NORLJ EXCLUSIVE!

Eeeeeeeew!!!
(What makes it worse is there's no real reason for this picture to be here)

Yes, yes, I know it’s been a while, I know you’re angry. However, I also know that, much like a recalcitrant father, you’ll forgive me, even whilst secretly knowing I’ll let you down again.

Consider this week’s blog my attempt to overcompensate with extravagant gifts.

The Private Diary of Richard Madely

To be published posthumously with foreword by Richard Bacon.

The 8^th of September 2008, Anno Dominus

This morning I awoke in a cold sweat. I dreamed that my worst fears had been realised, that I, Richard Madely, had died before the world had time to fully appreciate my genius. I thought of my place in history. How will future generations remember me? For my age defying looks? My glittering journalistic career? For giving people an excuse to drink in the afternoon?

It simply isn’t enough, I thought. My time is fleeting and there are still so many problems left unsolved in the world. I mused throughout the night and finally fell into a fitful sleep.

I must redouble my efforts. I will book Ricky Gervais for next week’s Friday show.

Tune in next week for another dramatic instalment.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!EXCLUSIVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh my giddy incontinent Aunt it’s only the fucking exclusive of the year right here on No One Really Likes Jazz.

I’ve managed to get hold of a list of new programmes to be broadcast this winter on the BBC!

Please remember. This list is entirely genuine! Any attempt to imply otherwise will be taken as a slight against my good name and I will, of course, demand satisfaction. In the ensuing duel you shall surely perish! So think on!

Internal Memo outlining the new Programmes to be broadcast this year on the BBC (published unabridged and unedited)

Holby Pink

An entirely necessary extension to the much loved series of Casualty spin offs. Holby Pink takes us into the fascinating world of Holby City’s Gynaecological ward. Passions run high as yeast infections are diagnosed, smear tests are performed and a generation of up and coming British actresses make the quintessential ‘before they were famous’ faux pas by getting their muff out on tea time television.

Episode one. ‘Wizard’s Sleeve Crisis,’ 58 mins, BBC2: Dishy Dr Haversham scrutinises the wiffle of guest star Angelica Houston, Kelly battles her addiction to bread and comic foil medical student, Dean gets caught in the stirrups.

Celebrity Ombudsman

Ever wondered what happens when c-list celebrities attempt to settle high-level financial disputes? Well, you’re about to find out either way.

Marvel as Peaches Geldof liquidates a corporate pension fund and Richard Blackwood bankrupts Marks and Spencers.

I’d Do Anyone

Glossy pre-recorded Saturday Night Fayre where 10 wannabe escorts and 10 gigolos compete for a contract with a top madam. Week by week they’re set various challenges including sustaining an erection in the presence of Vanessa Feltz and looking their mums in the eye without crying.

In the final week six remaining finalists are unleashed on the Tory party conference (the money they made is financing the next three seasons of Dr Who.

The show is fronted by Jeremy Kyle in a pimp’s outfit. The judging panel is made up of Jamie Theakston, Angus Deayton and Snoop Dogg.

Spooks: HR Squad

A look into the tense, dangerous world of MI5’s Human Resources department. Contract negotiations take place left right and centre, disciplinary letters are sent and efficiency is reviewed quarterly.

Racist Britain?

Are we a Racist country? Are all our institutions irrevocably prejudiced and out of touch? A blacked-up Jeremy Paxman goes to Brixton to find out.

Olympic Celebration

A sixteen hour celebration of our Olympic team’s ridiculously successful games. Team GB are paraded around the M.E.N arena for six hours to commentary from Sue Barker before Boris Johnson and Gordon Brown take part in a Greco-Roman Wrestling match to decide who gets to take credit. Other highlights include a skit were Christine Ohuruogu plays the bagpipes and Gabby Logan personally fellating the men’s cycling team.

Teenagers Today don’t know they’re Born

See This:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dzM77PS8H8&feature=related

And This:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=he1rYR_8T4s

Reviewgasm (With Apologies to Laura Barton)

The Chatham County Line: IV

This is the sort of album that quite simply makes you need a cup of tea. You imagine being chased through a post apocalyptic world by a carpet monster with harmonica eyes, you try to scream but all that comes out is an episode of ‘Woman’s Hour,’ from 1995. Your cat will love it!

Thanks to Pete and Robbie for their ‘Reviewgasms’ last time out. Read them on the comments board & leave your own one if you want.

Main Event: Teenagers Today don’t know they’re Born

Do you remember how shit youth TV used to be?

When I was a teenager the choice was stark. You had overly earnest American crap or painfully moral home grown teachings. Obviously you had to watch something while you weren’t outside playing sports, so you were left with a modern day Sophie’s Choice.

The American stuff was awful - unfailingly po-faced and serious with zero sense of humour about itself. Plus, to vent a personal grievance, I had a tiny bit of trouble relating to Dawson: a teenage boy that spent three series refusing to have sex with Katie Holmes. Every time some ‘Lifehouse’ track kicked in and the little prick wandered down to the creek to think ‘Deep thoughts and stuff, y’know,’ I would scream at the TV.

“Sod your parents’ divorce mate! Think about what else you could be doing now. Borrow a pair of balls from Pacey* and go do your duty! Muppet!”

I hope I never meet James Van Der Beak because I might just slap him involuntarily.**

Bad as it was, it was a million times better than the home grown stuff. If you’ve blocked it out let me refresh your memory, there was Grange Hill - a government sponsored alternative universe where kids called each other toerags and one drag on a cigarette or being within a mile of someone taking ‘the drugs’ would instantly render you a wall clawing addict; Byker Grove – more of the same but somehow less tolerable due to the Geordie accents; As if - which appealed exclusively to turn of the century coffee shop ‘Justins’ who owned a ‘DJ Shadow’ CD and therefore viewed themselves as only slightly less important than God; and of course the immortal Hollyoaks, which was, and remains, nothing more than a daily half hour Topshop advert. The former two felt like they were written by your dad, the latter two by a ‘cool drama teacher’ called Nathan, none were any good at all.***

And so it remained until a couple of years ago and the debut of ‘Skins.’

For those of you still hardwired by your childhood into thinking that anything featuring teenagers and misadventures is intrinsically bad, allow me to blow your mind. Skins is fucking fantastic!

Shut up, it is!

If you’re sceptical I understand, when I saw the trailer for the first series (which is basically an advert for drugs) my twat sensors started flaring up too, I may have shouted something like ‘get a job, hippie!’ at the screen.

Then, begrudgingly, I found myself watching it. The first few episodes of series one are pretty fun, entertaining fare, the only difference between it and a normal teen drama being the quality of the jokes, the budget and the sheer amount of (consequence free) drug taking. I was mildly entertained but not instantly hooked. However, like all good series, Skins doesn’t blow its wad early on, it has the confidence in its characters and stories to hold something back, to not properly reveal itself.

Then something funny happens. About three episodes in you start to realise that you actually care about these characters, it suddenly dawns on you that they’re not just variations on the traditional slut, jock, freak, nerd, cheerleader archetypes, they’re proper people. My favourites are Chris and Cassie but an argument could be made for all of them, there’s simply no weak link.

Then, when you’re good and hooked, Skins starts to fuck with you a bit; weird little stylistic devices start creeping in, odd things happen that aren’t properly explained by the end of the episode and your opinion of one character - who’s probably been your favourite up till now - is slowly and subtly turned on its head until you fucking hate him. Then the show kicks you in the balls good and proper with a final three episodes that would be more at home in a series of ‘Twin Peaks,’ one of which was easily my TV highlight of 2007.

The second series is even better, it filters out some of the naff aspects of series 1 (there are a fair few) and concentrates on delivering a story that’s dark, strange and emotionally affecting in a way that all the Dawson and Joey bullshit could only dream of. It’s undoubtedly the best teen drama ever made****.

If you haven’t seen it, take your face out of the guardian for five minutes and give it a go. It’ll make you wish you were a teenager again (even more than you already do) whilst simultaneously making you jealous of a generation of kids who actually have something worth watching.

Take note BBC, the bar has been raised. When the laziest development department in TV inevitably pitches ‘Holby High’ you should tread carefully, you’re not going to get away with another ‘Grange Hill’.

*It’s a sad indictment of a town’s gene pool when Joshua Jackson is the Alpha Male.

** The one oasis of occasional quality was Heartbreak High but it couldn’t hold its own against the deluge of shit.

***And give him a poke in the eye for ‘Rules of Attraction.’

****I say teen drama, but if viewing figures are to be believed most of the audience are over 25.

JUMPING THE SHARK

Is that a surprised face or a yawn? I can't decide...

I don’t know why people complain that politicians are arrogant and out of touch.

I’m not saying they’re not. I’m just saying it’s obvious, like moaning that the grass is too green. These are people that presume, not only that they should be running the country, but also that thousands upon thousands of people will agree with them. In a sane world they would be called delusional and put in an institution but no, we give them nuclear launch codes.

For the same reason, it’s completely futile to point out that Big Brother housemates are dull, attention seeking, twats. Of course they are! They’ve volunteered, actually volunteered, to be locked in a house with no books, no television, no music and only other mentalists to talk to.

We know they aren’t interesting and we know that nothing of any consequence at all is going to happen but every year we (myself included) keep watching. It’s just another one of those staggeringly illogical things that human beings do like washing cars, barbequing and buying bottled water.

This year’s siphoning of human slurry is a new low. It’s not that they’re particularly repulsive, or offensive, or deformed. It’s that they’re hauntingly familiar. During the introductory show I watched housemate after housemate prance into the house thinking ‘don’t I know you?’ each time.

After a while I became paranoid that I actually did know all of them. Was I the twist? Were they filling the house with casual acquaintances of mine, only to install me against my will in week three forcing me to make protracted stultifying awkward small-talk for two and a half gruelling months?

I had to find a place to lay low for a while a place where Davina couldn’t catch me. Just as I was booking my ticket to Afghanistan I stopped, suddenly realising where I knew them all from. Where? Why, previous series’ of Big Brother of course! I breathed a huge sigh of relief as I realised that almost every one of them is simply doing an impression of their favourite housemate past, it’s like watching a really eerie tribute band.

Of course, for several years now the show has happily trundled along like a bilge spewing tanker on an ocean of hackneyed clichés and stock characters* - Even the casual observer will recognise the hilarious annual conversation about the sparkling media career each housemate is planning or the daily discussion about who does or doesn’t have a game plan – but never so obviously as this year. I don’t want to get my hopes up but I think the country is finally waking up to the fact that everything, absolutely everything they are seeing has happened before. In a year or two we may even be free entirely.

That’s right Big brother has finally jumped the shark**.

*The stock characters/strategies employed by BB housemates are listed below...

Shouty Cow: Turning yourself into a pantomime villain can be very effective. Simply bellow at the top of your voice and constantly belittle everyone in your path. Note: no witty put downs, keep it simple - root one unpleasantness. Oh, and remember to single out the nice middle class girl for particular venom.

This only works if you’re a woman because, as we all know, when men shout it’s intimidating and unacceptable. When women shout it’s great telly!

Eg. Charlie, Alexandra...

Gay Man: Only pantomime stereotypes need apply. This ridiculous country’s latent homophobia can only be allayed by viewing the gay community as hyper-real, entertainers. Be warned, as soon as your facade cracks and you turn out to be a real human being just like them you will probably be voted off.

Eg. Brian, Marco, Dennis, that Greek guy from last year...

Disabled Person: This one’s hard to fake but if you happen to be disabled you’re in with a serious shout of winning the thing purely because people will be terrified of nominating you. ‘That Dave is so lazy, always wheeling himself round in his chair, God, talk about a primadona!’ Can’t quite see that sentence happening can you? Seriously, this housemate could take his/her morning piss in the cornflakes every day and still not get voted out.

Eg. Pete (tourettes), Mikey (blind), Nadia (Penis)

Pretty Girl: If you happen to be ridiculously fit you could do worse than going on the show and simply lazing around in the sun, rubbing sun tan lotion on your thighs for a couple of months.

Some bint tries this every year. You won’t win but that’s not the point, when you eventually leave you’ll walk onto the cover of Nuts, Zoo, FHM, etc. Immediately setting the porn for cowards brigade into their traditional dead-eyed masturbatory stance for a couple of weeks.

There’s only one rule, don’t open your mouth. Unless of course it’s to talk about how you’ve always wondered what sex with a woman would be like – the readers of Zoo wonder that too.

Eg. Chanelle, Shell, Michelle (do you see a theme here) and of course Imogen.

Really Stupid: We love idiots, they make us feel good. That’s why no stand-up comedian will ever go broke as long as he/she has plenty of jokes about Americans. Just being thick isn’t enough though, you need to be thick in comparison to the rest of the house. This requires monumental levels of stupidity but if you can make it work you can win.

Eg. Brian, Jade

Filth: Getting grotty on TV is a pretty shameless way to get attention but it works. Just beware the law of diminishing returns.

Eg. Kinga, Michelle...

Genuinely Nice Person: These guys do exist in the show. One generally turns up about every two years though because they haven’t done anything particularly horrific you generally don’t notice them until the final few weeks.

Eg. Craig, Pete, Shell... Um, I think that might be it.

** By the way, for those who dont know, ‘Jumping the Shark,’ is a reference to the exact moment when Happy Days became shit.

Perfect Family?

BT’s ‘perfect family’ campaign is one of the most sinister things on television...

On the face of it it’s a cosy image - Attractive thirty-odd brunette with two kids meets bumbling, lovely Kris Marshall. One thing leads to another and they all move into a stainless steel/magenta box somewhere non-specific in London. How idyllic. It’s the modern Bisto family. Of course there are problems along the way but it’s okay because they can all be solved by BT products, allowing everyone to continue in high brightness, low contrast bliss*.

Or do they? If you look closely enough you see that these ‘wholesome’ adverts actually show the harrowing tale of the slow steady erosion of a relationship as it descends into a mess of power games, stony silences and, eventually, adultery.

Don't believe me? Well, think back to the couple’s heady early days - Kris sits at the kitchen table stressing out about the fact that he’s now officially trapped in a relationship. With his ready-made family already bonding with him he has no way out except to behave like a complete cunt and flee, adding yet another betrayal to the children’s already long list. Of course he can’t do that he’s Kris Marshall.

Meanwhile, to seal the deal and allay her crippling doubts about his love for her, Thirty-Odd Brunette forces him to get a joint account (online obviously), a symbolic but highly potent representation of their union but it only serves to underline his absolute fuckedness.

From then on something dies in Marshall, he’s forced to get a trendy haircut and wears a constant callow frown. He becomes distant towards Thirty-Odd Brunette and when looking around houses, is reduced to making impotent, snarky remarks to the estate agent, “Costafortunum?” Whenever the kids wander in he appears bemused and avoids interaction by simply plonking them in front of BT Vision digital TV (Available from £30 a month) and when their real Dad turns up Kris’s expression seems to say ‘Teach me your ways, how can I get away from this, how can I be a bastard like you?’

The final straw for the pair is when, confused and alienated by her husband/boyfriend’s** indifference, Thirty-Odd Brunette withholds sex or ‘perks’ (the emasculating term Marshall has taken to using).

So what next for the increasingly bitterly ironic ‘perfect family’ campaign? Well I have a theory, remember that black girl at the party, the one that appeared and reminded Kris of his lost freedom and then did the same thing again in the record shop? She’s what’s known as ‘a crow at a wedding,’ a harbinger of doom that reveals your eventual destiny to you ahead of time.

He may not have sex with the black girl but he will probably stray – he’s already started justifying it to himself ‘It’s good to have a few secrets’ etc. I’d say we’re two years away from the ad where Kris organises his affair cheaply and efficiently with a combination of BT Total Broadband personal email and free weekend calls to land lines, taking advantage of personal settings to forward any calls from his other girlfriend to his BT Fusion Mobile when he’s out.

Of course Thirty-Odd Brunette will find out. She’ll probably see a photo of them on facebook and have no problem downloading it because of BT Broadband’s generous download limits. She may even back it up with ‘Digital Vault’ to torture herself further before drunkenly confronting him in front of the kids.

I’m sorry, I hope I’m wrong but it seems to me that the ‘perfect family’ are on borrowed cut-rate call time.

*What is the deal with the washed out colours?

**Are they married or arent they? Nobody cares - how very modern of you BT

Oh, I See... The truth Behind the IOC

Is it just me, or does the Beijing Olympic stadium look a bit like a... Like a...... Nevermind, forget I said anything.

Quote of The Week

Alan Brazil: I like Cambridge City, not as much as Colchester but they're my second team.
Paul Hawksby: Ever been punting on your trips to Cambridge?
Alan Brazil: What do you mean? Cambridge Dogs?

MAIN EVENT

Do you fancy throwing me a party? You know, a great big shindig in my honour, with my name plastered over everything...

Yeah? Great!

Couple of minor details, the party needs to be two whole weeks long. You’ll also need to buy in a whole load of expensive equipment and build loads of stuff that you’ll never use again - a permanent bouncy castle bunker, underground Mexican takeaway, stuff like that. Naturally this will be entirely at your own expense. There’ll be photographers and journalists everywhere so you’ll need to make sure the place is spotless and that any embarrassing friends and relatives are out of sight. Oh, and another thing, I’ve got loads of mates coming over to sell stuff in your back garden, that’s cool right? I wouldn’t ask, only they’ve already given me a load of money. I’d cut you in but, y’know I don’t want to.

Actually, come to think of it I’ve got a few other people interested in throwing this massive party for me so you’re going to need to kiss my arse and buy me presents for a year or two before I decide to let you hold it.

What’s that? What do you get in return? Well, you get the right to say you’re having my party. Isn’t that enough?

Still interested? If so, great! Don’t read any more of this and give me a call...

For anyone who isn’t completely daft, congratulations, you’re less gullible than all the governments of the developed world. The above is exactly the deal that the International Olympic Committee gives host nations like Beijing and London. You know the estimated £9.4 billion pounds of tax payer’s money that’s going to be spent on the 2012 games? Well, not one penny of that will be made back by the event itself.

Not that a lot of money isn’t going to be floating around the games. Olympic sponsorship is one of the most expensive endorsements you can buy (despite the fact that many, many more people watch the World Cup*). It’s impossible to quantify exactly, though it’s fair to say Olympic sponsorship costs more than it delivers in terms of increased sales, it’s just an exercise in corporate cock-measuring** a way of saying, we are the biggest company who do whatever we do.

Never ones to miss an opportunity to exploit someone, the IOC then makes the sponsors run the bloody games for them – that’s right they don’t do that either. Tag Heuer will handle the timekeeping, Lenovo will run the computer system and supply all hardware, McDonalds will be expected to flood the olympic village with their ‘restaurants’*** etc. After all that, the companies don’t even get to put their logos anywhere near the only thing that anybody is watching, the events - that would pollute the Olympic brand!

Right, so the host cities don’t see a penny of the sponsorship money however, they do get**** a load of sports facilities. Although if history’s anything to go by they won’t be used an awful lot. I’ve been to the Barcelona Olympic village twice now - it’s a very beautiful ghost town, Athens’s facilities lie unused and largely unfinished. Sydney still use theirs but let’s be fair, we’re talking about a nation so sport obsessed that 11 people randomly picked from in and around Darling Harbour could probably beat England at Cricket. London is not Sydney - somehow I don’t see East London having a tremendous amount of use for a vellodrome, do you?

What about the hundreds of people on the ground who work to make the Olympics happen, the stewards, the drivers etc? Surely they’re IOC employees. Well, no those people are - I shit you, not – volunteers. Yep that’s right, tragic individuals who have drunk IOC coolade.

So, all in all the IOC do nothing except pick a city and cash a cheque. They even have the nerve to call themselves “A catalyst for collaboration” and a “Service to humanity.”

This is a nice idea but it doesn’t really bear scrutiny. I’m sure I’m not alone in thinking that humanity was not especially well served by undermining decades of work to force the Chinese government to be less shitty to its people by giving it a great big international pat on the head. Oh yeah and then there’s the whole thing about letting a Nazi dictatorship host one in 1936 but we’re not supposed to mention that.

In any other situation the Olympics would be called what they are, a scam... Though to be fair it is a brilliant one, probably the greatest ever. IOC, I salute you

*300 million tuned in last December to watch the draw for the 2006 World Cup! That’s 300 million watching a fat man pulling balls out of a pot!

**The Olympic Games is one of those things that would cease to exist if there were a decent number of female CEOs. Just like team-building trips, or high class whores.

***Something the marathon runners are absolutely thrilled by!

****By get I of course mean pay for and build themselves.

RICHARD DAWKINS CAN FUCK OFF!

When it comes to religion I’m really not sure what I believe and to be honest I don’t give it a tremendous amount of thought. My view is that I’ll find out eventually so why stress about it now. If there is a God then I’m not a massive bastard really, I should be able to talk my way into heaven or at least a non-smoking table in hell. If there isn’t and it turns out we really are just a giant evolutionary mishap then it won’t matter – I’ll be dead.

The truth is that no one can prove anything either way which is why it continually baffles me that people - often very intelligent people - seem to feel the need to discuss the question at length. These conversations are the definition of pointless and are basically just the intellectual equivalent of those debates about meaningless triviality you have when you’re stoned. Y’know the ones where one guy will swear blind that Marilyn Manson was in ‘The Wonder Years’ or that Dogs can’t look up and another guy will strenuously disagree. Neither side has any means of proving their point but both believe themselves to be 100% right and a very boring discussion ensues.

This is the way a conversation about religion between a religious person and an atheist should go...

“I believe that Jesus Christ died for our sins and that God is looking out for us all”

“That’s nice, I don’t though”

“Fair enough, would you like some pie?”

Of course that almost never happens, (especially the bit about the pie) what usually happens is that the atheist starts talking loudly about fossils and evolution whilst everyone else edges away slowly.

Some atheists aren’t satisfied by simply having this argument and feel the need to actually dedicate their lives to it by writing books and appearing on TV. One such twat, sorry academic, is Richard Dawkins*, a scientist and author who has a chair** at Oxford University. He’s done other stuff in the past but at the moment his whole thing seems to be going round the world and explaining to religious people that they’ve wasted their lives.

That’s fine I guess, the question is why? He’s an atheist why does he care? It’s got nothing to do with him. It’s like straight men being interested in lesbian sex. Sorry bad example, er okay, lets say it’s like a man being interested in sanitary towels.

It certainly can’t be to help them – “Gee thanks Richard – I used to believe that there was a plan to the universe, I helped people less fortunate than myself and I had no fear of death. Good job you stopped all that.”

One reason he cites is that wars have been fought over religion, therefore it is bad. Yes Richard, wars have been fought over religion, millions of people have died in its name but do you really think that there would have been no war without it? I think we’d probably just have had wars for different reasons don’t you? Sadly people just fight with each other sometimes, people’s interests are at odds sometimes, sometimes people look across borders and think ‘Y’know what? I’d quite like all that land for myself.’ More often than not religion’s just an excuse.

‘Religion gets in the way of scientific progress!’ is another justification for this campaign of one-upmanship. Yeah you’re right it probably does, but actually scientists don’t get to determine the course of humanity on their own. I know you want to play with all the exciting new science right away but everyone’s got to live together on this planet and it’s quite reasonable that the ethics of, and popular support for things like human cloning are interrogated properly, by everyone. Me you and a billion other people may think that stem-cell research is brilliant but some people don’t and they get to be heard too before we go ahead and start messing around, so be patient***. Splitting the atom seemed like a great idea too remember? Because of that we almost blew the planet up in the 60’s. Let’s just behave like mature adults rather than kids the week before Christmas okay?

But what about intolerance? Religions promote intolerance right? Okay, a very small minority use religion as an excuse to be homophobic, racist etc. But again, there are just small minded people in the world who are going to see somebody doing something different and get all angry. People hear what they want to - if someone’s chosen to fixate on the obscure parts of the bible or the qur’an that deride homosexuality then, let’s be honest, they’re most probably quite the homophobe anyway. It’s not as if there aren’t racist/sexist/homophobic academics now is it?

What he of course downplays on his TV show and in his book is the positives that come from religion, the charitable giving and actions, the great works of art and architecture (not so much music). Michelangelo had such a hard-on for God that he created arguably the greatest work of art in history. I’m pretty sure people will still be going to see the Sistine Chapel when every copy of ‘The God Delusion’ has been rightly pulped - are we really more of an advanced society without God?

Even if we assume that what he says is all true (quite the assumption) he is still basically just being a mean spirited little gob-shite - like the guys who delight in ruining the twists in films by telling you right at the start: “By the way, there’s no heaven and Bruce Willis is a ghost.”

So, in conclusion; are those guys at the Christian rock concert waving their hands in the air a little weird? Yes. Deluded? Maybe, but you definitely can’t call them miserable. They’ve figured out a way to exist in this bizarre world that works for them and they’re not hurting anyone, so leave them alone you sanctimonious prick!

*If for nothing else he’s a cock for this tag-line on his website, ‘Richard Dawkins.Net: A Clear Thinking Oasis.’ What-a-bell-end!

**Most people send their children but whatever works mate

***I have become my Mother

Local Elections Live: Part 2/2

12.30 - 13.30

I'm making serious headway with the first bottle of wine so expect some splling mastikes soon....

12.30: For the first time ever Labour have lost control of Bedworth. It's gone blue! The BNP gained two seats as well... So obviously an educated ward!

Tessa Jowell is completely freaking out! By the end of the night I expect her to be cowering in the corner of the set, babbling incoherantly and wearing a tin-foil hat.

Seriously though, that's pretty bad. This is going to be a long night for Labour.

12.45: Jeremy Vine is dressed up as a cowboy and doing a southern accent while he talks about projected Lib Dem percentages. Am I awake?

12.45: Tories take control of Southampton according to Tony King it's "Sensational!"

12.50: Tories about to take Colchester after promising everyone a free convertible white Ford Escort (Probably).

Pretty much all anyone is saying tonight is Conservative gain, Conservative gain, Conservative gain! Tessa Jowell looks as if she's about to cry, every cloud eh?

13.05: Tories have more councils under their control now than Labour did at their peak in the 90s... Bottle of wine 2 now I think.

13.10: Boris Johnson's Dad is on TV now. He reminds me of uncle Monty from 'Withnail and I'. 'I mean to have you boy!'

13.25: Jeremy Vine is the King of the laboured analogy, this time something about Gordon Brown and Mr. Bean.

Right it's 1.30 and I'm tired and drunk. I'm going to knock this on the head and just declare the Labour Party totally fucked.

Boris Johnson is seeming a lot less humourous now...