BEYOND THE IMPLODE 3 - BRITISH AIRWAYS 0

I was forced to cough up £135 for a TV license the other day. I tried to argue with the licensing creeps that I'm only interested in watching Newsnight, Footballers' Wives ((sorry, but has there been a more prurient moment in the history of the idiot box than Gillian Taylforth crawling around the carpet on a triple bad acid trip while an overweight football manager, in a plastic donkey mask and posing pouch, tries to rape her for the second time in her acting career?)), the odd nature programme, football and The Heaven and Earth Show ((a pile of pseudo-religious Sunday morning dross put together by a production crew so hard pressed for decent stories, and evidently too scared to tackle grown up stuff like honour killings and Vatican paedo fumblings, that they'll happily send reporters out to Ireland to interview mentally ill old ladies about 'fairy trees', or conduct interviews with Pete Doherty's mum and try to pass it off as 'religious-orientated viewing')).

((No, seriously, you didn't see the one with Pete Doherty's mum? Shame K-Punk missed it, he'd have been on it like a lion on a lame gazelle - and I thought my ma was a soppy old bat! Rock and roll! You could tell Gloria Hunniford didn't have a fucking clue who he was))

Anyway, I digress....by Harry Redknapp's melting maw, where was I? Oh yeah, so anyway I try to tell the TV license scoundrels - rot their kidneys! - that as I only watch about 10% of available TV, I should only have to pay £13.50. After all, I've no interest in watching anything on Channel 4 ((especially not tripe about jaded 'LDN'ers trying to up sticks to the south of Croatia - hang on, we're meant to laugh at fat single mums on council estates but cross our fingers that these simpering creeps get their bargain Dubrovnik 3-bedder for less than £250,000??)) or BBC1, so why do I have to shell out for it?? Oh, because I'm going to go to court otherwise. Oh alright then. Here you go, son. No, let me personally slip the notes in your jacket pocket there. Our little secret. Give it a nice pat. Feel that fresh bankroll press against your tit. Don't spend it at all once. And may you be trapped on a burning ferry, you grasping flock of cuckolds.

But cheer up! Don't be down on my behalf. If I was worried about a bit of penury I'd have thrown myself head first from the pram into the traffic in 1977. But this episode's inspired a fit of poetry - I don't normally inflict this shite on you, so apologies - come back later, there'll be a review of the Lewisham '77 thing:

Farting in your fictional detector van
Wading through files on a battered PC
In your mind, you're some cop from a rugged northern drama
But as you skulk through addresses, scan Hackney to Bank
Think of this! Your wife's head, flopped on the pillow
As the milkman slobbers and has his wicked way
Yes! Look to the skies: the dead aerials mock you
They make cuckold horn signs from their nests on the rooftops!

You struggle to fulfill your court order quota
Like a rabid German Shepherd turned parking attendant
Staggering up stairwells, hired muscle behind you
The clicks of hastily disconnected TV sets
Produce Pavlovian drool in your B&H gulphole
Like big hearted Tarby and 'how clean is your colon'
Or your wife, making post-coital tea for Jehovahs!

Now they're clearing your desk, it's like razing an anthill
A new drone with a pixeltan squats on your swivel-throne
As the license fee dodgers, fresh from HMP Brixton
Don animal masks and pelt you with brickbats
Lead you out on the marshes by dog chain and bedsheet
"NO!" you scream, "CHRIST!" as your eyes meet THE PYLON
132kV of cancerdustrial wicker man
You sob like a wretch, as your captors cheer freely
Embrace the pylon! Feel that electric surge
Kick your corpse on the blood-boiling bucking bronco
A public information film for you and your kind!

Not that I'm bitter, the ponceing cunts....

"We will recruit patriotic, pro-British youngsters, regardless of whether or not they are physically robust, because we need everybody in the National Front. In addition, we are particularly keen to recruit youngsters of a physically robust disposition, who are willing to defend our legal activities from communist assault, where necessary" - Martin Webster, 1977

Event down Goldsmith's College tomorrow commemorating the NF getting their arses kicked 30 years ago.

I believe it was the philosopher Mark P who once observed Life's about as wonderful as a cold... life's about as wonderful as growing old...life's about as wonderful as a tramp lying dead in the road...life's about as wonderful as...NUFFING! And he had a point. After all, 'LDN'ers, there's a corporate pig sitting in a business conference, RIGHT NOW, snuffling through a brochure outlining the core qualities of a new and unique ID tracking system, enabling companies to keep tabs on employees wherever they are in the world. He tries to locate a brown bogey with his finger as he reads about the system's ability to ensure key execs' safety on jaunts across SE Asia ((or at least to pinpoint exactly where an angry taxi driver shattered their opaque ribcages with a meat cleaver, after the Manila whore-trawl lurched down the wrong side-street)), but what really impresses him is the fact that he can determine exactly where his London-based staff go for lunch; how long they spend on the toilet; who they tend to hang around with 'socially' after work ((cos, let's face it, you need the fucking ID card to get back into work in the morning, so you're not going to leave it on your desk when you scramble out at 5.00 on the dot...))

Yeah, life's pretty grim. It seems the Muslims were right all along - booze and bacon give you cancer. The greasy swine we shovelled down our gullets have returned as a multitude of tumours, squealing with vengeance as they turn our insides out! Britain is fucked, and we're all going to die like nannified manatees, wallowing in a sea of shit.

But cheer up! As Vegetius once dribbled, "If you want peace, prepare for war", so fuck Steve Ignorant and his lifeboat benefit gig and check out this soundclash instead:



I really thought KID SHIRT BLOG had cooked up this flyer for a laugh, but no, the event seems to be real. For the benefit of foreign readers - - to whom I profoundly apologise for the amount of limey slang and in-jokes that litter this blog - - this clash basically represents a struggle between East and West. Tottenham Hotspur vs Bristol City. The Godfathers of Grime against the Pagan Sons of the Cerne Abbas Giant!

The West Country folk - a strange and savage breed! - hate Londoners. As far as they're concerned, we all live in 12-bedroom mansions, gas pensioners for sport and think nothing of paying £75 for a pastrami sandwich, as long as it comes in a pretty paper bag. We treated the Elephant Man like crap and never caught Jack the Ripper. Westminster houses the current kakistocracy responsible for patronising the nation and tearing Iraq to shreds. In fact, any self-respecting yokel will tell you that Londoners are lazy bastards who've never done a day's work in their lives, couldn't knock up a haystack if you paid them, think eggs grow on trees and spend all weekend sitting round Starbucks on their fucking urban arses, pontificating about haircuts.

Whereas Londoners view the West Country folk as evil, crafty tricksters - rogues who'd sell their bed-ridden grandmothers' souls to the Devil at the crossroads at midnight, in exchange for a HAND JOB. Scrumpy-guzzling freaks who gibber like toads as they roam the fields, molesting scarecrows and tearing lambs from the wombs of terrified ewes. Illiterate criminals who've contaminated this country's western hinterlands with incest and in-breeding to the point that scientists fear the dawning of a new mutant race by as early as 2020. Toothless, corn-chewing halfwits, who eat stillborn children...you get the picture.

So, this clash is a way of settling, once and for all, who's better. Having been entrusted by Lord Ganesh to record the history of the universe in unbiased fashion, I obviously await the outcome of this apocalyptic encounter with great curiosity. However, things don't look too handsome in the C'N'D camp. In recent years, the cockney rebels have been ravaged by internal conflict. Promotional posters for a string of dates in the early 2000s featured the baffling information, "LIVE AT THE ALBANY, CHAS AND DAVE* (*not the real Dave)". Fuck knows what that was about. Incidentally, I met Chas and Real Dave on a Ryanair flight once. My travelling companion tried to engage them in conversation, but all Chas could muster was a growled, "JUST DONE A BENEFIT FOR LONNIE DONEGAN'S WIDOW", before slouching off to Departures, while an excessively glum Real Dave retreated to KFC and sat glowering at a drumstick like a man on Death Row. They sat at other ends of the plane and didn't even speak to each other in baggage reclaim.

Well, they say you shouldn't meet your childhood heroes, as they invariably turn out to be a pack of cunts. BUT - London's pride is at stake here. If C'N'D can't get their shit together, then I'm going to be well angry. The Wurzels, for all their faults - cirrhosis, the same genes as lizards, obsession with human sacrifice - are united and boast solidarity in their ranks. Come on Chas - stop dicking about, you Silvertown oaf. Real Dave! Oi! Gertcha! Cut this ridiculous in-bitching, and swig jointly from the holy chalice of COCKNEY PRIDE - we're all in this together and now, more than ever, London needs you to perform.