Howardsendaway...

And now on Radio Flour, Part 137 of our adaptation of Weasly Marbles's 'The Cochinneille Loaf' by Brainy Berylbidge.

The story so far:

The plight of Palter and Wally, the incestuously intertwined twins takes a further twist when tom-boyish Palter is discovered to be not a muddy kneed little boy, as Great Aunt Ted Nugent had first feared, but a rather promiscuous and well-developed young lady with expensive tastes in nether-garments and an unnaturally advanced nose for a winning hand at gin rummy. Despite the introduction of a lubricant, they are still touchingly inseparable, although now - it's generally acknowledged even by the most conservative elements of Howardsendaway - as filthy lesbians, not a rather dashingly coupled brother and sister.

Back in Calais, Calliperso has broken off her engagement to Hercules, the charming, non-key-collecting prison guard. Turning her attentions to Hercules' dimwitted assistant prison guard, Grimondi, she is able to lure the innocent, demented young understudy into her cell with promises of unlikely acts of contortion and a jar of brylcreem. With her captor lulled into a sense of security and Calliperso sensed into a lulled pair of falsies, our heroine is soon free of her bondage - although it takes her a considerably longer time to get out of the prison cell as her escape has coincided with an unlikely 1970's style power cut. She is reduced to scrabbling around in the dark feeling for her fur-trimmed handcuffs to the accompaniment of Neil Sedaka on a transistor radio. Lighting restored, and finally out of the bounds of her gaolers, Calliperso boards the first ship back to Britain, a tramp steamer headed back to Tyneside. Noticably ravaged and with the grime of the cell still visible about her person, Calliperso brushes up her Geordie accent amid the dank rows of slowly baking vagabonds.

Now read on...

Back at the Yardy Merman, newly redundant and visibly trimmer after his workout on a yacht-simulating treadmill, Hichard reveals that the situation had been on the cards for a month, and that he kept it a secret from the family as he believed he could find another position before his final days at Southern Aviation - although he now acknowledges that the dip in salary occasioned by his drop from highly paid aircraft designer to part-time traffic warden might have made it hard for the family to make ends meet. However, this having not eventuated, or happened, even, Hichard must now rely on his redundancy settlement and the paltry amounts he's able to earn selling close ups of his shaven legs to desperate Polish underwear models for whom, in the current economic climate, it is cheaper to manipulate Hichard's photographs in photoshop than it is to purchase a razor.

Rowenta is angry that Hichard did not confide in her earlier, and she storms from the dining room and proceeds to play her trusty old 8-track cartridge of the Bat out of Hell album at full volume for several hours. Hichard, realising he has handled the announcement badly and, notwithstanding their hirsuteness, wishing he'd handled one of the Polish models instead, endeavours to placate her by donning his trusty old Mata Hari costume and doing a loose-limbed version of The Sand Dance in the doorway of her bedroom to the blaring sounds of Meatloaf emanating from the 8-track cartridge machine by his wife's bed. Rowenta angrily confronts him, demanding to know why he didn’t speak to her before announcing it to the family, although admitting that his new see-through veil does look very fetching. She voices her concern that they once shared their worries, although Hichard is quick to point out that this usually led to both of them being twice as worried as they had been when worrying individually in secret and that he had been wondering if, by the same logic, there was more to be said for sharing their finances instead which could lead to a higher interest yield and, who knows, might even enable them to afford one of those nice flan cases they've been eyeing up for some time and thus never need to worry about carrying flans with them wherever they went ever again.

As the pair exchange apologies, they speculate on their uncertain futures. Rowenta is confident that Hichard will find another job easily, although if he *insists* on going back on the game, she would *much* rather he used his own nylons as he has a tendency to stretch hers and she doesn't want to be waddling about the boatyard like Nora Batty, does she? But Hichard angrily reveals that after a month-long search, he has been unable to find a new position and so will continue to crouch down on all fours with a bucket on his head as he finds this perfectly comfortable and, what's more, he may soon be able to apply for a grand on the rates if he can prove that his position is not liable to abuse by asylum seekers or other such undesirables. Failing that, it's back to the Arts Council.

Hichard reveals he will be unable to find a new aviation role at his time of life, especially now his arthritis is starting to worsen and now prevents him making even the most cursory attempts at the flapping motions so vital in man-powered flying craft in effecting clean take offs and landings. Now that his contacts have melted away upon hearing the news of his Polish leg-modelling expolits, why, he'd be laughed out of the aerodrome without even a thought given to his gliding prowess. He tells Rowenta that he considered an offer in Pretoria, to become President of the Republic of South Africa, and poses the question of leaving Christarrantcestershire altogether. But Rowenta expresses her desire to remain in the area, not to mention her dislike of the South African accent in general, which she's always found too coarse and guttaral, even on the daintiest of men, to enable effective foreplay, to which Hichard counters by revealing he has already turned the offer down on the grounds that his legs will be unlikely to find a suitable tonal match should he ever need to fall back on the day job servicing the region's undergarment modellers. Rowenta is upset that he had already made up his mind regarding a future decision without consulting her, but reluctantly acquiesces because the Antiques Roadshow is just about to start and she has a fiver on the first item being an Edwardian pewter cakestand that will turn out to be worth at least a hundred pounds.

Will Calliperso be able to keep up her geordie accent until the boat docks on Tyneside? Will she be able to keep her boobs up until elevenses? Will Rowenta's dislike of the South African accent prove an impediment too far in her crusade to become the Chairperson of the Commission for Racial Equality? Will Hichard be able to find a gravy powder match for the Cape Colored thigh tone? Find out next week on Howardsendaway...

Recognition at last...

Regular readers will know that we are here at Swipe Towers are immune to the whims and fancies of popular opinion (why else, dear reader, would your humble scribe be typing this kitted out in flared Rupert trousers, a sombrero and a pair of pink, 22 hole Doctor Marten boots as she is if that were not the case?) No, say what you like about us, but we have never courted the good opinions of our readers when we sensed there was more cash in being outrageous and pissing people off with our childish and ill-considered outbursts (usually about Muslims...)

So it came as some surprise, going through the mail this morning, to find a hefty package wherein was wrapped a pre-publication, complimentary copy of the latest edition of Who's Who. With eager mitts, our highly trained staff had quickly figured out the organising principles of the text - entries are filed alphabetically in surname order, apparently - and yours truly was presented with the following entry:

Swipe, Roberta: 1945- Performance artiste, eminence gris, lay prostitute. Author of three highly acclaimed* works of popular music (Madcap in the Attic, Bedroom Burlesque, The One Where She's Garbed up Like a Studiously Ignored Lap Dancer on the Front) and host of long-running and entirely tedious blog (The Roberta Swipe Show) and its sister publication, the podcast of the same name. Interests: Tara Fitzgerald, Bivouacing, Oat-based alternatives to dairy, prostitution. Clubs: Arsenal F.C. (discontinued), Tufty, Six iron. Positions held: no comment. Education: Rhonda Valley School for the Gifted (1957-1971), Lyndsay Kemp school of Pretending to be Stuck behind a Pane of Glass (1967-1980), Harry Palmer Academy of Correct Pronunciation (retired hurt). Family: wife of Robert, no children that she knows of, although there does seem to be an uncanny similarity between Mr. Swipe and the last three winners of the One Thousand Guineas steeplechase. Politics: left of centre Buddhist with anarcho-syndicalist leanings.

*They make excellent draft excluders, apparently...

So, there you have it. Meet the new boss - same as the old boss, only with slightly more eccentric arrangements in the pantalon department.

It won't change me, of course...

Art is...

...a dream in which you're reunited with your parents. You hug them and tell them how much you love them - say all the things you couldn't tell them while they were alive. And when you wake up, you feel cleansed and flushed with well-being and it was as if they were really there and you really did hug them and tell them that you loved them and said all the things you wished you'd said to them when they were alive.

Only they weren't.

And you didn't.

And when you die, all that will linger of that dream you had is this.

Winnigan's Fake...

By Brian O'Edna.

...but that wasn't the worst of it, so it was and what with her having been left to fend for herself after himself was off gallivanting with that flighty one with a bob on herself from down the road oh and look at the sight of her, always giving herself airs and graces and for good reason notwithstanding the mole on her mandible the shape of a Maltese cross and the two of them off at the hobnail factory ball and herself left here all alone in a frigid bedroom with nothing for warmth but a half pound block of state-donated Kerrigold and an inflatable Patrick Kielty - fat lot of use that'd be, what with him being all flaccid and gay and all and all the fuss and botheration of scraping the mould off the State sponsored butter before they could even think of getting down to it - no, she'd rather go without so she would and a bollicking good job of it too she'd make thank you very much and still have a lovely green nob to melt onto the morning macaroon and he could go flog himself and anyway who did he think he was with his firm and county, minty, imperious manner and his County Fermanagh mint imperials - always the cock of the roost no less and keen as mustard - still what could you expect from a man who hadn't taken off his bicycle clips since the great radicchio famine of 1842 and only then because he'd searched everywhere else for the half-eaten Jaffa orange he'd won as a side bet on the Sons of Connamarra steeplechase - oh how they'd shrieked for joy when the steeple crossed the finishing line ahead of the chasing pack - why they'd done it that night so they had to the strains of next door's wireless playing 'The old mottled ferret on the banks of Tra-La-Lee' and oh wasn't it terrible about the banks and all and now what with the cheese reserves having all but run out too whenever would she get to taste the greasy snap of rarebit on her tongue again and there she was once more, a wee slip of a thing half a bite of quartered bread away from the lips of the dandy young fancy Dan from the Gilligan's Turmeric Farm and him having one gnarled and orange-spicy mitt on her thigh while the other nursed the uncocked rifle at his side and her all the time wishing he'd just leave it for a moment, resting against the stump and take her in both his strong arms and make her feel as only a lower-limb amputee could - but that was a lifetime away and here she was now with ridiculous thoughts and catechisms running through her head unchecked, like where was Bono with his feed the world when you needed him and could she possibly bring herself to endorse electoral reform, the flagship policy of a party that had so flagrantly betrayed the electorate by facilitating the most draconian round of public sector cuts ever and flying in the face of almost every single one of their own election pledges? - yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes - no.



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Wiki-leeks...

"Hello, Roberta?"

"Yup, and you are, Madam...?"

"It's me, Jules....you remember....last June. In Stockholm..."

"Ah - of course. *Jules*. How could I forget? Cracking boogie-woogie version of 'Tramp Smash', was it? Just you tinkling the old ivories and me in a pin-stripe lyotard and a bustier made from Mr. Sheen feather duster refill pack, wasn't it? Or was Benny on B.V.s? No, it was the one with the beard - Bjorn? Or am I thinking of Frida? Anyway, I digress. Planning any more Summer Solstice Hootenannys in the Land of the Midnight Sun Jules, me old pal? Count me in if you are sunshine..."

"No, Roberta, I think you're thinking of another Jules. I'm Julian Assange. You know - from Wiki-Leaks...."

"Gor blimey, stone the crows - of *course*! Well I never! So, how are you me old son? And how's the swelling? Those two bits of spare we hooked up with at the after show party *were* a bit of a handful if memory serves. Mind you, I was off me face on Smorgasbord most of that trip, so I shouldn't think anything I could say would hold up in court. And that's not all that wouldn't hold up in court these days, believe me...but I'd prefer it if you could keep that to yourself, obviously. It's bad enough with the all the publicity about me cock-rot, let alone the world and his wife knowing all about my erectile dysfunction. But I thought they'd dropped the charges against you at the time? Besides, isn't it all still perfectly legal in Scandinavia anyway? Not very good for the Emmendel, I'll grant you - but hardly a hanging matter..."

"Look, Bob, can I just butt in here, this is a rather urgent matter...I'd love to sit and chat, obviously but you'll be aware that I'm in somehat of a jam at the moment. Basically, if you've been following the news, you'll know that the CIA and MI5 and Interpol, not to mention half the dodgy P.I.s in the northern hemisphere are all after my ass and, look, the long and the short of it is that I need a *really* *secure* bolt hole - you know, just for a couple of days until all this blows over...somewhere completely out of the public arena where I could get my shit together and, you know, distribute a few zip files to my trusted fellow conspirators without anyone in the world knowing my whereabouts...hello, Bob, are you still there...?"

"...'somewhere completely out of the public arena where I can get my shit tog'....and *somehow*, *I* was the first name to, you know, pop into your head...is that it? Shit....I'm speechless...you randy, conniving, bogus, oriental old cable leaker...Look, you know, I may not have much of a profile these days, but I used to *be* someone *mister*. "I laughed..." You know who said that?? Stewart Lee - *Stew* *art* *Lee*, no less. *He* said that, you know. About *my* blog. (Well, it was about one of the songs, actually - a real tearjerker, I thought, but there you go. 'All publicity...' and all that... Besides, what's *he* done for a while, anyway, eh? Mister Jerry Springer The Opera Mister High and Mighty Stewarty Lee????) I've had stalkers you know... Oh yes. Proper cyber ones with hourly emails until my Venezuelan ex- hacked into the account. You see, there's a lesson for us all there - cyber crime doesn't pay...

So let me get this straight: basically, what you're saying is that you want to come and hang out here in Rothergavenny because you think it's the last place anyone in the the world will think to look for you?"

"...you would be doing me *such* a great favour Bob..."

"...and you promise you'll bring your own tights? I'm down to me last pair after the Comprehensive Spending Review. And they're all laddered...and not in a good way..."

"Pristine 80 deniers Bob, all the way..."

"Why-yiy-oughda...."

xxx
Bob

Taking stock...

Worthless,
Spent.
No currency.

Deflated.

Devalued,
Sub-prime.
No longer tender.

Armour plated.

Not flush,
Bust -
A busted flush.

Zero rated.

Low interest.
Of no account.
A final statement,
Stamped and

Crated.

Post #983...

I just wanted to take this opportunity, as we near the end, to thank those of you who have kept reading me. It struck me today that there was a degree of near bravery attached to your continued presence here - not to mention the obvious elements of masochism and - stop me if I'm a bit near the mark here - perhaps more than a little obduracy. We have something in common, at least; reader and author tenuously united in their shared determination to see this thing through to the bitter end. There's a sort of courage in sharing, however tangentially, the suffering and ridicule of another. Please, don't ever think it isn't greatly appreciated.

As we've adopted so personal a tone for this one, I suppose I might as well name names (or nerm nerms, as we say at home, when we're being silly). Apologies to anyone lurking who's not made themselves known to me, but a hearty thank you to the following: Dave, Rog, Mme. (and for all I know, M.) DeFarge, Jendocino, Kev, so fleetingly he may well have given up like so many others Dickster, purely for old times sakes as I'm sure she is away with the tweeters and having her own life/blog-interface issues, Spinsterella and, how can I forget? All the kind souls over at the Rufus Sewell message board - there, that should get me a few more hits, eh!

And that, I think is it - again, apologies if you have been reading or commenting and are miffed that I've not mentioned you. Contrary to every conceivable appearance to the contrary, I do vastly appreciate anyone having taken the time to have read even the smallest portion of this - how did it ever get this far? - this vast opus. I had it in my mind quite early on that one day these blogs would make a sort of ultra-experimental modernist novel when viewed with enough distance from their diary origins. My apologies that this will test the limits even of such a highly fluid narrative form. But there you go - we can't all be Shakespeare. But then, I guess old Will never got to thank all his readers personally, as I have. That's the trade off.

Thank you. There's not too much more for you to endure...

Post #985...

"...yea though I walk through the shadow of the valley of death..."

It doesn't feel like that right now, as I sit typing this, listening to Susan Sarandon talking about the death of John Lennon on the radio, but I guess that as we enter the home stretch, that's pretty much the truth of it. I used to be petrified of dying as a kid - went into real grands mal about it, much to the alarm of my poor old parents - but the fear has definitely receded since we lost both of them. I guess that it's a fairly obvious reaction to seeing anything up close. Things tend to lose their aura of mystery a bit once they've been absorbed into the repertoire of personal experience. I remember thinking at the time my Mum died that most of us are really protected, shielded from death throughout most of our lives. If you stop to think about it, it's happening all around you, all the time on an unbelievable scale and yet - maybe this is more an urban phenomenon - one really wouldn't know it. Nature seems to be incredibly good at recycling itself. So when you do see someone lying dead before you, there's a certain amount of shock attached to all the other emotions that one becomes a home to. But once that passes, a sense emerges that you've been oddly privileged to see something that, whilst obviously the most universal occurence we're likely to know, is also so deeply private.

I haven't done much reading up on it - as I imagine many people do - just a quick skim of the Tibetan Book of the Dead, which I'm going to put off reading in greater depth until a bit nearer the time. But there was an interesting passage in that about the near-death experiences of the Yogic masters who would induce trance-like states so profound that they would take themselves to the very borderline of conscious- and unconscious-ness. They reported back - with surprisingly scientific detatchment - the same sorts of unbelievably intense white light that are familiar from the accounts of so many near death experience survivors. According to the Buddhist wisdom, this is your soul and if you are mindful and brave enough to, this is the ideal moment to grab it and save oneself an awful lot of to-ing and fro-ing on the old karmic wheel. That's a beautiful thought, isn't it? Seeing yourself as a brilliant supernova of spiritual energy and being reunited with an idea of self one only has the vaguest intimations of during this life. Well, I find it a beautiful idea.

I know many of my readers won't have very much time for the idea of a soul - certainly not in the conventional religious sense - but I think most of us, no matter how ostensibly rationalist, would acknowledge that most of us live, whether they like it or not, with a profound need for transcedence from the mundanity of our bare existence. As an artist, I've always found the doctrines of pure materialism somewhat counter-intuitive. Perhaps this is why, despite my evident socialist leanings, I've always found that that belief system is ultimately only a partial solution to some of the problems of existence. For me, listening to Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers singing 'Jesus Gave me Water (and it was not from the well)' provides something profoundly uplifting and sustaining and without which I would merely be existing, not living; something that no five year plan or food ration could provide.

We're living in a generally soul-less time - the great fusion of black religious and good time party musics that provided the bedrock for so much engaging and confirming popular music from the 1950s onwards has been coralled into a cynically (not to mention violently and misogynistically) marketed 'urban' style that to anyone with less superficial and meretricious tastes is the musical equivalent of someone defacating in a catheral. The structures we've evolved to ameliorate the pernicious grind of modern capitalism - and I'd include in this the church and the labour movement, both of which should have an arm-long list of fundamental objections to the current administration - means the sort of violent scenes we witnessed earlier this week. It's impossible not to sympathise with the anger and resentment of the student protestors; equally impossible to see a way in which the violence will help anyone but the Coalition, ultimately.

But I've digressed. We were talking about death - at least the fictional treatment thereof. The best, though still unsatisfactory, attempt is obviously Sterne's in Tristram Shandy. Death for Sterne is a plain black page. It's a brilliant conceit and as a death-fearing kid, I had the same apprehension; the extinguishing of consciousness, absolutely and forever, well, it *had* to look like that, didn't it? But what if consciousness does not die when the body does? Supposing our essence does not perish but rather, just changes its form; the way the light that goes out when you extinguish a candle doesn't disappear, the light disappears, perhaps, but it leaves behind a wisp of dancing smoke. This is, I might add, an observable fact. Science, even? Oh well, that's another essay, I think! Anyway, in about 15 posts, we might have more of an idea...

Roberta Swipe: an appreciation...

by Lucy Ellmann...

"WHAT?"

"Oh *PLEEEEAAAAASSSSEEEEEEE!!"

"No WAY mistah!"

"Aw - come ON"

"NO! *AND STOP SENDING ME FAN LETTERS!!!!!*"

That's pretty much how it goes with me and Roberta - sorry, with Roberta and *I*. I take it as a perverse proof of integrity - a kind of badge or honour, if you like - that I receive crazed fan mail from one source and one source only: M(r)s Roberta Aloysius Tinkerbell(e) Swipe. I mean, I wouldn't MIND. I really could live with it in fact. If only there weren't so many. In fact, there would be a sense of acievement in having plumbed the depths - or, depending on your VIEWPOINT - scaled the heights of obscurity. Were it not for the smell. I like perfume. Wear it myself, indeed. I like SOME perfumes an AWFUL lot, if truth be told. On a woman, perfume is NICE. But used subtly. Not quite so OVERPOWERINGLY as certain admirers of mine seem to like dispensing - DISPENSING? POURING the stuff on more like, to paper. And then there's the CONTENT...

I received my first letter from Roberta Swipe in about 1990. It seemed fairly harmless at the time - so much so that....and I need hardly tell you that this if one of THE most regretable things I've ever done...IN MY LIFE - I even sent her a reply. On nice purple paper, no less. With a photograph enclosed. Of me. And that seemed to do the trick; appeared to satiate the star-struck scribe. But then, one day almost 15 years later to the day, another envelope landed on the welcome mat of my then-publisher, bearing a familiar hand.

...And dream of (electric) sheep...

An interesting
piece in last
weekend's Observer.
We certainly seem
at some point in
the last few years
to have crossed
a rubicon of some
sort and are now
emerging, blinking,
disoriented and
slightly apprehensive
from one technological
era and into another. It's
probably too soon
to give it a name, but
one senses from the
overall thrust of the
Observer's predictions
that it will be one of
increasing plasticity;
of food, culture, environment
and, perhaps most unnervingly,
of the human form itself.

In short, to get a flavour
of the world we'll soon be
inhabiting if the Obs's
crystal ball gazers are
anywhere near being on
the money, you could do
worse than reacquaint
yourself with a few frames
of Ridley Scott's Bladerunner.
It all seems to be in there,
doesn't it? The increasing
confluence of eastern and
western technologies, high
tech, blaring-neon consumer
capitalism operating just
beyond the reach of an almost
medieval favella teeming with a
gene-bending peasantry.

Our only hope, perhaps,
in this world of nano-nurtured
replicants squabbling over their
allocation of protein pills is
that somewhere in its margins
some of the spirit of the little
man fighting against the odds that
the author of the original book
so often eulogised will somehow
have survived. A favoured technique
of the science fictition is to take
emerging trends and push them to
their (il)logical limits. But will it
much longer be possible to devise such
narratives when society itself
seems to be pursuing the very course
that was once the preserve of the
speculative imagination? It won't be long,
surely, before Philip K. Dick's Do
androids dream of electric sheep is
being taught as a classic example of the
proto-realist school pf literature?

xxx
Bob

With Gaddaffi downfall looming, the Hollywood offers start to roll in...

Gaddaffi: "Duck... Soup! (Geddit??? Gaddaffi Duck. Please yourselves...)


As the world waits anxiously for the denouement of the crisis in Libya, Hollywood executives have lost no time in positioning themselves to secure the services of the country's embattled Colonel Muamumumumumwah! Gaddaffi. Fox and Miramax are currently involved in a frantic bidding war to land the controversial totalitarian dictator/unpleasant but ultimately necessary bulwark against Islamic fundamentalism for a new biopic based on the life of the much loved American comedy genius, Groucho Marx.

Groucho: "You'll be hearing from my lawyer just as soon as he's qualified..."

A spokesman for Miramax made it plain how highly coveted the hardman of North African politics is. "First up, it's the hair", Fox production assistant Benzedrine Cliffbalaster told our correspondent. "It's real cinema dynamite. Not many people can train it to do that unruly wavy-even-though-you've-smarmed-it-down-with-brylcreem-and-several-hours-worth-of-combing thing that made Groucho such a unique and iconic screen presence, but we really think we're onto something with Moo-moo-moo-mwah! But it's not just the hair; we reckon the kid can act too. He's funny too and had our emissary in stitches when during our first face to face with him - hell, he even got a few laughs out of the old fingernail pulling routine! If we can just coach him to walk as if he's trying to get under a three foot high pole whilst comically shaking his cigar, we'll have hit cemedy cinema paydirt!"

Gaddaffi Jr.: "Led Zeppo"


But Gaddaffi's son, Seif al-Islam - who, incidentally, is a strong contender to land the role of Zeppo, the legendary fourth Marx Brother in the same production - hinted that the Libyan Leader might be holding out for a higher offer than either of those currently tabled, which might open the way for a shock move into televison. "Dad is highly honoured to have been asked to play the role of Groucho Marx who, even though with a name like that he's almost certainly a Jew, has been a huge favourite of my father, and a very important influence on his life - particularly in the area of foreign policy and cigars. My father knows all the gags - 'I've had a wonderful evening, but this wasn't it'; 'There ain't no sanity clause'; 'Love goes out the door when money comes innuendo'; 'you can lead a horse to water, but a pencil must be lead'....no, hang on - that's Laurel & Hardy. Whatever. He can do a great Stan too you know, that bit where he raises his bowler hat and teases the hair up and starts blubbing. Honestly, he's a real scream! But seriously; Dad's also a huge fan of contemporary American small screen dramas such as The Wire, Six Feet Under, The Sopranoes and Madman. You know, much as he'd love to have a crack at playing Groucho, I think deep down he sees himself as a bit more of a Don Draper and we think we're beginning to get the executives at HBO to see things that way too..."

Draper: "I'd rather stay here with all the madmen..."

Cameron urges 'back to back to basics' approach as new revelations shock Met....

David Cameron has launched a valiant last ditch attempt to reunite the warring ranks of Tory MPs by once more claiming the moral high ground in British politics. Stung by claims from some quarters that he's a 'clueless, chinless berk' who has 'lost it', Cameron met reporters and delivered an impassioned plea for his party to 'go back to back to basics'. Speaking from a remote hillside retreat in Tuscany where he's currently holidaying with the people who actually run the country, the PM recalled the spirit of John Major in an attempt to reignite the flagging Conservative party flame.

Seated behind a protective cordon of security guards cunningly disguised as 'ordinary people' but all of whom look more like the 'synthesizer with a strap' player in some bloated and tedious German soft rock band on a very bad hair day, all with massive erections, the Prime Minister urged his party faithful to revert to tried and tested means of delivering electoral success. 'Look, I'm not gonna kid you that this is gonna be easy' said a tanned and relaxed PM in between taking sips of champagne from a glass proffered between the rear cheeks of a loyal fag, 'but it worked for John Major and it might just work for us.' Warming to his theme, Mr. Cameron continued, 'I know, I know, you're all thinking "this is a bit rich coming from you, you boss eyed liberal toff. You used to bang on about 'detoxifying the tory brand' and called your faithful foot soldiers "swivel eyed nazi cunts", but please, hear me out.

It might seem hypocritical to launch a moral crusade, especially at a time when we're turning a blind eye to all the highly dubious stuff we've all been asking the police to do for the last 20 years. Adopting the identities of dead babies and getting all manner of commie pinko slapper bitches banged up just in case they give us something we can rely on in court when they reach the moment of crisis, despite being married with kids themselves might not seem like the sort of thing we should be condoning, let alone paying large amounts of public money for in these supposedly austere times. (Another jeraboam of the Krug please Anatol, this one's ever so slightly on the tepid side). I certainly hope they didn't do that with mine - or use our dead baby's identity for that matter. And let's not even go there with the hate campaign we've been orchestrating against those poor people the Stephen-Lawrences. But, hey, come on - we're the Tories! When has a bit of complete and utter hypocrisy ever bothered us if it means we can lord it over the lower orders and appeal to enough lobotomised louts in the Midlands who think the sun shines out of Norman Tebbit's jacksy to win the key marginals?' Besides, if it all goes pear-shaped - as now I think of it it did when John Major tried the same trick despite having half his cabinet bonking one another and him not being averse to a bit of Edwina Curry himself (and who can blame him, I say?) even then we'll virtually get a Tory government in any case, regardless of who wins - just like we did in 1997."

The Prime Minister fleshed out the announcement in familiar fashion with a more detailed list of policy initiatives that had hastily been scribbled on a piece of recycled scrap paper, and referred any difficult questions to which he didin't know the answers to the Deputy Prime Minister, himself holidaying with a troupe of Burlesque artistes and high class call girls in Mustique.

xxx
Bob

Loss...

Love, love, love.

And loss.

The most recent.

I found the calm, still centre of myself and things were fine. And then we got a cat.

How do you describe a cat? How do you describe a hurricane? Oh you can make a stab at the outward manifestation of it; the markings, the little rabbit's feet, the infinite ground pepper flecking of his beautiful coat. You can draw up the generic idea of a swift rotating V that sweeps up towns and motorways in its path. But you can't see the force that drives it any

George...

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.

T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets. (1935-1942)

Highbury bore me. Oh, alright; Hampton bore me, if you must know. The Bearsted Memorial Hospital, 17th April, 1965. But we'll come back to that, I'm sure.



Highbury may not have borne me, but there is a North London connection. My Mother's family moved over from Belfast to a house at 497 Archway Road (I think) some time in 1953. Mum would have been about eighteen. Mum's father, Robert George Knight - known as George - was a painter and decorator. He invented a tool that helped you paint up to the skirting board called, appropriately enough, The George. It was patented, I believe. I never met either of my Grandfathers. Dad's father - like him, a Joseph - had died before they were married and George left his wife (my grandmother) Sarah - everyone called her Sadie - for another woman shortly before the same big day. My Mother banned him from the ceremony I believe, so distraught was she at his infidelity and subsequent departure. He's notably absent at Sadie's side here on August 29th, 1959 as the wedding party spills out onto the Archway Road from the Methodist Church on the corner of Jackson Lane.



Liz, Joe and well-wishers all eagerly awaiting the news of the Arsenal's 3-3 draw with Wolves at Molineaux...

My grandmother was a frequent presence in our home as my sister and I were growing up, so we never really heard that much about grandfather George and I suppose I just assumed him to have been long dead - which, if my Mother's attitude to him was anything to go by, he pretty much had been from the day he packed his bag.

Sometime in the early seventies, my grandmother (that's her to the left of her daughter, the bride in the photo above) moved out of 497 and took a small flat above a sportswear shop on Green Lanes, just by Haringey Station. From the window in the small kitchen at the rear of the flat you could just about make out Haringey Stadium where there used to be dog racing and, some time in 1973, the tail of comet Kohoutek just visible flying into the away shirt yellow of the sunset. In January 1975, I went with my Dad from that same flat to Highbury to watch my first game; a pitiful 1-1 draw with lowly York City in the third round of the FA Cup. It was a short tube ride from Manor House to the Arsenal. It felt like what I suppose it was; a second home.

Dad had been a fan of the club since childhood. He'd grown up in the afterglow of the great Gunners sides of the 1930s, possibly even going to see them play Brentford at Griffin Park in the Inter-war league or cups. The first game of football I remember seeing was the televised 1971 FA Cup final between Arsenal and Liverpool. It was another George, Charlie, whose spectacular winning goal and famous cruciform collapsing celebration of it that captured my heart and imagination that day.



My sister has left me some family photographs for safe keeping and I spend much of the Bank Holiday Monday going through them. Here's Samuel Crawford, born according to his death certiicate, "about May 1880", with his son-in-law George, in a photograph probably taken somewhere around Brookeborough in the very north of Ulster where the Crawford's family home was.



Whilst I'm looking among the documents in the loft for my Mum and Dad's marriage cerificate, I come across those recording the deaths of mum's side of the family. There's Samuel's and my great grandmother's. Sadie died in 1982 - only a year, I notice, after her long-lived mother (and my mother's namesake). Elizabeth Ann Crawford, nee Bullock; was born in 1885. She was born a year before Arsenal was formed. And then I come across George's death certificate and I realise that I've never bothered to check when he actually died. I feel my chest tighten a little when I see the date; 22nd May, 1971. So I could have met him, but never did.

It felt very strange, coming down from the attic with that thought - like losing something you never even knew you'd had. And the strange symmetry of football, of winning and losing - finding a new George only to lose another two Saturdays later. And that game, which had until then been a fixed, unyielding point of reference; a pole star by which I could navigate my youth suddenly veered off, Kohoutek-like; no longer a reliable crutch for the time-ravaged memory; now that whole month has splintered into a kaleidoscope of uncertainty. How much had my Mother known of her father's illness? Had his death come out of the blue? Why hadn't I picked up on her grief - if, indeed, she'd shown any. And if not, why not? How had the woman who through all of her life had proved so extraordinarily forgiving and charitable towards others been unable to extend those virtues to her own father? Had he gone peacefully, like my father, in his sleep?

Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.

In the garden, late May, serene and tranquil, untroubled by the sadness of the world, I hurl myself down in a cross on the grass; a double winner, a Georgina glittering in the youthful sun. For weeks this goes on, months; all the pleasure of the world encapsulated in one goal, one timeless prostrate celebration.

Out there, in another world, another May, another George lies dying, lies dead.

The Urghers...

...and now, it's time for our weekly round up of goings on in Umbridge with The Urghers...

'TUMTY-TUM-TY-TUMTY-TUM-TUMTY-TUM-TY TUM TUM....'

Anthea is causing quite a stir amongst some of the Umbridge locals with her new comedy breast shaped hotpots, although Maurice is unimpressed and Tom says he'll stick with his ‘overpriced convenience food’ thank you very much even though Anthea has promised to model a pair for him if he still thinks that he'll find anything to match them in the ready meals section of the Umbridge Asda all of which is a bitter blow to Maurice and Jazzer who have decided to give up collecting eggshells for Mozambique and were going to start collecting Fray Bentos steak and mushroom pie tin foil lids for Uganda, blissfully unaware that Anthea has secretly bought up a job lot of them to customise with glace cherries which leaves Eddie to admit to Ruth that he still has concerns about Joe who, even with his calliper off, is a shadow of his former self - although he did prove to be a natural in the midfield holding role for the Umbridge XI before getting stupidly sent off for cything down the opposition's centre half who was though on goal with only Joe to beat by using one of his crutches and he's now worried that his three week suspension might mean he's not even able to make it to the micro-brewery visit, which poor Jim is really looking forward to as only a recovering alcoholic can, though Maurice is surprised when Lynda approaches him for the eponymous leading role in the Robin Hood production playing Friar Tuck but is quick to denounce Lynda’s big plans and says he has no inclination at all to make his debut now unless he can take over from Jazzer in the role of Maid Marion, using a split down the middle Friar/Tart costume in the style of the late Tommy Cooper, an idea to which Jazzer is beginning to come round to when Mike, who is awaiting results of a sputum test following the death of two calves is relieved to find out that the results are positive - it was definitely sputum - but when Alistair finally stops by with the good news Caroline and Oliver are unsure how to react especially as Joe’s rejection of their compensation offer has left them feeling that, although on the one hand, an increased offer could put an end to the whole scenario; on the other, a renewed offer could put an end to the whole scenario, causing Joe’s solicitor’s to push for more than just a printed apology in the Umbridge Argos and a large portion of chips and we'll say no more about it but just as they're beginning to come arould to the idea if he'll throw in a pickled egg each, Caroline is further set back when she finds out Kathy will be leaving the Health Club, taking all of her creativity and expertise with her along with several exercise bikes, a dozen treadmills, four of those rowing boat type seats and her complete collection of flat screen television monitors all of which leaves Helen feeling overwhelmed.

'TUMTY-TUM-TY-TUMTY-TUM-TUMTY-TUM-TY TUM TUM....'

The Idiot...

The Ballad of Russell and Roberta...

The scene: Day three of Roberta and Russell's Bed-in at the Amsterdam Hilton for a Slightly Less Iniquitous World Order and already the boredom is beginning to set in....)

Rob.: So, run me through this Bed-in for a Slightly Less Iniquitous World Order thing again....

Rus.,: Well, basically babes, we are opposing a tyrannical and illegitimate archetype that guarantees, prima facie as an inevitable function of its paradigm, rampant global inequality and has no moral legimacy whatsoever and by lying here in bed as we are in our cosy Imperial sized bed at the not inconsiderably expensive and luxurious Hilton Hotel in Amsterdam we are striking a *damaging* blow to the empirically unsustainable power elites of global finance and the world moneyed elite. Plus it's nice to be able to catch your breath once in a while in between hosting all those awards ceremonies and just chillax with a likeminded old babe-buddy....

Rob.: Ah, that's sweet! OK then. So, we're in Am-ster-dam! That would explain those breakfasts. What's with the ham and cheese at this time in the morning? And ALL that BREAD? I mean, I like a slice of slimsea every now and then as much as the next woman, but this is beyond a joke. And that heavy brown stuff with the millet on it - that *is* actually edible is it? Only I've been using mine to keep me pumps from sagging. If you find a slice on the shagpile, I'd give it a miss if I were you - it might be one of mine. Sorry, I've digressed. What were we talking about...?

Russ.: ...opposing a tyrannical and illegitimate archetype that guarantees global inequality and has no moral legimacy whatsoever and striking a *damaging* blow to the empirically unsustainable power elites of global finance and the world moneyed elite....*kind* *of* important....

Rob.: Oh yes, that. Right. Well, obviously I'm right behind you - well, right *next* to you, just to make that clear to the watching world media... - on that. Absolutely 'shoulders' Russ. Bloody peeve me off they do, those banking wotsits and the whole global whatjermacallit of inequalitous erm...farragos...no, hang on, he's that UKIP chappy. But yes, right on, bro/sis, to all of that. I'm just not quite sure what we are going to do about it all just by having a slightly lengthier than usual lie-in in a very plush Amsterdam hotel, is all....

Russ.: Well, it's *media* *exposure* babe, obviously Darling! Just think, there won't be a *single* newsdesk on the planet that won't want to put two gorgeous squire/ettes like us lying provocatively draped together 'neath silken sheets in a *known* global hotspot of depravity and debauchery - sorry, I didn't mean to spit on you...here, use my cravat, that should get the worst of it off. You can use the rest to slick your sideboards back. Just because we're lying in bed for a week doesn't mean that you have to lose *all* semblance of basic human hygiene you know. I mean, how long have you had those socks on - oh no, hang on, it's a bit of Stilton from breakfast that's got stuck in your calliper. I'll ring up for some tweezers from room service in a mo...we're getting low on the Moet front anyway. You've made me lose my thread here. Where was I? Oh yes. The media. See, normally, a stunt like this would just be some boring way of getting publicity for a new movie or gameshow or autobiography or something, but this is *completely* *different*. See, we're making ourselves look *absolutely* *ridiculous* for world peace....or whatever it was I said earlier....see, it's you with yer bloody mindless interjections about breakfast throwing me off my stride. I had it all figured out a minute ago but now all I can think about is avoiding your improvised shoe expanders cobbled together from items of traditional Dutch breakfast comestibles. Honestly, no wonder the poor world's in such a state...

Rob.: I can kind of see the logic of it where you're concerned, but what about me? I mean, I don't have *anything* like your profile. I can't even get Lucy Adams to friend me on Facebook - and she's been in the same room as Chris Effing Patten for crying out loud. You'd think she'd need all the friends she could get. And I went to junior school with her...

Russ.: ...you went to school with Lucy 'Loosey' Adams....?

Rob.: Why certainly. Look here....what does that say on the top left of the middle leather calliper strapping....?

Russ.: [reading slowly, as if trying to make out a well aged motto scratched into worn leather] 'Roberta, you is such a MING. Luv Luce H...'

Rob.: She used to kick away my sticks too...

Russ.: Don't put yourself down babe - you're a vital part of this team. I mean, what would I do without your songs?

Rob: Yes, and before you start on about it, when I said that was the last time I was going to fart 'I'm forever blowing bubbles' into a punchbowl of Drambuie breezers, I meant it...

Russ.: No, I mean *your* songs...

Rob: Oh right, ta. Oh yes, which reminds me, I've had an idea for another one - in fact, a whole ruddy LP we could do to cash in on...I mean, commemorate our glorious struggle against the paradiddles of globular inequusness...

Russ.: Go on...

Rob: Well, it would be called the Wedding Album and all of side one is just one track with us saying each others names in a variety of silly voices for half an hour...you know, 'Roberta.....Russell....Roberta....Russell....Roberta!!....Russell!!!!!............Roberta?....................Russell???.....'

Russ.: ...yes, I kind of  get the concept babe...

Rob.: ...and we could have a pretend slice of wedding cake and a facsimile of the certificate and....here, Russell.....stop rubbing up against me like that....'ere.....are those twenty deniers you've got on....Rus-sell!! Ah, Jesus, do we have to go through all this again. I'm still waiting for the stubble rash to subside from the last time. Oh go on then, but don't get snagged on me calliper again...and tell that lot with the cameras to look away....

Paul Davis

I actually went to school with this guy and he's finally made it!

Which is a good job, because he owes me some moolah.

Check him out by clicking on the words that comprise his name.

It's a Coooooool site!



Love on y'all,



Bob

Sir Harrison Birtwistle's Indespensable Guide To Contemporary Music...

This week: Drum 'n' bass

How do,

As ye know, I'm a plain speakin', Accrington born laddie me and I doesn't care to mince uz words. Ye'll get none o' the sort o' fancy Dan fripperies ye would from yon poncy Southern Music critics from this un. (Most of 'em are right bloody pooves an' all, like as not). No, I speak as I find me, call a spade a spade and if ye don't like it, happen as like ye'll know where tha's can shove it!

Anyroad, this week I've listened to yon Drum 'n' bass music and quite frankly, if ye want t'truth, I'll give it ee straight: I've never heard such a flamin' racket in all uz born days. It's bloody murder on tha' eardrums - worse than bloody Peter Maxwell Davis (if ye can believe that!) I was fair near tearin' uz ears off after the first couple or three bars, it were such a cacophony. Tuneless bloody racket it is, I'm not kiddin' ye. Happen as like yon young uns'll go doolally o'er it but if y'ask me, it's nowt but a bollockin' pile of old shite.

Let's be havin ye,


Harry
This week: Franz Ferdinand

How do,

As thee know, I'm not one t'shy away from plain speakin', me. I'm an Accrington born laddie and proud o't and uz doesn't care t'mince uz words. I like t'shoot from t'hip, does I. Thee'll get none o' yon meally mouthed blatherin' and a-mitherin' from this un. None o't'pompous peregrinations and regurgitated bourgeoise platitudes of yon poncy, la-di-da NME journalists from this un, thee can count on't. No, I speaks as I find me, calls a spade a spade and if tha doesn't like it, tha's can take a flamin' hike and take tha beggarin' wife with 'ee!

Anyroad, this week I've listened to yon Franz Ferdinand and, if thee wants t'truth, I'll give it thee straight, no beatin' round t'bush: thez are a shower o' feckin' shite if ever I did hear't. What a flamin' racket! Never heard such a pathetic heap of codswallop since uz did t'first run through of t'Orestia at t'flamin' Festival Hall with yon twatting one-armed conductor. Cacophony? I'll give thee bloody cacophony. I've heard more sense comin' out me own arse after one of t'wife's stout and mushy pea pies than out of yon singer's bloody gob. Thez make t'bleedin' Gang o' Four sound like t'Nolans and no mistake. By heck, I'm not kiddin' ye - I'd rather eat uz own shite than have t'put up wi' yon caterwaulin' again. And jest t'put t'bloody silk cap on't, yon singer's one o' them fancy Dan bleedin' Southerner Guardian columnists an' all. Bunch of pooves thez are, and no mistake. Tha'll not get this un wi' uz back to 'em for a kick off, I can tell thee.

Happen as like yon young uns'll go doolally o'er it but if tha asks me, Franz Ferdinand? Thez nowt but a bollockin' pile of old shite.

Now, get away with thee before I teks uz bloody belt to thee,


Harry

The boy with the hole in his heart...

The scar was a zipped up fly of blistered skin. It ran for about six inches down the middle of his chest. It was as if someone had taken an iron to some worms and a passion flower and then a translucent skin had been allowed to form over the resulting mess. Most of our scars were visible back then, his was just the most apparent and the most extreme. There was a spina bifida boy with crutches and a calliper in the year below and another sturdy girl with a stiffening fixture on one leg, but their manmade buttressing somehow seemed to make them less, not more fragile. We were all always getting cuts and grazes, but they mostly came from falling over. The knees of Ian Davis and Brian Nederhoff in particular seemed to be perpetually scabbed or bleeding, bleeding or scabbed. Tall and gangly Big Birds, they both seemed especially prone to going down. A strange mustard coloured ointment would be daubed on to the blackcurrant jam of their wounds and somehow, soon, everything would be alright, their tears become smiles once more. But nothing as extreme had befallen us as had the boy with the hole in his heart. You didn't get a scar like that just from falling over.

We didn't call him the boy with the hole in his heart back then, of course, but Pharoah Kid was Pharoah Kid even then, only rarely to his face. It was just the way our minds worked, I suppose. His unruly shanks of growing out ruffian crop hair were abstracted into a crude, linear, side-on Egyptian caricature. In much the same way, the boy with the hole in his heart was The Milky Bar Kid owing to a passing similarity to the kid from the TV advert which, now I think about it, didn't extend too far beyond them wearing similar round framed, high magnification spectacles and both being kids. But it seems right to call him this new name now, to turn that lifelong reminder of a childhood hole in the heart operation into the stuff of metaphor. Because now we too know a little of what he went through. Our hearts have all been yanked out, pummelled, probed and prodded, put back in and the wounds, however poorly, however ineptly they disguise the trauma undergone, have been stitched up. There were no surgical gloves, there was no anaesthetic for us though.

And then there was Harry. That strange meeting at Kefalinnia Airport. The odd rightness of that Greek setting; him returning from the Island of Odysseus which we'd observed for the previous two weeks from our lazy poolside, unaware that he had been secluded there somewhere on one of Ithaca's rugged boobs. Harry, still the quiet centre of it all, his fame and renown even greater than when I could claim to know him. Those Ustinov locks hoary now but deserving of the laurel leaves they always seemed to be requiring then. But so sad now, and lost looking, with Sheila gone. And me, my Mother living on through me, perhaps, inhabiting me, something anyway making me become the compassionate, concerned 'good with people' son - perhaps the man she'd hoped one day I would become. The past healed, then, in a moment, with that firm and more meant than was ever said hand clasp and his straight in the eye, sincere entreaty to 'take care of yourself'.

The past is healed. It can be written now, with love. Because I tried before to write it but there was still anger in my heart. But now there is no room for that. Not with so many gone. First Bill, my Mum, then Dad and now Sheila. Only Harry and Jo-Jo remaining now of all our parents. How can there be room for anger? What is it Larkin says? 'All that survives of us  - remains of us? - is love'. And whichever it is, that's true. 

All that is left is love. Love, love, love.

Thank You Mr. Howesey...

For being Europe's premier bass-playing train driver...

Oh, and for this:



I've only watched 250 times so far....


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© 2007 Swipe Enterprises

Delete blog option #1,468...

Controversial self-styled web terrorist and housewife superstar Roberta Swipe has died at the age of 48 in a state-sponsored Bed & Breakfast in Norfolk of an unspecified groin ailment. It's the second time in as many months that the barely known and much-despised contrarian author of 'My Life in the Bush of Tights' and other spectacularly unsuccessful (not to mention unpublished) works has taken her own life in a failed attempt to drum up some semblance of a readership. Swipe, once again, leaves behind a harem of fictitious celebrity wives due to her belated conversion to Islam/a partially successful sex change - the harem is thought to include Bette Stove, Tara Palmer Tompkinson and Lyndsey de Paul to name but eight. However, under stringent new anti-terrorist laws the actual names of the estimated 412 concubines cannot be published, only communicated by semaphor at night within a 12 mile radius of Hartlepool. Swipe's Tabbyssinian cat, Monty, was once again unavailable for comment.

Tributes to the much mourned (not to mention deceased) broadcaster and wit have been pouring in from across the blogosphere. The grief-fuelled outpourings of Titty Abimuss, author of the popular, mildly erotic and highly instructive 'Girl with a One Track Mind' blog were pretty representative. 'Roberta was a much misunderstood artist who even bore a vague resemblance to a normal human being at times', wept the celebrated author who is frequently wheeled out at random by BBC news 24 and so on to pontificate on all matters vaguely related to the internet (or sex - so she'd be a dead cert for sex on the internet stories, actually, now I gthink of it) in a lull between youthful sexual partners. 'She didn't help matters much by writing in Swahili and changing the address of her blog every five minutes, but I for one will very much miss her, if only because she was actually quite a dab hand at spelling words such as chlamydia and such like that I often have a problem with - and before you get all snooty, you try leafing casually through a Chambers concise when you've got half a hundred weight of key grip going hell for leather with a chamois over your private portions in the back of a catering trailer...'

The news of Swipe's repeated demise comes at a time of growing concerns over internet freedom. 'Roberta was many things - and most of those involved wearing badly laddered pantyhose and rather too much foundation - but at least you knew where you stood with her; usually with your back firmly up against the wall!' commented Van Istski, rhythm guitarist and farfisa organist with popular post-punk trio the Labial Tizers. However, in a move designed to placate his angry europhobe backbenchers, Prime Minister David Cameron is said to be considering a public beheading and massed booing of Swipe's corpse as an example to others. A Downing Street insider opined, 'this Swipe bint is a tremendous example of the harm that an unrestrained and feral internet can do. These people can say whatever they please and it's often downright offensive to someone or other, somewhere on the planet which is, if you ask me, unspeakably beastly. And I should know, I frequently fagged for Nicholas Soames so there's little I don't know on the subject of unspeakable beastliness, I can tell you. Skidmarks like tractor tryes is only the half of it, ducky. Now, all we're calling for is sensible regulation and light monitoring so that we know exactly what everyone is writing at any given time and can intervene to have them locked up in order to stop anyone who might otherwise try to blow up our citizens from being offended.'

For reasons of national security, the Roberta Swipe Show blog will be closed down at midnight tonight.

Bobcast #79

Eddie, are you kidding???? Listen, download, ignore here...

xxx
Bob

Velma...

velmavideo from Robert Swipe on Vimeo.

xxx
Bob

Transvestite Pop Star Hacked to death in Second Brutal Hacking to Death Incident...

Robert Swipe, the transvestite Pop Star and self-styled 'First Lady of Web Terrorism' has been found viciously hacked to death by Islamofascist Global Terror Suspects in his West London home. Swipe, who up until his untimely and sensationalist murder was trying to kid the world that he was still only 45, left behind several wives, one viciously carnivorous but ultimately lovable Tabbyssinian cat and two half-eaten Snickers bars which, in typically contrarian style, he insisted upon referring to as 'Marathons' right up to the bitter end. At a hastily arranged press conference/champagne buffet and reception held in the back of the Prime Ministerial limousine, David Cameron made the following statement:

We condemn in the strongest terms this vicious and unprovoked assault upon one of our Nation's most expendable stand up comedienne's/talentless pop wannabees. Robert Swipe may have been typical of his class; a decadant, amoral loafer with all of the ambition of a demotivated sloth suffering a major existential crisis and about as relevant to contemporary British society as a vaguely racist Lance Percival 45 rpm disc, but he was often completely harmless and had, to his credit, as much intention of voting UKIP as my wife and I have - although of late Samantha has, worryingly, begun to make some rather alarming comments about asylum seekers and 'squeezing the cripples' until the pips squeak'. Much as I would like to reassure her that both of these are indeed very high on the list of current Government policy priorities, I have to be very careful of what I say in public in case the Deputy Prime Minister finds out. Robert will be sorely missed - not least at the ballot box in the forthcoming Eurpopean elections where - I won't lie to you - we need every single non-UKIP vote we can get our hands on, no matter how unsavoury and morally dubious some of the lifestyle choices of these grimey little toerags might be.

The circumstances surrounding Swipe's brutal hacking to death with a saracen sword-style machete remain surrounded in the usual bogus fug of obfuscation that surrounds carefully orchestrated symbolic state executions masquerading as random atrocities aimed at spreading fear and terror amongst an otherwise docile and harmoniously co-existant multi-cultural society. However his murderers are believed to have broken into his bijou West London home in a fashionable part of Feltham (nowhere near the terrorist hotbed Young Offenders institute) and savagely hacked him to death in a vicious and brutal manner. The terrified perpetrators then beat a hasty retreat to await arrest in a crowded nearby street, posing for photographs whilst telling the rapidly swelling crowd of onlookers that, rather than voting for UKIP at the forthcoming European Elections, they could send an even more powerful message to the Coalition by agreeing to be swallowed up by a new Caliphate sweeping its way majestically across Europe, from Southern Spain to the Russian steppes, with the Eurozone being effectively replaced by a return to the feudalism of the Middle Ages. 'You'll be begging for the EU to come back by the time we've finished with you', one of the murderers is supposed to have informed Adam Boulting before helping himself to a bourbon biscuit offered to him by the hastily convened Sky outside broadcast catering unit.

Swipe's widows, Sophie Rayworth, Michal Hussein, Wendy Hurrell, Emily Maitliss, Kirsty Wark (Kirtsy Wark???) and Tanya Beckett (Swipe converted to Islam in 2006 precisely in order to take advantage of its more liberal attitudes to polygamy) are convinced that their former husband (and lover) was the victim of a shady collaboration between the CIA, the British Government and the laughably incoherent and ineffectual assortment of so-called terror cells grouped together under the supposedly terrifying umbrella of 'Al-Qua-bloody-eda'. "We want the truth about Bob's viscious hacking to death by Islamofascist Global Terror Suspects in his West London home to come out", said Bob's harem of wives in a carefully worded - not to mention synchronised - statement. "We know the CIA and 'Al-Qua-bloody-aeda' have been in cahoots since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and have now forged a mutually beneficial 'enemies of convenience' arrangement  that allows both parties to benefit from massively inappropriate levels of funding from their government and the Saudis respectively. This may be convenient for the organisations themselves, the military/industrial complex, the global power balance and News International, but we have lost a much-loved husband and a tender and giving lover not remotely fazed by the complexities of pleasuring multiple newsreaders in the 24/7 digital information age. A part of us died with Bob and we now have only our vast collection of sexual aides and Trevor McDonald to comfort us at this most difficult of times."

Bob's cat, Monty, was unavailable for comment...

xxx
Bob

2012 Games Hit by Savage Coalition Cuts...

The prestigious London Olympics set to be staged in summer 2012 could become the latest high profile casualties of the ongoing cuts sanctioned by the Liberal Democrat and Conservative coalition. Seb Coe, himself a high profile tory supporter, was the first London 2012 official to break ranks and come out in public to condemn the government for extending its austerity programme to what had been hoped would be a joyous sporting occasion.

"I'm fecking livid!" Snapped former middle distance champion Coe, in between taking swipes at a punch bag with a photograph of Steve Ovett sellotaped to the top. "We're hoping to lure the word's finest athletes over here for a wonderful athletics tournament when all the time the rug is being pulled from under our feet by those cowardly politicians. First they let the anti-cuts protestors abscond with several thousand quid's worth of Boris Johnson's hire bikes (sponsored by Barclays) and now they've told us that the games won't be exempt from the cuts either. It's a rotten shame as we were hoping to use the bikes for the Cycling pursiut in our lovely new state of the art Velodrome - or flipping bike shed, as it'll no doubt be by the time Cameron and Clegg have had their way with it."

"And that's just the start of it", continued Lord Coe. "How's Hussein Bolt going to feel when he turns up and finds there's only enough cinder track laid for him to run the 50 metres?

We're only making plans for Nigel...

Exciting developments here at Swipe Towers. As many of you will know, I've been a long standing opponent of Britain's membership of the European Community - well, you know me and foreigners! Never have got on with them - especially the French! And don't start me off on the Germans... what was it Tom Lehrer said?:

We taught them a lesson in 1918 ....
...and they've hardly bothered us since then...

Erm, *hello*!?

So you can imagine my unbridled joy when I get a call from UKIP leader Nigel Farage asking if I'd be interested in appearing in or doing the voice-over for their next Party Political Broadcast. 'Just try and stop me, Nige!' I chortle down the line as I rifle though the old wardrobe for a suitably exotic tweed three piece - well, you can never look too stylish for voice-over work, can you? 'Indeed, I can go one further,' I tell him as I run the rule over a rather dapper pair of plus two and three-quarters that haven't seen the light of day since my last tour of the 19th hole with Alice Cooper back in the heyday of his peak time 'A round with Alice' pro-celebrity golf and wine tasting televisual spectaculars. 'If we're really going to build on the solid start you chaps have made in the recent local election and really start powering on to become a major force in British politics, you're going to need to get your social media campaign sorted, and PDQ. Now, don't take this personally Nige, but pleasant old cove as you'd no doubt be to sup a couple of tankards of fiercely independent British ale with in the snug bar of the Dandelion and Artichoke, I'm guessing you don't know one end of a Twitter from a Joined-up FaceTube, am I right?' There's a cascade of pooterish snorting from the other end of the line. 'Right-ho, Nige - leave it to me.'

Well, we've all got to play our part haven't we if we want to drag this sad and begraggled country kicking and screaming from the mire of Federalist craziness, Health and Safety straight jacketing and Political Correctness gone mad and back up to where it really belongs - in the 1950s. I mean, don't get me wrong, I've nothing against your average Nigerian or Somalian. No. Indeed, some of them have been amongst the most reliable domestic servants I've ever had the pleasure of fining a week's wages for dozing off in the larder whilst on kedgiree stirring fatigues. The sun shines on Englishman and wog alike, who could disagree with such a basic, noble sentiment - after all, is not such a progressive notion of brotherhood and commonwealth the very foundation stone of our blessed and eternal Empire? Exactly. I'm no racist - indeed, I'll take my sturdiest 12-bore to the first curmudgeonly rascal who dares suggest I am and have them publicly horse-whipped by the Royal Hussars' finest into the bargain. No, I'll happily break bread with any tint of darky, be it in Nairobi, Lagos or Mogadishu, once the forced repatriations start.

So I'm straight on the old Skype contraption to my new buddy from across the pond, the startlingly witty and (I'm sure she won't mind me saying) rampantly horny, hot piece of ass, Kelly Oxford. Kelly and I first 'bumped into one another' on Twitter. I was immediately drawn to her no-holds barred approach and her mastery of the pithy put down. Indeed, she was able to sum me up in as little as 9 characters. I felt she was perhaps a trifle lazy with the 'camp' bit, but the 'cunt' was certainly spot on... Kelly's in mid-tweet when she comes on the line. 'I'm just Barrcking Obama' she tells me. I didn't realise that legalised that too, not so soon after allowing sodomites and lady poofters the right to the old matrimonials. Strange country. Always has been.

Now, I know what you're thinking - this Kelly Oxford dame might have the anglicised name and look like as English a rose piece of pereipheral eye candy totty from the aristos of reality dramas, Made in Chelsea as you could ever wish for, but isn't she (forgive the non-PC terminology) a septic? Yes, yes, yes, I see the irony and - if they haven't bloody banned that too - if you'll forgive the industrial expression; what the bollocking hell if she is?

Look, it's impossible to disentangle the history of our beloved isle from that of its more illustrious former colonies, would you not agree? Similarly, our destiny has been forged -and for the better I'll have you know - by many a former colonial. Without the likes of, to choose just one example from literally six or seven, Ian Macgregor, who helped poor departed St. Margaret break the yoke of militant trades unionism, we'd still be piling our refuse sacks onto the local village green and have a currency that would look like green shield stamps compared to the Drachma. The day that this country can't open its doors to outsiders in order to rid itself of filthy fifth columnist enemies within is the day this pride nation of ours might as well fall on its ceremonial sword and hand the levers of state to the ruddy Liberal Democrats once and for all.

But I digress. Kelly's pretty soon on board when I let her know that she'll have unlimited scope (well, 140 characters) to be as rude and nasty to foriegners and the mentally retarded as she likes. 'Today Twitter, tomorrow the world!!' she tweets me later on. I smile and go back to Yesterday. They're re-showing 'The Nazis: a warning from history' in its entirety.

Bobcast #78...

You know the drill...

Scott...

One of the most pleasing aspects of putting together the 'Urbane' LP has been the opportunity to work with some of my personal favourites and heroes from the world of pop. Obviously Eno's involved too - incidentally, I swear he eats his own body weight in Jaffa cakes over the course of a session - although his contributions have got so quiet and ethereal of late that I just tend to turn the level of his synthesizer down completely and crank up the mic on his feather boa. Sounds much the same - in fact, a bit grungier if anything...

Lana del Rey was an unexpected but very new addition to my close-knit coterie of collaborators. I'd expected her to be somewhat more of a diva than she turned out to be actually. Her penchant for milk stout was particularly surprising - especially so when taken with a Cinzano top. I'd had an odd inkling about the pickled onions though, as it goes, and so was able to congratulate myself on my excellent foresight whilst watching her guzzle down a couple of jars in between crates of Mackeson. I was flattered but still a little irked to discover later that she'd swanned off with a couple of my favourite blouses after laying down the tambourine part on 'Sparklejumpropequeen' - although, to be fair, she probably pulls off a wire wool and cheeseystrings combo with a little more elan than I ever managed. They probably do need a broader shoulder, with hindsight.

So you can imagine my unbounded joy when one of my favourite ever singers, Scott Walker called to ask if there was anything he could do to help me put the finishing touches to the album. Obviously Scott's about the only person currently operating in the music business who could reasonably be described as being more outre than your humble scribe - obviously as I'm almost comepletely vegan, it rather rules out the possibility of using a dead pig's carcass as a percussion instrument to recreate the viscious slapping meted out to Mussolini and his wife (Clara?) as they hung from lamp-posts. Obviously, I'd have no such qualms about using Nick Clegg, but I've just not had the time to hunt him down yet, but I'll catch Scott up one day in the wierdo stakes, just you wait and see!

Scott arrives looking dapper in a baseball cap and a pair of luminous Mickey Mouse ears. I'd been warned to expect a somewhat erratic presence but even an eccentric old dufferette like me is a bit taken aback when he insists on talking in a high-pitched and squeaky voise and calling me 'Pluto'. Still, he's otherwise no trouble at all and certainly not a biscuit-hoovering gannet along Eno lines. Indeed during the marathon session the poor thing is more than happy to graze on nothing more elaborate than a hardened crust of cheese he'd spied lurking at the back of the fridge. He nibbles on this occasionally throughout the day in between making odd peeping noises and twitching his nose.

Lunch sorted, we head up to the attic and, when I can stop him from nosing around the skirting boards for five minutes, Scott begins to layer some dissonant string parts onto my song 'Gone'. It's a complex and time consuming process which entails him lying spreadeagled over the keyboard playing a series of chords as dictated by the random gyrations of his enviably wiry torso - must look into the nutritional values of hardened cheese rind; it's obviously working for him. Of course, that's the easy bit. The difficult and laborious part is sifting through hundreds of takes to find the one that sounds most out of tune. It's no wonder his LPs take so ruddy long - I'd have cracked by the second week and be phoning up the rest of the Walker Brothers to ask if they wanted to do an album of saccharine Archies covers played by five year olds on the ukulele, but Scott's obviously made of sterner stuff. I keep wanting to tell him he should let me produce him - it only took me six weeks to churn out the tuneless twaddle that was Bedroom Burlesque and I didn't have to lie on top of the keyboard once - but I hate to disturb a proper artist when they're at work.

Finally, after what seems like a month, we manage to comp a section that comprises of absolutely no melody whatsoever and I'm able to usher him out of the studio (carefully avoiding the cat, who has a current body count of 21 mice, 1 rat and a wood pigeon to his name) and wave Scott a cheery farewell. Blimey, that was hard work. I've barely time to wind up another dumb waiter-full of bourbon biscuits to keep Brian going as he starts adding 'Enossifications' to Scotts sting overdub than it's time for Emmerdale. I must be due for retirement soon, surely...?