Nation's Idiots to have "Nothing to Talk About"

Experts have warned that Britain's idiots could be left with literally nothing to talk about as early as this weekend following the dual demises of TV's Jedward and Jordan. Since the eviction of Dubliner twins John and Edward Grimes and the withdrawal from the jungle of large-breasted void Katie Price, it is feared that drooling, asinine viewers of ITV's "X Factor" and "I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here" will simply run out of fatuous booby-babble regarding their favourite shows.

For weeks now, offices and saloon bars across the land have echoed with the empty-headed tittle-tattle of mean-spirited ninnies of both sexes, eagerly discussing how much they hope "them twins" and "that Jordan" meet with a timely comeuppance.

"With the departure of both of their betes-noir in rapid succession, there is a yawning chasm where previously reality-show enthusiasts would project all of their ill-willed negativity towards people younger, richer and more attractive than themselves" commented pop psychologist Dr Carl Rackemann.

Although many fans of the successful karaoke show will find some relief in discussing the less controversial vocal stylings of remaining X-Factor contestants such as The Lass, The Geordie One and One of The Others, it is thought that many erstwhile Jedward-haters will find themselves unable to re-engage with the show and will be reduced to blowing saliva bubbles out of their gaping bovine maws or simply gawping at the wall in front of them through vacant, unseeing eyes.

Elsewhere, with the dramatic departure of permatanned pneumatic renaissance woman Katie Jordans, millions of celebrity-insect-eating-humiliation enthusiasts will be forced to subsist on a diet of non-entities about whom they have no strong feelings making the best of things and rubbing along together in an air of strained, unconvincing camaraderie.

In an attempt to gauge the mood of the country's morons, we asked the first people we found in the street eating Gregg's pasties for their thoughts. "At first, I wanted nothing more in life than for Jordan to get evicted off of 'Jungle-y'" wheezed one tracksuit-clad bloater. "Now though, since she's left it, I just feel a yawning sense of emptiness inside, as though I'm being crushed under an inexorable landslide of monumental, soul-destroying existential angst, yeah?" continued the tattooed shaven ape of indeterminate gender.

However, it wasn't all doom and gloom on the nation's high streets. Shop assistant Jan Tearson, 22, was still managing to remain optimistic. "Oh my God, I was like sooo glad when Jedward got kicked off of X-Factor, right, but then I was like kind of sad, know what I mean? Like I had nothing left in my empty, pathetic existence. But like I'm now so over that, yeah, and I hope that all their hair falls out or they get scabies or they're like in a car crash or something. Yeah, I hope they die in a mangled mess of twisted metal debris, the cunts. They were rubbish".

Peter Kay to Unveil "New Material"

Some old rope, yesterday

The nation's favourite rotund Lancastrian funnyman is set to unleash an avalanche of laughter this winter, with speculation rampant that he has, at long last, been working on some new material. Sources close to the roly-poly comic have refused to confirm the scope or nature of the new material, which is set to be unveiled at next month's Royal Variety Performance, a mere five years after the last confirmed sighting of a piece of fresh comedic gold in the Bolton gag-merchant's live routine. The comic will also announce details of a live stand-up tour on this Friday's "Chris Moyles Tabloid Breasts Appreciation Breakfast Show" on Radio 1.

Comedy fans were understandably delighted at the momentous news, with fans of ultra-short-term northern nostalgia breaking down in the street and weeping tears of slack-jawed mirth at the memory of the comedian's incisive analysis of the quiz show "Bullseye" and his extended riffs on something slightly foolish his mother had said to him when he was eight.

The new material will be eagerly anticipated across the length and breadth of the country, as speculation raged in the nation's workplaces.

"I hope he says some funny things about the programme "3-2-1", with Ted Rogers and Dusty Bin", 47 year old clerical assistant Connie Plank, of Rochdale, told our reporter. "What was that all about, eh?".

However, plasterer Dave David, 24, of Hunslet was hoping for "Mock incredulous pronunciation of some fancy dan foodstuff, possibly as delivered by one of Peter's daft uncles at a family gathering or something. Maybe couscous. Yeah, I'd like to hear Peter Kay repeatedly saying the word "Cous! Cous!" in the style of a bemused older man. He should do that. I would definitely pay as much as 25 quid for a ticket if I thought he would be saying "Cous? Cous?" over and over again. I mean, couscous, what's that all about, eh?"

However, not everyone was as enthusiastic at the prospect of fresh joke funnies from the porridge-skinned end-of-the-pier entertainer. Simon Joyliss, of online comedy site notcomdotcom, feels that the public's tastes may have changed in the time that Kay has been busy re-hashing and reheating his stage act into three separate autobiographies. "With the credit crunch and the worrying rise of extremist political parties, people want edgier comedians who are performing riskier, harder-hitting material than Peter Kay. Comedians like Frankie Boyle, digging up thirty-year old Barbara Streisand jokes in order to insult a 20 year old woman on a topical news quiz, or Jimmy Carr, doing updated Bob Monkhouse gags with a bit of gratuitous swearing thrown in. That's the type of thing today's zeitgeistlisters want."

When asked to confirm the rumours surrounding his much-vaunted new material, Kay was remaining tight-lipped, pausing briefly to inform our reporter "Hey son, I want twenty grand before I talk to youse cunts. I'm only doing Moyles' show so that they give me a prime slot on Children in Need. "

"Garlic! Bread!"

Ins and Outs: November '09

Oy oy, saveloy! How's it growing?

By which, the Committee means to say "Happy Halloween/Bonfire Night and that!". Truly, this is the most wondrous time of the year, where students, horror film enthusiasts, goths and other miscellaneous wazzocks get to tit around with costumes, make-up and pumpkins and insert fireworks into cat rectums. Marvellous.

Whatever happened to bobbing for apples, eh? That's what we used to do "back in the day". Shite, it was.

Pigeonholing the tiresome nostalgia for the moment, it's time to deploy the countdown that lets you tell the difference between the pumpkin and the blumpkin, the Catherine wheel and the Catherine Tate and the Michael Myers and the Michael McIntyre.

Ladies and gentlemen, ghosts and ghoulies, Ins and Outs am here!

In

On spotting anybody drinking an Irish whiskey/cream-based liqueur, bursting into an impromptu chorus of "All that she wants, is another Bailey's, oh-oh-oh!"
Loving Phats, hating Small.
When entertaining the GLW to anniversary cocktails in the Savoy's Palm Room, sidling up to the pianist, sticking a tenner in his top pocket and asking if he could run through DJ Assault's "Ass and Titties" as it was 'Your Song'.
Having two or three classic, 'signature' items in your wardrobe which, if you layer and accessorise, are timeless.
Telling your grandchildren that you used to play Timpani in the Joe Loss Orchestra, despite the fact that a) this impresses them not one jot and b) it's Some Bull Shit.
Engaging in a lengthy SMS-based correspondence with the girl from the 24 hour garage regarding who is hotter: Rush Limbaugh or Newt Gingrich.
The Superior Colliculus. It's mint!
The old boy on the bus with spectacles whose arms cling to his head a good two inches above the ears.
The banjo-pickin' stylings of Marcy Marxer and Cathy Fink.
Explaining to your boss that the reason that ever so important work thing hasn't been done is because you've been "busier than Lagos airport, yeah?"
Writing frightening verse to a buck-toothed girl in Luxembourg, together with a request for a couple of risque Polaroids.
New Jersey. There should be more states named after knitwear purchases.
Killing a marmoset with a teaspoon, boiled egg style. Just to see what it would feel like to kill a tiny, furry man, the size of your hand.
Grimly chronicling on Facebook the time you get up every single morning, as if even one person in this world gave the merest hint of a rat's ass.
Being firmly of the opinion that the preparation and consumption of food by fairly repellent members of the public is not necessarily something that needs to be televised.
Asda Smart Price mushy peas. Yummlicious!
Mercilessly taunting a fellow about still living at home with his parents, only for him to remind you that he's 8 years old.
Getting a fishtank built from bulletproof glass, in case some mope tries to wack your guppies.
Shankill Butchers. Quality cuts of meat at a price that can't be beat!
Harbouring grave concerns that poor Katie Price is about to have her heart broken again. Bear up, our Kate, oh do bear up.


Out

The sudden crop of "Question Time" connoisseurs with their hitherto hidden expertise regarding the format and ethos of the show.
Failing to convince the bloke delivering you a skip that Sartre's theory of existentialism was nothing more than solipsistic pre-reflective consciousness.
Making a big show of repairing pitch marks on the rare occasion you find the green with a full-blooded iron shot.
Committing the textbook novice drinker's error of mixing the grape with the grain with the crystal meth.
Halloween fancy dress fuckology.
Initiating intimacy by cordially inviting your lass to "put yourself on the hot spot".
Jamie T. Jamie S.H.I.T. more like!!!!!!!111!!IEHEISSHIT!!!!!
Blokes taking a "bag for life" to the supermarket. You big jessie.
Low quality shower-head replacements.
Ballroom dancing. No amount of East European prostitutes and actors from Holby City will disguise the fact that it's shit.
DJ Hero. Bloody hell.
Describing the bloke in the local dry cleaners as a "Major League ass hole".
Crafting Hour on QVC. The most banal, godawful tat you will ever see offered for sale.
Becoming embroiled in a vitriolic flame war on Twitter with Noam Chomsky regarding the relative merits of the Pozidrive and the Phillips screwdriver.
Tedious co-workers who insist on delivering a lengthy and voluble review of every single dreadful ITV programme they have watched the previous evening.
That hairy seven foot tall boxer. Looks like a bloody gorilla he does, and that's swearing.
Constructing an eight-foot papier mache model of the head of Nicholas Witchell and fucking it in the ear.
Thinking you are such hot shit just because you buy red onions instead of normal ones.
"Sex on Fire", sixty weeks in the charts. Who the cornholing hell is going out and buying it, sixty weeks later?
Loose Chippings. The gravel whores!

Ins and Outs: October '09

Wu-Tang!

The IOC, in the place to be. Gonna give it to ya, time to deliver to ya, raw like cocaine straight from Bolivia.


Ahem. Some young shaver must have been interfering with the wireless, putting on Radio 1 Extra's Light Programme. Don't touch that dial.

Word up, canines, it's time to get schooled in what's cool and who's a tool, what's giggity-giggity and who got no diggity. Throw yo set in the air and shake your derriere, because, lords and ladies, Ins and Outs am heeeeerrrrre!


In

Occasionally stepping out your front door for a few pints and to get some ess on your aitch ell rather than tubby boohooing about which twat on Mock the Week is the unfunniest.
The unlikely scenario of Richard Thompson stumbling on stage to headline the Cambridge Folk Festival and introducing the opening song by telling the audience "this song is about leaving your missus to spend six months banging she-males in Thailand, it's called '25 years stabbing round the same hole'."
Vladivostok. The best vostok of all.
Complimenting your good lady wife on the fetching new mascara she got from Virgin Vie, telling her she's the spitting double of a young Charlie Magri.
Nate Dogg.
In a low tavern, sidling up to "Dogfighting Dave" and asking him if he can get you a Kennel Club registered Borzoi pup.
Any politician proposing the introduction of Camp Gitmo style torture for anyone caught using the word "diary" as a verb.
In the event of unorthodox behaviour by a companion (howking their guts up outside the pub, shanking their golf ball into some trees) bellowing witlessly "There's an app for that!" into their disgruntled face.
The novels of George P. Pelecanos.
Proclaiming that you be "lovin' kaolin but hatin' morphine" before excusing yourself and hotfooting it to the lavatory, clutching your stomach.
Concluding the tale of how you pulled the lass from the kebab shop while voguing in "Dizzle-Dazzles" nitespot by sagely informing your audience that "there ain't no off switch on a fanny magnet".
Spending some Friday night quality time alone with a couple of bottles of fruity Muscadet, a shoal of mussels and an entire sky-plussed series of "Don't Tell the Bride".
(Falsely) claiming that "they call me Masai Mara, 'cos I got so much game".
Polish chicks. G'dang g'dang g'dansk!
Spending a long, lonely sleepless night wondering whether the UK Speed Garage scene will ever return to its former prominence.
When asked by a dreadful mate why the long face, swilling the remnants of your pint around and ruefully remarking that what with the punk ass bitches and suck ass niggaz, you were seriously considering getting out of the game.
When reminded that you are not a player in South Central, rather you work as a minor functionary in the Town Hall's Planning Department, cheering up and getting a round in.
The Alimentary Canal. Very picturesque at this time of year.
Asking the barber to leave it long at the back, "a bit like Günter Netzer, you know?"
Bismuth. An excellent metal.
Fooling people that you're dealing drugs by standing round on a street corner in a beanie hat and an outsized white t-shirt, occasionally shaking hands with passers-by.



Out

Anybody over 14 who plays "Guitar Hero". The "bairns computer game plastic guitar toy" solution of the fool.
Making out that you used to be a well-known face on the Northern Soul scene, back in the day ktf.
On being introduced to a dreadful mate's new bit of stuff, taking a step back, eyeing her up and down as though you're admiring a freshly creosoted new fence, before unwisely opining that "she's got a bit of an arse on her."
Finding that the sight of people eating crisps is growing increasingly repugnant.
Tim Krul and Ja Rule playing pool, looking too cool for school.
Thinking that your relationship with your 13-year-old daughter has improved multifold since she added you as a friend on Facebook before logging on one day and discovering she has "become a fan of rough sex."
The Hunkpapa tribe. They ain't hunky, they is minging.
Eyes too far apart.
Boring the hole off all and sundry about the fabulous bargains you picked up on your trip to Costco.
On the serendipitous occasion of copping off with and being subsequently fellated by, a girl named Denise, texting everyone on your sim card the slightly self-congratulory message "DIRTY DENISE DIRTIED HER KNEES!!!!!"
Claiming to be an authority on Sumerian mythology, when really you wouldn't know sun god Utu from Harry "Choo Choo" Romero.
Pretty much anyone who hasn't taken Holy Orders using the word "bless".
Pusillanimous five-a-side goalkeepers.
The BIG OPINIONS of Messrs Venables, Wright and Redknapp in The Sun.
Men that eat jam. Catch yourself on, Billy Bunters, it's a female preserve.
Gavin from Autoglass. Yow-yow cock-knocker.
Telling people that you like to watch the first few episodes of "X-Factors", because the Hilarious Spectacle of seeing carefully selected footage of lads with bad haircuts, chunky unco-ordinated girl bands, daft old biddies and the mentally ill singing poorly simply Never Gets Old.
Inadvertently putting your foot in it due to suffering IVF/UVF confusion.
Shuddering at the prospect of being ostracised. Imagine having the end of your old chap bitten by an ostrich. Ouch!
Hans Blix and his missing Twix.
Stuck-up, nose-in-the-air beeyatches who think their shit don't stink. Your shit does stink, actually. It stinks of shit!

Ins and Outs: September '09

It's September, folks, and that means it's time to go back to school, fool!

If you need to know your A* score from your G-Star Raw, your logarithms from your biorhythms, your protractor from your X-Factor, your National Curriculum from your Bristol Funicular, then walk, don't run, and assemble in the main hall, because Ins and Outs am here!

In

Bringing a little East End style gaiety to everyday life by adding the word "Well" to any "Out of Order" signs one encounters.
Always referring to St John's Ambulance staff as "sinjen's ambulance" people.
Ladies darts teams that contain one scrawny wife who looks like Nicky Wire.
Letting out an extended "sheeeeeeeee-it" as an errant four iron shot spirals off towards the shelter of the trees.
Ginger lasses' wispy muff hair
Getting into a furious slanging match with a member of the Big Issue sales team regarding the relative merits of Warp records artistes Plone and Autechre.
Nostalgically remembering the heyday of "happy slapping".
Telling the bloke behind the counter at the Chinese takeaway that, with the prices they charge, they ought to be able to afford a larger telly than the small-assed effort they've got up on a bracket there.
Loving croques madame, hating croques monsieur.
Slowpoke Rodriguez. That brother knew how to chillax to the max.
Burly girls eating Viennese Whirls.
Being unable to go on your best mate's stag weekend due to having spent all your spare cash on Lladro ladies.
Harbouring grave concerns that Katie Price's new kickboxing beau is a Thoroughly Bad Lot.
On the occasion of a pal purchasing a rusting Hyundai Pony, clapping them solemnly on the shoulder and telling them "My friend, that's not just a car, that's a vaginal lodestone, right there!"
When your lass gets back from the spray-tanning parlour, telling her how fabulous she looks - "Like a young J.M. Coetzee".
Being frankly uninterested in anything anyone ever tells you.
Phagocytes. They're skill!
Having a matey drunken conversation with the taxi driver about the wild, albeit invented, times you have had while fishing for chub in Southern Ireland.
Scratching one's head ruefully as things go wrong.
The Brandenburg Gate. A big old gate made of pink and yellow cake? Yum yum!


Out

We Are Klang. You Are Cunts, more like.
KFC Hot Rods. You'd be as well off dipping your knackers in batter, deep-frying them and eating them off a stick.
Slow play. It annoys.
Football clubs conducting multi-million pound deals by desperately titting around with fax machines minutes before the transfer deadline.
The perplexing amount of young fellers wearing t-shirts declaring their love of the Japanese prefecture of Osaka.
People who worship The Stig. Grab what dignity you can scrape off the floor and fuck off to Goa.
Drunkenly informing a bubble-permed blonde girl in "Screwers" brasserie and grill that you "serve it raw and uncut. Respect it or reject it!"
The song of the lark. A din.
Grow-your-own Gretas thinking that putting aside half their garden to attempt to cultivate 1/4 size marrows (not that any cunt likes marrows) will turn them into a latterday Felicity Kendalls, getting them the chap interest to match.
The so-called Championship. They're all shite!
Earthy sorts, obviously new to the internet, who "add" you on Facebook and proceed to send you every hoax security alert and mawkish chain-letter going, then attempt to get you to join highbrow groups such as "I'll level with you, I just don't like blacks" and "Let's go round to a peados house and shit him right up!".
That blonde brummie cow with the teeth,off of the bank advert.
A girlfriend with glaucoma. It's quite serious.
Anyone making unwelcome noises about the advanced state of their Christmas preparations.
Grown adults stuffing their faces with jumbo bags of Haribo jellied sweets.
At the supermarket checkout, some hairy-chinned old OAP beeyatch poking you upside the ass with they trolley. Ho, you need to back the fuck up and wait your turn.
Camping enthusiasts.
Thinking that the fact that you won't be watching "The X-Factor" makes you some sort of latter-day Bernard Levin.
When inscribing greeting cards, fancying that a paucity of imagination can be counterbalanced by a surfeit of exclamation marks. "Have a good one!!!!!!!" indeed.
Being only too willing to launch into a lengthy narrative when asked, purely out of politeness, how the job is going.

Behind the Music #7: Village People - "YMCA"

Hey, music lover, how the jumping jehosophat are you doing?

You may have noticed a not unbecoming gravity in my demeanour today. That's because I have my serious head on. It seems the previous soaraway installment in this series has kicked up a controversial stink. Feathers have been ruffled, umbrage taken and brickbats, erm, batted.

The charge is a serious one: that of homophobia. In cocking a playful snook at REM and REM enthusiasts, it seems as though your correspondent appears to be implying that being gay is A Bad Thing and that the gays are to be shunned and derided.

This is not the case. I love the gays, me, although I wouldn't want one marrying my daughter.

Unless it was a lady gay, or "lesbian", as they call them. Then they could have a civil partnership, no problems there.

Indeed, one of my all-time musical heroes was a gay man. That man was the motorcyclist from The Village People.

The Village People are probably the biggest thing to hit the music world since the demise of The Beatles.

In the 1970s, you could ask any healthy young boy, with red blood coursing through his veins, what he wanted to grow up to be, and without exception the answer would come back "A member of the Village People".

The German sextet were the ultimate embodiment of healthy manhood and right-thinking notions of masculinity. The cowboy, the construction worker, the so-called native american, the cop and the soldier were, of course, all perfectly respectable role models for any young laddie, but the cool guy, the real deal, the big cheese was, of course, the motorbike enthusiast.

Men wanted to be him, women wanted to be with him.

As a teenager growing up in the, erm, early 90s when they re-released a lot of their music, I, like most of my peers, wanted to be the mustachioed biker from the VPs, as we called them. His stylish leather cap and impressive curved facial hair gave him a rugged, masculine look that all of us young shavers could only dream of.

Truly, a man with a soup-strainer like that one would have hot chicks hanging off him like fruitbats, we surmised.

Imagine then, our surprise, when it emerged that he was, in fact, a gay man. Surely everyone of a certain age remembers where they were when they first heard that "the one with the tache" out of the Village People was gay? It was our generation's moon landing or JFK assassination.

First it had been George Michael, then it was Stevie G from Boyzone, and now the motorcycle guy from the Peeps, as we were now calling them. Where would it end?

They say there's nowt so queer as folk, but, right then, it seemed that the world of pop was every bit as "queer" as its bearded, jumper-wearing musical counterpart.

We were once again allowed to use the word "queer", incidentally, thanks to the sterling reclamation work of Peter Tatchell and his Outrage brethren.

Props, Pete!

However, this was still a challenging issue for a confused youngster growing up in the North-East of England in the 1990s, which was still very much a repressed, backwards place in those days, full of outmoded attitudes, flagrant prejudice and disapproving attitudes towards pastel-coloured shirts.

In the end, it was the band's music that won the day. Of all the classics in the Village People canon, the classicalest of them all is "YMCA". We all know it, we all love it. Essentially, the song is a paean to the simple pleasures of going to the local YMCA and hanging out with all the boys.

Now, in my younger days, I enjoyed nothing more than doing just that very thing. There was indeed a YMCA in our local town, where, in addition to hanging out with all the boys, one could play Table Tennis and Snooker.

Also, soft drinks, crisps and sweets were available.

While this mid-teen disco doctor wasn't especially keen on riding motorcycles or engaging in healthy homosexual practices with a like-minded consenting partner, I was keen as mustard on ping-pong. Sheeeit, back in the day I was all about the ping AND the pong. Topspin serves, backhand cutspin returns, towering forehand winner, snug-fitting Fred Perry polo shirts, I was down with that shit like a mother-fucker.

It was the Village People's espousal of the beautiful game that removed the scales from my prejudiced eyes and enabled me to see the light and let in the sunshine. If the five remaining members of the band were fine with the fact that one of their group had chosen a different path to them, then why should anybody else worry about it?

Some things, like table tennis and, to a lesser extent, snooker, are important. Other things, like sexual preferences, aren't.

It was the simple poetry of this 1978 disco pop chart-topper that enabled this dimpled rubber paddle-wielding pop kid become a tolerant, enlightened individual who sees that all people are equal and special, regardless as to their sexuality, colour or creed.

As the lads themselves would have put it "You can do whatever you feel".


Peace and love to all y'all, whether you're gay, straight, bisexual, trangender, a pub man, a club man, a jet black guy with a hip hi-fi, a white cool cat in a trilby hat or if you're just into having someone piss on you.

It's all golden.

Behind the Music #6: REM - "Everybody Hurts"

At the back end of the 1980s, no band rocked the party harder than R.E.M.

Darlings of gossip columnists and paparazzos the world over, the band's four members, Mike Stipe, Peter "truck of fuck" Buck, Bill Berry and The Specky One, were rarely pictured without a Playmate or Baywatch babe on their arm, a cold drink in their hand or some stank on their hang-low.

The hard-rocking Paris, Texas four-piece formed in 1986, initially calling themselves Radical Ecstasy Motherfuckers. A pragmatic change of name later, they released their debut single 1987's "It's the End of the World as we Know it (And shit, yeah?)" to rave reviews and sold-out shows all across America. The band's mixture of feelgood heavy hits and hell-raising antics ensured they were never out of the headlines wherever they went.

The lads followed up their chart-topping breakthrough hit with a string of good-time fratboy anthems that rocked colleges from USC to NYU. Tunes such as "Stand", "Shiny Happy People", "Orange Crush" and "Hats off to Keggers and Boobies!" were the soundtrack to a million pantie raids, toga parties and initiation ceremony buggeries across the nation's campuses.

However, all was not well within the REM camp, as the cycle of constant touring took its toll. Stipe was so off his box he shaved his head, painted his face blue and talked nothing but shit. Buck was arrested for Air Rage after threatening to chop an air hostesses' hands off, The Specky One continued to persevere with a haircut that gave him the look of an embittered lesbian version of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.

As with all American morality pieces, the party eventually had to stop. With the arrival of the 1990s, a wind of change was blowing across the land. Gone were the bacchanalian excesses of the eighties, the new decade was all about responsibility, pretending to care about the environment, kissing Clinton ass, getting in touch with one's feelings and generally acting the Dudley Do-Right.

Sensing that this was not the time for songs to "get butt naked and fuck" to, REM set about writing the ultimate song to "sit around wearing round glasses, pretending to be into poetry and that, tubbyboohooing about how you're so sensitive and how come you don't get no chicks" to.

That song was "Everybody Hurts".

With its minor chord piano backing and hypnotic, twinkling guitar line supporting Stipe's plaintive yet reassuring vocals, this is a song that was custom-built to be played to massive crowds of lighter-wielding, doe-eyed festival-going beardie weirdies and perpetual student types. But it is in the words that the song's deep emotional resonance lies.

The lyrics to the band's emo masterpiece are deceptively simple. The casual observer could easily dismiss them as trite, mawkish shite, but they would be wrong to do that. For, while on the surface the lyrics may seem to be a load of self-help jibber-jabber lifted straight from a Samaritans leaflet, there is a message of hope within that has touched the hearts, minds and oxters of a generation of gloomy Guses and moaning Minnies.

"Well, everybody hurts sometimes,
Everybody cries. And everybody hurts sometimes
And everybody hurts sometimes. So, hold on, hold on
Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on
Everybody hurts. You are not alone"


Truly, if ever a maudlin, whiny rocker ever said a mouthful, then old laughing boy Stipey was that rocker. Because, underneath it all, boiling it down to brass tacks, it's true, isn't it?

Everybody hurts.


Everybody cries.




Everybody who's a LASS or a QUEER, that is.

So, yeah, hold on. Hold on to your "Friends" box set. Hold on to your man-bag, your Chuck Palahaniuk novels, your Hello Kitty nick-nacks, your his 'n' hers bath towels, your war stories from "Glasto" and "Burning Man", your scented joss candles and your fucking REM albums.

Hold on tightly to them, I hope you choke on the bastards.


Your sort make me sick to the bottom of my gorge. Fuck you and goodnight!

Ins and Aoûts: August '09

G'day cobbers, how 'bout this heat, eh?

As the clashes for Angela's ashes rage in balmy Birmingham, the Ins and Outs Committee have been cracking open a cold shrimp, tossing some tinnies on the barbie, making ill-judged remarks about the "abboes" and generally having a bonzer old time.

Slap on some sunscreen and get down to the creek for a dip into the hotlist that discriminates between didgeridoos and didgeridon'ts, kookaburras and Middlesbroughs, Shane Warnes and Shayne Wards, Ayers Rock and Pam Ayres' cock.

Tickle it you drongos, Ins and Outs am here!!!!!!!87!!!!!!


In

Initiating marital relations by waving one's old chap around and singing "It's Howdy Doody time! It's Howdy Doody time!"
Applying for the post of Emeritus Professor of Divinity at Caius College, Cambridge as the skip hire company has made your job part time.
Asking the barber to give you a marcel wave, "...just like dear Nancy Mitford"
Joe Tex. That brother knew his bidness all right.
Giving credit where credit is due. This handy little truism could have saved the world a whole lot of fiscal turmoil, no?
Having a soft spot for Dinamo Zagreb.
Pooh-poohing the veracity of any alleged swine flu sufferer who doesn't go on to die.
40 frankfurters for two quid large? Got to like them numbers.
Post-horseracing aled-up ladies, fascinators akimbo.
Michael Owen's sparkling pre-season form. It really is a pleasure to see the mealy-mouthed, monotone little cunt back among the goals.
Leaving a greeting message on your work voicemail that informs out-of-hours callers that you are "in Miami, bitch!"
Hors d'oeuvre. The best type of d'oeuvre, bar none.
Joba Chamberlain.
Coves meandering around the supermarket holding the basket in the crook of their arm. That ain't a good look.
Twisted Sister playing pissed-up Twister with Mr Mister in a pub in Bicester
Telling rambers by the side of a canal that the blackberries they are picking are legally the property of the crown and as such the thieving cunts may as well be fucking the queen in the arse with a dildo.
Steven Gerrard's brief. He chinned the feller!
Using the word "carambola" as a mild hispanic-type profanity, while knowing it's actually a type of fruit.
Loving diastole, but hating on systole.
Idly wondering whether Andrew Sachs' fruity grand-daughter has been reduced to providing half 'n' halfs for walking-around money yet.



Out

Trying to impress a real dolly bird in Wetherspoon's by claiming to be a kitchen fitter 'of international renown', only to have a dreadful mate sell you down the river by revealing you're nothing but an insurance clerk.
Getting all excited about seeing "Bruno". Just re-watch "Ali G" or "Borat" and imagine him saying it in a "1970s comedy puff" voice.
Making efforts to close legal loopholes. Where do these do-gooders think we're going to keep our legal loops, eh?
Any man using the term "lol". Get a bloody grip.
Bell-end-nosed big screen unfunnyman Owen Wilson.
Re-using a plate and getting toast crumbs on the untoasted bread of one's new sandwich.
Scalene triangles. They rubbish.
Acting in a shifty manner when the Betterware catalogue man calls, as though you had a flighty camisole-clad lady hiding in your broom cupboard.
Shitake mushrooms. There's a clue in the name, mate.
Old, fat childless twats who ride Harley Davidsons round Suffolk.
Pookiesnackenburger.
Strange folk who write odd comments in library books.
Eating pineapple rings when you haven't had gammon for your tea.
Casting aspersions. Although, in fairness, there is little else one can do with an aspersion.
Shooting a chap through his dome simply for wearing a kerchief of the wrong colour.
The Carthaginians. Elephant-riding shitbirds.
Damon Runyon and Vashti Bunyon, chopping onions and listening to Todd Rundgren.
Asking the barber to see if he can give you the look of "a slightly posher Tinchy Stryder".
Demigods. You ain't no half a god, you chump. That was just a lie your slut of a mother told you.
On the whiteboard at work, enumerating the day's key objectives as: "1. Get my drink on. 2. Get my smoke on. 3. Go home wit', something to poke on."

Behind the Music #5

Greetings, pop-pickers.

Since beginning this series of essays, to give a little insight and background detail in an attempt to broaden and deepen the reader's listening pleasures, there have been several naysayers, scrimshankers and quibblers getting up in my ass and generally messin' with my shit.

In essence, their beef is this: Where is the love, dawg?

Enough with the negativity, can't you bring us some news we can use? Turn us on to some of the good stuff, instead of hatin' on well-meaning acoustic guitar-toting singer-songwriters who really meant no harm.

Okay then, bitches, get your laughing holes round this bad boy. A tale of tragedy and despair. A tune to which you will try in vain to stop your toe tapping. An ultra-modern melding of town and country, of America and Europe, of beer and tabs.

That song is, of course "Cotton Eye Joe" by Rednex.

Rednex - Cotton Eyed Joe
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If history is to remember the year 1994 for anything, it will be as the year Swedish country-popsters Rednex took over the world with their banjo-spangled dancefloor chart-topper. From Britain to Australia to America to Latvia, we all knew it, we all loved it.

There were literally hundreds of country-based euro-dance records released in the early 1990s, including The Grid's "Swamp Thing", 2 Cowboys' "Everybody Gonfi-Gon" and, erm, many, many more. None, however, had the emotional resonance and tear-jerking gravitas of "Cotton Eye Joe".

The narrator tells us how his life and romantic ambitions have been thwarted by the titular anti-hero. Our troubled storyteller has been doomed to eternal solitude by the dastardly Cotton Eye Joe. Were it not for his malign influence, our man tells us, he would have been married "a long time ago".

"He came to town like a mid-winter storm,
riding through the fields so handsome and strong.
His eyes was his tools and his smile was his gun
But all he had come for was having some fun"


The songwriter, Sven Rednek, displays extreme lyrical dexterity here. The character sketch of Joe is simply and economically drawn, yet the simile "his smile was his gun" hints at the malevolence beneath the surface.

It got worse.

"He brought disaster wherever he went
The hearts of the girls was to Hell, broken, sent
They all ran away so nobody would know
and left only men 'cos of Cotton-Eye Joe"

Say it ain't so, Joe. Disaster! Girls going to Hell! Our boy Sven getting no stank on his hang-low!

That ain't right.

The mysterious Joe, and his cotton-based eyes, moved on, his origin and his intended destination shrouded in secrecy now and for ever more.

"Where did you come from? Where did you go? Where did you come from, Cotton Eye Joe?"


One fears we shall never know...

Behind the Music #4: Del Amitri - "Nothing Ever Happens"

It's 1990, the dawning of the last decade of the second millennium. As humankind hurtles blissfully towards a future world of spacesuits and jetpacks, computerised collective consciousness and BSB squarials, music was splintering and expanding into ever more diverse, spaced-out diaspora.

From acid house to acid jazz, from gabba to Shabba and right back to Abba, 1990 was a time of dizzying variety and invention.

However, in Scotland they said "Fuck that shit, it's plodding guitar-based balladry or nothing for us, the noo!"

Nobody did plodding like Del Amitri. Del Amitri, real name Derek Amitri, is a Glasgow-born singer-songwriter who was born in 1964 at the age of 42, at which he has remained ever since. In 1990 our Derek was about to release his meisterwerk, his tour de force, his piece de ass. 1990 was the year that "Nothing Ever Happens" happened.

While we all know the song, we all love the song, it seems that relatively few of us bought the record. The single peaked in the UK charts at number 11, a disappointing placing for a song that all serious music historians classify as one of the most important "Dreary Scotch Rock Ballads of the Early 1990s".

The construction of the song is deceptively simple. Against an insistent, monotonous guitar line the singer recites a litany of dull events going on in the world, given added piquancy by the fact that they are delivered a boring balladeer voice, before delivering the killer-punch knockout blow of a chorus that tells us that "Nothing ever happens".

The juxtaposition of tedious content with a message that is at once hackneyed and tiresome is stunning in its effectiveness.

Take this little lyrical nugget, as our Decka casts a wistful eye over the humdrum lives of the Little People who aren't even in a band.


"Gentlemen time please, you know we can't serve anymore
Now the traffic lights change to stop, when there's nothing to go
And by five o'clock everything's dead
And every third car is a cab
And ignorant people sleep in their beds
Like the doped white mice in the college lab"


Ah, the poor, foolish wage slaves, going to work like brainwashed, unthinking zombies. If only they knew how to strum a guitar and churn out third-rate teenage poetry, they'd see what was REALLY going on in our world.

Later on our latter-day Woody Guthrie rails against those enemies of progress; Consumerism, Capitalism and, erm, people who write to "Points of View".


"Bill hoardings advertise products that nobody needs
While angry from Manchester writes to complain about
All the repeats on T.V.
And computer terminals report some gains
On the values of copper and tin
While American businessmen snap up Van Goghs
For the price of a hospital wing."


Oh, the humanity! Those American Businessmen, eh? Coming over here and buying up all the Van Goghs instead of funding the British national health service.

Hang your cigar-chomping heads in shame, the lot of you!


As a casual parting shot, the whole problem of bigotry and racial intolerance is summarily dealt with by laughing boy, who opines:

"Nothing ever happens, nothing happens at all
They'll burn down the synagogues at six o'clock
And we'll all go along like before."


Man alive, this hairy-faced cock-knocker has some brass neck, no? As if his lumbering little smugfest of a song wasn't far enough up itself, he's throwing in portentous allusions to the holocaust now, just to show what a deep-thinkin' man he is.


Fuck you, Derek, and fuck your song. Fuck it in the ass.


And that's swearing.