BEYOND THE IMPLODE 3 - BRITISH AIRWAYS 0

This isn't really a 'proper' BTi post: just a bunch of films in one spot, so I never need invoke the Sniffer Dogs of Styx to track 'em down on YouTube again. It's also, to my knowledge, the first blog effort to collate a series of videos shown on the first season (Tx 1993) of Channel 4's Midnight Underground - years before that wretched channel devoted itself to hateful documentaries about 70s porn stars, toffee-nosed villa-hunters, organic chicken-rearing pillocks and sneering at obese Russian children and single mums.

It used to go out on Wednesday (or was it Tuesday?) nights, often lasting until past 3am, and was presented by a mild-mannered, long-haired chap called Benjamin Woolley. Basically, for a couple of hours, all bets on 'Consensus Reality' were well and truly off. Midnight Underground went off the air for two years, then made a comeback up until '97, though I think I only caught it once afterwards, and the format had changed to a showcase for single, longer, contemporary films. If you want to get in the mood for this, watch it in the small hours on a weekday night, with all the lights out.

This is a kind of patchy 'Best of..' from 1993. I say 'patchy' because I couldn't trace some of the stuff I wanted to. Unfortunately, Bruce Connor's video for Devo's Mongoloid has been removed from YouTube due to copyright restrictions, while Steve Dwoskin's Moment ((12 minutes of a girl's face during orgasm)) and Daina Krumins' Divine Miracle ((like an ultra-kitsch film version of Reality Asylum IIRC, which I probably don't)) are nowhere to be found on the InterWeb.

Anyway, I'd like to dedicate this post to me at 17, and to anyone else who used to stay up and fry their brains. Oh, and to Benjamin Woolley, whatever he's up to now. If you're not into it, come back in early March. Hope your servers don't crash!

Hey, do you remember last year, when Rusko took the theme tune to the '80s Commodore 64 game Bionic Commando and whipped it into a dubstep choon? I hate to break it to the bloke, but he picked the wrong game entirely.

I know what you're thinking - he should have gone for Renegade, the game where the lucky player gets to control a gutbucket of pixels in a bandana, jerking around the mean streets of the Bronx and whacking seven shades out of multiple blocky Deadheads. But you'd be wrong on that score too. God, that game sucked, or at least my cassette version did. Every time I got past the 'first level' dust-up, paggering my hippy gang opponents into the storm drains, the screen would suddenly freeze and morph into a wall of programming code. Meaning I'd have to re-boot the whole console and spend another 20 minutes loading the game.

As for the 'music'...well, the Renegade theme started off OK - very 'brooding John Carpenter' style electronics - but then inexplicably dissolved into what I can only describe as, er, 'Elizabethan knees-up means Challenge Anneka'



On the other hand - if, like my mate Chris, you owned a ZX Spectrum, you had to make do with games like Psycho Pigs UXB. We actually used that title as a punk band moniker for about a week. This was a totally WTF? multi-player game where you commandeered a mob of swine hurling grenades at each other. I can't remember much more about it than that, except it had one of the most ludicrous advertising campaigns ever - featuring a cartoon of two kids gawping at a giant pic of a Page 3 Model, and one announcing, via speech bubble, "I'D RATHER BE PLAYING PSYCHO PIGS UXB!"

Clearly, the music's utterly unsuitable for dubstep producers...but manna from heaven for Lithuanian novelty DJs, come the inevitable EuroTrance-CowPoke revival.





Here's 'Wolf', years before he became a 'gladiator' ((upping the rate of UK Saturday evening suicides sevenfold)), posing with real-life Page 3 'stunna' Maria Whittaker (UPDATE - she's married to Rebel MC, apparently – small world...). Barbarian 2 was pants. I can't remember the music - I don't even want to look it up on BoobTube. Yet, in a weird way, I miss the days of Fabio and the Chippendales. You kind of knew where you stood with those cunts. I grudgingly respected them for going all out on an oiled limb of extremity, even though I was manning the skinny, spotty punk barricade at the time. It was the blokes caught in the middle - the ones with the flat tops and shellsuits, ski jackets and slip-on shoes, hairgel and white socks - that we punks'n'hunks mutually wanted to destroy.

Fabio's given me hours of amusement over the years. Did you know, he drinks liquidised cucumber? Water's not safe because it's packed with oestrogen, or summat. I wonder how much Maria W got paid for helping to flog this tedious, low budget, hack'n'slash fiasco to sexually frustrated 12-year old boys? At least Beki Bondage could sing a bit.

Nah...if you want a game worth sampling for a banging DUBSTEP track, check out Nemesis The Warlock. Rob Hubbard's dark, cavernous, melancholic Sino-Dubstep slow-burner is the one you DJs need to start remixing. Add a dose of lethal wobble and some beats, and the pigs'll be kicking down the doors at Plastic People before you can say "SYNTAX ERROR? TROUBLE AT LINE 5"

Sorry for posting delay - been a nightmare getting my passport back from Dubai.

SHY FX / GUNSMOKE - "Gangsta Kid"

In 1994, the dance music factions were divided and warring. Handbag House fans didn't like Techno cos it was hard, cold machine music for fascists; Spiral Tribe fans hated Handbag House cos it was made for apathetic, apolitical snobs called Victoria, and the Ministry of Sound bouncers were capitalist clothes nazis who'd co-opted and pissed all over the spirit of the Free Rave; the Garage fans only came out at night, to man the pirates and go clubbing in YSL jumpers; and everyone thought Jungle was murder music for crackheads.

This was partly due to the violent spoken-word 'sketch' which opens the Shy FX/Gunsmoke collab Gangsta Kid - which, 16 years on, sounds...well naff, to be honest. Gunsmoke's aimlessly driving around when his passenger, Shy FX, informs him that some local badman's called his girlfriend a "bitch" and threatened to rape his mother. Rather than actually checking out his DJ mate's story, or writing off the taunt as the fanciful bragging of an insecure adolescent, Gunsmoke decides, there and then, to go ballistic and kill the bloke who's *allegedly* bad-mouthed the only two women in his life.

Suddenly - what a coincidence! - Shy FX spots aforementioned Mr Gobby on the street. Gunsmoke pulls over, ordering his passenger to pass him his gun from the glove compartment. At this point, shit-stirring Shy FX starts freaking out, shrieking, "Don't kill him man, don't kill him!" Er, Gunsmoke's a gangsta - what did you think he was going to do when you told him, you interfering prat? What's your encore, telling a Millwall hooligan you saw his girlfriend flirting with the student barman in the New Cross Inn?

Anyway, Gunsmoke swears at the rival bad man, shoots him seven times, then drives away as Shy FX burbles, "Are you crazy??" Gunsmoke tells him to shut up, which he really should have done two minutes previously. FINALLY...oh sweet Jesus...FINALLY, we get to the tune. The Goodfellas samples sound fairly stale in 2010, but what the hell, we all danced to it at the time.

Oh, if you're interested, the duo also knocked out Gangsta Kid II, in which Gunsmoke goes bananas, turning on Shy FX for questioning his badness. "HAVE YOU GOT MY BACK?" he snaps at Shy FX. But when Shy FX demonstrates he has by warning Gunsmoke that two badmen have just crossed the road and are stomping towards them, the gangsta, bizarrely, tells him to shut up and ignore them. Not the wisest move - the two newcomers plug the pair with a machine gun.

More than anything, these intros remind me: gangstas were really thick in the 1990s. Still, an Express hack or two got a few paragraphs of 'Yardie music menace' mileage out of the whole sordid affair.

SHAM 69 - "Borstal Breakout"

What the fuck's the demented laughter at the beginning of this single meant to signify? A 'trainee' (seriously, that's what they used to call borstal inmates - later co-opted by the YTS) having a nervous breakdown in solitary? A sadistic screw, cackling as he slams the cell door behind him, honing in on his juvenile prey?

No - try a fucking Punch & Judy show*. Terrible intro to one of the best UK punk 45s of all time - though, to their credit, Sham 69 salvage proceedings by having a raucous window-smashing / throwing-their-keys-around-and-hitting-milk-bottles-with-pencils-in-the-studio RIOT moment, half-way through the track.

Mind you, my favourite version's the one they recorded for John Peel in '77, where they omit the 7" intro, but throw in some fake dog barks during the 'trash the gaffe' scene.

(*EDIT- sorry, Steve Ignorant was the one into archaic puppet shows, not Chairman Jimmy. Duhh...)

PSYCHIC TV - "OV Power"

I have absolutely no problem with 99.5% of this track, which sees PTV getting all FUNKED UP and, miraculously, not blowing it. Shit, it was good enough for The Rapture to tea-leave the bassline for House of Jealous Lovers.

I do have a considerable problem with hearing Genesis P.Orridge put on a ridiculous, high-pitched, cod-Oriental accent at the beginning, wheezing I'm a little Chinese girl, I'm going to put my pussy on you, waaahhh! Hey, Mr Psychic - shame your cut-up experiments didn't inform you that, come the 2000s, Mary Whitehouse would be toast, and sexual references on records ten a penny. So all that Enjoy yer own fookin' body! stuff and the endless references to masturbation sound really trite now too.

And what if I'd ever wanted to tape this tune to impress a Chinese girl? Did PTV factor THAT possibility into the equation, before recording their borderline racist, infantile skit for eternal posterity? I'd have had more luck taping her some Skrewdriver. Even those boneheads never ripped the piss out of the most heavily populated commie country on Earth.

Oh, and 4-Hero: what if I ever make a CD-R mix for someone whose surname's 'Kirk', who never came to terms with the tragic loss of their only son? Yeah, your poxy 'old skool' anthem's not so CLASSIC now, is it, you inconsiderate scumbags?


THE CLASH - "Capital Radio 2"

Bang to rights on both intro AND outro! Allah smoking Silk Cuts, there's some things even a tone-deaf, musically inept gibbon like me knows you should never do in a studio. Rap acts should NEVER put 'skits' on an album, on pain of death. Speedcore thrash bands shouldn't attempt that 'difficult, jazz-fusion-oriented 5th album'. Ragga MCs should steer well clear of Autotune and orchestral strings. None of this requires a PhD.

Similarly, punk bands shouldn't even dream of slagging off other musical styles by recording parodies of said loathed style. That's the kind of bumfoolery Frank Zappa used to get up to, and who honestly wants to listen to his old platters anymore? Anyway, here's everyone's favourite weekend SWP-ers, The Clash, having a pop at Capital Radio for being bland, conformist and MOR. He picks all the hits to play / To keep you in your place all day! Fair enough.

But was the wanky acoustic guitar intro really necessary? The original Capital Radio was about 90 seconds long and did exactly what it said on the tin. For some lunatic reason, Strummer and Co. decided to string out this re-recording with a completely unfunny, ONE MINUTE-PLUS outro, where they parody a greedy pop group, getting into a 'funky groove', and announcing their intention to sell out to the highest record company bidder...

Oh hang on - The Clash actually did that in 1977, when they signed to CBS. OK, so the genuine beef seems to be: Capital sucked cos they never played any Clash, being too busy brainwashing London's workforce with commercial pap by Diana Ross and Free. It was a dire situation...especially if you were incapable of twisting the dial to Radio 1, where you could hear Kid Jensen rasping, And coming up now, it's the new single by The Clash..."Tommy Gun"!

Actually, to hell with this - I'm throwing this track off the list. Because, even if you chop the offending extremities off this tune, it's still rubbish. It's probably the worst thing The Clash ever churned out. At least Cut The Crap was amusing and had This Is England on it. END OF POST.

From a 'blogger''s point of view, slamming posts online – like a butcher shoving stunned swine down a greasy conveyor belt, towards a whirring rotor blade – is a pain in the arse. You spew out all this random stuff, then try to link bits together and tie it up neatly at the end, twisting the whole effort into some crucial observation, or a punchline. So, from now on, I'm just going to stop writing when I get bored, and bring the post to a crashing halt. Sure, it's not the best deal for readers, but let's see how it goes, for now at least.

I never really got involved in the VINYL vs CD vs CASSETTE vs MP3 debate - but I'll say one thing for the first three formats – if a top tune had a shitty intro or outro, it was easy to remove it when you were taping the damn thing for someone. Yeah, yeah, I know - you can download software from somewhere or other, allowing you to edit MP3s. HAVE YOU EVER DONE THIS, though? I nabbed a copy of Wavepad once, just to isolate and extract a tune I liked from an online reggae mix. It took about 45 minutes, and the final, saved MP3 sounded even tinnier than usual. So I had to do it again, while messing around with settings like REVERB, PITCH, VOLUME...oh, I dunno, FREQUENCY, MODULATION, ENVELOPE, GSX1400, TRANSUBSTANTIATION, whatever. The process was so skull-crushingly painful, I just ended up feeding a load of short sound files into Wavepad and converting them into industrial / power electronics monstrosities instead. THAT bit was easy...just crank up the echo x 5,000, slow the pitch down to –999 and re-record it backwards.

Anyway, I was thinking of some amazing songs cruelly blighted by shit bits at the beginning or end, and I came up with:

Ghostface Killah: "Daytona 500"

Along with Cobra Clutch, this is probably my favourite Wu-Tang spin-off track. I know the world and its soppy grandma raves itself bandy about Liquid Swords, but I never thought it was all that, to be honest – so burn me at the stake.

Daytona 500 is such a killer tune...but WHY did they have to tag that fucking stupid a capella onto the beginning? Just cut to the song, will ya? It's the "doo doo doo doo-duh-doo-doo"s and the "ooh!" that offend my sensibilities. I don't expect every song I like to start off with "ONE! TWO! FREE! FOUR!", but this is as bad as those occasional rough D'n'B tunes you'd get where the first minute was a woman whispering "Sculpt the future..." over synth strings. Or anarcho-punk bangers that kicked off with a nasally poem about nuclear power.

Siouxsie & The Banshees: "She's A Carnival"

I've always been a defender of the GOTHS, the snakebite-quaffing graveyard dandies who left a trail of dead, black roses scattered across Cold War Britain's septic silos. But I thought the Banshees were far better during their Psychedelic Dollhouse Romany Gypsy phase, personally. Dunno about you, but the line, With your hands upon the hips of the dancing fish does it for me every time. And the bit where she wails "GYPSY EYE-YE-YE!" kind of sums up EXACTLY why I never went for girls who take designer handbags seriously.

By the way, did I ever tell you about the time a gypsy girl kicked the crap out of me? It was a very, very long time ago. I would've mentioned it before, but I honestly don't think I can do the anecdote justice. It's true what counter-terrorism experts say: if it boils down to a siege, you have to shoot the women first. The men are marginally more likely to surrender, whereas the women go proper Assault On Precinct 13 ((the original, natch)). My advice to any 9-year old BTi readers is this: don't wander into a gypsy encampment, especially when a bunch of local kids have just spent the past couple of days lobbing stones and full Tango cans at the caravan windows.

Anyway, this tune is class. Well, until the last minute, when one of the band's minstrels starts prannying around with an end-of-pier organ. Moron! Talk about killing the mood. Seriously, it's a completely twattish outro, and renders the tune useless for a) jukeboxes b) compiling a MP3 'mix tape' for someone (in a zip file, I, er, guess). END OF POST.

(BTi Corps gearing up for the inevitable GOA TRANCE REVIVAL)

Hey honey-bunnies! Happy Valentines Week! Mwaaah! I'm all luvved up and ready to go. Oh, bollocks - listen, just do what I used to do every year. Go AWOL on the 13th. It's on a Sunday this year, isn't it? You know what that means, right? Your SO's pathetic parents will try to bully the two of you into popping round for Sunday lunch. Your SO will give in, and all your plans for making a mess in those spanking new Furry outfits you picked up at the local fetish fair will be straight out the window. Also, you'll have to deduct an hour, for going to church / mosque. As well as conserve your energy for Chinese New Year.

Oh, by the way, big shout out to the Saturday Golders Green synagogue posse. Yeah, I see you...driving round the back of Hodford Road, furtively parking your cars, and pretending you walked all the way from Temple Fortune...and on the sabbath!

They're still playing Scottish folk music in the Hindu temple, by the way.

But enough of this drivel - let's up n' man the LISTENING POST! I only bothered with individual tracks this time round.

A.B.H - "NERVES OF STEEL"

I wouldn't normally stick glue-sniffing RAC bands up here (("yeah, not much" - an ex-BTi reader)), but following our most esteemed cretin of a mayor's decision to piss £75k of London's budget up the wall on a 'USA Day', I'm really getting into this blast of thug rock: "Kentucky Fried Chicken and Coca-Cola / The Yanks are coming, they're taking over! / Reagan's hands around our neck / It's our nation he wants to wreck!"

Suffice to say, A.B.H weren't massive fans of our transatlantic cousins. Neither were the UK Left, actually. Luckily, A.B.H throw in an unrelated verse at the end, so you don't get confused, bemoaning: student bastards, the communists / trendy liberals, the multilateralists!, which actually sounds quite funny when he tries to cram in the last word in time to the beat.

Did you know - if you statistically collated everyone who ever bought a Skrewdriver LP, the breakdown would work like this: 45% neo-nazis; 35% the curious, intrigued by the group's reputation; 20% Lefties, who bought it to study the enemy ((and to secretly rock out to Back With A Bang when their comrades aren't looking)).

UPSETTERS - "RED HOT", "POPCORN", "CATCH THIS"

I don't really get many offers to clash fellow bloggers - I think they all grasp the difference between 'courageous' and 'kamikaze' - but, y'know what I was thinking the other day? If I ever did disgrace a DJ booth again, I'd probably just need to bring along a copy of the Upsetters' Eastwood Rides Again LP. You don't need anything else to kick-start a party - just slam both sides of this plastic bullet on the deck.

OH SURE, I'd draw flack from moaners, demanding to know how I could expect them to put up with "just one record" all night! Zip up, twatwaffles. If you can't have a good time repeatedly listening to Eastwood Rides Again, you don't deserve the epithet of RAVER. You're probably the kind of serial complainer who gets invited to a hearty Xmas dinner by your SO's parents - out of the pure, honest kindness of their hearts - and then whinges and bitches cos they didn't lay on any cheesy parsnips. Or those 'pigs in blakelocks' things.

The whole LP's sizzling, and boasts one of my favourite reggae front covers of all time, but I've been caning these three tracks the most recently. They're tough, stripped down, atypical (for the Upsetters) funk instrumentals. I know Lee Perry's kind of blasted in Blogworld, cos everyone remembers him playing to white sociology students with rasta hats in the 1990s, but sweet fucking Jah - could he make his musicians rock like bastards when he needed to.

I'm pretty sure some minor league trip hop / plunderphonics outfit filched the Red Hot bassline for a played-once-on-XFM-in-'97 single. And even that sounded brilliant. Cheers, Upsetters!

WILEY / CHEW FU - "TAKE THAT"

ANY tune that starts off sounding like a Flymo being violently ground into Boris Johnson's vacuous pusbag head is cool with me! Does Wiley actually say "Bedford nightclub" in this? ((NB - THAT BURNING SPEAR "COCKNEY WANKER" THING IS REAL, SO FUCK OFF)) Ask the History (Is Made At Night) Man - I reckon if this track had dropped in Mirage in 1993, there'd have been a curtain of Kilkenny drenching the dancefloor, as punters carrying those squeezy plastic pint glasses through the baying throng succumbed to the sweaty, human wave attack. And then everyone off to the kebab place opposite Bridge Street, to watch a Wonder Stuff fan rolling around under the tables, repeatedly sobbing, "Please, stop kicking me". What's Luton like now? I saw footage of the EDL demo and it just looked like most Friday evenings back in the old days.

GANG GANG DANCE - "DESERT STORM"

On the whole, the Gang Gang Dance album is so-so, but I played this track really loud on my earphones on the Metropolitan Line at Baker St the other week, and everybody in the carriage stared at me. OK, there were only four other people, but you get my drift.

Tussaud's is still doing a lot of business, isn't it? You'd think tourists'd have better things to waste their time and money on. I mean, most of the waxworks have nothing to do with London anyway. Is Britney still there? It's like flying all the way to Tokyo to gawp at a mannequin of Gordon Brown, or Alexa Chung, for ¥300,000. Gary Gilmore's not there anymore, allegedly. Some family, possibly Iberian, tapped me on the shoulder so I removed my earphones, and they asked me how to get to the wax factory. They'd all bought single Tube tickets as well. I really wanted to tell them to save their dosh. But shit, it's their biscuits, not mine. As they thanked me and headed for the opposite Exit to the one I'd pointed out, I re-jigged my iPod to the start of this track - and, for six minutes, I was again glad to be alive.

DILLINJA - "SOUTH SIDE" (RIFFIN' MIX)

There's this site called Zamzar where you can rip Youtube videos into MP3s, so I did it with this tune, which I literally hadn't heard for 16 years.

I know I'm fond of yelling "IF IT AIN'T RAGGA JUNGLE, IT AIN'T WORTH A FUCK!" into fellow bloggers' indignant faces, but this is different. If opening synth swoops could take a photo, this track would be every Camberwell skyline sunset in 1994. The tune still puts a shiver down my spine.

Dillinja used to be really good, then he got roped into all that moribund 'Intelligent Drum 'n Bass' codswallop. I guess ID'N'B is due a revival soon. Did you know that Photek's real name was Rupert? All the labels started monikering themselves stuff like Phuture Rationalizm or Channel Kognitiv - and, suddenly, everyone's SO's parents were inviting them round for Sunday dinner and putting on the LTJ Bukem 3LP set.

Sadly, the bass on the MP3 rip of South Side is so pitifully weak, I think I'm gonna have to brave the digital Hades of eBay to score a vinyl copy again.

GENERATION X - "KISS ME DEADLY"

Punks - tell me something. Why do you all hate Gen-X so much? Just because they were popular with Japanese schoolgirls before Japanese schoolgirls became 'cool'? They were the Suede of the Kings Road punk scene and Billy Idol is a gin-swigging nutcase with an IRA-supporting mum, who's done loads more zany shit than anyone else in the UK'76 crew, with an admirable (albeit illogical) absence of shame (that's Billy, not his ma...but who knows?)

I'd rather listen to the glorious Minder meets Christiane F psychodrama that's Kiss Me Deadly than anything by those boring powerpop gerbils Stiff Little Fingers - a band so devoid of original thought, they had to get a Daily Express hack to tell them how to dress, write half their songs for them and basically persuade them to become "the Ulster Clash" - right down to incorporating a lengthy, torturous white reggae workout halfway through Side 2 of their debut. I saw SLF in 2005 and they were toss. Jake Burns is just a bumbling old dad from a gravy advert and his interviews are fucking dross - So, we went into Rockfield for the third album...interestingly, it was the first time we'd recorded on 32-track...I used a Les Paul for the overdubs...we were tired of record company pressure and just wanted some time to... DIE, PERCHANCE?

The only person I've ever known who was fanatical about SLF turned out to be a grade-Z halfwit who once walked out of a pub without telling his SO he was going, because she was chatting to OTHER PEOPLE instead of clinging to his arm. He then sulked for a weekend and refused to answer her calls. He was especially put out by her selfishness, he later informed everyone, as he used to shower her with gifts on a weekly basis and sorted her out for lifts when her car broke down. She just didn't appreciate him! That's the kind of thing SLF sing about.

Said muppet also used to enjoy his steaks 'well done'. I know veggies won't get this, but that's about as low as you can go. What kind of tosspot has a 'well done' steak? Seriously, I have as little time for 'grown men' who fear blood on their chips as I have for people who suddenly swap their football teams in their 20s (which he also did).

As I suffered my way through that SLF set, you know who I HONESTLY wanted to see on stage? Who I'd have jumped right into the grunting mosh pit for, at the drop of a hand grenade? Yep...Generation X. Kiss Me Deadly is fucking amazing, and that's why it wins VALENTINES WEEK LISTENING POST.

And remember - your SO's parents reckon that their darling squirt could do MILES better than you - so don't get their goat by repeating any of this over the table.

(Virtually everyone in Britain owned this T-shirt between 1980 and 1982) (except me).

Kill Your Pet Puppy has just chucked up an online tribute to Sid Vicious on the 31st anniversary of his overdose. I don't really have much to add: I did have a drink with an ex-punk star once, who told me about the night Sid had to be hauled by his ankles from a disco, after he'd glugged so much booze he blacked out and shat his ripped jeans.

Sid's greatest contribution to humanity was the invention of POGOing. He basically invented dancing for kids who can't dance. Just repeat that to yourself 'til the implications sink in. And, for that alone, he will always be a fucking STAR in the BTi Hall of Fame.

1) A staggering 97% of online forum combatants who begin rants with I'm working class... are actually...middle class! In fact, there's a foolproof way to discover somebody's real social class by asking them which game they prefer - Space Invaders or Tetris. Space Invaders is working class. Tetris is so middle class, it's literally staggering around in a bar in Moorgate in skinny jeans, trying to wipe out those years of piano-playing shame by feigning a Mile End accent.

2) The chief culinary fare of the sleepy town of Dunstable is the 'Bedfordshire Clanger' - a nauseating suet pudding, stuffed with decomposing meat at one end - and jam at the other. It was named after a resident of the town, who, in the 1800s, beat his family to death with the puke-inducing piece of stodge. He was boiled alive - and stewed into a commemorative 'Clanger' - as punishment.

3) Don't ever ask hippy wigwam sensation BAT FOR LASHES to be your accountant. This is simply because...the unclassifiable PJ Harvey rip-off can't add up to save her life!! In a 2008 interview with Vogue India, Lashes admitted: "I don't understand numbers at all! One plus one? Uhm...no, I can't do it. Is the answer...a billion?" When later asked if she could multiply 2 by 2, she confessed: "I don't actually know what 2 means! Does it come after 30? I know 30." When quizzed "WHAT IS HALF OF 30?", Lashes conceded defeat: "Ohhh-kaayyye... I don't really know 30 at all. I was 30 a few years ago, and saw it printed on my birthday card, though I wasn't sure whether it was a number or a word. Is the answer...30 and a half??"

4) Skrewdriver singer IAN STUART had a paralysing, obsessive fear of DALEKS. He was convinced that the Jews had perfected a 'Dalek army', secretly stored in the basement of Hendon Town Hall, which would be unleashed on the White Race on New Year's Eve, 1999. According to Stuart, the surrealist structure located outside the town hall - Itzhak Ofer's fairly rubbish sculpture, The Family of Man - also served as a 'location marker' for CYBERMEN - who would link up with the Daleks before jointly commencing an almighty anti-Aryan onslaught.

5) Among some of the more unusual global gifts to be found in North Korea's INTERNATIONAL FRIENDSHIP EXHIBITION HALL..!

* A rare Rinse FM recording, featuring Logan Sama having an argument with a pizza delivery boy

* The head of World Cup-discovering mutt PICKLES - preserved in embalming fluid

* 75 pristine 'Global Hypercolor' T-shirts (still in shrink-wrap)

* Pamela Colman Smith's original prototype DEATH tarot card - featuring a yellow smiley face (and "Sorry, fuck up! Proper skull on the next one - luv, Pixie xxx" scribbled on the back)

* Issue 1 of WOOFAH fanzine

* A Bauhaus chess set (two pawns and a knight missing)

* A chunk of moss from the Principality of Sealand

* A portrait of Class War co-founder Ian Bone - fashioned entirely from doner kebab meat and solidified Special Brew

* An acetate copy of Mariah Carey's outrageous, banned 2001 'rap album' ((which led to her being dumped by Virgin Records. SAMPLE -Rip the baby outta your muthafuckin womb / Boom fuckin boom! / Slam the fetus in a tomb / Like 9-11 comin up your ass / Jihad I preach and kufar fuckin planes crash / On the end of a fuckin 0.38 / Kids I castrate, fat bitches I mutilate / In the name of Satan, Lord, Rape-Master! / Bitch Slim-Faster? / Get the metal out and blast her / I'm over your shit like the Aberfan disaster / I'm the fuckin Omagh bomb / Killed more bitches than the Somme...)) ((NOTE - public decency forbids this blog from reproducing any more of the lyrics to Imperfect Angel (Bring Da Muthafucking Ruckus))

* An old TOM ROBINSON BAND tour poster (the late Kim Il-Sung's favourite band, reportedly)

6) "It's like a bloody viking tea party up there". That's NASA's damning verdict on the INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION - where, according to a leaked report, the years 2005-2010 witnessed:

* 13 astronauts and 8 cosmonauts injured as a result of fighting
* a research assistant pushed out of the airlock into space, following a 48-hour booze binge
*$200,000 worth of sensitive equipment DESTROYED, due to 'manhandling' and 'abuse'
* the onboard computer attacked by more than 200 viruses, caused by ISS personnel repeatedly visiting MP3-sharing, PORN and poker sites
* meals being consumed in 'zero-grav' conditions, resulting in heavy staining to the Space Station interiors
* ...and FAILURE to respond to communications from ground control - with hungover cosmonauts opting to 'sleep it off', instead of reporting back to Earth.

"They're supposed to be conducting vital scientific experiments on a daily basis - fuck knows what's going on in their heads," the NASA report concludes. "It's an utter disgrace. Maroon the bloody lot of 'em up there, if they want to act like spoilt children. I know trainees who'd give their right arms to work in space.".

7) Is it true that pigeons regularly ride the London Underground network on certain routes, routinely boarding and exiting at the same stations? The answer is a resounding...YES! We refer to these feathered passengers as 'commuter pigeons'.

8) TOM ROBINSON is in fact a notorious occultist. In a 2007 interview with Vogue India, he claimed that he ritually designed the chorus of his hit single 2-4-6-8 Motorway! to be chanted as a "magickal mantra", to help hitchhikers to summon a lift in bad weather. Unfortunately, Robinson is unable to test his hoodoo experiment for himself...the 50-year old singer suffers from motion sickness!

9) Some records that have fallen foul of the PMRC's crusade against indecency in pop and rock music:

* Moving On Up, M People: (Record cites: invoking [and becoming intoxicated on liquor with] Satan; forced homosexuality; 'infantilism' [sexual aberration]; assisting a prison escape attempt; personal pride in the face of God)

* True Love Never Dies, Flip & Fill :: (Record cites: lycanthropy; pre-marital sex; wilful public disturbance; the sin of 'presumption')

* Even After All, Finley Quaye: (Record cites: homicide; S&M [sexual aberration]; petty larceny; idolatry)

* Like A Feather, Nikka Costa: (Record cites: witchcraft; masturbation [sexual aberration]; anal sex [sexual aberration]; auto-erotic asphyxiation [sexual aberration]; Gnostic heresy)

* Brimful of Asha, Cornershop: (Record cites: idolatry; immodesty; repeated reference to firearms; female frontal nudity; civil disobedience; reference to prophylactics)

* Because We Want To, Billie: (Record cites: public disturbance; mob violence; drug consumption; communism; scrying; genocide)

10) Burning Spear vocalist JOSEPH HILL WINSTON RODNEY doesn't think much of pirates, Babylon or the system...or EAST LONDON, for that matter! After being ripped off by a Mile End taxi driver in 1974, who blatantly charged the dread £2 for a 90p fare, Hill Rodney recorded the mighty reggae hit Marcus Garvey, in which he concludes the second verse by snarling, "COCKNEY WAN-KERRR!" To keep the peace, apologists such as Paul Gilroy and David Katz have insisted that the lyric actually flows as Come on, little one.... But, for those of us with ears, the dig is clear!

Not that I give a fuck - I'm from North London anyway, and WE ARE NOT 'cockneys', OK?