courting’ read ‘trying every trick in the book in order to make them part of a living, breathing Turkish kebab before the holiday-clock ticks away, so the girl can jet off home thinking they’ve found their prince when in reality he’s already got his todger stuck in another willing waif even before the pilot guns the engine for the flight home’). This is undeniably impressive when you consider that over the summer season most of these Supermen work seven days a week, often twenty hours a day, and still find time to shag a higher quota of girls than most of us will see in a lifetime. I’m impressed, in a kind of amoral way: their wives probably wouldn’t be.
Over summer, a lot of the waiters and bar guys come to Marmaris from the far corners of Turkey to make a bit of money for their families, before totting off home with their genitalia tucked between their legs. Winters are spent as mild-mannered Clark Kents; the kind of guys who love their wives and kids and definitely do NOT shag an army of drunk slags from Essex.
Take THAT, AIDS!!!
A word of caution for the ladies out there: there is a widespread belief among a large section of the male Turkish population that the best way to counteract nasty old AIDS, chlamydia and general knob rot is not to rubber up, but to thoroughly wash your bits afterwards. Yes. We all remember that from Dove’s last advertising campaign: Tom Hanks scrubbing his balls with a bar of soap, and smiling to himself about his new promotion at work. You’re not singing any more, Bruce Springsteen.
But what kind of guys can the ladies expect to meet? I’ve calculated that Turkish workers, especially in the bars, fall in to one of three physical categories: Gay Boyband Turk; Evil Hollywood Movie Turk; and Looks Like a Turkish Version of a Well-Known Celebrity Turk. For example, my very attentive hotel clerk looked like a Turkish David Arquette, and one of the wee waiters at a local restaurant looked like he was plotting to kill Arnold Swarzenegger.
Here, pussy, pussy, pussy
Pussy on a bike
It’s strange to come from a country where cats are pampered and beloved (some rich old British ladies have even been known to leave their vast million pound fortunes to spoiled Persian cats called Tiddles) to one where cats run wild and are even considered by some to be vermin. How cute they are, though. Well, the ones that aren’t horribly diseased and bedraggled, that is. Most of the street cats are considerably smaller than your average domesticated kitty, with tiny little faces and humongous, pointy ears. I always wanted to pat them. I wandered the Turkish streets dispensing a stroke here and a clap there, willing to touch the sick and the hungry, like some kind of Christ of the Cat People. Like a Steve Irwin who deals only with animals tame enough not to skewer him through the heart with a barbed part of their anatomy.
‘Any spare change, pal?’
It is a shame, though. Turkish people don’t appear to be as enlightened as we are when it comes to animals. No real equivalent of our RSPCA seems to exist in Turkey, although animal welfare matters are slowly gaining relevance and importance thanks to the actions of various volunteer and charity organisations. Earlier this year in Marmaris there was outrage over a mass poisoning of street cats by assailants unknown (although the farming community is suspected). Unfortunately, the attempted cull was indiscriminate, and many domestic dogs, cats and other trusty pets bought the farm along with them.
Remember the Turkish men who thought that washing their bits was the best and only defence against AIDS? Well, another widespread belief held by some morons is that ingestion of pet hair can be fatal. This means, ladies, that stroking a cat is the best form of contraception.
In his high-school yearbook, Nick Griffin was voted ‘Most Likely to Make a Career Out of Racism’
At root, all the BNP wants to do is make sure that people ‘get back to their home’, which is why the organisation is so popular with taxi drivers.
Nick Griffin is the party’s current leader. When he’s not indulging in his favourite hobby of racism, Nick likes to enter look-a-like contests, and has recently come first-place in a variety of different competitions: most like Morn from Deep Space 9; most like Greenback from Inspector Gadget after a stroke; and most like David Cameron after an over-eating disorder and a motor-bike accident.
Aryan Family Guy
The BNP attracted a lot of media interest last year when it took over production of the American animated series ‘Family Guy’, and substituted Nick Griffin for Peter Griffin.
‘This is how we’ll reach the kids with our message,’ said Griffin. ‘Speak to them through popular culture; let them see me as the Fuhrer…em, the father. Like the time Hitler put himself into Mickey Mouse cartoons.’ {roll sketch}
A memo Nick Griffin sent to the production team, intercepted by news teams, spelled out the new direction he felt the show should take:
‘I’m not having a Jewish wife. Get rid of her. The baby, too. Nick Griffin doesn’t father fags. And I’m not happy about the daughter, Meg. She’s obviously a lesbian communist. Have my character send them off to camp, if you know what I mean. On the plus side, my son is a big, dumb blonde and the dog is white. I’m digging that. A final word on the neighbourhood. That neighbour of mine, the one in the wheelchair? Make it clear he was wounded in combat, or in the line of duty. If he was born that way it wouldn’t be realistic to have him survive to adulthood. As for my black neighbour and supposed best friend, Cleveland? Either kill the family off, or give them their own spin-off show to get rid of them.’
Controversy
‘Das balustrades are a fucking disgrace.’
The future of the BNP now looks uncertain. A German historian, Herr Grosse Busen, has discovered that Hitler, the party’s hero, wasn’t a racist, genocidal maniac after all.
‘The Fuhrer was actually a decorator hired by the Reichstag to brighten the place up,’ explains Busen. ‘and he was a lovely wee bloke. We know what caused the confusion. Hitler was in the main chambers, surrounded by politicians, and shouted out: “I’m going to fill all the interior spaces with colour, and widen out the mews.” But everyone thought he said: “I’m going to kill all the inferior races and coloureds, and wipe out the Jews,” and they were well up for it. Hitler only started WWII because he was too embarrassed to point out their mistake.’
Breakdown
Floella Benjamin
Nick Griffin’s nervous breakdown may serve as the final nail in the party’s coffin. He appeared on ITV’s Loose Women, and sobbed into the breasts of Floella Benjamin. As Floella stroked Griffin’s head, gently rocking him back and forth and saying, ‘Shhhhh, baby, it’s okay, it’s okay’, Griffin apologised for being a meanie and admitted that ‘he actually quite liked black people and muslims.’
Griffin is set to relaunch the BNP as the ‘Be Nice to Pakistanis’ party.
'I'm busy, right? Got my manicure today.'
Satan’s rather busy in this modern update of The Omen. So busy, in fact, that he can’t manage his Evil Empire™ alone. Just like McDonalds, he’s franchised out his brand, allowing a series of hard-on-their-luck imps to commit atrocities in his name. Satan realises a little too late, however, that the job of asserting his bloodline in the world of man shouldn’t have been farmed out to a complete knob.
Wee-Ballsy-Bud, played with relish by TV’s Ken Barlow, is entrusted with the task of installing Satan’s son on Earth. Unfortunately, his lack of experience and ability leads him to incubate his master’s seed in Yorkshire instead of New York, and even in the wrong host species. Behold: the Omen Pigeon.
Still, it’s not all bad news. The bird quickly proves to be a chip off the old block, thereby saving Wee-Ballsy-Bud from eternal damnation (another fifteen years in Coronation Street). Securing work as a carrier pigeon, Satan’s feathery son spends his days ferrying evil messages to the unsuspecting people of Barnsley. Messages like: ‘I pecked yer dirty maw’s minge like a piece of breed’; ‘Your aunty’s actually yer maw and yer brother’s yer son’; and ‘You’re ugly, hen, I’ve done sexier shites on car windscreens.‘ Every message is written in a Scottish dialect – the international language of evil.
The only people who can stop the Omen Pigeon are hardened Vatican priests David Dastardly and Michael Muttley. They charter a bi-plane from the pope, and fly to Yorkshire hell-bent on destroying the devil’s verminous son.
The trailer for the film, which I’ve been privileged to see, shows a gripping high-speed chase at 15,000 feet. Just as the two holy warriors are closing in on their Satanic prey, the pigeon pulls a one-eighty spin, flies above them upside down, and poos straight into pious pilot David Dastardly’s eyes. As the bi-plane begins its terrifying earthwards descent, we hear the blood-curdling cry: ‘Muttley…. Doooo something!’
IF YOU LIKE THIS, YOU’LL LOVE: The Calamityville Horror. The Chuckle Brothers buy a dilapidated old house which carries legends of blood and horror, and proceed to accidentally demolish it through a series of hilarious mishaps. Also look out for: MC Hammer’s House of Horror, and The X-Factor-Cist. Simon Cowell has to find the best demon before the world ends. ‘I was expecting Linda Blair; you gave me Cherie Blair. This could be the best possession we’ve seen this series.’