Monday 25 June 2007

Fuck Off, It's Just A Bag


If you're a regular reader you'll know I'm not a huge fan of celebrities, rich folk or anyone else who has it better than me.

I would have more respect for them if they adopted a common sense attitude to this kind of thing though.

Go on Cameron. Call him a chancing twat who is just trying to get his name in the papers. It's what he is. Say something like "How am I supposed to know every minute detail of your country's history? Fuck off, it's just a bag."

If there is one thing I hate, and there isn't, there's about 10 million things I hate, but anyway - it's the bleating cry-babies on the news trying to advance their own careers of the back of some completely manufactured scandal - news stories that didn't exists until PR folk decided they did. These self aggrandising indignity merchants, happily besmirching reputations for a few column inches, a few points in whatever poll is important to them.

"But I'm just a human rights activist trying to point out the blah blah blah..." No you're not. You're an opportunistic politician "handling" the media.

Everyone knows how spin works these days but still these muppets insist on trying to play their daft games.

If even one of these celebs bit back instead of issuing an apology for doing fuck all we'd maybe see less of this kind of contrived tosh in the news. Plus I'd love them forever.

The Big Funny Queer is Back!

As some of you may remember from some time ago, us at Talking Pish were big fans of comedian Scott Agnew's blog. Hilarious tales from the life of a hard drinking gay man always on the look out for another scrape to tell stories about at a later date. His infrequent posts however dried up.

But now he's back promising new shananigans and regular blogging. We shall see. But
check him out in the meantime.

Saturday 23 June 2007

Jesus in the Park

I was walking through Kelvingrove Park yesterday when I noticed a crowd of people. I wandered over for a look and discovered that they were watching an open air play called The Life of Jesus Christ. So I hung about to watch it and take photos.

The play moved through various locations in the park and was quite an exercise in staging. The best of my photies are below.













Friday 22 June 2007

Just Some Good Ole Boys

Patton Oswalt has a new album coming out. Werewolves and Lollipops. This is a link to a great sample from it. The Dukes of Hazzard.

Wednesday 20 June 2007

More About Manning

On the Chortle forum there has been the inevitable discussions about the death of Bernard Manning. As with most forums there's a wide range of opinions. A lot of folk held Manning in contempt and thought his act was foul. However a few folk have been on defending him. Or at least attempting to point out what a technically good comedian he was, therefore making critisisms of racism unfounded.

That argument is like saying Albert Speer shouldn't have been condemned for being a Nazi, because he was quite a good architect.

I for one am not saying that Manning was inept at how he made his living. He had comic timing, could hold an audience of a certain kind and had a stage prescence. Things that you would really need to have to be successful in entertainment for six decades. None of that excuses the jokes he told and the out and out racism - the belief that 'The White Man' was superior to everyone else - he peddled.

One of the best bits on the forum thread was a guy who said "I've heard countless black people over the last 24 hours stating that they didn't think Bernard Manning's act was racist." Maybe he had, I have no way of knowing.

Alexei Sayle writes about Manning in today's Independent.

To placate whatever frazzled part of their mind acts as a conscience, Manning and his kind always draw some arbitrary line that they swear they won't cross, like an alcoholic telling himself that his drinking is under control as long as he stays off the barley wine. I seem to remember Bernard stating that though he might use terms like "nigger" and "coon " in his act, he would never, ever tell a joke about "disabled kiddies". You could hear the self-regarding tremor in his voice as he said this, as if he was reluctantly admitting to being a humanitarian of similar stature to Nelson Mandela, Noam Chomsky or Aung San Suu Kyi. He always denied being a racist, claiming that he made fun of everybody, equally - " politicians, bald-headed people, people with glasses on, the lot. I have a go at everybody and that's what makes everybody roar with laughter." I notice he left "nigger, coon and Paki" out of his list, though. Those were the words people objected to him using; I can't remember much of a furore about his specky four-eyed barbs.

Tuesday 19 June 2007

The New York Cosmos

While I'm on sabbatical from mundane office work, I've been taking this opportunity to research and write a book on Scottish footballers. As part of my research I purchased a couple of DVDs of the legendary New York Cosmos.

One of the discs was the complete coverage of a game against Tampa Bay Rowdies in 1976. It's amusing for several reasons. For it looks like a cross between a game in the park and the biggest sporting event in the country. The match was played at Yankee Stadium, home to the baseball giants the New York Yankees. The pitch therefore was still marked with a baseball diamond and a flattened down pitcher's mound. So around a quarter of the pitch was basically dirt.

As this is a game from 30 years ago TV coverage of soccer was in its infancy. There are no captions on screen for the score etc, and no close-ups. The commentary too is unusual in that the two guys haven't the best grip on what's going on, unsure of the score at one stage. Whenever the ball reached the baseball diamond the commentators would then refer to baseball terminology. "The ball played in to the shortstop." Commentary also routinely stopped for the commentator to read out sponsors' messages.

"Pele and Marsh are having a real contest in the centre of the field...throughout July get free air conditioning with every purchase over $50 at Joe's Tyre Yard...Smith swings a cross over..."

There are some stills from the DVD below.





A Great British Institution

More pish talk about how great Britain is in an attempt to sell us something we don't want. This time Liam Byrne, Minister of State for Immigration, Nationality and Citizenship at the Home Office, tells us that ID Cards will be brilliant because they "will soon become part of the fabric of British life".

What a lot of nonsense. Roast beef on a Sunday, a pint of cool lager, egg and chips, the Queen's Christmas message, oh aye and an ID card in my back bin so the Home Office can keep tabs on me. What a Great Brittish life we all lead. More tea vicar?

Remember of course that it was only the other week there when it was quietly announced that the projected cost of ID cards has risen by almost a billion pounds. Or to put it another way the equivalent to 16,894,745 weeks of buroo money.

International Comedian

I stumbled on this while flicking through cable channels last night. It's the new Travis video. Why are you putting the new Travis video on 'Pish, Tom? I hear you ask. Well, simply because it stars Demetri Martin. It involves him interpreting the song through dance and T-shirts.

Monday 18 June 2007

Could Be Anything

I noticed this on Graham Linehan's blog earlier. The actual post is about an American show Channel 4 have picked up that seems very similar to The IT Crowd. However on the comments page someone links to a clip of a sketch they've made and asks for his opinion.

Linehan watched the clip and offers some very good constructive critisism. He also follows that up when the commentator comes back on slightly disappointed that he didn't like it. I mention this only because I found it very refreshing that a guy working in television is happy to offer advice to a general punter.

I found what he says quite interesting as well, as he refers to something he calls 'CBA - Could Be Anything' where the punchline would remain unchanged even if you altered the payoff to something entirely different. It's not something I would have considered before but I'll probably think about when writing sketches in future.

I also mention it cos several years ago Iain met him at the Edinburgh Festival and asked him if he'd have a look at a couple of issues of Cheery Bananas. He did, and he also provided constructive critisism on them.

Here's one of the best sketches from the first series of Big Train. Oh aye, it's not suitable for work.

One Less Racist in the World

And one less homophobe. Bernard Manning has died at the age of 76. According to the BBC he was "was renowned for his off-colour humour."

Naw, he was a hateful, spiteful racist and homophobe who should have been shunned by the comedy world a long time ago. For too long folk like him and Davidson made racist and hateful comedy acceptable since it was 'just a laugh'. I'm sure folk will be trotted out saying what a great guy he was and 'all right maybe some of his comedy was a bit near the knuckle, but he was a lovely man.' Yet still a man who peddled comedy full of hate.

This from Chortle.

Only five weeks ago, Manning held his own spoof wake for a Channel 4 documentary and told the audience: ‘I'm going to be with you for a long time yet, so don't you worry about me.’

Update: A few hours on from the news breaking there's a few tributes come in for him. And some of them are belters.

His biographer, Jonathan Margolis, said, "He was a man of his age - and as people of his age went, he was relatively un-racist."

'Relatively un-racist', that's a beauty. What does that mean? He was against racism? Or just that a lot of other people his age were more racist than him?

Fellow racist Stan Boardman, said that all he did "was take the mickey", which was "the British sense of humour". Cheers for your contribution Stan, maybe someone will say something nice about you when you've uttered your last 'off-colour' remark.

"He was the last of the comedians who put the PC brigade behind him," said Michael Winner. "He took no notice of them and just got on with the job of being funny." Aye right enough Mr. Winner, one of Britain's worst film directors, good old Bernard ignoring 'the PC brigade' or as they're more commonly known, decent members of society.

The following is from Hunter S. Thompson's obituary for Richard Nixon and his funeral suggestions for the former US President might just as well apply to Manning.

"If the right people had been in charge of Nixon's funeral, his casket would have been launched into one of those open-sewage canals that empty into the ocean just south of Los Angeles. He was a swine of a man and a jabbering dupe of a president. Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning. Even his funeral was illegal. He was queer in the deepest way. His body should have been burned in a trash bin."

Ronnie's Birthday Photomarathon

On Saturday Ronnie celebrated his birthday by coercing a bunch of his friends into taking part in the Photomarathon. I chose not to enter the competition, what with the ban on digital cameras and the cash entrance fee and all, but I hung around with them for the day anyway.

The photographs that they all took had to be handed in to the Photomarathon staff at the end of the evening, so although there aren’t any competition photographs to view at the moment I have put the best of my pics of the day below. More about the day over at
This Place is Dead.













Monday 11 June 2007

Rourke's Drift

A while back I was asked by 'Pish mucker One Neck to write a 3-page short for an anthology comic where all the stories had to be in some way about Mickey Rourke.

The comic may or may not still happen, but here's what we came up with anyway.





I'm a Marvel and I'm a DC

This is courtesy of One Neck. I don't think you need to be into comics to find it funny. There are I think 11 of these.

The Fizzy Birthday BBQ

Below are some photographs from the 2nd Annual Fizzy Birthday Barbecue. Many beef, ostrich and bean burgers were munched, much beer and wine quaffed and quite a lot of sun soaked up.

The final photograph is of the top of my street on the way home. Unconnected to the BBQ, I still though it merited inclusion here.











Friday 8 June 2007

Vice Cops

Yesterday afternoon I thought I would indulge in one of my rights as an unemployed person. That is to sit in the park and drink. So I bought myself a few bottles of fancy lager from a shop on Great Western Road and headed for Kelvingrove Park.

I picked a nice spot, sparked my drink and opened up my book. Then I heard the distant sound of piss hitting a tree and noticed that in amongst the seas of trust fund hippies, Emo kids and English students I had managed to sit alongside a team of bare-chested Buckfast drinkers.

So I packed up my book and moved along to a quieter spot, opened beer still in hand. As I walked past some sunbathers I heard a couple of voices shouting out.

“You can’t drink here.”

“No alcohol.”

I looked round to see two guys in their late thirties, with sagging faces that clearly showed drinking in the park was no day off for them. One had a can of Tennent’s in his paw, the other grasped a bottle of Buckie.

“No bother guys,” I replied, showing them I was in on the joke. “Thanks for keeping me right.”

“We’re only joking,” one of them shot back. Obviously in his head his jakey voice sounded like one of reason and authority.

I walked on a good distance away from my fellow bevviers, sat down and got back to reading. Ten minutes or so later I noticed a Police patrol car coming round the park. They parked up and a policeman and WPC got out. Perhaps remembering the sage council from my two new buddies, I drained my drink and stuffed the empty in a plastic bag.

The two police made a beeline straight for my two hard drinking pals. They then proceeded to pat them down, check their ID and quiz them for the following ten minutes. Ah, taste the delicious irony thought I.

Now I don’t know if the police just generally do spot checks on the city’s many parks for people having a drink when the weather’s good, but if they did just decide to pull up two people randomly they’re the two folk I would have chosen. They then went on to quiz the bare-chested Buckie boys.



Remember folks, drinking outdoors can be dangerous.

Thursday 7 June 2007

Gonna Make You Pay Your Fare, Pay Your Fare

I was getting the train back home today. No one had come to take my fare and just as my destination was approaching, a ticket inspector came in to the carriage. I walked up to get off, knowing that I was about to get collared for my fare right at the last.

Standing opposite me, also waiting to alight the train was a drunk bam. A drunk bam playing loud hip-hop from a ghettoblaster. The kind of loud hip-hop that if you were writing a parody of a hip-hop song it would be this. “Gonna make you suck ma dick. Suck ma dick. Suck ma dick. Gonna make you suck ma dick. Suck ma dick….”

So whom does the ticket inspector turn to? Does he turn to the bam to ask ‘Can you turn off your offensive loud music please?’ or at least ‘tickets please?’ Or me? Of course I get collared for my train fare while the bam skips past him through the next carriage and off, blaring ‘Gonna make you suck ma dick. Suck ma dick…’ as he goes.

As I walked through the tunnel behind him out of the station he stopped and set his boombox down in order to adjust his electronic ankle tag.

As Fraser has often said, there’s only two types of people in this country who do exactly as they want. Those at the top of the social ladder and those at the bottom.

Wednesday 6 June 2007

Suicide Watch

I was here the other day there. I first noticed a crowd round about Waverley Station and a woman with a camera with a telephoto lens. I looked over and saw nothing, presuming that some fancy train was due to be coming in or out of the station.

Then when I was in a shop on Cockburn Street I heard someone say that there was a bomb scare. Funny how daft rumours start eh? Of course on hearing that I immediately returned to see if there were any good photo opportunities. The crowd that had been gathered round Waverley Station had been dispersed, being replaced by a policeman. Several police patrols had been set up at various locations adjacent to the station.

I took a couple of snaps, of nothing much other than the police. However if you look very closely at the top left hand corner of the first picture you can see the person who was threatening to jump and the two police negotiators. I didn’t notice them at the time and I only realised I had taken a photo of them when I looked back on my pictures. At the time I wasn’t aware what the situation was. The other rumour was that there was a burst water main.

I presume that the woman was successfully talked down as the news item states she was 'removed from the scene'. People threaten or commit suicide a lot from North Bridge. I remember seeing a woman standing over the other side of the bridge some years ago when I lived there.

Coincidentally on Saturday I took some photographs from atop the Erskine Bridge, unaware that someone had killed themselves from there only the day earlier.



Monday 4 June 2007

It Happened Here

Yesterday I went along to the GFT to see It Happened Here, showing as part of their ‘What If…?’ season. It Happened Here was made over 8 years (the longest ever film production schedule) and finally emerged in 1965.

It tells the story of an England inhabited by the German Army in the time after Dunkirk. British police forces patrol alongside Nazi soldiers and for the majority complying with law and order is the best way to get along and get Britain out of its current dark days.

There was a lengthy introduction to the film, by film critic
Mitch Miller, who provided much of the background to the film. The directors Kenneth Brownlow and Andrew Mollo made the film initially without any funding (although director Tony Richardson provided a contribution towards the end), using their own wages, working on weekends and employing mainly amateur actors and friends. All the costumes were painstakingly sourced; none were made for the production.

The finished film was deemed to be controversial for a number of reasons. For one the film industry at large didn’t like it that two amateurs could go out and make a professionally looking film that also had artistic merit. The film’s suggestion that Britain could have colluded with the Nazis also sat uncomfortably for people.

Kevin Brownlow said of the production, “We started as raw amateurs, with no money. We ended as semi-professionals, our film sold to United Artists. And no money. En route, we had the bumpiest ride imaginable. Desertions from the cast, technical catastrophes, lawsuits…Enraging the film industry is not a sensible way to become part of it. And to make what you firmly believe to be an anti-Fascist film and to be accused of anti-Semitism is something of a blow."

The film features real-life British national socialists as officers in the incumbent puppet regime. They provide their real thoughts in a 7-minute segment in the film. Although it adds to the authenticity it sparked criticism that the filmmakers had allowed them a platform.

As for the film itself, it was very interesting from a historical point of view. It’s no war film, where the Goodies and Baddies are very clearly illustrated. There’s a lot of confusion in how people have to live their lives, not really knowing who they can trust and compromise plays a large part in their existence.

It Happened Here is available on
DVD and Kevin Brownlow has written a book on his experiences.