HEAVEN KNOWS I’M MISERABLE NOW

STEVEN PATRICK MORRISSEY, the aristocratic, aloof, Mancunian singing star and lookalike for a Gerry Anderson marionette, has apparently survived his embarrassing collapse on stage in Wiltshire, and will now not be joining the ranks of the recently fallen popular entertainers, much to the irritation of the vultures in the media, who have been circling the story for a short time. The irritation for Morrissey, however, is that those of us who had happily forgotten about him and judged him dead now realise that he is playing concerts in such venues as “The Oasis”, Swindon, wearing, according to the local newspaper, a dark open-necked shirt, and looking “relaxed”.

STARK, IMPECCABLY-DRESSED Morrissey may soon be wishing he had stayed onstage with a spleen splint and a minute-by-minute morphine splish up his bloodstream rather than be carried off to let the local yokel photographic press slip into the cottage hospital and snap him in his smalls; but, with his lifestyle, I imagine that Morrissey understands he has it coming to him, if he pardons me the pun.

IN THE MEANTIME we have had the release of the new Michael Joseph Jackson movie “This is it”, shown simultaneously in all the major cities in our world, and no doubt on several of the planets from which Jackson’s fans come. On the tail of this story, as they now seem to say on the television, The Times has published the list of the most successful “dead franchise brands”, as a large number of famous people are called today. I was expecting Ronald McDonald and Colonel Sanders to be included in this list, but was disappointed to see that the only names I recognised in the “top five” besides all-singing, all-dancing Jackson, were Elvis Presley, the famous Dixieland jazz singer, and Yves Saint Laurent, the well-known dead African tailor.

WHATEVER THEIR HUMBLE BACKGROUNDS, death has been good to their bank accounts, certainly showing, as Morrissey appears to have always known, that misery is an earthly quality, and that Warhol could have said about Pop culture that “if you want to get ahead, get dead.”

STRICTLY COME HUSTING

WHEN ADOLF HITLER, the world famous landscape painter, and later politician, was fortunate enough to appear, in 1933, on Zeit für Fragen, a German version of the BBC programme Question Time, it is said that his popularity increased by over forty percent, thus convincing him that his future was in politics and he could concentrate on decimating the population of Europe and forget all about kunst.

NICHOLAS JOHN “SPITFIRE NICK” GRIFFIN may have been similarly persuaded; not that he will cut with the kunst, as I believe he has never been interested in anything artistic, but he will certainly be encouraged by The Times informing us that one in five “Britons” are now considering voting for the British National Party. Indeed, similar polls suggest that up to two thirds of people in Britain believe the two main parties are out of the zeitgeist in relation to immigration.

EIGHT MILLION PEOPLE watched Mr Griffin on Question Time, a programme usually condemned to an audience of about six or seven thousand people, most of whom are bearded university students studying politics, history or law, and thus not representative of the lumpenproletariat by any stretch; the figure made this the most watched BBC programme of the week, outstripping the absurdly popular Strictly Come Dancing.

THE MESSAGE IS CLEAR: when the average person is as equally willing to watch an utterly non verligte politician spout curious opinions as they are ready to watch young long-legged ladies twirling about the dance floor shaking their derrière and with their mammaries hanging out of their tight-fitting sequined tops then the big hitters in Westminster ought to look over their shoulders. So at a time when Gordon Brown and David “Dave” Cameron are arguing about whether they should appear on TV for debates, the answer should be clear to them: do it gentlemen, do it in leotards and show us your Ding an sich.

PLAN B FROM OUTER SPACE

THOSE OF US WHO LOVE CINEMA will never be able to forget Ed Wood’s magnificent 1959 movie, showing how one can make an apparently harmless piece of uninspired idiocy have a lasting legacy, talked about even today in bars throughout the world and discussed on the Internet every minute of the day by people who have grown tired of looking at pornography and tweeting to fellow “twits” about the weather, what they had for lunch and Demi Moore’s figure.

IT MIGHT BE A SLIGHT EXAGGERATION to suggest that Wood is still a talking point, but it is true among an underclass of adults who still live in a bedroom in their parents’ houses and have posters on their walls, and in many ways they are similar to the people who enjoyed Gordon Brown’s now famous “No Plan B” speech yesterday at the London “pre-Copenhagen” meeting to prepare the summit on climate change in a few weeks’ time.

DESPERATE BROWN seems to have swallowed Prince Charles’ absurd beliefs, even quoting him almost verbatim (see Sunday Mornings passim) in an attempt to gather the support of the greenies and win the next general election. “We have fifty days to save the planet,” he informed us, “and if we fail, there is no plan B.”

UNFORTUNATELY FOR GORDON, there appears to be no plan A for the government at the moment, just a bunch of people who are confused, have no idea what they are supposed to do next, are wondering who is really in charge of proceedings, occasionally try to look serious when the camera is on them, and are clearly only hanging around for the money. Rather like Ed Wood’s original cast.

FORTUNATELY, IN A RELATED STORY, I was informed today that 32 “new” planets have been discovered. This, according to a friendly scientist speaking on the BBC news this evening, “means we can now go to outer space with more confidence.” I am not quite sure what this means, but if this can provide a Plan B for our politicians I can guarantee I will be there to wave them off.

WILDERS IS THE WIND

MUCH AMUSEMENT HAS BEEN forthcoming this week involving the media feeding frenzy over the fleeting visit of bouffant-haired, “freedom fighter” Geert Wilders (above, static), responsible for a little light cinema entertainment called “Fitna”, which details his personal view of the end of the world as we know it; in Wilders’ tanned Dutch head, the Koran is “directly responsible for terrorism”, in the sense that the book itself is going around blowing up buildings and hijacking airplanes.

DOUBLE DUTCH HAS LONG BEEN a common expression in the English language to suggest that something makes very little sense, or sounds like gibberish, and thus Mr Wilders will no doubt find a warm reception when he returns with a copy of his film, co-written and co-directed, I note, with one “Scarlet Pimpernel”, and presents it in the House of Lords, where they have been listening to gibberish and drivel for centuries. My Lords may find Dutch comfort in knowing that the work is only seventeen minutes long.

WHILE THERE CAN BE NO DOUBT THAT THE KORAN moves the faithful to hatred, fear, loathing and even murder, one finds it rather difficult to believe that the effect of its clumsily written verses is still present in the minds of well-fed, happy, young, sparkly-toothed Muslims we see on our streets nowadays – they would no more take it literally as would most Christians pull out their eyes if they distract them from God, or cut off their hands, or cut out their tongues. One imagines.

BUT A GREAT DEAL SHOULD BE SAID for banning books (and even films), particularly if they lead otherwise decent chaps into the sad realms of religious hatred. Perhaps we could start out with Dan Brown.

VENI VIDI SOLVI

THERE WILL NO DOUBT BE THOSE who are upset at recent revelations about the policy paid for by the Italian Government to protect its army in Afghanistan and avoid bloodshed all round, involving paying money to Taleban commanders so they would “not shoot at the Italian troops”. The Italians, according to Taleban Commander Mohammed Ishmayel and two Afghan government officials, also promised not to attack any local forces, although I myself could have told them there would be precious little chance of that happening. All of this has been fiercely denied by Italian defence minister Ignazio Benito Maria La Russa (above), who helpfully tells us “When our secret services bribe other people’s troops I know about it.”

THE ITALIAN NOTION OF AVOIDING BATTLE at all costs has been shown in other events involving possible personal danger, such as World War I and World War II, when Italy made deals before both wars with both sides, and then joined the war after having decided which side was going to win, although always allowing the possibility of changing sides later on. During the latter conflict, except for in Stanley Kramer’s movie The Secret of Santa Vittoria, in which Anthony Quinn’s village actually stands up to the occupiers, Italian villagers generally clubbed together to pay the Germans not to shoot at them.

ITALIANS SHOULD NOT BE EMBARRASSED about this behaviour, as the only obviously disastrous result of this policy has been hyper-inflation, bound to happen when word gets about. Yet while protection money seems to be one of the particularly successful approaches used by Italians over the years to deal with bella detesta matribus, one does have to wonder whether this is the true way to avoid deaths in the future, or to waste public money. Otherwise Gordon Brown would be using it to pay would-be terrorists on the streets of Leeds, Oldham and Luton to stop them joining “radical mosques” and fighting against our country.

THE SLEEPING AND THE DEAD

I AM STARTLED BY THE RECENT spate of unexpected deaths of famous people. First and most famously we had the death of the popular comedian Michael Jackson, and only today we have heard of the death of the hardly any less notorious Irishman Stephen P. Gately, formerly of the “boys’ band” Boyzone. Most startling to me is the way that the tragic death of the singer was announced today on television: it is the first time I have heard the expression “in the house he shared with his husband” used in relation to a homosexual couple. I suppose the next startling event will be when a “boys’” band sings songs to boys rather than hypocritically pretending to like girls and thus morally stealing their money.

ON THE SUBJECT OF MORALS, MONEY AND DEATH, tomorrow will see one of the final movements in the exciting events surrounding politicians and their ludicrous expenses fiddling. While politicians had quite sensibly kept quiet and hoped that the public would forget about the whole matter, they are about to be surprised tomorrow, when they “come back to work” and get letters from Sir Thomas Legg telling at least half of them that they will have to pay back money, justify their expenses or walk the plank and die a political death.

ONE OF THE MOST RIDICULOUS CASES is that of Lord Paul of Marylebone (pictured above), a personal friend of Gordon Brown's, who is financially worth £500 million, and who claimed £38,000 for a flat in London in which, as he admits himself, he “never slept”, but states “it was my home.” Applying the same leap of logic to one's wife or mistress would be an interesting spin on how one sees the world and words. Or one’s wife and/or mistress. Or even husband, nowadays.

DO YOU REALLY WANT TO HURT ME?

AMONG SOME OF THE MORE SNOBBISH of my friends are those who think that the Conservative Party ought not to be elected into power at the coming elections because they do not “deserve it”. I am not totally clear as to what “it” might be, or as to whether my friends wish to save the Conservatives from upset or to prevent them from glory. Either way, of course, my position is that one gets what one deserves, and if this means having to run the country then so be it.

GENERALLY THERE ARE FEW ADVANTAGES to having a Conservative government, other than the fact that they are utter amateurs at politics and thus leave us all alone to get on with our business, but, somewhat selfishly, I have to confess that I am looking forward to the opportunities for writing provided by the mish-mash of muddle-headed, silver spoon-sucking slimeys lined up for cabinet under our future leader David “Dave” Cameron.

FOREMOST AMONG THESE CLOTS is Baronet Gideon “Boy George” Osborne (depicted above), for some absurd reason forwarded by “Dave” as the man who will do the sums under a future Conservative government. One suspects that Cameron is having a laugh; he is not such an intellectual lightweight to believe that anyone will be happy leaving their finances in Boy George’s hands, unless they need advice about how to escape prosecution after being caught “red-handedly telling lies” (as Gordon Brown states it) over fiddling expenses. At the moment “Boy” Gideon is being investigated by the police over his stealing of public money. I sincerely hope that proceedings are still under way late next year, allowing Gideon to be elected and given the position as Chancellor of the Exchequer; if for no better reason, so we critics will have something to write about.

DON’T FEAR THE REAPER

PETER BENJAMIN MANDELSON (pictured left) otherwise known, among other designations, as Baron the Lord Mandelson, or sometimes the Prince of Darkness, has apparently put the journalistic cat among the political pigeons by using “the C-word” when referring to the decent chaps who work at The Sun newspaper. When I heard this reported on the more giggly TV channels I was at a loss to discover what possible word beginning with the letter C might be offensive to British journalists, as no doubt they have been called everything under the sun (no pun intended) before reaching the dizzy heights of working for the scruffiest, most uncouth bunch of foul-mouthed press “barons” one could ever imagine.

THUS, IN THIS BARON VS BARON contest, we the outsiders had to stretch our vocabulary imagination to come up with an explanation for such mutual ill-feeling. The Princeps Tenebrarum himself was not of a great deal of help when he told us that he called them “chumps”. “I said, ‘You silly chumps’”, he claimed yesterday to Adam Boulton, who had himself survived a bit of an insulting from Gordon Brown, who is also feeling like he is standing in the valley of the shadow of death at the moment.

BUT ARISTOCRATIC MANDELSON SHOULD NOT be involved in, or at least not be caught being involved in, using the language of the gutter and of the lower classes. Although he was obviously upset by the fact that The Sun newspaper had just called time on the Labour government and had announced his political death as certainly as if it were hoisting the scythe above his delicate head, he should not bring into play language he must surely have picked up from his boyfriend Reinaldo or the Italian ruffians with whom he consorts in the summer vacation.