Notes from two small islands

That’s a nifty little headline, actually. Notes because it’s about music, and two small islands because it’s about Britain and Australia. That feeling you’re feeling, that’s awe. That’s probably awe.

So, this isn’t a long post. I’m going to adorn it with as few words as possible. I just need you to watch two videos for me. They are – and please stay at least until the end of this paragraph – the respective theme tunes to TV cricket coverage in England and Australia. They both date from the late 1990s. Have a listen, and then try and work out why Australia always beat England at everything. Have two pieces of music ever encapsulated the difference between two countries quite so perfectly? First, the BBC.

Now, Australia’s Channel 9.

I mean… God!

I might come back to this at some stage. TV theme tunes are my kinky fetish.

Some suggestions for the TV election debate

So Nick Clegg, the other one and the other one have agreed to a TV gang-bang. Which is either fine or not fine. Either way, seeing as they’re entertainers now, perhaps they could take on board a few of the following suggestions to make it a spectacle worth spectacling.

1) Each of the participants is allowed a maximum of three swear words, to be deployed whenever they wish. This turns the whole thing into a thrilling tactical encounter. Do you deploy the words one at a time? Or do you load them all up into one monstrous insult along the lines of: “You’ve given us the deepest recession since the 1930s, you fucking shitting cunt!”?

2) Before the debate starts, each party leader must choose an envelope from a selection of, say, a dozen. Contained within that envelope will be a word that the participant is thereafter forbidden from using. Some, such as “economy” or “families”, will have a ready synonym; others, like “the”, “it” and “hung parliament”, will present a genuine test of verbal dexterity.

3) The contestants should be kept in locked, sealed chambers and their microphones should only be activated when it is actually their turn to speak. The twist is that they won’t know exactly when this is, because they will be deprived of light and sound and able to perceive nothing about their surroundings. At worst, this will entail all three leaders talking loudly but uncertainly over each other like the homeless people on the Strand. At best, we will be treated to the sound of a slightly wistful Gordon Brown muttering to himself: “This is more like it.”

4) Each guest is allowed to speak for no more than 45 seconds at a time. This will be enforced thus: the microphone shall be firmly attached to a chunk of radioactive material (manganese-57 is particularly suitable for this purpose) that the candidates must hold if they wish to speak. Should they speak any longer, the material will begin to decay, shooting fatal doses of ionising radiation in Messrs Brown, Cameron and Clegg’s bodies. Their call.

5) Each of the leaders should be required to attend one of the debates wearing only their underwear. The twist is that if all three of them appear in their underwear at the same debate, they all get to keep their clothes on and the host has to strip to their underwear. But if the host has anticipated this and is already in their underwear, the studio audience then have to strip to their underwear. However, the three leaders can then agree to reprieve the studio audience so nobody has to strip to their underwear, by choosing one of themselves to re-strip to their underwear, as well as supplying to their chosen charity the sum of one magic crystal. Basically, underwear. More underwear.

6) The victor of the debates should be decided by a combination of audience text vote and studio audience electronic ballot. The winner should, quite simply, win £250,000, a three-album record deal and a slot at the Royal Variety Performance.

Gazza: a very human tragedy

It’s the children I feel sorry for the most. Aren’t they the ones who always bear the brunt of it? Gazza has been in a bad way for some time now, and still every bulletin, every article, every chilling expose appears to bring yet more bad news.

Clearly a battle is raging inside Gazza; a battle between the elements of calm, diligence and sanity, and the pernicious forces of destruction, carnage and harm. It’s a battle that has been fought for quite some time, and really it’s one about possession. Who really owns Gazza? At the moment, it appears the answer is nobody. Gazza, as things stand, is simply a zone that defies control, pacification, even understanding.

Those that fail to understand Gazza have no right to pass judgment. Who really knows what’s going on inside? Because Gazza has been a part of the public consciousness for so long – since around May 1967, one might wryly point out – we feel as though we have some sort of privileged insight. But our assessment is no more valid or useful than the next dispassionate observer’s. We can trace the decline, we can drink in the grim headlines, we can even try and grapple with the intense sense of human tragedy. The unfulfilled potential. The senseless waste. But most of us don’t have access to Gazza, and those that do are often the ones with some sort of vested interest.

For the story of Gazza is a tragedy, and a needless one. It is a story of wanton stubbornness, of rotten luck, of bad choices and wrong decisions. Setback has followed setback. As quickly as hope has sprung, and Gazza has appeared momentarily at peace, that hope and that peace have been extinguished with a crushing sense of inevitability. I think we all know how this story might end.

And yet, the very worst might be averted. Gazza can yet be saved. If only, if only, if only, Israel, Hamas and the relevant parties were prepared to sit down and discuss a viable two-state solution, Gazza and its beleaguered citizens could dream of a life without rockets and shells.

NB: Apologies for the spelling errors.

Ode to Robert Pattinson

Hello, Robert Pattinson.
It’s me, Jonathan.
You don’t know me
And to be perfectly honest, I don’t really know you.
Just thought I’d write you a little poem.

I should probably come clean at this point.
I haven’t actually seen Twilight
And I’m fairly certain I won’t in the future.
It’s vampires, innit?
Creeping into people’s bedrooms late at night
Plunging a prosthetic fang into their neck
And drinking their blood.
I’m sorry, I just can’t condone that kind of behaviour.

Still, you’re all big now, you movie star, you, eh?
Eh?
Crowds gather when you go to Boots.
Strange people point electric sticks at you and demand speech.
Pictures of you appear in places you’ve never been.
Ghent. Pasadena. Bromley.

Other people in the world called Robert Pattinson are rendered irrelevant in an instant.
There’s Robert Pattinson from Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan,
Cursing your ass loudly as the phone rings for the FOURTH TIME IN A ROW.
Robert Pattinson from Wakefield, West Yorkshire
Has decided to make the best of things.
He goes online, pretends to be you, and grooms teenage girls for sex.
They run
When they find out he’s 81.

Lots of people want to be your friend.
“Watch out for sharks,” say the vultures.
“Watch out for vultures,” say the sharks.
Everybody wants a piece of Robert Pattinson.
The girl who wants an autograph actually wants a photo.
The girl who wants a photo actually wants a kiss.
The girl who wants a kiss actually wants you to use her buttocks as a bicycle.
Everyone wants something from you.

Not me, though.
Robert Pattinson, this I swear:
I will never demand a second of your time.
I shall ask no favours of you.
Your thoughts will never be darkened by my craven likeness.
Because, like I say,
I’ve never seen Twilight.
Don’t know what you look like.
Don’t know a thing about you
And really, couldn’t give the tiniest shit.
Not the most minuscule, ephemeral, sub-atomic particle-sized,
Shit.

LIVE: Tiger Woods doesn’t DIE DIE DIE BLOOD TORTURE HOW MANY MORE

It was on the tips of their collective tongues, the D-word. Fortunately, society still isn’t at the place where you can toss around that SEO-sucking mother completely at will, but the day when you turn on Sky News and read the words: “This person might die! Look at us! Look at us until they die! Look! Look!” is assuredly imminent.

The networks got a taste of it with Michael Jackson, had a little shufti at the viewing figures and decided that a little mortality goes a long way. So, “man in car accident” becomes “most famous sportsman in the world might die” becomes “Tiger Woods’s organs were splattered all over the windscreen of his Cadillac SUV, from where his tepid, clotting blood dripped into the gaping mouths of children below like olive oil drizzling onto the world’s worst salad. AAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHH.” In terms of overkill, it’s the equivalent of choking on a fish bone and deciding, on the basis of this, to destroy all fish everywhere. Julius Caesar actually once tried to do this. He was told to go and have a long lie down. To his eternal credit, he did.

Of course, Tiger Woods did not DIE DIE DIE BLOOD TORTURE HOW MANY MORE (although a few dozen people on a train in Russia did, meh). Moreover, it became very quickly and very suddenly apparent that he was not going to die. The news agencies were still hammering out their obituaries when the local mayor popped up on CNN and announced that Woods had left hospital, and the newspapers were busy reinstating their original front pages for tomorrow when Woods’s agent declared that the World’s Greatest Sporting Thing was “fine”.

How the words cloyed in SkyNewsWoman’s mouth as she uttered them.

“We’re just getting news from Tiger Woods’s agent saying that he is… ‘fine’”, she drawled in the manner of a surly child being forced to apologise. “That’s… a great relief,” she added with a wicked note of defiance. Then the tactical retreat began.

“We were, of course, going on reports in the Orlando Sentinel that he was in a ’serious’ condition.” No longer was she the interpid face on the tiller in this time of global catastrophe. She was Emperor Hirohito, sheepishly admitting to the nation that, well, you know this whole, ‘fight to the death’, you know, thang?

“Obviously, it now appears his injuries were less serious than first thought.” Damn right. No BAFTA for you, sunshine. Now. What’s on E4?