Well?
Is this news?
On a slow news day, and when I’m in the middle of an article it has to be. Gary Barlow and Robbie Williams have been civil to one another. Which is great news if you’re a female or homosexual human being who was born in the 80s and who appreciates the music of Take That. The rest of us can just shrug.
They highlighted this cosy reunion in the coverage of the Arsenal vs Manchester United match on Sky Sports on Saturday morning, but I was too busy bricking it to actually notice it properly. Presumably they both wanted United to win.
Thankfully, United lost.
Ha.
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This is earth-shattering, front page stuff compared to an average evening’s Look North. The other week, the lead headline was:
“With the downturn in the housing market, why not buy an obelisk instead?”
And why not?
What - a fat Gaul?
I learned over the weekend that Robbie Williams, having weaned himself off the epsresso addiction (rehab for coffee, dear oh dear), has now become a commited UFOligist.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/apr/19/popandrock.spaceexploration
If only it had been that interesting.
Now then. I done did all my Christmas shopping on Saturday in the monstrous bedlam we know and love as Meadowhall. It cost me a fucking fortune. Damn my family for having the bad grace to not leave the stage at one end of the spectrum, and damn them for having the temerity to have unprotected sex at the other. If this lack of deaths / rampant procreation continues for much longer, I’ll be bankrupt and eating my own shit in a cardboard box. BASTARDS.
I’m tempted to do all my Christmas shopping via Amazon again this year - including the crappy gift wrapped service with the note written in courier font. It’s more than they deserve.
Did you receive that email I sent you last night NC?
I’m sorry, I’ve got nothing…
I did, and I shall be writing about my unseemly and embarrassing nose just as soon as the fog of last night’s disaster television binge clears.
You bird-beaked, pecking parrot of a man.
Robbie William’s girlfriend, apparently.
http://www.shakeitbaby.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/ayda-field-bikini-naked.jpg
They’ve got to be fake.
Good to hear! I knew it was the reggae you feared!
disaster television binge
Please elaborate.
Take That AND football. I’m so enthralled I dont know where to start.
Anyone suffering post-election withdrawal?:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3_95F5e-Ac&eurl=http://www.cynical-c.com/
she looks like a spanish transexual.
Do you not like football, Mingles?
Good god.
I’m not suffering post-election withddrawal because unlike the rest of the UK (apparently) I’m not completely immersed in another country’s election.
The ‘TV On Demand’ function from Virgin that allows one to watch thousands of hours of plane crashes, earthquakes, volcanoes and earth-destroying imaginary asteroid strikes.
Right - I get you.
I found myself over in the murky waters of the Virgin Media dubious channel selections on Friday night watching a slow-paced documentary called COUPLES WHO KILL.
Did you see this?
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=4Xkw8ip43Vk&feature=related
He’s a hammer as well!
Last night - for the first time since I got broadband, freeview and installed utorrent 18 months ago - I had nothing decent to watch on tv.
Luckily I downloaded Adaptation and watched loads of old have I got news for youz on youtube. So crisis averted. I watched the one where anne widdicombe hosts - possibly one of the best episodes of anything, ever made.
The fact that paul merton makes very few jokes at all and just sits looking at her with undisguised contempt - and ian hislop is for once in his life quite amusing , makes it great tv.
No, not keen on football.
I can’t watch that as I don’t have sound Mikey but I suspect he’s a gooner, like all the American stars. Christian Slater, Spike Lee, Michael Moore, Jerry Seinfeld, Larry David and…erm… Kevin Costner
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuwALT1ubJQ
In case anyone wants to watch that episode again.
well worth it.
My gambling and drinking addictions are spiralling out of control. Meanwhile, my wife - a crack whore - has begun a sordid affair with my father. My best friend’s just announced he’s a transvestite, and I haven’t seen my mother in thirty years.
Now if only there was some form of daytime television discussion forum I could go on to share my pain …
Napoleon, have you thought about becoming an MP? You sound like just the ticket!
I watched Sharpe at the weekend, and even though it was a bit crap I still loved it. Shall I write up about that for WWM? You know spin it out a bit?
What I want to know is - where the hell is Rick Astley? He’s ripe for a rivival.
I haven’t bought any Christmas presents yet. I don’t think I’ll bother. Fuck’em, my mere presence in their miserable lives is more than enough.
I didn’t realise it was a new Sharpe, so watched a programme about Krakatoa instead. Buggeration.
have never watched sharpe. it looked like a daytime soap opera set in olden times.
I thought the same thing, Mingles. Isn’t Sharpe for women?
It’s quite good. A sort of Flashman-type thing, but with all the humour removed.
That hasn’t really sold it to you, has it?
It’s about simple honest folk in nice uniforms stabbing French people, battling the upper classes and saving ladies in skimpy clothes. Liz Hurley (with giant Alistar Darling style eyebrows) even appears in an early one and you get to see her norks.
Oh and there tend to be a lot of explosions too. It’s like the A-team set in the Napoleonic wars.
Not really, considering I read the two Flashman novels I’ve consumed for the funny bits.
Old people, SH. Every elderly relative I have loves that shit.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/nov/10/barack-obama-zombies-running
SH: brooker continues the zombies running debate above.
I was just about to read that, Mingles, but shit keeps getting in the motherloving way.
Old people do indeed love Sharpe. My grandparents live in a close of old folks’ bungalows, and some days you’d be mistaken for believing the Battle of Waterloo was raging within their walls. Why the fuck they can’t turn up their hearing aids is beyond me, the old gits.
he doesnt really add anything in the least interesting. just thought id mention it though SH.
sharpe seems to have been on for about 15 years. is it just repeats or new episodes?
I liked sean bean in Ronin. he played a twat very well.
God - it is rubbish, isn’t it CM?
He should stick to the TV work.
So, Simon Pegg is actually a filthy racist swine. It all makes sense now.
CharlieMingles, it’s a new episode so all the people they managed to round up to appear in it again are all old.
as I mentioned a few weeks back - charlie brooker has lost interest in his tv critic career. Lets face it - its much more exciting writing zombie films, so who can blame him. poacher turned gamekeeper. or the other way round. Im never sure.
whats your article about SH? a thesis on the physiological plausibility of zombie motor-skills?
I’ll stick it up when it’s done, CM, have patience…
The Bean did a grand job of bringing Goldeneye to a grinding halt with his barely-disguised Sheffield accent.
What’s that thing he did where he’s in love with a German Shepherd? Or did I dream that?
I’ve met Mr Bean before, in a pub after his performance as Macbeth.
He was rather good at being a Macbeth. And he was very pleasant when I drunkenly assailed him saying ‘you’re Sean Bean’ like every other idiot probably does.
Was he wearing clogs? Was he accompanied by a whippet and a racing pigeon? Was he wearing a cloth cap?
If he wasn’t, I reckon this man you met was an imposter.
It was definitely him, he had a broad bean balanced on top of his head - The Mark of the Bean.
I watched Two and a Half Men and laughed like a drain.
Brooker goes in dribs and drabs with his guardian column. It’s been slowed down before now, when there’s a new screenwipe season or when he was filming Nathan Barley. It’ll pick up again and he’ll have another book out by the end of next summer.
Hmm … I’m still suspicious. Was the bean on top of his flat cap?
I havent read any of his books ugeine. Any good?
They’re just compilations of his columns, CM.
wasnt sean bean once married to some woman who was in bread?
His sheffield accent cant have been any worse than timothy daltons yorkshire one when he advertised brainzzz faggots.
A Welshman? ADVERTISING FAGGOTS? That’s an outrage! What next? A Frenchman advertising Scotch’s Porridge Oats?
HELL IN A HAND CART!
that was back in the 80’s I think napoleon.
Ben - he was carrying a coal scuttle and talking about rain precipitation on the Yorkshire moors - that good enough for you?
HAPPY NOW>?
eric othlewaite
Well bang goes my well-constructed shield of anonymity. Cheers!
Eh? Your blog’s title is your name!
Well done, CM - the King of Denley Moor
I’ll never forgive my mother - Mrs. Back In Again - for naming me In Through The Out Door But Then. School was a nightmare.
I’m going to out Swineshead now, to make thing’s fair. What do you think about that Swineshead, or should I say Crispin?
cava plus jour de matin de la dejeuner …
his dad used to pretend to be french just to avoid talking to him.
superb.
tomkinsons schooldays was great too. or uncle jack with his collection of exotic diseases.
Readers should be made aware that Louche looks like Coldplay’s Chris Martin. How do I know this, having never met him? ASK FUCKING SWINESHEAD.
Bpperry3… url then, not name. Same thing.
I always enjoyed Cleese’s cameo in the football one, fantastic freeze frame at the end of that one. I always love shows when they freeze frame someone jumping in the air at the end.
Napoleon, I am going to take a knife to my face now.
Well, readers, Napoleon knows that because he made some pictures for the ‘about our writers’ page which, as yet, I haven’t been arsed to upload following in a long tradition of laziness which first manifested itself a year or so ago with Napoleon’s reggae reggae sauce non-event.
The ‘Reggae-Reggae Sauce Affair’ has driven a wedge between Swineshead and I.
Swineshead once said I looked like Rod Liddle.
NP, you’ve been referred to on here as B Perry before, and that would make you either a brian, Benedict or Bernard. Or Boris.
You would look like Rod Liddle if Rod Liddle looked like Coldplay’s Chris Martin.
Mingles, by the way, is the ugliest man in the world.
Ugeine - I’d have preferred ‘Bernard’. ‘Ben’ is what you call a labrador.
thanks napoleon. at least I have the excuse that I was in halloween disguise. you cheeky bastard.
I pity the poor fool that was named Nick Tann….oh
Bit harsh that comment about Mingles, Napoleon. And we all know how that wedge can be removed - by you recording a song about your bulbous hooter.
Louche - did I say that to your face? If so, sorry. If not, sorry.
Mingles - That was also the worst Halloween costume I’ve ever seen, you monstrously ugly man.
Swineshead - I thought it was quite caring, that comment. I don’t see why Mingles should escape the curse of the WWM ugly stick. We look like a circus attraction when the photos are placed side by side.
I was trying to impress a girl I used to work with - with my joi de vivre and life and soul of the partyness. very out of character.
On another topic - where the hell are these big nosed vocals you bastard?
Or shall I set my watch for three months from now?
at least I wasnt named after a rat in a fucking michael jackson song. a love song. hes singing a lovesong to a fucking rat! how didnt we pick up the clues back then.
And your way of getting to said female’s heart was an ill-considered and shambolic collection of rubbish attached to your body that included an appalling set of false teeth, a highly-unconvincing bald cap, a cheap plastic ribcage and what appears to be Brillo Pads attached to your hands? What were you going for - escaped mental patient?
You’ll get my opus about the size of my nose when I damn-well feel like doing it, you arse! I’m in no hurry to insult myself for the amusement of you and your cronies on here, Swineshead.
and just to clarify: it wasnt a costume exactly. they left a whole load of cheap bits of disguises, wigs etc from a joke shop and people chose the bits they liked. I think 12 people had probably had that wig on before me already. gah!
at the start of the evening, we were all way too cool - and none of us had any intention of wearing them. But its amazing how broad your sense of humour becomes after lots of drink.
I was wondering why a man would voluntarily dress himself up to look like that. Large amounts of booze explains it.
It doesn’t have to be about your voluminous conk, Nappers - you could sing an ode to Dave (who’s eerily absent today) or anything you want (so long as it’s not racist).
large amounts of booze and a very sexy ex-workmate. plus a table laden with crap props.
I defy any many to resist.
in fact, if you want to make any of your friends look like a tool - hire a large funtion room, provide free drink and lay the tables groaning with free food and cheap plastic halloween disguises you buy in newsagents.
even the coolest dudes end up trying them on. its impossible not to.
*scraps song about Pakistani shopkeepers in the 1970s*
It’s all rules, rules, rules with you.
I’ll stick to my titanic nose. Oh, and YOUR humungous bird beak.
On the subject of Dave, I had an idea of starting a website called ‘Dave Millionaire’ where we do our damndest to make this shabby, pasty-faced, call-centre FAILURE an undeserving millionaire. On the surface, why on earth would we do something like that? Two words:
Danny Wallace.
I can see us on BBC Breakfast now discussing the tie-in book, Hollywood film deal and our future stupid internet prank projects. We’d be showered in glory. The only downside would be Dave’s new-found wealth.
I wouldnt bother napoleon. I recorded a marvelous piece called ‘ take it easy’ for swineshead and he ignored it completely.
the mans a teasin’ bitch in my opinion.
the other downside is that people would associate us with arch-twat danny wallace. the man with the strangest hairstyle on earth.
Mingles - I’m focusing more on Wallace’s money / fame than I am on his hair or his twatiscitudinousness. I’m also trying not to focus on Dave having a vast pile of cash he’s done nothing to deserve.
I’m in for the Dave scheme. Where do we start?
it a good plan in many ways.
Unfortunately, daves self-destructive side would take great delight in torpedoing the whole thing just as it was about to succeed.
I guess that makes it more of a challenge - and gives a USP to punt on this morning with that fat randy woman and the skinny gay man with the bottle-grey hair.
We’ll have to discuss it in more detail once I’ve hammered out my idea into a battle-plan. I thought of turning Dave into a registered charity, but apparently individuals can’t be charities. I’m trying to work my way around that by moving Dave offshore. I also need to see if the site http://www.theundeservingpoor.com is free.
a complete makeover is where Id start. contact lenses, hair dye, a few months of live n lift ( just the weights, not the sodomy) and elocution lessons.
Mingles - No! We need Dave in all his ginger-haired, ghostly-skinned, overweight monstrousness to tug at people’s heartstrings. I had an idea for a campaign where we treat Dave as if he is an abandoned dog in an RSPCA advertisement. Making him over would lose us the patheticness we need to exploit if we are to hit the million pound target.
No no no. We need to keep him looking just the way he is - that facade that demands a sort of withered sympathy.
I’m sure he’d be interested.
*smells profits all round*
good point napoleon. thank god one of us is thinking of the bottom dollar here, rather than - god forbid - actually helping anyone properly.
theres no money at all in that. thanks for setting me straight.
PS: dont anyone make any jokes about dave hanging himself when he reads this - for obvious reasons.
See? Great minds and all that …
We may need to rename Dave “Barney”. That name tugs at the heartstrings.
Basically I think it’s a good idea.
I doubt Dave will hang himself before he bags the million, Mingles. It’ll be after he’s blown the money on limited edition DVD boxsets and Xena Warrior Princess blow-up dolls that he’ll reach for the rope.
on what basis though, would anyone in tellyland be interested?
whats our USP? our angle? we cant do the 52 daves ( dave gorman did that) we cant take dave round ireland in a fridge ( morris minor did that)
whats left?
This would be the first time in history that a group of people go out of their way to make a man they don’t particularly like much, much richer than they are for no apparent reason. Begrudging philanthropy, embittered largesse - that’s your angle, Mingles.
You need a song as well. All proceeds etc.
There could also be some posh, university-educated type angle that sees this project as another example of the wastefulness and pointlessness of the internet community. Instead of making the world a better place, we choose instead to watch people breaking their backs on YouTube, read rambling online diaries, immortalise rubbish such as David Hasselhof and Rik Astley and make an undeserving little pillock rich beyond his wildest dreams. The sort of thing the Guardian likes to gush about.
DINLT - Of course. A rousing ‘We Are The World’ type thing.
I didnt realise your concept was quite so simple, so stark. And so beautiful Napoleon.
I guess we should watch what we say here from now on. No doubt, once the story goes global, some journailst will be poring over our comments and probably publish them in a book.
And what about all the skeletons in our closets?
Big deal. I’m a horror fan. I collect plastic skeletons. I store these collection in a closet.
It helped to ease the pain when my ‘great’ uncle frank used to sodomise me whilst quoting from the bible.
he wasnt that great - believe me. Ive had better.
The only skeletons in my closet are certain discrepancies on my tax returns and the vast amount of copyrighted material I’ve ‘borrowed’ off of the internet.
Oh, and all that cottaging I did in my twenties, o’ course.
as a fellow self-employed type, please dont bring up tax returns napoleon. not even in jest. you should know better sir.
*hides*
Rick Astley is NOT rubbish, Nappers.
Where’s Dave? I’m missing him, the hideous racist.
But surely they’re a time to really get those creative juices flowing, Mingles? “Friends, Romans, countrymen, bring me your cash receipts!”
Who - Rik Astley IS rubbish. I hardly think a person who listens to James Taylor and ELO records is qualified to judge what is and what isn’t rubbish, Who.
daves new-found stardom has gone to his head and he’s in the studio right now recording his christmas single: I am the world.
I saw him wandering down manchester high street this morning in long flowing white robes and carrying a golden staff to heal his flock. Its mick hucknall all over again.
WHo: I feel Rick Astley went back onn the whole deal.
he promised not to ‘give me up, let me down, run around or desert me.’
but I havent heard a peep from the cunt in twenty years.
These popstars arent what they used to be.
‘Mick’ and ‘Hucknall’: Such innocent words that, when put together, morph into something truly evil.
hes a good template though napoleon: ginger, manc, podgy, talentless - and spectacuarly rich and famous with more fanny than a fanny-croesus.
at least for a while. Until he set up that manchester/lidl space programme thing. In space - no one can hear your next single.
You’re telling me we may be on the verge of creating another Mick Hucknall? Christ!
I can’t believe this is real - It was in the back of Empire magazine.
http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=jzh2t&s=4
Can we have some kind of warning if you’re going to mention Mick Hucknall? Just reading the name makes me mad.
Advertising revenue’s declined in the mag world, Louche. They’ll allow anything nowadays, the mercenary shits.
Which aspect can’t you believe Louche? Those ads are always in the back of mags, even reputable mags. The ones in grot mags are far worse.
It was more the fact you could listen to old women at home ‘Ooh my feet hurt’
Some crone wittering about her lumbago - quite a turn on.
I remember when Empire valiantly stopped carrying online porn-supplier Blissbox’s advertisements on moral grounds. Obviously morals have been tempered in favour of profits on the evidence of these fuck my bunions ads.
One of the people who work at Blissbox is quite hot, from what I remember.
Did you used to work there, Louche? If you did, you’re a PERVERTED DEVIANT who’s already earned his PLACE IN HELL.
No I never worked there but I often met them at parties.
At parties, eh? Obviously there’s more glamour in online pornography-peddling than there is at the rockface of high-street filth-pushery. When I worked in a sex shop, I just sat around in an old cardigan, smoking tabs and watching blue movies. Nobody ever invited me to any parties.
I went to one of these parties, Louche mentions. Despite meeting Paul Xenon and an ex Big Brother housemate, I found the experience underwhelming.
That sounds exciting, Swineshead. Almost as exciting as the bash I went to that featured unpleasant, wife-beating bully Geoff Boycott as a guest.
Ha, yes didn’t Paul Xenon tell you to fuck off when you asked him to do some magic? And then he did some tricks for the sub-Satanic Sluts performer who was on later.
the most hardcore porno ads in a non-porno mag seem to be in viz.
they dont seem to give a fuck so long as they pay well enough.
He said ‘I can’t be bothered’ which is actually worse, when you consider he was being paid to do tricks for guests.
I don’t think Viz give much of a fuck about anything, Mingles.
He probably mistook you for a fellow performer, Swineshead. Some sort of half-man / half-toucan sideshow there to alarm the fellas and terrify the ladies.
If you’d have been there we could’ve formed a double act - Sharpnose (me) and Blobface (you).
The former named after his streamlined, characterful facial appendage, the latter named due to the unflattering, formless glob of rotting hulk attached to his upper lip.
which fookin page are we on here lads? I cant multi task. Im heterosexual.
I take it this dave campaign is on the shelf then?
I name this baby - Paul Radon, no …Helium … Xenon. And may he grow up to be an irritating cocky northern twat.
Streamlined? A fantastical notion.
Anyway, I may well have a nose only a mother and my half-blind, insane t’other half could love, but at least I don’t look like I’m going to start pecking at the ground at any given moment. I’m surprised you haven’t been arrested for stealing birdseed.
We must have made for an entertaining sight that night we all met up. You with your beak, hamster’s cheeks and bright red face, me with my bad hair, enormous nose and rotten teeth, and Piqued with his teenager’s haircut, wanky glasses, bandy legs and hump. I’m surprised we weren’t captured by an enterprising Victorian ringmaster so we could be displayed in cages to horrified onlookers.
Don’t forget the obese Mr Chipz with his enormous Christopher Biggins spectacles.
You must have a healthy supply of massive corks for your nostrils given the fact they gape so wide you could fit a baby in each one?
I found a model of Salisbury cathedral up there the other day. I’ve been wondering where that was for nigh-on ten years.