Hurt

Twitter and Facebook have a lot to answer for. They’ve ruined the art of the put down.

My calling for more insults may sound strange in a week when journalist Alison Pearson reported an unknown comedian named Doug Stanhope for abusing her on Twitter, Radio presenter Richard Bacon told police of an internet troll who insulted him, and former footballer Stan Collymore watched Joshua Cryer get sentenced to 240 hours of community work for comments posted.

But I’m talking about the proper insult, one which leaves the recipient admiring his assailant for inventiveness, ingenuity and cleverness. Pearson’s abuser posted that he hoped her kids would get tetraplegia, Bacon’s stalker insulted his wife and infant son while fantasising about Bacon’s death, and Collymore’s opponent simply posted a vomitarium of racial slurs. Hardly clever, ingenious or inventive, and certainly not designed to leave anyone in admiration.

I’m not sure if it’s the fact that people who insult others on digital media tend to have nine fingers more than their total number of brain cells and therefore type nine words for every time they actually engage their thinking gear, or whether they just spend too much time on their own congratulating themselves on their sense of humour.

If digital trolls had any social contact whatsoever, people would instantly tell them that drawing beards on photos of ladies and boobs on pictures of men doesn’t really make you a comedian, no matter what Stanhope’s agent tells him. Guessing what other trolls have had to eat over the past few weeks, by looking at their stained clothes and matted beards, may pass for entertainment at the open source computer code writers’ weekly forum in the church hall but the rest of the world just doesn’t get it. You’re not funny, OK?

None of the people mentioned above will find themselves quoted in years to come as being the source of great new invective. None will be held up as a new Oscar Wilde.

One of my favourite insults was written many years ago when someone who talked a load of rubbish was described as being “an alimentary canal with a sphincter at both ends.” What a fantastic way to say “you talk sh*t”. It’s inventive, snappy and funny. When was the last time you found that level of insult on Facebook? We seem to have lost the art of the funny put down.

When I was younger, much, much younger, I once tried chatting up a girl at Glasgow University’s student disco. I must have been completely hopeless and persistent because I’ve always remembered her reply when I asked if I could drive her home. “No thanks, I’d be scared if you put your head out the window we’d be arrested for mooning.” Now, admit it, that’s clever. It may have been the only put down she had, she may have stolen it and she may have used it hundreds of times, but I smiled at her originality - if not her taste in men.

Churchill was brilliant at inventive put downs. My favourite of his is “He’s a modest little person with much to be modest about.”

Many special put downs have become clichés and old hat but were original once upon a time. “He’s a self made man and worships his creator” may sound dated now but when John Bright first coined it I hope people cheered. Groucho Marx again deserved applause for “I’ve had a great evening, but this wasn’t it.”

But perhaps the best insults come when two original thinkers come together. When George Bernard Shaw insulted Winston Churchill he wrote “I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my play. Bring a friend....if you have one”. Churchill wrote back “Can’t attend first night, will attend second....if there is one.”

So, set beside these legends in the art of the insult, today’s internet offence geeks are neither big nor clever. They’re small, very small, and missing something in their make up. Many people are now deserting Twitter and Facebook because of these nasty, weak, emotionally cadaverous zombies who are wordsmiths only in their own imagination.

I think that social media arrived just about a hundred years too late. Oscar Wilde, Winston Churchill and the rest would have had a ball.

Dirty Cash

While billionaire Philip Green flies dozens of millionaire celebrities First Class to the Caribbean to celebrate his 60th birthday in style, here in the UK we are just days away from the country’s new financial budget being announced.

I realise this is a blog start guaranteed to turn you off quicker than a hormonal teenage male watching TV’s Embarrassing Bodies only to find it’s a special devoted to the cast of Loose Women. But, as always, it could be worse. A special on Anne Widdecombe anyone?

Perhaps I should have started this blog with an attention grabbing sentence like “This week I thought I’d discuss Aristotle’s conception of metaphysics” or maybe “Here’s Sean Penn with thoughts on his struggle to learn the alphabet”. But I have no confidence in my knowledge of philosophers or indeed Sean Penn’s ability to write .

So, the Budget it is. Money’s important.

For those reading this from outside the UK I should explain that “the Budget” is the Brits’ annual chance to complain together while our Government tells us the new ways it will rip us off over the next few years. Or, as they put it, “help us plan for our future”.

How important is it? Well there’s no need to worry about it costing you money unless you happen to be male or female, alive, and aged between embryo and one hundred and seventy nine. So relax. We’re all in this together, unless you work for Barclays bank or can afford a clever accountant who’s not already in jail.

I cannot object to the tax on cigarettes going up each year as anyone addicted to nicotine deserves all they get. Likewise it’s a bit difficult to object when tax on alcohol or petrol increases as we should be cutting back anyway. But as the search for new government income goes on, the year they introduce a tax on chocolate I’m leaving the country.

Trouble is we’re all so broke we’re looking for cleverer ways of avoiding taxes like never before but, like a one legged farmer, we’re falling in the shit. Our local retired cab driver - let’s keep him anonymous and call him Timmy even though his name is Tony - has been living the life of Reilly after his mum left him the house they lived in along with a substantial trust fund. The problem for Timmy is that his lawyer’s fees have now all but wiped out the fund and he can’t sell the house to move somewhere smaller as his mum’s will states that the proceeds have to go to his kids. He’s stuck in a house he doesn’t want, with no income. Great tax dodge, eh?

Then there’s another friend called Annie, (though her real name is......oh, never mind) whose accountant talked her in to a complicated scheme where she didn’t have to declare income on a property she owns and rents out. Now she wants to sell it, she can’t as, officially, it doesn’t exist. Another pal got a Portuguese holiday home in her divorce, registered to an overseas company to avoid stamp duty. It costs her a fortune in accountants and she can’t sell as she’ll have to pay prohibitive corporation tax.

As soon as someone offers to save us money we seem to jump in, head first and without hesitation, and hand over our life savings. Yet when someone asks us for a small donation to charity we make ourselves self important and ask what it’s for, what percentage is taken off for administration, etc, before handing over our ten pence. It seems the only charity we really want to believe in isn’t UNICEF or the RSPCA, but SCAMB - Saving Cash And My Behind.

This week several celebrities were exposed as having greedily invested with a conman who “guaranteed them” riches. No other person in the world could give them the return that he promised so, instead of asking questions, they simply threw thousands of pounds at him. He gave them back some money every month as “interest” to encourage them to invest more and then disappeared with their millions. This week he started a prison term. Serves him, and the investors, right.

Greed isn’t good so, I guess I’m asking the Chancellor to be wise in his budget this week and make us believe we don’t need to be sneakier than a career conman to pay what’s fair. Make it worthwhile for us to work. Get the charlatans at Barclays, Goldman Sachs and other banks to donate several million of their own ill gotten gains to worthwhile projects. Stop making us pay tax on savings. We’ve already been taxed on the money as we earned it. And stop taxing older people on their pensions.

Let me bring it back to earth. If all else fails as you prepare you budget this year Mr Osborne, just keep it simple. No tax on chocolate, and give generous tax breaks to anyone with the initials PC.

I could live with that.

Who's Foolin' Who?

Just a few weeks to go before April Fool’s Day, that time of year when I kind of get away with my visceral stupidity by claiming “I was only joking”. It’s the only day of the year when I don’t look a complete idiot, just a work in progress.

So, have you planned ahead? Got some innovative ideas that will have them falling about with laughter and hiding with embarrassment, or are you going to fall back on the old faithfulls like cling film over the toilet bowl and washing up liquid in the cistern?

Toilets do seem a ripe area for April Fools. While my academic record at University may make my genius less like Michaelangelo and more like Michael Angelis, the voice of Thomas The Tank Engine, I will always be proud of the day I visited an old school pal’s student flat for the first time. I left a twelve inch length of dental floss floating inside his toilet bowl and showed him that he had left a huge tapeworm behind. My cries of April Fool didn’t help in any way, perhaps, on reflection, because it was, and I imagine he’s probably still in therapy. Once you plant an image like that, it stays for life.

I think I’m already ahead of the game this year. I have ordered a box containing a new capsule that has just been launched, and I may end up buying crate loads. It’s called Puck - probably because the reaction you will get may sound a lot like that – and the idea is that you go to someone’s house and ask to use the loo. Once there, slip a capsule in to the cistern and then say nothing. For about a week afterwards, no matter how often they flush, the water will remain the shade of yellow that artists may call ‘lemorange chiffon’ but you and I will know better as ‘three day old wee’.

The best practical jokes take a bit of setting up. Chocolate covered apples with sticks in make lovely treats. Chocolate covered onions, however, look exactly the same and are the present that keeps on giving – every time the recipient gets wind for hours afterwards.

Some April Fool jokes can be cruel. One couple I know were expecting their first baby and had already decorated the nursery and installed a cot. They hired a babysitter and went out for the night, telling her not to disturb their nonexistent child as she had just fallen asleep. After an hour in their favourite restaurant they rang home and asked the sitter to check how the baby was doing. I’m told the hysterical report back that the baby was missing had them in stitches. Me? I thought it was mean.

I also didn’t much appreciate the thinking behind last year’s call to our local large grocery superstore on April 1st when some idiot had obviously ‘phoned in and asked for a call to be put out for his friend. Over the PA system a woman steadily announced “Would Al Kyder please go to customer information. That’s Al Kyder to the front desk please.” You don’t have to be a terrorism specialist to find that a bit stupid. Clever, but stupid just the same.

These April Fool tricks are usually great when done to someone else but, for some reason, I don’t find them hilarious when aimed at me. I still harbour a grudge against the school pal who put those sticky plant seeds in my gym kit many years ago, making me itch for days. I’m not happy either with another pal at my gym who swapped my deodorant for Ralgex heat spray, nor my old school pal Robin who stayed with me just before I got married and hard boiled all the fresh eggs in my fridge one day when I was out, before putting them back in their box.

So, let’s get our thinking caps on this year and come up with something new and different. If you have any ideas please let me know. A lot rests on this, remember. It’s my day to shine and make people forget I’m just a sad idiot every other day of the year.

A Different Beat

“What do you call those Italians that nobody likes?”

That was the question I was asked four times over lunch this week, and I had no idea at all what to reply. Would you know the answer?

I had flown home to attend a funeral in Scotland, God’s favourite holiday destination, where it usually takes me a few minutes to rediscover my roots and embrace the accents, the slang, the weather, and the wonderful sarcasm. Scotland is my kind of big town, obsessed as it is with sweets and cake shops on every corner, and I even ended up wearing a suit made of puff pastry. But more of that later.

What would sound amateurish and twee elsewhere can sound homely and comforting in Scotland, although the jury’s out for me on the serious debate I heard on Radio Scotland about the state of football north of the border which was signed off by someone, who I assume considers himself a journalist, with the words “Toodle oo the noo”. Either he thinks only his granny listens or I have been away far too long.

In Scotland they do things differently. I picked up the Valentine card sent from my mum to my dad and she’d signed it “Lots of love from Jean. Guess who?”. I’m not sure that after almost sixty years of marriage she’s got the hang of this romance thing yet.

The crematorium is situated in a place called Castlemilk, a renowned district given a bit of ironic class by locals who call it Chateau du Lait. Looking at the floral tributes from previous funerals I spotted one bunch of flowers with the message “To Dad. Lang may yer lum reek.” This is a traditional Scottish good luck saying, expressing the hope that you may always have enough money and security wherever you are. It translates best as “long may your chimney have smoke” which, as we were at a crematorium, could be seen as maybe just a wee bit ironic, no?

I’ve mentioned before my mum’s visit to this crematorium where, in a badly timed gap between hymn verses, she sniffed and said loudly “there’s something burning in here”. But in Scotland there’s no such thing as inappropriate, just different.

At the funeral lunch afterwards I sat beside a nice, kind, elderly man of ninety five who regaled me with stories of the war and how he had got himself involved with “those Italians no one likes.” I couldn’t think of what he meant, so the stories simply started over again as I heard about him being blown up and losing his hearing, then being sent to Kenya to recover.

Listening to another generation like this of course makes us think of how lucky we are that we haven’t lived through world wars, but it can also re affirm how kind people are. On returning to Italy after the war he was given a hero’s welcome by the village where he’d been in charge of Italian prisoners of war. They respected him simply because he’d been fair, even though he had been doing business of course with those Italians no one likes.

Unfortunately, before I could work it out, our meal carried on with sausage rolls, the flakiest, messiest foodtuff it is possible to find. And when the person eating it has ill fitting dentures (that’s not me incidentally) and speaks at the same time as munching, unfortunately everywhere within two to three feet gets decorated with pastry. My suit, hair and face ended up covered in the stuff as the stories started all over again.

But I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. There is something slower, easier, less fraught about life in Scotland, almost as if everyone bonds and gets on, if for no other reason than to simply survive the weather. It may have been a lightning quick visit, and it may have been for a sad occasion, but I came away with a smile. They even arranged for me to stay a bit longer than expected as I arrived at the airport to find my flight delayed by two hours because the co pilot had called in ill. You would think he could have dragged himself from his sick bed to bid me “toodle oo the noo.” Probably eaten too many cakes.

I’m now back in London and my suit is off to the dry cleaners, but I did in the end “get” which unloved Italians he was talking about after he eventually added the clue that “they are a wee bit naughty”.

He was talking about the mafia.

Fool If You Think It's Over

So that’s another Valentine’s day over. I offered to take Debbie somewhere warm that would remind her of our place on the Portuguese coast but our local fish shop closes at five so, instead, I bought her something black and lacy. Those football boots cost me a fortune.

Not true of course. We actually had a lovely meal out and watched a movie. It did strike me recently that this year we’ve been very lucky in that the quality of movies coming on to our screens has been exceptional. But I think I may have been wrong.

I’ve really enjoyed, The Artist, The Iron Lady, War Horse and The Help, I’ve thought movies like The Descendants, Shame and Moneyball have been OK, and I even believe that Madonna’s W.E. is, like her religion, not as bad as the critics say.

However, just as I was starting to believe that the movie makers had grown up, along come a couple of really awful movies that make me blink with surprise and gasp in astonishment as I search for other glorious clichés to describe something you might step in at a dog show. If you thought movies like Snakes On A Plane and Centipede were the worst things ever committed to celluloid, get ready for the release of ABRAHAM LINCOLN, VAMPIRE HUNTER.

It’s based on a book written two years ago in which John Wilkes Booth, the killer of Lincoln, is revealed to be one of the “undead”. In consequence Lincoln becomes a vampire as well and turns up at Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech a hundred years later . Oh, also, in the book Walt Disney becomes a vampire too. I’m guessing here, but I don’t think this is an accurate historical document.

In the movie President Abraham Lincoln uses his top hat, a bit like Oddjob in Goldfinger, to try and decapitate vampires and, if you think I’m making this up, you can see the trailer here at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPxdjECyPmw&feature=player_embedded

If I put this movie down to a blip and still think there might be a chance that Hollywood has grown up this year then that might fade when I get to see JOYFUL NOISE starring Dolly Parton as a choir mistress. In the film every man who sleeps with a member of the choir seems to drop dead, although Kris Kristofferson comes back to life half way through to sing as a ghost! Maybe Lincoln and Disney appear doing a duet.

Another, soon to be released movie, is THE WICKER TREE, in which two Christians travel to Scotland, on “the border of England” to convert pagans. The trailers look hilariously bad, but not as awful as IRON SKY, in which earth comes under attack from Nazi spacemen who escaped after World War 2 and have lived ever since on the dark side of the moon. It is left to Sarah Palin to save us. Dialogue includes “Invasion? Y’all must be trippin’” and the posters have the strapline “The battle for earth is about to get Nazi”. It’s out in April but you can see a trailer now at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Py_IndUbcxc

This movie is billed as a comedy but looks about as humorous as tapeworm.

Bad movies are nothing new of course but it always amazes me that people are given money to make this rubbish. I have a pal who has been trying for over a year to raise money for a good movie (involving Charlie Chaplin and India since you ask) and he’s nowhere near getting enough dollars to start filming.

In a global recession the lesson for him seems to be to come up with an idea that couldn’t possibly succeed and then sit back as people throw money at you, a bit like Mel Brooks’ character did in The Producers by writing a musical about Hitler. Yesterday’s musical is today’s Nazis on the moon.

Next year on Valentine’s, as we’re all reading the Oscar and Bafta nominations, I don’t expect vampires and Nazis to sweep the board but I do expect Abraham Lincoln and Walt Disney to be seated in the audience telling anyone beside them that it was better in their day.

Just steer clear of the garlic at dinner guys.

Doctor, Doctor

I didn’t write a blog last week as my wife and I have been playing doctors and nurses. And before you get carried away with some fantasy involving bed baths and visits to the Anne Summers and Victoria’s Secret outlet stores, I mean that my daughter has had pneumonia and we’ve been mopping her fevered brow and her bedroom floor.

Getting any of our local doctors to come and visit this week has been a nightmare as they only come out for old people, or so they say. In the end, and under protest, a lady doctor came, demanded an X ray, pronounced pneumonia and antibiotics, and then reminded us that she would not come back for my teenage daughter, no matter how sick, but only for an old, infirm, patient. I’m not sure where we’re supposed to find one, or perhaps she was looking at me.

But the thing she fails to understand is that old people aren’t at home waiting for doctors. They’re all at work. News on pensions this week means that we’re all going to have to be employed till we’re old and incontinent with whiskery ears and fluffy bits missed by our razors and eyesight. Pensions look set to be postponed later and later in life as yet another politician said this week that we will all have to wait till we’re in our Seventies before we can retire.

So now that no one can be ageist and get rid of staff because of age, who is going to gently tell us when we’re no longer up to the job?

Am I going to see pensioners playing rugby or football for Scotland? Arguably, of course, results may improve. Will we have someone on a zimmer frame going for the Olympic pole vault gold medal? Will Joan Rivers enter beauty contests and Richard Attenborough play Braveheart 2?

The thing about getting older is that you get odder too. Who doesn’t know loads of people of a certain age who are slightly off centre? They call it “speaking their mind” and I often find myself roaring them on, delighted that they don’t care what people think of them. But, in the work place?

Part of playing the game of Work is biting your tongue. When someone messes up or spills coffee over your desk, for the sake of a calm working environment you bite your tongue and shrug it off, don’t you? It won’t be the same if you tell your colleague that you’ve missed a deadline and he shouts back “you young people don’t know you’re born. Bring back hanging and national service, and by the way you should be wearing a vest in this cold weather”.

And fancy going to see an old dentist whose dentures are looser than a skeleton’s waistband? His hand will be shaking so much that your teeth will rattle. And just imagine the reading material in his waiting room. There are only so many back copies of Gardener’s World and People’s Friend I can cope with.

Although I’m way off retiral age, I found a strange side effect of getting older this week. I discovered that I have become a goody goody. I have always hated people telling me what to do and I have ritually rebelled, often realising within minutes what a stupidly embarrassing thing I’d done. But this week I surprised myself by doing something odd and experiencing a strange feeling that I had to look up in the dictionary. Apparently it’s called “maturity”.

A female friend of mine who is Polish asked me for a favour. She has been offered a job doing security at the Olympics but needs to prove she has been living here for five years. She’s one year short so asked if she could give my name and number, telling the authorities that she cleaned my house for the year in question. Now it’s not that I think she’s a secret terrorist or drug smuggler, but it would be wrong wouldn’t it? It would be a lie, so I said “No”, which for a rebel like me is a big step.

So now I am officially “mature”, which is fine. I’m supposed to be grown up now and leave childish things behind. I guess the next stop is old age.

It may mean I’ll get a doctor to visit me a little bit quicker.

Let The Sideshow Begin

In the current financial climate, when the going gets tough the tough get going on a hunt for cheap entertainment. For instance, it costs nothing to be entertained for hours by Facebook or Twitter where a female friend of mine landed in deep water this week by posting “I just got paid”, only to discover that her fat fingers had typed “paid” with an L instead of a P.

You’ll be pleased to hear this week then that I’ve found a safer and better way to spend a few hours and be royally entertained at the cost of absolutely zero.

Now I do realise that when I say “royally entertained” you may be worried that I’m going to suggest something boring and turgid like the Royal Variety Show where Her Maj almost certainly pays an aide to dig fingernails in to the royal palms to keep her awake. If anyone ever says The Queen doesn’t earn her money just mention the dreadful shows she has to sit through, smiling, as doddery old variety turns, all as topical as a Leo Sayer tribute act, suck up. They’re Old Boring Entertainers, OBEs hoping to get an MBE. I went to one of these shows once and I’ve had a more fun evening scalping dry skin off my feet.

So no, my free day out is not as boring as the Queen’s social calendar. This free day out has entertainment by the barrel load, but I advise you to wear comfy shoes as there will be standing room only.

If you’re one of the lucky ones who says “what credit crunch?” these days and are still coasting along buying Ferraris and Sunseeker yachts to make your holiday home in Portofino look flashier, then good luck to you and the bank you work for.

A quick walk down any high street today tells a gloomy story as one shop after another lies empty, usually with a sad notice in the window thanking customers for past loyalty. Landlords have not woken up to reality and are desperately hiring out their places to charity shops, cheaply, just to avoid paying taxes on empty property. I’m going to open a cafe called Paul and avoid high rent by telling the landlord it stands for Protecting Animals Using Latté. They’ll snap me up.

As a serious aside, I noticed a very large fish and chip restaurant in Wimbledon is closed with notices in the window saying it’s because one of the family has a brain tumour. It’s all the more poignant because the family has arranged all the get well cards from customers on the restaurant floor, and they stretch as far as the eye can see. There’s always someone worse off isn’t there?

Looking at empty high streets just now even the good old post offices have suffered, with two I regularly use closing recently. This is personally sad as I got to know the families who ran them very well. But, if you look very hard, there is a bit of a bonus, and this brings me back to my free day out.

Yesterday I went to one of the few remaining post offices to post a parcel and, because so many have closed, the line of waiting customers was out to the street. I had no option but to wait in the queue feeling annoyed. But once I had resigned myself to fate, it turned out to be the most entertaining day out I had had in a while. Forget the surly people who work there. They’ve been told in training that if they smile they’ll contract malaria, and if they apologise for your waiting time then they’ll get a Fast Lane ticket to the bad fire. It can only be a matter of time before someone re records those post office queueing announcements to say “Cashier Number Four Will Belittle You Now Please.”

Anyway, as I stood there (see why I said standing room only?) I became engrossed as the man behind me took a call from his wife. I only heard half the conversation, of course, but he was so apologetic I think he must have done something really, really bad. He ended it with “ok, I’ll give you five minutes and do my married duty tonight”. I can only guess what that means!

Then I overheard a girl buying Jamaican dollars who couldn’t quite get the hang of the buying and selling prices quoted and thought it was a choice. “I’ll just take that one”, she said as the cashier tried to explain the difference. A baby in front of me started giggling and we bonded. One guy sang out loud unaware, because of his earphones, that he could be heard, another told his mate a funny joke about football, a well dressed woman had a sack full of risque underwear to post as she ran an E Bay site, and so on. By the time I was served I was disappointed the free show was over.

So next time I have to stand in line, instead of being wrapped up in what I’m doing I’ll open my eyes and ears and see that the motley collection of strangers brought together by queueing really do provide great entertainment.

It’s a bit like Twitter and Facebook, but with real people.