Space Raiders Killed My Son

This is a letter I (as Alison Tuvoices) wrote in 2003, and genuinely sent to KP Foods. I’ve always regretted not using a real name and return address. What did I think they would do? Hunt me down? Sue me? Sick the Space Raiders on me? They probably just smirked and then shredded the letter. The ‘fun facts’ mentioned in the letter now no longer appear on the backs of Space Raiders’ packets; they haven’t since 2010. What can I say, I’ve really got my finger on the pulse. Anyway, the cannibalisation continues… – Jamie

Dear Sirs

Space Raiders re: Intention to Sue

It is hard, in this day and age, to cushion your offspring from the horrors of the world. This task is made all the more difficult by sick companies such as yours (KP? What does it stand for? May I suggest ‘Killer Produce’?) with absolutely no regard for the sanctity nor the sanity of the consumers you seek to damage, exploit and murder. I thought my son was safe. I thought I’d done a good job of protecting him. Enter KP foods, stage left.

Just try to imagine my surprise when I returned home from a hard day’s work as a crack-whore to find my son lying in his bedroom amidst a nest of empty crisp wrappers, crying his eyes out but unable to stop himself from shoving clammy-handfuls of crisps into his fat gob!

‘What’s wrong, little Timmy?’ I asked. But Timmy is far from little, I can assure you. Thanks to the evil actions of your criminal empire, my eight year old son weighs as much as a couch. In fact, the whole suite.

‘It’s the aliens, mummy,’ he wailed, through a mush of crisps and a veil of tears. ‘I have to stop them!’

‘What on Earth do you mean, little Timmy?’ I asked. And that’s when he pointed at an empty bag of Space Raiders and implored me, through a glob of beef snacks, to read it and share his pain. And so I did.

Now, I am fully aware that you will know your own sickening mantra cum promotional evil off by heart, spawned as it was by your own vile and Hellish minds, but, in the interests of clarity, allow me to repeat it:

They came… From the darkest depths of the uncharted cosmos… THE SPACE RAIDERS Brightly coloured, bug eyed, bad guys with really big brains and easily enough technology to take over the planet. The only thing that can stop the Space raiders imminent invasion of the Earth is the sound of munchin’ crunchin’ snacks! So finish off this pack and go get another… before it’s too late!

Before it’s too late! So, in my Sumo-son’s effort to both save the known universe and stave off a multitude of panic attacks he has, to date, spent almost four and a half thousand pounds of his pocket money, my drugs-and-whoring money, and a great deal of my credit card limit on Space Raiders. To pour more salt (and, indeed, sugar) into the wound, he developed a form of diabetes so severe that he has to inject himself with insulin more times a day than I do myself with heroin.

What kind of a world is this we live in where people like you can warp the minds of impressionable youths and destroy their futures with complete and Satan-sealed impunity from prosecution? If only the torment had ended there! May I direct you to the ‘fun facts’ printed on each of the flavours of your disgusting product. Perhaps ‘Hellish facts designed to drag your weak and vulnerable children down deep into the fiery bowels of Hell to be disgorged and dismembered by the Lord Beelzebub himself’ would have been more appropriate, although I appreciate it probably wouldn’t fit on the packet.

Let me turn your attention to the ‘fun fact’ printed on the packet of your Beef flavoured ‘snacks’. It reads as follows:

ALIEN FUN FACT There is no such thing as a grey alien, in fact they are all bright colours, usually red, yellow, blue, green and purple. They only turn grey when you feed them with Beef-flavour snacks. So, go on, take the colour out of their faces and feed them as many Beef snacks as you can.

It may not take a vast leap of intelligence to see the relationship between cause and effect once I begin my heart-wrenching tale of horror. My crippled mother, moaning and gasping her last on her urine-soaked death-bed, let it be known that she wished to bequeath something to me that was very valuable to her. Unfortunately it was not her Bentley, as I had hoped, but something of an altogether more sentimental value. Since my mother has never given me anything but beatings and a strange fetish for silk stockings, you can imagine I was moved to tears by the old bitch’s intended legacy. She left me Geoffrey, her forty-five year old red, green, blue, yellow and purple parrot.

Are you a step ahead of me now, you evil swines? So, my demented son, believing Geoffrey to be a multi-coloured alien on a ruthless mission to enslave the human race, dutifully stuffed that feathered bastard full of five hundred and eighty-seven packets of Beef flavoured Space Raiders. And, do you know, much as your Beef-mantra predicted, Geoffrey did turn grey? He was fucking dead!

‘Mummy, the packet was right!’ Timmy cried, as I hit him with a snow-shovel.

To fill the void that Geoffrey’s terrible death had left in my heart, one of my Johns bought me a beautiful, fluffy Persian cat. I named it Cecil, after Cecil Parkinson. Perhaps I should have thought to consult, like some twisted Horoscope, the blurb on the back of your pickled onion snacks before welcoming another life-form into my home. May I direct you this time to the filthy pish you have splashed across the back of these Hell-snacks:

ALIEN FUN FACT Many people claim to have been abducted by aliens. This is a myth – Space raiders only abduct cats. They make them really fluffy, put little aliens inside their heads and then send them back to earth to spy on us…we call them Persian cats. You’ll never see a fluffy Persian cat eating Space Raiders snacks.

And so as I wandered out into the back garden to toss off my thoughtful John as a show of thanks, imagine my dismay at catching little Timmy bent over Cecil with a rusty hacksaw, the poor beast’s head lying meaowing and bloodied on the ground, as Timmy proceeded to slop out the goo inside.

‘But mummy,’ he said as I raised the spade, ‘he was one of them! He wouldn’t eat the Space Raiders!’

As Salt and Vinegar is my favourite flavour of crisps in the whole wide world I found it doubly difficult to accept that you could both warp my arsehole of a son even further and sully the good name of Salt and Vinegar at the same time. Since the ‘fun fact’ contained on this packet does not directly advocate the murder of animals, but instead opts to distort and violate the authority of Timmy’s history teacher {…they (the Space Raiders, of course!) built them (the sodding Pyramids!) out of bits of giant plastic and made them look very old just to confuse us humans!}, I’ll curtail my venom in this instance.

Ms Tuvoices

Suffice to say, Timmy was expelled for becoming unruly and hitting Mr Gilhouley in the ghoulies infront of the school bullies with a bottle of Dooleys he’d bought from Woolies, and now no other school will accept him because, and I quote, ‘…he is a complete piece of skum with the brain of an alcoholic maggot on acid.’ I’m quoting myself, of course.

I have since had to have my son put down. I hold you accountable for both the vets bill and a damage pay-out somewhere in the region of forty million pounds. I have arrived at this figure through consultation with my schizophrenic alter-ego, who assures me that the sum is a modest one given the circumstances. You will, of course, be hearing from my lawyer.

And you can tell the Space Raiders to expect a call as well. If they think they’re going to get away with this, they’ve got another thing coming.

Yours dementedly,

Alison Tuvoices

PS Tonight while you sleep I will suffocate your pets with a Bag-For-Life from Lidl’s. Incidentally, they’re only about thirty pence and are pleasingly durable. Worth a look the next time you’re popping in. Take care now.

I’m Dead… I’m Dead… You Know it… I’M DEAD

I’m still cannibalising material from the previous incarnation of this website; hence why the following is my review of a television programme that aired more than three years ago. Still, it involves ‘getting it roond’ Derek Acorah, and there’s no expiry date on that. Enjoy. – Jamie

The Michael Jackson Seance – Sky 1

“If Michael was here, would he call you crazy?”

So asked presenter June Sarpong of David Gest moments before the big Michael Jackson Live Seance kicked off. This was a bit like asking Nick Griffin: ‘If Hitler was here, would he call you racist?’

June had just appeared on an hour-long programme preceding, and building up to, the main seance. She ratcheted up our sense of anticipation by reminding us that she had ‘got quite close to Michael’ during her LA quest. Hmmm. Close perhaps only in the sense that when I stretch my arm out as far as it can go, I get ‘quite close’ to the fictional planet of Cuntypandy in the entirely made-up Sookyermaw galaxy, fifty billion light years away.

‘He was a weird-faced, sinister-looking, child-like freak,’ said Michael Jackson.

David Gest was there to lend June a hand. Good choice. Gest himself is a man no stranger to planets billions of light years away. He cheerfully name-dropped his way through just about every celebrity he’d ever met thanks to Michael, careful to turn even the most bland and innocuous questions about Michael’s life into a story somehow involving himself and Stevie Wonder. And if it’s a tinge of credibility you’re after who better to have in the studio than a man who actually states that he’s ‘crazy’ live on-air, and then tells you that ‘he believes in leprechauns too’? If only he’d gone for the bampot hat-trick and started battering himself over the head with a hammer. Incidentally, top marks to the Sky controller who saw fit to run a Sky Real Lives’ promo about dwarves and little people immediately after this segment. Pot of gold for that man.

‘I’m bad.’

Still, who am I to mock? I’ve been waiting for this super-duper, supernatural event for months; salivating at the thought of King of Pap Derek Acorah getting his hammy gnashers into the King of Pop.

The venue for the seance was an Irish cottage in which Michael Jackson once stayed when he was putting together a new album. Already we could tell Derek loved a challenge. Never has the old cliche ‘looking for a needle in a haystack’ been more aptly analogised: in this case, looking for the ghost of one dead paedophile amongst a legion of dead pederast priests. I guess it would be more apt to say: ‘It’s like looking for a needle in a needle-stack.’

These cunts can vote and have children, you know.

Still, ‘renowned medium’ Derek Acorah was up for the sift. Alongside him at the seance table were four emotionally-unhinged Jacko fans, two of whom were King of Pop impersonators. The readiness to believe among them was running so high even before they’d formed their circle and sought spiritual protection, that if Derek had brought out a box of Weetos and claimed it was an incarnation of Michael Jackson they probably would have asked it to do the moonwalk. And then fucked it.

Sarpong asked the ‘superfans’, looking collectively like they’d fought in the Christmas Panto regiment of the Whackjob’s army, how they’d coped in the months after Jackson’s death.

‘You’ve just got to keep going, meditate, think through it,’ said the loony female one that looked a bit like The Joker’s even crazier sister.

‘I feel like a part of me has died,’ said another, ‘I miss him every day.’

‘It hasn’t sunk in that he’s passed away,’ said one of the impersonators. I thought to myself, ‘May I suggest that you let that particular nugget of information sink in quickly, son, because you’re about to raise him from the fucking dead.’

Anyway, there was no time to lose as Derek got word from his spirit guide, Sam, that Michael was almost ready to join them. I liked how everyone at the table seemed reassured of Derek’s abilities once his invisible friend had given the nod that Jacko was in the building.

Mad Hatters’ C.U.N.T Party.

They all joined hands, although Derek did allow them to connect with one of Jacko’s hats that he’d placed in the centre of the seance table. One of the spangly-gloved superfans seemed reluctant to stop touching it, long minutes after the rest of them had decided to salvage what little dignity they had left and keep their hands to themselves. Even when Derek was rabbitting on about ‘residual energies’ and ‘thought pattern residues’ and ‘love giving us the power to go on’, this guy was still stroking the brim of Jackson’s hat in an incredibly intimate, sexual way. It was like glove porn. Hot glove-on-hat action. Extreme brimming.

‘I just can’t believe that’s his hat,’ said another of the wide-eyed psychopaths. I just can’t believe, I thought, that you daft, ugly cunts are sitting there with a half-daft Scouse maniac thinking you’re about to chat to a dead, dancing paedophile with a melted face.

A digested Ghost Kebab threatens to tear Acorah’s arsehole apart like a chicken.

So, finally, to the seance itself. Derek’s channelling technique is a joy to behold. Strained and sweating, he looks like a heavily constipated man who occasionally sees a moth flying past his head. And can somebody please explain to me why every spirit Derek channels talks like a Shakespearian character? ‘Hang on, my aunty Betty never sounded like Ophelia.’

Sam, of course, is always there to help him. He’s the ghosty go-between. ‘Sam… Sam… Sam..,’ Derek kept saying. If he had any sense of humour at all, Derek would have shouted out: ‘Who the Hell is Sam Wheat?’ He didn’t, unfortunately. It is funny, though, how Derek can reel off these big, wordy, stage-script-like speeches – stuttery yet fluently – yet when he tries to evoke or decipher a person’s name it takes him about ten minutes and twenty attempts.

Derek eventually uttered the predictable names ‘Samuel’ and ‘lovely Crystal’. Wow, Michael Jackson’s grandparents! How could Derek possibly have known about them? Oh, Wikipedia. I see. Still, it’s quite uncanny how some of Jackson’s first words were ‘journalists…journalists…journalists… they tell lies upon lies upon lies (tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, oh where for art thou etc.)’. What, was there some recent tabloid controversy surrounding Michael Jackson or something? How could Acorah have divined such exclusive knowledge? How wholly and completely unpredictable for ‘Jackson’ to have come out with that.

The Thriller Who Became Vanilla. And then fucking melted.

There were many, many highlights during the seance. Derek channelling Michael Jackson with laryngitis being one. One of the idiots at the table breaking down in a flood of tears as Derek/Michael tells him that love ‘oozes’ from him was another. But the best was when Derek, clearly struggling for things to say, got ‘possessed’ by Michael and pointed to one of the superfans and said: ‘You, say hello to Quincy Jones for me,’ and the superfan looked Derek square in the eyes, all serious faced, and said: ‘Hello, Quincy Jones.’ You daft, deluded cunt-rag.

A triumph, then. A wonderful piece of entertainment. I haven’t enjoyed a television programme so much since one of the contestants on Countdown got the word ‘WANKER’. And I doubt I’ll enjoy one this much again until the day they broadcast Stevie Wonder and David Gest wrestling oily, disabled midgets for cash.

A closing word from Michael? ‘He’s going to go very close to his beloved children,’ Derek told us.

It’s a shame that Heaven hasn’t reformed Jackson.

He never asked about his fucking monkey, either.

THE END

 

 

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I hope you’ll find something in these pages to make you laugh, or at least leak some description of bodily fluids. I write about a broad range of nonsense, but find myself most often drawn to the absurdity of existence, the wonder and chest-thumping terror of parenting, and the world of TV & film. I also occasionally write for the mighty Den of Geek: https://www.denofgeek.com/authors/jamie-andrew

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‘If this website had been around a few years ago, maybe I wouldn’t have allegedly killed my wife. I didn’t kill my wife.’ – OJ Simpson

 

 

‘I didn’t kill my wife either, but I WOULD have if she’d tried to stop me from reading Jamie Andrew With Hands!’ – Dr Richard Kimble

Let it RIP – The Farting Preacher

Inspired by the infamous YouTube videos featuring ‘The Farting Preacher’ I simultaneously created and killed off my very own farting preacher character. He only exists in the confines of this obituary. This is his story.

OBITUARY

Hank in happier times. One mouth mic, one cheek mic.

Hank “Oh, God I Love Jesus” O’Flatulence, aka the self-styled Farting Preacher, sadly gassed away peacefully in his sleep in the early hours of yesterday morning, at his home in Redneck, Texas. Doctors cited bottom complications as the major reason for his demise: the unfortunate physical side effects of a life-long connection betwixt chocolate-starfish and the Almighty.

The first time that the Lord used young Hank Bannen’s (he changed his surname to O’Flatulence in 1972) arse as a conduit for his holy message, it saved Hank’s life. Wounded while trying to subdue an unruly nigger, Hank was thrown down the slope of a mountain, where he would have lain undiscovered until his death were it not for his peculiar anal divinity.

Lineker tries to get in on the act.

Hank recalled, in an interview with Gary Lineker in 1987: ‘I was just lyin’ there, and the wind was knocked out of me. Or so I thought, Gary. I just couldn’t get the words out. And I just knew I was close to death, I could feel God whispering in my ear. My momma and papa were calling out for me, calling out, all of the time, and they walked right by the bush I was lying in, and I thought to myself, God, if you can hear me, please help me, and I will be your servant in this world for the rest of my life.’

Both sides made good on the deal. Hank claims that God chose that moment to send through him a powerful rush of wind that culminated in the most explosive fart that Hank’s father had ever heard, or ever would hear.

‘In fact I shit myself,’ remembered Hank.

The local ‘community’ rallying to help Hank. Shortly before he killed them all.

Young Hank was discovered and found himself on a sacred path that would lead to the foundation of his church and the harnessing of the awesome and Heaven-blessed power of his holy fart-factory. ‘My cheeks are my church and my farts are my sermon,’ was a phrase that Hank would later coin.

Hank met and married his sweetheart, Groin Masterton, whilst a roving missionary for the Church of the Dead N***** in Dallas, Texas. He was 22, she was not yet 20. In fact, she was 14.

‘She had great tits even at that age,’ Hank remarked to the judge during his 1967 trial. He recalled the story to Frank Bruno, who had the opportunity to interview him in 1993: ‘I knew what I was doing was wrong in the eyes of the law, but the only law I followed was God’s Law, and it bowed down to nothing.’

Holy Cow!

Again, Hank sought guidance from the Lord before committing to his path. ‘I asked him, I said, God? God, if I’m bound to take this girl as my wife, you just got to tell me. And she was there with me, and we waited, we waited a few minutes, and I swear that when that burst o’ guff ripped out of me, it sounded like it said “Yes, my son”.’

Masterton later claimed that, in fact, it had sounded like a motorbike. Again, and not for the last time, Hank had shit himself. ‘It just showed how keen the Lord was for this union to happen,’ he told Jocky Wilson in 1979.

Hanks sermons were soon as empty as his colon.

Hank suffered a crisis of faith in 1975 during a prolonged bout of constipation that lasted months. Convinced that the Lord had forsaken him, or that he had done something to anger him, Hank set off on a journey to Asia to immerse himself in the mountainous wilderness. It was his hope hat he would be able to rekindle his faith and purify his soul. Speaking to Ayrton Senna shortly before the Frenchman’s tragic death, Hank admitted that he found it hard to be around people: ‘I would be in a crowded room, or in the church, and I’d hear a fart, and I’d just flip out, you know, lose it. I’d be calling to God, saying “What was that, God?” and going up to people and shaking them, trying to shake loose some more of the Good Lord’s words from their bellies. I guess I was jealous of them, cleanse my soul.’

A nervous breakdown followed during which time Hank ate nothing but boiled cabbage, broccoli and Heinz beans. From that point on people were expressly forbidden from farting in front of Hank lest he ended up in the local mental institution, which was called The Local Mental Institution. ‘It got that bad,’ said Masterton. ‘Even if he smelt one he’d cry.’

His efforts to kick-start his colon were in vain, and the Lord seemed to have turned His back on Hank’s crack.

Mysterious Nepalese nomadic monk, Ho Ya Dansa.

Whilst on his sabbatical in the Nepalese mountains, Hank had the good fortune to meet a nomadic monk called Ho Ya Dansa. This chance encounter between two deeply spiritual people probably saved Hank’s soul. Dansa spent many months teaching Hank to cleanse his mind, to allow God to flow through his body again. With the little English he knew, Dansa implored him to ‘be the fart’, a mantra that Hank would never, ever forget. In an interview with Jim Bowen from Bullseye a few weeks before his death (Hank’s, not Jim’s! Phew, relax! You’d have heard about that!), Hank praised Ho Ya Dansa: ‘He was patient with me, and I thank him. He put me into this stance and he sat there and he waited for 96 hours, Jim, never moved, never blinked, just meditated, he just waited for everything to be alright. And out it came, man… after all those months, out it came.’

Dansa was hideously maimed in the resulting blast and lost half of his face and three-quarters of a testicle. ‘It was God’s will,’ said Hank. ‘Besides, the guy was a l’il yella Ching Chong. These guys don’t even get to Heaven.’

Hank’s in heaven now. And this is what he’s doing.

Hank rarely spoke, except during interviews, for the last decade of his life. His church, The Church of the Holy Contemporary Christian Bowel Movement, had cemented itself in the hearts of Texans, and the church eventually expanded worldwide to rapturous acclaim. During his time as pastor he learned to communicate solely through farting. ‘He was a genius,’ smiles Masterton. ‘Years of practise. He learned to control the inflections, the volume, the pitch, the intonation. We’d talk about everything that way, and there was nothing he couldn’t say. Sometimes the Lord would chip in, like we were having a conference call through his asshole.’

Hank O’Flatulence is survived by his wife, Groin O’Flatulence nee Masterton, and his children Squeaker, Ripper, Puffer, Claw, Trump and David O’Flatulence, who are all gay. Hank never hid the shame he felt for his dirty children. Speaking to Sponge Bob Square Pants in 1999, he said: ‘That hole, man, it’s a conduit for God’s word. That’s God’s mouth. My children are allowing God to be fucked in the face, and that’s something I hope they burn in Hell for like a fat pig on a stick.’

Nutkins: ‘I don’t want to fucking live anymore.’

Showbiz friends were quick to praise the late O’Flatulence. A mournful Rowan Williams masturbated into a pie Floella Benjamin had made out of her own fetid excrement. This later transpired to have had nothing whatsoever to do with Hank’s death. Terry Nutkins shot himself in the eye with snake venom he was so consumed by grief. One of The Saturdays cut off an eyelid and then threw herself onto a concrete sandcastle from 10,000 feet. Prime Minister David Cameron bit off his own elbow and used it to suffocate a poor person, who was later burned. Girls Aloud entered into a machine-gun suicide death pact live onstage once they heard the news. Stephen Hawking changed his voice to a motorbike fart, and then drove through as many war funerals as possible. Bruce Willis, who’d been filming his new summer-smash ‘Pie Hard’, touchingly said of Hank: ‘Who the fuck is Hank O’Flatulence?’ Willis is now set to play him in the upcoming film of his life.

Willis: ‘I smell dead people.’

Masterton is organising a tribute to her deceased husband. ‘We’re going to get millions of people to join hands across all of the states and let off a big one.’ Farts Across America is planned for next month. Worried environmentalists fear that the international community will be up in arms over this stunt, which they predict will add to the anger felt over the Kyoto treaty. ‘This could blow Arkansas all the way to Bolivia and start a new ice age,’ claimed a bearded commie lesbian.

In tribute to his one-time pupil, Ho Ya Dansa is incorporating O’Flatulence’s teachings into whatever the fuck weird religion it is that he follows. Happily, Groin Masterton used some of the proceeds of her late husband’s church to fund an operation for the magnificent monk, who has now had a prosthetic quarter of a testicle appended to his ruptured left ball bag.

‘It’s good to be wholly spherical again,’ said Dansa. ‘Wherever you are, Hank, I’ll think of you every time I take off my underwear.’

 

Postman Pat – Kids’ TV Redux Pt1

”sup, motherfuckers?’

The first episode of the re-imagined Postman Pat opens on a misty moor on a frosty winter’s morning. Pat and farmer Peter Fogg are drinking strong, home-brew whiskey, as they lie propped up against a dry-stone dyke.

‘Foot and mouth, swine flu, Defra, the wife. They’ve all fucked me, Pat. I’ve got nothing.’

‘I hear that,’ says Pat, hurling an empty bottle and smashing it against a tree. ‘Fucking government. Sixty pence for a first-class stamp? It makes me so angry I could choke Mopatop dead!’

‘Give us a minute, will you, Pat.’

Justice has a long nose and a black pussy.

‘Yeah, sure,’ slurs Pat, wobbling to his feet. As Pat crunches through the frost covered field, he hears the silence broken by a single loud clap. He knows that Peter Fogg’s long misery is at an end.

It’s 2012. The countryside is in ruins thanks to the recession, underinvestment and the exodus of the young and their money. Crime, unemployment and despair are the orders of the day. Chicken rapes are up 200 per cent.

Postman Pat’s seen better days. Especially since the tragic death of his wife at the village fete, crushed under the wheels of a tractor driven by a joy-riding fox.

RIP OAP. Goggins’ last stand: mailing her own dessicated jobby to Tory HQ shortly before doing herself in.

A few scenes in, the local post office is closed down by a laughing Tory bastard. Mrs Goggins, with nothing left to live for, takes her own life. She downs a bottle of Gordon’s dry gin, laces her false teeth with paraffin, pops them in, and then lights a petrol-soaked Cuban cigar.

Clutching Goggins’ withered, cooked fingers in his cold hand, Pat vows to avenge her and all of ruraldom. He paints a mural of a black fist on the side of his big, red van; wraps a bandana made from Mrs Goggins’ tear-soaked handkerchief around his head, shaves a mohican into Jess’s skull, claims the shotgun Fogg used to blow open his skull, and rides into the Yorkshire night looking to bring order into chaos.

Ted Glen – or ‘The Ferret’ as he was known by the SOCS.

The paedophile Reverend Timms is paper-cut to death by a stack of manilla envelopes. I guess he shouldn’t have tried it on with the Thomson twins.

A heroin smuggling ring, controlled by handyman Ted Glen and mobile-shop owner Sam Waldron, is brought to a swift end when Pat pulls up in his van of justice.

‘Package for Glen,’ Pat drawls, slipping an unfiltered cigarette into his badly animated mouth. He hands them the parcel, then makes sure he looks straight into their eyes with a menacing intensity before swaggering back to his van.

‘Ee, thanks, Pat,’ says a puzzled Glen, ‘But tha thought delivrees ‘ad ended.’

‘They have,’ laughs Pat, lighting his cigarette and blowing out a jet of smoke. Out comes a remote control. ‘For you. Privatise this, you drug-dealing motherfuckers.’

Pat slapping them down, Terminator-style.

The resulting explosion takes out Ted and Sam, the mobile shop, three cars, two walls, an electric fence, a pot of cottage cheese, John Craven and fifteen sheep. Wiping from his face the bloody remains of John Craven, and a fragment of sheep’s arse, he looks down at Jess with an uncertain grin. The flames from the explosion reflect in his lenses, lending him the aura of hate and Hellfire. Jess miaows.

‘Maybe we’re too old for this shit, buddy,’ says Pat. ‘But retirement is a choice. My choice. And this letter-posting, big-nosed bitch says nobody sleeps till Greendale’s cleaned up.’

Much crime-fighting and indiscriminate fox-murdering ensues.

Pat stands on a desolate outcrop overlooking the hills and valleys of his new kingdom. In the sky above he sees a vision of Mrs Goggins.

‘Pat,’ she howls in her ghostly tone, ‘will the mail ever come back to Greendale?’

‘One day,’ says Pat, cocking his shotgun, ‘There’ll be knock. Ring. Letters through your mother-fucking door.’

Vote for the Dinner Party

'More jelly and ice-cream, Sir Rich Cunt?'

So, a rich, elitist politician in a corrupt capitalist society offers rich CEOs and horrid right-wing sister-fuckers the chance to influence governmental policy for money? The only thing surprising about the recent Cam-for-Cash revelations is our surprise.

Here we have David Cameron, a man whose face tells the story of a weird genetic experiment to meld Buzz Lightyear with a posh monkey-nut, preaching about the Big Society at the same time as he does his utmost to dismantle it. Well, the peasant part of it, anyway.

Goodbye, NHS. It’s OK. Poor people don’t need hearts or kidneys, anyway. That’s a scientific fact. Cheerio, provisions for the old and skint. Want to keep warm, working-class OAPs? Why not make a fire and burn all of your old copies of ‘The Socialist Worker’? You’ll be feeling your fingers and toes again in no time. Auf weidersehen, rights of disabled people on benefits. I know one thing that will help your broken back and crippling depression: a little stint stocking shelves for free down at Tesco, your local, friendly greengrocer.

'Gonnae nonny nonny no dae that?'

Cameron’s been robbing from the poor to give to the rich (and extorting the rich to make the rich richer) from the start. This Cash-for-Goujons debacle is the least of the coalition’s misdeeds. You know a regime’s got a problem with image when its antics begin to make Tory-punching, problem-drinking, schoolgirl-shagging, nutcase’s-nutcase Eric Joyce look like a folk hero by comparison. And, worst of all, I’ve just imagined Eric Joyce decked out in green tights prancing around a forest.

What will we, the people, do? I know what they’d do in France: start burning sheep until Cameron stepped down. But not here. We are the sheep, and we’ve not the wit to realise that the whiff of lamby barbecue in the air drifts from our own scorched backs. We’ll forget this story, and the next one, and the one after that. That’s if we’re watching at all. Isn’t Eastenders on?

That's the smell of you being fucked.

We live in a country where vile politicians who trade in misery are re-elected time and again, while the people who play baddies in soaps get soup cans hurled at them in the street by angry old women years after their career has ended. ‘How could you cheat on oor wee Deirdre, ya animal!’

Politicians have the power to decide how we live and die, but we all find it… well, pretty bloody boring. Certainly not as exciting as the prospect of a nutty slut getting her jubblies out on the next series of Big Brother. But keep an eye on live updates from the Big Brother house in Westminster. Once those old men and women in suits are certain that the TV viewers have fallen into a tedium-sponsored coma, they’ll stop talking about agricultural quotas and caps on this, that and the other, and they’ll turn their attentions to the REAL order of business: building a Death Star.

Movie Reboots – ALLAN VS PREDATOR

'Please demonstrate how you would lift this human safely, taking care not to hurt your back.'

It’s fair to say that the two AVP films didn’t exactly get the pulses of fans or critics racing. In fact they were shite.

But this time, the Predators face their greatest nemesis of all: Allan.

Allan is an officer with the Health and Safety Executive who objects very strongly to the flagrant disregard the Predators show towards meeting safety standards in the workplace. Although filming is still underway, we managed to obtain a few excerpts of dialogue from a scene in which Allan has a white-knuckle showdown with the head Predator.

'That's it, Tentacle Face. I'm shutting this mother-fucker down.'

ALLAN: Do you think it’s safe to have your staff piloting a large spacecraft through a potentially very busy region of space where there may be elderly space users, when clearly their vision is limited to detecting thermal signatures from warm-blooded creatures? Can I see a copy of your risk assessment forms, please?

HEAD PREDATOR: Graaahhraaahhragraaahhh.

ALLAN: And has the thermo nuclear device attached to your arm been PAT tested yet?

IF YOU LIKE THIS, YOU’LL LOVE: I-Can’t-Believe-It’s-Not-Butter-Field. It’s kind of like Cloverfield, but you won’t be able to tell the difference. See also: Alien vs Creditor. Phillip the creditor doesn’t care how many mouths they’ve got to feed. He’s still repossessing their eggs.

Why Advertising is so Full of Shit

'I'm chokin' it.'

Advertising: the art of taking something ordinary and building a mythology around it : the art of masking the brutality and nonsense behind the money.

Adverts. I wish they’d all just front up. Show us the whipped and weeping Chinese kids crying bitter tears over an assembly line of Barbie dolls. Show us an alcoholic drink-driving past a school with a bottle of Budweiser in his hand, swerving to avoid a mass of talking frogs and crashing into the school bus. Show us Ronald McDonald rabbit-punching an injured abattoir worker in the kidneys. It makes my head spin.

But it all makes me laugh, too. While shopping in Spar I came across something that made me guffaw uncontrollably. It was a slogan on the front of a Super Value Pack of KittenSoft toilet roll: ‘Irresistibly soft,’ it said.

'Itty Bitty Shitty Kitty.'

Has anyone ever found their toilet paper to be irresistible? ‘So Soft, You’ll Wipe After Every Fart,’ it seems to entreat. If we follow this line, it won’t be long before daddy is blowing his wage packet on luxury toilet roll items instead of heroin. Psssst. Want some Andrex, mate?

Ah, yes, Andrex: the crap-paper manufacturer that chose the puppy as its brand mascot. Puppies FIND the paper deliciously soft; the product is not AS soft AS puppies, a trap into which KittenSoft appears to have fallen. The implication from their packaging seems to be that using their product will have the equivalent feel to picking up Tiddles and sliding him between your arse cheeks like some kind of miaowing credit card. In fact, the little kitten on the packaging wears an expression somewhere between terror and hope, praying that today will be the last day he gets used as a BogMog.

Or a ShitKat, if you’d prefer.

'Go on, motherfucker, I dare ya.'

It makes me wonder whether the scientific wing of KittenSoft experimented with different creatures before settling on the kitten. Could we have had Total-Chinchilla-Comfort? HamsterWipe? Never mind if animals were harmed during the process: were any scientists harmed? ‘Can we just say a few words of remembrance for brave Ronald before we have a little re-think on HedgehogHeaven?’

And what criteria were used? Did they have a little check-list, sub-divided into animal groups and species, measuring things like fluffiness, absorbability, prickliness, and likelihood-of-biting-back-iness? And call me far too liberal-minded and PC for my own good, but things seem to be disgustingly mammal-centric over at toilet paper HQ. Kittens, puppies, tribbles. For once I’d like to see: ‘New SharkWipe – Something to Get Your Jaws around’; or ‘PythonWipe – For When You’ve Snaked One Out’. And why not give the amphibians and reptiles a chance to shine: ‘FrogComfort – So Tough You Won’t Ribbit?’ ‘Chod-in-the-Hole’?

I’m not even going to broach the subject, ladies and gentlemen, of Gerbil Lil-Ets.

New Stella-flavoured Deodorant a steaming success.

Ah, I really should have gone into advertising. A final word on deodorants. It seems that not smelling like filth isn’t good enough for us anymore. We have to stare at rows of peculiarly labelled scents ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous. On the shelves in Asda the other night (yes, I really do spend my free time skipping from shop to shop, frantically scanning the aisles for amusingly-named commercial products to brighten up my suicidally depressing existence) were deodorants called Java, Surge, Cool and Miami.

Java? Who the fuck wants to smell like a computer programming language? And what in Christ’s name does it smell of? I’ve seen computer programmers, and they don’t look like the kind of guys you’d want to be within sniffing distance of. As for Surge… I’m sure the smell of the surge rather depends on the kind of surge you’re talking about. Whatever the explanation, I’m pretty sure I don’t want to walk into work smelling of it.

A snapshot from Falkirk's premier nightspot.

And Miami? Hello? Did they huddle seven thousand Floridians into a warehouse, spraying chemicals at them from a giant shower-head until they all agreed on what Miami smelled like? ‘I couldn’t smell enough sunshine in that blast!’ ‘Give us a whiff of Mickey Mouse!’ ‘That one smelled far too much like Detroit!’

Where will it end? Scents called ‘One-Legged Welsh Gay’; ‘Recently Mouth-Raped Kangaroo‘? ‘Dead Peruvian’?

Next week, look out for the launch of my new toilet paper: ‘ARSEWIPE – You Can Clean the Shit From Your Arsehole With It’.

Derek Acorah is a Mentalist Pt 1

The following is a TV review/rant I cobbled together after watching one of medium-extraordinaire Derek Acorah’s shows a few years back. More deliciously fun Acorah poo-pooing to follow over the next week or so – Jamie 

Snakes on an Astral Plane

Derek Acorah and his invisible psychic side-kick, Sam, in happier times.

Most parents keep their children away from gory, overtly disturbing, sexual or horrific TV content: explicit war films; late-night pieces of a pornographic nature; violent gun-and-monster flicks, and anything that has a hint of the red stuff or even a soupcon of rough language. All well and good.

But there are some programmes that slip under the radar, which many families actively encourage their children to watch. Happy, feel-good shows that seem innocent upon brief inspection, but if explored in any depth turn out to be more insidiously destructive and psychologically scarring than a back-to-back late-night marathon of Vampire Gore Splat Anal Destruction Nympho Whores in Trench Warfare Hell.

Welcome to Derek Acorah (broadcast on Sky 3 in the UK), a regular hour-long delve into the spirit world with the eponymous Derek Acorah, ‘Britain’s best-known medium’ – an accolade bestowed upon him by the Daily Mail. ‘Best known’? Yes, he’s ‘Britain’s best-known medium’ in the same way that AIDS is the world’s ‘best known’ sexual infection, and Adolph Hitler is Austria’s ‘best known’ Jew-killer.

'Your gullibility is THIS big, screaming woman.'

So what’s my beef with Acorah and his ilk? Surely it’s all a bit of harmless fun? Doesn’t Derek Acorah bring people comfort and closure, say ‘please’ alot, and thread love, peace and happiness into and around all of his dalliances with the spirits and their living loved ones? Well, yes. But this is why he’s so insidious. What gives a man like Derek Acorah, with no demonstrable psychic powers – certainly none that would stand up to any scientific scrutiny – the right to take people’s raw feelings of loss, hurt, fear and confusion, and attempt to exorcise them with flimflam and lies? Not to mention to extort these peoples’ feelings for money?

There are a few possible explanations for his conduct. The first is that Derek knows he has no psychic powers, and is cynically employing his theatrical tricks to make money from vulnerable punters, or else to satisfy some insecurity or Messianic complex whereby he feels a surge of self-worth or grandeur through ‘curing’ people – even if it is by a sugared deception. The second is that Derek actually believes he possesses both ESP and the ability to commune with the dead, in which case he requires some urgent and far-reaching mental help.

What's it watching? The Hissssss-tory Channel, of course! Belter!

In the episode of Derek Acorah broadcast yesterday (Friday 21st August) Derek brought out a woman and her pet snake. He attempted to read the reptile’s ‘thoughts’ and translate them for its owner.

‘He’s not been himself,’ said the woman. Excuse me? How can you tell that a snake hasn’t been himself? A drop in witty repartee? Not dressing as smartly?

Anyway, Derek was able to meld with the snake and went on to dispense some real psychically-gleaned pearls of wisdom. ‘You’ll need to take him to a vet,’ he told the woman.

Later, Derek added that his long-time spirit guide Sam was sure that the snake wanted to watch more television. The woman looked enthralled. During her own straight-to-camera moment, away from the studio audience, she made excuses for Derek. ‘It can’t have been easy reading a snake. I think he tried his best.’

Derek did little better when he moved on to bipedal mammals; although the audience didn’t share my assessment. He appeared again to have convinced them that he was a spiritual savant and all-round psychic miracle worker. This despite the fact that any person with a little common sense and a lot of balls (or a psychological condition) could come up with an achingly similar ‘reading’ and enjoy a chorus of oo’s and aah’s from any number of poor misguided souls. I’m being diplomatic here.

Derek after being told how much he gets paid for this shit.

His subject was a woman called Sharon, aged between 50 and 65. He amazed by asking if she knew anyone called Jack, Betty or Anne. She did. Incredible. Who would have thought that a woman born between 1945 and 1960 would know people with some of the most common names of that era? He moved on to wow her with such startling and specific questions as ‘Do you know someone who died of breast cancer?’ and ‘You’ve had to counsel someone recently who’s been through a break-up, haven’t you?’ Shockingly, she had. Who would have thought, given how long she’d lived, that there would be a statistical chance of those two things having happened? Certainly not Sharon or the tearful studio audience.

‘You’ve not had an easy life, have you?’ oozed Derek, staring at her like some demented hypnotist.

‘No,’ she agreed. I was almost out of my seat by then. This was getting spooky.

‘But you’re a star,’ he told her, almost on the verge of sobbing himself, ‘I know you’re a star. And they (the gaggle of dead communicating with him) know you’re a star.’

Who knows what frisson of sexual excitement was zapping through his balls at that moment as he held this deluded woman’s happiness in his huckster’s hands. He was probably thinking: ‘Ha! Jesus can suck on my big Liverpudlian throbber.’

Don't let your children watch Derek Acorah.

Have you ever heard noises in your house late at night? Probably just the pipes, or the radiators, or wood or cement expanding or contracting, right? WRONG, DICKHEAD! It’s ghosts. They’re there to talk to you, silly. Only they’re not going to make it easy for you. If your death has been foreseen by your loved ones on the other side, what are they going to do? Simply tell someone like Derek Acorah in plain, uncluttered English so that you can do something to prevent it? Rap out a warning in Morse Code? Use telekinesis on the fridge magnets to spell out ‘GO TO HOSPITAL’? No. They’d really rather prefer to make pots fall on the floor until you get the message.

Sharon had heard things in her house at night.

‘You’re confident you’re psychic, aren’t you?’

‘Well, yes, I’ve heard things. But I’m not scared.’

‘You’ve got an innate receptiveness,’ he told her. ‘You’re sensitive to spirits.’

What I like most about Derek Acorah is how he listens to all the facts, forms a hypothesis, looks at it from all angles, contemplates everything deeply, conducts a thorough investigation, follows through with an experiment, and then arrives at a wholly logical and scientific result. Inspiring.

The best part of the show, however, was when he grilled an old lady (not literally, although that really would’ve been entertaining) and claimed to have one of her acquaintances from the other side jabbering in his ear. The old lady had no idea who the person was.

‘Not someone in your family?’

‘No.’

‘Someone you know?’

‘No.’

‘If anyone in the audience wants to jump in, if you know them, please raise your hand.’

"You know someone called Morag, don't you?"

Even that little bit of fishing never made the audience in the least suspicious. Even when he moved on and left the old lady on spiritual call-waiting to entertain another spook they were still on his side and in full support of his miraculous powers. And still no one raised an eyebrow when he pretended to be in conversation with the spirit and said: ‘What’s that? You’re saying someone here does know who you are? OK, but we’re going to have to move on now, please. Step to one side, please. Thank you.’ Yeah, fuck off, ghost, nobody likes you!

It’s quite telling that after the end credits roll a message flashes up that reads: ‘All views and messages relayed in the show are for entertainment purposes only.’

Wouldn’t it be reasonable to expect someone who sincerely believed himself to possess genuine supernatural powers to fight the government and the media regulators tooth and claw to remove such a disclaimer from the end of his television broadcasts?

Just a thought. I’d like to lobby to have the message displayed throughout the entire show, in huge block capitals at the top of the screen. And force Derek to shout it at the end of each reading.

If you’re looking for something mildly diverting and inspiring for your children to watch on television as you organise lunch or dinner, don’t be tempted to expose them to Derek Acorah.

In the true spirit of the medium, simply go over to the other side. Or put on a DVD double-bill of the Hostel films which they can watch while you beat them with a fucking spade.

 

Movie Reboots – COME SHINE WITH ME

Jack tries to keep cool after his croquettes burn in the oven.

Dinner parties can be stressful at the best of times, but this Film Four production takes social awkwardness to a chilling new level. Reuniting the original cast of The Shining, Come Shine With Me sees writer Jack Torrance returning to the Overlook Hotel to cook for Danny, Wendy, Scatman Crothers, and his mental son’s imaginary friend Tony – all for a crack at the £1000 prize money. It’s not as easy as it sounds, though. Tony used to haunt the finger of a famous French food critic, and so Danny’s index digit is always on the waggle: ‘This food makes me glad I’m only a finger with no mouth, Mr Torrance.’

Add to that the constant pressure on Jack to chop up his family into so much spotted dick, and you know there’s going to be a lot more tension in store before you hear the words: ‘Heeeeerrreeeee’s dessert!’

Dave Lamb’s acerbic commentary is a delight. ‘Good luck slicing the garlic with that axe, Jack. I think there’s a sledgehammer around here somewhere if you can find yourself a walnut.’

Look out for more of your favourite catchphrases in the movie, like: ‘All wok and no sautee make Jack a full boy,’ and ‘Watch out for that fucking axe, Scatman!’ We particularly liked the ending, which sees Jack freezing to death as he tries to retrieve his black forest gateaux from the hedge maze.

IF YOU LIKE THIS, YOU’LL LOVE: Stephen King’s ShIT. One of the writer’s turds is buried in ‘Pat’ Cemetary. It returns to possess a teenage girl, from Maine obviously, who takes a misanthropic writer hostage and breaks his legs with a mallet. Also look out for: Tommy’s Knockers.  

 

Movie Reboots – NEXT FRIDAY THE 13TH

"Oooooh, helloooo ducky!"

To what fresh ground can you take Jason Vorhees once he’s been cryogenically re-awakened in deep space in the far-distant future? Producers and writers have faced this problem for the last eighteen Friday the 13th films. Some would rather forget the critical failure that was Freaky Friday the 13th. Others rather liked Very Camp Crystal Lake, one of the more recent reboots, which saw Jason stalking his prey whilst wearing tight bicycle shorts and a cravat.

Though commercially successful, the film’s ending raised a few eyebrows among diehard Friday the 13th fans. They argued it wasn’t exactly in the spirit of the saga to have Jason settling down in the suburbs with an uptight human-resources manager called Gerald.

Which is probably why Next Friday the 13th sees Jason Vorhees kicking back in the hood with Ice Cube and Chris Rock. Watch out for the increasingly inventive kills: especially Jason taking out a whole crew of Hispanic drug dealers using only a yo-yo and a bottle of Gatorade. Our favourite scene is where Jason rips out a man’s lower intenstines, prompting Chris Rock to quip: “Cos it’s Friday the 13th, you aint got no jobby, you aint got a shit to do.”

Although seemingly impervious to any form of physical pain, Jason is not immune to the social problems that are rife in the hood. By the end of the film he’s been shot fifty-six times, is the father of three illegitimate children, and starts selling weed.

IF YOU LIKE THIS, YOU’LL LOVE: Knightmare on Elm Street. At long last the two worlds of 80s ITV kids’ show Knightmare and Freddy Krueger’s Elm Street are brought together. Also, look out for: Rod, Jane and Freddy Vs Jason and the hotly anticipated John Craven’s New Nightmare.

 

Movie Reboots – JOHN CANDYMAN

"Heeeeeeeeeeeeereeeeee's John Candy!!"

Say his name five times into the mirror, and you summon the angry ghost of John Candyman. Does he flay you with his hook? Disembowel you? Lop your head off? Worse. He casts you in a Steve Martin film.

John Candy had several reservations about appearing in this film – top of the list being that he’s dead. However, Hollywood trade magazine Variety reported that a seven figure sum soon convinced Candy to come back to life. Actors’ unions are now up in arms over what they perceive as a grave case of ‘positive discrimination’.

‘Already we have Rex Harrison resurrecting himself to star alongside a recently re-animated Dudley Moore in Under Siege 26,’ said an angry Jamieson Girthrocket, of Roles Taken From the Living (ROTFL), ‘What next? Die Hard 12 with Clark Gable?’

In the original Candyman, the eponymous villain opened his jacket to reveal a stomach crawling with bees, an echo of his brutal death. In the new film, John Candyman will unbutton his shirt to reveal a fully-grown bull charging from his colon, as a consequence of dying during a violent steak-eating contest against Dan Akroyd.

IF YOU LIKE THIS, YOU’LL LOVE: The House on Notting Hill. Foppish Hugh Grant throws a posh dinner party to impress Julia Roberts. His soul quickly gets torn in half by an angry army of ghosts, who are sick fed-up of his humming, hawing, ooo-ing, ah-ing, and fringe-tossing. ‘If you’re not going to shag her,’ say the ghosts, ‘you might as well die.’ Die Hard 12 with Clark Gable starts shooting next April.