Check out this bust

There was a story in the tabloids a while ago about Craig Charles going on a CRAZED bender, buying DRUGS and having a PINT with some MATES. You can read about it here. The reason I am reminded of this is because as part of his crazeddrugfuelledwildnightbender, he asked his driver to buy him some PORN. Now, unfortunately this is the only link I could find, but I remember at the time the reporting was even more lurid, quoting him as saying "f*ck me I really need a w*nk". This was actually the embarrasing part of the story. Drink and drugs are fine, he's famous and it adds to rock and roll mystique he's cultivated whilst pretending to be a taxi driver in the only part of Manchester to still have cobbled streets and whose most ethnic resident is a slightly tanned David Essex. Buying porn though, is just a little bit embarassing. That's all I could think about when I read it, "oh no, poor chap, what would the boys from the Dwarf say?". Stories like that serve a positive purpose though, they remind us that famous people are the same as the rest of us. They may appear in Heat magazine, snapped boarding a bus in Mayfair (whereas the rest of us have to snap ourselves if we want a record of it), but they are just us with a more recognisable face. How do we know this? Because people like Craig Charles helpfully remind us that even famous people get drunk, go home and masturbate alone over a woman with staples through her tits.

You may ask why I am talking about a news item from four years ago? Well it's all down to drunk men's nocturnal desire to look at boobs. A burger van has been 'seized' by police for giving away free porn when their customers spent more than five pounds...

I love the idea of men being 'enticed' with free porn, like they are under the spell of a pied piper in a dirty raincoat. In the event of a population explosion you could cull the male population by dumping copies of Razzle off a cliff and just sitting back to watch the shuffling hoardes of drooling grub-monkeys tumble off the edge fondling their crotches and murmering "mmm, jubblies" as they fall to their doom.

Please don't think that I don't approve of free smut. I actively applaud it in fact. If porn was given away as a free gift more often just imagine how empty the streets would be. On the rare occasion anyone did leave their houses violence would be as rare as rocking horse droppings since everyone would be so weak and sluggish, it would be all they could do to drag their massive right-arms behind them like they're on their way to their own crucifiction. Even if violence did erupt it would be over in seconds because if anyone landed a punch it would take your head off.

The reason this story really appealed to me was the undercover officers who made 'test purchases'. That's a bloody tough case for them isn't it. The horror of it, having to buy burgers and be given free porn. Oh dear. Imagine the counselling bill. How many volunteers do you think they had for that operation? I'm amazed there isn't a headline underneath the article detailing the officers killed in the stampede. One thing's for sure, the waiting list for evidence room duty is longer than the ever dwindling rolls of Andrex in their desk drawers.

'Five Pass Out in a Gutter'

Take a look back there. That was a bank holiday that was. You can tell because it was mostly drizzly and for the rest of this week people will keep asking you what you got up to, as if by tacking an extra day onto your weekend you are guaranteed adventures that a regular weekend simply cannot encompass. In fact it is generally acknowledged that all of Enid Blyton's 'Famous Five' stories take place over bank holidays, as that's they only way the adventures could be completed and the mysteries solved. Apart from 'The Case of the Unwanted Pregnancy' of course, which was solved in an alley on an overcast Thursday afternoon. I recall Julian and Georgina didn't mention that one to the others until 'The Riddle of the Bloody Coathanger' in 1958.

One response could be "I went to the 'Jazz on Broadway' event", which took place on Sunday. Doesn't that look fun (and isn't the website attractive). I have actually hitched my wagon to that particular star on a previous occasion and emerged stained, hoarse and due to the exotic pricing structure imposed upon on all drinks, poorer than an unemployed church mouse (in fact wherever they live, mice have yet to develop a satisfactory system for funding a jobseekers allowance, primarily because mice are very resistant to taxation). This time I was busy attaining squatter's rights on a comfy Brighton sofa whilst others were jazzing all over Broadway, which I can recommend you try but would also ask you to find your own sofa.

Sadly, home being what it is, it must eventually be returned to so 10:30pm saw me returning from Brighton to Haywards Heath station and from there wandering in the direction of Castle Benenstein. Though it had failed to lure me, the prospect of £5 pints and a lack of requirement to make conversation had evidently proved too much for many, and my return took me through the wobbly masses who were en route to the fabled 'last train'. It was easy to see why they chose to name the street 'Broadway' as there is a definite air of glamour about it. I could think of nothing else in fact as I walked up through the steadily departing hordes. Sweating wobbly drunks farting down the street with burger grease dribbled down their shirt-fronts and couples demonstrating how lovely it is to be in a relationship by arguing in the middle of the road, showering each other's red-faces with spit and insults. Glenn Miller always brings out the best in people.

So anyway, hopefully you had a lovely one. The banks have now returned to work feeling refreshed, full of vimto and vinegar and are happily setting about ruining people's lives until their next break in August. You might like to start planning your next adventure.

An indelible melt

Some films sell themselves by the cast, such as the action movies of the 1980s where the star's surname was in significantly larger type than the name of the film. Some sell themselves by the title alone. I'm a particular fan of a good title. You know what you are going to get with something like 'Zombie Flesh Eaters' or 'The Blood Beast Terror' whereas you're still in the dark with something more vague such as 'Legend'. Actually, 'The Blood Beast Terror' is about a girl that turns into a moth (rather brilliantly called a 'were-moth') so maybe you don't know exactly what you're going to get after all. The title gives you a clue though. There is blood. There is a beast. There is also a certain amount of terror, but this terror is mainly towards the end, when an evil scientist's dastardly plot to create a male were-moth to mate with the aforementioned girl is revealed. Primarily because you fear for the actor's ability to utter the phrase 'male were-moth' with a straight face.

Another film that drops one or two subtle clues as to the plot in its title is 'The Incredible Melting Man', which I was fortunate enough to see recently. Okay, so it doesn't so much give you clues as write the plot on the title equivalent of a baseball bat (it's an American film) and proceed to bash you about the head with it. Needless to say, I was very excited when I loaded the dvd into the player, eager to see this incredible melting man melt incredibly. Sadly, the incredible melting man doesn’t really melt incredibly at all, at least not until the final gooey reel. Until that point he just loiters in the shadows glooping over his suit, lurching out occasionally to smear himself on someone. Initially optimistic hopes of him concentrating his melt when he feels threatened and squirting it at someone remained simply hopes.

Happily this small failing is made up for with some delightful b-movie silliness. Near the end, the hero on the trail of the dribblesome one, Dr Ted Nelson, walks towards a policeman with his hands up and shouts "don't shoot, I'm Dr Ted Nelson" and promptly gets shot. Apparently GPs weren't popular in the 1970s. Nurses evidently weren't particularly bright either, as at one point a rotund nurse is shown running (in glorious slow-motion) away from the eponymous fiend down a very long corridor, and when she reaches the door at the end rather than pull or push it open, she barrels through the glass like it's the front door of her local Greggs. Actually, I might be doing her a disservice. Perhaps if the camera had lingered a little longer we could see that rather than say 'push' or 'pull' on the door, maybe it simply said 'smash through'.





Maybe she was just in a hurry. It can't have been fear, after all she's running away from a man with toilet tissue hanging out of his nose. Don't believe me? Watch the scene here.

There, that has to have sold it. If not, the box cover declares him to be an all new type of monster and I can confirm that this is absolutely true. Of course bearing in mind the toilet paper incident he's not a very scary one. It's hard to feel intimidated by someone with Andrex dangling from his right nostril. This doesn't stop ladies from screaming throughout but really it’s just because of the mess he’s making on the carpet. “Eeeek!" they squeal, "stand on a newspaper!”.

I'm not clearing them up

Whilst on this subject, I may have mentioned before that I do not enjoy following people into the bathroom. Specifically I don't like being reminded that anyone uses it apart from myself. The whole event is an unpleasant one in fact, if I wouldn't end up with my own wasted seeping from my pores and coating my skin like over-applied foundation, or sorse simply bursting like a blocked sewage pipe, I'd have glued myself up years ago. Yesterday I was pleased to be reminded that I'm not alone in this.

"I hate going into the toilet when someone's dropped their guts" declared a colleague at work.
"Hear, hear" I concurred, inwardly congratulating myself on our banter.

His words stuck in my mind. Not because of  wondering who/what he would like to follow into the toilet, but because his expression was simply so vivid and colourful (although that colour was mainly brown). It makes you think that you're following someone of immense clumsiness, because after all of all the areas of your anatomy, your guts are surely one of the most secure. It takes great skill to drop them. I would have thought that you are more likely to have one of your hands fall into the sink whilst you're washing them, it tumbling awkwardly around the plughole, than you are to drop your guts all over the place. I could understand your brain falling out of your mouth since that's an orrifice that spends most of its time hanging open like a cave with a single wingless bat hanging from the ceiling. I suppose if that happened your body would soon follow it to the floor and the inconvenience wouldn't be the grim mess, more the minor annoyance of an individual having to stand astride your blankly staring face in order to have a wee. But to drop your guts? Clumsiness in the extreme. Rude too. Just because you don't want them doesn't mean that you can leave your spare parts laying around on the offchance that Burke and Hare happen to be passing.

Another alternative is that it is an exhibition of selfishness, the person cheerfully unburdening themselves of a gutful of guts without considering the effects their presence will have upon the next bathroom inhabitant. Away they swan to live their now slightly less gutful life whilst an unfortunate someone slides across the floor, one foot on a colon that's echoing raspberries around the tiny room, the other making an ill-judged step onto some intestines, squeezing semi-digested pap from them like a rusty tube of toothpaste before skidding to the wall and coming to an undignified halt sprawled over the sanitary bin.

So I suppose this is a plea to the rest of the world: keep your guts. Love them. Cherish them. Maybe even use them. Just please, for all of our sakes, don't drop them. If you do tire of them at least have the decency to have them eaten by zombies and add some entertainment to the proceedings.

Faesh in a bowl

I've just seen a programme (the brilliant 'You Have Been Watching') that talked about 'Dancing on Ice's judge Jason Gardiner and his comment that Sharron Davies resembled "faecal matter that won't flush" (watch him apologise in an entirely heartfelt manner here). Now needless to say this passed me by at the time because I'd rather gouge my eyeballs out with a junkie's spoon than watch any of the celebrity dancing dross that infects Saturday prime-time schedules and seeps into conversation like sewage from a leaky pipe, however even I can tell that's not the most supportive comment he could have made. However, in his defence, she was wearing brown and drifting awkwardly around a large white bowl. Compare that to the ever popular 'Lion King' musical where every night a black fellow gets a standing ovation for wearing a yellow hat and saying he's a lion. Suddenly Sharron Davies as shit seems pretty convincing.

Warbling foetus

There's somthing immensely creepy about Justin Bieber, the latest musical hot potato to stare at us from MTV with eyes like gooey dinner-plates, warbling 'baby, baby baby, ooh'. I'm not sure what proves most upsetting. The haircut, like a tea-cosy missing a bobble. Possibly it's the jacket with sleeves hitched up his forearms in doubtless homage to Cutting Crew. Or maybe it's the shuffly dancing he's taught every chatshow host into whose lair he has inadvertantly shuffled, dancing that looks like Skat the Cat in Paula Abdul's 'Opposites Attract' video channeling the spirit of Michael Jackson.

No, I'm not going to say anything about MJ's spirit entering a young boy. That would be wrong. Shame on you.

Actually, I do know what it is. It's the advertisment for his little album (I don't know why I feel the urge to refer to it as his 'little album', I just do. Maybe I'd ruffle his hair if he was within ruffling range. I'd wash my hands afterwards, obviously. I'm not an animal.) where we are informed that we should "get Bieber fever!". Bieber fever. Bieber fever sounds like something you would inoculate a child against, not something you should actively encourage.

So that's why I think he's creepy. He's the aural equivalent of whooping cough.

Tellers about the bank

I don't pretend to know anything about money, or indeed have any skills in keeping hold of it. Where funds are concerned, I can always find an ill-judged investment window to throw my cash through. Money to me is as easy to keep hold of as a fish in vaseline pyjamas. Which is why, when possible, I keep it in a bank. You may be familiar with banks, they are institutions who you ask to look after your money and who then spend it as soon as you turn your back. We don't usually worry about them doing this so long as they give us something that looks a bit like our money when we ask for it. As I understand it, that's why the credit crunch annoyed so many people. They went to their bank and asked for some of their money and the bank put its hands in its pockets, looked guiltily at the floor, shifted its weight from one foot to the other and said 'sorry, I spent it'. The bank's customers then walked away grumbling about how they should have put it in a sports bag and asked a homeless junkie (whom we shall call 'Heroin Harry', in the hope that he gets his own chatshow) to look after, since there's at least a chance he'll overdose before he spends it all.
Of course I rarely read the money supplement, so I may have misunderstood the whole thing.

I was in the bank today queuing behind a middle-aged woman. As you know, each bank teller is numbered. This is because if they were identified by name then the tannoy would say "Steve is now free" or "please move to Christine", and the customers would be milling around scratching their heads trying to decide if someone had a Christiney quality or not. The subjective nature of whether or not someone is Christiney would result in terrible delays and an inability to recall why you are standing in front of a man who might be called Christine in the first place. To avoid this situation a simple numeric system is in place so that a disembodied voice (who also works for the post office) can say "[bing] cashier X is now available". Well, I say simple, the system proved a little complicated for the lady in front of me.

"[Bing] cashier three is now available" [flashing light]. The lady looked up. She knew something had just happened, but she wasn't sure what.
"[Bing] cashier three is now available" [flashing light]. The cashier waved. The lady looked around like her skull was sat on a rotating metronome.
"[Bing] cashier three is now available" [flashing light]. The cashier then stood up, waved like someone on a desert island attempting to get the attention of a passing ship and said "I'm over here".
This had the desired effect, the lady made an exaggerated 'oh, THERE you are!' gesture and toddled off to the desk. Yes. THERE she was. Number three. Next to number two. Before number four. If you find yourself standing next to a stranger at number five, you've gone too far.

I didn't get to hear what she asked the clerk for as I was then summoned to number one, but I like to think that she then tried to deposit some buttons.