The Musings of Mister Williams

GET LENT

2012-02-24T00:55:00.000Z

I'm not a religious person, as I think I may have mentioned before, but this year I am observing a religious ritual.

Don't worry, it's nothing painful, you can uncross your legs.

And it's nothing too binding, so I won't be bequeathing my comics and toys to Tom Cruise's mates.

No, I'm observing Lent.
Yes.
Lent.

Am I being Lent on?

Nah, I'm doing it of my own accord!!

Ha! Suit yerselves...

Over the past month or so I've been under-eating, over-eating, drinking like Ollie Reed on a brewery trip and smoking like an ash tray in Chernobyl... it's no good. No matter how much your heart is broken, it's probably not a great idea to speed up the process of making it stop altogether by downing a bottle of mid-price plonk and inhaling a 10-pack of cancersticks before bed.

So, I've decided to give my lungs and liver a rest for a bit... and also to lay off the tea.

Yes, tea.

Now, stopping drinking tea may not seem much of a wrench to you, but I've been on between eight and fifteen cups of tea a day for the past thirty-odd years, and to be honest it's been the most difficult thing to give up by a fucking country mile.

Those bastard Tetley Tea folks and PG chimps - they lure you in with their cutesy characters and free playing cards/tea-towels/key-rings/cuddly monkeys and before you know it, thirty-odd years later, you're hooked!!

The Gaffer's worse than Bobby Brown.

Now this is going to make weekend's a bit more of a challenge.

Without the distraction of my beautiful tiny ex-girlfriend's beautiful tiny daughter to entertain, or an all day boozy session to take part in, or to frequent one of those coffee bean emporiums whose windows those laptop-prodding gits like to decorate as they pretend to write their great novels, without all that, I'm unsure what to do with myself.

Perhaps ride that bike I bought last year and have barely sat on?

Maybe take all those CDs and books that I never listen to or read, down to the charity shops?

Do some odd jobs around my elderly Nan's house?

I'm sure I'll think of something to pass the time.

But I think it's good to have a period of abstinence and purging, and it make much more sense to do it now rather than as a New Year's resolution. There's a futility to trying to cut out comforting fatty foods and rich drink when you're snowed in.... and as if you can be arsed going to a freezing cold changing room when the radiators on full whack in your living room? Balls to that!

No, it makes more sense to have a go at Lent. The days are brighter, the air is lighter and people are in a far more genial mood. Spring is around the corner and it's a time of rebirth.

Yeah, it seems alright does Lent. In fact, thinking more about the subject (which I am) I think others should do it:

ANDREW LANSLEY - GIVE UP BEING DEAF!

Andrew Lansley should give up ignoring health professionals, doctors, nurses, midwives, denists, vets and anyone else that's ever wore a white coat, and shelve his ill-thought out NHS ~~privatis~~ reforms.

TABLOIDS - GIVE UP PRETENDING TO BE OUTRAGED

The British tabloids could stop running the picture of Adele flipping the bird and pretending to be outraged that she did THAT GESTURE at 10pm (when any child can see the pic on front of their tawdry rags at any time of the day - or read the opinions of Melanie Philips...)

AMERICANS - GIVE UP BEING DICKS!

The US Military could give up suspecting the Koran as a "terrorist handbook" and treat it like any other religious book (ie, a work of fiction).
And they should definitely stop setting fire to them.

THAT'S A MISTER WILLIAMS TOP TIP, US MILITARY:

BURNING BOOKS IS NOT A GOOD IDEA.

SUPERMARKETS - GIVE UP BEING SLAVE-DRIVERS!

Tesco's could use Lent, and some of their billions of pounds of fucking profit, to actually pay some of their staff some wages instead of JSA & bus-tokens?

And Rupert Murdoch.... GIVE UP POLISHING THAT TURD!!

Ah, Rupert Murdoch.

Well, he could use Lent to stop pretending that his new newspaper is anything other than the News Of The World with botox and that his staff are anything other than lying, bullying criminals.

But he won't. So, what I suggest is that everybody gives something up for Lent that they haven't even tried before.

I suggest that we give up on The Sun On Sunday before the first one is off the presses.

Don't reward Rupert Murdoch for bribery and hacking.

Not even out of curiosity. Forget the Novelty Value and remember the atrocious acts that forced them to close the NOTW (a few weeks after they had registered The Sun On Sunday as a domain name).

In fact, don't buy The Sun ANY day.

You're smart, why would you want News that's three days old?
Why would you want Friday's sport & celebrity lies, conjecture & gossip on a Sunday?

If you agree, here's a link to hit News International where it hurts. In the pocket. Help suggest that advertisers think twice before giving their money to a tainted organisation that bribes, bullies and belittles - CLICK HERE.

I'm sorry to go all preachy on you, but I cannot believe the brass neck of News International and News Corporation. They must think we're all stupid. They re-brand their shit-smeared rag, re-hire some of the same staff, and pretend that it's a new product.

It isn't. It stinks.

One of the bravest journalists of recent times, Marie Colvin, has been rightly lauded for trying to report on Syria despite reporting restrictions and an outright broadcasting ban. She worked for The Times, part of of News International, and believed in the power of journalism to such an extent that she paid for that belief with her life.

Yet, in The Sun her story barely makes it ahead of some bollocks about Dawn French having a fucking walk.

FUCK'S SAKE!!!

It's not as if they can't invest in a decent newspaper and credit their audience with some intelligence, they just choose not to.

Ahhh, sorry, I've started ranting... did I tell you I'd quit smoking and drinking?

Hopefully this piousness will wear off after Lent. I mean it's only a few days isn't i....

WHAT???

HOW FUCKING LONG??

Anyone got a light?

If you click on this you can follow me on Twitter
@misterwilliams

or you can join my FB group

THE MUSINGS OF MISTER WILLIAMS

BLEAK ARSE

2012-02-11T19:07:00.004Z

The more eagle-eyed amongst you will have noticed that I haven't posted anything for a few weeks. That is because I have been absolutely miserable.

Not in "teeth-gnashing-rail against society" way but in a very real, raw, numbing kind of way.

Not to put too finer point on it, I suddenly became single again.
Pretty much against my will.

I won't go into too many details about it, but I'll just say that I have coped with the break-up in the time-honoured tradition by sobbing, not eating, not sleeping, sobbing, drinking far too much, smoking far too much, sobbing, comfort-eating anything that looks like it has never been near a basic foodstuff, sobbing, watching TV in the dark and staying in bed until twilight.

And then a little more light-sobbing before bed.

I have not been great company recently, or at least I wouldn't have been great company had I answered any of the lovely calls & texts & emails asking about my well-being. They were all massively appreciated, but each one would come at a random time & set me off again. Hence not replying...

It would appear that because I am now alone I want to be left-alone.
At least for the time-being.

I've tried to be cheery, but the things that once brought me joy now seem to fire deep shards of pain into me as they go about their business of obliviously reminding me of happier times.

Photos, songs, shows, places, pictures, foods, shops, restaurants, anything and everything could trigger me off and so I shut down and resigned from the world and dug out old moody classics that won't remind me of them.

So far, so clichéd.

But this is exactlly why people play The Smiths or Joy Division when they're upset.

You don't want to hear Happy Songs because they remind you of Happy Times, which have now become very Sad Times.

You want music about grief and pain and loss and hurt, because that is how you are feeling.

... it's also one of the reasons that you don't hear "Atmosphere" played at many funfairs. Well, not the Joy Division version.

Maybe the Russ Abbott one...

**************

The music thing reminded me of my Uncle's funeral. He and my Aunt liked to go dancing and they loved the Sting song "Fields Of Gold". At his funeral they played the Eva Cassidy version, because neither of them cared for that version at all.

I thought it was a strange thing to do, to play a terrible version of a song you loved at your loved-one's funeral, but my Aunt explained to me that had she picked the Sting version then whenever she heard it in shops, on the radio, on TV or wherever, it would only remind her of the funeral and not of the times they went dancing.

Now she had another reason not to like or listen to the Eva Cassidy version.

You cannot argue with that logic.

**************

Apart from the binge-eating & drinking I have tried to distract myself with TV.

My God it is terrible.

David Jason wiping out a 50 year career of comic brilliance with 30 minutes of pained mugging and gurning, a seemingly tireless, tiresome stream of How I Met Your Mother, Room 101 succumbing to the panel show format and acting as a grumbly waiting room for the same carousel of faces itching to get on 8 Out Of 10 Cats, Never Mind The Buzzcocks and Would I Lie To You, and The 10 O' Clock Show meandering back on screen like a four-way bickering dinner party where the conversation is about nothing but is frequently interrupted by Jimmy Carr's music-hall interpretation of current affairs.

Top Gear and it's endlessly unfunny boorish & cowardly men in fast cars talking like Murray Walker with a stroke. Loose Women with it's fractured coven of glass-eyed victims pontificating without authority or knowledge, Question Time with it's knackered pantomime of policy wonks, right wing columnists and left-wing comics, and The Jonathon Ross Show which has gone from being a late night guilty pleasure of questionable taste to a toothless hour-long commercial for other ITV shows.

I mean, thirty fucking minutes talking to Paddy McGuinness??
WITH EMMA THOMPSON IN THE WINGS??
THIRTY FUCKING MINUTES??
WITH PADDY McGUINNESS???

I bet his own fucking mother would struggle with talking to that charmless berk for that long!

Emma Thompson would have been completely justified in being introduced, walking out in front of the audience, taking the applause and then kicking Wossy in the plums and walking straight off the fucking set.

Fuck's sake.

And so I turn to current affairs, which isn't news.

These days the News is full of football, or the politics of football, or the homophobia in football, or the racism in football, or the riots and deaths at football matches, or the football managers resigning, or the football managers in court cases, or the sad & sorry inquests into the suicide of former footballers...

Meanwhile Syria burns and is on straight after a report that says it has unexpectedly snowed in February.

A hapless reporter in a North Face jacket (with the logo clumsily gaffa-taped-out) stands by the side of the M1 in a blizzard to tell us wih a deadpan face "not to take risks or make any unnecessary journeys."

Cheers for that.

QUICK JOKE:

Two snowmen are in a field...

One turns to the other and says "Can you smell 24hr TV News crews?"

In desperation I watched a series I hadn't seen before called The Late & Live Guide To Comedy. You may not have seen it because it's one of those shows from BBC Scotland that you find when desperately scrolling through the On Demand section trying to find something that isn't a soap, a fly on the wall hospital series, something about Property or a repeat of Come Dine With Me.

From the blurb on the On-Demand selection it looked quite good, a series about a supposedly legendary comedy gig featuring Bill Bailey, Ross Noble (doesn't everything these days?), Johnny Vegas and many others.

"Good", I thought, "I could do with a laugh."

If you've not seen it, here's what it is.

A bunch of comics watch archive footage of themselves on a monitor, performing comedy at around 2am in a theatre in Scotland and comment on what they are seeing.

Many of them cannot remember even being there as they were so drunk. Some of them get naked, some crowd-surf, some start fights, all of them swear and not one of them are remotely funny.

It is the single most depressing entertainment show I've ever seen.
Depressing, boorish crap.

Each scene is dissected by the comedian (who seem to be watching something else) as they describe their approach to the art of anti-social behaviour as if they are George Martin discussing how he produced The White Album.

When one of the highlights is Jared Christmas proudly talking about how he physically fought an Australian member of the crowd over the origin of the pavlova (accompanied by footage of that fight) you know you're in trouble.

In fact, when one of the highlights is Jared fucking Christmas you should know it's going to be shit.

The Grand Finale was awful. It featured Scott Capurro, a comic I greatly admire, who was trying his best to entertain an unsympathetic and aggressive crowd of drunks. Some noticed a jumper had been thrown on stage.

They started yelling at him to piss on it.

At first he seemed incredulous that this is what people would want, then, knowing he couldn't control the crowd any more, he simply shrugged and pissed on the jumper.

He then left he stage as everyone cheered & Jimmy Carr came on and mopped up.

That's how the show ended.

A man was forced to piss on a jumper by an angry mob.

This wasn't live, this was filmed, archived and resurrected as a highlight of a comedian's career.

The highlight of this club night's history.

Unlike most of the other talking-heads, he wasn't proud of himself. He looked as embarrassed then as he did today. The audience had deserted and bullied him and he reluctantly gave them what they want.

I genuinely felt sorry for Scott Capurro.

And after watching the parade of idiot after idiot that had preceded him for half an hour I suddenly didn't feel all that sorry for myself any more. They say that somewhere there is someone who is worse off than you? I'd just watched a half-hour programme covering fifteen years of people who were worse off than me. No matter how low I go I won't EVER be in the audience of Late n Live, let alone on the stage.

I just simply don't understand how we got to the point where people are entertained by soiled knitwear?

So, enough with the moping (and the mopping!) it's time to redress the balance. It's been nearly three weeks since I posted anything on here, I simply cannot leave you with a wee-soaked woolly garment as a final thought.

Here is A Classic Moment of Pure Joy.

Enjoy.

I won't leave it as long next time...

If you click on this you can follow me on Twitter
@misterwilliams

or you can join my FB group

THE MUSINGS OF MISTER WILLIAMS

WHATBY? (Part Three)

2012-01-26T15:31:00.002Z

NOTE TO NEW READERS:

This is the third instalment in an unexpected trilogy of blog-posts. If you wish, you can read the first and second parts here - or you simply read from here and have done with it. You may wish to better spend your time looking at pictures of cats.

In which case - you are an idiot. Go away. I don't want you looking at my page.

This will be my final word on Whitby and how I came to visit the place in unusual circumstances, as I say, I didn't mean for this to become a trilogy. I'm not George Lucas. Although, that said, I am spreading one small story out over three chapters. But at least I don't pretend to have another three prequels floating around to cash in on the firsts runaway success....

If you look to the column on your left you'll see I have 115 prequels.

Which, if anything, makes me even more evil than George Lucas.

As before, anything highlighted in BLUE links to another page or site.
Anything highlighted in orange is simply for effect.

You may wish to run away now....

I awoke the next day with a very, very dry throat.

At the suggestion of the man who may or may not have been the landlord of the B&B I had left the wall heater on all night and that, combined with the bellyful of Real Ale I had consumed, I was thoroughly dehydrated. Even so, I was happy. At least I had gone to bloody sleep for the first time in ages!

Three cups of tea later and I was ready to have my complimentary Full English breakfast. As I walked down the four flights of stairs I realised that my legs were incredibly stiff, that's because Whitby is built on a series of hills and cliffs. I had walked miles and miles in my first day, along the two harbour walls, around both cliffs, up and down the town with a stupid small suitcase that I resolutely refuse to drag behind me in fear of being mistaken for Paris Hilton.

Which happens a lot more than you would credit it.
(I think it's because we're both aesthetically challenged and got no tits to speak of...)

I walked into the breakfast room and saw at once why my B&B had been described as "music-themed". There were about a dozen classic album covers in frames on the wall and a small portable CD player playing the soundtrack to the film "Dreamgirls".

I also had to move an acoustic guitar out of the way so I could pull my chair out and there was a clarinet on the table.

The very jolly landlady came in and took my breakfast order ("Breakfast. Please.") and I realised I was the ONLY guest in the B&B. There wasn't a single other sound apart from bacon frying... and Jennifer Hudson singing "And I'm Telling You I'm Not Going".

It was as the landlady brought in my breakfast that I had to inform her that I had to leave a day earlier than planned. She looked crestfallen. Looking back I see how heartless this may have seemed, but I just wanted to inform her at the earliest opportunity in case any other insomniac nutballs needed a room on a Saturday night in a small Northern fishing village.

It wasn't that I wasn't enjoying myself, I was, it's just that... well....
THERE ARE NO TRAINS IN OR OUT OF WHITBY ON A SUNDAY.

NONE.

NOT UNTIL SUMMER 2012!

Which meant that tonight would be my last night staying at the B&B, and my only stupid-suitcase-free day.

Happily, the landlady fully understood my predicament and I wasn't charged for the third night, which I suppose as a standing-agreement she would have been within her rights to do. I wolfed down my breakfast and a whole jug of fresh orange, tripped over a bodhran by the doorway, and hobbled the four flights back to my room to get ready for a whole day of Whitbying.

It was a much greyer day than the previous one and so I packed a scarf gloves and spare hat in my manbag (having already lost one woolly hat the night before staggering between ale houses).

Again there was absolutely no-one else around and I was beginning to feel like I was in the Holiday Special edition of 28 Days Later. On a whim I decided to turn left at the bottom of the hill and walk through a park.

This was probably the second best decision I made in my whole visit.

The park was on yet another steep hill and once again there was no-one to share it with. The sun was struggling to peek at the wonderful landscaping and enormous, abandoned children's play area but did manage a tiny burst as I walked around the back of the Pannett Art Gallery, which also housed Whitby Museum. I walked on, but something made me think "I may as well pop in as I'm here..."

So I went in.

This was definitely the best decision I made in my whole visit.

A large unpretentious square building, Whitby Museum is one of the finest buildings I have ever entered. Unlike most modern museums who like to boast about their wide spaces and interactivity, which masks the fact that there are only a handful of interesting artifacts in their museums, the Whitby collection has NO interactivity and has over 80,000 artifacts all housed in one massive cramped room.

And what artifacts!

The World's Largest Complete Ichthyosaur Skeleton! Civil War Muskets! A North American Totem Pole! Ships In Bottles! Ships In Lightbulbs! Ornamental Carved Whale's Teeth! Samurai Armour! A Narwhal Skeleton!

Whaleskin Dolls! The Ripley Cabinet! Case Upon Case Of Stuffed Animals! A Genuine Pirate Treasure Chest! Snake-headed Fossils! The World's First Crow's Nest! Whaling Aparatus!

Coconut-Matting Armour Trousers From Micronesia!!

.....THE HAND OF GLORY!!!

These are all genuine artifacts.

If the makers of Being John Malkovich wanted to make a sequel called Being Vic Reeves they could film the whole thing in this room. It was the most compact, fascinating, terrifying, illuminating room I've ever paid four quid to enter. I was there for two and a half hours and barely scratched the surface.

You should go and have a look.

There was a definite pattern developing among the collection too, many of the items had been donated during the First and Second World Wars when Whitby was under heavy bombardment. Presumably, as people took only what was necessary from their homes they looked around and thought "Do I really need that North American totem pole that great granddad was given by the Navajo? I'll give it to the Museum..."

It's quite clear that the people of Whitby brought back some weird and wonderful stuff on their travels.

What a room!

I wandered into town and as I did so I checked all the drunken tweets I'd done the night before. One from @Sturdygirl0803 suggested I pick up a copy of the local paper as they had a promotion on. Good idea, it would also let me know what the locals do on a Friday night. Apart from offering to bum passers-by (see last post).

I went to the offices of the Whitby Gazette and was given a newspaper, two blue balloons, a Whitby Gazette pen, a block of some sticky fruitcake called Yorkshire Brack and a bag of Whitby scampi.

All for 80p!!

It was a bit overwhelming! I wasn't sure about the scampi as I was about to take the legendary 199 steps to St Mary's Church and didn't really fancy the idea of walking around with a bag of scampi on me for the rest of the day. Also, I wasn't going back until Saturday afternoon.

Was I supposed to leave a bag of scampi in my room? With the radiator on full?

I decided to decline the kind offer and, turning, around, felt the white-hot scowls of Whitby pensioners as they collectively projected - "Who the hell is this? Whitby scampi not good enough, eh? Won't fit in your handbag? You make me ill..."

That's all I need. I'd already been getting funny looks for being the only person walking around town without either a walking stick or a small dog in a tartan waistcoat...

In hindsight I should have accepted and thrown the bag among the pensioners just to watch them fight it out for delicious frozen seafood, instead I slunked out of the office and headed towards St Mary's.

One of Whitby's most famous landmarks, St Mary's church is possibly the least accessible church in Britain but the churchyard has some spectacular views. It is also, as legend has it, the place where Dracula roams in the guise of a black dog. He wasn't there when I went.

As I say, no fucker was.

Behind St Mary's is the impressive Whitby Abbey.

I imagine.

Not that I imagine it is located there, after all, it's a difficult thing to try and hide is a large medieval Abbey.

No, I imagine it is impressive. I couldn't say for sure as the fucking place was shut.

After walking up 199 steps up a cliff and through a supposedly haunted graveyard I found that Whitby cocking Abbey was closed and only open at weekends.

HOW CAN A CHUFFING RUIN BE SHUT??

YOU COULD HAVE AT LEAST PUT A BLOODY SIGN AT THE BOTTOM OF THE CHUFFING HILL!!!

Anyway, I took a few pics through a gap in the fence and went for lunch in the Quayside at a place called The Marine, and had the best seafood lunch I've ever eaten. Thoroughly recommended.

After a bit of shopping, a few more visits to fine ale houses (to get out of the sporadic bouts of light to heavy rainfall) and a few more touristy photo ops, I walked back to the B&B and flopped onto one of my four beds.

My legs throbbed. I had probably walked about ten to fifteen miles up and along the winding streets, finding more Ghost Shop signs and pottering around the various charity shops (the idea being, if the stuff they give to the museum is that awesome what do they donate to the charity shops? Answer - fuck all.. unless you want to pay for thse free CDs that were on the front of the Daily Express a few years back?), I was absolutely worn out at 6pm.

I got up to have a shower, and in the words of Maroon 5 (ft Christina Aguilera) I began to "Move Like Jagger" - that is I pottered around gingerly like a man nearing his seventies who looks like he's had a coconut inserted up him at some point.

Back into town, after a wee nap, I continued to eavesdrop and drink fine ales.... and tweet.

After mentioning the booty I got from the offices of the Whitby Gazette to @Sturdygirl0803 I accidentally got into a conversation with the Editor of the aforementioned organ!

We exchanged jokey messages and I assured him I wasn't there to take the piss out of Whitby. He replied that he knew, as he'd already read my blog!

In the end he offered me a job writing a column....

YES YOU DID, @jonstokoe, I HAVE WITNESSES!!

Now, this is where I have to apologise. I thought, in my drunken state, that tweeting an album of pics would do the whole thing in one go. I didn't realise that anyone following me would get about 40 individual messages with pics of Whitby spamming up their tubes.

Still, as I found out, there are a lot worse things to see.

The next day I decided to pop to nearby Scarborough on the way home.... fucking hell.

Let's just say someone should tell Jeremy Kyle his audience have escaped. It's like a huge open-air Wetherspoons full of rat-faced boys and blighted, crestfallen old people. I decided to leave when I saw a drunk man hold on to his wig with one hand try to chase the loose Rizlas that had escaped from his other hand down the street in the wind.

It was 11.45am.

Sheesh! What a toilet.

I'll say one good thing about Scarborough - it made me really, REALLY appreciate Whitby.

So that's it.

My Whitby adventure over.

Not much happened, I got drunk and mocked the locals, they offered to have gay sex with me or ignored me to look at their favourite trees, I got wet, I was out-manouvered by a swan in the street, had to come back early because the place is shut on Sundays, I infiltrated the highest echelons of their media by tweeting about a sticky fruit cake, I was barred from entering a ruin and I finally saw my first Goth just as I was leaving.

I've had worse weekends.

I hope you enjoyed his nonsense.
Thanks to everyone who kept me sane. x

NORMAL RANTY-SWEARY SERVICE WILL RESUME NEXT TIME....

If you click on this you can follow me - @misterwilliams

or you can join my FB group

THE MUSINGS OF MISTER WILLIAMS

WHATBY? (Part Two)

2012-01-24T14:01:00.000Z

NOTE TO NEW READERS:

If this is your first visit to my Musings then you may wish to start with last week's post first. This one would still make sense, of a sorts, but it's best to see where the madness stems before embarking on this trippy trip.

Also, if anything is highlighted in BLUE then that sends you to a separate link for a little background information. Anything highlighted in YELLOW is simply for emphasis.

Enjoy!

So. I went to Whitby.

Or rather, I stumbled into Whitby. I finished work at 1am and set my alarm for 7am in order to finish packing and be on the 8.53am train. Thankfully my insomnia made it almost completely unnecessary for me to set my alarm and I watched the digits on my phone slowly, oh-so-slowly, count-up from 1.30am to 7am.

A the last minute I decided not to pack my laptop as I thought it would be too distracting of Whitby's charms if I had the Internet at hand, besides, I didn't want to spend all my time in the B&B typing away. Those of you that followed me on Twitter probably wished I'd left the phone at home too, but I'm getting ahead of myself...

After a three and a half hour train journey that stopped off in Middlesborough and then took in ever 1950's themed train station in between, I finally got to Whitby. The first thing I saw was a faded shop sign painted on the wall of an estate agents.

I love these. I collect them. I call them Ghost Shops.

This was a sign.

Well, obviously, it WAS a sign.

But it was also a SIGN.

I was immediately won over. I went for a wander across Whitby Bridge and into the old town, past the offices of the Whitby Gazette and almost immediately found the White Horse & Griffin that had been recommended to me (see last posting). This too was a sign.

Yes, yes, it WAS a sign. A sign that said White Horse & Griffin - look, we're going to get nowhere if you're taking everything I say so bloody literally....

I popped in, sat down, ordered my beer-battered fish & chunky chips with REAL mushy peas, opened my Wodehouse novel, poured myself a cup of tea and soaked in the atmosphere. I could smell and feel the proper wood fire and hear the strains of Strauss playing low in the background.

This couldn't be more British if I was wearing a bowler hat.
(Which I definitely am going to buy one day).

OK, I suppose Vaughan Williams would have been a bit more British but like I said a moment ago, don't take things so literally...

Then Vivaldi came on and made me feel like I was on-hold with the council ready to complain about bin-collections... Dammit, Vivaldi, you're not spoiling this!

After a fantastic lunch (topped off with a wonderful creme brulee) I looked for my reservation confirmation... and realised I had slid that into my laptop case. Which I hadn't brought with me as it was wrapped around my laptop.
Which was on my bed.
In Leeds.

Not Whitby.

And I couldn't remember the name of the B&B. Nor had I written it down. Why would I? I had already printed off the confirmation notice. I also discovered that I couldn't access that email on my phone, for some inexplicable reason.

So here I am, suitcase in hand, stuck on the streets of Whitby.

What would Jason Bourne do?

Rejecting the idea of hacking into the offices of the Whitby Gazette or kidnapping one of the bar staff to drive around Germany in a Mini, I went to an Internet cafe, somehow and inexplicably recovered the email and wandered off to seek my accommodation.

After a quick walk around the Quayside and down by the harbour to look at the ships bobbing on the sea, I picked up a street map and walked off in the general direction of my lodgings, not knowing how far it really was but not willing to let a taxi driver make up his off-season shortfall by driving me all around town before dropping me about 20 yards up the hill.

I saw an old lady approaching and stopped her for more precise directions. When I mentioned the street name she looked at me a bit bewildered and annoyed:

"Sorry? What? I'm sorry?" she then paused and looked away "Sorry, I was looking at my favourite tree..."

She was.
She was staring at a tree.

I left them to it.

Finding the B&B was a bittersweet experience.

On the one hand it was very easy to find.
On the other it was a bit bland.
On the one hand it was well signposted.
On the other, the next door neighbours had a LIFE-SIZE DRACULA IN THEIR GARDEN!!

Aw, man. That looks so much cooler!

I tried to check in for about 15 minutes, but the landlord (I presumed?) was absolutely baffled by the fact that his Guest House had started a new Diary, what with this being January, and as he sat on the step scratching his head I had to tell him to thumb back to the January date and look at the bit that had my name and room number on it.

He laughed and asked if I wanted a job.

He then went through the rules. No smoking in the hotel, breakfast at 8.30am, the TV only gets the five terrestrial channels - "...Well, four, Channel Five is a bit fuzzy... oh, and and you can't get BBC2 if it rains. So three channels..." - no loud noises after 11pm and the red key opens the main door.

I went to my room, which was quite big (I'd booked a double as it was only £5 more) and had two single beds as well as a bunk-bed in the corner next to the aforementioned TV, which was the size of a child's dice.

Despite being advertised as a "music-themed" B&B I could see no evidence of this. It was more "Oxfam-themed". The two floors below housed an odd collection of Forever Friends teddies, some hippy glass-blowings, a couple of pine wardrobes and some "ethnic" art prints.

Inside the room, above the bed was this...

Possibly meant to make me homesick for West Yorkshire?

Or just to get me out of the room?

It certainly worked.

I got out of the room sharpish. I unpacked, put my coat back on and walked straight into a gale. The wind and rain lashed and howled as I walked back to the old town.

Most of it was closed because it's off season. I'd noticed earlier that everyone seemed to be re-painting their signs and replacing old furniture, many of the shops and stalls were closed, some of the pubs had just one customer (an old lady rooting around her copper purse looking for enough for another sherry), there were very few lights on in town.... and I had yet to see a single Goth.

Do they hibernate?
Not in Winter though?
Surely Goths hibernate during Summer?

Anyway, I went to a pub called the Endeavour and sat by the open fire, drying out my coat on a chair and listening to other people's conversations. It's quite an impolite thing to do, to eavesdrop, but when you're on your own it is difficult not to.

Normally I would have some conversation to be part of, but here I just listened to a middle-aged couple discussing the merits of various other Whitby pubs (specifically their attention to stoking a good coal fire) and the four or five young fishermen at the bar, fresh from work.

Well, I say fresh... they had worked with fish all day.

Each round they bought, they put the spare change in the RNLI box on the counter and at first were talking about the different kinds of RNLI boxes they'd seen when they were kids. The wooden ones with a little lifeboat that came down a ramp when you put 2p in it, the sailor that waved... and then I remembered the two boats I'd seen from the harbour earlier that afternoon, their blazing lights on-full on a such a grey day, swaying, rising and dropping feet at a time, tilting at massive 40 degree angles in a ferocious murky sea.

I could only imagine the unrelenting danger of their daily work.

I saw that these young men's whole lives from children to now had been dominated by something that we landlubbers patronisingly come and stick our tootises in once a year. If it's not too nippy. I could see why they gave their spare money to the RNLI.

It's quite likely they may need them one day.

Them, or one of their friends.

Speaking of which, one of them loudly snapped me out of my reverie with this little nugget:

"I do love Knobhead Anthony... but he has got his problems.."

Well, yes - I thought.
His fucking name for a kick-off

Whoops. Time to go.

It's only a matter of time before the fresh sea air, the air of wistful melancholy and industrial strength Real Ale makes my mouth a legitimate target for salty sea fists.

(NB: Salty sea fists are the worst type to be hit by. Not only can they cut you, but they realllly sting afterwards an' all...)

I bundled up my toasty-warm coat, necked my ale, put on my gloves and hat and headed off.

Outside, an angry swan blocked the pavement.

After a tense stand-off between a tipsy idiot and a massive bird that, as we all know, CAN BREAK YOUR ARM WITH IT'S WING, I slowly started to make my back to the B&B.

I walked past another pub, The Black Swan, and overheard the joshing smokers.

"It was a lad's night, if you know what I'm sayin'?"
"Yeah, there was no women. You went and fucked blokes.... Again."

They all laughed.

One of the joshers spotted me on my phone, all lit up like a drunken tourist.

"'Ere mate? You want a bumming?"

It wasn't said in an aggressive way, nor was it furtive or secretive. It was an out-and-out question.
Literally out-and-out.

I politely declined his kind offer.

I'd only been in Whitby ten hours.

And besides, it was only Thursday.

Let's see what docks tomorrow....

(CONCLUDES NEXT TIME...)

If you click on this you can follow me - @misterwilliams

or you can join my FB group

THE MUSINGS OF MISTER WILLIAMS

WHATBY?

2012-01-18T00:25:00.008Z

Every now and again I have a bout of insomnia that lasts about two days, making me a tad grumpy and not a little delirious. I've mentioned before how I start to ask myself odd questions or imagine celebrities who were separated from their "twins".

Well now my stupid bloody brain has gone one better.

About three weeks ago I awoke very suddenly at 3am (having only got to bed about 1.30am) I sat bolt upright and murmured the words - "I haven't been to Whitby in ages."

What?

Whitby?

Whatby??

What the hell??

I looked around the darkened room. What the hell was I talking about? It's true that I haven't been to Whitby since I was a kid, but then again I haven't thought about Whitby in years. Why was I thinking about Whitby all of a sudden? I haven't even heard anyone talking about Whitby, seen any programmes about Whitby, hummed any songs about Whitby. What the hell was going on?

I then stayed awake for at least another three hours thinking about Whitby.

I remembered going camping with my family as a kid, I remembered trying to put the tent up in a force 10 gale, I remember my Dad taking a picture of me and my two brothers laid across the canvas trying to stop it escaping into the sea. I also remember my Mum deciding that two nights in a tent with three excitable little boys on a cliff edge in a hurricane "wasn't a bloody holiday" and us coming back, after we'd had some fish and chips and been up to the Abbey to see if we could spot Dracula in his transmogrified form.

But all that was over thirty years ago. Why the chuff was I thinking about Whitby now?

I haven't got anything against Whitby, if anything it brought back fond memories. I'm sure it is every bit as lovely as I remembered it, and I hear that the locals are very friendly and accommodating towards the Goth community, which can only be a good thing.

I bloody love Goths, me!

Eventually I drifted off and had a lovely Whitby-free sleep.

I thought no more about it until a couple of night's later when around the same time, three a.m., I murmured into my pillow - "I really should look at visiting Whitby."

I opened my eyes.

WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON??

Are the Whitby tourism board using subliminal advertising?
Why am I obsessing about Whitby?
Why am I arguing with myself?

What the hell is my stupid brain playing at??

The next day I mentioned it to a couple of colleagues and my beautiful tiny girlfriend, none of whom had visited, talked or thought of Whitby in ages too. One old chum told me she loved the place, another sent me a link to a virtual tour of Whitby and another recommended a pub called The White Horse & Griffin for me to visit... when I go.

I laughed it off. They were right to take the piss. It was all a bit ridiculous.

That night I could NOT sleep. I lay in the dark, staring at the ceiling. I fluffed up my pillows, straightened the duvet, rolled around trying to get the optimal comfy spot, got up, had a drink of water, got back in bed, thought about Whitby....

NYYYAAAAARRRGGGHHH!!!

NOT THIS AGAIN, BRAIN?

WHAT IS YOUR OBSESSION WITH WHITBY, YOU SLIMY GREY BASTARD?

You should check train times. I bet you can get some cheap rates in a B&B seeing as it's out-of-season.

SHUT UP!!

You've got some leave due from work. Aren't you booked off next week?

I KNOW, BUT IT'S ASHA'S BIRTHDAY. I'M GOING TO GO TO THAT LONDON, HAVE A NIGHT OUT WITH HER.

In that London?

YES. I THOUGHT I'D MAKE A LONG WEEKEND OF IT. MAYBE GO AND SEE THE NEW WEST END PRODUCTION OF THE LADYKILLERS.

What?

IT'S MY FAVOURITE EVER FILM. I LAST SAW IT WITH ASHA ON THE BIG-SCREEN TEN YEARS AGO AND WE GOT TO MEET HERBERT LOM.

You share a birthday with him...

I KNOW! ANYWAY, THIS NEW STAGE VERSION HAS GOT PETER CAPALDI IN IT.

Ooh. I like him.

AND HIM FROM "ARMSTRONG AND MILLER".

The one off the Pimm's adverts?

NO. THE OTHER ONE...

Meh....

GRAHAM LINEHAN HAS ADAPTED IT.

Nice.

NOW FUCK OFF ABOUT WHITBY!!!

I lay in my bed as the sun shone on my curtains and the birds sang. A new day had begun and I'd spent the night thinking of nothing but Whitby.

I stumbled through my working day, having caught about an hour's sleep in the afternoon, and zombied my way back home that night, walking the three miles from work to my home in an attempt to feel as mentally tired as I was physically.

I got home, somehow, and cannot recall a time when I had ever been as tired before in my life.

I went to my room and as the wind outside howled and I could see the silhouette of the trees thrash across my curtains. I slumped into bed and closed my eyes. Sleep. Please.

Hello!

RIGHT!!!
FUCK THIS!!!

I sat up, powered up my laptop, swore at my brain, kicked the quilt about a bit and angrily punched at the keyboard...

The upshot of all of this is that I go to Whitby on Thursday morning.

On my own.
Whitby.
In North Yorkshire.
The North Yorkshire coast.
In the middle of January.
For three days.
Whitby.

Not London.

Whitby.

Fuck's sake.

No. I don't know why either. I can't explain it to my beautiful tiny girlfriend, I don't know anyone there, I haven't been in years and I have no idea what I'll do when I get there.

I just want some fucking sleep.

Ah, who knows, it could be fun?

Watch this space...

If you click on this you can follow me - @misterwilliams

or you can join my FB group

THE MUSINGS OF MISTER WILLIAMS

I'M AFRAID OF AMERICANS

2012-01-12T12:32:00.005Z

I've never been to the United States of America - and now I don't think I ever will.

It's not that I am anti-American, that's a level of commitment I simply cannot be arsed with, it's just that I know I'd be disappointed.

After years and years of American popular culture, from Disney to Scorsese, Elvis to Levis, Kermit to Coke, we've imported the very best from the US and it has made our lives a bit more glamorous.

America has sold the dream of the American Dream all over the world, it is their No1 export. Blue-jeaned, cola-drinking, rock n' roll-lovin', lip-smackin' great-tastin', finger-lickin' Freedom, that's the American Way.

From Honest Abe to Superman there's little not to love in the ideals of Truth, Justice and The American Way.

Which makes a week like this even more depressing than it is.

After years of espousing the merits of democracy and freedom, and countless wars buoyed by the skewed notion of imposing that very democracy and freedom, America will be marking the tenth anniversary of the Guantanamo Bay holding facility - a disgusting affront to anyone who believes in the concept of justice.

Guantanamo Bay was once a paradise - you may remember it from the song "Gunatanamera", a patriotic Cuban love song that has since been defiled by many a boorish football terrace chant - but is now more famous for it's extrajudicial detainment and attraction facility, Camp X-Ray.

Camp X-Ray sounds rather fun on the face of it.

Like an adventure park that junior would-be spies would see advertised in a comic book or a procedure overseen by Kenneth Williams in a Carry On film.

Hoowever, it is actually a shameful and despicable place that defies the Geneva convention, adds legitimacy and fuel to America's ideological enemies, shames their President, their military and their Allies.

Which includes us.
Britain.

Many people are still being held illegally in this facility, nicknamed Gitmo, and many are interred without the prospect of a trial, some have reportedly been tortured, almost all are unrepresented. It is the kind of situation that, if committed by any other regime, would fire up the Americans to mount a military offensive.

However, this is an American regime, one that vowed to close the camp, and it is simply offensive.

UNHAPPY BIRTHDAY, GITMO ...
YOUR PRESENCE SHAMES US ALL.

And speaking of shame, the Republican Party leadership race is underway with a handful of white billionaire candidates seeking the opposition party's nomination to tackle President Obama in the US General election in ten months time.

That's right.
Ten months.
Almost a full fucking year.

You think our elections are nasty and long, man alive! You ain't seen nothin' yet!

As I have said before,I love American humour and I absolutely love watching programmes like The Daily Show & The Colbert Report as their political satire is both whip-smart funny and devastatingly incisive.

They are going to make this Race To The White House unmissable!

Whereas British satirists like to simply Tipp-Ex out John Prescott's name and replace with Eric Pickles' name on their Bumper Book of Fat Jokes, the US satirists really do their homework.

They often know a LOT more about the issues than the would-be elected officials.

They are so good that in South Carolina the comedian and faux-pundit Stephen Colbert has 5% of the public vote - putting him ahead of one of the nominees without him even standing for election!

It's no wonder he's doing so well. Take a look at the remaining candidates.

All men. All white. All religious. All wealthy.

There's very little to choose between them. They offer no real alternative to one another, except in their degree of hatred for one another.

In the lead we have Mitt Romney who appears to be a cast-member from an Am-Dram production of The West Wing who has somehow stumbled into the race for the Presidency because if you screw your eyes up he looks a bit like Martin Sheen - whilst making pronouncements like Charlie Sheen.

His latest is that in light of huge military budget cuts America should spend it's way out of trouble and that he would preside over a military so big that "no-one would ever dare threaten us."

And he's seen as a bit of a Liberal!

Among the others we have the hate-filled egomaniac Newt Gingrich, a man with all the humility of a West Coast rapper who is routinely labelled as an out-of-control power-crazy loon by people who used to work with him. He is standing on a Family Values ticket, something two of his three wives may have some issue with, seeing as they were cheated on by him.

Then there is Rick Santorum, a name that sounds like it belongs to a heavy rock star in a Disney Channel kids show - "Hey man! We got tickets to see Rick Sanatorum! Gnarly!" - but looks like a tiny face being projected on a much larger egg that is doing a Terry Wogan impression. Or, for older readers, Latka from Taxi.

There's Ron Paul, Mr Magoo as played Sir Ian McKellen, who likes to yell strange things at rallies such as "I look forward to the day we can all say We Are Austrians Now!"

Then there is Jon Huntsman, who is likely to have thrown in the towel by the time you read this. He is hampered by the fact that he was the US Ambassador to China under President Obama and so has actually worked with the two most powerful nations on earth.

Fucking elitist!

And then there is Rick Perry. I don't know why, but there is.

I can only assume that The Daily Show's Jon Stewart is correct when he said that most people who vote for Perry think they are voting for George W. Bush as played by Josh Brolin

They seem to disagree with one another on virtually every subject, although most of the candidate DO agree on three - terrorists are bad, everybody must gang up on Mitt Romney... oh, and gays are an abomination.

I have never seen so many democratically elected officials denounce homosexuality with such passion as in these televised debates and press conferences. It is thoroughly shameful and disgusting the language being used and the accusations being made.

From Gingrich telling gay voters to "Vote Obama" rather than taint his campaign to Santorum drawing parallels with bestiality and paedophilia, it is portraying America at its most bigoted and bullying worst.

(NB: Santorum's long-held opinions have so outraged people that his surname has now been appropriated as slang for a rather messy by-product of gay sex. Look away now if you don't want the definiton...)

I'm not going to waste time qualifying my own position by saying "some of my best friends are gay" because quite frankly if, in the 21st Century, in a multi-cultural society, in a western democracy, you do not have SOME gay friends then you ought to be ashamed of yourself and quite frankly I do not want to fucking know you.

How can you possibly seek to represent the Nation when you want to shun a section of society?

As another famous former-Republican elected official recently said:

In other words, you are a fucking disgrace to yourself, your country and whatever political party you claim to represent.

You certainly don't deserve to be a politician and your blind hatred towards people who love one another due to your deference to what you interpret your God to mean borders on a mental instability that should preclude you from being electable.

You also sound an awful lot like the religous extremists you pretend to be ideological opposed to...

I don't know who will win the Republican Nomination to stand against Obama, but it troubles me that their horrible views could easily be misinterpreted as those of the majority of a country that I was brought up to love and admire.

America has so many things to love about itself, I don't understand why it is showcasing it's hatred.

There's a desire to replicate the homsepun wisdom and down-to-earth, man-of-the-people vibe as so perfectly encapsulated by multi-millionaire former Hollywood star Ronald Reagan. Many of the candidates reference him as an idol and an inspiration and adopt a similar folksy patter.

Well, I'm not sure about you but I don't want a fucking yokel in the White House.

What's wrong with having an articulate Commander In Chief?

Since when did the most Powerful Man On Earth have to be a fucking redneck??

I doubt Reagan would be quite as complimentary about what these pretenders are doing to his legacy - in fact, I wouldn't be at all surprised if he didn't try and warn the rest of us about the fucking nutjobs who have inherited his mantle...

"Mr Gorbachev, I say to you, BUILD UP THAT WALL!!"

Ah, well.
They say a week is a long time in politics.

We've still ten more months of this anal-anche of bat-shittery to come...So buckle up, it's gonna be a bumpy ride.

I give it another four months until large swathes of the American public march on Guantanamo - and demand to be taken in!

If you click on this you can follow me - @misterwilliams

or you can join my FB group

THE MUSINGS OF MISTER WILLIAMS

SATURDAY NIGHT'S ALRIGHT FOR WHINING...

2012-01-09T16:03:00.002Z

I went out on Saturday night in my hometown of Wakefield which, if you've ever been to Wakefield on a Saturday night, is not the wisest of moves. Wakefield has one main road through it's city centre that is rammed with pubs and bars.

Anywhere and everywhere is a bar.

My first bank is a bar, the offices where my Dad used to work is a bar, the bank I transferred my account to is a bar, the bar I used to work in is now three bars...

It's not just the banks and Victorian insurance offices that are bars, that's the same anywhere in the country, but in Wakefield even the tiny tobacconists and the greasy spoon have been turned into bars.

And they are directly opposite one another.

You cannot walk more than 10 yards down Westgate Road without seeing a weeping divorcee or a shirtless buffoon after 9pm, as this video by Wakefield singer Matt Abbott documented so well.

Evidently he sees more poetry and beauty in the place than I do, but then again he is a poet....

I just see dead drunk people...

Anyway, I went to meet my old mate Thom (you remember, There's One In Every Town) as he'd blown me out for New Year's Eve drinks last week to sit in with his girlfriend and watch Conversations With A Serial Killer.

And who am I to stand in the way of love's young dream?

Happily, this rescheduled weekend coincided with another friend, Helen, having her birthday drinks in the same bar.

While chatting to Helen's new boyfriend we got on the subject of clothes - yeah, men talk about clothes too, y'know. We're not all sport-obsessed, Nuts-reading Top Gear-enthusiasts, some of us like to dress a bit sharp.

It's not always appreciated though.

I remember about ten years ago going for a job interview. As I walked through town at 8am in my very modish thin black suit, two homeless men sharing a plastic bottle of refreshment yelled out "Oooh! Suits you, sir!"

Heckled!
On my sartorial stylings.
By the fucking homeless.

And just where the fuck had they been catching up on episodes of the fucking Fast Show??

Another time, I was visiting my Gran and as I stepped off the bus in my pin-striped waistcoat, bootcut black jeans, crisp white shirt and skinny tie, a small boy went past on his toy scooter.

As he eagerly propelled himself forward, eyes fixed on the pavement, he zipped by and, without looking up, yelled - "YOU LOOK LIKE A TWAT!"

Thank you, young urchin.
Little shit.

And the very last time I was in Wakefield, just before Christmas, I was stood with my mate Bryn as a drunk came out of the bar and looked us up and down - me in my Crombie & skinny tie combo, Bryn in his light grey suit. Finally, Stumble McPissed-Up said:

"Gotta say, you boys look sharp. Very Mod. Very ska.
Y'do right...

Fuck fashion - that's what I say!"

Um.. Thank you?
What?

It's true though, I have turned my back on fashion. Not that I was fully facing in the right direction before, but I've gone back to simple styles. Adidas superstar trainers, 501s, parkas, thin ties, polo shirts, two-buttoned suits, tank-tops, Harrington jackets, Doc Martens - practically all the stuff I was wearing as a schoolboy 30 years ago!

Which is a vast improvement on the stuff I wore at college just 20 years ago.

Spot The Difference

Sweet Jesus.
The 90's were like a collective fashion amnesty.

I blame grunge.

Anyway, back to this weekend, and while we were chatting the subject of the disappointing New Year's Sales came up. Now, I went into Next on Boxing Day, not from 6am like some idiots, but at a reasonable time in the afternoon. Despite the rails and floor looking like a passing tsunami had popped in to check out the chinos.

As I wandered around, half-heartedly picking through the same identical tops in brown/blue/black/grey it occurred to me that men's fashion has lost it's way.

Everyone dresses the same. It's all lumberjack shirts and Superdry t-shirts. Trousers are either non-descript or have legs shaped like a horse-shoe, tapering to two inches at the bottom and billowing like a circus performer's at the top.

The only person who could wear trousers like these would be MC Hammer, and only then if he was being used as the frame for the World Champion Gurner to poke his contorted face through.

The other fellas in the bar agreed with me.

Whatever happened to looking sharp?

Who thinks a baseball cap is acceptable in a country that has no baseball teams?

Why is it that no-one in JJB Sports looks like they can run five yards without suffering a massive heart-attack?

Why is the fucking Snood back in shops?

Then Alistair said something that upped the conversation a notch:

"Helen won't let me get a cravat."

There was a slight pause, and then one by one we revealed that OUR girlfriends have stopped us from buying equally resplendent garments, not explicitly but implicitly.

Like PG Wodehouse's Jeeves considering his master's plus-fours or straw-boater, it would appear that our girlfriends have learnt some secret trick to make us feel ashamed of wanting to buy cravats (Alistair), cuff-links (me and Alistair), Edwardian frock-coats (me), bowler hats (me again), stetsons (Thom) and sword sticks (absolutely fucking everyone).

Twenty first century British men have lost the art of dressing well. There are one or two who still look good in a suit, but more often than not a man in a suit looks dowdy and downhearted. It's a uniform of conformity, a badge of blandness, it's signals "I am an office drone and they make me wear this.."

The elegance and style of icons such as Cary Grant are a distant memory as young men emulate the shambolic hipster-look that makes them all dress like their father's did in the late 70's.

Only now they are supposedly ironic.

Well, sod it.

I don't want to look like a homeless fucking lumberjack or one of those bands that Uncut magazine thinks are going to be the next big thing but never are.

(btw, there appears to be something wrong with this months Uncut magazine's CD. I've checked but there doesn't seen to be any Wilco on it. Are they ill?)

I'm not going back to dressing like we did in the Nineties.
I've learnt my lesson. It's time to straighten up and look sharp....

I'm getting a bowler hat.

Although, fuck knows when I'm ever going to wear it.

One things for certain - it won't be down Westgate on a Saturday night.

If you click on this you can follow me - @misterwilliams

or you can join my FB group for other nonsense

THE MUSINGS OF MISTER WILLIAMS

"YES! I AM EATING MY APPLE!"

2012-01-07T08:04:00.013Z

My little brother joined Twitter this week and, as you would expect, "followed" me.

What a week to pick!

His first query, not unexpectedly, was to ask what the chuffing point of it all was.

That is the nature of Twitter. It's a confusing and bewildering world, no-one gives you a handbook, no-one acts as your guide. You have to, in the words of Olivia Newton John, feeeeeel your way.

I remember my first Tweet.

It was, not irrationally, to bark out into the cyber-wildness "Is this fucking thing on?".

After a while I just kept barking until someone responded. I'm pretty sure my fourth tweet was "Twitter is witless shite", something I'm still not entirely convinced was incorrect.

And yet I still tweet.

I don't know why, it just seems like a bit of fun. Every now and then I get some responses, like a lunatic hears an echo, and I respond accordingly. I then started to "follow" people that I may have heard of, ones who are a bit less mental than myself, and ones that let me see their tweets.

In the end I just started tweeting jokes and observations.

RELENTLESSLY.

I'm not alone.

I started to follow famous people that I like.

Stephen Fry, for instance.

He's clever. I'll talk to him.

He won't mind, I thought - along with half a billion other people - I'll talk to him. Cut out the middle-man. He'll be my BEST mate.

But, obviously, it's not like that. You find your way. You find people you like (celebs, news sites, friends, etc) and keep typing until someone responds.

Social Networking, I'm finding, like so many before and after me, isn't a hotline to the great and good. It's just another nascent communication avenue that is stumbling blindly into the darkness.

Twitter is 21st Century CB Radio for people who can type.

You turn your machine on, blurt some nonsense about what you like & dislike, feel your way around the terminology, wait for a response, and hope that you are not alone. That someone will take pity on you and respond.

With CB Radio it was all massively stupidly exciting for a boy of twelve. You had the power to broadcast whatver you liked to complete strangers (mainly cabbies and truckers). How very exciting!

Exciting, but still, quite stupid.

My cousin's cousin used it all the time. He was a housebound invalid and spoke mainly to truckers, cabbies, the police and various other enthusiasts, bringing a world of nonsensical terminology into his world.

He let us play with this unfathomable technology that was available to anyone - anyone with the space to mount 18ft aerial mast and the ability to generate ridiculous pseudonyms.

We wouldn't have names we would have "handles" and would mostly report on "jam sandwiches" passing by.

"Breaker, breaker. Blade Runner got eyes on a jam sandwich advertising in your area.... Disco lights a go go. Do you copy...?"

Utter fucking nonsense.

We were in a bungalow.

(And yes, my "handle" was Blade Runner. I was twelve..)

But it was social. One would argue it was more social than Twitter. After all, Burt Reynolds has yet to star in a film where the hero is sat in his pants eating crisps at 3am convincing Jerry Reed to evade a humorous redneck sheriff who has just spammed him.

However, I'm no longer twelve.

But I'm still an idiot.

And one who cannot come up with a more imaginative pseudonym than "Mister Williams"...

When my brother told me he was on Twitter I did the the exact same thing I did thirty-odd years ago when he joined my infants school. He was lost, alone, looking for guidance...

I did what any big brother would do....

I told everyone else he was new, pointed them in his general direction, hoped they'd pester him and leave me alone, fucked off and left him to deal with it.

What??

He's got to learn.

Shut up.
Anyway, most of his scars have healed now...

He's fine.

The thing is, most of us on Twitter don't have a fucking clue how it's supposed to work anyway. We're all finding our way.

From Diane Abbott to Ed Milliband, we're realising that it isn't the great leveller that brings communication to all. Just the great leveller that brings our faults to a wider audience.

In Douglas Adams' masterpiece "The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy" one character, Zaphod Beeblebrox, is faced with a room that has him confront the entirety of the universe. It is a punishment. To see that the whole expanse of creation sets it's gaze upon an individual & shows them how microscopically insignificant they truly are in the greater scheme of things.

In the book, however, Zaphod turns out to be the MOST important thing in the universe and comes out unscathed.

Twitter is very much like that room, albeit one populated with racists, Justin Bieber fans, premiership footballers and people who want to bring back hanging for grammatical errors.

If you are in the public eye and you say something ridiculous you can find that every hot iris in the land is boring into you.

Diane Abbott found that out this week as she made an unfortunate comment about "white people" dividing and conquering black people.

She has since been vilified for her stupid tweet, and in some papers she has been unfairly compared to the the quiet dignity of Doreen Lawrence. Thus, proving her point somewhat...

She was also taken to task by Ed Milliband about her comments on twitter and given a telling off .

Which I can only assume is a bit like the wet cobwebby-bit brushing off your face in a ghost train.

Odd, clammy, but not all that scary.

In any case, it's not the worst thing she's done.

I think that pretending to be Michael Portillo's friend is worse.

Every week.
Pretending to like Portillo.
For money.
And the enjoyment of Andrew Neil.

That is far more disgraceful.

Anyway, thanks to Twitter, and a spectacularly misplaced vowel during a week of heightened sensitivity about race relations, the leader of the Opposition Ed Milliband is blinking into a screaming world telling him just how insignificant HE is.

"BLACKBUSTERS?"

And lo, the glare of the Universe (or at least the Sun) burns into the absolute cock...

Just because Bob Holness was born in South Africa doesn't make him a "Blackbuster", Ed.... that's well racist.

Well, if you will pander to Twitter to harangue a colleague over a mistake on Twitter it seems only fair that you should be judged by the same mistake.

That said, Twitter is as Twitter does.

It's a fun distraction that can bring brightness to your day as people "tweet" odd comments, observations, funny pictures or bring about the end of totalitarian rule in despotic middle-eastern regimes.

It also provides lazy, lazy vengeful News International journalists who you have reluctantly sided against over phone-hacking with a front page that tries to hide the fact that most of their staff are still on their Christmas jollies and they are cutting and pasting tweets and passing it off as News.

You get out of it what you want to put into it.

You follow who you like. have your views reinforced, have your opinions questioned, or see people make very human mistakes and all within 140 characters or less.

I like twitter.

I like tweeting.

Don't blame the system if the system shows you up for being a twat.

As the man you are supposed to be fighting against (instead of your dopey thumb-happy colleagues) once said:

"The trouble with Twitter, the instantness of it - too many twits make a twat..."

Ouch.

Hey, Ed, remember when he was the only one saying stupid shit?

If you click on this you can follow me - @misterwilliams

or you can join my FB group for other nonsense

THE MUSINGS OF MISTER WILLIAMS

or better still, you can follow my little brother on @deanprophoto !!

2012: WHAT DO Y'THINK OF IT SO FAR?

2012-01-03T00:20:00.010Z

Hello!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

How's your head?

Recovered yet?

Broken your Resolutions already?

Of course you have.

Everyone I know who made a resolution to stop drinking and smoking in 2012 woke up with such a hangover and raw throat that the 'Hair Of The Dog' cure seem to be the only viable option.

I'm sure they weren't alone. Anyone observing Twitter on Sunday will have seen a curious mix of sub-Hallmark platitudes and hippyish faux-philosophy punctuated with the groans, howls and mumblings of the severely hungover.

It was like a text-based mash-up of the dreamy-bits of Woodstock with the opening sequence of Saving Private Ryan.

Anyway, everyone knows that January 1st doesn't count.

It's a non-day. A day to finish off the tubes of crisps n pots of dips, the vol au vents, the gala pies and quiches... even those toffee pennies in the bottom of the Quality Street tubs start to look like they'd make a perfectly acceptable breakfast alternative on January 1st.

It's a day for sitting about in your PJ's doing something less challenging than walking upright and talking coherently. I went to an old friend's house-party which went on until 4am and so spent the whole of the following afternoon watching a Channel on TV, one that I didn't even know I had, called "Watch".

It seemed such an insistent demand I could hardly muster the strength to argue with it, and besides they were showing the final episodes of David Tennant's tenure as the tenth Doctor.

Which finished ten minutes before the new episodes of Sherlock on BBC1.

Giving me just enough time to make myself a cheeseburger and a cup of brew.

Lovely! I think I will "Watch". Thank you.

Resolutions always start on January 2nd.

As I say, January 1st is a non-day... unless you are a Samoan, in which case it is 30th December that is a non-day, in so much as they decided to forego the 30th of December this year and skipped from the 29th straight to the 31st of December.

But why would they do this?

Do Samoans love that smell of fireworks, vomit, urine, sweat, Smirnoff Ice and cheap perfume that accompanies New Year's Eve?

Could they just not wait for the prospect of paying twice as much for a cab home after being fleeced three-times the normal door charge to go into a nightclub?

Is that why you never see a Samoan band on Jools Holland's Hootenanny?

No, it's not that.

The Samoans have just decided to ally themselves with Australia, New Zealand and Asia, rather than the United States (who control a series of smaller Samoan Islands 100 miles to the east) as they are more compatible trade partners.

The world is in such a delicate financial state that an entire South Pacific island would rather forego AN ENTIRE DAY than be aligned with the floundering US Economy...

BOOM!!

IN YO' FACE UNITED STATES!!

YOU HAD ENOUGH - OR DO YOU WANT SAMOA??

Nah, it's to do with the days.

They sacrifice one day last year and get to trade with countries who aren't kipping through a Samoan day. That's all it is. Every time a Samoan tries to sell something to the States they have to wake the lazy chuffs up.

Although, having said that, I do like the idea of using that as a threat.

You see, for the past decade and a half we have excused the behaviour of Captains Of Industry, financiers, bankers and various other FUCKING ARSEHOLES who, we are told, will withdraw their labour or move to other lucrative positions with rivals unless we pay them top dollar.

They must have their incentives and bonuses and ridiculous pay-packets otherwise they will up and go.

In which case we should be more like Samoa. We should just shrug, say:
"Ok. Fuck you, we'll cancel Friday altogether and see who's awake in Wellington...
Off ya fucking pop!!"

I mean, can you see any of the City twonks arguing with this fella if he permanently wanted Friday off?

It's a better response than anything that anyone in Europe has thus far come up with.

In the face of severe financial warnings from Chancellor Merkel and President Sarkozy, some wags came up with the lamest satire ever...

Apparently it is a legendary British sketch, albeit one that not even Paul Merton can remember, but one which is played out every New Year in Germany.

This is their equivalent of "Four Candles".

I mean, I know that sometimes humour doesn't always translate successfully - but fuck me... that's terrible.

And you wouldn't want to spend your New Year's Eve in Italy - not only can't those idiots be trusted with Democracy (see Berlusconi and his 24% approval rating) but look at this list of fuckwitted behaviour over NYE.

Mind you, Britain's not much better.... according to the misery-pit that is The Daily Mail, our emergency services were stretched to breaking point again this year as drunks, wife-beaters, victims of crime and general arseholes tied-up the switchboards with their fuckwitted behaviour.

And speaking of fuckwitted behaviour.... our esteemed Prime Minister-by-proxy tells us that 2012 is the year that Britain "Goes For It".

"Hi! Call me Dave!"

However, he hasn't specified what "it" is.

Or where we can find "it".

Nor how much "it" costs.

Nor, whether anyone still stocks "it".

Or if there is any of "it" left.. especially, after last year's looting.

Or this weekend's drinking.... I mean look at this lot, they've definitely lost "it".

In fact, as usual, he's told us absolutely fucking nothing and is expecting us to just get on and fix Britain for him.

Elsewhere in the world, 2012 got off to a rocky start:

President Obama snuck through a despicable piece of legislation enabling the military to indefinitely detain US citizens without the burden of proof or prospect of a fair trial - a move that Dick Cheney didn't even attempt.

North Koreans have been told by their military that they "should defend King Jong-Un to the death" and be prepared to be used as human-shields to protect that miserable chubby little nutjob - no wonder they're always weeping. The fat fuck is going to need to wear a village round his belt.

Having failed to buy Facebook, and been forced to sell his control of MySpace back at a loss of $545million, Rupert Murdoch has joined Twitter prompting many rumours that he intends to buy it. If you are interested in tweeting him you can contact him on @rupertmurdoch - or simply do it the old-fashioned way and leave yourself a voicemail. (At the time of writing this Mr Murdoch's account has not been hacked. Yet.)

and finally

Iran has picked this period of Peace & Goodwill to ALL men to try out their brand new nuclear rocket

Fucking hell!

I think 2012 may have peaked too early. It's all downhill from Day Two as far as I can see.

Apart from my Doctor Who marathon and Sherlock, it's shaping up to be one massive bag of shit. A massive bag of shit with an incredibly expensive Sports Day slam in the fucking middle of it.

And then to top it off we then have to host a massive fucking birthday party for the Queen!

I'm kind of hoping the Mayans are right about this forthcoming year, but if not I think I may have my New Year's Resolution....

I'm moving to Samoa.

Does anyone know if they get Sherlock over there?

If you click on this you can join my FB group

THE MUSINGS OF MISTER WILLIAMS

or you can follow me on Twitter here -

@misterwilliams

HAPPY LIMBO-MAS!

2011-12-27T22:04:00.016Z

The tinsel's faded.
The pine-needles are a pain in the socks.
Silvery wrapping paper is being a recycling nightmare.
There's the unmistakable smell of used-sprouts and Febreze in the air....

ITS LIMBO-MAS!!

That bit in the end of your old Diary that you can't even be arsed to write in.

And the first few pages of the new Diary that you can't even be arsed to write in.

The week when no-one can work out what day has gone before.

"Is it Boxing Day?
Is that a Wednesday?
It feels like a Wednesday..."

Nobody knows what to do during Limbo-Mas.
It's like an episode of The Walking Dead.

"Are the pubs open?"
"Why is the supermarket shutting at 6pm?"
"Why is Next open at 6am?"
"Will the News at Ten be on at 4.30pm or five to eleven?"
"Are the buses running?"

It's a period when TV becomes a wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey strand of overstretched elastic, where Dickensian drama school orphans jostle for attention with Angela Ripon's legs and godawful foghorn singing voice.

Stuff that we would love to see all year round is smashed together like a televisual coleslaw.

Morecambe & Wise, Tommy Cooper, Les Dawson, Victoria Wood, Blackadder, The Two Ronnies and even that Botttom episode where Richie has to cook a meal for Spudgun & Dave Hedgehog, are ALL crammed into ONE week, reminding us that there's nothing new being made at the moment because everyone involved in making telly programmes clocked-off sometime in November.

The same stuff is on EVERY year, and we don't mind.
We lazily lap it up. The repetition is comforting and we're in no mood to use our brains for anything other than shovelling peanuts into our gobs.

It must be like being programme controller of BBC3.

Or the scheduler for Dave.

Apart from the repeats are relics from the past that are dusted off and given one last trot around the televisual paddock before hopefully, and mercifully, having a bolt shot through their pained unfunny faces.

Putting on the TV in Limbo-Mas also reminds us that there are a great many terrible, terrible, terrible American Christmas films - and that's why we're all drinking Buck's Fizz from nine-thirty in the morning, because the alternative is to watch a fucking Tim Allen movie... SOBER!

Fuck's sake.
Tim Allen.

Has he actually made a decent film?
One where he wasn't a cartoon spaceman toy?

And then there's all those adaptations of A Christmas Carol...

"Next, a new spin on an old classic as Charles Dicken's perennial favou.."

OH, FUCK OFF!!
FUCK RIGHT OFF!!
IT WAS GOOD ENOUGH AS IT WAS!!

SMURFS?!

MUPPETS?!

BILL MURRAY?!

ROSS KEMP...

ROSS FUCKING KEMP??

FOR THE LOVE OF ALISTAIR SIM, LEAVE IT THE FUCK ALONE!!

(Although, I do quite like the Muppets one....)

But I digress, it's Limbo-Mas, so what to do?

Well, I like to spend Limbo-Mas in the traditional way, by finding a place for all those newly acquired Christmas presents. Usually by storing them in the spaces recently vacated by taking last year's stuff to the charity shops three weeks ago.

The books I don't need.
The CDs I'll never listen to.

Then I like to take a minute or two to bin those receipts out of my wallet for presents for all those books that I bought that no-one needed and CD's that they didnt want.

I also like to cram my fridge with the food I bought too much of and will never eat, the cheese-platters, the sausage rolls, pork pies, various hams, individual prawn surprises and other titbits that no-one took from my home buffet... mainly because I didn't have one.

Then there's that mountain of mince pies that you could fucking ski-down that I have to pour in the bin, because no-one ever wants a mince pie. It is one of that massive unwanted food group that you are obliged to buy at Christmas.

Brandy butter.
Turkey.
Marzipan.
Stollen.

Egg nog.

The stuff that isn't on your shopping list at any other time of year.

I wouldn't be surprised if mince pies were actually made of wax and balsa wood as I've never seen anyone enjoy one.

Don't try it, you'll lose a tooth.

That's if you haven't already chipped one on the coin secreted in that godawful fruit pudding that was set on fire... seriously, why do we buy all this inedible shit??

Anyways, Happy Limbo-mas to you!!

A time to reflect on the year just passed and look forward to all the resolutions you are going to break in precisely one week's time. A time to rest your liver until you give it one almighty fucking good kicking on New Year's Eve. A time to smoke and eat and fester and bloat - because next week you ARE joining that gym.

And this time you might even go..

In the meantime go and have some Gala Pie, there's loads leftover...

...and Eric's about to call him "Andrew Preview"!!

SEE YOU IN 2012!!

If you click on this you can join my FB group
THE MUSINGS OF MISTER WILLIAMS

or you can follow me on Twitter here -

@misterwilliams

CHOP-CHOP, BUSY-BUSY, WORK-WORK, BANG-BANG!

2011-12-22T00:55:00.011Z

Ooh, my little bloglets and blogettes, I am sooo sorry.

I feel like I have been neglecting you of late by not posting anything vitriolic about popular hate figures in the news. And there have been so many too.

Right, I'll be quick:

Kim Jong Il - no. Kim Jong Dead.
Well, he hadn't been Kim Jong Well for quite a while.
BOOM!!

Still, at least his lad, Kim Jong Un can now get that Despotic Ruler badge he's been craving.
SLAM!!

Piers Morgan has denied hacking anyone's phones whilst he was the Editor of the Daily Mirror, yet did admit to hearing private conversations between Sir Paul McCartney & his then wife Heather Mills-McCartney.

On their phones. Which he definitely didn't hack.

He also compared himself to a rock-star hearing only his worst hits and argued that he didn't "want to get into the business of rumour-mongering".

Bit fucking late for that, you boiled-ham-faced, self-publicising sack of soulless shit. You edited the Bizarre column in the fucking Sun! That's what paid for your daily face-oiling.
BRRAAAP!!

Still, he could be innocent? As @carlmaxim said on Twitter a couple of days ago:

"I can't believe Piers Morgan would hack anyone's phone.

Not without leaving a very long message all about himself."

WHOOP-WHOOPAH!!

And finally, John Terry has been summoned to attend court (again) to answer charges of alleged racist behaviour.

Erm... um... ah, fuck it.

The man's a cunt.

BADDA-BING!!

Will that do?
I am sorry.

I have just been so busy with my Christmas shopping that I have forgotten how to hate properly - which is odd given that I everytime I've been out in town I just want to punch everyone in the fucking face despite it being the season of goodwill to all men.... the trouble is that a lot of those men are fucking arseholes.

Take last Friday.

I'd got off the bus in Leeds and saw two drunken fist-fights in the street within 10 minutes. It was 2pm on a Friday afternoon.

Black Friday.

MAD Friday.

The Friday when everyone goes mental and drinks their faces off from about lunchtime. The first Friday after payday and the last Friday before Christmas - except this year there are two of them. The other one is tomorrow.

Taxi-drivers, doormen, bar-staff will be verbally & physically abused, the emergency services will be stretched to breaking point dealing with record numbers of incidents of domestic abuse, and all because a bunch of part-time drinkers equate the probable birth of a possibly-fictional semi-deity with a dare about how many pints of Jagermeister they can fit into their stupid faces before someone objects to their stupid faces and promptly fits the glass that the Jagermeister came in into their stupid faces.

TRA-LA-LA-LA-LAAAH
LA-LA
LA-LAAAAH!!

In the meantime, there's the last minute shoppers to contend with, the ones who amble along a pavement as if they've just discovered walking and treat every illuminated shopfront as if it is a signal from another world.

The type of clueless cocksmudges who are baffled by an escalator reaching it's journey's end. The shoegazing pillocks who stop dead in the middle of the path as if they've just remembered they've left the fucking gas on.

And as well as these moronic rubberneckers there's the harassed, dead-eyed, mono-toned shop assistants, forced to wear Santa hats and sprigs of mistletoe when all they want to do is take an overdose of Nytol.
If they haven't already.

I pity the shop zombies, I really do, but it does lead to some unexpected bargains...

Take this little exchange I had in Leeds Market:

"How much are the selection boxes?"
"Two quid each. Or three for a fiver."
"Ah, that's a shame. I need four.." "
"That'll be four quid then, mate."

What??
Where the fuck did you learn to barter?

Lehman Bros??

Incidentally, here is a Guide To Coping With Zombies At Christmas.

Good luck.

Now last year I'd got everything done a fortnight earlier as I was going to Edinburgh with my girls for a few days before Christmas. We calmly spent our days sat in the windows of cafes and art galleries watching everyone panic-buy pashminas and Brazil-nuts.

It felt great, and so Christmassy.

But Edinburgh is one of those cities that looks perfect dusted with snow.

It so wonderfully encapsulates that Dickensian Victorian perma-frosted view of Christmas that we see on Christmas cards from our Nan's but that hardly ever materialise in reality.

Leeds isn't like that.

It's like a city with a permanent hangover. Not as pretty as Manchester, not as important as London, a bit better than Birmingham (in it's own mind), but still the dowdy, miserable, best-days-are-behind-it weary little shithole clinging on to some kind of misguided, half-arsed pride.

There's an innate grimness to the place at this time of year, as the city centre becomes crammed with neck-jerking tattooed shellsuits pointing their fags at each other with drunken menace.

The perfect place for this disappointing Christmas, then!

This year Christmas is predicted to be a mild, damp October day that's just got a bit lost.

It's just not got that Christmassy zing about it.

For a start it's at the weekend, so it'll just be another big Sunday Lunch or a visit to the relatives. The religious programmes would've been on telly anyway.

Probably the Bond film too.

There's no fun in Christmas being on a Sunday. It doesn't feel Special. It doesn't feel exceptional. It feels a bit... meh!

Put it this way, if this coming Christmas was a person it would be Ed Milliband...

(coincidentally, a Leeds United fan.... just saying...)

Yes, this Christmas is all a bit wet, a bit beige, a bit bland.

Not quite as impressive as the one that came before it, not the one we really want, but for the time being it's the one we're fucking stuck with and we'll just have to take a deep breath and make the best of it.

Or just put up with it for now until we can get excited about the next one.

So let's hope that 2012 is a little better than 2011, eh?

It couldn't be much fucking worse....

Maybe if we all write to Santa...?

DO TRY AND HAVE A MERRY CHRISTMAS, EVERYBODY!!

If you click on this you can join my FB group

THE MUSINGS OF MISTER WILLIAMS

or you can follow me on Twitter here -

@misterwilliams

AS SEEN ON TV...

2011-12-14T14:59:00.012Z

It's that time of year when the shops become battlefields and all common sense goes out of the window. People walk along the pavements with their heads fixed 90 degrees to their right, hands are torn by plastic bags, grown men have punch-ups in the Disney Shop, others just shuffle along, shoulders hunched with grim bargains....

She has been paid to smile. You haven't.

Go and buy some pointless shite, it's baby Jesus' probable birthday!!

Except it isn't. Most religious scholars reckon it was around 6th September, before we changed the calendars and added a few more months, but can you imagine trying to get a decent Nativity play like this one organised during the first week of a brand new school year??

Nah.

Let's stick to December 25th, shall we? We can be flexible when it comes to Baby Jesus deathday, but not his birthday.

Not that he had either of them.
He's not real.

That's why it's called Faith and not Fact.

Anyway, enough of this atheistic nonsense, it's Costmas!

The streets are Merry with the sound of people shouting on their phones over the sound of the Salvation Army Brass Bands, the poor and the needy are stepped over as folk make their way to HMV for that solitary non-Amazon CD purchase, drunks decorate the pavements outside the parameter of the ubiquitous German Market and the streets are lit by gaudy council-funded festive illuminations that will be deducted from the budget of next year's bin collections or Meals on Wheels.

"And now, Peppa, if you'd like to press this button that cancels all free school meals.. 5-4-3-2-1!!"

Christmas is a time for shoving and mumbling as everyone up & down the land get into the spirit by repeating the age-old mantra "I'll just be glad when this is all over..."

So, have you got all your shopping?
The big presents? The stocking fillers? The food and drink?

Which celebrity convinced you to spend some more money? Because right NOW is the very height of the celebrity endorsement season.

I think he plays football...?

Did Wayne Rooney convince you to have a Wii?

Maybe Hugh Laurie persuaded you to buy some baby lotion?

What about that floaty lady and her perfume? You know the one... Kate Moss? No, Beyonce. Halle Berry... Rhianna? I mean Britney! Or was it Charlize Theron? No. Eva Longoria? Eva Mendes? EVA GREEN!!

Did the singing shelf-stackers from X-Factory coax you into M&S?

Or maybe that giggling afghan hound Stacey Solomon got you to buy some gourmet mini steak-burgers from Iceland with her dire Rea song?

Perhaps it was miserable tap-dancing old skeleton Bruce Forsyth gumming a pie on a Ferris wheel as his carers from the Make A Wish Foundation let him speak to Freddie Flintoff?

And who could fail to be impressed by Roger Federer and his rucksack of chocolate balls?

The answer is - Everybody.
Everybody in the world could fail to be impressed by this terrible, terrible advert.

It really doesn't matter what they are hawking around as all these ads have one thing in common. They are absolute fucking rubbish and serve no fucking purpose.

From Heston, Delia and Jamie telling you to buy food from a food-shop to Rory McIlroy fluking a shot for a struggling bank, everybody is trying to convince you to spend spend spend!!

The thing is, we already are.

We don't need Alan Hansen to mumble "mazin'valyooo" to a basket of groceries, it's fucking Christmas. We're already spending November's wages on December's gluttony and January's wages on February's charity shop donations, and it has nothing to do with which famous face tells us what to buy and where.

I'm not going to buy insurance off Iggy Pop for the same reason I'm not going to go on an online casino because Shane Warne thinks it's fun. Can you imagine living your life like that? You'd be sectioned..

"That's a nice cappuccino-maker, where did you get it?"

"Well, George Clooney told us it was the best one..."

"You KNOW George Clooney? Wow!"

"Umm... no. Actually, he was paid to say he liked it. On telly."

"Oh."

PAUSE

"Have you had your hair done? It looks nice."

"Thank you, it was Davina McCall's idea..."

"Oh, do fuck off."

"Get your hands off my mocha.."

OK, so Hugh Laurie gave his entire L'Oreal fee to Comic Relief, which is undoubtedly admirable, and Wayne Rooney plugs a football game because he's a footballer, I can see the logic there - but why the fuck would you want to insure yourself with a man who used to cut his own chest with a broken bottle or a bank that's drawing comparison's with a golfer accidentally getting a hole-in-one?

What a reckless and slipshod attitude towards finance and security.

Anyway, happy shopping, people!

You have just over a week left to get into more debt. Make up your own minds on what to buy and don't get a lipgloss just because Scarlett Johanssen pretends to like it.

I'm off to get some Austerity Christmas Crackers... instead of a gift and a joke each one has a picture of a Greek picket line and an IOU inside.

Robert Peston reckons they're great....

Merry fucking Christmas everybody!!

If you click on this you can join my FB group

THE MUSINGS OF MISTER WILLIAMS

or you can follow me on Twitter here -

@misterwilliams

WHY I HATE CATS...

2011-12-09T16:26:00.006Z

OK, the Internet, I've been patient with you long enough.

I thought you'd have grown up by now, I thought I'd let you get it out of your system but you're showing no signs of stopping anytime soon. I don't get why you're so obsessed, but the time has come.

As Barbara Streisand & Donna Summer will tell you - Enough is enough.
(Is Enough...)

You've had this coming for a long time, the Internet, so I'm just going to give it to you straight...

GIVE IT A FUCKING REST WITH ALL THE FUCKING PICTURES OF FUCKING CATS!!

Fuck's sake!

Cats in hats, cats on mats, cats on their backs, fat cats in macs, cats who are stretching, cats that are retching, cats in sunglasses, cats with fat arses, cats playing golf, cats like Adolf, cats who are going fucking crazy, cats who look like Martin Scorsese..

I will not watch them any more.
Don't want to see a single paw.
I've seen them doing this and that..

I'VE HAD ENOUGH OF FUCKING CATS!!

Why is everyone on the planet taking pictures of these feline freaks and flooding cyberspace with their stupid kitteny faces? Why are there so many fucking pictures of cats?

Sweet Jebus!
What's the big deal?

Is Google being run by the ancient Egyptians??

Were the ancient tomb walls just King Tutankhamen's Facebook page?
Cleopatra's collection of YouTube clips?
Nefertiti's LOLCatz?

I don't get it. I just don't get it.

But then again, I hate cats.

They make my fucking flesh crawl.

Evil, predatory little shits that come and go as they please leaving a trail of disemboweled birds and mice. Thinking they own the place because they've convinced their soft-headed owners to vandalise their own homes by putting a special fucking flap in the door. Shitting and pissing in a tray in the kitchen because, for once, they can't be arsed to go outside.

And then they go outside.

To another house, where they have a different name and a separate tray and more fucking food, the lazy, parasitical, duplicitous shits.

Whenever I tell anyone how I really don't like cats they say to me "Ah, but you'll like my cat. I've had him since he was a kitten.."

No.
No I won't.
I'll fucking hate your cat.

Your cat will make a fucking beeline for me and sit on my lap, while you smile at my terrified face. While I'm desperately blinking Morse code for GET YOUR FUCKING CAT OFF ME your bastard cat will be stretching and purring like the bullying little bastard he is, and as soon as you're looking the other way he will dig his fucking claws through my jeans and into my leg to show me that he is fucking boss.

"You've already said you hate me." he'll purr to me, and me alone, "If you react in anyway then I'll just get more love from these mooning simpletons and you'll be the bad guy. Sit there and take it. I am a cat. I fucking own these people... and now I own you."

Then the furry little bastard will cough some wet hair onto my lap, to go with all the loose dry hair on the back of my jumper from your fucking piss-stained sofa, and softly pad away, flicking it's tail up and displaying his arse in my direction.

Cats are fucking scum.

"But, Mister Williams, why do you hate the ickle wickle kitty wittys so?" you ask me, in that simpering child-voice that cat-owners always use, the voice that I see as a precursor to the inevitable mental breakdown that owning a cat will bring.

Well, I shall tell you...

IN THE INTERESTS OF FULL DISCLOSURE AND TRANSPARENCY I MUST TELL YOU THAT MANY OF THE EVENTS IN THE FOLLOWING TALE MAY OR MAY NOT BE TRUE.

IN MY DEFENCE I WAS A LITTLE BOY, IT WAS A LONG TIME AGO, I WAS TERRIFIED, AND LATER TRAUMATISED, BY THESE EVENTS... THE MIND PLAYS TRICKS. MEMORY FADES. DETAILS BECOME HAZY.

PLUS, I AM A HABITUAL LIAR.

PLEASE CONTINUE. >>

Many years ago I was playing Cowboys at my Grandma and Grandad's house. I was decked out in my little cowboy outfit, running around, firing my cap guns, yelling "Yeehaaah!" and having a ton of fun with my brothers and cousins.

I will have been about six.

At some point I was rushing up and down the stairs with my little cap guns going off when behind the net curtain at the top of the landing a furry black blur hissed and clawed onto my face.

I screamed, it hissed and dug deeper. I ran around screaming, it hissed, staring it's Satanic yellow stare into my baby blues. No matter what I did this frenzied evil was stuck to my face.

The evil had a name.

It was Sammy.

Sammy had probably been sleeping in the sunshine and had been disturbed by a tiny, noisy cowboy, and I accept this now. But his fucking reaction was a bit OTT. The bastard thing was clamped to my face like an Alien on John Hurt or a predatory female TV host on a pubescent boyband member.

Sammy continued to scratch and hiss into my terrified face as I was somehow ushered into the garden where my loving grandfather decided that the best way of removing a ferocious feline from the face of your tiny grandson is to first set the hosepipe on both of them.

An interesting approach.
Not entirely successful.

Now I had a wet, screaming cat on my face, howling it's demonic curses, flashing it's tiny teeth, staring it's starey stare.

Grandfather now decided it was time for more direct action and so he swung a broom at the cat attached to my face.

Now before you write to the RSPCA I want you to know that both my Grandfather & Sammy have since passed on. And not because of what happened in this tale.... besides, attitudes to cats were very different in the 1970's. They had nine lives after all.

Also none of this probably happened.

Swinging the broom around like a Scotsman with a hammer, my doorframe-filling, hard-handed giant of a Grandad initially failed to dislodge my arch-nemesis and Sammy stayed on for at least two more hits, managing to drag his claws around my face each time, making me look like a shellshocked and tearful barber's pole.

Finally he loosened his evil grip and fucked off into the bushes - where he probably killed a vole or had a shit on the neighbour's lawn or summat.

I trudged inside the house to stand on some newspaper and have TCP painfully dabbed all over my torn-up little cowboy face.

I took off my papier-mache stetson.
I put my guns away.
Handed in my tin badge.

I never went near Sammy again.

As I say, very little of this probably happened. It's just what I chose to remember, and have then since embellished.

But if anyone asks why I don't like cats, this is what I tell them.

So now, the Internet, PLEASE stop it with the fucking cat pictures.

Some wounds take a long time to heal - and imaginary ones run deepest.
Probably.

Thank you.

If you click on this you can join my FB group

THE MUSINGS OF MISTER WILLIAMS

or you can follow me on Twitter here -

@misterwilliams

THE MEANING OF CHRISTMAS?

2011-12-05T23:19:00.367Z

"Isn't it strange how certain words and phrases can take on entirely different meanings?" I thought to myself the other night as I settled down for my tea.

To some people a 'banquet' conjures images of huge medieval halls, bedecked by candle-light where some great and powerful monarch roars approvingly between plates of wild boar, pheasant, plump grapes and the like, jauntily tossing chicken bones over his shoulders to his faithful hunting hounds.

To others a 'banquet' conjures up images of David Cameron and his sappish fag "Boy" George Osborne dressed up like penguins and stiffly puckering up to assuage a large ceremonial hall full of financiers.

But to Colonel Sanders the word 'banquet' means three limp lumps of tablelamp-warmed chicken, a small box of rooster-knackers in breadcrumbs, a quarter of a cob of corn boiled within an inch of liquefying into yellow, dribbly mulch on a stick and a paper envelope of tepid, deep-fried potato remnants.

All dusted in the Colonel's secret recipe of germs and spices.

Mmm!! Fit for a King, it were!!

"B-B-But..Sir.. Did the banquet displease you?"

"Verily, it fuckinge displeased me! I spent the best part of six quid on that shyte? If I don't have the Tom-Tits by morning I'll be fuckinge stunned. GUARD! Chop his nuts off..."

"Touchinge Clothe: The King's McMalady"

by Thomas Kyd

(Act IV: Scene II)

Other confusing definitions of words that I used to understand are 'classic', which once referred to anything old and stylish but now, apparently, means that episode of TOWIE where Amy Childs describes putting glitter on her friend's fanny, and 'legend', which once meant paritally historic/ part folk tale and now means any footballer in his mid-thirties or beyond.

Then there's the word 'cougar'.

When I was a kid there was a character in a sporting comic book called Johnny Cougar. He was a fierce, proud native American wrestler, never one to back down from a fight but always on the side of good.

The writers of 'Johnny Cougar' probably picked the name because of it's association with the ferocious, solitary, wildcat of the rough, tough mountainous regions where a strong Native American would be inspired by the sight.

Little would they know that within 25 years it would be used to describe any delusional women-of-a-certain-age who've had a few too many mojitos in Harvey Nicks' bar and are now feeling-up the nervous arse of any & all terrified male students in the cab queue home.

Spot the Difference?

It's a trick. Both of these scantily clad Cougars repel mortal men.

They weren't 'cougars' when I was younger.
No, they were 'slappers' back then.

(The only difference I can see is that they pay too much for their shoes these days.)

Anyway, "Johnny Slapper"?
It might describe them to a tee but it's not really a good name for a Native American wrestler.

But most confusing of all are 'ideal' and 'perfect' which, when used to describe a gift or present, now mean (according to every Christmas advertisement and supplement I have seen) something thoughtless, pointless and of no redeeming value.

Every Sunday magazine has pages and pages of absolute tosh that they have deemed 'ideal' gifts for the ones you love, 'perfect' even.

Earlier in the year I described how difficult it was to get something for my Dad for Father's Day as the shops and advertisers seemed to think that my he would love to recieve absolutely anything, from a pink birdbox to a biography of Josef Fritzel, as a token of affection from his grateful eldest son.

So, let's see what they have in store for the rest of the family!!

(PLEASE NOTE - THESE ARE ALL GENUINE SUGGESTIONS FROM THE SUNDAY NEWSPAPER'S MAGAZINES):

Hey! Is your partner obsessed with the last game of kickball of any international significance for this country? Then why not fork out FOUR HUNDRED AND FIFTY FUCKING QUID for a REPLICA of a 45 year old jersey scrawled on by TEN of the surviving geriatrics from that dubious victory....in a frame!!

He can look at - but not wear - the vandalised FAKE shirt during the next World Cup tournament as he drunkenly blurbles the classic pop-hit "Forty-eight years of hurt.. never stopped me dreaming..." into his warm can of Carling.

PERFECT!

Are you being kept awake by an annoyingly cute little insomniac kid who loves lacklustre cover versions of The Smiths? Then you might need some caffeine to keep up with the little tyke! Why not spunk away TWO FUCKING GRAND on this glorified kettle?

I can't even work out which bit of it that fucking is!!
IDEAL!!!

Do you know a hypocritical tosspot who reads the broadsheets but secretly likes paparazzi shots of what they think celebrities ought to be doing? Good news! Pointless "artist" Alison Jackson has yet another collection of her grainy photos of vague lookalikes doing something staged.
It's like manipuating the contents of Madam Tussaud's and staring at the compromised waxworks through a sheet of greaseproof paper!

It's satire or summat, you divs!
PERFECT!!

Ladies! Tired of being your own person? Feminism too much fucking hassle? Then why not become the subservient cretin you always dreamed of being by letting your fella buy you the new Louis Vuitton 2012 decorative collar?
Slave or pet? Who cares?

Wearing a £1,340 fancy metal collar at the height of a fucking recession says more about you than you will ever know...
IDEAL!!

On a budget but think your kids are not being bullied quite enough?
Then why not get them some snorkel blue or magenta slipper socks with non-slip soles? They're bright enough to be seen from a fucking mile-off and soft enough for the wearer to be unable to fight back!

At only ten pounds a pair you can victimise the whole family for under a ton!
PERFECT!

Fuck's sake.
I could go on....

There are tons and tons more of this needless shite, and we'll be bomdarded with it right throughout Christmas and beyond - particularly when the trendspotters tell us what the New Looks and Must Have Bullshit is for 2012.

On the one hand we're reminded that old people cannot afford their heating, that we'll all be working until we're in our 70's, that the economy is far worse than predicted and the recovery is further away than forecast - and on the other hand we're being urged to buy a dog toy shaped like a moustache....

For the love of Jimmy Edwards!

I, for one, can do without any more pointless crap and have decided that all I want this year are a few PG Wodehouse novels. That's it.

No ties, aftershaves, socks. No selection boxes, no novelty singing Christmas trees, no albums from Mojo's Top 50 Albums Of The Year, no DVD of Robbie Fowler's Football Howlers, no KFC Festive Feast, no Nancy Dellolliollio Shave Up & Dance Badly fitness DVDs, no New WKD cranberry & violence alcopops no Best of HBO boxsets... none of it.

This year it's just me, Wodehouse and a glass of wine.

Maybe the exquisite language, lazy-plotting and genteel caricatures will cure me of all this anger and profanity?

In an imperfect world that would be ideal.

Pip-pip!

If you click on this you can join my FB group

THE MUSINGS OF MISTER WILLIAMS

or you can follow me on Twitter here -

@misterwilliams

PAST? TENSE.

2011-11-29T14:44:00.005Z

I'd hate to be a Historian.

The past is an awful place.

Quite apart from the plague, the malnutrition, the scurvy, the infant mortality, the slavery, the genocides, the Kajagoogoos and so on, I've been watching the News of late and have discovered it's also full of recent racism, sexual-misconduct, bad banking practises, phone-hacking, illegal wars and whatnot... what a godawful place.

Bloody History.

I can't even think about it anymore.

Why do the Time Team keep insisting on digging up the History and prodding it with sticks?

What is wrong with Tony Robinson?

Did he hate being Baldrick that much that he feels the need to grab a hold the History, render it in glorious 3D graphic-form and rub our faces in it's dirty business?

Leave the past where it is. Don't you realise what a sour, foul, horrible place the History is, Baldrick? Don't you watch the News? No-one likes it.

Everybody wants to move forward, not backward.

How many times have we heard a a public figure say they want to move forward?

"It's time to move forward."

"What's done is done."

"Let's look to the future."

"History will judge us," they say, "It's time to draw a line under this."

They're very keen on drawing lines under things. Unfortunately, they haven't understood that if you underline something you don't take people's attention away from it. Quite the opposite.

If anything, you make whatever it is you want people to forget a lot more noticeable as it has a big fucking line under it.

Still, many people in positions of power who have displayed gargantuan levels of hypocrisy, selfishness, and brain-melting fuckwittery like to draw lines under the decisions they have made in the hope that we will forget these nuggets of horseshit and continue with our day.

The Banks say it about the financial meltdown. Apparently banging on about their culpability makes it difficult for them to concentrate on clearing up their mess.

Tony Blair said it about his decision to invade Iraq on questionable 'evidence'.

Sepp Blatter has said it about his idiotic statements about how to tackle racism in football.

Republican Presidential hopeful Herman Cain has said it about the sexual harassment charges he is accused of. And his alleged thirteen year extra-marital affair...

Tha tabloid press have said it about intrusive, abusive, malicious reporting and the illegal practice of phone hacking.

David Cameron has said it about his conduct in the Bullingdon Club, his decisions to shut libraries, charging students to attend university, the NHS, his own alleged drug-use at University...

....in fact he pretty much says it every time he opens his big posh gob.

(Although, why he wants us to "move forward" to a society that his Chancellor, Boy George, is determined to fashion into a Dickensian Workhouse is a bit more of a mystery?

Sorry, that's probably being a bit unfair to George Osborne. When I think back, I was pretty terrible at my first proper job too... )

Anyway, back to the Future...

"Move along," they say, "let's embrace the future. The future is where it's at. Let's look to the future. All those bad decision, calamitous injustices, illegal wars, broken promises, shattered vows, they are all in the past.

They are history."

But the trouble with history is that it repeats itself.

At the moment we have an unpopular Tory government, disgruntled and politicised students, riots in our major cities, record youth unemployment, unions calling for strike action, severe austerity measures, two wars, a budgetary collapse.....

....and if all that wasn't bad enough we have Sinitta and Pat fucking Sharp back on prime-time telly!

If History HAS to repeat itself, does it have to be the fucking Eighties??

As the great dramatist George Bernard Shaw once said:

"If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens,

how incapable must Man be of learning from experience?"

We have to learn from History in order to make things better, not just dump any old toxic shit we don't want others to notice there, otherwise History becomes the domain of bigotry, hatred, and ignorance.

Mind you, that does explain why David Starkey is such a massive tool....

You can join my group on

THE MUSINGS OF MISTER WILLIAMS

or follow me on Twitter -

@misterwilliams

"UVAVU!!"

2011-11-25T14:43:00.004Z

I'm in a bit of a quandary. A dilemma. A pickle, if you will.

You see I'm a massive comedy fan and the company I work for has just cancelled not one but two of my favourite comedy shows.

The first one is a kid's show that I like to watch with my beautiful tiny girlfriend's beautiful tiny daughter and goes by the rather peculiar title of "I'm Sorry I've Got No Head".

It's brilliant!

If you've not seen it then I urge you to head to CBBC and hunt it out. It doesn't matter that it's a kid's show, so is Horrible Histories and that got the British Comedy Award for Best Sketch Show 2010, ahead of Armstrong & Miller and Harry & Paul.

Come to think of it, The Goodies was a kids show - as John Cleese once famously noticed.

Pfft!
He can talk!

Most of the Python's came from children's TV - Eric Idle, Michael Palin, Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones all came from the ITV kid's show Do Not Adjust Your Set.

As did David Jason and the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band.

Kids telly is fucking awesome!

But that's not my point, my point is that a show like "I'm Sorry I've Got No Head" has barely got into it's stride. It has a following and works on brilliant, repetitive catchphrases but it has only been going for three years and has now been unceremoniously dumped in a cost-cutting exercise.

It is such a shame as it has an awesome cast including some of the very best people working in British comedy today, including Marcus Brigstocke, Marek Larwood, Anna Crilly, Mel Geidroyc, James Bachman, Justin Edwards and Fergus Craig.

Now you may not recognise their names, but if you're a comedy fan you will have seen them in shows such as Peep Show, The Thick Of It, Rev, Star Stories, Extras, That Mitchell & Webb Look, Saxondale, Black Books, Lead Balloon and loads more. they've got a great pedigree and some brilliant sketches.

Clive the Clown is quite a disturbing creation, the Fearless Vikings are wonderfully silly, the Witchfinder General is pure Python, Mark the Record Breaker is the kind of annoying tit that Harry Enfield would be proud of but my favourites are the two screeching old biddies Jasmine And Prudith, who scream a tirade of baffling nonsense at a poor man (always poor Nick Mohammed!) and generally come to the conclusion that they are being conned and that everything in life will cost a thousand pounds.

It's absolutely glorious stuff!

But now it is no more.

My employers have killed off one of the things that my beautiful tiny girlfriend's beautiful tiny daughter loves to watch. With me. They've killed OUR show...

But that isn't my quandary-dilemma-pickle. Oh no.

You see, the Beeb have also killed off one of the most innovative and consistently anarchic, surreal and laugh-out-loud shows of the past 20 years.

THEY'VE CANCELLED SHOOTING STARS!!!

How could they?? It's Shooting Stars!!

It's brilliant and has found it's feet again after a few so-so episodes. That said, even a so-so Shooting Stars has more gags per minute than an entire decade of My Family.

The reason given for cancelling Shooting Stars is that the Beeb are cutting back on "panel shows".

Panel shows??

It's all they chuffing make these days! That's like Fray Bentos cutting back on making fucking pies!!

And does anyone actually believe that Shooting Stars is a real panel show? Do they think that the points are awarded correctly and that they serve a purpose? Shooting Stars is so much more than a panel show, it's slapstick, mime, Music Hall, sketches, sound-gags, sight gags, parody, surrealism and art.

It's the show that gave the Nation the Pub-singer round, the leg-rub-mating dance and the sarcastic handbag mime!

Where else would you see John Peel throwing sprouts out of a pram?

George Dawes singing about the life-saving merits of a baked potato?

Jack Dee with his face like a hard-boiled bollock?

Johnny Vegas giving the most impassioned version of Love On The Rocks ever recorded?

Angelos Epiphemiou giving John Humphrey's a bollocking?

Or even social comment like this gem from Vic -"True or false 80% of Daily Mail readers believe that Poland is now empty..."

Genius!

They even had one of the country's greatest writers and intellectual heavyweights, Mr Will Self, as a regular team captain and sketch performer.

Will Self!!

Pretending to be Crocodile Dundee!!

That is fucking epiphenomenal!!

Now I know humour is subjective, and that some people cannot stand Vic & Bob, but surely it is of more value than, say, Mock The Week, with it's tiresome parade of pub-bores making Eric-Pickles-Is-Fat jokes?

And just how expensive is it to make? Probably a lot less than BBC2's big money-drain Jeremy Clarkson spends on his wives not finding out about each other..

Anyway, most of the props are made by Vic & Bob in their shed!

As Bob Mortimer posed on Twitter:

"True or false ;Vic and Bob wrote and performed the whole last series of SS for less money than (Alan) Hansen gets for 2 appearances on MODay?"

But even that isn't the root of my pickle-quandray-dilemma... the problem with cancelling one of the most inventive and funny isn't that it puts me fiercely against my paymasters, but that it allies me with my enemies.

THE SUN HAVE LAUNCHED A CAMPAIGN TO SAVE SHOOTING STARS!!!

The Sun!!

Fuck's sake!!

I mean, I know they'll try every tactic going to divert attention away from the daily outrages coming out of the Levenson Inquiry but even the fucking Sun can see that cancelling Shooting Stars is a boneheaded decision.

Dammit!! I don't want to agree with the fucking Sun!!

I haven't been this conflicted since The Daily Mail published it's one and only truly heroic front page.

Obviously I am not equating the Stephen Lawrence murder with the loss of a comedy show, that would be ridiculous, but I don't like feeling proud of something odious that normally makes me want to fucking gip in my mouth then swallow it again.

The Sun even have a petition and have suggested that the show might go to Sky!

NOOOO!!!

We simply cannot let that happen. The Beeb have to turn this decision around, like they did with 6music and Asian Network and will probably do about local radio... probably.

You may no agree with me and think it should go, but once again you are wrong.

You might think it is a waste of Licence Fee, but again you are wrong.

A waste of licence fee would be thirty fucking years of Last Of The Summer Wine, forty three years of Question of fucking Sport, ten years of My Family, eleven years of The Weakest Link, one fucking minute of that Nick Knowles & Julia Bradbury fucking programme that makes the One Show look like The Wire.

Oh. And also The One Show.

We all have favourite shows on the Beeb and shows we hate - and the great thing about the Beeb is that it makes all of these shows for different audiences. We can't pick and choose what we want the Licence Fee to be spent on (yet) and so shows like Cash In The Attic and Eggheads are put in the schedule to appeal to mutton-headed fuckbricks alongside University Challenge and Antiques Roadshow... no, hang on.

They are the exactly the same programmes.

We need Shooting Stars and I'm Sorry I've Got No Head because they are funny, brilliant, daft, clever, puerile, informative, stupid, original and fun.

Don't believe me?

Try watching this and keeping a straight face for the next minute....

Whatever you think about Vic & Bob, or kids TV, looking around the world today you've got to agree that we could all certainly do with a few more laughs like this.

SAVE SHOOTING STARS - AND DON'T MAKE ME AGREE WITH THE SUN!!

You can join my group on

THE MUSINGS OF MISTER WILLIAMS

or you can follow me on Twitter -

@misterwilliams

PLEASE RE-POST OR RETWEET IF YOU LOVE COMEDY...

And if you wish to complain about the cancelling of Shooting Stars, but don't wait to soil yourself by joining The Sun's campaign, you can phone, email or write to the BBC here http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/

Yorkshire Street Magic!

PHWOAAAR!! - WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR?

2011-11-23T00:43:00.010Z

"Ooooh..... sex. Sexy, sexy-sex..."

... as Alan Partridge would say - although, oddly, not at his appearance at the Levenson Inquiry into Amoral Lying Bastards - it's EVERYWHERE!

Sex, not the Levenson Inquiry.

That is quite noticeable by it's absence in certain newspapers.

But sex, eh? Eh?

You can't move for it.

There's that little plank who used to be on the X-Factory before he started acting like a proper popstar and snorted up some drugs and got chucked out by Gary Barlow. He's in the paper every day talking about his shame at being chucked out of a glorified karaoke night by one of the wettest men in Britain.

He's so ashamed he's started to make things up to be ashamed about, like today's claim that he has slept with seventy-one women.

Seventy-one.

He's eighteen years old with a head like a flat garlic-bread being shoved through a bearskin hat and he reckons he's slept with seventy-one women??

That's not a caption. He actually carries that around with him.

Now, normally my reaction to a spotty Herbert bragging about his pork-swordsmanship with such obvious bullshittery would be to laugh so hard in his stupid lying face until the force of my laughter caused every spot on his face to erupt, like an acne-powered firework display, but in this instance I cannot.

Why?
He has proof.

He reckons he keeps a log.

Which seems very appropriate for a fucking plank with a permanent wood.

Apparently, he keeps a record of the women and scores them out of 10 - having already given himself 12 and a half out of ten.

Classy.

I bet his parents are proud. He's like the personification of those fucking arseholes on the WKD commercials or the sexist billboard adverts for Boost energy drink.

By the way, if you see anyone drinking Boost or WKD you have my permission to punch them right up the chuffer.

Pricks.

I don't want to sound like an Amish forefather, but I do think there's too much emphasis on sex in the media. Oftentimes it is completely inappropriate.

About a year or so ago I took my beautiful tiny girlfriend's beautiful tiny daughter (aka, The Murnkey) to a council-run, free, Party In The Park. It was just the two of us attending as my beautiful tiny girlfriend had to work. So we were simply having a lovely picnic by a stately home that had been given over to some pre-teeny pop nonsense, awaiting the appearance of Pixie Lott.

At the time she had become besotted by Pixie Lott as she had heard her songs on Radio One. I got tickets and we sat, with our little picnic of ham sandwiches, chips n' dips, pork pies and fizzy pop.

All was going well until some utter cockbobber called Basshunter came on the stage.

Now, bear in mind this was a pre-teen audience and a free event run by the council.

He came onstage and so his opening gambit was "Hello, you crazy motherfuckers!!!"

So far - not so good. I managed to distract Murnkey with some crisps.

"Who's feeling sexeeeeeeee???" this bombastic imbecile then yelled.
To a field of little girls...

"What does 'sexy' mean?" asked my beautiful tiny girlfriend's beautiful tiny daughter.

I choked on my pork pie.

"Ummm..." I said, buying some time, "It means, um, feeling pretty and happy, I think..."

Not my best lie, but I thought it would get us through.

She leapt from the picnic blanket, waved her arms about and yelled - "I'M FEELING SEXY!!"

She was five. People looked at us. This was not good.

"Sweet fucking Jesus", I thought. "I'm going on a fucking register."

What I managed to say, once I'd stopped spluttering kettle chips & Vimto, was - "Sit down, sweetheart, and eat your crisps..."

In his defence, Basshunter has apparently been diagnosed with Tourettes.

Not that it fucking helped at the time.

There's a time and a place for Basshunter - probably about 3am on a Friday night at Manumission. Not 3pm on a Sunday afternoon at Temple Newsham.

But that gormless prick aside, is there anything less sexy than someone who wants to prove how sexy they are?

I mean, for instance, look at someone like Nancy D'ellolliollio.

There isn't an article printed about her or an interview aired where she doesn't bang on about how men want to bang on her. She's desperate to be portrayed as a sexual being. This is despite her looking like a cross between former Radio One afternoon DJ Gary "Oooh Gary Davies" Davies and that young puppet from the Dolmio ads...

...in a frock.

But according to Nancy, every bloke she meets starts mentally humping her leg like a horny Jack Russell. Recently she was being interviewed about Italy's role in the Eurozone Crisis and "revealed" that Silvio Belusconi fancied her.

IT'S SILVIO BERLUSCONI!!

HE FANCIES FUCKING EVERYONE!!

They had to prise him free of a knot-hole in a fucking fence and pull his pants back up just so he could come inside and resign.

She also "revealed" that Tony Blair fancied her too - and that's why she and Cherie don't get on. Now, it's not often that a sentence will have you feeling sorry for the Blairs but the thought of Nancy dragging her arse around the carpet and purring like Eartha Kitt is enough to make you want to grant them safe haven.

Apparently men cannot resist her, which begs the question - "Then, how come Sven Goran Eriksson- Sweden's premier Professor Yaffle lookalike - dumped you for Ulrika Jonsson??!"

Uvavu!

Maybe he'd seen her dance?

I swear, she was so clod-hoppingly graceless on Celebrity Come Dancing that it looked for all the world like Anton DuBeke was miming a routine about the time he had to put a stepladder back in the shed and his turn-ups got caught. On a particularly gusty day.

It's nothing new, people have made themselves look ridiculous before now by blathering about their sexiness. Rod Stewart has never been more amusing than when he recorded this gem.

But at least he looks like he's in on the joke and having a giggle.

Unlike Madonna.

You know, Madonna? You must remember her?

She was a bit like Rhianna if Rhianna had a voice like a nasal gibbon and was a little less discreet.

Before she started grinding herself at men a third her age, looking like the portrait Fearne Cotton keeps in her attic, Madonna tried to convince us that she was the sexiest thing on planet earth and the way she did this was to release a book called, imaginatively, "Sex" which showed her pretending to shag Vanilla Ice.

If ever there was an image likely to put people off sex it's a box-haired idiot licking three-inch of foundation off grim-faced tranny.

There's nothing sexy about saying how sexy you are. It never works.

But we don't learn. The media is obsessed with sex and at this time of year the papers are full of saucy, sexy tips on how to pull at the office party, how to get a perfect body and how celebrities have either lost loads of weight and are now sexy (like Dawn French) or have put on a bit of weight and are now not sexy (like Martine McCutcheon).

And on and on and on it goes - sex sells newspapers and so we get Frankie the Plankie lying about his tiny pecker, Rhianna showing the paps her paps, that girl from the conman-show having a shower in the Celebrity Jungle to illustrate a story about Freddie Starr almost dying...

... Nancy Dolmio heavy breathing on the One Show and Madonna putting her hip out trying to pull an evidently homosexual backing dancer while her teenage daughter shrinks into the nightclub shadows, her face glowing pillar-box red with embarrassment.

And while the press use long lenses to show us a BB or TOWIE-slapper on the beach, rifle through Steve Coogan's bins and generally act like legalised stalkers they can say it's all our fault, because we NEED TO KNOW who Hugh Grant is bumping uglies with.

It's in the public interest to out-Ryan Giggs as an adulterer, they'll say.

While it might be funny to point fingers at horny celebs and footballers it's worth remembering that while we are sniggering like schoolboys who have watched others draw a willy on the supply teacher's blackboard, the reality is that all this reporting about other's sex lives is a smokescreen.

It excuses the tabloids shameful and evil practices. Practices that fuel this need for gossip.

Practices that may sometimes take lives.

I'll leave you with this sobering thought:

"The Leveson inquiry into press standards and ethics has heard from a Glasgow couple whose 16-year-old daughter was stabbed to death by another school pupil. They said negative reporting about their daughter -- after she was killed -- had led to the suicide of their son, who they said was found with newspaper cuttings of the case in his hand."

- BBC NEWS 23.11.11

Still want to see Sienna Miller's bum?

For fuck's sake people.

Grow up.

And keep it in your pants.

If you click on this you can join my FB group

THE MUSINGS OF MISTER WILLIAMS

or you can follow me on Twitter here -

@misterwilliams

JOHN TERRY: ROLE MODEL

2011-11-17T14:09:00.009Z

So which John Terry is your role-model?

The adulterous one with the super-injunction against his best mate's wife?

The violent one accused of assault and affray with a nightclub bouncer?

Or the alleged racist?

I'm not sure, myself.

I think I wasn't keen on him when he parked his Bentley in that Disabled Bay.

Either way, he is still the Captain of the England Football squad and that says more about the beautiful game than I ever could.

That's right. He's the Captain. Of England. The Best of the lot.

It has to be said, first of all, that John Terry is being investigated for alleged racist abuse by FIFA.
Nothing has been proved.

It's taken almost a month, which may seem a long time for you and me to have been investigated into racist conduct in the workplace - but then we didn't cost our bosses tens of millions to sit around on our arses when they need us for a couple of European Championship warm-up matches.

Well, I'm assuming that's the case...

And anyway, FIFA are investigating - so that should put everyone's mind at rest.
Especially John Terry's.

The President of FIFA, Sepp Blatter, has made his feelings known about racism in football.

There is no racism in football.
None at all.
He denies it even happens.

But if it did happen then it's all sorted out afterwards with a handshake.
Like gentlemen.

Gentlemen racists.

And who wouldn't want to shake hands with a Gentleman racist?
They are by far and away the best kind of racist.

The more cynical commentators have suggested that Sepp Blatter is out of touch and should resign, they don't agree with his assessment of the situation. But who would replace him? Let's not forget that during the FIFA Presidential election, mired by allegations of corruption and bribery, he stood alone.

Literally. As in no-one stood in opposition to him.
You could vote for Sepp Blatter - or you could shut up.

How can anyone have anything other than absolute faith in an organisation as black & white as that.

Sorry, there is no black & white.

Handshake?

I've said before, I don't like football, I can't stand it, I would ban it it in the blink of an eye - not the actual game, that still brings joy to children in much the same way conkers, skipping, hula-hoops and Off-Ground-Tig do. But anyone still persisting in football beyond the age of about 16 ought to take a look at themselves.

I don't fully subscribe to the idea that it is the Premier League that has ruined football, although I don't believe their solution of throwing shedloads of money at every awkward situation has helped.

By paying astronomical figures to individuals they have removed those individuals from society. Cossetted and pampered, their every whim catered for they seek extra thrills.

Thrills they cannot get by simply being adored by thousands of heterosexual baying men in an enclosed space.

So they play poker for thousands of pounds to while away coach journeys.

They shoot interns with air-rifles.

They text photos of their genitals to girls they want to roast in hotel rooms.

They forget where they have left their massively expensive and gaudy cars and so simply leave them for someone else to find.

They sleep with their brother's wife.

They beat up people in nightclubs.

They drink & drive.

They use old lady prostitutes and give them their autographs.

All the while they endorse everything from videogames, fizzy drinks, chocolates, beer, trainers, biscuits, wristwatches, crisps and aftershave. Be like these men, young people are told, consume what they endorse.

More money piles in, bigger gates go up, fans are kept further afield and the isolated imbecile with the Golden Boots is told that they can do and have whatever they like as long as they can keep putting a small leather ball precisely where they want it to go by just using their feet.

It's nothing new, though. The other week, former Premiership footballing "character", alcoholic and non-friend of Raul Moat, Paul "Gazza" Gascoigne was interviewed on TV by that most intimidating of inquisitors, Piers "Moron" Morgan, about the pressures of being a pampered idiot.

He spoke of his depression, his loneliness, how he wasted his money... but said very little about the time he headbutted his wife and broke her finger.

Odd that.

Like I say, footballers are NOT necessarily very good role models.

But you can't just blame the Premiership, although it should shoulder a lot of the blame. There is a crowd element to address. A mob mentality can make people do incredibly stupid and disgusting things.

Years and years ago rival fans were treated with a kind of chummy respect with a touch of gentle teasing about their affiliation with a certain club.

That turned in the 1970's and 1980's into unreserved pathological violent physical hatred for any team that wasn't yours.

I remember the various "crews" travelling up & down the country, often having tooled-up pitch-battles away from football grounds. As Wakefield was one train stop from Leeds we used to see many a ruck between idiots who associated themselves with Leeds United and travelling fucktards from Millwall, Newcastle, Chelsea and so on.

This disgusting period of national embarrassment would later be repackaged in films, books, TV series and even fashion trends for the next generation of Danny Dyer-aspiring twats.

This was also around the time that John Barnes would be openly called a nigger and have bananas thrown to him.

Of course there is racism in football, there's homophobia and sexism too. There's probably a sex offender or two also - and not just on the pitch....

I don't think it's rampant, but if football crowds are a microcosm of society at large then it is obvious that while consisting largely of good people there will be some of the viler elements of society in there too.

It doesn't have to be tolerated, or excused, or completely fucking ignored by the likes of the President of the governing body of International Football. Some people are trying, and have been for years.

The question is, what do you do when someone as high profile as John Terry - Daddies sauce Dad-Of-The-Year 2009 - is accused of acting like a racist? And what if he is guilty?

Do you ban him? If so for how long?

Long enough to make him think twice.
I would suggest an entire season.

Do you fine him? If so for how much?

All fines should be proportionate to the income of the offender, and that goes for crimes outside football. Fining a footballer a couple of hundred pounds or even a couple of thousand pounds is tantamount to asking them for some loose change.
Ten percent of their income should do it.

Whichever way you look at it, there's a massive problem with football.

As an uncle of three nephews I dread to see them getting hooked on the game. Again, not the actual game - which they will enjoy and make some of their lasting friendships - but the adulation, idolisation and acceptance of figures in the National Team who are drug users, serial adulterers, have solicited for sex, been arrested for violent or lewd behaviour and generally acted like a sack of spanners.

Respect isn't given it has to be earned.

Hopefully they'll grow up to have more sense than to choose fiscally solvent but morally bankrupt young men as their role models.

That said, Joey Barton's tweets are brilliant (@Joey7Barton)!!

Oh, and I've been reading and hearing a lot about Mario Balotelli recently.

Now THAT guy is fucking hilarious!

Join my group on

THE MUSINGS OF MISTER WILLIAMS

or you can join me on Twitter -

@misterwilliams

SCHRODINGER'S TWATS

2011-11-11T19:30:00.003Z

If a dick falls in the Big Brother house and there is no-one watching, are they still a dick?

This is a question that came to mind the other day when I realised that Big Brother is still on the television.

Admittedly, it's on Channel We Don't Call It Channel Anymore Five - but technically that is still television.

A couple of years ago, back in the Golden Age of Big Brother when the Nation's sweetheart/ gobby moron Jade Goody could be a shouty racist at Bollywood supporting actress Shilpa Shetty, I used to pretend that I didn't watch BB and didn't know any of the names of the contestants in the house.

That was a fib as I used to dip in and out of the show, much like everyone else, and form opinions on the heavily edited versions of objectionable human beings that Channel Four used to beam into my living room on a constant basis, pausing only very briefly to repeat an episode of Friends, in order to give that Geordie voice-over man a toilet break.

I remember once coming home from the pub and watching about five minutes of Night-Cam footage of people sleeping and drunkenly asking myself "Who watches this shit?" - before realising that I was watching this shit.

This year I don't have to pretend not to watch this shit because I haven't.

I watched a bit of the Celebrity Big Brother, a veritable Who's That? of showbiz royalty.

There was the fat man with the egg-box stitched into his belly, the boy from that Waterloo-thing, the predatory slapper from Atomic Sugababes, a man with no shirt, her off that in-flight movie you half watched, the lady MP in a bedsheet, Knight Rider's mum, a fighty gypsy, Jessica Rabbit and the Tintin twins - all hosted by Graham Norton's little brother.

It was all very exciting.

And by "exciting" I mean absolute dogshit.

When they brought in the Civilian Big Brother I could barely tell the difference. The producers were obviously hoping for a full on sex orgy as virtually every contestant was a TOWIE-clone.

And they put Pamela Anderson in there to speed up the libidos.

I'm just surprised they didn't lube everyone up before pushing them through an Anne Summers while Marvin Gaye's "Let's Get It On" was blasted into their blinking faces.

So, did they have a full-on sex orgy? I don't know.
Like I said, I haven't watched it.
And neither have you.

The viewing figures for BB this year are the worst ever, despite heavy pushes in the newspaper's run by Channel We Don't Call It Channel Anymore Five's owner.

There were more people watching the Russian cosmonaut's pretending to go to Mars than are watching this year's Big Brother.

That would make a much better show. Put a group of people through a series of ordeals for over a year and let them believe they are going to Mars, then pull-back to reveal that they are in a St Petersburg car-park.

"Day Foor Hunred an' Sixtee-Ate: Leonid has gurn apeshit with a fyurr extingwisha an' is threatenin' to curt off tha produssa's ears..."

So, tonight is the Grand Final of BB and we will see just who it is that has captured the hearts of about thirteen people.

My money's on Zeppo.

But don't worry, reality/celebrity TV fans, this weekend sees the start of I've Been Told That I Am A Celebrity So See Me On Here, plus The X-Factory is still on (despite having THE GOLDEN RULE broken!!) and there's Strictly Cunts Dancing as well.

All of these wonderful shows that have given us such wonderful memories - Tony Blackburn eating a koala bollock, Anton Du Beke and Nancy Dellolliollio dancing around with all the grace of an epileptic trying to fold-up a deckchair without it triggering an attack and that mouthy fat-bird pushing a wine bottle up herself.

No wonder BAFTA have created a whole new category for these telvisual treats.

And let's not forget, TOWIE already has one of these...

...Proving that you may not be able to polish a turd but (as they do in the show) you can put some sparkles round a bunch of twats.

Sweet Jesus.

I might just hibernate through the winter.

Someone ring Blue Peter to come and put some holes in the top of this box.

Join my group on

THE MUSINGS OF MISTER WILLIAMS

or you can join me on Twitter -

@misterwilliams

SOMETHING IS WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE

2011-11-09T15:57:00.012Z

I got some lovely responses about my throwaway half-term posting There's One In Every Town, which was all about the ancient art of Bod-Watching.

Bod-Watching is much the same as Bird-Watching in that you have to keep a relatively low-profile so that the unsuspecting Bod is unaware that you are admiring their plumage.

However, unlike Bird-Watching, Bod-Watching is a little more dangerous as once you are discovered rather than fly away startled the Bod being watched may come up and glass you in the head with the traditional native cry of "WOTYOOLOOKINAT??"

I cannot stress how important it is to be subtle when Bod-Watching.

Especially these days, because unbeknown to us all the former professional lemon-sucker, transgendered Doctor Who villain and current Home Secretary, Theresa May MP, has helped a variety of new 'types' gain entry into the country which has provided us all with a lot more spotting opportunities.

By relaxing checks at airports across the land, the former Sontaran Warlord has allowed a variety of undesirable caricatures wander around our National Parks, upset our cricket matches, mock our warm beer, disturb our Harvest Festivals and generally destroy all things British... at least that is the idea being presented by the political cartoonists in The Sun and The Daily Mail.

I went on holiday recently and I can't tell you how many bearded Muslim extremists I saw wandering around with their Duty Free explosives and gift-wrapped nuclear warheads on display.

I can't tell you because it didn't happen.

It never has.

The accuracy of political cartoons is always questionable, take The Sun's cartoon above.

Why is someone holding up a card for Osama Bin Laden?

Does The Sun's cartoonist not read The Sun? Even if he can't read The Sun, he must have seen the gory pictures of his bullet-strewn corpse on their front page?

And isn't Carlos The Jackal currently on trial in Paris for murder?

When did this event happen?

Something's very wrong with this picture.

For one thing it is very, very poorly drawn. It's like it has been done by a chimpanzee who only has access to the angriest colours of the spectrum and has been taught by those Court Artists, the ones we still insist on employing in this age of digital media, who can draw neither people nor their surroundings.

I think Court Artists should just be set free to paint the countryside and abstract fruit bowls because they are clearly out of their depth when it comes to capturing the physical proportions and facial characteristics of even the most international recognisable of human beings.

By the way, the people depicted in these official court drawings are supposed to be Abu Hamza, Heather Mills-McCartney, Amy Winehouse, Sir Paul McCartney, Catherine Zeta Jones and Michael Douglas...

Though not necessarily in that order...

Mac, on the other hand is an excellent cartoonist. A brilliant draughtsman of the old-school, clearly inspired by the late, great Giles. However, due to his work appearing in the appalling bumrag of News that is The Daily Mail, his subject matter is limited to perpetuating their prescribed daily diet of paranoia, bullshit and hatred.

Such a shame.

Just look at those beautiful clear lines and how much facial expression is achieved with so few strokes.

What a waste.

The other papers employ their own cartoonists with varying degrees of ability, skill and humour. Steve Bell in The Guardian is probably the most feted with his depictions of Tony Blair, John Major, Margaret Thatcher and David Cameron informing our opinions of their personalities though very surreal touches.

But what's with all the fucking penguins?? I don't get it.

Martin Rowson's work looks like he's been handed the Big Book of Gerald Scarfe to colour in, it always seems a bit muddied and trying too hard for me. It lacks the razor-slash precision of Scarfe but emulates the scatological stylings.

The Independent's Dave Brown is an excellent cartoonist with a masterful style...

However, once you flicked through the pages of the Indy his excellent efforts were immediately undermined by the minimalist piffle that came from the paper's other regular 'cartoonist', Sally Ann Lasson.

Lasson draws as if she's doing it with her other hand for a bet and someone has quickly stolen the page before she's finished.

Either that or they're whipping her sketchpad away from under her in the same way a magician removes a table cloth without upsetting a full dining service on top.

The 'jokes' also appear to be a series of overheard statements that amble out of sight before anything remotely resembling a punchline hoves into view.

I MEAN WHAT THE HELL IS IT SUPPOSED TO BE??

It's so unfunny and dull it makes Fred Bassett look like the fucking Far Side.

Just awful.

Thankfully, she doesn't do it anymore... I think someone from Amnesty has confiscated her pens.

She was quite clearly the worst cartoonist on Fleet Street but by far and away the worst political cartoonist belongs to the worst tabloid in Britain, the Daily Express.

A controversial choice, I know.

That title has long been held by the Daily Mail for it's dogged pursuit of foreigners, benefit fraudsters, liberals, the working classes, homosexuals and gypsies, but for all their bile and scorn they do actually cover news stories.

The Express is simply a catalogue of other Richard Desmond products you may want to try. There's a page for Big Brother, a page for OK! Magazine, another for the new Health Lottery and so on and so forth.

Having opted out of the PCC some years ago, the Express feels no compunction to cover news-stories and so settles for spurious Health rumours (which in turn feed the desire to fund the health service through, I don't know, some kind of lottery?) and knee-jerk campaigns.

Recently the Express started a campaign to preserve and repair broken war memorials and gravestones, asking it's readers and photogenic celebrities like Katherine Jenkins whether they agreed with the fucking obvious, that desecration is a bad thing.

Having created their story, much easier than reporting on actual stories, it is time for their cartoonist to add that final artistic touch with a defining image that encapsulates everything they stand for.

Fucking dreadful.

What should be the Express's mascot The Crusader defending the memory of those who defended our liberties at the cost of their own lives now looks like a palsied man with a spear, threatening some faceless five year olds.

Or are they the Jawas from Star Wars?
I can't tell. That's because it is absolute balls.

The cartoonist, Paul Thomas, draws stiff lumpen bodies, grim sparse landscapes, bleak grey skies and joyless faces... which is understandable if you work for the Express, I suppose.
How can you have a cartoonist working on a paper that cannot even draw that newspaper's logo properly? For fuck's sake. Private Eye have been getting it bang-on for the past 50 years!!

And just in case the subtlety of this image goeas over your head, there's a handy little box in the bottom right hand corner of most of these cartoons that helpfully explain the 'joke'.

Honestly, that is REALLY shit!

Mind you, the Express do still publish the adventures of Rupert Bear - which I am having a LOT of fun with at the moment..... (click HERE to see!!)

So if you're a fan of humour, politics, comment and cartoons, don't get a paper.

Buy The Eye.

If only because Theresa May probably hates it.
Well, she'll hate THIS issue.

(There, that should get me a free subscription....)

If you click on this you can join my FB group

THE MUSINGS OF MISTER WILLIAMS

or you can follow me on Twitter here -

@misterwilliams

OUT OF TIME

2011-11-01T13:25:00.005Z

There are many things that vex, baffle and confuse me, as regular readers of this ramshackle collection of brainfarts will attest.
Among the many things that I don't understand are these:

Why couldn't Bob Marley say 'Armageddon?'

Why would Pete Townshend get into a debate on misuses of the internet?

How bad are American actors if Bill Paxton continues to get work?

Should Sir Jimmy Savile's ashes be given to some cub scouts on their way to Alton Towers?

And, thanks to The Murnkey (aka my beautiful tiny girlfriend's beautiful tiny daughter) I am now contemplating this little nugget that she posed just before settling down to bed the other night -
"Why are M&M's called M&M's? Why aren't they just called M's?"

But one of the main things that intrigues and baffles me is the concept of time.

Not in a Stephen Hawking/Hadron Collider/Einstein was talking bollocks about neutrinos-kind of way, but in a more general kind of way.

I'll explain.

I work Late Nights which means that my day is pretty much the opposite of most people's. I have about six or seven hours to kill BEFORE I even start work, then another two or so AFTER I finish at 1am.

Most of the time this is great.

For example, "This Morning" happens when I'm asleep, the lunchtime news is my breakfast telly, I always avoid the rush-hour traffic, I never have to wait too long for a pub lunch (as I go in about 4pm) and I get to swan about half empty supermarkets on a Wednesday afternoon instead of battling young families who bring their kids to the fresh fruit aisle on a Saturday with the express intention of beating them in public.

My time is generally just that.
My time.

However, the other day, while heading back from Spain, I had to change my watch back an hour in the full knowledge that within another 24 hours I would have to change my watch back a further hour to be completely British.

From a sunny climate I had to purposefully invoke the darkness of winter.

Twice.

There have been a lot of articles written about why we even need to set our clocks and watches back & forth for GMT and BST, many of them jingoistic nonsense suggesting that should we ever abandon our stupid habit of spending the extra hour we get remembering how to re-programme our microwaves, DVD players, cookers, i-phones and car clocks then Greenwich will either fall into the sea, disappear into the mist or become Norway.

Personally, I like the Spanish attitude to time. For one thing it's lighter and brighter so there doesn't seem to be the same onset of S.A.D. that we get as soon as conkers hit the floor, and for another they don't seem to watch the clocks as much as we do.

Quite apart from having siesta tine, which probably wouldn't work in, say, Cudworth, I noticed that their shop & restaurant opening times were more of a general guide than what Doctor Who would call a 'fixed point'.

Doors open at 5pm?
Let's say about 5.20pm.
Ish.

I would have happily turned my clock back a week and stayed in Spain.

That got me thinking about Time Travel.

If you could turn back time, what would you do?

If you could go back to November 23rd 1963 would you save JFK from the sniper's bullet?

I wouldn't.

I'd probably watch the very first episode of Doctor Who, which coincidentally happened to air on the very same day, 48 years ago.

Time and coincidences are amazing things.

As part of my job I research the On This Day features which we broadcast after midnight. This means I am talking about things that happened on a particular day in the past then going to sleep and waking up with that day in my future.

I find On This Day titbits fascinating, if only for the myriad of possibilities that could have occurred if a certain person had taken another route in their own personal timeline.

For example, did you know that Margaret Thatcher and Lenny Bruce were born on the very same day in 1925? (I like to imagine a mix-up in the maternity hospital...)

Also, American teen heart-throb Zac Efron is only forty years, a haircut and an ocean apart from being a time-twin of CBBC's Paul Chuckle of the the Chuckle Brothers (formerly the Chucklehounds).

Add to all this I get to see the morning's headlines before I hit the quilt and you can understand why it all goes a bit 'wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey' in my head before lunchtime-breakfast. That said, most times I can predict things that are going to be in the newspapers before I've even clapped eyes on them.

The Express will tell you that there is a possibility of a pill that can cure ageing/alzheimer's/cancer/AIDs.

The Mail will find something objectionable about a minority and link it to your pensions/mortgage.

The Independent will have cover story a big picture of an endagered animal or economic disaster with the word WHY? or INJUSTICE! underneath it, like a Fresher's bedroom-wall poster.

The Guardian will have a free wallchart on endangered trees and the environment which will be chucked in the bin outside WH Smiths and won't be recycled.

The Sun will continue to be a boorish, homophobic, misogynistic, hateful, morally bankrupt and borderline criminal advertisement for Sky TV maquerading as the Nation's Favourite Family Newspaper.

The Daily Star will tell you about Big Brother and give you voucher for a free pie.

Also, there are events that happen on a cyclical basis.

For instance, I know that during the first hot day of the year a young person will inevitably and tragically die in a pond or lake or canal. On the same day, the newspaper's will suggest our climate is better than Teneriefe's and a photographer will be paid to snap a Brighton student in her swimsuit.

For a fortnight in June strawberries and tents will be more expensive than at any other time of the year thanks to Wimbledon and Glastonbury.

In August/July there will be a debate about how easy and how pointless exams are these days. These debates will be carried out on local radio and in newspapers by people who never passed their own to a sufficient standard. Also Christmas cards will go on sale in Cliton's.

In September there will be a collective slump of shoulders as that heatwave, heralded by the death of that teenager in June, comes to nought. Peter Kay will release a DVD or book that has a new cover but is essentially the same one you bought in 2002 - when he was last funny.

By the end of November there will be a housefire that is caused by faulty or cheap Christmas decorations and someone in the Mail will complain about Huw Edwards not wearing a poppy.

In December a well-loved elderly showbiz figure will die, closely followed by another one or two, and by January everyone will become obsessed by how much grit their particular council owns - something that doesn't concern them in Spring.

New Year, and Davina McCall will have a new fitness/zumba/yoga DVD out.... which will be five pounds cheaper by February.

Again, these are fixed points in time.

And sometimes the passing of time can just be cruel. Is it really fifteen years since I went completely bald?

How is it twenty years since Screamadelica or Nevermind?

Is it twenty-five years since Top Gun?

And did it really take another eight years until Quentin Tarantino points out just how gay that film is?

If we are now much closer to the future in Back To The Future than the present in Back To The Future... where are the hoverboards??

Why did we only get nine years of the Beatles but fourteen years of fucking Westlife?

What the hell happened to Audley Harrison?

And why in the name of holy fuck are there airships in the new (abysmal) remake of The Three Musketeers??

Also, if I'd turned back my clock whilst watching ITV4+1 and eating Instant Noodles could I have travelled back in time?

In all, I think I disagree with the curiously ageless David Bowie who insisted that Time "reflexes like a whore, falls wanking to the floor" (I'd hate to see his timesheet...), Time is just something to be enjoyed. Something to be savoured, captured, remembered and loved.

Don't waste time.
Don't spend time.

Enjoy time.

If I've learnt anything from next year it's this - life's too long.

Allons-y!!

If you click on this you can join my FB group

THE MUSINGS OF MISTER WILLIAMS

or you can follow me on Twitter here -

@misterwilliams

THERE'S ONE IN EVERY TOWN...

2011-10-20T23:45:00.003+01:00

Years ago my Mum was having trouble remembering one of my friend's names, this wasn't all that unusual as she quite often forgot her own son's names and simply said all three of us very fast with the addendum "anyway, one of you".

She started to describe my friend, more to kick-start her own memory than to aid me: "Long black hair, wears a lot of black, long raincoat... y'know... John Lennon glasses... there's one in every town."

I knew exactly who she meant.

And I knew exactly what she meant.

It was Thom, but she was quite right - there is a Thom in every town (although not as good as ours).

So that got me thinking, what else and who else could you say there is in every town?

As it's coming up to half-term you can turn this into a game.

What, or who, can you spot in your town that is the same in every other town?

SO, BECAUSE IT'S THE HOLIDAYS LET'S PLAY -

"THERE'S ONE IN EVERY TOWN"

SUPER SCOOTERS - Large people in mobility scooters putting their pedal to the metal and going faster than they ever could when they were bi-peds.

THE BENEFITS BOOZER - A place for people to rest between signing on and placing a bet. Usually has a ramp for mobility scooters and is PRECISELY equidistant to the benefits office and a bookies.

FAT GIRL & CAMP BOY - Usually walking around arm in arm with him talking and gesticulating, and her smiling and listening. Sometimes Goths (BONUS POINT)

GOTHS - The greatest, sweetest sub-culture known to man. Just don't tell them. It makes them depressed.

SKATE-TWATS - Young men who see every park bench and low wall as a ramp or slide. Can also be seen on a BMX bike despite being nearly fucking thirty, and not twelve, years old.

CHUBBY HEN NIGHT - Dragging tiny suitcases on wheels on their way to the Travelodge from the train station, wearing devil horns/deely-boppers/red veils, matching denim mini skirts and black t-shirts that were printed in Snappy Snaps. Pissed by 11.30am and shouting down their phones as they have already lost Sharon.
(BONUS POINT FOR CRYING-BEFORE-LUNCHTIME)

SAXONDALES - Bearded, leather-clad, Pub-Quiz frequenting Real-Ale drinkers who hint at some former role within the music business "before it got all corporate..". Claims to have worked with big name bands but probably just sold t-shirts for The Longpigs. (Named after the spot-on character as beautifully observed by Steve Coogan.)

THE SILENT COUPLE - Bearded skinny man and silent thin woman. Their voices barely register and they share a close proximity without looking comfortable with one another. Usually in Berghaus jackets. Look like they recycle everything, eat FairTrade and like Roots music. One or both will be wearing glasses and a Yasser Arafat scarf.

THE HAPPY TRAMP - Cheerful Big Issue Seller.

THE UNFORTUNATE TRAMP - Doesn't initially strike you as a tramp, but is one. Starts a conversation by claiming he isn't a tramp then goes on to describe a tale of woe that usually ends with the line "...so I have to go see my girlfriend/sister in hospital in Doncaster - but I need £1.67 for the train fare..."

THE GNOMES OF ZION - middle aged white men in army combats, Pete Tosh t-shirts with facial piercings and ratty dreadlock. Stink of Jamaican Woodbines. Impoverished trustafarians.
(DOUBLE POINTS IF THEY TURN OUT TO ALSO BE SAXONDALES!)

TANK GIRL - As above, but young, attractive and female.

SHITE RIDERS - Young Asian lads with patterns or lines shaved into their heads and a zirconia stud in one ear. Drives a metallic cobalt blue Nissan with a stereo and underfloor light show that cost more than the car. Can sometimes be Caucasian lads who desperately pretend they aren't.
(BONUS POINT FOR BASEBALL CAPS ON AT AN ANGLE)

OLD CASUALS - Former football terrace thugs who are getting on a bit. Don't get to games much these days but do like to meet up with the lads for a laugh and a fight.
(BONUS POINT FOR BALD)

TWIRLIES - Pensioners huddled at a bus-stop who can't use their free passes until 9.30am. Name comes from having to tell the hapless driver who stops for them that he is "too early..."

BENCHWARMERS - Twirlies inside shopping centres. Using Meadowhall's heating & lighting rather than their own.

ROBBING HOODIES - Young people on the back seat of the top deck of a bus sharing ringtones and calling each other 'Gay!' quite-loudly. You would ask them to modify their behaviour but they've probably got knives.
(BONUS POINTS FOR DETECTING MARIJUANA SMOKE)

TATTOO JACKS - Serious-looking man who strides with purpose. Covered in facial, scalpal and body tattoos as well as massive looped ear-piercings, eyebrow, lip and possibly genital studs too. Never wears a coat and looks like he could fuck you up in a blink, but is probably called Neville and has a kitten.

GOD'S BOTHERERS - Stands in the middle of town with a placard and yells about Jesus.

LANCE ARMSTRONGS - The cyclist who has taken riding into work a bit too seriously. Dresses like Spiderman on laundry day.
(BONUS POINTS FOR CYCLE-HELMET-CAM)

LADY SOVEREIGN - Skinny, pale feral girl who looks like she's on heroin but talks like she's on cocaine. Lots of bad jewellery (including sovereign rings) and a baby buggy piled high with 'shopping'.

PARK BENCHWARMERS - The Unfortunate Tramp who has successfully collected his £1.67 to see his sister/girlfriend in hospital but has struggled to pass an Off Licence on the way to the train station.

CARRIE BAGS - Ladies of a certain age who like a mojito or three and then get lairy with younger chaps under the delusion that their antics mirror exactly those of the cast of Sex & The City, rather than boiler from Birds Of A Feather (as played by Alice Cooper).

SKINS - Loud, braying, twattish students screeching about their courses on public transport. Think they have to behave like this because they watch a lot of T4.
(BONUS POINT FOR NICK GRIMSHAW HAIRCUT)

TOM JONES 2.0 - Fake tanned, muscular, groomed HETEROSEXUAL men with a liking for t-shirts that gape to the sternum. DEFINITELY straight but just like to look good and use a lot of 'product'. Dress almost exactly like Louis Spence BUT ARE NOT GAY.

MAMMA DRAMA - Middle aged ladies who wear lots of floaty scarves in sustainable ethnic patterns. Once went to Bangalore and was touched by the plight of the urchins.

COSTA-MONGERS - Impossibly cool looking young men and women who frequent coffee houses. Usually wearing the same clothes you remember your grandfather wearing when you were little and solid black NHS specs - but still looking unfeasibly stylish.

ROCK LOBSTERS - Big broad men with big red faces, look like they would've kicked your fucking face off back in their heyday but are now grandparents. Always look like they've just come back from Benidorm but have probably just got too much salt in their diet.

BEST FRIENDS - Mother and daughter who dress far too similarly for the daughter's taste.
(BONUS POINTS IF ONE OF THEM TURNS OUT TO BE TV'S WATCHED-DOG ANNE ROBINSON)

DISINTERESTED SHOPGIRLS - Walks like she is carrying a pail in each hand and absolutely hates her job. Whatever you want is going to be a lot of fucking effort. Her working life is soundtracked by the tuts from her supervisor.

DROP DEAD TEDS - Men of pensionable age who still sport remnants of their Teddy Boy past (side burns, brothel creepers, bootlace-ties, Brylcreem, flick-knives, etc.). See also MIDLIFE COWBOYS.

Click HERE for more details

PRIME SUSPECTS - Early morning dog-walker who you supsect has probably discovered a dismembered body part on a canal path. Dresses like Norris from Coronation Street.

SPONSORED RUNTS - A teenager who spends all their cash on designer clothing and wants people to see those labels. Completely covered in brand-names they resemble the bonnet of a Formula One racing car.

MIDLIFE COWBOYS - Karaoke-haunting ballardeers with a penchant for steel tipped cowboy boots and stetsons. Often speak with an inflection that they think makes them sound a bit like Johnny Cash but simply highlights that they are from Cudworth.

(BONUS POINT FOR LUNCHTIME LINE-DANCING)

AMY SHITEHOUSE - Paraletic women in six inch heels and four sets of fake eyelashes. Like to dress from Vintage shops and chain-smoke Marlboro reds.

OLD SOLDIERS - Admirable pensioner who collects money for various charities, but primrialy children's hospices and the Poppy appeal. Out in all weather's, every day, wearing his service medals.
(BONUS POINTS FOR GIVING HIM A POUND)

TIM COCKS - Young men with long hair, John Lennon-granny specs and long black woollen coat. named after my mate, Thom Cook, who inspired this game.

How many did you spot?

Have you seen any others?

There are many, many more, I am sure, so please feel free to add your own....

Have fun, you crazy kids!

Join my group on

THE MUSINGS OF MISTER WILLIAMS

or you can join me on Twitter -

@misterwilliams

NO MORE WORRIES FOR A WEEK OR TWO

2011-10-19T14:46:00.007+01:00

There are an awful lot of things to be angry about at the moment.

Dr Liam Fox taking his best mate to work in Defence meetings.

The announcement of the BBC's ridiculously sweeping cuts.

Ricky Gervais defending his use of 'mong face' photos on Twitter.

Any other week I would gladly spend an hour or so writing a blog entry that addressed one of these ridiculous fucking scenarios, and pepper said blog entry with charming expletives and accompanying imagery, however this week I cannot be arsed.

Not that the BBC Trust, Ricky Gervais or Dr Liam Fox give a shit either way - "Ooh, did you see that blog from Mister Williams? Scathing it were. I reckon about two dozen people skimmed though it looking for cock-jokes. We'd better change our ways..." - no, they'll probably carry on merrily fucking things up without any hindrance from me.

The reason I cannot be arsed with them, quite apart from it making absolutely no fucking difference, is because at the end of this week I shall be going on holiday with my beautiful tiny girlfriend and her beautiful tiny daughter.

For an entire week I shall be away from England and it's pathetic politicians, cringe-worthy comedians and bumbling broadcasters. I'll also be laying off the social media and relying on books and the actual, physical things I see in front of me to keep me entertained.

Mind you, I say books.
More like book.
Singular.

That's because we are travelling with a well-known budget airline with a reputation for being, let's say 'strict' about what they allow you to take with you on the holiday you've paid them to fucking take you to.

I don't want to name names, mainly because of their shitty reputation for vindictiveness and because I want to actually get to my holiday destination, but I have never been so tense about setting off on holiday as I have been while obliging the whims of this particular budget airline.

For a start I've had to buy a tiny suitcase.

It's the size of a fucking stamp. If it was any smaller it would be a charm on a fucking bracelet. For some reason this particular budget airline operates aeroplanes that cannot cope with normal-sized suitcases.

Every other fucking aeroplane can, but not the ones operated by this airline, who for ease of typing I shall simply refer to as O'BrienAir....

NOT that this patently made-up name should give you any clues to the name or origin of this particular budget airline.

Bejaysus no!

OK. They are Irish, I'll give you that.

As O'BrienAir's picky planes cannot cope with things like normal fucking luggage I have had to pack a week's worth of clothing into something with the storage capacity of a wasp's arse. At one point I was deliberating whether I had room for two pairs of socks - the idea being that I would wear one pair then wash them at night so I could wear them the day after next...

I SHOULDN'T BE HAVING TO THINK LIKE THAT.

THAT'S NOT WHAT YOU SHOULD BE DOING ON A FUCKING HOLIDAY?

THAT'S WHAT YOU SHOULD BE FUCKING DOING IN PRISON.

"Mine smell of Lenor Summer Breeze..."

I also have to think about how may clothes I need to wear on the way out and way back in to Britain to save on packing space...

I'll look like Joey from fucking Friends.

But even that hasn't put my mind at ease.

That's because I got my suitcase from Argos and not from O'BrienAir's official website where it would cost me FOUR TIMES AS MUCH. In fact it would cost TWICE as much to buy O'BrienAir's tiny useless compact suitcase as it cost me to buy my normal sized suitcase that let's me take as many fucking socks as I want to Spain. And because I haven't got an officially extortionately-priced O'BrienAir suitcase I'm convinced they're going to charge me extra or not let me on the plane... it's so fucking stressful!

A colleague of mine said - "You're going to Spain? You won't need socks."

Of course I will need socks, for two simple reasons

a) I will never wear sandals
(not with my Hobbitty-feet. I'd spend most of the holiday hacking them free)

and

b) I am English.

Our Empire was built on men wearing socks abroad.

Not my actual socks

Anyway, enough about socks. You're becoming obsessed with hearing about my socks. The socks aren't the issue.

There IS the issue of popping to Boots to buy tiny fucking toiletries to go in my tiny fucking suitcase, however, because even though I am an adult I have to travel like a fucking Ken-doll in case anyone mistakes my Original Source Mint & Tea Tree gel as a fucking explosive liquid or thinks I might try and use my Wilkinson Sword disposable razor to get the fucking pilot to fly into an open plan office.

Just because I have a beard doesn't make me a terrorist, y'know...

In fact, the only reason I've got a fucking beard in the first place is because you twats won't let me fucking shave on holiday!!

I am not the fucking Taliban, I'm just itchy!!

Fucking Taliban.

If it weren't for those cunts I could use the sun lotion I got in July instead of having to buy more when I get to Spain. They just don't fucking think about other people.

The fact is, I'm going a relatively short distance for a relatively short time and I'm more stressed about this than when I went to Thailand for a month and slept in a cattle shed with a bunch of machine-gun toting children from the karen tribe, and all because of a greedy, grasping, budget airline that wants to fleece it's customers and has even proposed to take the chairs out of it's planes just so it can ram more people into them like a fucking veal truck.

And now my iPhone weather app is telling me that it's going to piss it down in Spain next week, with a temperature of just 20 degrees. Well, thank you Steve Jobs.

So the rain in Spain falls mainly when I'm away?

IT HASN'T RAINED A FUCKING DROP IN THE PAST EIGHT MONTHS!!

HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO GET AN UMBRELLA IN THIS FUCKING MOUSE'S EAR OF A SUITCASE??

I'M NOT MARY FUCKING POPPINS!!

ANYTHING ELSE??

oh yes... I nearly forgot...

The re-scheduled Rapture's supposed to be happening this Friday.

Just my fucking luck.

Yup. This weekend the world will spin out of orbit, the Heavens will burn and 'the dead in Christ shall rise... Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds'.

Those dead in bloody Christ. They're gonna play havoc with air traffic control.

I'll put money on the flight being delayed.

And while the World Ends around my ears I'll be arguing with a stroppy camp steward about having three pairs of socks in my unofficial tiny fucking suitcase.

I'm going to need a holiday to get over the stress of going on holiday.

Join my group on

THE MUSINGS OF MISTER WILLIAMS

or you can join me on Twitter -

@misterwilliams

LIP UP, FATTY!

2011-10-15T15:29:00.006+01:00

Hello you, you big fat fuck!

Yes you.

You there.

The massive fucker.

Don't look around, I mean you.

Not someone behind you.

Ha!
As if I could see who's behind you anyway!

You're a right chunky fucker!

I mean YOU.

Yes. You.

You big fat, lardy, chubby, bloated, water-retaining, tubby, blubby, flubbery fucking chunknut wobble-bottom.

Have a sprout.

This is a direct quote taken from the rejected opening paragraph from the Department of Health as they have concluded, after a lengthy consultation process, that Britain is now a "Nation of Chubby Cunts".... (working title).

It seems that under the previous Labour administration we have retained a lot of lard-arses, something that this government is determined to do something about. Mainly by plunging us into a phenomenal financial depression whereby food becomes such a valuable commodity we end up fighting for takeaway scraps with rats and tramps - thereby getting exercise and valuing food more highly than gold, oil or Boardwalk Empire boxsets.

In a week that we found out that former human being and Tory Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher simultaneously invented Mr Whippy ice-cream, took away primary school children's milk and sold their school playing fields, we were lectured about the dangers of obesity by her oily spawn.

"Do you want a flake in that?"

So what's the plan?

Besides employing scowling crop-haired dishmop Mary "Queen Of Strops" Portas to be a special advisor on something entirely different, but still take time out to rip the piss out of the female members of the Cabinet for being unattractive, they've published their recommendations to tackle Britain's obesity epidemic.

Or chip-pandemic, as it will soon be known.

Apparently, we spend too much time eating shit and not exercising, and short of Jamie Oliver coming around and feeding us broccoli through a fence, there's not much chance of us changing our habits.

This took a DEPARTMENT to tell us.

A GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENT.
SPENDING MONEY...
TO COMPILE A FUCKING REPORT...

TO TELL US WE LIKE CAKES MORE THAN CARROTS???

If I could be arsed getting out of bed I would slap the Secretary of State for Health, Andrew Lansley with a giant Toblerone.

Of course people like cake more than fucking carrots, you Westminster wonks!!

For one thing, everybody knows that all the stuff that is bad for you tastes nicer than all the stuff that doesn't. Otherwise Special K would make chocolate eclairs. If your five-a-day came in a Big Mac (which my brother absolutely insists it does - "Lettuce, gherkin, onion, tomato sauce, onion.... cheese?") then we'd have no problem.

We all love fatty foods and sugary treats. That is no surprise. We don't need a whole government department to tell us we like sweets and chips more than apples and bran.

It's why Roald Dahl never wrote Charlie & The Wholefood Co-operative where children ran to the vegan aisle of Waitrose to desperately find a Golden Ticket in the Gluten Free bread.

It's why advent calendars don't have a mung bean behind every window.

It's why people in Tesco's went mental when they priced Terry's Chocolate Orange's at 29p instead of £2.75.

Seriously.

Fucking mental.

When was the last time you bought a Terry's Chocolate Orange? I'm willing to bet a kidney you're saying "Christmas".

That's because no-one fucking buys them any other time of the year.

You never go on holiday thinking "Book, sunglasses, lotion.... Terry's Chocolate Orange" do you?
Of course you don't.

Because you are not fucking insane.

Terry's Chocolate Orange profit forecasts are the only things that flatline throughout January to the end of November then shoot through the fucking roof for just one month allowing them to stay in business for the other eleven months of the year.

Terry's Chocolate Orange and Noddy Holder's bank balance.

Just those two.

IT'S CHRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIISTMAAAAAAAASSS!!!

"Put the heating on, Susan!"

But apparently, when they are just 29p we go fucking mental for bitter tasting spherical chocolate that has the aftertaste of a Glade Plug In.

According to the Daily Mail, who do make a lot of shit up to sell their rabbit cage-lining:

"There were reports of people rushing between up to FIVE stores to clear them out and make more of the deal"

See that, Lansley? Exercise!

People are running across town to get more fucking chocolate orange! Do you see? There's your answer.

Pork pies for a penny? See Grandad make the most of that new hip.

Tuppenny trifles? Move out of the way!

Make kebabs 5p apiece and just watch those Midnight marathons.

The Mail goes on to say:

"One bargain hunter snapped up 192 chocolate oranges for just £56 - a saving of £472..."

A saving??

If you are spending £57 pounds on chocolate fucking oranges - let alone your usual FIVE HUNDRED AND TWENTY NINE POUNDS - then you want sectioning.

You need to be put away for your own good.

Either that or you're Dawn French.

The story was also covered in the equally risible hamster toilet The Express, only you may not have seen it as their front pages were obscured by Strictly Cunts Dancing and the offer a daily free pasty from Greggs.

But the message went unheeded by chocolate orange fanatics, despite support from the likes of The Sun's Page 3 girl Hollie, 20, from Manchester who 'said' she was "glad the nation has been told to cut out the equivalent of 17 million cheeseburgers from its daily diet." She said "As the proverb goes - don't dig your grave with a knife and fork."

Wise words, Hollie, 20, from Manchester.

Although I'm not sure how I should take the health advice of a woman whose name makes her sound like a Pleasurebot from the future and who can't seem to wear clothes in October.

Maybe she was so against obesity she just forgot to put her top on?
That's probably it.
You do silly things when you've got your mind on ther things

But what about other famous tits?

Fat tongued celebrity chef Jamie Oliver has called the report "worthless, regurgitated, patronising rubbish."

In your face Lansley! Coming from a man who likes Toploader that is a fucking SLAM!

He said "The country's bill of health is shocking and it's not going to get any better over the next 30 years if a clearly defined plan of action isn't put into place soon..."

Then reminding us he once did something on telly about school dinners he said:

"Any one of us could go into any primary school and find eight year olds that have more creative solutions to these problems.."

I'm not sure about any one of us. That bloke off Coronation Street will have trouble for a start...

He then sang "Dancing In The Moonlight" and pointed out that Sainsbury's were doing a Buy One Get One Free on Cox's Pippins.... but, yes, their chocolate oranges were still nearly three quid.

Cheers Jamie.

This image honestly came from a website called Bell Percussion..!!

Now fuck off back to your saucepan drumkit.

We all know that taking regular exercise, eating less and drinking more water than fizzy pop has its benefits.

Well, most of us do.... not this fucking idiot though.

You can read her depressing moronic, witless fucking tale here.. if you want.

The trouble is, the truth is fucking boring.
Like Jamie Oliver.
And his band.

We don't need money wasted on telling us this shit.

Booze - bad. Yes.
Sweets - bad. Yes.
Chips - bad. Yes.
Fags - bad. We fucking get it.

Stop telling us this like we are retarded goldfish. Have a plan of action that doesn't involve crisp salesman Gary Linekar asking us to collect tokens to buy a crashmat or having the Olympics sponsored by (and housing the World's Largest branch of) McDonalds.

Spend the money wisely, Government, tackle the big problem.

Tax McDonalds properly, keep a chocolate Orange ridiculously expensive, implement healthy food in schools and hospitals.

Go a step further, have fucking muesli vending machines if you like - just fucking do something useful like rather than waste all our fucking time and effort while you're sat around having roast swan at Mansion House with the bastards that make us want to comfort-eat in the first place.

Instead of cosying up to these pricks you could try and save the NHS?

Just some food for thought.

You fat cat twats.

Chins up!

Join my group on

THE MUSINGS OF MISTER WILLIAMS

or you can join me on Twitter -

@misterwilliams

LET'S GET READY TO HUMBLE

2011-10-11T13:36:00.006+01:00

Have you noticed how humble everyone is right now?

So humble.

They all want your forgiveness for the wrong that you have perceived them to have done.

I'm not talking about those nauseating HSBC commericals where they use an Asian man's innovation of neon-zapping fireflies that he then goes on to make into fried, sugar-coated street-meats for children to enjoy (that's a metaphor you can work out for yourselves....).

No. I mean the real, heartfelt, humblingly-grovelly new techniques that may, or may not, be a result of the powers-that-be fucking up with no solution as to how to fix.

HSBC have been peddling that "we are all one world" shit for the better part of a decade, it's not fair to pick on them. Poor little HSBC. No, I'm talking about the other humble organisations.

Or at least the ones who still use language that is supposed to make us feel sorry for them rather than us.

British Airways, for example. Bless.

You remember British Airways?

They were aces. They pioneered bi-plane flight, They took in all those disparate, random, weirdy airlines and made them all really good and efficient. They had a Concorde once...

What? They fly to Blackpool now??

Forget the lawsuits, the union issues, the strikes, the people spending days upon days sleeping in their soulless Departure Lounges waiting for flights...

Look! Their Captains have new headbands on their hats!

It's all been sorted.

They are there to Serve.
How lovely.

They've told us they are the World's Favourite Airline.
It must be true.
They're so nice about it.

One of the main tools to hand for the New Humblers is the use of patriotic imagery, it evokes that mythological Dunkirk Spirit, that ethos of Make Do & Mend.

Or, as it has become these days, Make Do & Shut The Fuck Up.

It's all about having PRIDE in HEROES and COMMUNITY and BRITAIN.

It's why ITV has a gameshow all about nominating squaddies and firemen.

It's why Cheryl Cole detracts from her failed bid to crack the American entertainment market with a well-publicised trip to visit Our Brave Boys.

It's why everyone on the Halifax ad is in a communtiy choir.

It's why pornographer Richard Desmond has launched his Health Lottery.

They are giving something back. To the Country. To make us all feel proud and grateful again. Huzzah!

Or rather, they are keen to be seen to be giving something back.

All this despite the sacking of thousands of servicemen, the lack of after-care for wounded servicemen and their families, the dismantling of the NHS, the riots in our impoverished communities, a lack of investment in society and a government, media and establishment that seems to get more and more distant and corrupt day by day.

It's an age-old tactic to appeal to the nation's sense of civic and national pride while distracting from the reality of not actually giving a shit.

But Shush.
The Big People are pretending to be humble.

The Godfather of the New-Humble has to be the multibillionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch.

Aw. He's humble alright.

How do we know?

Well, he told us he was. You can't get much more humble than somene telling you just how humble they are...

In fact he couldn't wait to tell us just how fucking humble he was.

Well, he'd already planned the speech. He wasn't going to let the small fact that he was denied permission to say it stop him from saying it.

He even interrupted his own son - James, the swivelled-eyed chairman and chief executive of News Corporation, Europe, and Asia - during his stammering, amnesiac testimony into what a disgusting vicious, callous, privacy-intruding, exploitative organisation they run, to let us know JUST how humble he is about the accusations of hacking into the the phone messages of murder victims.

Truly humble.

He even put up a couple of million quid of his own money (IE, money made from the sales of material obtained through phone-hacking, the paparazzi, private investigators, pictures of tits, paying off call-girls' and rifling through people's dustbins), NOT THROUGH GUILT, but because he felt it was right.

Aww.
Bless.

According to Private Eye, he gave almost as much to Milly Dowler's family and their favourite charity as he gave in a pay-off to Rebekah Brooks, the editor in charge when all these supposed practices were allegedly going on.

Well, not him personally.
But someone at News International.
Not sure who.
I don't know who deals with the money-side of things.

I can't be expected to know that.... as poor old befuddled, custard-pie-attracting Rupert would probably stammer in his humblest voice.

There should be a statue of the cunt.

" I am truly hum.. hum.. Wendi! How do you say this word? Is it French?"

Recently, there was the sad news that the Big Kahuna of Apple had died.

Now, Steve Jobs did an awful lot to connect people around the globe, more than anyone ever, and it truly was a sad day that he passed away.

A visionary who gifted the world with handheld communications, portable music players.... all built in Chinese factories with no unionisation.

But he wore a polo neck, so he wasn't the face of corporate evil. He was like the Ben & Jerry's of computers.

Lose the suit. Get some Lennon specs. Jobs done!

Try & forget the stranglehold Apple has on the communications market and the way they destroyed/revolutionised the music industry, think of all the shiny toys they gave us.

And the way they sold the same shiny toys year on year with just a different coloured casing - manufactured in China. By kids.

I'll probably get it in the neck including Steve Jobs as A) he died young and b) his corporation professed to unite mankind. But the fact is that they used a hippy ethos to sell mass-produced electronics, cobbled together by poorly paid children in factories with scant regard to worker's rights.

They're no different to Nike. They just pretend to like you a bit more and use folksy music in their ads.

Then there's the BBC, that once proud and great organisation which has been cowed by idiots in the past decade through a myriad of training schemes and public consultations and has recently released the recommendations of its own internal cost-cutting initiatives under the misnomer Delivering Quality First.

What an heroic ambition that appears to be.

To deliver quality, first.

Despite the fact that it means absolutely nothing on the surface, once you scratch that surface and put it through an Orwellian Language Manipulator you see that Delivering Quality First means "charging you the same licence fee, putting more repeats on the telly, cutting your local services to nothing and firing two thousand people from their jobs".

But not the ones who came up with the nonsensical phrase Delivering Quality First.

Nor the consultancy companies who would inspire such a phrase.

Nor the managers who implemented it.

No, the other ones. The fuckers that work for the company rather than let the company work for them.

You can disagree with what this man has allowed to be done to the BBC by going HERE

How the hell you're going to make anything of quality once you've cut resources by 20%, let alone deliver that quality before anyone else, is anybody's guess.

But if you disagree you are disloyal, unpatriotic and out for yourself.
You're rocking the boat.
You're spoiling everything for everyone else.
Don't you see that?
Shut up and eat your gruel.

Everyone else is.

This is the future.

(FUN FACT - did you know that George Orwell wrote his nightmarish vision of totalitarianism and doublethink just five years after working for the BBC propaganda unit? That is sadly fucking true.)

Even the goverment are getting in on the act, in these weirdly embaraassed-to-be-patriotic advertisements that are simultaneously PROUD but ashamed to be British.

What the hell do these posters even mean?
Are they really trying to take credit for history and nature??

And the word Britain couldn't be smaller if it was in a fucking microdot.

Hey ho! At least they made a good fist of it.

So long as you have a stab at Giving A Shit, so long as your logo harks at a more caring era of history (be it 1960's hippiedom for Apple or 1940's stoicism for the government and BA), so long as your language conceals your true purpose, so long as you look like a cross between a Cath Kidston tea-party and a wartime Keep Calm & Carry On poster, so long as you can hide your true purpose amidst a sea of caring, sharing, flag-waving, "We're-all-in-this-together" bullshit, then you too can give the illusion of being humble.

And what is more, my son, you can fleece the fuckers - and they'll thank you for it.

Please join me on FB

THE MUSINGS OF MISTER WILLIAMS

or you can get in touch on Twitter -

@misterwilliams