Racist Family Heirlooms

‘Can I go up into the attic and have a nose around’, I asked my Mum during a recent visit back to Wales with the kids.


‘Just don’t make a mess’, she replies.


I was hoping to find some old comics and KISS albums on vinyl that I knew had been gathering dust since I moved out in 1988. Instead fate decided to reacquaint me with an object that I had long since repressed from childhood memory.


Wrapped in newspaper and hidden away in a cardboard box is this:

‘Oh, I forgot about that’, my Mum said proudly. ‘You realise that’s worth a small fortune’

My daughter displays a strong sense of cultural sensitivity almost immediately.

‘That’s SO racist’, she shouts.

In direct contrast the boy excitedly asks, ‘Have you got a coin so we can try it out’.

‘I don’t see why it’s racist in any way’, Mum says. ‘I’m sure no black person I know would be offended’.

At this stage I remind her of the fact that as far as I know the only black person she actually knows is the painter and decorator we always used to renovate the house.

‘And what was he called’, I ask.

‘Choco’, she says.


Cue uncomfortable laughter from the kids.


Over the next five minutes I try and convince her of why the moneybox is offensive and how it might not have be appropriate to refer to our painter and decorator as ‘Choco’. If nothing else I want to draw a line in the sand for the kid’s sake.


A few years back, whilst driving through Newport town centre, my Mum was compelled to vocalise the following profound observation.


‘There’s lot’s of people carrying plastic bags out tonight’.


This a statement that gives a strong clue to her way of seeing the world. And one that may well explain her glazed expression as I pontificate a length about slavery, negative representations of race and how times have changed since the money box was made around 1900.


‘Well, if you feel that strongly about it Bruce, you won’t want to share any money we make if I ever sell it’, she says, quickly wrapping it back up in newspaper.

A Eulogy for Phyllis Jones (1916- Present)

After living a life defined by fierce, sometimes frustratingly stubborn independence, Phyllis Jones, 98, now lives in a nursing home in the suburbs of Newport, South Wales.

It's a place where chemical air fresheners constantly pump out a sickly mist of faux vanilla. In front of televisions which blare out cookery shows at maximum volume. A room where the dead barely function, where newspapers remain unread, but are always soaked with weak sugary tea.


Here my Gran has been known to receive her increasingly infrequent visitors with grief stricken tears. This a result of her worsening mental illness that sometimes takes the form of tortured crying jags which can on bad days last for hours at a time.


The temperature is maintained at a nauseating 80 degrees. My brother Mark darkly refers to it as the 'maggot farm'. The staff are at least caring, warm and loving. Not something that can be said of all institutions like this. Most carers are older. More understanding. Less likely to be heard quietly tutting when one of the residents soils themselves.


Even the most tender touch of Gran's once beautiful hands, now paper thin and brittle, complete with shallow veins that look like faded tattoos, can't resolve the frustration we all feel for a flame that is dying.


She's now so frail you fear reaching over for a hug in case you break bones.


Weighing no more then five stone she brings to mind 1940's news-reel footage of the liberation of the Nazi death camps. When visiting I'm always reminded of my friend Bobby, a charming and sensitive soul who worked in a Jewish care home with a number of Holocaust survivors.


He once told me that they couldn't have sprinklers as a fire precaution because they brought back too many traumatic memories for the residents.


Even those with acute dementia retain memories from many decades ago, often the most disturbing ones, whilst struggling to remember the names of their sons and daughters.


My Mum breaks her heart every time she visits. And she visits every day.


At the point you think things can't get any worse, usually when you're trying to hide your tears from the kids, the fog of age clears and the old spark briefly resurfaces to further taunt those who have ever loved her.


'Shall we go into the village and have those fish and chips you like so much', she'll say with a broad smile.


This is something we haven't done for a decade.


'I'm worried about great-gran', Jacob said last time we visited.


A few years ago now, Christmas 1998 I think, we were talking about what she wanted as a gift.


'I never know what to buy you', I told her. 'In a dream world what would be the best present anyone could get you'.


'Death', she dead panned.


Without any sense of irony. Fourteen years ago. Before she became ill.


A committed atheist when she was well, even in her late eighties she'd take three buses to attend humanist meetings near her Cardiff home and seemed to view any idea of faith with complete contempt. To this day I have never met anyone with less guilt about denying the existence of God at every possible opportunity.


It's a sign of her strong personality that as well as religion, she also had a pathological loathing for all members of the royal family.


Once during a gushing television eulogy following the death of the Queen Mother she turned to me and said, 'they say she was good for her age Bruce, but remember that she never even had to wipe her own arse'.


Born a bright, but stern girl, any hopes for her future were destroyed at the age of fifteen when my great-grandmother 'took to her bed', rarely venturing downstairs until her death a few years later.


Gran found herself doing everything. Any dreams of education destroyed under the jackboot of 1920's domestic patriarchy.


Despite this she always displayed a real intellect and willingness to engage in conversation on any topic.


Once after a few drinks I shamefully asked her if cunnilingus was ever a feature of 1950's marriage.


'It might have been for some', she answered diplomatically.


‘People can be very strange’, she said in response to reading my book about deviant sexual practices.


'I’m very proud Bruce, but next time please can you write about something I can tell people about'.


As much as I love my Gran, I find myself hoping that all her Christmas dreams come true this year.

MISSING

                                                         I

‘"I believe that women have a capacity for understanding and compassion which a man structurally does not have. He's just incapable of it." - Congresswoman Barbara Jordan

One afternoon last year I received a phone call just after I got home from work. On the first day of 'big school' my daughter, Rosa (11), failed to meet her Mum at the arranged pick up point and instead went missing for over two hours.

I guess what follows is how I filled the gaps.

Ask any parent, or indeed child, and they'll tell you the first day of secondary school is a massive event. You'll remember it I'm sure? The majority of people reading this will have a picture of their first day hidden away in a family album at home somewhere. It will no doubt capture that gawky, uncomfortable stage between childhood and youth. The halcyon days before you enter the adult world of utility bills, credit scoring and receding gums.

I'd be destroyed if that particular picture ever became the picture.

The one that tabloid journalists repeatedly knock at the door to get their hands on.

Two hours doesn't seem like long. But, 'missing child time' it goes without saying, lasts considerably longer than any other kind, except maybe for the wait for a radiologist to review a chest x-ray that shows a lung shadow.

 Within minutes my sense of clammy fear evolved into trembling impotent nausea. Beyond pacing up and down my bed room chain smoking I couldn’t think of a single thing I could do to help.

When an hour had passed and the sun started to set things became even bleaker. I found myself heading towards the front door on hearing the slightest noise outside, praying quietly to myself that I didn't see the dark shadows of people in uniform about to knock.

Yes. Praying.

After a life time happily and loudly denying the existence of God I found myself involved in a situation that at least demanded I try.

Hypocrisy for sure, but I think I would have been failing in my parental duties if I hadn't at least tried.

Sorry God, I don't believe in you but this is how much I love the kids.

In situations like this every possible scenario passes through your mind.

1) Road accident.

2) Murder.

3) Kidnap.

That's the exact order (and it goes without saying how difficult this is to vocalise) in which I'd prefer my daughter would have died.

Luckily this story has a happy ending.

Caked in mud, sometime later, Rosa eventually turns up, her pristine uniform ruined. A new found sense of independence meant she decided to try and find her own way home. Taking a wrong turn at an early stage her unplanned mythical quest seeing her walking aimlessly through ploughed farm land, Cornish housing estates and the navigation of brackish streams choked with Morrison's shopping trolleys.

 If there's any positive to be taken from the trauma, it's that Rosa now finally realises that losing every mobile phone I've ever bought her (three at the last count) is best avoided.

 Luckily middle-aged women passed by, noticed her obvious distress and drove her into the town centre. Rosa, bless her, was initially reluctant to get in the car but after clarifying that 'she looked OK Dad, honest' she eventually acquiesced and accepted a lift.

 I'd like to meet this women and tell her how grateful I am.

One of those horribly confusing family arguments ensued. The ones where the flood of relief and sickening adrenaline come down means you forget to quietly acknowledge how terrified you were, how much you love them and how glad you are to have them back safely.

'It would have been better if I had died', Rosa tells me at one point.

'No it fucking wouldn't', I inappropriately respond.

                                                                       II

 A few months later I'm at a safeguarding children training day, along with twenty other professionals who have responsibility to keep their eyes peeled for vivid purple bruises, malnutrition or inappropriate sexual behaviour in the young people they have contact with.

After a buffet lunch defined by stilted conversation the enthusiastic trainer suggests the kind of group exercise that always makes me cringe.

In my ideal world highlighter pens and A6 flip-charts would be subject to rigid prohibition.

On the board are a list of scenarios. A line is drawn on the floor and a sheet of paper placed on each side. One says 'ACCEPTABLE' the other 'UNACCEPTABLE'.

Most of the scenarios are, to my mind at least rather bland.

'Is it acceptable to give a twelve year old child alcohol at a family BBQ?'

‘Should a 12 year old be left home alone in charge of younger siblings?’

At no point does this question arise:

'You have a daughter who you love more than life itself but who as a six year old would scream, punch and undo her seat belt whilst travelling at speed purely so she can punch you repeatedly in the back of the neck at full force whilst undertaking a ten hour drive through rural France'.

Do you, a) ignore such behaviour or, b) pull over the car and slap her to the point where an obvious chubby adult hand print is visible on her upper leg and then spend the next ten minutes gently weeping, whilst telling them how much you love her, dabbing the evidence with a cold flannel, paranoid that a teacher might see evidence of physical abuse when she's changing for PE?

Perhaps this is too specific?

Back in the room another question is asked, a safe guarding classic, one that comes up every time. 

'Is it acceptable for a father to share a bath with his 4 year old daughter?'

I undertake a lonely walk towards the 'ACCEPTABLE' side. Fighting through the crowds heading in the opposite direction, I eventually stand with just one other person.

Another man.

The trainer asks the 'UNACCEPTABLE' group why they are standing there.

'It's just creepy', an attractive twenty-something social worker claims.

'It's not right. Totally UNACCEPTABLE', a middle aged GP says. 'Maybe if it was a four year old boy it would be different'. 

Whilst I'm no expert on these matters, the concept that the paraphilic nature of paedophilia works along rigidly defined heterosexual/homosexual lines strikes me as slightly disingenuous, although moral cowardice prevents me from saying this.

'I'd be very concerned', a recently qualified teacher says.

 'Why would anyone do THAT?' a paediatric nurse shrills rhetorically. 

At no stage does anyone actually openly vocalise that all Dad's are genetically predisposed to raping their own daughters at the merest glimpse of their pre-pubescent vaginas, but this the glaring subtext.

 I find myself fighting a rising well of righteous anger.

 I even start thinking, 'should I communicate to the kids that the fact that we've shared baths in the past should be kept as some kind of dirty secret?'

 My understanding has always been that abuse thrives on secrets.

My kids lie constantly, but not about anything of importance. Leave a chocolate bar knocking about and Jessica Fletcher from Murder She Wrote wouldn't be able to identify the culprit; such is their vocal denial, even though both the main suspects will be sporting a chocolate moustache and a profound aura of guilt.

Back in the room the focus now moves to me and my fellow non-hysterical sharer of the Y chromosome. Everyone looks at me with an air of expectation.

'It's my daughter', I weakly mumble by way of inept defence.

For the rest of the day I’m convinced that people are avoiding me.


FOOTNOTE:

Given that I tend to write directly about the kids on occasion, I only thought it fair to show Rosa the text of this post before uploading it.

 ‘That’s not how I remember things’, she told me.

‘You should mention that time you left me out in the snow with just my pants on’, she added.

That’s my girl.

Diary of a Fake man on Gyllyng Street #1: Radio Ga Ga

[Originally written in 2007 and recently rescued from the shredder, my reluctance to post this may become obvious in the opening few chapters]

I

‘The drowning man is not troubled by rain’ - Persian Proverb

I'm booked to appear on the graveyard slot of Bigot FM [1]. This a national 'speech only' radio station based in London . I pay the £80 train fare out of my own pocket, even though I already have a strong suspicion that a royalty cheque is unlikely to drop through the door at any point in the near future.

'People write for reasons of money or ego', Samuel Johnson once sagely suggested. Given that a decade of creativity has failed to bring in a single penny in revenue, I'm forced to admit at the time that I seem to fall into the latter category.

There is however another shallow, much darker motive that Johnson failed to address.

In this case an attempt to impress a girl I'd been having a relationship with for the previous six months. By 'relationship' I mean I'd been getting drunk with someone else's long term girlfriend on a weekly basis and despite repeated fumbled attempts I had so far failed dismally to achieve anything resembling appropriate erectile function.

There I've said it now. Breathe deeply and relax.

Knowingly punching well above my weight, I began to understand that the reason my penis tended to resemble the melting clocks in Salvador Dali's The Persistence of Time was probably a direct result of me putting her on a pedestal so high there was no way I could ever hope to reach it.



I tend to do that sometimes.

Well, pretty much all the time if I’m being honest.

My understanding is that this is a common enough dynamic among men. It's just most choose not to mention it because they haven't seemingly fused the neurones in the part of their brain that stops them disclosing such information in public.

Anyway, I guessed I was getting a little too involved when I found myself picking up and sniffing her coat to smell her when she left the room.

'What fresh madness is this', I'd think.

'Is this type of behaviour deeply creepy or romantically charming', I'd often ask myself.

The conclusion I'd draw depended very much on my mood at the time.

It's not all about penetrative sex I would kid myself in rare moments of positivity. I'll fuck her with my enquiring mind instead. As soon as she heard me waxing lyrical on national radio all sexual ineptitude will be quickly forgotten and she'll most likely consent to another doomed attempt at coitus.

Anything to avoid getting ‘friend zoned’, a definite risk at the time. If there’s one thing I’ve learnt through bitter experience, it’s the simple fact that trying to sleep with a close female friend is more difficult then trying to jump the fence at Glastonbury.

Ask anyone with a Y chromosome going through a similar situation and they'll tell you that failing to complete the deal, sexually speaking, with someone you are falling in love with tends to dramatically alter your world view. Despite always loathing the idea of vivisection for example, after engaging in the 'it's not your fault it's mine' conversation, always delivered to a visibly disappointed audience of one, I would have happily seen every mammal on the globe wiped out if it would help cure my sexual malaise.

If, at the time, if I'd read somewhere on the internet that tea brewed with the severed genitalia of a giant panda increased sexual prowess, I wouldn't have thought twice about scaling the wall of London Zoo armed with a Stanley knife and a camping kettle.




Panda dick aside, what I found most frustrating was the simple fact that a failing cock means you can no longer hide behind the pretend version of you that you created to get a women interested in the first place. You have no choice but to be brutally honest. The worst aspect of impotence for me is the simple fact that it destroys any cultivated air of mystique immediately and absolutely.

So looking back, that's why I probably agreed to do it.

II

Better a red face then a black heart- Portuguese Proverb

Having listened in to the show the previous night, I quickly drew the conclusion that Bigot FM is far from a reasoned amphitheatre of civilised debate. More the broadcast equivalent of a medieval bear pit where callers suffering from acute insomnia are given the chance to vent spleen about asylum seekers, gay footballers and supermarket self service check out tills. The host was a legendary shock jock playing out the dying embers of his career [2]. His well established shtick being to verbally harass callers to the point of tears before suddenly cutting them off mid-rant .

On arrival the initial omens are not good.

I'm sat with a friend on the green room sofa which is draped in the flag of St George. Rather then CNN or Al Jazeera the impressive bank of plasma screens in the reception area are all tuned to obscure satellite channels showing American bikini competitions and female beach volleyball. Instead of the vast spread of cheeses and fine wine I was expecting, refreshments are served by a vending machine which dispenses a dark, brackish tasting fluid that doesn't seem to be either tea or coffee. It's a beverage which I'm told BBC employees refer to as 'Uni-Quench'.

I like to think I'm not naïve to the workings of the media, having been through this dog and pony show on a number of previous occasions. Although I will admit to being quite shocked when I first went into a news room. I expected a pulsing environment where keen young journalists worked flat out for the scoop. Ending up more then a little disappointed to discover that they got their stories the same way I did. By watching BBC News 24.

I genuinely believed that all media organisations had a direct line to the world's trouble spots. Some magical 'news matrix' where major events were sent down a mythical 'wire' as soon as they occurred. At the very least I thought there would be one of those weird fax like things that spit out bits of paper with an arcane code printed on them, the kind you used to see when watching final score on a Saturday afternoon in the 1980's.

To find out that journalists got their news off the telly just like I did came as a shock. Fancy a job as a foreign correspondent in the Middle East? Piece of piss. Forget the flak jacket and MA, just make sure you have a Sky Digital subscription. No need to even leave the house.

I'm also nervous because just the week before, my publisher (a man so quietly spoken I always imagined he was recovering from recent extensive throat surgery) had booked me to appear on another radio show based in Scotland, which he claimed would reach a wide audience keen to hear about the book.

I did that to impress the same girl too.

What my publisher failed to tell me was the show was scheduled for the Sunday morning 'God slot'. This a contractual obligation for public service broadcasters to provide a token hour once a week which deals with topics of a religious nature. Sat in the studios of my local radio station, listening in on a crackling phone connection, I was introduced to my fellow guests: a Church of England vicar, a former dominatrix and a liberally minded Rabbi. A strange mix of personalities that sounds more like the opening line of a bad joke then a crack team able to produce an hour of radio magic.

The first question:

'Do you agree with the Archdeacon of Falkirk's assessment that Christ would be predisposed to sit in moral judgement of those who are sexually active if he was alive today?'

'Let's go to author Bruce Barnard', the host said.

'I'm not really that sure', I responded, leaving a horribly long silence in my wake. This being something of an anathema to radio producers I later discovered. I could almost sense the host willing me on to provide a functional answer, but I still failed to provide any profound theological insights.

'I'm in the wrong place', I wanted to say. 'My book is at heart a joyfully filthy, but charming comedy jaunt about people who have weird sexual habits. To be honest you could replace the word 'Jesus' with the term 'Giant Ant' and I'd still have no idea what the fuck you're talking about'.

'Thanks for that Bruce', the host said through what I imagine to be gritted teeth.

I wasn't asked any more questions. Not one. Instead I sat in complete silence, avoiding the urge to nervously cough over the microphone, haunting the show with my shadowy presence over 600 miles away.


Yeah cheers for that Jesus....


In an example of what English teachers like to term 'hubris', my shame was witnessed by a friend I'd invited along. So keen was I to show off how successful my second career as media raconteur had become.

When it aired I'm told my input had been completely edited out. Like a victim of some strange Stalinist purge I had been completely erased from this small part of radio history.



III

Better a quiet death then a public misfortune - Spanish Proverb

Memories of 'Christ-gate' fresh in my mind and aware that my object of desire was sat in front of her radio deciding if she was willing to give me another chance, things in London are going equally badly. The opening off air salvo from the shock jock being, 'what's the book about, I haven't bothered reading it?'.

Luckily a keen as mustard researcher springs to my rescue and brings over a short summary of the books main themes. The presenter takes a cursory glance before the studio light changes from green to red.

'Lot's of gay stuff in the book isn't there', the DJ asks .

'Well there's some', I reply.

'You must be fascinated by what gay people get up to. You're obvious bi-curious', he responds.

So now I'm being 'outed' on national radio.

I imagine my object of sexual desire sat in front of her radio drawing some unhealthy conclusions about my inability to sustain an erection in the past few months. I become increasingly clammy and tongue tied.

Things get gradually worse in the next thirty minutes. Not least because each and every caller wants to talk about paedophilia. This is around the same time as the high profile Chris Langham case and the phones just don't stop ringing.

Trying to shamefully tout a book about deviant sexuality immediately following a lengthy discussion about celebratory nonces is a skill I quickly discover I just don't possess.

'Stop talking about child sex abuse', I selfishly think. 'It's ruining the atmosphere I'm trying to create.'

Even when a chance arises to attempt a Stephen Fry like faux witticism I choke and fail to deliver. During one lengthy monologue the host suggests that all stupid people should be sterilised.

'Surely that would leave you with no audience', I fail to respond.

Throughout the experience I keep myself positive by thinking of both the book sales that will result from my extreme discomfort and the 'mind fucking' I'm giving the girl who will shall forever remain nameless.

By shamelessly touting myself like this I'll never have to face the cold horror that comes when an author's book is remaindered and you end up having to buy all the copies at a discount price and store them under the bed or in the garage.

The interview finishes.

'Thanks for that', the DJ says.

Adopting what I'm convinced is an exaggeratedly camp hand gesture he points to my friend John who is waiting in the green room.

'I'll leave you to get back to your...erm...colleague', he sneers.

As soon as I turn on my phone I get a flurry of text messages from everyone I know who has been listening.

All of them say pretty much the same thing.

'It wasn't that bad'.

Later, after a few drinks, I decide to adopt a half glass full approach . Just think of the sales boost I tell myself. Surely the public humiliation will all be worth it.

Bright and early a few days later I ring the distributors to see how things are going.

'I'm not sure if you know', I boast. 'But I did a publicity slot on Bigot FM. It went really well. What are the sales figures looking like today?'

A quiet voice gives me the exact figure: three.

A magic number for 90's hip hop act Del La Soul maybe, but to me a total disaster.

As for the girl:

She rang when I was heading back in a taxi to the friend's house where I was staying. Champagne induced giggling was obvious in the background, along with the vague sound of water bubbling, it was quite the party, a least she was having a better night then me I thought.

'Well that was interesting', she said.

'Yeah. Where did you listen to it', I ask.

'Oh, in a friend’s hot tub', she casually remarked.

I find out some time later that rather then the intellectual 'mind fucking' I was offering it was your actual physical sex she was after.

In fact I've always believed that her wish was granted in that hot tub on the very night my mumbling voice was playing over the radio.

I struggle to find any moral in this sordid story but if pressed it's this:

When people vocalise that the brain is one the most important sexual organ, do feel free to tell them they are full of shit.


[1] Enough time has passed, I think, the sation was TalkSport.
[2] Jame Whale. Often listed as a major influence on Chris Moyles, which in many ways tells you all you need to know. Wikipedia him if you've got a spare ten minutes.

Barnard Family Values #3: Teaching the Kids to Say the Word F.U.C.K

I can't remember hearing my Dad say the word fuck until I was twelve years old. He must have said it at some point during my childhood, but obviously I wasn't listening closely enough at the time. Then one fateful day, in a rare father/son bonding exercise, we drove to his friend's South Wales based haulage yard to drop off a car engine. Comfortable among his working class peers, all of them wearing diesel saturated boiler suits and drinking tea the colour of creosote, Dad seemed to be struck by a sudden compulsion to swear like the proverbial motherfucker. Think Dennis Hooper in Blue Velvet with a Welsh accent as thick as coal dust and you are almost there.

With the benefit of hindsight, this was obviously Dad's attempt to introduce me into the world of Planet Men. Despite this I still vividly remember being quite shocked, even a little bit scared at the swearing based dynamics at play.

'I'll try a different approach with my kids', I must have subconsciously thought.

There are of course nouns that have much more power to offend then the word FUCK. We'll get to them soon enough.

I can't help but blame comedy writer/actor Simon Pegg for the socially embarrassing conversation that follows. Given its only happening because my son, Jacob (9), is desperate to watch his 15 certificate film 'Paul'.

'It's not a kid’s film', I insist.

'Yeah it is, everyone in my class has seen it', Jacob replies. 'It's about this cute alien'.

'There's loads of bad language and drug use in it', I explain. 'It is a kid’s film really, but for some stupid reason the script is so anaemic they filled it with swearing in an attempt to give it some edge'.

'What kind of bad language', he asks.

'You know the F word', I say. 'Remember when I let you play Grand Theft Auto that time?'

'Yeah, with the volume turned down?’ Jacob responds.

'Exactly, because I don't want you hearing people swear over and over again'[1].

I start thinking that whilst I'm on a liberally minded, 'speaking to the kids honestly' roll perhaps the pernicious power of the word that dare not speak it’s is worth bringing up for discussion as well?

I'm in charge here. Perhaps it's best coming from me.

No, I decide.

Reading my mind, my daughter Rosa (12) acknowledges that she's heard the word like a million times already.

'Someone in school said this word the other day.....’ she smiles.

'Nah', I say, quickly interrupting. 'That's not something I want to get into'.

Moral cowardice. You start something you should finish it.

'There's so many more offensive words then fuck', I say, floundering.

'Even worse then that one', Rosa asks.

'Yes'.

I find myself using both 'nigger' and 'coon' as examples of words that are worse then fuck. Then I realise that no one uses coon as a racial slur anymore, least of all my kids. It's so 1970's. Like 'spear chucker', 'spade' or 'nig-nog' on the hierarchy of forgotten abusive racial terms. These are slurs that seem to have fallen out of favour even for the most committed bigot.

'If I ever hear you say words like that I'll snap your neck', I tell them.

'Erm....OK Dad', they jointly respond.

The children know I'm skirting around the real issue. I'm only bringing racism into the conversation as a deflective technique to avoid dealing with the reality of what we are actually talking about.

This, is to clarify, the word that dare nor speak its name.

'There's a word people call.....erm....a girl's plum duff', I say to Rosa (12).

[As deeply uncomfortable as it may be, men lucky enough to have a female child will at some point have to dream up a nonsensical name for their offspring’s genitalia. It's a stone cold given. You can't bath a three old and refer to her vagina as a 'gash' or 'slit' or indeed a 'vagina'. Too cold, too medical. Terms like 'Mini-Moo' and 'Foo-Foo' have always struck me as too flowery and childlike. Me and my own beautiful screaming princess have decided on 'plum duff' as the signifier for her bits. Although the frankly horrifying term Pig's Trotter enjoyed a brief spell as the euphemism of choice for reasons now lost in time. As time goes by and we watch Charles Dickens adaptations together on television our choice has developed unexpected but charming comedic overtones.]

I'd never use that word though. Obviously.

It still has a power. Even though in adult company I use it all the time, way too much in fact, as do all my sewer mouthed but charming female friends. I'd prefer it if the kids never used it, but realise that this is out of my hands. Does talking about it make it more likely that they'll use it? I've n idea.

'What about using these words in context?', Jacob (9) asks me.

'In what way?', I ask, secretly impressed that the boy understands the slippery concept of context.

Seeing his chance to break a taboo, he goes for it.

'If I said someone came up to me and said 'fuck', he joyfully shouts, 'would that be alright'.

Happy that he's finally got to say the word FUCK in front of his Dad (in context mind you), I realise just why we are having this conversation.

'No', I say. 'In any context I'd rather you just didn't say it.'

'OK', he replies.

He seems happy that the taboo is broken. It'll be a while before he uses it again. I'm the best kind of parent I smugly think.

Fast forward two weeks. After much soul searching and a number of viewings to gauge its appropriateness the DVD of 'Paul' sits on top of the DVD player.

'Look mate, I got it for you', I say.

'Thanks Dad', he unenthusiastically responds.

'But you've wanted to see it for ages'.

'Yeah, I guess so'.

As we go upstairs he's got the strong look of a boy keen to appease guilt by vocalising a secret.

'Dad', he says in a drawn out, overly apologetic manner. 'The thing is right...well...you see....I watched it round someone’s house at a sleepover last week'.

'Well, you'll be watching it again son', I angrily tell him.

As the opening credits start, the boy feigns faux enthusiasm for watching 'Paul' for the third or forth time.

As soon as the alien, played by Seth Rogan, appears at the twenty minute mark he drops the word 'fuck' almost immediately.

Me and Jacob casually smile at each other as if it's no big deal.

When it's finished and Jacob's been kissed goodnight I walk downstairs.

A profound thought strikes me:

That Simon Pegg, he's such a CUNT.

[1]I'm aware that GTA provides ample opportunity to batter street prostitutes around the head with lead pipes and other domestic implements, but have always been comfortable that if Jacob (9) even knew what a prostitute was his reaction would be one of love and understanding rather then dishing out a Sutcliffe style hammering.

Sir Jimmy Saville (31 October 1926 – 29 October 2011)

[I always tend to find most obituaries quite dry, so as an alternative I offer you this story told to me recently by a close friend in order to add to the legacy]

Jimmy, Frank and The Yorkshire Ripper: Together at Last

In the late 70’s a 17-year old friend of mine was reluctantly cruising with her parents on the QE2. She’d recently got into a spot of trouble with experimental drug use and they wanted to keep an eye on her and make sure they didn’t return from holiday to a house that resembled a hippy crash pad rather than a family home.

One night over a sumptuous, but very tedious dinner, the one and only Jimmy Saville (there in some sort of work capacity) approaches their table.

‘Now, then, now then’, he says[1], ‘would you mind if I joined you’.

Over the course of the next half hour he charms my friend’s parents with show biz tales and the buying of fine wines. As the coffee arrives he suggests that my friend may like to grab some free records he’s been given. Reluctant to engage she tells them she’s tired, but her star struck parents can’t believe she’s turning down the opportunity to grab some goodies as a present from Sir Jimmy Saville.

‘You must go’ they tell her, afraid that she’s miss this once in a life time opportunity. ‘Just imagine telling your friends back in Cornwall’.

‘Alright then.’ she agrees feeling very much forced into the arrangement. ‘But I don’t even like Jimmy fucking Saville’ she tells them.

They arrive at the penthouse cabin and Sir Jimmy shows her a selection of Brotherhood of Man[2] singles.

As she inspects them he moves closer.

‘Why not Jimmy a cuddle’ he suggests.

‘Nah, you’re alright'.

‘What harm can it do’, he replies.

As the conversation takes place she notices a perapic tent is appearing in his track suit bottoms.

He moves in closer and brings her towards her. She can’t help noticing (and indeed feeling) the Saville erection which is now gently caressing her hip. ‘I don’t think so’ she says before running out of the room.

She was shaking when she told me this story decades after the event.

I didn’t help matters by suggesting that she should be faltered by the attention, she was after all of a suitable age.

‘But it’s all quite innocent really, just someone trying it on’, I suggest.

Still a bit shaky she then told me, ‘But Bruce, you just don’t understand, it was really long and thin…. (sob)…...like a pig’s cock’.

RIP Jimmy.

....................................

[1] For the pedantically minded: I’m not 100% sure he actually said this and have added
it only to provide some historical’ colour’.
[2]
Please see above.

Happy Words about Sad Songs: 5 Heartbreak Classics.

[Apart from this I've also been reviewing erm....adult novelty items this week. 100% NSFW link follows: http://http://www.strangethingsarehappening.com/instantmuff.html ]

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Crying Jags and Quiet Raves.....

Much like spotting a ten year old casually sparking up a bifter in Morrison’s car park or stumbling over a boozed up hairdresser squatting down to urinate next to a busy bus stop, there is something deeply unsavoury about the sight of a chubby, middle age man reduced to sobbing, retching tears. Aware of the social stigma attached to the act of crying, like most emotionally retarded men of my age I tend to always make sure that I do it in secret.

The only time I’ve broken this rigid code was a decade back,when I went through a protracted and acrimonious divorce. The situation was made slightly more toxic because I had a lump sum of spendable cash in my bank account and had moved next door to both a pub and a notorious local drug den. This was the era of what I euphemistically termed the ‘quiet rave’. Following a phone call to work explaining that I was struck with flu, the stereo would be turned to full blast as soon as I woke up and before the closing credits to the Jeremy Kyle Show had even run I would have partaken in some kind of serotonin enhancer. Sweating and gurning through elevenses, I’d dance like a drug addled marionette and stare out towards the Cornish coast, laughing at the faces of people wandering joylessly to work. Safe in the occult knowledge that only I, psychic explorer, 33-year old charity worker and buffoonish father of two, had discovered the mystical secret to maintaining a constant level of happiness.

‘You simple minded fools’, I’d think, displaying a level of hubris more suited to a Shakespeare protagonist. ‘Of you go…. meandering to a soul destroying day job…. whilst I feast on bath tub MDMA and Tesco own brand Cava.’

Sadly, there was something of a fatal flaw in my plan.

Namely, that around 3pm, when most people were still sat at their desks updating spread sheets, the drugs would stop working.

On waking the next day, details of the events of the previous evening were best diplomatically described as ‘hazy’. In fact the only clue to my state of mind used to come when clearing up the CD’s I’d find scattered across the floor along with discarded beer bottles, broken glass and coffee mugs acting as make shift ash trays. Here was a map of my emotional state, a musical check list that gave a strong clue to last night’s behaviour. Indie rock, retro metal and hip-hop would indicate that I’d been quite the happy clam the night before. Most likely entertaining my friends with ribald jokes and amusing tales whilst playing the perfect host and ensuring no glass was left unfilled. Other musical genres hinted at a much darker dynamic, never more so than when I found a copy of ‘Pet Sounds’ by the Beach Boys among the detritus. This would indicate only one thing. That I had been playing ‘God Only Knows’ on a continuous loop, probably at full volume, deaf to the neighbours hammering on my wall for hours.

The point being that its music, rather than film or books, that has the power to make me start snivelling like a lottery winner. Sometimes it sneaks up on me even when I’m at my happiest. I’ll be sat at a red traffic light waiting for the change to green, when suddenly the radio will play a sugary, banal song that I hate. Despite my loathing of it I’ll be surprised when the cars behind me start honking furiously and realise that I’ve been staring into the middle distance with fat tears falling down my cheeks. In many ways that’s the problem with sad songs, they hit you on a purely subconscious level. Often meaning that it’s sometimes the most insipid, badly crafted tracks that have the most profound impact. If you need any further evidence of this then just read on:

#1: Motley Cure ‘Home Sweet Home’

Motley Crue: It's not all cocaine and anal apparently

It seems that every cock rock outfit from the 1980’s had a contractual obligation to provide a sickly sweet ballard on every album. Other notable examples would be Posion’s moribund ‘Every Rose has its Thorn’ and Kiss’s plain awful ‘Beth’. On this particular offering the Crue deviate from their usual power anthems detailing the many ways they intend to fuck you, by way of a piano driven slide into oozing sentimentality that mourns their sense of home sickness on the road. The sub -text here seems to be that the bacchanalian rituals of drug taking, groupie molesting and extended guitar solos among touring metal band can soon wear painfully thin. What the Crue really want is a simple night in front of the discovery channel eating Chinese takeaway on their laps.

Here it is: http://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbRfYDP5P28

#2: Bone Thugs-N-Harmony ‘Crossroads’

Legendary Ladies Man, Eazy 'Motherfucking' E

My favourite dying words came from the mouth of notorious gangsta rapper Eazy E. The squeaky voiced misogynist behind seminal hip hop group NWA and US based rap label Ruthless Records. As he lay on life support in a LA hospital, battling the final assault of a HIV related illness, he turned to his homez, noted the concerns on their faces that he was dying of a disease usually contracted by gay men and uttered the following immortal line: ‘ I fucked a lot of bitches’. Crossroads is his musical eulogy, written and performed by gospel influenced vocal group Bone Thugs-N-Harmony. If the cloying lyrics weren’t cause enough to get the tears flowing, do watch the video, in which an angelic looking Eazy E glides peacefully (sans bitches) to take his rightful place in hip-hop heaven.
Here: http://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMYAEHE2GrM

#3: Super Furry Animals ‘Hello Sunshine’



One of the best things about the first flush of sexual attraction is how songs seem to take on an entirely new significance, almost as if they have been written especially for you. This particular track by the massively under rated Welsh masters of new psychedelic always finds itself appearing as the debut track on my ‘seduction’ mix tape and in a just world would become the new Welsh national anthem. On one occasion I spent hours mixing in audio of Richard Burton reading from Dylan Thomas’s ‘Under Milk Wood’ before each track on a mix tape, until half way through I decided to set a challenge to see if my object of desire had actually listened to my labour of love. Pulling out my ‘War of the World’s’ CD box set I started to add slightly ridiculous Burton quotes about imminent alien invasion from this most overblown of prog-rock epics in between the soothing poetry of Dylan Thomas. Sadly she never noticed which made me think the relationship was doomed from the offset. Despite this, every time I hear this track I still tend to start crying with the same intensity as a toddler refused sweets at a supermarket checkout.

Here: http://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njaYAccqpqk

#4: Celine Dion ‘I know that my Heart will Go On’

Cloying Love Songs = Unlimited Cash for Plastic Surgery

Let the vilification begin. Despite having never seenTitanic (that’s not strictly true as it goes, me and a friend once fast forwarded to the bit where Kate Winslet gets her knockers out, but we hit eject immediately afterwards) this awful example of music’s pernicious power to manipulate emotion always catches me at the back of the throat.

Please accept my sincere apologies: http://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNIPqafd4As&ob=av2n

#5: Beach Boys 'God Only Knows'

Mentioned above, it is to my mind the greatest heart break song ever written. Although recently it has been used to sell everything from toothpaste to weed killer, its power still hasn’t diminished. Its author, tortured genius Brain Wilson, had a particularly troubled relation with his dad, Murray. To punish his young son for the slightest misdeed, Murray would remove his glass eye, grab Brian by the head and force him to stare into the orbital abyss for minutes at a time. As a result, many years later, Brian was no stranger to the concept of the ‘quiet rave’, spending years at a time drinking and drugging without leaving his bedroom.

Here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDfH_J4MAUQ

Goat Glands and the Electric Water Conspiracy

[Here's the prologue from the new book 'Soft'. This chapter detailing the strange and sometimes deeply disturbing medical experiments of one of the world's most infamous quacks, Dr JR Brinkley]

It is March 1915. Just a few weeks before Germany takes warfare into the industrial age by aiming over five thousand cylinders of chlorine gas at Russian troops. The chemicals are designed to cause blindness and ulceration of the throat for any soldier unlucky enough to be caught in the slowly advancing grey fog. If wind conditions are right the results are even more destructive, causing hundreds of dazed soldiers to succumb to choking death by asphyxiation before collapsing into the vicious mud of the trenches.

All attempts to escape the chemicals prove futile, front line troops quickly discovering that the sensible human response of running away from the threat just increases the speed at which the chlorine enters the bloodstream. Here is a profound lesson in just where advances in science had led humanity, the use of poison gas alone leading to 100,000 deaths during the First World War.

Meanwhile across the Atlantic, Dr John Romulus Brinkley, failed medical student and bigamist, is fondly remembering the short period he spent singing and dancing as part of the cast of a travelling medicine show. It was during these halcyon days that he made a life changing decision, after coming to the conclusion that there must be a less economically challenging way to fulfil his life long dream of becoming a physician. His ambitions thwarted so far by his inability to fully pay the expensive tuition fees required to complete his studies, he decides to invest $500 for a mail order diploma from a fake university in order to add the initials M.D to his name.

False qualifications in hand he is now licensed to practice medicine in eight Southern US states. After a brief spell in the army, which ends after a nervous breakdown, he becomes free to take any employment he is offered.

He works for a short time at a storefront clinic in South Carolina he sets up with a fellow grifter called Crawford. Their scam is simple and very profitable. The promotion of a new miracle cure which they claim increases ‘manly vigour’ by the medium of charging hundreds of dollars for a simple injection of tap water luridly coloured with food dye.

The business is a roaring success, not because the placebo works, although there is no doubt the treatment has a psychosomatic effect in some patients, more as a direct result of Brinkley’s aggressive advertising campaign. An expensive PR exercise that uses direct mail shots, street level carnival barkers and acres of newspaper print to alert the public to his medical miracle .

The duo chose to promote the faux treatment as German ‘electric water’ in order to add an aura of European cosmopolitan mystique. Within days of setting up shop they are swamped by men crippled with shame as a result of their sexual dysfunction, often working long hours in order to treat the queues which stretch along the high street. It also helps that Brinkley is described by those who know him as the very definition of a charming Southern gentleman. One of his patients saying, ‘he could charm a wagon out of a ditch’ in reference to the good doctor’s bed side manner.

In what would become something of a reoccurring theme in the life of the ambitious Colonel Sanders look-a-like, the business eventually closes down because the pair fail to pay their outstanding bills. As word spreads of their financial incompetence and angry debtors gather to discuss a plan of action, Brinkley and Crawford pack up their snake oil and leave for pastures new.

Soon Brinkley finds work as a staff doctor at a Kansas meat packing company. This a tedious job that mostly involves stitching the wounds of workers whose choice of career involves the risks inherent in using razor sharp knives on a fast moving production line. Bored and irritable he has to find ways to make the hours pass and devotes himself to the study of animal physiology to pass the time, becoming increasingly obsessed with the mating habits of the livestock kept at the plant. Specifically, the keen enthusiasm shown for coitus within the large population of goats awaiting butchering.

The radical idea that will make his fortune comes as a result of a casual conversation with a local farmer, Bill Stittsworth, who brings in his fattened livestock for slaughter to the plant. Whilst discussing the weather, Bill candidly expresses some frustration at a problem that has recently been haunting his marital relations.

‘I’ve got no lead in my pencil, no powder in my pistol’, he says.

In a moment of divine inspiration the good doctors mind quickly visualises the raw libido of the rampant bucks in his care and comes to a simple, if somewhat radical, conclusion:

‘You’d have no problems if you had a pair of those goat glands in you’, he remarks.

Rather than recoil in revulsion at the prospect of a clinical procedure more suited to the House of Pain in HG Wells Island of Dr Moreau, then surgery in any traditional sense, Brinkley claims that Sittsworth begs him to perform the surgery as soon as possible. A statement his son denies in later years, claiming that his father was offered a large sum of money as motivation for acting as a human guinea pig. Whatever form the deal takes, we do know that an appointment is booked and Brinkley sets himself the task of preparing for his surgical debut.

The operation itself is relatively simple, even for a man of Brinkley’s limited medical training. After scrubbing up and delivering basic anaesthesia to the patient, thin slices of flesh are extracted from the testicles of a recently slaughtered goat and are inserted into the patient’ scrotal sac following a small incision.

Although quick, the procedure has a number of serious flaws, not least the refusal of the host body to accept the foreign tissue, which often leads to infection and necrosis at the suture site. Also complicating matters is Brinkley’s habit of performing surgery after having a few robust snifters to steady his nerves. A habit that causes to him become the subject of frequent litigation over the years. Although always reluctant to vocalise any problems with his treatments, Brinkley will occasionally admit, if pushed, that the insertion of the goat testes can o make patients ooze a strong animal musk, making them ‘reek like a steamy barn in mid-summer’.

Buoyed by the success of his botched debut (in the sense that the patient had survived the surgery if nothing else), Brinkley soon sets up a state of the art sixteen bed clinic in order to dramatically increase the number of daily operations he can perform. The goats are kept penned in outside the back door, allowing potential clients to hand pick the animal of their choice before being taken to the operation theatre.


Surprisingly Brinkley’s investment pays off as a result of a medical fluke, Stittsworth’s wife becoming pregnant just weeks after the operation. An event that Brinkley is quick to capitalise on, taking out acres of newspaper advertising proclaiming the sexual benefits of his miracle cure. As a marketing strategy it brings in hundreds of clients, but also alerts his repulsed medical peers to his unique brand of dangerous quackery.

Charging $750 per operation means that Brinkley quickly becomes incredibly wealthy and invests further in spreading news nationwide about his discovery. At one stage he even starts his own radio station promoting his operations in-between musical interludes and comedy sketches. The only dark cloud on the horizon is the hundreds of malpractice cases awaiting his attention in court and an ongoing investigation by the American Medical Association. The group forced into taking action when rumours reach them of a macabre twist in events, when Brinkley starts touting a new procedure available for $5,000, where instead of goat testes he will use flesh from the glands of recently hung death row inmates, these secretly sourced from a sympathetic prison warden over the border.

‘War is a racket’, declared retired Major General Smedley Butler, in reference to how big business benefits from armed conflict. His iconoclastic outlook evidenced by the profits made at the time by Beyer, the German pharmaceutical giant which supplied the chemicals required for production of the poison gas used in the 1915 attack on Russian troops.

Whilst Brinkley would eventually die penniless in 1938 as a result of legal action and continuing litigation aimed at methods described as ‘immoral’, the power of capitalism dictated that Beyer would go from strength to strength. In fact their profits increased dramatically throughout World War II, mostly as a result of their production of Zyklon-B, the genocide agent used in the Nazi death camps.

Fast forward into time to just under a century later, where Brinkley’s methods are now the subject of much ironic laughter and his position of charlatan is set into cultural stone. In direct contrast we find Beyer’s profits going through the roof. This mostly a result of a new miracle cure for erectile dysfunction called Levitra, aggressively marketed as an alternative to market leader Viagra. This small, scored 20mg tablet offering a thin sliver of sexual hope for a recently divorced father of two and occasional writer of books about the pornography industry.

Dduw ydy mo 'n fawr

Me and the kids are wandering around the picturesque seaside town of Tenby, West Wales.

As we approach the main shopping street their attention is drawn to a man doing a roaring trade selling monkey puppets from a wheelbarrow. Realistically simian looking and coming complete with both an adoption certificate and a bag of peanuts, I quickly come to the conclusion that trying to argue the case against shelling out £40 is futile. Money in hand they skip off to buy one each.

Whilst I’m waiting, I kill some time by listening to a Christian evangelical group who have set up shop outside Greggs the bakers. A middle aged man is pontificating at length to a scattering of people, praising the glory of God in a dull, practiced monotone that is unlikely to inspire even the most faithful.

From the corner of my eye I spot a church member heading in my direction.

‘Do you have faith?’, he asks.

‘What in?’, I reply.

‘The Risen Christ’, he responds.

‘Sorry, I’m an atheist’, I add.

The children arrive back, both sporting massive shit eating grins as a result of the monkey puppets they have firmly attached to their backs.

‘You see’, I say, grateful that such an obvious chance has arisen, ‘I believe we evolved from them’, pointing at the monkeys.

‘Really’, the religious guy replies with a look of pathological smugness. ‘I’d like to think we’re a bit cleverer then them’, he adds.

‘Well I am’, I blurt out, over pleased with myself.

The guy’s head drops, he’s obviously hurt.

‘There’s no need for that’, he says before walking off.

The kids will always remember the monkeys in Tenby.

Seven Things I've Done Instead of Working on the Book This Week

Read any book on the process of writing and the author will usually pontificate at painful length about how writers should feel 'compelled to create', obsessed even, taking every available waking moment to hone their craft in the vain hope that it will strike a chord with an increasingly apathetic public. The reality is somewhat different, for me at least. The crushing tedium of sitting in front of a blank sheet of A4 can be easily avoided by thinking of other pressing household matters to attend too, unblocking drains or putting your CD's in alphabetical order for example. Here's a short list of avoidance tactics I've engaged with this week:


1)Spent many shameless hours loudly tutting at Celebrity Big Brother on Channel Five. Eventually deciding that if I did have any motivation to write anything I should probably aim my sights at Hollywood and write a script for a low budget horror film starring Jedward called... 'TWINCEST'. Basically it's the usual good twin/bad twin formulaic, popular in the early 70's but somehow not subject to the 're-imagining' trend that infects the modern cinema industry like a fucking tedium virus. In short, the police are unable to solve a series of grisly sex murders even though it's obvious the killer is one of Jedward (I like Edward best I think), but given they share the same DNA its hard to find any usable forensic evidence that would stand up in court. It's down to one maverick cop with an alcohol problem...well you can guess the third act. I'd have to write in a shower scene cameo for Amy 'The Only Way is Essex' Childs though, she's as thick as that gooey stuff that collects around the rim of a bottle of ketchup but remains utterly charming never the less.



2) You may need to bear with me on this one, but I've started thinking that foodie culture has got slightly ridiculous and as a result started to dream up some new variations on the 'nose to tail' eating culture that's so popular among broadsheet newspaper readers. You should eat all parts of the animal you say? I see. This left me wondering if a Michelin starred chef decided that it was appropriate to garnish a dish, lets say a £25 risotto, with sperm taken from the testes of a bull would people actually eat it. Sadly I think the answer is probably yes.



3) Read Carol Ann Lee's 'One of Your Own: The Life and Death of Myra Hindley' (Mainstream). This a fascinating biography of Hindley's early life, her still disturbing crimes and her bitterness at having to remain in prison until her death in 2002.One criticism would be that Lee devotes a lot of time to cleverly de-constructing the iconic image (pictured below) of the Hindley mugshot taken in Hyde police station when she was charged for the Moors Murders. But then uses the very same image on the cover, where it stares blankly at me every time I walk past the book case. Otherwise highly recommended.



4) After seeing a few friends finally climb up the greasy London media career ladder in the last few months I've come to the conclusion that people who work in advertising should come out of the closet and describe their jobs as 'advertising', rather then 'innovative marketing solutions' or the many other examples of Orwellian news speak they adopt in a bid to hide the fact that they sell sugary decaffeinated drinks and posh cars for a living.


5) Thought at length about a statement made by a female friend of a friend regarding a sexual attraction to this very author that bluntly stated: “(Bruce) may be bald and overweight, but he ticks some boxes” Left thinking that this is no way a ringing endorsement.

6) Have fully re-engaged with my obsession with the little people http://bigballofnothing.blogspot.com/2009/09/fear-of-little-people-three-midget.html
by way of Channel Four's 'Seven Dwarfs', a charming and sensitive study of the cast of a UK pantomime living together in a shared house for six weeks. Less wholesome is my best VHS find for months. 'The Creeps' (2000) which features the tag line: Undersized, Undead and Angry. An all midget cast play Dracula, the Wolf Man, Frankenstein and the Mummy in a shoot on video monstrosity that isn't without some charm. How can you not love a box cover that features the following beautifully lurid description, 'three feet tall and deranged with anger, these minuscule monsters embark on a mad mission to complete their creation-at any cost!'. Exclamation mark aside, if I'd managed to write just those twenty-one word this week I'd be a happy man.

7) Dwelt on my many previous creative failures, which include (this is no way an exhaustive list by the way), 'Wolf Cop' (lycanthropic NYC detective solves crime with the arrival of a full moon) and 'Moneyshot' (a six part sitcom about a small Welsh valleys town where the owners of a shop called Madienbillia- they only sell Iron Maiden merchandise you see?- are constantly feuding with the owners of the Van Halen warehouse that has just opened up on the outskirts of town- I wrote six of these, it took ages, the BBC weren't interested, bastards).

Sleeping with the Enemy: Three Politically Suspect Recent Crushes

[Struggling creative type with a plasterer’s face but a poet’s mind, 40, seeks wealthy heiress looking to upset Daddy, 25-45.

Like many men from working class stock, I’ve always been strongly drawn to the idea of having a sordid, mutually destructive relationship that challenges my own limited socio-economic boundaries. I’m not really sure why, but a troubling part of my tortured psyche has always dreamt of becoming the roughly hewn, monosyllabic sexual plaything for a public school educated posh gal who speaks like she’s chewing a mouthful of marbles.

Strangely enough, the more I head towards the joyless mediocrity of middle age, the more I feel the chance of be engaging with a minor ariosctrat is slipping from my nicotine stained grasp, perhaps this is the reason why I’ve started to develop instant but overwhelmingly powerful crushes on women whose political beliefs have always been an anthemia to liberally minded oiks like myself.

An indication of how bad this sexual dynamic has become is best illustrated by my current plan to try and get tickets for the next Conservative Party Conference, purely so I can stalk the hotel corridors in search of a Lady Chatterly/Mellors style love affair. Drinking Pimms whilst loudly vilifying benefit claimants at a Right Wing fringe event, I have a well developed fantasy that my eyes will meet those of a fun loving upper middle class type in twinset and pearls who will be erotically hypnotised by my wildly exaggerated childhood tales of coal dust, polio and miners strikes. By way of illuminating this current madness, I give you the following examples of upwardly mobile gals, who despite a creeping sense of unease, I find myself looking at in a sloppily loving way every time they appear on my TV screen.

#1: Kirsty ‘Location, Location, Location’ Allsopp

First a brief preamble:

A few years ago I once dipped my toe into the world of doing up derelict houses in order to resell them and make a quick profit. It worked up to a point, although I quickly learnt one vital lesson applicable to any wannabe capitalist on the make. Namely, if your builder thinks it’s perfectly OK to crack open a three litre bottle of white cider at 2pm, as wet plaster drips onto your fiendishly expensive, freshly sanded floorboards; you have a serious problem with your role as project manager. Bitter experience dictates that if you let this kind of behaviour pass, within days he will be asking for £2K in cash for ‘supplies’ and then will transform into a shadowy, almost ghostly figure, who you wont see again for months.

That’s partly the reason I love Kirsty, despite her head girl keenness to take a major role as housing advisor to the Cameron government. I imagine uncouth builder types tend to turn the colour of skimmed milk when they hear the clack-clack sound of her Jimmy Choo’s tapping on a recently laid cement floor. It’s this passive aggressive Tory Girl response to the loathsome working classes that quite frankly gives me the horn.

“Not like THAT!”, I like to imagine Mrs Allsop yelping during our sweaty sexual congress, probably in the process mocking my secondary school education and generally treating me in the contemptuous way she would a Polish electrician who has ineptly rewired a plug socket in one of her many Georgian Townhouses. Even the simple act of watching her recent Persil adverts tends to leave me shell shocked by tortured visions of knee tremblers against a four door Aga or snatched gropings at the back of the Tattinger marquee at Royal Ascot. Sadly, even in a parallel universe, where are paths did manage to somehow cross, I get a strong feeling that it would be destined to never work, given that I’d probably end up acting like a Victorian urchin from a Dickens novel, fighting a constant urge to doff my grubby cap with every fumbled attempt to undo her bra strap.

Weirdly enough however, Kirsty isn’t an isolated example of the’ posh developer sexual attraction genre’. In fact an honourable mention should also go to:

#2: Rebecca ‘If It Bleeds, it Leads’ Brookes Conforming to every established cliché about the fiery nature of red heads, and despite occasionally reminding me of a witch illustrated by Quentin Blake in a Roald Dahl novel, Mrs Brookes has been aggressively bleeping on my sexual radar for a few years now. In fact I’m not in the least surprised that she’s currently public hate figure number one given her well documented ruthless ambition. Forgetting her recent role as exploiter of the dead, I instead like to wistfully remember developing the first pangs of sexual attraction after reading about her brutal attack on her ex-husband, Ross Kemp.

Apparently the EastEnders hardman was subjected to a prolonged bout of physical abuse after forgetting to put the bins out (I have no confirmation that this was the root cause of the problem, but I like to imagine that this was the catalyst in this case). Seeking a more peaceful life by reporting from the Afghan warzone the marriage ended in divorce and Mr Kemp moved onto alpha male pastures new.

Rebecca sought solace by getting her greasy team of soulless journalists to humiliate the victims of violent crimes to fill the yawning gap left by her profound heartbreak. Surely something anyone who has been dumped can fully understand? For example I once ran away as a youth following the messy end of a doomed love affair, carrying only a beach towel and a single can of sweet corn in a rucksack, so I better then anyone know the madness that relationship grief can bring. Who is to say that given a different set of circumstances I wouldn’t have conspired with criminals to target the traumatised victims of the 7/7 attacks? Despite the evil that glows like burning anthracite in Rebecca’s eyes, I still can’t escape the strong visual image of us mindlessly rutting like unneutered feral cats in the News International offices at Wapping. The tangy scent of sex hanging like a thick cloud over the banks of computer screens as our shared feline yelping distracts the Sun’s leader writer from producing yet another column on how Brits buy twice as much deodorant annually as the French.

#3: Louise ‘Thatcher-in-Waiting’ Mensch

Despite your near fascist viewpoint on those grabbing asylum seeking bastards looking to drain the resources of the British economy why do I still covet you so strongly? I ask that you take a risk and leave behind the day to day work of life as a constituency MP and your well established sideline in writing paper thin chick-lit novels about posh gals drinking latté in Kensington. There is so much I want to show you. A whole new world of unwatchable DVD’s from Poundshops, discount 5.4% supermarket ciders, front gardens littered with slowly rusting fridges, abscessed children’s teeth slowly turning a necrotic black in families too poor to afford basic dental care and breaded turkey products shaped like deformed Dinosaurs from budget freezer based supermarkets. All this could be yours? I know you’re married already, strangely enough to the manager of Metallica (I’m not making this up by the way), but my damp and uncarpeted maisonette could provide a warm and loving home for cosy fireside chats about destroying union power and ensuring that only the wealthy will be able to afford to send their kids to university. Take the risk Louise, but do give me some advance warning so I can be sure to stick £10 on the electricity key meter before you arrive.