Dinner Dirt

Since allowing TV into my life, I have been lapping up its various treasures. Its lush and gossamer tube glow washes over me like the waves of a velvety ocean. I am comforted by its soft and plump bosom like pillows of the scheduling. Like a baby wrapped in swaddling, I drool and gurgle whilst prostrate on the sofa transfixed by the flickering images parading in front of me like marionettes in a puppet show. Wading through the various delights offered up I have found some programs that I actually enjoy watching. One of these is Dinner Date; ITV's answer to Come Dine With Me.

Come back CDWM, all is forgiven!!

At its core is a cooking show, but Dinner Date is soooooo much more than that. With the heavy burden that remains of the baggage created by Cilla Black, ITV seem unable to commission any show that doesn't involve some form of dating. Cilla's Blind Date was a massive hit for ITV and they always fall back on this
safety net when they need a competition to the other channels success stories. What about Take Me Out? That Saturday night dross where desperate single men were paraded like a piece of meat in front of thirty desperate, lonely and love hungry women. The vast amount of oestrogen was overwhelming even from the TV screen. ITV's obsession with hooking people up borders on a secretive breeding program where only photogenic (suntanned, bright white teeth and well groomed) couples are allowed to procreate in order to give TOWIE a cast well into the future when the present ones collapse under the weight of their fake tits or shrivel like prunes in their sunbeds.

You can and will be replaced by younger and better looking specimens from ITV's breeding ponds...

Well, this time ITV have upped the ante. They have taken the classic timelessness of CDWM and twisted it beyond all recognition in Dinner Date. It is like Jeff Goldblum after crawling out of the molecular transformer in The Fly, the bastard offspring of two forms of life. In this case, CDWM and Blind Date. The genetics of the two shows have been spliced together and we gasp in awe at the hideous beast that pulsates and thrashes around in front of us. We bray and clap as it tries to stand up on weak legs but collapses into a panting slavering heap time and again.

Get up, your public is waiting!!

Why is it so entertaining? Allow me to explain: A singleton is asked to choose three dates on the strength of five menus. This is the first elimination stage. Five hopefuls are instantly whittled down to three because the diner prefers rocket salad to haloumi brioche. Talk about separating the wheat from the chaff. Woe betide you if your menu isn't up to scratch. You have been judged on what food you think would make a good meal. How dare you think I might like braised steak, you filthy little oik, how could you even begin to think that Eton Mess is a perfectly normal dessert? The disgusting swill you are planning to serve me isn't fit for human consumption, try again, you fucking loser! Get back to masturbating yourself to sleep in tears on your piss stained mattress, you miserly cur.

In my hands I hold the power over life and death...

It would appear that all the people in the show have been recruited on the strength of their careers, they all appear to be soulless office types that work in advertising, accountancy, mergers and acquisitions or public relations (whatever the fuck that is...). They all appear to be perfectly groomed, plucked, tucked and fully loaded with make up. And that's just the men. The are vainglorious bastards, the kind of people I would crush with steamrollers as soon as I get in to power. I'd have them bound up and laid out in rows in football stadia, then slowly run industrial machinery across them, film it and show it on TV instead of the sports channels.

First up against the fucking wall...

I digress. The lucky diner then gets to meet each of the final three and have a dinner with them. This is where we get to see the interiors of the flats that the hosts live in. They are all the exact same flat pack, chrome and wood interiors that lack any depth of imagination or singularity. All of them are spotless, soulless places, just like their owners.

You could cut the atmosphere with a knife... But I'd rather cut my own throat...

Then the hosts are asked to rate the diner out of three, which doesn't leave much room for manoeuvre. It's either, 'I like them', 'I'm indifferent', or 'get them the fuck out of my house, they have already tried to chloroform me!' This voting has very little to do with the outcome of the show and the final blow is left to the diner. They choose, on the strength of the dinners offered up, who they would like to see again and go out for a meal in a restaurant. This is where the show delivers its fatal strike. All three hosts are instructed to get up in their finest clothes and await the knock at the door. Two of them are delivered a meal for one, which they get to enjoy whilst dressed in their best bib and tucker. The show ends following the winning couple to the date and getting a round up on the meal. But I would far prefer for the show to focus on the losers, filming them while they weep like babies dressed in a ball gown as they shovel down their Weight Watchers Spag Bol.

'What is love?'

So, anyway, I sent off my application.

Drug of the Nation

It was my Birthday last week and my parents rocked up in York partially to take me out for a meal which never happened as we'd all eaten separately earlier in the day anyway (they had fish and chips. I had chorizo and bean soup. I know you are gasping for the details...). They were also up to deliver my birthday presents. One of which was a Sudoku toilet roll. The other was a TELLY!! Yes! My first Telly ever! It's massive. It sits in the corner of the room demanding attention. It cries out for my affections, and boy, do I give them. I can't stop watching it. There are paint smears on everything I own, the vapor rub is lying on a table of filth, Christmas cards to which I never reply, my eyeballs absorb only blue filtered light. I'm a TV casualty. I have watched everything from Come Dine With Me, Dinner Date (there will be a blog post on this at some point...), Coach Trip and even The Apprentice (I joined this late and only just caught the very last episode. It appeared to consist of a load of uptight badly made-up shit bags trying to peddle garbage to a prune in a suit , I'm glad I missed it). All the good shit. In fact, that was all there was that was worth watching over the weekend. Hopefully there will be something good on this week. I'll be using it mainly to watch DVDs

Not only did I get a telly, but I was also given a plastic Paratrooper and a Hurricane Styrofoam glider from Kirky, a mug with some Vikings on it from He-Who-Cannot-Be-Named (Tarquin Sheen had a shit fit when he found out details of his violent past were on display on this very blog and that they came up on a Google search. He threatened me with physical and psychological trauma and so from this point on I shall refer to him as He-Who-Cannot-Be-Named), a bag of Kola Bottles from Sam and a Justin Bieber sticker book by Moogdroog. The book came with six stickers, so in her ever inventiveness, she conscripted He-Who-Cannot-Be-Named to help make a few extra stickers to place in the album to start me off. Here they are for your perusal. I have no glue to stick them in the book, so I will have to use spunk.

Time, Gentlemen

Friday night was the bi-millennial On-Site drinks do. About three years ago Kate had cast the Runes and they had indicated this date and as fortune would have it, the stars were also in alignment (for the first time in 10,500 years). So it was decided that we lowly few, we band of bastards, should gather on the field of conflict and drink as much as humanely possible. Getting the crew from On-Site together to drink is such a painful task that it only occurs rarely and even then the full compliment of twits is not realised. Berny needs to get a babysitter (for himself), Brucey is off dropping children all over town at various Rainbow Brownie meetings, Ryan is up to his nuts in guts, Kate has been told the wrong fucking time, Logan Josh is off at some non-existent 'gig'. It's just too hard for one person to handle from an organisational point of view. It's akin to handling the logistics of the Afrika Korps and their landings at Tripoli. We had a date, as decided by the Gods and held on to it for our lives, come what may. So it was with certain trepidation that I approached the Maltings wondering who would be in there, or who would even turn up at all.

You sure we got the right day?

I shouldn't have worried, approach to the Maltings netted us Kamil and Berny, lurking in the streets like Burke and Hare. Upon arrival, I immediately saw Sir Stanners setting about a ruffian with his swagger stick. After clubbing said hooligan to the floor, Stanners (half cut from three days binge drinking) greeted us (Myself, Lauren and Steve, making a guest appearance. That's Lauren and Steve making a guest appearance, not me. I'm not a guest, I'm an employee. Oh, never mind) and the rest of the cunts duly filed in. We drank, we swore, we drank some more and by and by Logan Josh appeared as if out of nowhere. The bouncers wouldn't let him in due to his appearance and we made plans to meet him at the Akhorne. In the Akhorne were various people I'd met at Josh's birthday party, albeit not in military uniform this time. I spent my time there braying at Barry's muscle shirt and talking to Mrs Josh about buying cats. Despite a protracted argument with Josh about the logistics of 'all coming back to mine' rather than 'all getting a fucking taxi into the middle of nowhere (Huntington), getting pastis forced down our throats and then having to get another fucking taxi back on ourselves back to mine', myself, Lauren and Steve crashed out at some ungodly hour, drunk as cunts. Meanwhile, Stanners followed some young doris back to hers waiting for the rohypnol to kick in. A good night was had by all.

Thank fuck that's over for another forty years...

I was also on Telly again the other night, only as a photo though. Blink and you'd miss it, but follow this link below and I appear in the first fifteen minutes. I wouldn't bother with the rest of the show. It's shit and I'm not in it.

HISTORY COLD CASE: THE YORK 113

The Daily Mail says NO to the Euro!

As I mentioned in the last post this weekend was the night of nights, the best evening's entertainment all year. Yes folks, it was time again for the Eurovision Song Contest. That gathering of tribes from across Europe, the introduction into your life of countries you never knew existed (Lichtenstein) or were even a part of Europe (America's entry: Israel). It's the best night of the year, not only because you can be legitimately racist about the the cheese eating, garlic smelling, surrender monkeys that parade like retarded peacocks around boulevard cafes on the Champs Elysees, but you can also see the how the political map of Europe stands. Mind you, this part is usually pretty fucking obvious, like when Greece and Cyprus vote each other Douze Points every fucking year, or the Balkans countries voting for each other in order to avert sparking off another assassination attempt on Archduke Franz Ferdinand. It's also great because you get to get to dress up as Norway, get really fucking drunk and scream at the beetroot smeared faces of the Moldavians as they pretend to be people. Which is pretty much what I did on Saturday night. Lauren and Steve held a party and after umming and arring all week about it, I decided to go and am glad I did. It was either that or stay in alone, dress up as Norway, get really fucking drunk and scream at the chocolate smeared faces of the Belgians as they pretend to be people.

Another quiet night in...

I took my Norway costume, which seems to be getting added to each passing year. Along with my BIG FUCKING Norwegian flag, this year I had a bear skin. I think they have bears in Norway. Mind you, I also think that everyone in Norway runs around in corpse paint and burns churches down, an image I don't want to spoil by ever going there. So I tipped up at Lauren's draped in a bear skin and flag and proceeded to push as much alcohol into me as humanely possible. Angela had picked up some Romanian engine cleaner as a present for Lauren that we all had a shot of during the Romanian entry. It was fucking lethal, it came in a clear plastic bottle and had a ever so slight yellowish tinge to it. I took my shot and immediately felt as though I'd drunk some alien blood. It burnt a hole straight through my body and down through three floors of the flats. Besides the booze, this year's contest was a doozy, and by doozy, I mean doozy. The Moldovan entrants were great with their tribute to Devo, Lauren reckoned that their heads went all the way to the top of their hats. Which is probably true.

Words, literally, fail me...

Ireland came up trumps for me though, in the form of the fucktard conjoined Irish twins Jedward. They showed up looking like the Legion of Doom. If only they'd started cage fighting with folding chairs, the evening would have been perfect. I think Jedward are a prime example of why Ireland needs another potato famine.

Twats

The Danish contestant brought shame upon the competition by letting loose a stream of foul language that turned the very air blue and would embarrass a sailor.

Ban this filth!

Who won? Who cares? It was one of those former Soviet Block countries that all vote for one another and Russia, just in case the sleeping bear decides to wake up and want their oil reserves back. Whoever it was won't be able to afford a ceremony as lavish as the one thrown out by the Germans. Next years event will be held on a deserted strip of grassland with plastic chairs set up for the audience to sit on in the biting cold while the acts gyrate on nailed together wooden pallets. Whatever, I'll still be doing the same next year, screaming at the TV whilst shitfaced and covered in Norway.

A quick video of the German contestant, Lena, cos she's fit. No other reason. Sue me.

So it was with a heavy hangover and lack of sleep that I gave my final act as a teacher on Sunday. I took my class out to the Leeds Armouries to peer at weapons for the afternoon. I managed to hold the sick down long enough to bluff my way through a  potted history of weaponry in the Great War and then led them in triumphant procession to Pizza Express. Eight years ago when I was straightening a section in Ocean Villa's tea rooms trench and two hundred .303 rounds fell out on me, I never thought that I would one day be teaching this shit for a University. But here I am, after completing eight weeks of lectures and lesson plans, I only have a pile of essays to mark and I've finished my first 'lecturing' job. (the LOLest thing is, I initially misspelled University in that last sentence...)

'Oh God, I hope they don't find me out! At least not before they pay me...'

And a couple of final things. I was going through the student's field note books this afternoon and felt I had to share this page from Myle's book:

And Anna sent me a link for this 'product' to review on  Amazon, so please sit back and enjoy Pledge Manner's take on Pussy Energy Drink:

Salsa Sauce

I was on a watching brief today. For the three people who read this shit who are not archaeologists I shall explain what a watching brief is. When a developer decides to build something new, like an abattoir next to a children's soft toy factory, for instance, the development has to pass through several stages of archaeological investigation that has to be paid for. Full scale excavation is the highest of these stages, with a desk based assessment at the lowest. The developer has to take this extra cost into account when they decide to build a pole dancing club next door to a primary school, for instance. One of the most prolific activities of an archaeologist is the watching brief. This is an activity that entails the archaeologist being dispatched to a site that is being built, say, an artillery range next door to a playground, for instance, and literally watching the machine that is building the foundations of, for instance, the chemical warfare development plant next to the nursery. We are there to make sure that any archaeological remains are fully recorded in accordance with the local County Archaeologist's brief.

Shits and giggles never stop in archaeology...

This is what I was doing today and as usual it was no different from any other watching brief in the country. In that, when I arrived I was separately told by the cross eyed farmer and the grumpy machine driver that 'you won't find anything here, this is waste of your time and my money.' Despite my decade long experience and three years studying the subject of archaeology they still knew better. I guess when the farmer bought the land we were working on he must have stripped the entire field down to it's natural subsoil, identified and recorded any archaeological cut feature that existed in the pre-modern strata. It is my understanding that the farmer not only recorded these features to the acceptable levels of academic peerage that govern archaeological grey literature but submitted the report to the local Sites and Monuments Record office for future rumination under a tried and tested academic framework. This is the only course of action I can think of that would lead both these men to the conclusion that 'you won't find anything here.' Although, I had my doubts, especially when the farmer told me the village we were working in was the place the Vikings had 'parked their boats before walking to the Battle of Stamford Bridge', and I insisted on following the brief I had been given, that is, to watch the machine work for any archaeological remains, rather than listen to their, obviously, greater knowledge. I was texting Logan Josh throughout the day, I was telling him about the above situation and his reply sums up today's work:

I love that shit. As if we have not been sent by a third party but rather we have insisted we be allowed to watch. East Yorks farmers are the worst. They still think the English Civil War is raging and get all their 'news' via someone they know who attends church.

And in other news, we will be following Prince Rupert's campaign against Cirencester...

I was watching Knightmare the other night. Do you remember it? It was the spoddy Dungeons and Dragons rip off that was on ITV back in 1756 or sometime when I was in my early teens. It was a nerd fest, where three fantasy role-playing social retards had to navigate their equally 'insecure around girls' mate through a computer generated 'dungeon'. I fucking loved it! I sat transfixed trying to work out how many rooms they must have built to emulate the dungeon. I never cottoned on that it was all done in some tiny studio painted green with the images overlaid with computer graphics. I was a simple child. I always remember that every time the dungeoneer walked into a new room they asked 'Where am I now?' (they were wearing a helmet through which there were no eye holes) their three spoddy mates would always answer 'You're in a room!' NO FUCKING SHIT SHERLOCK!! WHERE ELSE ARE THEY GOING TO BE? IN A FUCKING FIELD? ON AN AEROPLANE'S WINGS? UP A FUCKING TREE?

Where am I now?

Erm....

Anyway, watching it again made me come to new conclusions about Knightmare. The first thing that struck me was the uneasy idea of a bearded creepy man in a tabard locking children in his 'dungeon'. If I had kids I would not be allowing a man called Treguard of Dunshelm to look after them. 'Yes, they'll be fine in my dungeon, there's plenty of fun awaiting!' Fun for who, Treguard? If that is your real name, which I very much doubt. Unless you had really nerdy parents who played D&D. I swear that man is wanted in Vietnam on statutory rape charges. AND WHERE THE FUCK IS DUNSHELM? IS IT A CUT PRICE CLOTHES SHOP IN ROTHERHAM?

A picture paints a thousand words...

But watching further I realised that the show was nowhere nearly as good as I remember. Treygard's introductions seemed to go on forever. It was like sitting through one of Ataturk's speeches. He was explaining the rules of the game in prose so formal it made me go blind. Once away from the most boring man in history the kid in the dungeon came across several other characters that lived in the dungeon. Generally the first was a wall monster called, I shit you not, Granite Arse. At least that's how I heard it. The second seemed to be one of Treguard's former child sex slaves, Lillith, or something. These two inhabited the lower reaches of the dungeon and as the kids progressed they met more characters. This got me thinking, were the actors who played these parts paid a proper wage or bit pay depending on their screen time? Imagine if you got the job of playing Cobble the Gnome? Imagine if Cobble resided on the forty sixth level of the dungeon and to reach the level the children would have to toil for six long years to get there. With the complete retards that took part in this game there would be no chance of you ever drawing screen time and therefore no chance of ever getting paid. Since most of the kids who took part couldn't even spell SHROUD or SHOVEL for simple level one spellcasting, Cobble the Gnome would be a very poor gnome indeed. I bet Cobble still drinks heavily now, trying to blunt the pain of what could have been an illustrious television career dashed by brainless idiot children that couldn't even work out right from left when walking along a chasm edge.

No! Your other left, you fucking prick!!

By the way, the farmer was right. There was nothing there. I didn't find anything.

It's Snow Joke

A little bit of snow has fallen in the North of England and as usual when this kind of inclement weather patterning occurs chaos has broken out. There has been rioting on the streets with cars being over turned and set on fire. Anti-snow protests in Wetherby have resulted in the death of sixteen people, including three police. In Sheffield the Supertram was derailed and looted before being set alight. The BBC News sent their intrepid Foreign Correspondent to the North to cover the stories. They uncovered horror stories of children refusing to go to school and instead spending their days fighting with crudely crushed together balls of snow. The general public is afraid to step into the street lest they be attacked by gangs of youths armed with these rudimentary weapons. Half of the pensionable population have fallen victim to the unrelentless snowfall by either freezing to death after refusing to put their heaters on or have slipped on the ice and broken a hip. The cost over the past two days to the NHS is comparable to the GNP of a small African Nation. Something has to be done and done fast, I'm at my wit's end, I can't get to Meadowhall to buy parcels from Poundland.

Oh No! No to Snow!

as I've been pretty much confined to the house due to the snow, I've been doing what I normally don't do. That is, watch TV, not only have I become consumed by the Jeremy Kyle Show, but I've slipped into Come Dine With Me. I have to do something to break this downward spiral up so I have also been watching the entire output of the Flight of the Conchords. I've exhausted that avenue of entertainment and will now have to turn to the two Kurosawa films I was bought for Christ's Mess. I'd go out sledging, if I had a sledge and some friends to go with.

'Can I come and play on your sledge with you?'
'Fuck off!'

With not much else to tell you, I thought I tell you a couple of jokes. The first one I told to Jamey over Facebook and she said I had to put it in this blog. The second I found when searching for a translation of the Funniest Joke Every Told in the Monty Python sketch of the same name. This second one actually made me literally laugh out loud for about two minutes. Let me know which you prefer...

A woman is giving birth and the midwife takes the baby, looks at it and says to the woman 'There's some good news and some bad news'
The woman says 'OK, what's the bad news?'
'Well,' says the midwife 'Your baby is ginger.'
The woman says 'Well what's the good news then?'
'The good news' says the midwife 'is that it's dead.'

Two hunters are out in the woods when one of them collapses. He doesn't seem to be breathing and his eyes are glazed. The other guy whips out his phone and calls the emergency services. He gasps, "My friend is dead! What can I do?". The operator says "Calm down. I can help. First, let's make sure he's dead." There is a silence, then a shot is heard. Back on the phone, the guy says "OK, now what?"

It's Not All Walking

New Year's Day is now well and truly over, as is 2009, we'll never see it's like again. Thank fuck. I spent my New Year's Eve in the company of Dave, Linzi, Jon, Joolia, Richard and Wendy and we proceeded to get as drunk as ants, whilst shouting about various things like being raped by bottle nosed porpoises. Which is nowhere near as bad as getting raped by a shark, but there you go. There was a pitiful display of fireworks from the rest of the estate, but being in the poorer part of the village, what can one expect? As the evening got later and we got drunker the music got louder until Dave was blasting Metallica at a level that was enough to makes one's ears bleed. I'd hate to live next door to that stupid hippy.

A Marine Sexual Predator

Along with the New Year Decibel madness my parents have hosted two parties, the first for my mother's rambler's club. They all left at five o'clock ON THE DOT, lest they turn into pumpkins or something. The next evening was the lot from the local boozers, now this was a much more boisterous affair, being that they can take their booze due to having had good practise in the pub. Bob also came down from North Allerton, which is a lot further than Cow Rakes Lane, where Ninjasaurus Rex was hiding, although he had been repeatedly invited, least of all by my drunken mother on Christ's Mess Eve. Bob won my father's quiz, another shaming in the brainy stakes for me. She took home a picture of Whiston Manorial Barn, to be proudly displayed on her work desk at Archaeology South East, no doubt.

I coulda been a contender Charlie...

I have spent the rest of the holiday period quietly contemplating my navel and I have actually watched a massive amount of TV (for me) recently. The other night I settled down to watch 'The Turn of the Screw'. It was new BBC adaptation of the Henry James novella. The book is excellent, not much happens but the suspense it builds up is immense until the cataclysmic finale. This latest adaptation I could only watch for half an hour due to the cack-handed nature of the script. Coupled with bad acting, this was one of the worst things I've watched for a long time. It started off badly with one of the opening lines 'Tell me what terrible things happened in that beautiful house'. How clumsy are those lines? It's like holding up cue cards for the audience because the writers believe we are all so busy sucking on our own feet that we have no idea what is going on around us. It got worse, the governess was shown crossing a street in Victorian London with the voice over of the psychiatrist saying 'You were young, pretty and excited about you new job'. LET THE ACTOR SHOW IT TOO ME, I DON'T NEED TELLING! Those lines should be in the script but as a description of the character, not the voice over. The interview of the Governess was a wincingly awful scene with a really bad flirtation that would have never have happened in Victorian Britain. I turned off after twenty five minutes into an hour and a half program. It suffered as all dramas on TV, namely the people writing them are not good enough to write film scripts so they smash their way through classic writing like bulls in china shops. As usual TV treats us like idiots believing we are not up to the challenge of working things out for ourselves. I HATE IT, I HATE IT, I HATE IT!

Ext: Ghostly figure walks out of door

VO: This is a ghost. It is not a person, it is a Ghost.

The best stuff is in the Volvo

True story. I don't watch much TV, in fact I hardly watch any at all. I have been taking the opportunity of being proactively unemployed to watch the Jeremy Kyle Show, but beyond this guilty pleasure I mainly listen to music for my entertainment. Not so this past week however. I noticed on Thursday there was a brand new episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm on More 4. I planned my night around it. I waited patiently for it to begin. Within two minute of it starting I got the first text off Kate which resulted in a back and forth text conversation that lasted the entire episode and finished exactly as the credits rolled. Roll on Friday, I decided to have 'TV night', mainly to ensure myself that I wasn't actually missing anything by not watching TV, also cos I was at a low ebb and was a little bit down and couldn't be bothered to do owt else except stare at the idiot lantern. I watched TWO SOLID HOURS of the X Factor repeats. I felt dirty and shameful by the end, but not once did I hear a peep from my phone. I noticed a Peter Kay show was on later, something that I'd not seen. I like Peter Kay and his spoofs, so I set the reminder on the TV to turn over when it started. It duly did and within two minutes of it beginning Archer called me for the first time in a year to ask if I wanted to go and see Alice Cooper with him. I had to spend ten minutes explaining why I hate Alice Cooper and why I would rather pull my own eyes out and stamp on the stalks than watch him prance about pretending to be Satan when he is a fucking Born Again Christian. He slags of Black Metal bands, by saying they are 'only out to shock', talk about bare faced hypocrisy, as 'shock rock' is what his entire career is based on. Fucking Douche Bag.

Alice Cooper; hypocritical Born Again Christian, Golfer and complete cunt

I politely declined Archer's kind offer and tried to get him off the phone as quick and as pleasantly as possible to watch the rest of one of the few programs I was looking forward to. Peter Kay finished and there was a double episode of Family Guy about an hour later. I duly set the reminder and began watching an hour of laughter filled fun. Not for long as the phone went again, this time it was a half cut Bob. She was wanting to escape Brighton, fleeing from an unfortunate snogging episode that had gone terribly, terribly wrong she was heading north and was coming past Rotherham on Saturday. She half mentioned seeing her Grandparents in Whitby, so I jumped on that and suggested we carry on from Rotherham and head to the coast and stay over. By this stage I was also worst for wear as well having a sunk a few bottles over the course of the evening. In our inebriated states it seemed like a perfectly logical thing to do. Drive for miles, arrive after dark, find an expensive place to stay and drive home the next morning. The Road trip was on!

Whitby: Bracing

So this is how I found myself at Charlotte's house in Northallerton surrounded by several drunks, several empty bottles of wine and cheap Tesco Cava, listening to Fleetwood Mac and Dire Straits whilst being told 'the best stuff was in the Volvo'. We had decided on the journey up that it would be better to stay at Bob's parents place at Northallerton rather than pressing on to Whitby. This was mainly due to Bob's lack of Navigational skills, my lack of noticing motorway exits and the round about way we were slowly heading north. I awoke this morning in Bob's parents spare room feeling like a cat had shat in my mouth and not relishing the drive back home.

Clear your heads with another extract from Singapore...

Sunday, June 03, 2007

We dug all the anomalies that the array had brought up on area 2 and not one turned out to be ordnance. Not a sniff. Nada. Zip. Which is a good thing, as I don't really fancy having my arms blown off. This means that we have now finished the second area that we have to scan and dig. This is also the biggest, so as scanning goes we are nearly half way to finishing. Area three may pose a problem, as we have already found a load of bombs. We dug them up yesterday whilst waiting (again) for Mr's Wong and Sing to finish bashing the jungle. One of the anomalies turned out to be a massive shit pit packed full of what appeared to be aircraft parts. There was Japanese stuff in there as well. Or that's what Ang told us. His word is his bond, I guess. We pulled about 2,500 British Bullets out of the ground along with about one hundred small aeroplane bombs. None of the bombs went off, even when Ang was shaking them out of his machine bucket about ten foot off the concrete floor. Whilst he was doing it, I started running off, he panicked and was shouting 'No running!! No!!' Oh, how I laughed.

I met up with Ariff (From Ironfist) and his mate on Friday evening. We had a few drinks and chatted shit. Ariff works just round the corner from where I live, he's a car-park attendant by day. The lads were telling me that in order to buy a house in Singapore you have to be either married or over 35 years old and even then you will not be at the top of the list. So I guess I am lucky I have this apartment to myself. The lads left, Ariff had a date with the guitarist out of Tormentress, he has done the rounds with the whole band, it seems. I headed back home after some dinner. I went down to St James' Power Station again last night, I didn't stay long. I'd had enough by about 1am. But before I left I went to the toilet and found myself in the Malaysian part of the Night Club. The place is divided into three separate clubs. One bit is mainly Chinese, another Malay and the last big one is a mix of people. The Malaysian one was an eye opener. There was a band on, but not the same band that played the Flamenco shit and was fronted by a Spanish Brian Ferry looky-likey. This was a Malaysian band, fronted by this guy who was a complete throwback to 1987. He had aviator glasses on for Christ's sake. The Malaysians are like the Singaporeans little brothers, desperately trying to fit in and look cool, but failing miserably. Mind you give em their due, they got the crowd going well enough. I wonder if Chumbawamba were aware that their song 'Tubthumping' would become such a hit that it was covered by a crappy Malaysian Night Club band? The mind boggles.

TV, Get Off The Air!

Last night on Facefuck, I told Jamey I was going to write another Archaeological adventure chapter, but after today's shitty work I'm going to have a rant instead. We've been further reduced of ground to work on; since Tuesday we've been working on an area about ten meters square and I've had Sir Stanner's arse in my face all day (something most women in Wakefield would probably enjoy, but not me, no sir). Lauren has also been off sick, it could have had something to do with the Amazing Racist telling her that her hat was 'spiffing' or the fact that we are now surrounded on all sides by monkeys driving heavy machinery. And they're not even those clever trained monkeys that can use tools and shit. We are breathing in heavy diesel fumes and having to shout over the noise. I asked Kevin, the groundworker's Foreman, if the machines had a volume button and if they could turn them down a couple of notches, but my requests went unheeded. Added to all this was the incessant rain that G-Funk's weather circuits failed to register. Stanners though that some rain had got into his circuitry and damaged his electrics. Whatever, he didn't bring us in to shelter in the cabin.

'Yeah, it's that kind of rain that takes seven hours and fifty five minutes to get you wet, we can work through it...'

As Stanners and I were not in the best of moods all day we had our own rant about TV celebrities, which reminded me of how much I hate TV. In particular Top Gear. My Brother was home for a couple of days before heading out to Cuba for a month again. He was watching Top Gear as we were getting ready to go out for a drink. This particular episode had that little shit Richard Hammond driving a 4X4 Yuppie Cadillac in a race with a motorised kayak across Jökulsárlón, the beautiful glacier lake in South East Iceland. Obviously, that withered little cunt was driving across the land at the side of the lake, although the TV spectacle of watching him drown trapped in the locked vehicle in the middle of the lake would be something to set the video for. I watched this particular piece in absolute dismay. I've been to Jökulsárlón and it is an area of breathtaking outstanding natural beauty, it is one of the nicest places I have ever visited, the combination of sea, land and ice is unbelievable. I have watched seal colonies laid out on ice flows basking in the sun. When the weather was hotter I have watched ice broken off from the glacier float majestically by like an ocean liner in utter silence. It is one of Iceland's many beautiful high-points. So to have that little shitbag drive a gas-guzzling tank across the snow, churning up the gravel in order to win a race where the prize money comes out of license fee payer's pockets made me cry on the inside. Added to this was the fucking bellend that was thrashing through the water in the kayak. I was wondering how many of those seals appreciated the end result of the race after their colonies are broken up amidst panic. This is what Top Gear is all about, as long as the three presenters (that strutting cock Clarkson, that simpering cunt May and the hobbit motherfucker Hammond) get their fucking kicks they don't give a shit about anything else. The fucking idiot presenters ecological destruction doesn't stop there, they raced across the incredibly delicately balanced Makgadikgadi salt pans in Botswana, they have also churned up heather on Ben Tongue mountain in Scotland. When will the madness end?

LET'S OFF ROAD!!!

The problem is this, they are getting paid from BBC license payer's pockets to go and do all this stuff mainly just for kicks and in the name of entertainment. I don't know about you but I don't want to sit and watch someone else having fun at my expense. It's like giving all my records to someone else to listen to as I have to watch them through the window of a soundproof booth. Top Gear has become unfeasibly popular over the past few years. It used to be about cars and it never had a studio audience. Now it's just about the three tossers rolling about in their own shit while the crowd of baying imbeciles and invited sycophantic celebrities egg them on. It's totally dumbed down, it treats you and I as though we fall over our own feet anytime we attempt to stand up. It's obviously hitting the lowest common denominator button like a senile American President about to push the red button to launch atomic apocalypse on the Soviets.

'I'm the biggest cunt!'
'No, I'm the biggest cunt!'
'Seriously Jeremy, I'm the biggest cunt here!'
'OK, but I'm the biggest asshole!'
'No, I'm the biggest asshole!'
Ad Nauseum until end credits...

Further to this, Top Gear is not the only offender when it comes to insulting us. I have watched about forty five minutes of TV in the past week, two minutes was devoted to Top Gear as detailed above, twenty five minutes was devoted to Flight of the Conchords (brilliant, as ever) and the final eighteen minutes was all I could stomach of the hour long Andrew Marr's the Making of Modern Britain. It was a new series about about the Edwardian period and the lead up to the Great War. It covered the first powered flight, the Suffragette movement, the general strikes and welfare reform. It could have been brilliant. It could have been a real in depth look at an interesting historical period that changed the world forever. What we got was dodgy reconstructions, shaky camera work and Andrew Marr's impressions of Prime Ministers of the time. Andrew Marr is a political commentator not Rory Fucking Bremner. This is why I could only stomach fifteen minutes of this. and why I rarely watch TV anymore. Gone are the days of the brilliant documentary The Great War, a program made in the sixties and one that didn't treat it's audience as though they sucked on their feet like it was a hobby. Do me a favour, turn off your TV, let the powers that be know how you feel about this dumbed down, bite-sized, celebrity obssessed idiot lantern that sits in the corner of the room mocking you like the slack jawed imbecile that you're not!

Is there anything on the other side?

Table Cop 2

I asked Herr Docktor Clay if he had any Table Cop material hiding in the dark recesses of his computer. Apparently the stupid bastard must have deleted it all, as he said he didn't but I definitely remember him writing at least one script that had a great scene between Manners and his arch Nemesis the Phantom Whittler. I didn't mention the Whittler before, but he was another important character in the show. The Whittler would have been Manners' enemy throughout the series, a mysterious figure of whom only Manners could see the clues, the wood shavings at every crime scene, the bottle of wood polish in the darkened alleyway. I always imagined the Whittler to look a bit like the Phantom Flan Flinger from Tiswas, but with wood tools instead of the pies...

Take that Manners! Oh sorry, wrong show...

Anyway, the scene that Herr Docktor Clay had written involved a battle between Manners and the Whittler atop a miniature train in a park. I don't remember much of it except that Manners would have been foiled again and ousted from the roof of the last carriage. The final shot was the Whittler disappearing around the corner on the train laughing while Manners stood and shook his fist in rage.

Imagine a titanic battle between two opposing but unmovable forces across the carriages of this train and you have an idea of the 'missing' Table Cop scene...

The Docktor and I also had an idea about getting the program commissioned. We reckoned if there was enough public demand to see the show then the BBC would be forced to make it. With this in mind, John produced a teaser poster for the show, to be liberally displayed across the country. Obviously we hadn't made the program but this would lend weight to our pitch when we approached the Beeb with the idea.

Feel free to print out this poster and display it in the shitty office you invariably work in. Get your fellow workers excited about the possibility of a wood themed cop show...

On the subject of the Evil Nazi Herr Docktor Clay, he also sent me a poster he made for his new Political party he tried to set up in York. The Christo-Fascist Party. I'm not sure what his policies were, but I guess it involved not joining Europe and mandatory church for everyone. His main campaign was directed at Heartbeat Candy, a street entertainer in York. Heartbeat Candy is a York institution, he has an array of artifacts surrounding him, a store dummy dressed in Seventies style, various toys and best of all two Border Collies. The dogs help him on songs, like when he plays 'How much is that doggy in the window'. On the last note he plays his harmonica at a pitch that obviously causes the dogs some discomfort and they howl along with the music. Anyway, Clay got it into his head that this harmless old man is an evil paedophile and directed his vengeance against him with this poster campaign:

Table Cop

I was recently going through my documents and I came across these two scripts that I had begun but hadn't finished. I'm publishing them both here for the first time, unedited. A bit of background first. The Evil Nazi Herr Doktor John Clay and I (I think maybe also Craig and Ross, but memory fades...) came up with an idea for a TV show called Table Cop. It was a detective show based around the Wood Division of the Police force. Actually, John, if you have any further scripts you'd like me to put up here, email them to me and I'll post them. The main character was Pledge Manners, a fiftyish year old career cop. He was an unorthodox, pushy angry man. Early ideas for the show name was 'Against the Grain'. Manners had joined the wood Division due to him needing to get closure on a personal tragedy. His entire family had been wiped out in a yachting accident and he had only survived by clinging onto a table which washed him to shore. He felt he owed something to wood, so vowed to work only on cases involving wood and wooden objects. We'd fleshed the character out pretty well, he even had a girlfriend who was a table dancer in a lap dancing club. He was torn between his need for human contact and the abuse she was dealing out to the wooden tables with her high heels every night. We even had an actor pencilled in for the role, Michael Sheard. You'd know him best as Admiral Ozzel from The Empire Strikes Back and Mr Bronson from Grange Hill. His gravitas and acting ability would have brought a certain 'j'nais c'est qua' to the role. Only the stupid fucker went and died in 2005.

You ruined my chance for BBC light drama you stupid fucking bastard. RIP Michael

Pledge Manners wasn't the only character, he was helped by another wood detective (there were only two in the Wood Division, and they were fighting a losing battle against being closed down due to cut backs in the Police Force as a whole), named Tarquin Sheen. Again, we already had someone pencilled in. Dexter Fletcher was perfect. I remain fairly certain had we got off our arses and actually wrote a full episode and then sent it to Fletcher's agent and the agent hadn't rejected it out of hand and given it over to Fletcher to actually read, he would have been behind the project 100%. Sheen was a Detective Bobby Crocker to Manners' Kojak. A thrusting upstart, Sheen would be ever present on the Wood Scene of Crime.

Never mind Press Gang, Dexter, we'll make you a big star with Table Cop...

A final third character was included, a Female Beat Officer, WPC Ashley Beech. She was to be played by Heather-Jay Jones, who you will undoubtedly remember as the older sister, Melody Parker, in the TV show The Queen's Nose. Not too pretty to be distracting but not too shabby either. Beech would have been continually ignored by Manners, who saw women's roles as being in the kitchen rather than on the beat.

In lieu of finding any decent pictures of Heather-Jay Jones, here is a picture of her younger co-star in the Queen's Nose: Victoria Shalet, who has certainly grown up well...

OK, enough waffling about the background of the show, let's take a look at the scripts and see what brilliance could have made it's way onto our screens. As I said both are unfinished and I was unsure as to were they fit into an episode, you'll have to work that out yourself. let you fucking imagination run away with you.

Table Cop Script Fragment One

Ext: Wooded area in mist, several Police Forensic Officers are working on what is obviously a crime scene. Close up on a body wrapped in a plastic bin bag, the arm is sticking out. It has been bothered by animals. Photographs are taken, samples sampled, etc.

Enter Pledge Manners and Tarquin Sheen. Manners strides ahead, Sheen trying to catch him.

Sheen: No, Pledge, please, for your own sake.

Manners: DI Albridge? Albridge?

Detective Inspector Albridge looks up from the body. He has a Yellow High Visibility Jacket on and PC’s Helmet. He is fortyish, stout, life long cop. There is tension between Manners and Albridge.

Albridge: (quietly) Christ, who let him in? (To Manners) Pledge, ah, how good to see you. Is this business or pleasure?

Manners: Business, always business. Listen Albridge, you’re searching for the wrong clues.

Albridge: Pledge, how can we be looking for the wrong clues at the scene of the crime? (Loudly to all in earshot) Has the Wood Department increased its arrest quota sufficiently to start telling us Forensics how to do our job? (The Forensic officers titter among themselves at Albridge’s put-downs) Do you think you two jokers can solve this murder with wood? (More laughter) (Mockingly) Oh look at me, I’m in the Wood Division, this murder was committed with a… WOODEN STICK! (Uproarious laughter) in a… WOOD! (Laughter, shouts of ‘Oh Yeah!’, ‘you d’Man!’ etc) by Pinocchio!! (Lots of ‘ooh ooh ooh ooh’ like in the Jerry Springer Show) Get out of here you clowns!

Manners: This time I know what I’m talking about Albridge, you are looking in the wrong area. You Forensic boys have your noses so far up a corpse’s arse you can’t see what’s in front of you.

Albridge: (Angrily) I’ll tell you what’s in front of you if you don’t get out of here, the fucking Police Commission Complaints board. Now take Marionette here and fuck off back behind your plastic desk.

Manners: (slowly and quietly) we’ve found paint chippings from the murderer’s car on some of the trees back there. (Indicating into the woods)

Albridge is momentarily shocked, but quickly recovers his composure. He moves in close to Manners.

Albridge: (almost whispered, barely contained rage) Listen, you fir fucker. I’m running this show. What I say goes. There is no paint on those trees, in fact there isn’t even any trees. If we haven’t found it, it doesn’t exist. And if someone goes around flapping his big mouth about things we may or may not have missed then they are going to find themselves in a world of pain. Do I make myself clear, monkey puzzle?

Manners and Albridge have a stare off for a few seconds.

Manners: C’mon Sheen, let’s get back to the office, I think I left the cap off that tin of wood polish.

Manners and Sheen walk off, leaving Albridge fuming.

Table Cop Script Fragment Two

Int: Backstage at the Cock and Balls Public house. A small time rock band, Bloodgoat, are readying themselves for a gig. The band is Ian; Keyboards, Nigel; Vocals, Ray; guitar, Roger; bass and Neville; drums. Ian is sitting in the corner with his hands down his jogging bottoms.

Nigel: For Christ’s sake Ian, give it a rest.

Ian: I’ve told you, me name’s not Ian, use me stage name, it helps me get in character.

Nigel: Alright Axe-lord, but will you stop playing with yourself. We’re meant to be a serious fucking band here.

Ian: That shows how much you know about rock and roll, man. I’m only doing what Iggy does before every show.

Nigel: Iggy doesn’t fucking tug himself off before a gig, you nobhead.

Ian: No but he makes his cock look bigger for the birds, you’d know if you’d ever seen him play live.

Nigel: I would do, but you never told me the fucking Stooges had reformed and were playing did you? You twat.

Ian: Don’t get bitter about it man, that’s history anyway.

Int: Bloodgoat are on stage, finishing the set. Ian is almost bent double over his keyboard his erection making it difficult for him to play. Nigel comes over to him after the last song.

Nigel: You idiot, you ruined the whole show. You’re on thin ice Axe-Lord.

Manners: Bellingham? Ian Bellingham?

Ian: (bent over) yeah, who wants to know?

Manners: (holding up his plastic badge) Pledge Manners, Wood Division. I want to ask you a few questions.

Ian: (still bent over) What about, is this about Shirley? I’ve already been through this with the cops. I thought you lot had finished with me.

Manners: Not us. I still have a few questions about the sawdust found on your trousers. We’ve run some tests…

Ian: (still bent over) I had nothing to do with the murder, I wasn’t even in the fucking country.

Manners: (shouting) Don’t interrupt me when I’m talking!

Ian: (still bent over but shouting) I could sue for Police harassment, you know

Manners: (shouting) you’re still a prime suspect Bellingham! You don’t have a leg to stand on!

Ian: (Stands up to reveal the erection poking obviously in his jogging trousers) This case has nothing to do with you Manners!

Manners: (shouting) We deal with any case involving wood!

The two are faced off close together, the only thing between them is Ian’s erection.

Fin