# Work! Consume! Die!

Frankie Boyle

Brace yourself for Frankie’s novel, he’s more outspoken and brilliantly inappropriate than ever.There are fears that this year could see the start of a double-dip recession, or worse still a double-dip-with-misery-sprinkles and f**k-where’s-my-job?-sauce. Why not chuckle into the howling void as taloned fingers reach up to consume you with Frankie Boyle’s book, Work! Consume! Die!In Work! Consume! Die! stand-up comedy's favourite pessimist, Frankie Boyle, offers his outrageous, laugh-out-loud, cynical rant on life as he knows it. He describes your reality as viewed through a bloodshot eye pressed against a shit-smeared telescope, focused on hell:• ‘Charlie Sheen’s life consists of going on huge drug benders with groups of porn stars. If he straightened himself out he could have a really mediocre career as a bit-part Hollywood actor. Playing the role of Martin Sheen’s corpse. He’s crazy like a fox! And also actually crazy. What a tragic waste, not being Charlie Sheen is. How majestic it will be for him to die, possibly quite soon, knowing that when they make a movie of his life, it will be a porno.’• ‘The X Factor will be allowed to show product placements. That’s powerful advertising. Last series I realised that looking at the judges alone had made me subconsciously buy a gnome, a scrag-end of mutton, a vacuous mannequin and a suspected gay.’• ‘The Taliban are running out of bullets. Operation ‘Get our troops to absorb them with their bodies’ is finally paying off. The Taliban are finding it impossible to get hold of essential supplies – at last we’re fighting on equal terms. But let’s not get complacent. Just because they’re running out of bullets we mustn’t assume our boys won’t get shot. Remember, the US troops have still got plenty.’A no-holds-barred tour de force of comic writing, Work! Consume! Die! is Frankie Boyle at his brutal, taboo-busting best. This is nothing more or less than the clanging call to arms of a dying mechanical God.

FRANKIE

BOYLE

WORK! CONSUME! DIE!


Copyright

First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2011

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

© Frankie Boyle 2011

Illustrations by Nick Morley

Frankie Boyle asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

The novel element of this book (identified by the italic type) is a work of fiction. The fictional names and characters are the work of the author’s imagination, as are the incidents portrayed in it. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

The remaining chapters (identified by the upright type) contain previously published material.

p. iii John Dos Passos, Manhattan Transfer © the estate of John Dos Passos; p. 14 Slavoj Žižek, Violence (Profile Books, 2009); p. 76 Hakim Bey, Immediatism, reproduced by kind permission of Autonomedia; p. 76 R. D. Laing, The Politics of Experience © R. D. Laing, 1967. Reproduced by permission of Penguin Books Ltd; p. 94 Bret Easton Ellis, The Informers © Bret Easton Ellis, 1994; p. 122 Raj Patel, The Value of Nothing, published by Portobello Books © Raj Patel, 2009; p. 148 David Icke, Children of the Matrix, reproduced by kind permission of David Icke books; pp. 161–162 Obituary of Jeff Conaway by Ronald Bergan, 30 May 2011 © Guardian News & Media Ltd 2011; p. 168 C. P. Snow, reproduced by kind permission of Curtis Brown Group Ltd; p. 182 Thomas Geoghegan, The Law in Shambles, reproduced by kind permission of Prickly Paradigm Press; p. 190 and p. 302 Terence McKenna, reproduced by kind permission of the estate of Terence McKenna; p. 228 Robert Anton Wilson, permission granted by Writers House LLC as Agent for the Estate of Robert Anton Wilson; p. 252 Noam Chomsky, What We Say Goes © 2007 by Aviva Chomsky and David Barsamian. Reprinted by arrangement with Henry Holt & Co; p. 270 David Madsen, Memoirs of a Gnostic Dwarf, reproduced by courtesy of Dedalus Ltd © 1995.

A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-0-00-742678-2 (hardback) ISBN 978-0-00-742680-5 (trade paperback)

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Ebook Edition © SEPTEMBER 2011 ISBN: 9780007426812

Version 2016-10-17

Dedication

If rape, poison, dagger and arson

Have not as yet adorned with their pleasing artistry

the banal canvas of our piteous destinies

It is, alas, because our soul lacks boldness

Baudelaire

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Introduction

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

What Next?

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Credits

Back Ad

About the Publisher

Epigraph

His stomach turns a somersault with the drop of the elevator. He steps out into the crowded marble hall. For a moment not knowing which way to go, he stands back against the wall with his hands in his pockets, watching people elbow their way through the perpetually revolving doors; softcheeked girls chewing gum, hatchetfaced girls with bangs, creamfaced boys his own age, young toughs with their hats on one side, sweatyfaced messengers, crisscross glances, sauntering hips, red jowls masticating cigars, sallow concave faces, fat bodies of young men and women, paunched bodies of elderly men, all elbowing, shoving, shuffling, fed in two endless tapes through the revolving doors out into Broadway, in off Broadway. Jimmy fed in a tape in and out the revolving doors, noon and night and morning, the revolving doors grinding out his years like sausage meat. All of a sudden his muscles stiffen. Uncle Jeff and his office can go plumb to hell. The words are so loud inside him he glances to one side and the other to see if anyone heard him say them. They can all go plumb to hell.

John Dos Passos, Manhattan Transfer

Introduction

I sincerely hope you will be disappointed by this book. To disappoint, anger and dismay has always been my ideal. Of course I’ve made the book a fairly commercial collection of light-hearted topical comments. This is so I can dismay you further by pocketing a huge advance and spending the rest of my life surfing, reading crime thrillers and fucking.

If I had it my way this book would be an impeccably researched novel about the friendship between Tom, a young white boy, and Jefferson, an old black gardener, set in turn-of-the-century Mississippi. It would possess an air of complete authenticity. The old gardener would have an encyclopaedic knowledge of herbs and their uses, but he would be an illiterate and solitary curmudgeon. He would heal the boy’s broken arm with a poultice and later save his little brother from dying of a fever. Young Tom would convince Mr Bridges, his schoolmaster, of the gardener’s gifts and together the three of them would start to write a herbal encyclopaedia. The three protagonists would come from very different worlds, so there would be a lot of conflict but also a lot of wry humour and wisdom.

After the first 50 pages the reader would wonder what kind of follow-up this was to the jokey autobiography of a panel-show contestant. After 100 pages they would be completely drawn into the world of Tom, Jefferson and Mr Bridges. After 150 pages they would be nervously wondering whether Tom’s stepmother could really have been so spiteful as to burn the manuscript.

For the final 50 pages I would have a description of Old Jefferson surprising Tom in a hay barn and the two of them having brutal, unprotected consensual sex. As he fucked the boy, he would scream about how he didn’t give a shit about plants. Perhaps in modern words, because he was a time traveller or something. His cock would grow to a fantastical size within the boy, and glow and hum like a lightsaber. The boy’s arsehole would start to talk. ‘I clench and unclench just like a vagina’ it would note cheerfully in poor French.

Perspective would shift jarringly to a microscopic civilisation that lived in the hay under Tom’s face. They would be a poetic, romantic people for whom time moved incalculably slowly. Tom’s face would have hung in their sky like the sun for millennia before Old Man Jefferson started fucking him. Its gradual change to a rictus of pain would excite and disturb the minds of their greatest philosophers. Eventually, the glowing tip of a huge black cock emerging from his mouth would cause the whole society to commit mass suicide.

Ideally, the title of the book would be an endless binary number and it would scream when you opened it and then a brawny fist would shoot out from between the pages and rip the nose right off your face. As you fell to the ground squealing, the hand would hail a cab that would run over your head. A passer-by would film your death on a mobile, making it an internet phenomenon. Huge crowds of Japanese teens would gather at stadium events to masturbate each other as they watched it on overhead screens. This footage of your nonchalant and motiveless murder by a book would attract a billion YouTube hits and not a single sympathetic comment. In a million years a super-advanced civilisation of androids would misinterpret the film and you would become a figure in their culture analogous to a paedophile Guy Fawkes.

Through advanced scientific methods they would re-create your consciousness and you would re-live your whole life over and over again, but with all the enjoyable stuff taken out. On the day of your 18th birthday someone would hit you so hard on the back of the head with a polo mallet that your eyes would pop out. Crawling from your burning house you would have your arse clawed out by a mountain lion and when you reached the hospital you would be diagnosed with AIDS of the leg and cancer of your empty eye sockets. Through a synaptic quirk you would have one image frozen in your mind so it was as if you were looking at it constantly – your long-dead Chinese stepfather’s dead arsehole. The only way to treat your eyes would involve, every night just before bed, playing the screams from a horror movie loudly to encourage a wolverine to fuck the sockets. Somehow its stinking cock would numb the holes even as its scrabbling feet shredded your face and scalp. You would continue to re-live this life in ever-increasing detail long after the universe had ended, praying for death to a God who was already dead himself.


I got into comedy because I loved watching comedy as a child. I later discovered that’s a bit like loving burgers as a child and deciding to become a cow. I’ve never found anything in life particularly heart-warming or uplifting. Except the smiles of my children and even those are ruined by the knowledge that someday my children will die, their smiles having long gone as they struggled with the mental and social handicaps they developed from having a cunt like me for a dad. If you want to hear something uplifting go read something else. You are well catered for in our culture; there are hordes of halfwits who want to help you find an upside. One day both you and I will be hipbones and shinbones buried in a box being eaten by worms. You will find no solace here.

Just fuckin witcha! I’ve always had an instinct to laugh at everything, the good stuff, the horror, everything. With laughter comes perspective. You might be scared of the dark, you might be sitting alone in the woods in the dark but if you suddenly heard laughter … no, wait a minute. Some people don’t hold with the old ‘gallows humour’, it’s not civilised, there’s some stuff you shouldn’t laugh about and so on. I think we’re all in this trench together and everything is fair game. Do me a favour. Any time you have a problem with somebody having a laugh, have a think about where your grandparents went, look around and tell me what you think a gallows looks like.


‘Slowed by the grass, the guys laugh as they spacewalk on the suddenly deep carpet’


I’ve been living at the top of a high-rise on the outskirts of Glasgow. I can’t say where exactly but it’s the tallest one in the city. The evening I moved in I remember standing at the bottom just looking at it, reaching up endlessly into the night. The partying windows and the partied-out windows, a punch card for the fifth dimension. One night me and my mate Paul Marsh stop in the wee pub at the bottom of the flats. We’re supposed to be going round to our pal Murphy’s to play FIFA on the PlayStation and have a few joints, but the Celtic game is coming on in the pub and it seems daft to go play football. We phone Murphy to come meet us and after the game we walk down to the high street, Murphy’s elongated frame casting a daddy-longlegs shadow under the streetlamps. I get us all fish suppers and, for a laugh, pickled eggs, ’cause we’ve not had them in years and are genuinely fucking surprised they still happen. We get the lift up to mine to have a few beers and get MTV Base on.

Murphy is banging on about some show called The Game and genuinely can’t believe we haven’t heard of it. Cannot believe it. He’s laughing and shaking his head and chokes as he opens the wee bag with the pickled eggs in. He’s eating the third egg by the time the lift starts and then he realises. He looks up embarrassed with his face stuffed with eggs and says, ‘Sorry guys, fuck, sorry.’

‘It’s OK,’ I say, and fuck knows why but I tousle his hair, like he’s a wee boy. ‘I fucking hate eggs,’ I say stupidly and we all laugh. We’ve had two joints outside the chippy and we’re all stoned.

I’m staring at a football sticker someone’s put on the intercom. It’s Anthony Stokes, the Celtic player, with the bland smile of a waxwork. The smile that a millionaire in his early twenties conjures up for a contractually necessary photograph. Someone has scratched his eyes out with their thumb, really precisely, so with the perforated metal of the intercom underneath he seems to have the eyes of a robot beeman. As we go past the 14th floor the lift gives its usual shudder. Some really bad bastards on this floor.

I dig out some of those big plastic plates I have for when the kids come round, easier to clean. My flat looks like it’s been furnished at a hoopla stall and I just think, fuck this, fuck playing it on the portable telly again, this is nuts. ‘Wait till you see this, lads!’ I yell, rising unsteadily and aiming at the far wall. I’m pressing at the wall and suddenly it flies open with a rattle, not the Star Trek whoosh I’d paid for.

Paul looks up from his chips and still has his hand in his mouth, like a baby. I’m standing with my arms wide and laughing. Behind me – the lights slowly rising – is a massive room going back an impossible distance in Victorian splendour.

It’s an expedition down to the far wall where a huge plasma sits, still paused on a grimly realistic cup game I was playing as Celtic. Slowed by the grass, the guys laugh as they spacewalk on the suddenly deep carpet. The room is the whole floor down one side of the building and I’ve roughly modelled it on a stateroom on the Titanic. There are walnut panels, replica straight-backed chairs, an ottoman and three huge brass floor-to-ceiling portholes. Glasgow in the darkness is just lights.

I take them to the big oak table and there’s the whole estate mapped out in a wax model. It’s a proper belter too. All the local characters are there, wee white wax people, wee wax hardmen and wide-os, and wee wax shopkeepers (I just keep those ones in the shops, you never really see them anywhere). All the wee wax people are mostly in their houses because I haven’t really fucked with it since last night. I notice that the wee Murphy, Marshy and me are all in my flat, right by the table.

All over the rest of the table are notes for the book, paragraphs in longhand on A4, scraps of paper, a stack of little notebooks for sitting in cafes.

‘This the book?’ says Paul, compartmentalising both the stateroom and voodoo neighbourhood with typical élan.

‘Aye,’ I laugh. ‘That’s “War” you’re holding right there. I explain “war”, man …’

It’s like a wee neat pile of stress, those notebooks, so I just mumble, ‘It’s good for absolutely nothing,’ but, like most references, this passes Marsh by. I take the notebook off him and put it back where it was.

‘Some days I think it’s brilliant, some days I think it’s shite …’ I offer over my shoulder while I’m plugging the controllers in.

‘Like having a kid!’ slurs Murphy, but he’s got kids so we all groan at the harshness.

Murphy gets bored of the football. He can never get the shooting right, always just fucks it over the bar. He’s sitting through in the lounge of the real flat watching MTV loudly, as Paul and I fight a gripping series of Old Firm encounters. I play as Celtic and the ref is even biased on the fucking PlayStation, Marshy getting away with several tackles Frank Miller’s Batman would have been proud of.

I wake Murphy up when I’m going to bed and he phones a cab. As I’m saying goodnight to Paul, I notice the wee light flashing on my laptop. David Murphy doesn’t even know any porn sites and has just pishedly typed the word ‘groped’ into Google.

I go into my room and start the big stretching session I always have before bed. No matter how long I do, my legs always ache when I get up. Telegram from Mr Death! He’s sorry he can’t be with you right now! Telegram from Mr Death!


I’m in the middle of a confused dream where I’m married to a Muslim woman who won’t let me fuck her, when I hear the drill of the doorbell. I bang through to the living room and nearly fall over Paul, who for some reason is sleeping on the floor, right beside the couch. As I open the door, I look behind me and check we closed the wall, and when I look back I see two massive cops.

They’re plainclothes, CID or what have you. The older one has those watery eyes some older Scottish guys have, like he’s about to start greeting. In front of him is a man with a side-parting who looks like an enormous schoolboy.

‘Mr Francis Boyle?’ he asks, but it’s not really a question. ‘Alright if we come in?’

All the grass is through in the stateroom, I can see it in my mind’s eye. It’s on the big tarpaulin I put down so we wouldn’t get burns on the carpet. ‘Paul! We have visitors!’ I shout, and he leaps up startled. Literally springs up like he’s part of an ambush, then sits down suddenly on the couch, internalising a massive spasm of guilt.

The two cops are making a show of looking about, like explorers in a bad movie. I make them a cup of tea and we all sit down around the tiny kitchen table while Paul sits rigidly in the other room, too paranoid to leave. I expect some kind of introduction but there is none.

‘This is a fairly unusual matter,’ the younger one starts happily. ‘I believe you know the TV presenter Dom Joly?’

I try to shrug but the mug I’m holding is too full, so it comes over like a twitch. ‘Eh, not really. I met him a couple of times doing panel shows. We did a couple of panel shows together.’

‘Panel shows,’ agrees the older one mournfully, his eyes filling right up like tears are going to start rolling down his face.

‘Mr Joly was the subject of a serious sexual assault over the weekend,’ chirps the other guy. I don’t really register what he says at first. I’m aware that I’m not really saying anything and I start to feel uneasy.

‘Dom Joly?’ I ask foolishly. They don’t acknowledge this in any way, so I say, ‘sexually assaulted?’ and then there’s a long pause.

‘Dom Joly has been sexually assaulted,’ the old policeman confirms sadly. ‘Dom Joly from Trigger Happy TV.’

‘God, I’m sorry to hear that,’ I say, trying for a concerned look and tone. I actually feel nothing or – if possible – less than nothing. ‘He’s a big guy,’ I add puzzledly.

‘It’s believed Mr Joly was drugged, although we are still looking for a physically powerful attacker,’ side-parting confides excitedly.

‘That’s terrible.’ I look blankly at the digestive beside my cup that it would now be inappropriate to dunk. ‘Someone drugged his drink, or …’

‘They somehow got the drug into food served in his dressing room,’ he explains.

‘A Chicken Kiev,’ watery eyes announces.

I feel a rising, horrified excitement. The sort you feel when somebody dies. ‘Am I a suspect?’

They both laugh.

‘No, no, no, Mr Boyle.’ They beam silently at me for a bit. ‘You are on a list of, eh, celebrities we’re contacting in case they may be in danger.’

‘Danger? In danger of, eh …?’

‘Of being sexually assaulted,’ the old guy nods vigorously. ‘Of being subjected to the same kind of sexual assault as Mr Joly … there have been other incidents like this involving other, eh, celebrities.’

‘The suspicion is that this guy has been operating for several years, attacking people who have been famous but then slip below a certain level of public recognition,’ his partner explains, inexplicably ending by smacking his fist into his open palm.

I hold my tea in both hands like I’m nursing a Scotch. I try to think of a polite way of asking, then blurt out, ‘Who? Who else has he raped?’

The old boy flips open a notebook. ‘A lot of the presenters from The 11 O’Clock Show, Tony Slattery, Steve Punt, Sam Fox, Michael Greco, two … no, all three of the ladies from Smack the Pony, Frank Sidebottom, before he died. We can’t really name people.’

‘This has been going on for a while?’

‘It seems to be getting more active. And he seems to be focusing his anger on comedy.’

‘Everybody does,’ I smile.

As I show them out, Paul gets up halfway as some sort of farewell and it ends up looking like a curtsy. They both shake my hand warmly and, as the younger cop heads out, the old guy grips me by the arm and forces something into my hand. He fixes me with the liquid eyes of a dying spaniel and leaves without a word.

Half an hour later Paul and I are still smoking a joint on the couch, passing the picture back and forth. It’s a dressing room. I reckon it’s an ITV dressing room at LWT. In the foreground you can see part of a guy lying on the floor, his trousers off and a huge arse exposed. Is this Dom Joly? Is he fucking dead? Why would they take a photo while he was still unconscious? Did the rapist take it? On the wall is the real focus of the piece. Written in blood (presumably, we agree, Dom Joly’s arseblood) is a slogan in block capitals.

‘SHOWBUSINESS HAS NO BOTTOM.’


Abu Ghraib was not simply a case of American arrogance towards a Third World people: in being submitted to humiliating tortures, the Iraqi prisoners were effectively initiated into American culture. They were given a taste of its obscene underside, which forms the necessary supplement to the public values of personal dignity, democracy and freedom. Bush was thus wrong: what we are getting when we see the photos of the humiliated Iraqi prisoners on our screens and front pages is precisely a direct insight into American values, into the very core of the obscene enjoyment that sustains the US way of life.

Slavoj Žižek, Violence


Chapter 1

It’s interesting that war is the ultimate in reality television and yet the British public couldn’t be less interested. Remember when they used to have to persuade the country to go to war? Fake up a dossier? Remember when they even used to announce a war? Now, it’s just, ‘Hey, we’re bombing Libya!’ Soon they won’t even bother with that and we’ll only find out who we’re fighting when our friends send us a postcard saying that their hotel buffet just got destroyed by a pilotless attack drone, or when we accidentally read a tweet that Liam Fox has sent to Fearne Cotton.

Of course, war to us seems so brutal, so unnecessary. That’s because we don’t own shares in arms companies. Those guys live in palatial penthouses full of shrunken heads and wank to the news. Still, we are members of our society, so we are complicit in what it does.

Look at it this way. Personally, I think we should have much more open immigration arrangements, we should treat asylum seekers fairly, we shouldn’t imprison them and we particularly shouldn’t imprison their children. Perhaps I can hold that view because I live in a country that does the opposite. Because I have the security of knowing that it won’t happen. It’s the same with war. We might say, ‘Not in my name’, but it is in our name, and with our taxes.

We are told we fight consequence-free wars. Drone missions are ‘targeted killings’, of people who have never stood trial. ‘Your judge is this flying bomb, your sentence is kaboom!’ We drop bombs from miles up in the sky and say they are surgical strikes. Ignoring the fact that there is no way to safely drop high explosives into urban areas. That surgeons don’t, for good reason, ever use explosives.

In the UK, as bailiffs cleared out protestors at the peace camp outside parliament, one was filmed stamping on a protestor. And with that one vicious act of violence, the area was officially no longer a peace camp and just another London park. The area is now going to be used as a holding pen for Boris Johnson’s mistresses.

I never understood why men go to war. Then I thought, men have children. The average length of a war is four or five years, which is also the amount of time it takes for a child to stop being really fucking annoying. Men are saying to themselves, ‘Do I want to be here, listening to this wee guy scream because I’ve cut his toast into triangles instead of squares? No, I’ll go join the army. I’ll send him a Christmas video message, when I’m beheaded on YouTube … screaming, ‘How do you want my head cut off then? In triangles or in fucking squares?!’

Reading about Help for Heroes, I think it’s sad that that’s left to charity. Give it a couple of years and we’ll be getting hassled in the high street to adopt a para for £5 a month. There was a story that a legless war hero couldn’t get into a charity ball where he was guest of honour because it had no disabled access. Organisers apologised for the mix up, and invited him to have tea with the Queen – on a bouncy castle at the top of Blackpool Tower! How could we treat a man who lost so much for this country like that? Well, we sent him into an unnecessary war with inferior equipment and a breathtaking ignorance of historical precedent, so it was probably pretty easy.


I really don’t understand the no-fly zone in Libya. How can we designate a no-fly zone and then whizz about it in our planes? It has all the logic of a parent in McDonald’s telling their kids they’re embarrassing them. Presumably the reason coalition forces have been blowing up tanks and buildings is because they’re worried they might take to the skies like migrating geese. Instead of a no-fly zone, Cameron should just parachute in whoever was running Britain’s transport network last winter. British Typhoons reduced some schools and hospitals to barely functioning messes. Not in Libya, over here – at a cost of £90 million each, they’re bound to have.

William Hague said that Britain will stop bombing Libya when Gaddafi stops killing his own people. They’ve managed to turn a war into something akin to a loved-up couple not wanting to hang up the phone first.

‘No, you stop shooting first …’

‘No, you stop bombing first …’

‘No, you stop shooting first … Hello? … Hello? … Are you still shooting …’

‘Yeah …’

‘Oh, you!! OK, let’s both stop killing together … 3 … 2 … 1 …’

‘Are you still bombing? …’

‘Yeah.’

The debate is whether the war is legal. It has brought pain, misery and desperation to hundreds of thousands of people. Does that sound legal to you? To me it sounds like the dictionary definition of the legal profession. Tony Blair phoned Gaddafi twice to urge him to stand down. Apparently, the delusional lunatic rambled on for hours about not being a war criminal before Gaddafi managed to get a word in.

Hague confirmed that Britain is supplying the rebels with mobile phones. That’s incredibly useful. It seems that they’ve been texting us saying, ‘We’re dying. Send guns please.’ I hope we sent them iPhones. There’s a wonderful app for finding your legs in a bomb crater.

People may be wondering where Britain is getting all these free mobile phones from that we are handing to the young radical Muslims in Libya. They’re mainly confiscated from the young radical Muslims that we put in Belmarsh.

An American fighter plane crashed in a field near Benghazi. If you ask me, that was enforcing the no-fly zone a bit too strictly. What a laugh it would have been if it had landed on the house of Lockerbie bomber al-Megrahi. Not that he’d have been in; he spends most afternoons waterskiing.

The Scottish Parliament still argue they did stringent checks that al-Megrahi definitely had a note from his mum asking for him to be excused from prison. The claim is that it was the Scottish Parliament acting compassionately. Scottish and compassionate? Those words go together about as well as ‘Premiership’ and ‘consensual’.

BP lobbied over the Libyan prisoner-transfer scheme. If you’re one of those people who stick your finger in their ears and sing to themselves that Britain’s foreign policy is nothing to do with oil, that must be quite difficult to explain. It seems like the two have nothing in common. It’s like finding out that the manufacturers of Lynx shower gel had been demanding the release of Peter Sutcliffe.

The RAF pilots who flew on a rescue mission to Libya used maps printed straight from Google. Why bother? When I need a map of Libya I use a sheet of sand paper. Apparently, we have been dropping in troops as ‘advisors’. It’s all perfectly fine under international law so long as when they shoot someone they say, ‘I advise you to die.’

The public doesn’t seem to be behind the war in Libya. To engage them, maybe we should tally up the number of civilian casualties and use them as the numbers for the EuroMillions. You’ll have Jenni Falconer in a morgue as Graham, the voice of the dead, reads the results. 6, 22, 11, 4, 9 and, because last night we hit a primary school, 40.

David Cameron said he undertook military action because it’s ‘not acceptable to have a situation where Colonel Gaddafi can be murdering his own people using planes and helicopter gunships’. It also invalidates the warranties the British arms manufacturers sold them with. Amusingly, David Cameron was roaming around the Middle East with arms dealers trying to flog weapons while calling for an end to violence. He’s right. What these places need to solve their differences is more guns. The Tories see Gaddafi as a ‘legitimate target’ for them – after all he is elderly, Muslim and has children.

Gaddafi’s also been accused of using human shields. He’s going to have to do better than that. Our bombs will simply rip through them. He should have opted for steel or concrete. And they say he’s a tactical genius! Yes, it’s horrible that protestors are being fired on by jets, but what a way to go! Fighting a plane! It must be like unlocking a secret level of Grand Theft Auto coded by Raoul Moat.

Both sides have been accused of using rape as a weapon. The hardest part of using rape as a weapon is training the troops. The assault course is a very different thing at rape camp. You rarely see rape squads as part of military marches. You can hear David Dimbleby doing the voiceover at Trooping the Colour. ‘Visiting from Scotland we have the 4th Rape Squad. They’ve been raping for their country since 1935. They’re taking the salute from the Queen. Some of them have broken ranks, and are racing straight towards Her Majesty’s box. And from here, I think I can see a flicker of a smile come across her face.’

NATO says Gaddafi’s reign of terror is near an end – because we will soon have bombed everybody he’s been trying to scare. It’s an interesting policy. We just keep bombing everything around him, but not actually him. I presume if he gets captured they’re going to execute him by knife thrower.

We were told that military action helped to prevent a bloodbath in Benghazi. Thankfully, with our help the bloodbath happened five miles outside Benghazi. Libyans are gathering around military instillations, not to act as human shields but in the knowledge that it’s probably the last place that NATO bombs are going to land. Surprisingly, some people in Tripoli still support NATO. The undertakers. To most Scots, NATO’s just a description of their feet after suffering a decade of Type 2 diabetes.

Is it wise to fill Libya with melting corpses while we look for Gaddafi? He’s increasingly blending in. Gaddafi has a lot of money at his disposal – it can’t have been cheap buying Michael Jackson’s face after he died. He looks like the last surviving balloon from a children’s party. If only he hadn’t hoarded £60 billion abroad. He could have kept say £10 billion, and used the rest to create an unbreachable defence. Right now, a colossal golden robot bear could be lapping up the protestors like ants, its tortured attempts to sing ‘Bear Necessities’ in machine code sounding, to Libyans, like a series of garbled sex threats.

Our various wars are being fought purely to justify a £50 billion defence bill and maintain an army that is grossly oversized for the realistic needs of our country. Ours is the second largest military force in the EU. The last time Britain was successfully invaded was over a millennium ago in 1066. And our military is used to attack not to defend. Some critics of this will say that Britain has been attacked, by terrorists. But we didn’t need an army to prevent 7/7. We needed a bus conductor.

The bombs we’re dropping cost more than the buildings we’re dropping them on. In financial terms they’re winning. First Sea Lord Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope says he’s sure if we’d had enough money to send another warship we’d have finished this conflict. Yes, Sir Mark, and if we had enough money for jobs people could feed their kids. Who’d have thought that a navy as powerful as ours would struggle to win a war in a desert? So we sold Gaddafi weapons and now he has more than we do. How do we get out of this sticky situation? Surely we could launch a product-recall notice?

‘An unfinished surface of the T-72 dashboard could cause a nasty cut. Please return, in person, to the nearest HM warship.’

Why should we believe the opinions of the First Sea Lord? I haven’t trusted him since he told his daughter she couldn’t marry a human and she ended up selling her voice for legs. Also, maybe saying we’re running out of money to carry on isn’t the best way of getting Gaddafi to surrender. Is this the Big Society? We all work for free to save lives while special funding is ring-fenced to kill people? We got stuck in Iraq for eight years, we’ve been stuck in Afghanistan for ten years and, for some reason, we set the timetable for a conflict in Libya at 90 days. You can’t even get a sofa delivered in 90 days.

Gaddafi shut down all internet communications in the country. Which is a pity, as there are always thousands of people trying to get on Freecycle to pick up a coffin. Libya operated tight state control over the media, that’s obvious. The rebels invited Britain to get involved in their war – they must have watched no television at all. Gaddafi banned the learning of the English language in Libyan schools, which is obviously why Libya did most of its diplomatic negotiations with the Scottish government. A succession of colourful noises was all the two parties needed to be understood.

Trumping even Libya, Tunisia had the harshest internet censorship outside of China. I wonder why so few of us knew that? The Tunisian revolution started when a street vendor set fire to himself. Ian Tomlinson’s inquest ended and the British people were watching TV’s Most Shocking Talent Show Moments, which was a revolution in a way, as you didn’t get to vote on what won.

Tunisia’s revolution inspired the uprisings across the Arab world, so maybe all the Arab refugees should go to Tunisia. Put all the exiled revolutionaries in one country and rename it ‘Spirited Arabia’. It will have a lovely climate and be very close by plane, but the customer service will consist of someone shouting, ‘Don’t tell me what to do!’ and shooting into the ceiling.

These Arab states have had to fight with their lives to install a hastily-decided-upon, cobbled-together, temporary government. We did it simply by not bothering to vote last year. The Arab League. It’s not a patch on the Premiership. You just can’t get the ball control with sandals.

It was reported that Leila Trabelsi, the wife of Tunisia’s ousted ruler, left the country with 1.5 tonnes of gold, worth more than £35 million. The joke’s on her, though, as she fled the country on easyJet. Her baggage allowance came to just over £40 million.

Israel killed a bunch of civilians in international waters for trying to bring aid to the Palestinians. According to the Israelis, their troops started shooting because people on the boats threw stones. That sounds proportionate. It’s a bit like, well, someone throwing stones at you and you executing them in cold blood with a team of commandos. ‘20 soldiers airdropped onto the boat from a helicopter’ – what surprised me is, if you type that into Google, you get a Charlie Sheen sex tape.

Israel still claims land rights based on the Bible. That’s a bit like me pitching a tent beside your house and saying I want your garden because it belonged to King Arthur. I pity the Palestinians, who didn’t do anything to deserve what happened to them. Israel should have been given some of Germany to start a country in. Anyway, I’d better leave it there. I get a lot of complaints when I write jokes about Israel, mainly from the Mossad agent who has to update my file.

There’s a real sense of change taking place right across the Arab world as the old rulers are removed from power, making way for a whole new set of ruthless dictators. When will these corrupt rulers come to realise that guns cannot silence the people? Only reality television and talent shows can do that.

The people of Yemen have also overthrown their ruler, and now Syria is trying. The young lesbian from Syria who wrote an online blog was actually a 40-year-old fat American. As I discovered after arranging to meet her in a Travelodge car park. Despite common perceptions, lesbianism is actually becoming a more popular lifestyle choice for young women in Syria, now that all the men are dead.

What are all these Middle Eastern rulers going to do now they’ve been chucked out of a job? Become Northern Ireland peace envoys? Back home, people are asking why other Arab leaders haven’t got involved; given that most Arab countries are currently being ruled by an ‘out of office’ email, that might be a bit of a problem. The leader of the UN wants the world to have one clear opinion. The world won’t even buy the records of The X Factor winners they voted for – you expect consistency?


For all that I in my middle-class, lefty reality tunnel imagine that people aren’t behind Britain’s wars, I sometimes wonder if that’s true. I look at the Top Gear-style news items about the rockets we use, the computer games where we symbolically join in, and I think maybe everybody is right fucking into this.

Britain sent over new Apache helicopters and Typhoons to Libya. Are we just parading what they could have bought had they not decided to make things awkward? Our Tomahawk missiles have a camera on the front, which provides great clip-show footage worth £250 a go to help pad out the defence budget. There’s even talk of a couple of new ships if Channel 5’s controversial You’ve Been Maimed gets the go-ahead. They use the latest sat-nav guidance system, replacing an earlier model where two mice sat in a transparent nosecone yanking at a joystick as they bickered over a tiny map.

Some of our troops are to be issued with special bomb-proof pants. Yes, I can think of nothing that will ease the pain and suffering of grief-stricken parents more after being informed of the death of their son than being handed his perfectly preserved cock and balls.

Meanwhile, US soldiers have started using a futuristic rifle that fires radio-controlled bullets that can travel round corners. Now, they’ll be able to shoot British soldiers without even aiming at them. There are strict guidelines for their use and they’ll only be sold to rogue Middle Eastern states if they’re willing to pay more for them than their enemies.

The US army also wants all its troops to eventually carry military smart phones, with various battlefield apps. The apps will contain all sorts of useful military information, including phrasebooks. Though if you’re out of signal, a bit of paper with ‘You killed my wife, you western devil!’ should cover most of the things you’ll hear.

The US army are putting everything into this. They will have apps with training manuals, and the capability to order new equipment and downloadable maps of all the enemy’s positions. British soldiers will be getting a text message saying ‘Duck!’ Some soldiers are killed when protecting their squad, and some soldiers are killed when patrolling the streets. Future soldiers will be killed by replying slowly to a text message asking if you’ll definitely be home in time for Uncle Alan’s retirement party.

It will take a few years before the technology is developed for every soldier to carry a military smart phone. By that time, they will probably be quite useful because we’ll be placing phones in the hands of the first generation to have been raised by parents with mobiles. And if there’s anything to inspire a lust to kill strangers, it’s being given the object that prevented your mother from looking or communicating with you for the last 18 years.

I’m not sure why they say mobile phones are the weapons of the future? From where I’m standing, it looks like handing every child a cancerous stick of isolation and apathy has pretty much destroyed humanity already.

The US army also wants all American soldiers to have 24-hour internet access. It’s essential for operations that they continue to be anaesthetised by porn and Tekken, even when being begged to stop throwing grenades at a school.

The much-anticipated game Medal of Honor came out but it’s not realistic at all. You’ve actually got a chance of winning, and all the equipment works. The next one, however, promises to be just like the real thing. It takes 27 years to complete and, whenever your character dies, you get a crappy, badly spelt letter from the prime minister.

There was outrage because of plans to let you play as the Taliban. You can’t ban a game that has fighters in it just because they kill British soldiers. What about all the ones with US troops in? I’m quite advanced at it. The thing to do is be the Taliban. Then, when you get to Stage 3, sneak off and hide in a British coffin. Next thing you know, you can be pumping bullets into the till girl at Somerfields in Wootton Bassett.


France and Britain signed a treaty to share aircraft carriers. One week we’ll put nothing on them, then the next week France will put nothing on them. Having a military agreement with France feels like getting help with your school homework from Peter Andre. At a joint conference, French military chiefs told their UK counterparts they were looking forward to the cost-saving consolidation of their respective forces, and the English ones replied, ‘Hello, my name John is what I’m called, and my hobby I am cinema watching.’

David Cameron insists budget cuts won’t affect our fighting capabilities – we’ll keep losing. The army has to lose 7,000 soldiers. Probably the best way to do this is to put them on joint military manoeuvres with the Americans. I’m just worried that with thousands of unemployed troops, and Simon Cowell with a spare £100 million, The X Factor will move into its sinister second phase.

More than a quarter of the civilian posts at the Ministry of Defence will be cut over the next five years, following the Strategic Defence Review. Which will make James Bond films less interesting. ‘Ah, Miss Moneypenny … has gone … I keep forgetting she had to go off and retrain as a classroom assistant.’ Part of the defence cuts is the withdrawal of forces from Germany … Really? Do you think it’s safe yet? Do you think there’s a chance we could return them, only to have an 80-year-old Nazi try to destroy the tube network with a Doodlebug?

The British military are spending £8 million a year on parties. You can imagine how much they’ll spend if we actually start winning any of these wars. And there’s uproar that military bosses are travelling the country by helicopter. Why would they do that? I mean it’s not as if they’ve made it awkward for themselves to travel by tube. One general flew a military plane to Wolverhampton. But I suppose the only way to happily approach Wolverhampton is when you’re watching it through a missile-targeting system.

25 per cent cuts across the board for education, health, social services – yet only 20 per cent on defence? That’s like a family skimping on buying medicine, books and clothes so they still have enough money to catapult shit into next door’s garden. The army admits it’s lost more than £6 billion worth of equipment. That’s the problem when you cover everything with camouflage.

They’ve also scrapped HMS Ark Royal. What does it say about the safe future of our country when the first boat to be scrapped is the Ark? We’re building two aircraft carriers that, eh, won’t have any aircraft on them. Basically, we’ll defend ourselves by threatening hostile nations with a giant floating ironing board. What are they going to use all that space for? Sailors’ hornpipe practice or overflow parking? Why would you build an aircraft carrier if you had no aircraft to put on it? Probably for the same reason that my father built a sun room in Scotland. It’s a very handy place to store bulky furniture. Two giant boats that impotently travel about the world attracting ridicule. How on earth did they decide on the names Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Charles? Everyone is asking what will become of the Ark Royal? It will operate in the same manner as it did before being decommissioned. As a floating gay bar. Only now it will be docked in the Thames instead of prowling around the Persian Gulf in the dark like an old queen looking for trade.

Defence cuts mean fewer weapons – so at least it’s a break for Afghan wedding photographers. You’ve got to feel for them. Just setting up the tripod and in comes a NATO drone. You’ve got an 8 by 10 of shrapnel and body bits, and all you can think to put underneath is ‘The bride’s family’.

A beauty queen joined the RAF in Afghanistan. It’s nice to see someone in modelling who wants to kill someone other than herself. She has realised that there’s more to life than being beautiful. There’s being appreciated for your brave humour as they graft your bum skin onto your charred skull. Jodie Millward was pictured in a red vest and her RAF uniform – and I must say she looks better in blue – so I hope for her sake she’ll die in a gas attack rather than from shrapnel wounds. Most models hate bits of their bodies; Jodie will be able to have those bits shipped home ahead of her rehab.

Fears about women now being allowed to work on British submarines are just sexist – they are just as capable as men. And anyway, under the sea there isn’t as much call for being able to reverse. In the US, women have previously been barred from their subs because it was thought an unborn foetus would be affected from living near nuclear weapons and fuel fumes. It’s now realised that this child would still grow up to be a fully functioning American. Protocol is very different in the navy now. In the old days, a woman entered a submarine and all the sailors would stand. Now, for young male recruits, women being on board will mean they’ll be able to sit down for the first time in months.

Afghanistan has had a massive effect on me personally. Those shares in coffins and Union Jacks have gone through the fucking roof. I could retire tomorrow. According to defence chiefs, we have just completed the ‘first stage’ of the war against the Taliban. First stage? We’ve been there for ten years! What is the second stage going to consist of? Waiting for the tectonic plates to move and change the borders organically? Why is everyone talking about this as if it’s only just started? I’ve got news for the Ministry of Defence. If you thought you’d erased all our memories, it didn’t quite take. You may have to flash us again.

Support for the war in Afghanistan is at an all-time low. A lot of Scottish people used to say that Afghanistan was the only war we really needed to fight. But now that the street price of heroin is so low, even they don’t see the point.

Hamid Karzai won the corrupt election and now has sovereignty over, er, Kabul and a miniature golf course just outside Kabul. In fact, even the capital isn’t secure – they’re thinking about renaming it Kaboom. He beat Abdullah Abdullah, who was unfortunately baptised in a cave with an echo. Karzai’s brother was shot dead by his personal bodyguard. Never mind training Afghan leaders in democracy, we should probably start with interview technique.

The US army had to apologise for photos showing their troops posing with the corpses of Afghan civilians. Generals have been quick to say they’ve insulted the dignity of the rest of the US army. Is that the dignity of pissing on a Koran in Abu Ghraib, or the dignity of dangling from a rope ladder off the last helicopter to leave the US embassy roof in Saigon while your illegitimate children scream beneath you?

The Taliban are finding it impossible to get hold of essential supplies, so at last we’re fighting on equal terms. But let’s not get complacent. Just because they’re running out of bullets, we mustn’t assume our boys won’t get shot. Remember, US troops have still got plenty.

Children of troops killed in Afghanistan are going to have their university education paid for. Kind of ironic that some girls will get highly educated thanks to the Taliban.

The British forces have handed Sangin to US forces. Many middle-class liberals are asking how we can leave these vulnerable people in the care of poorly educated, poorly paid, selfishly driven rednecks? And then they pick up their children from the two 16-year-old work experience girls that staff the best local nursery.

To be fair, British generals do a difficult job. Usually very, very badly. The Taliban are holding us off with regular prayer, and guns they stole from the set of Rambo III. Still, good to see it’s all spilling over into Pakistan. A whole load of nuclear missiles and a bunch of people with different ideas about what Mohammed said. What could possibly go wrong?

The other day I was reading a book about how the Israelis captured Adolf Eichmann (there’s a thrilling intelligence operation to check his identity, then they hit him on the head and throw him in a bag) and realised how little I knew about the Holocaust. In the course of reading up on it I found a collection of pictures – taken at the camps – of people on their way to the gas chambers, which is really something you should be certain you want to see before looking at it. It will remain with you. These are the people fresh from the trains, tired and bewildered. Children sit exhausted at their mothers’ feet as they unwittingly queue to become victims of this monstrous and inhuman crime.

It all seems so remarkably singular, and yet also you can see these sort of pictures every day – newspaper photos of refugee camps, of families in war zones, emergency rooms in Gaza, children from the dollar-a-day world. Some of these people are victims of dictators too, but most are victims of an economic theory, and of our affluence and indifference. Daily, you see pictures of people queuing for death and somehow the worst thing, the very worst thing, is that if you really tried you could do something about it.


‘Aye, it fucking is him an all’


Paul makes me a cup of tea – he’s one of those people who always makes half a cup of tea – and I get my panic list up on email. It’s the only group email list I’ve ever had, one I compiled to announce that my daughter had been born. It included anyone who might give me work. I’d just got home from the birth and knew I was so broke I didn’t have the money to get a taxi the next day to bring her home.

I’m flush nowadays – my company just landed a big advertising contract for an anti-speeding campaign. On dangerous stretches of road we are putting up family photos (the ones you get done in a photographers where the kids have been distracted by bubbles) of the actual people who have died there, over the words DEAD NOW. It’s a suggestion I made as a despairing joke after they hated our other ideas. Everybody loves it. It’s like the fucking ‘Glasgow Smiles Better’ of the post-Apocalypse.

I drag my suitcase out of a cab at Glasgow Central and take my glasses off. I’m trying to buy the papers for the train but I can see fuck all, accidentally picking up the Star, which has a front page about a mystery Old Firm player being blackmailed. I queue and wonder what Lovecraftian practice could set this young pervert apart from his peers.

The woman at the counter goes, ‘What’s with the beard, Frankie?’

I honestly can’t think of a single response. Eventually I say, ‘When I stop shaving, hair grows out of my face,’ and she laughs like I’ve made a joke.

I’m squinting up at the departures board looking for the London train. I’m normally OK without the glasses but some wee guys by the bank machine are nodding over at me. Eventually one of them walks over, stands about 18 inches away from me and blares, ‘Aye, it fucking is him an all,’ as dispassionately as if he’s noting that it’s raining.

On the train I’m trying to do some work on a pitch for tomorrow but every time I look at the screen I feel sick. There’s a slight smell of sewage but that’s normal on Virgin. My stomach pitches. The disabled-passenger alarm sounds continually. Someone thinks they are pressing the flush. I log onto the internet and check the BBC news. The top headline is ‘Prince William is a really good bloke’.

I look through the ideas I’m pitching. I was just going to be doing these for my company, but now I’m desperately trying to think how I can host or be involved.

Celebrity Land of the Giants. Eight of the UK‘s most recognisable celebrities have signed up for what they ‘think’ is a new game show. They are put up in a hotel and wake up the next day. What they don’t know is that overnight our clever set designers have built everything from cars to hedges to paving slabs outside at 10x scale, giving the celebs the impression they’ve shrunk overnight! How will they cope as each week the least practical star is eaten by what they think is a giant spider?

Unbelievably, that is idea number one. The other one is about a celebrity slave ship where young black rappers are made to live as slaves for a week. I can’t focus on the screen without feeling nauseous. Maybe it’s a psychosomatic reaction to this shit? Or the fucking roast-beef sandwich they gave me was so old it’s like a fast-acting poison. I sit watery mouthed in denial for a bit, then run to the toilet and puke loudly. The disabled-passenger alarm is painted red, illustrated with a ringing bell and the word alarm is written on it in large letters.

The young guy across from me recognises me and tries to start a conversation.

‘Feeling sick?’

‘Yes, I just puked.’

The sort of conversation dogs would have if they could talk.

‘Aren’t you Frankie Boyle?’

I put my earphones on and stupidly plug them into the side of my shut laptop. He’s reading a book called Confidence: There are No Coincidences. Confidence is only worth having if you’re not a fucking idiot. Try speaking German using just confidence. Start skiing with confidence and break your fucking neck, you cunt. I wonder why there are so many idiots now and whether in the past the big wars used to thin them out. I wonder if the free coffees are winding me up, or the rapist, or the work.

I look at the ‘War’ chapter of the book. That end bit is maybe everything that’s wrong with the world. Wanting to help but feeling it’s all to do with ‘you’, the ego that thinks it can make a difference is the same ego that wants a new car, praise, pussy, immortality. Still, maybe I’m just being honest, and what I honestly am is an idiot.


In London, I have to go straight across town and into a script meeting. It’s a voiceover thing I’m doing for a clip show, which is a pretty shit thing to be doing, but I get to write the jokes, so that’s something.

I sign the visitors’ book and walk wordlessly past the security guard. In the event of some terrorist atrocity they will have the guy’s signature. There are whole floors of talented people beavering away making shit. An infinite number of Shakespeares producing the work of a monkey.

I’m met by Gary, a tall, spindly production runner who looks like a freakish wind chime or insect king. He leads me to the meeting room, where there’s a pyramid of Diet Coke, and some fresh notepads and biros. During the awkward wait for the producer, Gary tells me at length about his new baby while I reflect that in the wild his mate would have eaten him now.

I sit down and start reading the stack of tabloids that’s in any writing room, whether the show is topical or not. Alex Ferguson is playing mind games. If only he would – telling the opposition that there is a sniper in the stadium, or staging a coach crash then sending out players everybody thought were dead in a macabre piece of gamesmanship.

The producer, Gerry, drifts in. He has the jovial air of a corrupt small-town cop. I’ve not seen him for years and, in the meantime, his face looks like it’s had kids. I go through the intros for the show

Welcome to The Frankie Boyle Clip Show. There’s nothing like being on television. And let me tell you, reading out this shit, to you pricks, for this money, is nothing like being on television.

Hello and welcome to the show that made the Crossbow Cannibal refuse to pay his licence fee. Feels good, doesn’t it, knowing that cock is currently watching video tapes of Minder wishing I had tits and he had a lifespan of 300 years.

‘I prefer the first one!’ says Gerry, and I agree, having included the second one so I had something to give up. I launch into the rest at a pace calculated to delay discussion.

The show that masturbates to the Oscars’ Obituary Montage.

The show that’s laughing with you, not at you. Ahahahahaa! Oh no, wait a minute, it’s at you.

The show of clips you could find for yourself on YouTube. If porn didn’t exist.

The show that three of your personalities only agree to watch because they’re scared of your dominant personality, a murderous lesbian midget.

30 minutes that will leave you sweating like Peter Andre on Countdown.

The show that eats your pussy with neither skill nor enthusiasm.

The show that knows you felt a hand running up your leg on a crowded bus. You grabbed the hand and held it up, saying, ‘Whose hand is this?’ Only to find out that it was your own.

Hey! Mongo! It’s evening. The bright ball of wonder has yet again left the sky, so take your hoof from out your pants and once more suckle at my TV teats.

Hey, friendless! Yes, you! Wipe the dribble from your fleece and once more feast on my distractions. Together we can get you half an hour closer to the dawn of another worthless day.

‘Ehhh …,’ starts Gerry.

‘We only need six or something,’ I interrupt. ‘It’s just intros, we can come back to it …’

We nod, both agreeing to different things.


The first clip we’re doing is of some hugely misguided children’s show from the 80s, teaching yoga to little kids. It’s set on a farm and hosted by a real sandpit haunter calling himself Yogie Okie Dokie. We see him bending the kids into various positions.

It’s amazing how flexible kids are when they’re drunk. Yogi Okie Dokie is only his first name. His surname is Pokey Chokey.

‘Now the lawyers are worried about that … we can’t actually imply that he’s a paedophile …’ Gerry havers.

‘The lawyers?’ I ask. ‘It’s a joke. I don’t think anyone would really think his surname was Pokey Chokey. Or that his first names are Yogie Okie Dokie …’

‘You can’t imply that he’s a paedophile.’

‘Fuck, look at the show. I mean … fuck!’

There’s a clip of that wee toddler that smokes in fucking Papua New Guinea or somewhere.

Of course, he doesn’t smoke any more. He’s dead now. His little brother uses his skull as an ashtray.

‘We can’t say that,’ murmurs Gerry.

‘Why not?’ I ask and open another Diet Coke because maybe this would be easier if my brain were dead.

‘He’s not dead.’ Gerry is getting exasperated. ‘So the lawyers say that we can’t say that he is.’

‘It’s a joke. They’re saying we can’t say anything that isn’t the literal truth? He’s going to sue? He’s out in the fucking jungle. He’s hardly … getting driven on a moped to a clearing where they all sit round and watch fucking clip shows.’

We keep hitting bits the lawyers have vetoed. They have suggested replacements, the lawyers have written jokes. I have met lawyers and these are the sort of jokes you would expect them to write. It’s not immediately obvious that they are jokes.

The final clip is a terrible video about how to use the techniques of a magician to pull women. We type the last joke up in a way that it can be altered if there’s a legal problem.

These are the techniques that Debbie McGee [an older magician’s assistant] warns [a] young magician’s assistant about, before heading home to another night of being sawn in half so Paul Daniels [a magician] can watch her [them] eat her [their] own arsehole.

I suggest that we start the show with me in an armchair, cradling a huge horn. I will explain that not all of the jokes are literally true and that when I say something not meant to be taken literally I will blow a note on my mighty horn. Perhaps we should change the title of the show to The Horn of Balathor.

‘Where is Balathor?’ says Gerry

‘I thought of it as more of a what – Balathor the Green. Balathor the Mighty.’

Another producer comes in and this idea sort of catches fire. Yes, we could call it The Horn of Balathor. It’s only a fucking clip show. Perhaps I could appear at the bottom of the screen when I blow the horn, like the guy on sign-language programmes. Maybe there could be different sizes of horn, depending on how offensive the joke is. There is a clip from the 70s that suggests black people can’t swim. I suggest we do the line:

Of course it’s a ridiculous racial stereotype to say black people can’t swim. How do you think AIDS got to Europe?

And then I come on with one of those huge Alpine horns that rest on the ground and give a blast so loud it would actually blow the speakers on people’s TVs. I’m thinking that will keep me in the papers long enough that my arse will remain un-raped. I maintain to the guys that it could work as a show. Fuck it, it could work as a show, or has my judgement just gone? Yes, my judgement has gone but perhaps I could be right by accident.

I look them both in the eye and beam, ‘Comedy is tragedy plus laughter!’

But I know the fucking thing is not going to happen.


The bright old day now dawns again; the cry runs through the land,

In England there shall be dear bread – in Ireland, sword and brand;

And poverty, and ignorance, shall swell the rich and grand,

So, rally round the rulers with the gentle iron hand,

Of the fine old English Tory days; Hail to the coming time!

Charles Dickens, The Fine Old English Gentleman


Chapter 2

Having travelled a wee bit, I’m convinced that Britain’s sense of humour – the sheer scope and breadth and complexity of our piss-taking – is unique. That’s what I hate about these various joke scandals. They have at their heart the idea that the public won’t be able to decode what was meant by the joke; that even if you understand, other people might not, when everyone here has a PhD in wind-ups.

People are struggling with the whole idea of comedy at the moment. I think comedy is probably a descendant of shamanism. The comic is some guy or gal covered in shit who’d live out in the desert and come roaring into the settlement every so often to tell everybody what was up with how they perceived life. Of course, this made them a pariah.

Comedy is a fictional space. Some of the things the shaman says are true, even heartfelt. Sometimes she says things she doesn’t mean; sometimes she says the opposite of what she means. And, admittedly, she isn’t always good, but nobody is. Sometimes you end up watching Peter Kay, but sometimes it’s Bill Hicks and sometimes it’s Loki.

There are a few problems. One, you get the soul-grinding mill of television, which sees that it can use a few laughs to keep people dumb and distracted. It likes to employ shamans with their eyes poked out. Two, you get some well-meaning types who would like the status of the shaman without the whole pariah bit. They could maybe skip the drugs and keep the status – or even just the cash? Sorry, those are all false paths. The shaman knows that the route to enlightenment is to lose the ego and, what with one thing and another, she’s going to get too much attention to get very far with that. So the joke is on her. The price the trickster pays for her existence is to be, ultimately, the butt of her own joke. Glad I managed to explain comedy to y’all before I died [tips hat].[*]

[*] I don’t believe any of this. The idea of the comedian as shaman is simply a different way for a practitioner to gather status and feed the ego. In man’s original nomadic tribal state, the role of social critic would have been vital in deciding when to move on. Comedians are just the descendants of the guys and gals whose job it was to say, ‘It’s fucking shit here,’ and moan until everybody upped sticks and headed west, into an ambush prepared by a rival tribe, or a barren wasteland.**

[**] This is all bollocks. Comics are sort of the opposite of shamans really. Shamans, poets, priests are all people whose role is to power-up symbols. In our scientific reality tunnel a hallucination might be a manifestation of the unconscious mind. In a shamanic one it might be a fairie, in a religious one, an angel. The comedian is actually there to de-power the symbolic world. With Lenny Bruce, cancer goes from being this big demonic taboo to being, well, just cancer. The best comics are really trying to wake you up from the symbolic world; they’re desentimentalisers, pointing out that those First World War soldiers who had a truce to play football at Christmas probably killed each other the next day, and not even remorsefully but muttering, ‘That was never offside, you cunt.’***

[***] Of course, none of this is really what you would call accurate, but between these viewpoints there is something close to the truth. I think that by constantly undermining and subverting himself a comedian might be able to communicate quite profoundly, by a kind of triangulation. You can’t really ever defend a joke because at the point it’s getting dissected it’s not a joke. Is a dead butterfly in a case still a butterfly? Even a mermaid wouldn’t look too beautiful during an autopsy. This is as close as someone like me can ever get to explaining himself. Do you get it? [smiles hopefully with a brittle smile].****

[****] Look, it’s not supposed to be analysed. You can’t create a space that asks what would happen if we abandoned all the rules and then start saying things are outside of the rules. There aren’t any fucking rules. OK, here’s something that should stop you dissecting comedy, something I could prove scientifically if I could be arsed. Do you know the main factor in whether you find something funny or not? The kind of day you’ve just had.

So, the Tories are back. If you don’t remember them, they were big in the 1980s – like dungarees and white people getting AIDS. The British people spoke, and they conclusively shrugged their shoulders and said, ‘Whatever. I’m not bothered. Him. You. Or the other one. Britain’s Got Talent’s coming on, you sort it out. See you in five years.’ So, we’ve got a new prime minister and, unlike Gordon Brown, this one was actually nearly elected. Obviously, Cameron got straight down to work while Samantha got all of his forehead polish into Number 10. Can Cameron really manage to create social cohesion? I mean, his head has only just managed to create some semblance of a face. Cameron is the youngest prime minister for nearly 200 years, which is odd, because he’s also been alive for far too long.

People who say we shouldn’t have royalty and an elected representative seem to be missing the fact that we have royalty as our elected representative – both David and Samantha Cameron have royal ancestors. In fact, now William is married to Kate Middleton, we actually have an elected first family that have more royal blood than our future king and queen. Do you get the feeling that Sam Cameron is one of the few PM’s wives to consider Number 10 a step down on the property ladder? It comes to something when our prime minister regards his trip to Buckingham Palace as part of his gritty contact with working-class people. He’s descended from King William IV and his mistress. Why did we vote for him? Even King William knew he didn’t want to take him on permanently.

It was claimed that Cameron has a fortune estimated at £30 million. Do you really believe he really gives a flying fuck as to when your bins get emptied or where your rat-faced children go to school? Does he even know how to use public transport? I can see him now, queuing at his nearest helipad, clutching an Oyster card.

For a while, Cameron was on the board of the company that owns Tiger Tiger. This is his idea of how Britain should enjoy itself? Rows of spandex-clad women trying to work out which former reality TV star they are least terrified of accepting a drink from?

Not long after the election, David Cameron and Barack Obama had a historic meeting in Washington and Obama rolled out the red carpet for Cameron. A lovely gesture, but Cameron really should not have tipped him a dollar for doing so. It was a low-key welcome. I feel a bit sorry for the PM. It can’t be good for your self-esteem, seeing a cabbie at JFK airport with a bit of cardboard with ‘Mr Macaroon’ written on it in marker pen. When Cameron first saw a black man standing in a white mansion he thought they were remaking The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.

The PM met with the president face to face, after breaking free from the White House tour group when they passed the door to the Oval Office. Apparently, Obama and David Cameron ‘swapped anecdotes’. That must have been fascinating for Obama. After telling David all about his rise to become the first black president of the most powerful nation on earth, he then had to listen to Dave tell a rather amusing story about going to Waitrose and buying chorizo instead of salami.

Reports also said the men were on ‘Christian-name terms’. Dave calls him Obama and Obama calls him Nick. When David’s in Obama’s company he always has a very serious, concerned, concentrated face – like he’s desperately trying not to fart, but knowing that only minutes ago he ate four catering-size tins of pickled cabbage. He flew to meet Obama on a standard BA flight, to save money. If he really wanted to save money, he should have flown Ryanair. During a recession, it would be inspiring to see the PM pissing into an empty Fanta can, just to save a quid.

Ah, the Big Society. Does Cameron really believe Britain would be a better place if it were run by the public? Have you seen the public? It’s hard enough to get through the laboured and tedious process of getting a pair of trousers dry-cleaned by someone who has been in the dry-cleaning business for 20 years. How’s it going to work when your lollypop man is in charge of a prison?

George Osborne said, ‘Everyone in our society has had to make a contribution.’ And Osborne’s contribution is to destroy our society. Everyone’s going to muck in. First, you can make up for the lack of police by doing a citizen’s arrest, and then – due to the total lack of nurses – attempt to stitch your face back together.

If we really are genuinely all in it together they should disband all political parties and run the country in a true democratic manner. In the past the Greeks used to run their parliament in a similar style to jury duty. You were called up to serve and you did your time. There were no career politicians. It was part of your civic duty. And at least that way everyone in Britain would get one year to do their house up, employ their relatives, make some extra cash on expenses and find out what it’s like to live like a fucking king.

Sir Michael Caine helped the Tories promote their National Citizenship Service, a plan to help youths experience being a citizen of the UK in a non-military national service. Kids don’t need to have their own brown shirt to join, but the names, addresses and occupations of all friends and family are an essential.

The prime minister announced plans for private firms to run more public services. Clearly a good idea. You only have to look at Southern Cross care homes to see that. Thousands of OAPs may be kicked out onto the street after the care-home giant said it was closing. It’s a really distressing thing and my heart goes out to all those unfortunate people who must be worrying that they’ll have to let their parents move in with them. Staff said they’ve been kept in the dark. Something Southern Cross previously only did with residents, having them suckle a sedative paste until their direct debits ran out.

Cameron says he wants to give charities and community groups more power to run organisations such as youth clubs. Exactly how much power do you need to run a youth club? I’d have thought a Sony PlayStation and a box of biscuits, and you’ve pretty much covered all the bases.

Conservative MP and Education Secretary Michael Gove has announced that teachers will be allowed to discipline unruly pupils outside of school. This should allow teachers to be assaulted even when they’re not at work. They’ll end up getting their heads kicked in, and probably their assistant heads too.

More than 100 state schools failed to enter a single person for GCSE history in 2010. Which sounds like a shocking statistic, but bear in mind in just a few years’ time it will have been completely forgotten. Along with the Holocaust and slavery. A report said there’s one bad teacher in every school. Of course there is. They can’t cut PE out of the curriculum altogether.

A teachers’ strike hit over 5,000 schools. Gove wants teachers to work an extra eight years before they retire. But look on the bright side, teachers – you’ll be on holiday for four of them. Maths lessons will be interesting with a teacher who’s nearly 70. ‘If there are two milk bottles on my doorstep and they are joined by another twelve milk bottles, how long have I been dead?’

Luckily, on the day of the strike they also shut the job centres and the courts, meaning Glaswegians could spend the day with their kids. Civil servants, court ushers and teachers – we couldn’t have had more ineffectual strikes if the dead had decided to stop decomposing for a day. But it’s nice for British teenagers to have the day off – watch some Jeremy Kyle, find out what all those girls who left at 16 are up to. The Sun interviewed a teenager from Gateshead who was worried that the teachers’ strike would ruin his future. How will he sign on if he can’t spell his name?

There’s controversy over the ballot, with the government saying that many who voted for the strike were simply marking the fact that ‘Yes’ was spelt correctly. How can it be a 24-hour strike when these people only work until 3.30? Or did they also take the evening off when normally they’d have been getting drunk in the local pub while trying to grope ex-pupils?

Teachers don’t have my complete sympathy. I remember turning up without my kit and saying, ‘I suppose I have to do it in my pants?’ and my PE teacher whispering, ‘That was last time … you’ve raised the stakes. This time you’ll have to do it in my pants.’ The cross-country run was much easier, but I confess the whole arrangement did make me feel a bit like a baby kangaroo.

That strike went against everything the Big Society is all about, which is ‘work constantly for free until you die’. I love the way the media pretends that the erosion of workers’ right to strike is some kind of advance. In the 1970s, we’re told, strikes were the British disease. I guess we’re supposed to be proud that it’s changed to chlamydia. I still remember the last miners’ strike, when a shortage of coal led to a terrifying winter of blind snowmen. Still, it’s clearly ridiculous for teachers to go on strike for a better pension. A teenager will have stabbed them through the heart ages before they reach retirement. Some people defended the strike by saying that it was only one day. Unfortunately, it was the day all the private-school kids got taught how to run banking software and pass the Oxford entry exam.


The General Election was a surprising result for Nick Clegg – he was bounding around Parliament with the joy of a bullied child who’d just changed schools. His first action as deputy prime minister was to make sure Jeremy Beadle was still dead. Never has someone so mediocre been so fought over – he must feel like girl at a Star Trek convention.

The Lib Dems found it very hard to decide whether they were Labour or Tory supporters, mostly because they’re Lib Dem supporters. I mean, had most of them agreed with one of the major parties they would probably have applied to join those parties, rather than spend their career standing at the back of town halls looking disappointed.

Clegg said he wants the British to experience a taste of the Lib Dems in government so that they will be confident to vote for a fully Lib Dem government. I know that reasoning. It’s similar to when you bring home someone for a threesome who smells like a goat.

During the coalition a few compromises have been made. The Lib Dems have had to agree to Tory policies on taxation, immigration and policing – but they will be presented in a nice yellow folder. The Tories have dropped their cap on immigration, but have axed £150 million from the local government housing budget. You can’t get rid of immigrants while you’re cutting social housing – who will we blame? Horrible to see Child Trust Funds have been scrapped. By the time they are 18 our current generation of babies will need that cash to forge their papers and bribe a Chinese camp official.

Of course, the Lib Dems didn’t even get the voting reform that they sold their souls for. The problem with the Alternative Vote was that it wasn’t a real alternative. They should just make the candidates do an It’s a Knockout-style course with their last year’s expenses in 2p pieces in a rucksack on their back. My idea of an alternative vote would be having the option of electing someone who isn’t a cunt.

The coalition is also proposing to cut benefits to heroin addicts. Surely it would be better to send them to Afghanistan. If the Taliban are between them and those opium poppies we might just win. And when Al-Qaeda blows up the Olympics there won’t be a TV left in the country for them to watch it on.

The Lib Dems aren’t totally comfortable with a new deterrent being ordered. But in this new spirit of political cooperation they’ve been given some options by their coalition partners. They can either shut up or piss off.

The Lib Dems say they want to give everyone in Britain the chance to fulfil their potential. What potential does Britain have? If you’re talking about young people, then it means they’d all get the opportunity to release a single, be on Page Three or finger Cheryl Cole. And when it comes to old people, think about your parents. What potential do they have to fulfil? As long as they get their two weeks in Lanzarote and can afford wafer-thin ham they wouldn’t care if the country was run by a military junta of humanoid gorillas.

‘It should be what you know, not who you know,’ said David Cameron’s mate, Nick Clegg. Mr Clegg admitted he feels ‘quite miserable’ that he does not see enough of his three kids. I suppose someone has to work to pay for them to get through university. He’s also admitted he doesn’t want his kids to see him smoking. Luckily it doesn’t bother David Cameron at all. Apparently he’s even put a little ashtray in Nick’s hutch. David Cameron has suggested patches. But Clegg wants to stick with the name ‘Nick’.

Clegg says he and Cameron wander into each other’s offices to chat. Well, Cameron wanders into Clegg’s to chat and Clegg wanders into Cameron’s office to be greeted with a tuft of black hair bobbing behind a desk and some giggly shushing.

Nick Clegg’s popularity’s slumped to just 18 per cent, but David Cameron leapt to his defence, saying he’s a great politician and work colleague. Good move, Dave – never slag off the guy who brings your coffee. Especially if you have froth on the top. Clegg’s even been getting flak for doing the morning school run. I certainly take my lad to the school gates whenever I can. Then whisper in his ear, ‘See all those laughing children? Improve your stitching around the instep and maybe you can join them.’

Energy Secretary Chris Huhne isn’t faring any better in the popularity stakes after he allegedly tried to get off a speeding ban by claiming his ex-wife was driving. I guess he’s got to switch to plan B – claiming that a bomb would’ve gone off in his Vauxhall Nova if he’d dropped below 80. I suspect he was just confused by events. As a Lib Dem Euro MP, when the camera flashed he would have had no idea what it was.

If Huhne really was the one behind the wheel then it could have a devastating effect on the country. Just imagine experiencing the uneasy feeling that maybe MPs can lie. If Chris Huhne deserves any points then surely it should be for dumping his wife for a bisexual woman ten years younger than him. Bisexuals are really attracted to senior Lib Dems – as they’re both a man, and a great big pussy.

The cabinet performance of Vince Cable has definitely convinced me – to have my parents’ euthanasia documentation rushed through. Only kidding. I’d vote for Vince Cable. I did at this year’s EuroPorn Awards.

His speeches about Unions have been peppered with aggressive language, which is odd because he normally saves that sort of thing for his home help, who he thinks is stealing from him. Cable plans to sell off a portion of the Royal Mail but also to hand over a significant chunk of the service to employees. When he does hand it over I hope he does it in the style of a Royal Mail employee, by creeping up to the front door, pretending they’re not in when they clearly are, quietly slipping a ‘Sorry you were out’ card through the letterbox and making them go down to the depot to collect it for themselves.

The business secretary said that by giving them 10 per cent of the company this would be the largest handover to employees attempted in the UK ever. Really? I’m sure almost every employee has stolen more than ten per cent of the business they work for. If the plan for privatisation goes ahead, postmen will get regular performance-related payouts. As opposed to the current system, when they only get a bonus if they hold a torch up to an envelope and can make out a tenner wedged in a birthday card.

The Post Office is launching an evening delivery service. So now there’s a chance you’ll be interrupted while you’re trying to get drunk, as well as while you masturbate. It’ll mean no more postie-leaving-parcels-with-a-neighbour. At a stroke trebling the cost of my Christmas shopping.


Is it too much to ask that we have a fucking opposition in this country? Ed Miliband against David Miliband was the most titanic battle between brothers since Wimbledon 2009, when Serena played Venus Williams. Ed’s victory was wonderful news. We now have a choice of three interchangeable suited drones come 2015. With David and Ed being successful, I wonder if there’s another Miliband brother to come out of the woodwork? Jethro Miliband – he’s got an IQ of 70 and is defined by sexual jealousy, but Mummy Miliband insists he has a role in the shadow cabinet. What’s the future of the party? The only thing we can say for sure is it’s going to be a grim family Christmas round the Milibands. Bit like the one at the Minogues.

Ed Miliband looks like someone who’s talking while having dental surgery. His cum face must look like a widow’s vagina hitting G-force. There are a lot more cheap cracks that can be made about his appearance but I won’t be making them. Not after the trouble the last Down’s syndrome joke got me in.

It was announced that Ed had won and then the next day David made a speech, then the day after Ed’s speech David held a press conference – this is basically the political version of repeating everything your little brother says in a mocking voice. David was the first politician to resign so he can spend less time with his family. He looks like Mathew Horne being slapped in the face with a hammer. As do most of my fantasies. Ed now faces the huge challenge of trying not to look smug in front of his brother. Which won’t be easy, as it will mean having plastic surgery.

Diane Abbott said there was a plot to get rid of Ed Miliband, but I hardly think you can call the next election a plot. Miliband is now so invisible NATO wants to use his skin to cover stealth planes. Embarrassingly, he polled lower than Nick Clegg. That must be like your wife telling you she’s leaving you for an occasional table. Miliband’s approval rating would have been even lower if people had recognised his name.


The Scottish Nationalists had a huge result at the Holyrood elections. If we go independent all the beggars in London will have to be reclassified as refugees. The most persuasive argument for independence is that ‘We’ve got all the oil.’ Have you seen what happens to small countries that have oil? We might get independence but that will quickly be followed by pilotless US drones attacking Edinburgh Castle, being captured by the locals and reprogrammed to find Neil Lennon. Within six months, Alex Salmond will be hanging on a gibbet as David Cameron announces a plan to introduce democracy to Scotland.

We’ll finally have our own customs officers to check that we haven’t brought more than our personal allowance of 18,000 litres of alcohol into the country. Even if we did go independent, what’s the biggest change going to be? There will still be dog shite in the streets. Scottish dog shite. Our pubs will still be full of pricks. Scottish pricks. The only difference I can envisage is that on Saturday nights we’ll watch a TV show called Scotland’s Got Talent. And the winner will be a lassie who can mark a bingo card while having a heart attack.


The population of Britain is projected to grow by almost half a million people every year until 2032. Most of them will be immigrants from Eastern Europe, and a good thing too, as I can’t see anyone from here wanting to give me blanket baths and change my adult diapers for a few pounds an hour. Actually, I’m not talking about the future. That’s just what I’m into.

Iain Duncan Smith gave a speech demanding British jobs for British people. Where did he deliver this speech? From a balcony in a sports stadium shortly before Jesse Owens ran the 100 metres. Asking employers to consider British people for British jobs contravenes EU human-rights laws. Which has upset many Tories. Listen, when your policies are the direct opposite of human rights, it might be time to take a long, hard look at your soul. I confess I sometimes employ foreign labour to write for me and they do a great job. OK, some of the references may be a little off, but if you don’t like it, go whistle at the clay mountain, dragon shoes!

Theresa May says she’s going to cut immigration by 5 per cent, by standing on the cliffs of Dover with no bra on. In future, applicants will have to have a degree, private health insurance and a sponsor, or be able to do at least 50 keepy uppies in front of officers at Heathrow. There will be no restrictions on highly skilled professionals who create wealth, such as entrepreneurs and employees of multinational companies. That’s a weird one, isn’t it? Entrepreneurs are allowed in, but teachers and nurses aren’t. So, if you can work an X-ray machine, it’s a ‘no’, but if you’ve got an idea for Dragons’ Den about a biodegradable chair made out of cheddar, it’s a ‘yes’.

May is also cracking down on foreign students. Because we don’t want intelligent immigrants coming here, just the ones willing to sell us chips and sex. She also hopes to have more police out on the streets. Bad news for muggers, car thieves and blokes not in the best of health who’ve had a few pints and are wandering past a march.

Every time I see Theresa May I can’t help thinking that she looks like a woman going out on the town the first night after she has just finalised her divorce. She’s made way too much of an effort and there’s the very real sense that in two hours’ time she’s going to be crying in a toilet and wearing only one shoe. She admits that tackling immigration is her toughest challenge. Really? I’d have thought her toughest challenge was finding a foundation to match her skin tone that wasn’t solely available for wholesale to funeral parlours.

The BNP have voted to allow non-whites to join. They now look set to have their first Sikh member. What’s he going to do? Move house because he doesn’t want to live in a street with him on it? At least the turban will soften the blows to his head. He said that joining the BNP won’t change him. Although he’s stopped using the toilet and now craps into his own letterbox. Yes, I find myself forced to agree that ‘There ain’t no black in the Union Jack.’ But to highlight the counter-argument for a moment, there aren’t that many red or blue people.

I’ve finally worked out why Nick Griffin is so hated. It’s not just his policies, it’s his face. In particular, the big, mad eye. It makes him look evil. Like a bogus caller as viewed through a pensioner’s security peephole. Simply put, Griffin permanently looks like he wants to steal your granny’s pension and beat her to a pulp with a tin of soup. Look at him closely and you’ll see that he wanders around as if he’s gawping through an invisible magnifying glass – as if looking for clues that might lead him to an Asian’s lair.

After his piss-poor appearance on Question Time I suspect he’ll receive sack loads of hate mail, which will be delivered sometime around Easter. Host David Dimbleby tried to assure the audience it would ‘not just be the Nick Griffin show’. Although I’d love to see The Nick Griffin Show. ‘Tonight’s guests are Carol Thatcher, Ron Atkinson and the restless spirit of Jade Goody.’

Griffin’s political ideology is so confused I can’t wait for the next party political broadcast. He associates so closely with Churchill but is far more in tune with Hitler. Picture the scene. Griffin is made up as Adolf but he screams his speech in a Cockney accent, while thousands of Chelsea pensioners goose-step down the Mall singing ‘Knees Up Eva Braun’. There are Spitfires overhead, emblazoned with swastikas. Finally, we see Griffin, made up now as Churchill, talking to a young Jewish girl. Churchill takes a deep puff of his cigar and says with a terrible German accent, ‘Madam, I might be drunk. But you are ugly. However, in the morning I’ll be sober. You, however … will be dead.’

After Griffin compared Britain’s military generals to Nazi war criminals, he said that the party’s website attracted 77,000 unique visitors. Not that unique, I suspect. I’m willing to bet they all had a couple of things in common. Like the IQ of cat shit and a very scared black neighbour.

A British Muslim who wants to enter Miss Universe has received threats. Perhaps she could just compromise and ask if she can appear once in an evening dress, and once under a big pile of stones.

It turns out we’re all eating Halal meat without realising it. Basically, the animal has its throat cut with a sharp knife. Either by a butcher or, if it lives in South London, it might just have popped out for fags. It can’t be stunned, as followers of Islam are forbidden to consume blood. A revelation that’s pissed off the Daily Express, just as they were about to run their ‘Dracula Was a Muslim’ headline. The advice seems to be if you’re not sure about your meat’s origins, ask supermarket staff. That’ll work. ‘Erm … I’m usually on bread … Mr Richards. Mr Richards! There’s a man here don’t like sausages or somefin’.’

It’s also been revealed that chimpanzee meat is being sold in Britain to eat. Chimpanzees – could they get any more amazing? Are we to believe that they can add being delicious to their other qualities, like being funny and sexy? Before you ask, no, chimp meat doesn’t taste like chicken. It tastes like bananas and tea. I could see this catching on – imagine at Christmas. Instead of arguing over who gets a drumstick, there’ll be enough for everyone to have a finger.

Tesco plan to introduce the country’s first drive-through supermarket. Actually, that’s something Paul Gascoigne tried out when he lost control in the car park of Morrisons after knocking back a bargain bucket of Listerine.

Takeaways are to have their hygiene rating stuck on their doors in stars, from one to five. You put one star on a takeaway door – the rats will just think it’s their dressing room.

The boss of Burger King reckons British women are ugly. I’d like to disagree, but he is an expert on disappointing lifeless baps. How can he say that? The guy’s a clown. No, wait, that’s the other lot isn’t it? He also said the UK was terrible. Yes, some of it is. Burger King, for starters.


Last winter it got so cold that at one point a Geordie was spotted wearing a coat. It was later proven to be a hoax. It wasn’t a coat; it was simply a tattoo of a coat. The freakish snow conditions came as a total surprise to the authorities, for the third year in a row. Philip Hammond, the UK transport secretary, said that he had learned some valuable lessons. Next time he’ll just phone in and say he can’t get to work ’cause of the snow.

There was total travel misery, with thousands of train passengers attempting to reach Scotland and succeeding. Norfolk proved impossible to get to, bad news for anyone needing to bury a body. If you are supposed to be visiting relatives this Christmas make sure you check conditions of the relevant roads. If they’re clear you’ll have to make up another excuse for not going.

People waiting for the Eurostar had to queue for eight hours in the freezing cold, treated with no respect or consideration. Making their planned holiday at Disneyland Paris unnecessary. The queue for the Eurostar stretched for over a mile round St Pancras. Some passengers eventually abandoned plans to go to Paris and had to fuck their secretary on the pavement. The Eurostar was cancelled? Doesn’t it travel in a tunnel under the ground? Are the tunnels crowded with nomadic populations migrating from the new ice age?

Some people waiting for Eurostar became hysterical. How bad is the UK now when people cry because they can’t get to Belgium? Stop bloody moaning. What is more true to the original story of Christmas than taking a highly difficult journey, which puts your wife and child’s health at risk, and ends up with you having to sleep on a filthy floor because all the hotels are full?

Conditions at Heathrow were described as ‘Third World’. ‘Every day little Mr Alan Thomas has to walk 500 yards for water. Down to the gents past Tie Rack and Garfunkel’s.’ Can you imagine being one of those families stuck at Heathrow on Christmas Day? Waking up your 5-year-old to tell him that Santa has been, and he’s brought a ploughman’s sandwich and a pair of socks. Heathrow looked less like a Third World country and more like Heathrow airport exactly 12 months ago.

Apparently a flight to Newcastle was cancelled seven times – although that may’ve just been because the plane itself simply refused to go there. One passenger said it was ‘absolute mayhem’. Weird – my idea of ‘absolute mayhem’ isn’t a load of people sat around looking grumpy. It’s an astronaut indiscriminately firing a custard gun in Debenhams. I was upset that all those flights were cancelled. Anything that slows down the approaching death of the planet is a tragedy in my opinion. The snow caused quite a few injuries round my way. Apologies, but if you will keep saying ‘So much for global warming’, I’ve got no choice but to punch you.

My favourite Christmas game is hide and seek – last year I was undiscovered until New Year’s Eve. People worry about the elderly being lonely at Christmas, but the old woman next to me got loads of cards. They’re piling up on her doorstep since the letterbox got full. People were unable to buy presents due to online stores shutting down delivery. Mainly because people confused ‘some snow’ with a deadly stream of radioactive lava preventing them from walking further than their own door.

It’s definitely worth a deliveryman risking his life on treacherous roads so my missus can get Sex and the City 2 on DVD. Royal Mail postmen did their best to clear the parcel backlog – helping themselves to a couple of packages whenever they knocked off a shift.

Why does everyone always say there’s no grit? I saw loads of grit – granted, it was all in a van surrounded by bewildered council workers. They couldn’t find enough salt in Scotland? Surely they could have flushed the inhabitants of the motorway services onto the roads and opened a few arteries? I’m pleased they haven’t gritted the pavements; sliding into strangers is the only physical contact Glaswegians get.

A great-granddad nearly froze to death when passers-by ignored him after he slipped on ice and lay on a city street for nearly five hours. It’s hard to believe he lay there all that time and nobody stole his shoes. Happily, he got back home, where he’ll spend the next three months being ignored before freezing to death.

The head of British Gas said their profit margins are smaller than Marks & Spencer’s. I think the difference that he fails to recognise is that thousands of old people don’t die every year because they can’t afford to shop at M&S. Despite making £2.2 billion in profit this year, British Gas executives say they have been forced to pass on to customers some of the rising costs of heating their country mansions.


So, farewell then, News of the World. ‘Thank You & Goodbye’ was the final headline. Apparently, ‘You Can’t Sue, We No Longer Exist!’ wouldn’t quite fit onto the front page. If Rupert Murdoch had been allowed to take full control of Sky, it would’ve been great. You could’ve pressed the red button and it’d have given you 24-hour coverage of Gordon Brown’s bins. The whole Murdoch business reminds me of Grima Wormtongue from The Lord of the Rings. Formerly a tenacious-looking, sharp practitioner, whispering poison into the ear of power, suddenly this arch manipulator looks like a fucking Tequila worm.

The politicians, of course, are more like Denethor, whom Sauron drove to despair with images of his swelling armies. Looking deep into the palantír of the media, our leaders thought it showed them reality, when it actually only showed what Murdoch and his like directed their gaze towards.

I’m so disgusted with News International that I refuse to read anything they print. Including my own column in the Sun, which is why I write it with my eyes closed. I say ‘write’ – I mean, I let my cat run across the keyboard and then clean it up with the spell check. If it’s good enough for Dan Brown, it’s good enough for me. Just to be on the safe side, I’ve never given the Sun my mobile number. In fact, every week I dictate the column onto the voicemail of a random victim of crime. Of course, it’s easy to learn the precise details of people’s mobile-phone messages. There’s the high-tech procedure where you hack into their SIM account, and the lower-tech one where you somehow lure them into a giant imitation train carriage.

The hacking story took an explosive twist when it was alleged that the News of the World hacked into Milly Dowler’s phone. The police are investigating – which shouldn’t take too long. Officers, flick back your diaries to 2002 and see if any of the entries read ‘Helped News of the World hack Milly Dowler’s phone’. Some policemen were so sickened by the News of the World that they refuse to even line their budgie’s cage with it. Instead, they are using used bills with non-sequential serial numbers.

Ford cars halted advertising with the News of the World when the Milly Dowler story broke. Nice showing solidarity by ceasing to advertise the one thing that kills the most UK teens every year. Orange and T-Mobile also pulled their advertising. Makes sense – the News of the World had shown their products to be a little flimsy, security wise. Mumsnet cancelled £30,000 worth of advertising with Sky. Money they raised by selling their collected bile to the Chinese medicine industry.

Glenn Mulcaire, who’s accused of hacking Milly’s phone, asked the press to leave his family alone. I’m guessing he then went to look up the word ‘irony’.

Does anyone else think Rebekah Brooks looks like the exhumed Milly Dowler? It’s so sad that the mobile phone of a murdered teenager was hacked into – a life cut short before her natural death from a radiation-induced brain tumour in her 30s. Listening to a murdered girl’s messages. It’s a new low. Whatever happened to the traditional methods of tabloid journalism? Nicking stories from regional papers and doing Select All/Copy/Paste from Britain’s Got Talent press releases.

We celebs must take precautions. I urge any I meet to follow my example and make themselves a carrier-pigeon runway hat. The only tricky bit is training the mouse in the control tower. The News of the World hacked Lembit Öpik’s phone messages – after six months of waiting, they rang him just to check he was still alive. Apparently, Chris Tarrant’s phone messages aren’t very interesting – it’s mostly just people saying ‘Sorry I was out. I don’t know what the capital of Ecuador is.’ At least I know the newspapers will never listen to my answerphone messages, as no one ever calls me.

Rupert Murdoch appeared at a parliamentary select committee and some very important questions got answered. Such as, how hard can a Chinese woman punch a man in the face? Rupert said he’d never felt more humble – which is saying something. He owns the TV channel that shows Fat Families and Gladiators.

The committee room was full of searching questions. Well, apart from ‘Why are you carrying a plate of foam?’ The amusing thing about the incident is that normally, if you want to see an old man, a younger Chinese woman and a cream pie, you’d have to turn to channel 973 on Sky TV.

After the fight, the MPs missed an opportunity by not asking Wendi what her surname was. She’d answer and then they should’ve asked her to repeat it. ‘Deng. DENG!’ And then Tom Watson could have shouted, ‘Seconds out. Round two.’ Shaving foam in the face. What’s the big deal? If you read the side of the can, that’s the manufacturer’s exact recommendation. I could understand the outcry if it were toothpaste.

Before this incident the rest of the world only associated the Brits with Benny Hill. This won’t have helped. We might as well have ended the proceedings with Murdoch pulling his trousers down and chasing his wife around the room while intermittently being slapped on the head by Tom Watson MP. Jonnie Marbles (which isn’t even his real name by the way, it’s Jonathan Marbles) said that he wanted to shove a pie in Murdoch’s face, ‘for all the people who couldn’t’. Well, Jonnie, after your piss-poor attempt, you can now join the ranks of those people who couldn’t.

Of course, Jonnie Marbles should’ve stayed perfectly still – Wendi’s vision is based on movement, just like a Tyrannosaurus rex. After the attack it was difficult to tell if the white stuff on Jonnie Marbles’s face was shaving foam or if Wendi had slashed all the way through to the bone. Everyone’s lost interest in the hearing now and just want to see a UFC cage fight between Wendi and that other high-profile bodyguard, Sinitta.

I actually think Murdoch made quite a good impression. Of a garden gnome in a hospice. I’m starting to wonder if we’re actually dealing with the ghost of Rupert Murdoch. In the select committee I expected to see him starting making a clay pot with Rebekah Brooks. Met police chiefs resigned and Rebekah Brooks was arrested over the allegations. Talk about the pigs and the vultures being thrown to the wolves.

Sir Paul Stephenson was Britain’s most senior policeman – he’s so important he even invented the phrase ‘Evening all’. With Stephenson and Yates having quit, it means a dinner lady called Trisha is now the country’s highest-ranking officer, outranking Rav Wilding and the guy who does the funny noises in Police Academy. In Sir Paul’s defence, on his watch crime in London fell – well, apart from among policemen. After the stress of resigning, Sir Paul probably needs somewhere to relax for a few days. I hear Champneys Health Spa is quite good. What? Oh.

I liked former Assistant Commisioner Andy Hayman’s reaction in the select committee when asked if he took money – ‘I can’t believe you’ve suggested that.’ The fact that it came as a shock to him to be asked if he’d done something wrong gives us some insight into how the investigation might have fallen down. John Yates admitted that he didn’t investigate thoroughly because he had a lot on. Come on, mate, you’re not redecorating the back bedroom – it’s a criminal investigation. Not exactly Columbo is it? Just one more thing – I can’t be arsed to read all of that.

Surely the easiest way for the Met to prove they weren’t being bribed by the tabloids is to point to all the newspaper sellers they’ve killed.

Strange times. If you can’t trust the police, politicians and journalists, then who can you trust? Police officers have been resigning, politicians have been compromised and journalists are being arrested over the phone-hacking scandal. So it’s reassuring to know that their conduct is being investigated by the police, parliamentary committees and the Press Complaints Commission. There really needs to be an inquiry by a less corruptible group, though, like FIFA. David Cameron said the hacking inquiry will widen – or in other words, he shouted, ‘What’s that over there?’ and ran off.

Of course, let’s not forget that Murdoch’s decline will largely benefit the Mail on Sunday and the Daily Mail. Papers whose worldview could best be summed up as mentally ill. I also catch a slight air of monied celebrities and critics telling poor people what they should be interested in. Inequality in our country is so rampant that a big chunk of what was the News of the World’s circulation isn’t literate enough to read a broadsheet. Also, broadsheets are partly about consumption. Who wants to read about box sets, holiday homes and beauty routines they can never afford? Much as the whole thing was hugely enjoyable, I feel a slight prickle on my scalp wondering who might replace Murdoch as an owner, and how many decent billionaires there are around.

It would be great if the tabloids went back to being investigative, campaigning papers, but I think that muckraking and perverse nosiness are actually part of their function. Maybe the tabloids are a kind of Jungian ‘shadow’ of intelligent inquiry, addressing the wearying and disappointing part of ourselves that wants to see who Rio Ferdinand is fucking. The newspaper proprietor William Randolph Hearst pursued a vendetta against Mae West because of the forthright sexual confidence of her work and because he was appalled by how much money she made. Meanwhile, he had affairs and built a business empire. Perhaps we just project hatred onto things we see as embodying what we hate about ourselves, and perhaps tabloids simply embody the worst of us.


‘Haye punches his arm so hard that he falls over screaming’


First thing I do when I get back to Glasgow is I phone this drug-dealer lassie and get some pretty hefty Valium and some acid. We walk round a park for a bit before she hands them over. I’d always felt guilty about the chit-chat with a dealer, trying to hide the fact that you’d just like to buy the drugs. For the first time I’m aware that she is doing the chit-chat but would just like to sell the drugs. I gub two in the local coffee house and everything, the fact I’ve left my bike on the other side of the park, the fact I’ve agreed to do 8 Out of 10 Cats, the rapist, everything is OK. In a way they are all positive developments.

I’m trying to place some short stories I wrote ages ago. My agent is struggling to get me on anything (‘They’re scared’), and tidying them up is something to do. I get a big bag of Diet Cokes and chocolate at the newsagents on the high street.

‘Some rain, eh? It looks crazy out there!’ says the young assistant lassie and I switch into banter mode. A mere observation about the weather turning her from drone snack-parcel conduit into chatty fuck-target.

I sit in the kitchenette and go through the net-checking procrastination I always need to do before work. Some guy has Facebooked me about Tramadol Nights. His daughter is disabled, blah, blah, he’s going to kill me, blah, blah. Of course, I can’t really say that I think some people get sympathy and attention from their link to a disabled person. That (like anything) people laughing about it dilutes the horror but also dilutes the attention those people get. That all the disabled people I’ve met hate those people, blah, blah. Instead, I befriend him on a page where I’m pretending to be a woman and think listlessly about destroying his marriage.

I understand but genuinely despair of people speaking up for the disabled. They have enough taken away from them in our society without taking away their voices as well. People like that sector of society to be invisible. I had a lynch mob on my tail for making a joke on tour that wasn’t disablist in any way and that nobody had heard. Luckily, I’m mature and sophisticated enough to realise that being given a hard time by the papers doesn’t mean you’re a bad person (I’ve read a lot of Spiderman). Rather than feeling prejudice, I’m just someone who doesn’t see why there’s anything that shouldn’t be talked about. I was criticised by people who stereotyped the disabled as ‘weak’ and ‘vulnerable’, something I would never do. People with disabilities are people, just like anybody else and, strangely, that is a real taboo.

We live in a culture where the only time you see someone with a disability is on a freak-show documentary. The Man with an Arse for a Hand and a Hand for an Arse, that kind of thing. Is that really where we’re at with this? Where the Victorians were? I’m generalising, but disabled people are often more fully realised human beings, in that they have been forced to think about the nature of existence a bit more. It’s the ‘average’ person that should be in a freak show. The Man Too Busy to Love His Kids. Show that on Channel 5.


I get a cab down to BBC Scotland studios. It’s brand new and at its centre is a big staircase with bits off it with couches, tables and so on. The idea being that people meet in a village-type way, sharing ideas and energising each other. There is no cunt there.

My company is making a game show for Scottish TV called Dullion. It’s based on a dead-arm game from school. Contestants can win the opportunity to punch their opponent on the arm before they perform a manual-dexterity test.

Kevin Bridges is doing a fine job of hosting it. A gallus local DJ contestant is well in the lead until the other contestant plays her joker, which here is called Hauners. World boxing champion David Haye comes out to deliver the dullion. The DJ is not that bothered, clearly thinking it’ll be a bit of a love tap for the cameras. Haye gets a big laugh by putting in a gum-shield, then punches his arm so hard that he falls over screaming. We make the cunt try to play a game of Operation afterwards and it’s hilarious.


I go home and try to have an early night but there are big scratches on the front door. I think someone tried to break in, so fuck, it’s normal for the area. Then I go back a minute later and they look like animal-claw marks or something.

I take two Valium and try to sleep but downstairs is blasting out cheesy Top 40 pish. I will try to buy downstairs’ flat off them in the morning. I go through to the stateroom and get the model of the guy downstairs and I think I’m cool about everything but I end up holding him up by his wee neck, this tiny wee man, and punching the fuck out of him against the wall.

I used to think that we live in a wedding rules society. Like the way that the playlist at a wedding will be a load of shit records that nobody really likes. Because, while everyone can be disappointed, not one person can be offended. Conversations at weddings have the same rules … conversations everywhere have the same rules. So we all go through the motions, while the DJ plays ‘Born to Be Wild’ and some shit from The Commitments soundtrack.

Sat on my bed feeling the actual throb of those records, the hum of that conversation, like a spider at the centre of a web of banality, it occurs to me that it’s less than that. Most people don’t give a fuck what records get played or what gets said, so long as they can get drunk and have some prospect in the future of fucking a stranger/the wife of a work colleague/a slit they have cut in an uncooked steak.

The guy puts on a Daniel Johnston record and I feel sorry for having hated him so intensely. I remember this old Daniel Johnston drawing of a guy choosing to put on his happy or sad mask for the day. I text a few of my pals and suggest that they come round tomorrow, and we scoff in the face of reality. Stewart texts back, ‘You mean take acid?’ Yes, now that I think about it, I do.


The guys come round and we have a cup of tea and watch Florence and Connell in this BBC Scotland sitcom about an unemployed former metal band called Bitches Buroo, and drop the microdots I scored. It starts as this philosophical, futuristic buzz and when the show ends Stewart goes over and puts Dr. Octagon on the stereo.

Paul has this completely asymmetrical face. He got a bad eye injury as a kid, which exaggerates it, but I start to think how it’s expressive of him, the bit that wants to visit the 23rd dimension and the tense bit that wants to be normal. His face, it suddenly occurs to me as I come up, is a yin–yang symbol.

Stewart is talking about Terence McKenna, who he’s got right into. He starts quoting this thing about how we can choose to enlarge our consciousness or remain brutish prisoners of matter.

‘Yes!’ I laugh, as the acid drips me that loose physical buzz. ‘That’s that quote I used for that HMV thing! They wanted a quote from someone who’d inspired you for a poster campaign at Christmas. I gave them brutish prisoners of matter!’

Stewart: ‘That’s cool man!’

Me: ‘They didn’t use it – they used someone quoting Ferris Bueller.’ I’m overcome with the giggles.

Stewart is grinning. ‘That’s fucked … these fuckers are … brutish prisoners of matter!’

I shrug. ‘I dunno, man. I think you can choose to be amused by the hopelessness of the world. Laugh at every … crass awful thing, it’s like this fucking universal armour! You know that Buddhist thing where they say you can’t choose what happens, but you can choose how you react to it? You can choose to just laugh.’

Paul is struggling badly to make a joint and looks up.

‘“You can’t choose what happens” sounds kind of apolitical … like, laugh at stuff instead of doing anything about it.’

‘I’d love to debate this further but I seem to be losing my mind,’ I interject in an English voice and lurch towards a porthole.

Sheets of rain are lashing down and I feel a surge of excitement. For some reason it looks like it all starts below us, like we’re above the weather system. These flats sway a bit and we’re all standing there, and I know we’re all thinking it’s like a ship.

‘Haharr!’ I turn round roaring like a pirate waving a rolled-up notebook as a cutlass, but they’re laughing and giving me a look like What the fuck?


I’m still kind of high in the morning and go for a walk up the Necropolis. I meet this girl I know walking her dog, and we have a joint behind a gravestone and I start necking her. She starts wanking me off, her hand inside my tracksuit bottoms as I look out across Glasgow, breathing the cold morning air deep into my lungs. I stand up to get a better view and she just stays on her knees, reaching up. I feel like a post-millennial Tom Weir, my face proud and unreadable on a book jacket.

What I think about during the whole thing is Superman. He saw his whole planet die and became this force for good. Batman just saw his parents die and wanted revenge; it was all about him, his ego. Superman saw his whole world die and realised you need to transcend what you want, transcend the ego. Perhaps now, as our world dies, we will be forced to become good, to have perspective, to be Supermen even.

And I know it should feel sordid, this whole thing. But it doesn’t. Even with the dog there, it feels tremendous.


Capitalism only supports certain kinds of groups, the nuclear family for example, or ‘the people I know at my job’, because such groups are already self-alienated & hooked into the Work/Consume/Die structure.

Hakim Bey, Immediatism

From the moment of birth, when the Stone Age baby confronts the twentieth century mother, the baby is subjected to these forces of violence, called love. […] By the time the new human being is fifteen or so, we are left with a being like ourselves. A half crazed creature, more or less adjusted to a mad world. This is normality in our present age.

R. D. Laing, The Politics of Experience


Chapter 3

The old cliché of men saying their partner ‘doesn’t understand them’ comes about because we deliberately look for women who don’t understand us, who don’t understand what cunts we are. Women who have insight? Perceptive women who see through us? We run like hell from those women. No man wants to hear the truth. That after 40 nobody desires you – they put up with you because you remind them of their dad. Don’t hate yourself for struggling in relationships, it’s tough. Only being allowed to fuck one person – and that being the person whose farts you’ve listened to for the last ten years – is the sort of abject test that you would be set in hell.

We live in a society where women are demonised for having children in their teens when they are biologically meant to have them but there is no such stigma for women having children via IVF in their 40s. This is because what we see as the defining factor in bringing up a happy child is whether you have money, not whether you are still young enough to engage in play, or have the energy to love them properly. Still, you can use the money to hire some teenage girl. ‘Tommy! We’ve hired someone who’s fun, we’ve hired someone who likes you’; and she can play with them while you look on exhaustedly with a mug of tea.