THE LANGUAGE OF THE TAVERN

A mother of two has been fined for swearing at yobs who terrorised her neighbourhood… Ms Appleyard finally lost her temper and pleaded with her tormenters: "Please, just f*** off". Two weeks later, officers called at her house and issued her with the fine.

Sergeant Neil Haley, from West Yorkshire police, said: "We appreciate that anti-social behaviour can be frustrating for people but they should not take the law into their own hands."

Quite right. Swearing is the sign of a limited vocabulary. I hope they throw the book at her, just as they did with Wayne Rooney when he called the referee a cunt and a blighter, thereby setting a poor example to the young people. (It is important to nip this kind of thing in bud, otherwise the fans might start swearing.)

Freedom of speech does not give one the right to shout “Bollocks!” in a crowded theatre.



The authentic face of modern Britain: the face of a resentful stoat.

KILLER FACT!

Fatsos outnumber the malnourished for the first time in history. 800 million people are still underfed, but there are now more than a billion wheezing porkers. Finally the masses are living up to their name.

KILLER FACT!

Drivers called Ben are the most likely to crash.

YOU FUCK ONE GOAT...

I hate the way people keep bringing up the time Steve Irwin dangled his child above a snapping crocodile. Was it wise to use his only son as bait? Not really. On the other hand, it was ages ago and the kid is fine.

There’s a phenomenon these days, I don’t know how to name it, but you make one asinine remark, dangle one infant above one crocodile, shoot one lawyer in the head, fuck one goat, and no one ever lets you forget it.

Kos’ “screw them" comment about the dead military contractors is a case in point. His enemies bring it up every time his name is mentioned, and they’ll probably still be hounding him about it when he’s eighty. To me, Kos is a pain in the arse, but I don’t think this remark was particularly revealing, insofar as everyone will say something vicious and idiotic if they keep talking long enough.

It's kind of horrifying that every time you fuck up from now on the details will be filed for all eternity on the internet, where moths and rust do not corrupt. If we are to keep our sanity in an age like this we'll have to try to be a bit more lenient to human nature. (I suppose I may as well take this opportunity to apologise for the time I posted a decades-old photo of Germaine Greer’s gusset.)

People make mistakes: that’s why they put rubbers on pencils.

*American readers, in my country a rubber... oh, to hell with you.

STEVE IRWIN

Steve Irwin has been eaten by a stingray.

I really liked him. That show where he poked at wild beasts with a stick was the only decent thing on television. His death is especially tragic when you consider how many people there are on TV who deserve to be attacked by stingrays. To kill Steve Irwin and spare the entire cast of Friends shows very poor judgement on the stingray’s part, in my opinion.

He was highly talented, in his way. Almost any other job on TV I could do myself, but I couldn't do his. I could read the news- so could any idiot. I could commentate on a tennis match. But could I sneak up on a deadly snake and twat it with a stick? Could I wrestle an infuriated crocodile into a pit, using only my bare hands? Probably not, is the answer.

R.I.P.

THE TOWN WHERE GOD LEFT THE SHOVEL

"Some British people are nice. But on Friday and Saturday night everybody gets drunk. Many girls get pregnant at 16 or 17. The general level of education is low. I'm going back for a couple of months to collect our things. Then we'll start a new life in Bulgaria."

I don’t blame her. The big danger of EU expansion is that Britain’s skilled workers and young professionals may leave in unprecedented numbers, attracted by the higher standard of living in Bulgaria and Albania.

I left High Wycombe in the 90s to seek a better life in the Gaza Strip. People who have never been to Wycombe think I’m joking when I tell them this, but that’s actually what I did do, and it was the right decision. Sure, Wycombe has a Municipal Leisure Complex and a tree, but in most other respects the quality of life is better in the Gaza camps.

Wycombe’s main selling point, apart from the tree, is that there aren’t quite so many terrorist loonies and swarms of locusts (though we're catching up). When I was a nipper, strangers would arrive off the train, take one look at the surroundings and say, “Great God, this is a dreadful place!”

“Cheer up!” I would tell them. “At least there aren’t any terrorists.”

Last month's bomb plot means we're going to have to come up with a new redeeming feature. Being marginally less hellish than Slough isn't cutting it anymore.



"Welcome to High Wycombe. Keep out."
I don't know what this is supposed to be. Most of the town looks like this.

KILLER FACT!

The Times have published a league table of top orchestras:

1. Hallé
2. London Symphony
3. Northern Sinfonia

My team, The Royal Philharmonic, are facing relegation after our key bassoonist was hit by a hamstring injury, and we had to play Terry Butcher on the kazoo.

There was a thing on Radio 4 the other day about how touring orchestras have problems caused by the ban on hand luggage. Your $3 million Stradivarius must now travel in the hold, where monkeys of baggage handlers will throw it around and bash dents in it.

(Via Normblog Geras)