On this occasion the shipping forecast was read out by John Prescott. Or Baron Prescott as I think he might be called nowadays. Maybe it’s Lord Prescott. It’s something Prescott. For my purposes I’ll call him Prescott, John Prescott.  Anyway a non-standard presenter of the shipping forecast was apparently was a Rose Nose Day stunt. Rose Nose Day is the day Comic Relief, the charitable organisation, take over the telly and manage to somehow cram 13 minutes of watchable television into an amazing 8 hours worth of broadcasting time. Except it wasn’t even Red Nose Day because it was Saturday what with it being nearly 1am and Rose Nose Day was Friday not Saturday. But it leaks into Saturday. Like a neighbour’s burst plumbing leaks into your flat.

Somehow someone at Comic Relief, the charitable organisation, decided that Prescott, John Prescott, reading the shipping forecast was funny. For those of you who don’t know, Comic Relief are a hilariously funny charitable organisation made up of comedians… well, chiefly made up of comedians but the numbers are made up by celebrities eager to help save starving babies in Africa, celebrities eager to make you think they want to save starving babies in Africa and celebrities and politicians drafted in either to make the comedians look cooler, or for the purposes of irony. They do Red Nose Day on TV on a Friday where harrowing images from the world’s poorest countries are interspersed with mostly unfunny sketches awkwardly linked by the mainly terrible presenters… it makes for uncomfortable viewing.

So as some sort of stunt like a student sitting in a bathtub full of baked beans Prescott, John Prescott, read the shipping forecast. And it was just as soothing as if one of the normal proper presenters of the shipping forecast had read the shipping forecast. It was just as soothing as if one of the normal proper public school educated presenters of the shipping forecast had read the shipping forecast. It was just as soothing as if one of the normal proper public school educated Oxbridge graduate presenters of the shipping forecast had read the shipping forecast. It was just as soothing as if one of the normal proper public school educated Oxbridge graduate presenters of the shipping forecast with the reassuring voices had read the shipping forecast.

Luckily I was fast asleep.

But even though I was fast asleep I started to wonder why Comic Relief, the hilariously funny charitable organisation, had decided that it would save more starving African babies if Prescott, John Prescott, read the shipping forecast in the early hours of Saturday morning, the day after Red Nose Day. I lay there fast asleep wondering what was so funny about a different voice reading out something slightly differently yet equally as soothingly as someone else. On the wrong day. Apart from the mild surprise of hearing a slightly different voice reading something slightly differently I was a bit stumped. If I was actually wide awake gazing into the darkness I’d have wondered whether it was funny or actually not funny. It must have been funny, even if only to the person who came up with the idea.

Knowing that some people who almost never need to know sea conditions sometimes listen to the shipping forecast because they find it soothing and reassuring, perhaps they considered using a voice that would be the opposite of soothing and reassuring. But what is the opposite…. grating? menacing? unsettling? For a fisherman struggling against very rough, occasionally high seas in Cromarty the opposite of soothing may be someone screaming the shipping forecast. In Japanese. And for the radio to go dead immediately after. But making Bloomogganners shit themselves would be against the spirit of Comic Relief, the funny-but-don’t-forget-why-we’re-here charitable organisation.

So someone somewhere decided that instead of frightening isolated fishermen they would spring mild surprise on people who almost never need to know sea conditions. And Prescott, John Prescott, was drafted in to read the shipping forecast on the day after Red Nose Day in a slightly different but equally as soothing voice to which many listeners probably thought that’s unusual Prescott, John Prescott, reading the shipping forecast and to which almost no listeners went HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA that’s HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA Prescott HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA, John Prescott HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA, reading the HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA shipping forecast.

I scoured my mind for things I know about Prescott, John Prescott, to see if there was some sort of subtext I’d missed. I don’t think there was any subtle political satire at work but I was fast asleep so maybe there was. Watchers of topical satirical shows Have I Got News For You and Mock The Week will know that Prescott, John Prescott is funny chiefly because he is overweight. Maybe they anticipated fishermen cracking up: HA HA listen to a fat bloke reading the shipping forecast. I bet the normal proper public school educated Oxbridge graduate presenters of the shipping forecast with the reassuring voices who normally read the shipping forecast aren’t fat. Any of them. I bet they’re thin. But Prescott, John Prescott, is fat… I wonder if he’ll eat the shipping forecast? But what with radio being an aural medium you can’t be sure – you almost certainly know that Prescott, John Prescott is fat and that this is funny because they always mention it on the topical satirical shows Have I Got News For You and Mock The Week. But you don’t 100 percent know that normal proper public school educated Oxbridge graduate presenters of the shipping forecast with the reassuring voices who normally read the shipping forecast aren’t fat. You just reckon. And sometimes that’s not enough. Also – is being fat funny?

Another thing that topical satirical shows Have I Got News For You and Mock The Week always mention that is funny about Prescott, John Prescott is that he once punched someone who threw an egg in in his face. Maybe Comic Relief, the charitable organisation seeking to tackle the root causes of deprivation, were under the impression that the fishermen and insomniacs who listen to the shipping forecast would be on the edge of their seats… or fishing boats… or fishing boat-seats… or whatever fishermen sit on… waiting to hear if Prescott, John Prescott would get up and punch the shipping forecast. He didn’t. But then again it would be difficult to punch a forecast as it’s more of an abstract entity, a mere collection of words rather than a physical object. Especially on the radio. On the wrong day. Maybe that was the joke.

And another thing that topical satirical shows Have I Got News For You and Mock The Week always mention this is funny about about Prescott, John Prescott is that he had two Jaguars. The cars not the cats. He had two Jaguars – one of his own and one in his ministerial capacity as a government minister. Maybe Comic Relief, the charitable organisation who help us to understand poverty better through the insights of pampered celebrities, were under the impression that the fishermen blah blah blah… even I’m getting sick of this now… I’m too tired… I can’t type any more of this shite… just repeat the previous two parts but change being fat or punching to something about having two Jaguars or driving or whatever the fuck you like… I can’t be arsed.

Blur – This Is A Low

By the way I’m not an idiot – I know full well that the reason that Comic Relief, the charitable organisation who give hope to the hopeless Fearne Cotton, think that Prescott, John Prescott, reading the shipping forecast in the early hours of Saturday not Friday rather than one of the proper public school educated Cambridge graduate presenters of the shipping forecast with the reassuring voices reading the shipping forecast was hilariously funny is because he has a northern accent. I was being contrary. Because it’s not funny. But it doesn’t mean I’m against saving starving African babies. I’m not a monster. To donate to Comic Relief, the charitable organisation who don’t know what day it is click here.

I                     SAW                 THE             COVER

nooooo…     could not process…      why?         that looming inbred face…      it was wrong…        did not compute…   my head was swimming…    flustered… sorry mate, an’t got ‘ny change…     the vendor had seen my distress and knew this was a lie.  They’re used to the no change lie… but he also knew that I’d been jostling coins in my pocket and had made a beeline for him. Momentary mutual confusion ensued.  Coming out of it, I couldn’t say I’m not buying that with that on the front. He didn’t ask what had stopped me so abruptly. He didn’t want to ask. Or he didn’t need to ask. Perhaps he knew. I think he knew. He either knew or he didn’t know. Only he knows whether he knew or didn’t know. Or maybe he wasn’t sure if he knew. Only he will know whether he thought he knew or knew that he didn’t know. But I reckon he knew. Because he didn’t bat a crusty eyelid.

Ewwww that sickening smug multi-millionaire yucky-faced prince leering out from the cover of the Big Issue when he could give a bed to every single one of the Britain’s homeless if he felt like it. He owns whole counties for fucks sake. Is he trying to be the new Phil Collins? Phil Collins earnestly singing that song imploring us to care for the homeless then whining like a baby about paying his taxes, taxes that contribute to caring for the less fortunate in society. I bet you don’t step over many homeless in your Swiss tax haven you bald bastard(*).

Maybe William thinks that he is so devastatingly attractive and/ or interesting that sales of the Big Issue will rocket to such an extent that every seller will become rich enough to buy swanky pads overnight and his princely magical dust will solve whatever problems led them to become homeless in the first place. That’s the homeless sorted, now I’m going to give a pair of my old shoes to the spina bifida shop – I am a clever prince. He might have been told he’s clever by one of his lackies. Or maybe Jennie Bond. And don’t get me started on her.

Back in 1994 The Stone Roses had been self-imposed exile for a number of years, refusing to give interviews to the music press. It was part of the perpetuating the myth policy that worked very well (at least until people heard the Second Coming). When they decided to emerge they granted their first interview to The Big Issue (here, if you’re interested) creating an unprecedented demand, at least among skinny white boys. They knew that someone would be making money on the back of their comeback, so why not choose who it was – two-fingers to the industry that had ripped them off and a helping hand to those who needed it. Even now Big Issue sellers of the day thank Ian Brown on what was a bumper payout for them. But just as people made a point of buying that issue, people will make a point of not buying this one. Because William makes people nauseous. When I say people I mean me. I am a person. Of sorts.

In 2010 a group of Chilean miners survived 69 days underground after the Copiapó accident. But what is often overlooked is that ten years earlier a group of minors in Chile had to endure William on his gap year, mucking in around the camp for an astonishing 10 weeks. That’s 70 days. One whole day more. Seventy days with some grinning ninny slumming it during the day and guest DJ-ing at night. Ten weeks of him making shite bridges out of logs and rope when he could buy properly made ones out of his loose change. Ten weeks of him banging out Tom Jones and making embarrassing gang-signs to the hip-hop hits of the day. In contrast, the miners had the relatively simple task of trying to stay alive in appalling conditions and convince themselves that rescue would arrive before they had to eat each other.

Double-Agent Middleton, act now (her plan is mentioned here). April is too far away.

While on the theme of William and muppets, here’s a video of William, It Was Really Nothing oddly lip-synched by the Muppets. Any excuse for a Smith song.

The government are privatising the Royal Mail and to appease the idiots who believe it’s important they have decided to sell on the basis that the buyer keeps the queen’s head on the stamps. As per usual the tories miss the point of why people object to it being sold off. Please new owners, please buy the Royal Mail, please – you don’t have to honour the worker’s pensions or retain any jobs or keep prices down or not cut services in rural areas or actually deliver any post just so long as you retain a wee picture of Elizabeth. The Queen of all spongers. Sponging away while everything and everyone else gets cut. I’m actually in favour of her head being on the stamps. Her actual head. Cut her actual head into tiny slices, chop them up as finely as possible – get a chef or a scientist or world champion cutter or someone like that to do it – and she could remain on the stamps for a long time to come.

Are you getting the idea that I’m not a monarchist? It’s possible that my hatred for the royals meant some poor geezer was two quid short of whatever he needed that night. I don’t feel good about that but what would you have done? Exactly. But I will seek out some homeless people and bung them a few quid to assuage my guilt. Maybe it will be spent on crack or skag but surely that’s better than endorsing Prince Yuckyface. That would feel dirty. Dirty and wrong.

(* Apologies to unbastardy bald people, the bald bit is uncalled for but I’m a sucker for an insulting alliteration.)

The eighties revival is everywhere and it’s rubbish. I’ve just seen an advert for a 3CD abomination that was called Now That’s What I Call Greatest The Hits of the Eighties Ever or something. Every single track featured was shit. Every single one. Everyone knows that the eighties were when the charts and good music parted company. Early in the decade the discrepancy between number ones and music you can actually stand listening to wasn’t quite so obvious but to make it simple, the law stated that good ones had to began with the letter G. This was until around 1983 when the alphabet was de-regulated and letter choice was introduced. But even so, for every number one like Ghost Town, Going Underground (*) or Geno there were five hundred shit tracks by shit artists that sold shit-loads. And before you start throwing examples of decent music from the eighties at your screen, I do know that the entire work of The Smiths existed in the eighties… but they weren’t really hits and you’re missing my point. Deliberately. Just to spite me. The great bands of the eighties actually prove my point because like all great art they were a reaction against the mainstream, and as the mainstream in the eighties was the worst ever in the history of popular culture it stands to reason that those who kicked against it produced great art. Or something. I haven’t thought it through but anyway there is great eighties music just not eighties music as in the sort of eighties music that they feature in these post-modern, re-interpretation-of-the-facts-style compilations that people seem to want to shove down our throats. And don’t come the guilty pleasure defence with me.  Not even war criminals bother with that one…  I do not recognise the legitimacy of this court as the judge isn’t wearing day-glo robes with shoulder pads… and anyway I killed them ironically... I’m not equating people who like bad eighties music with mass murderers… necessarily.

Some of the best singles of all time were released in the eighties. I’ll happily bob in to whatever they call record shops nowadays and have a look at the track-listing of that compilation and if it features Love Will Tear Us Apart (*) or one track from What The World Is Waiting For/ Fool’s Gold 9’53″ I’ll take it all back but I won’t have to, as it’s are bound to feature tracks by… er… you know… that idiot… and the ones with the hair… I do actually remember all of their stupid names but I am deliberately not naming them as I’ll have to tag them and I’ll get unwanted visits from Eighties Fans who are disappointed not to find tracks with that crappy synth sound where the band look like geography teachers wearing make-up in a way they believe makes them look interesting and sexy and androgynous, but actually makes them look like geography teachers wearing make-up, which just looks creepy.

What is it with people? The shops are awash with eighties fashion. Youths are wearing the sort of clothes that were deemed too eighties even in the eighties. For fuck’s sake. But I can put up with youths looking like twats – that is their job after all. I can just about tolerate pointless A-Team and Karate Kid remakes and maybe just maybe I can get through a royal wedding without going postal but only because I’m banking on Kate Middleton to blow all of the fuckers to smithereens. She’s the only one going into that wedding full of assorted traitors to these isles that security daren’t frisk, and as such is the only one able to get explosives in undetected. The bigger the dress the bigger the bang. And we even get a day off work to celebrate. That Katie Watie is a revolutionary or an Al-Qaeda operative is maybe just wishful thinking partly derived from the fact she seems slightly too attractive to be marrying into that bunch of inbreds. But when I mentioned this to a friend he pointed out that she, like Diana, she was probably just there for the photos and Harry has probably got an ‘ugly’ on the side. Just like his Dad… but a boy can dream… and you’re getting me off the point… hang on… let me think…

… yes… so far you might agree or disagree with my eighties revival-based prejudices but the unforgivable part of the eighties revival is that the people in their infinite idiocy have somehow decided to bring back the very worst aspect of the eighties: the eighties government. The tories. You might remember them. They were bastards. Every single one of them. But I won’t go on about them. I’m scared I’ll throw my macbook at the wall. Hate eats you up from the inside, so here’s a happy tune to send you on your way while I go into a darkened room and think about fluffy clouds:

The Day That Thatcher Dies – Darren Hayman & Jack Hayter

(* Yes, they were both originally recorded in 1979 but weren’t released until 1980, so they count as eighties in my book. Mind you, my book is strewn with ridiculous biases, appaling errors and a blatant disregard of inconvenient facts that get in the way of my ranting.)

Électricité de France’s green approach seems to be based on making retro adverts appealing to everyone’s nostalgia. Look Thunderbirds! Blinking heck flares! Wahey the Six Million Dollar Man! Fuck me it’s a big twiddly knob of the sort you got in the 1970s but has long since been made obsolete by computer technology and now it looks a bit funny! Now I’m a big fan of nostalgia but today’s nostalgia is rubbish – nostalgia was much much better in the olden days.

By 2020 ÉDF to reduce their carbon emissions by 60%. My formula for working exactly how green that would be is letting me down but as they aim to do this by mending Britain’s dodgy nuclear power stations and building several more, a rough calculation gives me the approximate answer that ÉDF are bastards. You can tell they are bastards, as they once sponsored an ITV1 drama featuring Robson Green. You can’t really get much bastardier.

More nuclear power stations is bad news not only for us but also for people who live near Seversk (Се́верск) where ÉDF have been sending nuclear waste from their 58 French nuclear reactors to be recycled. I’m not sure what is more worrying, that France have 58 nuclear reactors or that they send waste to the formerly secret Soviet city, scene of the Tomsk-7 explosion. Coincidentally, Tomsk was also the name of a womble. The idiot womble. The idiot womble who despite being an idiot amongst noble creatures probably got the most female womble action due to his athletic prowess. If you aren’t familiar with the wombles, think of a John Terry where at some point you would eventually get bored of punching him in the face and begin to feel slightly sorry for him.

Out all of the parties involved in the ÉDF advert it’s the wombles that I feel most let down by. They’re a disgrace. All that work preaching ecology to the kids and they allow their images to be used by the nuclear industry. Uncle Bulgaria has obviously croaked and they’ve left that dinlo Tomsk in charge. He’ll be turning in his grave. If he has one. More likely he’d have wanted the wombles to donate his tartan poncho to a balding badger, chop him up into little bits and leave him for the weasels of Wimbledon common to scoff. Instant recycling back into nature. I hope he left a will, as the current Womble regime would dig up some rare plants, douse him in anthrax and chuck him in the hole with live fluffy bunnies wearing special commemorative nuclear ponchos. Wombling bastards.

This isn’t related apart from the word green in the title, but it’s nice – Deerhunter Green Jacket

I feel the need to clarify a comment I made in my first post (Sticks and stones may break my bones but words really wind me up). I implied that Heather Mills had said she’d entered Strictly Come Dancing with a view to winning over the hearts and minds of the British public. That would be ridiculous, she would have to be a complete idiot to say something like that. I apologise for any hurt or offence this may have caused. She actually said it about Dancing on Ice.

If you’re still there I’ll take the opportunity to get some things off my chest. Words and that. Sometimes certain words or phrases become overused. Over the last zillion billion years it has been impossible to listen to any news report about Afghanistan or Iraq (or in the case of Heather Mills, Strictly Come Dancing) without hearing the phrase hearts and minds - yes I realise it sprung from the U.S. Vietnam campaign and I understand what it means but please stop saying it. Blah blah blah blah hearts and minds. It’s as if all politicians and journalists have been briefed to use the phrase and are living in fear of a Malcolm Tucker-style bollocking if they don’t. I no longer hear the content of news reports. I hear disconnected words echoing, swirling in-and-out against a loud tick-tick-ticking in my head until the inevitable we-have-to-win-over-the-hearts-and-minds bit arises. And then I scream.

But the word which is really getting right on my tits at the moment is the word random. It’s fashionable to say random. I know this because everyone says it. All of the time. With various meanings. People often say random when they don’t mean random, they sometimes say random when they sort of mean random, very occasionally they say random when they mean random but most of all they say random when they mean ooh look at me I say random      I’m like totally random        I just said random        random random random.

I genuinely apologise if you haven’t noticed the overuse, misuse, and almost random use of this word because you will. And now you will blame me. Try making what you think is a witty comment among a group of people of, say, more than 5. I guarantee one of them will respond by saying that was a bit random. No. It bloody wasn’t. They may also just say random. This proves that they are part of the randomscenti. It also proves they are idiots.

I was having a random drink. A random drink. A random drink. Eh? When I hear it I have competing physical reactions, one a dizzying nausea that leaves me on the edge of throwing up and one a violent energy urging me to twat the, er, randomist. I feel like a sleeper happily going about my business until the signal which sparks me into predetermined act of violent outrage. I’m just about keeping a lid on it but it’s getting worse. It’s spreading like a virus. And not even a good one.  The other day I was out with some randomers. You what?… must not throw up… must not batter them with a random object… don’t play into their hands.

At the weekend I (accidentally) heard a radio presenter hand over to coverage of The London International Horse Show by saying it was being held randomly in London. And this was on the BBfuckingC. One of the reasons 5Live’s Colin Murray said it was to be funny – because where else would a London event be held? – but to my ears it was obscured by the other reason which was oooh I just said random    I say random    I’m so random    I just randomly said random   don’t you even say random  I do    I’m a random person     I’m like randomly random    everyone listen to me say random    random random random    random random random random.

I need to lie down.

I was going to make up for the above with some videos from 2009 featuring the Vivian Girls, Camera Obscura, The Pains of Being Pure At Heart, God Help The Girl, Atlas Sound, Grizzly Bear, Beck, Crystal Stilts, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Midlake, Animal Collective, Richard Hawley, Super Furry Animals, Wooden Shjips and Broadcast & The Focus Group. I saw was, as it was going to be my first go at embedding widgets. So I collected some videos using yubby.com and blinking wordpress won’t let me embed the channel and I can’t faffed to do it all over again using a different service on the ‘whitelist’

I told you I was this was my first go, so something was bound to go wrong. If you are arsed, watch them here:

http://www.yubby.com/i/twothousandandfine/channel/player/20518

None of them were chosen at random, nor with the intention to win over any hearts and minds.