I am livid

I have been at home for a couple of days visiting my folks, which always seems to offer me plenty of things to write about on here.

Last night they insisted on watching a programme called ‘TV’s Funniest Music Moments’ on ITV2 which showed clips of various celebrities making utter arses of themselves to music at various points in the last thirty years.

One of the acts the featured was The Krankies, which reminded me of one of the most disturbing days of my childhood. The day I found out Jimmy Krankie was actually ‘Jeanette’, the midget wife of Ian Krankie.

That was one fucked up relationship. It completely ruined Crackerjack for me. I am sorry, but no-one is going to tell me they planned to become a comedy double-act based on his midget wife dressing up as a pre-pubescent school boy. No. Fucking. Way.

I can imagine this ‘plan’ came about after a surprise visit from the inlaws.

If you can keep the vomit down for a moment, please imagine Ian Krankie at home, getting all ‘worked up’, “Oh Yeah, that’s right. Now tell me you’ve got to do your homework before cubs…”

Ding dong!

“Who the fuck is that? You lace up some more conkers Jimmy and I’ll get the door.”

“Surprise!”

“MOM! DAD?!”

“We just thought we’d pop in to say hello. Is Jeanette in?”

“erm, yes.  Say Hello to Mom and Dad Jeanette.  Och, you’re probably wondering why Jeanette is dressed like a pre-pubescent school boy, eh? Yes, why is that Jeanette?”

“errrrmm…. for a joke?”

“Yes. YES! That’s it. Jokes. We were starting a new double-act. Good idea isn’t it?”

That incident would have been fucking embarrassing for the Krankies though, but I guess no more than most of their TV appearances.  I’ll bet there were times where Ian probably felt like saying,

“Fuck it.  I don’t care.  This material is fucking shite. I like my wife to dress up as a small boy so I can be properly aroused during sex.  Is that so wrong?”

But the censors were even more strict back then so an outburst like that on live television would probably have a got a record number of complaints to the BBC.

A computer is a very personal thing. It is a bit like a car, or a girlfriend, in that it can be quite an uncomfortable experience letting some else have a go in it. Especially if you really really like the car.

Computers can be similar in that they are generally only used by yourself, and over time they learn your habits and idiosyncrasies. It can be as hard to navigate your way round someone else’s computer as it is to find the G Spot on someone else’s girlfriend.

The thing about computers though, is that they don’t immediately recognise they are being used by someone else, which is sort of the where the girlfriend analogy falls down a bit, unless you are using Rohypnol. Because they don’t realise they are being used by someone else, they can betray you in the click of a mouse button.

A friend was using my Mac to check some train times and had launched Google to search for the correct website to use.

“Ummm….” they began questioningly in my direction, “When did you search for Transvestites in London?”

“What?!”

“I only got as far as putting in the ‘Tra’ of ‘Train timetable’ when Google suggested I might be searching for Transvestites in London, as it was a search you’d done previously. So, when did you want to find a cockney ladyboy?”

This was disappointing in the extreme. Like a prison snitch looking to get credit for a tiny piece of information it had managed to gather, Google was grassing me up. As a result, I was then forced into a long explanation of how that search was conducted as part of a project I had been involved in, and how it really is not what it seems, out of context. After a couple of hours they finally conceded that it was not as they had first thought, and it really was a completely innocent bit of research and not conclusive proof that I am a pervert.

So, let this be a lesson to you. Just like the friend’s girlfriend who gets drunk and lets slip your little secret, you should be very careful what you share with your computer.

I have always believed that I will take my place in the history books. I had hoped it would be for something other than this little-read website, but I am not fussy about how I am remembered. So long as I am.

So I was delighted to receive an email from the British Library asking me to take part in their web preservation programme. I must admit to not even knowing that the Internet was endangered, but if people are happy to try and save the Whales, then I should do my bit to save the Internet.

Apparently the British Library are only approaching websites which “represent aspects of UK Heritage”. I am not sure which aspect of UK heritage I represent, but I like to think it is all of them.

I am sure this news is also a relief to all you readers, as you can now be safe in the knowledge that your great great great grandchildren (if you are not barren or a jaffa) will be able to enjoy my witterings as much as you have done. They will probably wonder who Fat Jim is, but I am sure by that point he will have his own page on Wikipedia outlining his various crimes against humanity.

Bearing in mind that what I write is now going to be, quite literally, in the history books, I have a new found feeling of responsibility to address only the serious issues of the day in modern Britain. Luckily, I have decided to completely ignore this feeling and continue in the same vein as I have done for the last two and a bit years.  Lucky, lucky you.

People often ask me what sort of person I am, whether I am a ‘glass half full’, or ‘glass half empty’ sort of person. I inevitably respond by making it clear I am the sort of person who would never serve anyone half a glass of anything, and I expect to be treated the same.

Who gives out half a glass of drink anyway? The tight bastards. I can imagine the first person to ever to ask this utterly shit philosophical question was merely short of booze and looking for a way to justify short changing their guests.

“Hang on, this glass of beer seems to be missing a quantity of liquid.”

“Ah yes!” responds the completely inadequate host “But the question is, do you think the glass is half empty, or half full?”

“Are you taking the piss? You’ve run out of booze again haven’t you?”

“No, I am merely interested in determining your philosophical outlook on life.” 

“Get fucked! I knew we should’ve had gone to Dave’s for poker night. This is fucking shit.”

Don’t be a tight arse, fill up everyone’s glass.

I recently took advantage of a sale at HMV and purchased some DVDs for my collection. These included the box sets for BBC’s Planet Earth and Blue Planet series, as I like watching a bit of nature on my big television with Dolby surround sound. It makes me feel like I am one with the world, from the comfort of my own sofa.

I recently wrote about vegetarians, and their so-called love of animals, but I find this same ‘love’ from the makers of nature documentaries to be extremely hypocritical. How can someone who claims to love animals sit idly by whilst they watch a poor defenceless creature having it’s ass handed to it, or a polar bear swimming out to sea and to its certain death?

It is sickening. If I did such a thing in the local park I would be reported to the RSPCA again. Apparently they are OK though, as it is deemed bad form to interrupt or influence anything which is behaving as per its natural instincts.

I am pretty sure that the police would take a very different view if you stood by and filmed a violent sexual predator in action. My applications for such a permit have been refused so far, anyway.

But what’s the difference? After all, it’s just me filming an animal responding to his natural urges, right?

I have often considered it strange that discussing someone’s potentially violent death is often seen as a form encouragement.

“Oh go on, you could get hit by a bus tomorrow!”

This phrase has always struck me as slightly threatening, especially from my mate Dave, what with him being a bus driver.

But why does the phrase have to focus on such a painful demise anyway? Perhaps we should all try and soften it a bit, “Oh go on, you could die peacefully in your sleep tomorrow!”

See? That’s a bit more pleasant, isn’t it?

It’s not as if alluding to being hit by a bus is particularly accurate either, statistically speaking. You are much more likely to die of some sort of hereditary condition, heart disease or cancer than being hit by a bus.

If someone wanted to encourage me to do something I wasn’t planning on doing, then they would be much better off referring to one of the more believable terminal illnesses, as then I might at least consider the merits of what they are proposing. If they were to start off with the bus thing I could not help but point out the slim possibility of such an outcome (unless it is Dave in which case I just look to clarify his shift times).

I don’t do politics.

This is a deliberate move to prevent people from realising how ill-informed I actually am about world and state affairs.

That said, a few months ago a couple of friends of mine sent me a link to one of those e-petitions on the Internet. Although they had a slightly vested interest in the subject, as they work for Innocent Drinks, I thought it was a very good point they were making, and so I signed it.

This is what the petition said:

“At the moment, all food (including things like hotdogs and crisps) is subject to a zero rate of tax. But people who want to make a healthy choice and buy smoothies and juices get taxed 17.5% VAT. It’s a simple step, and, as more and more people get their fruit in liquid form, it could make a big difference. Our research shows that at least 500 million more portions of fruit would be consumed each year if this happened. Since we all know that eating more fruit and veg is essential to being healthier, it makes sense to help people make positive choices.”

Makes perfect sense, right? You could even swap the VAT over to the junk food if you wanted to avoid a loss in revenue. Just imagine how much a hot dog at the cinema would cost if the DID add VAT.

Finally this week the official response came out on the website. You can read the whole thing here.

“Dietary based taxes were considered by Derek Wanless in ‘Securing Good Health for the Whole Population’ -published in 2004. The report highlights a number of difficulties of principle and practice in any attempt to use the tax system to influence diet.”

It’s a bit difficult? Really? That’s the excuse you are going with? “It’s a bit harder to do than we’d like, if we’re honest”.  Difficulties of principle? The principle I struggle with most of all is that good food is taxed, and the shit food is not.

“Furthermore, European VAT rules require that in most cases, the same VAT rate is applied to all competing products. This limits the extent to which any new reduced rate could be targeted on the most healthy fruit drinks.”

Fucking hellski. So, not only do you consider it ‘difficult’, but it is European basically telling you what to do anyway. And yet again with the ‘difficulty’ in targetting only the most healthy fruit drinks. Well, here’s a suggestion. Why not reduce VAT on a any drink that is made from 100% fruit or vegetables? How’s that for a clear division on what does and does not merit a VAT reduction?

It seems that if you want to use the ePetition site you have to ask for a change that is both easy for them to implement, and requires little change. Perhaps someone should start a petition for them to carry on exactly as they?

I do not understand how vegetarianism is so popular. It makes no sense whatsoever. It is entirely against our evolutionary imperative as human beings (my apologies to all the non human beings reading this in the future).

It is not that I dislike vegetarians personally. Not at all. In fact, I have met some quite fit vegetarians over the years, I just imagine them to be less than enthusiastic lovers. I guess I am the kind of guy who thinks that any woman capable of sucking the meat off a T-Bone is a good egg.

Vegetarianism just does not make sense. To make my point I would ask you to take evolution back a few thousand years and picture a hungry carnivore in his cave, if he was starving he would simply go out and bang the nearest Buffalo on it’s head, and then “Pow!” He is fed.

But what if you were to picture his herbivore neighbour in the same hungry predicament. Did he wander outside and ask himself, “I wonder how that potato I planted this morning is getting on?”

I do not think it is any coincidence that we have yet to discover any cave paintings of broccoli  florets.

The only acceptable reason to be a vegetarian is not a love of animals, but that you really hate plants.

I had suggested to a few friends that we go along to one of the comedy nights hosted by Richard Herring at the Lyric in Hammersmith. A few people were interested, so I bought four tickets and made my way there in the evening with my ex-flatmate, where we would meet with my friends Amy (who has written a couple of posts on here) and Red Face Paul (about whom I have written occasionally).

I had forgotten however that both Amy and Red Face Paul had been in the pub since lunchtime. This fact became abundantly obvious when we arrived at the Lyric bar and they waved and screamed their welcomes at us across about fifty theatre goers.

Despite my silent prayers, the hole in the ground failed to appear, yet again, and so after getting some drinks we made our way to the stalls and our seats.

Mr. Herring began his routine about potatoes being the apples of the sky for French people, when Amy turned to face me and said, in the shouted whisper that only incredibly drunken people are capable of, “I’VE HEARD THIS BEFORE!”

“Yes.” I whispered, properly, “It was in his Edinburgh show that we saw a couple of years ago.”

“RIGHT. IT’S STILL GOOD THOUGH.”

The show moved on, and she finished the bottle of wine she had successfully snuck into the auditorium from the bar. Pappy’s Fun Club did their set, which closed with a bit of an audience participation sing song, and which most people ignored to begin with. Except Amy.

Now, Amy can not sing. At all. She is so tone deaf that her singing can jump across entire octaves mid sentence. And jump it did. Several times. Once again the hole in the ground failed to appear, though I did manage to lower myself in my seat by a several inches.

After the interval we retook our seats and within five minutes her head was bent backwards as if she was looking at the ceiling. Only her eyes were closed and she was on the verge of snoring. The positive angle here was that I could use any of the jokes I heard in her presence and she would think I was very funny. This was weighed up against the possibility of something falling from the Circle above into her open mouth and choking her.

I let her sleep.

Right until the point she awoke with a start and began talking rather loudly.

“LET ME HAVE A GO!” she began, “I’LL HAVE A GO. GET ME A MICROPHONE.”

For some reason she seemed to think that Sean Hughes wanted her on the stage with him. It took almost a minute to convince her that this was not the case, and included a threat of actual bodily violence. From her to me, for clarification.

The show came to its rousing conclusion, and Amy fell asleep the moment she got in the car to go home. I have not spoken to her yet to see how much, or indeed little, she remembers of the show.

It is late and I am pissing about on Facebook, in my real account, not my I am Livid one. I have accepted a friend request from someone and almost immediately a message appears in my Inbox.

“Hi angry saw u were online so thought id say hi. do u remember me at all.”

I begin to feel like I have made a terrible, terrible mistake.

It is all well and good accepting Facebook friend requests from people with whom you share mutual school friends. They must have been at school with you, right? I am notoriously bad with names, but very good with faces, so if I see a picture of someone I recognise, I accept the request.

But she had not put up a photo when the request came through. Instead it was the generic blue question mark. We had five joint friends, some of whom were quite fit at school, so I decided to accept her.

But now the dilemma. No, I did not remember her. Which means she was definitely not on the A List of school hotties. I remember those particular girls very very well indeed.

I was at a complete loss.

So, did I say that I did not remember her and admit, somewhat embarrassingly, that I accepted her request because of some shared fit female friends we have?

Or pretend that, “Yeah, of course I remember you. How could I forget! Oh the laughs we had. You know, with our other joint friends and that. And the teachers, phew, they were a nightmare weren’t they? Yeah, I remember everything about school. Definitely. So tell me about what you’ve been up to. Do you still have the same height, hair, weight or distinguishing marks that you might want to mention?”

I imagine if there is a process on Facebook for having a friend removed she is in the middle of it right now.

Apparently an incredibly bad haircut and a ridiculous name are not considered ‘cruel’ by the RSPCA.  Technically they consider any report of such crimes to be ‘time-wasting’.  I bet it would be different if it were my Labrador shaved like Lion and called Fifi.

If your girlfriend mentions an itch she ‘just can’t scratch’ she is not politely suggesting you buy her an industrial sized pot of Canestan. She is dumping you.

And it is very difficult to return large pots of Canestan.

Yesterday was Saint George’s Day.

I didn’t actually realise it was Saint George’s Day until the afternoon, as it tends not to be celebrated with any form of street carnival or fireworks. Which is a shame for Saint George. If indeed that is his real name.

You see, Saint George was from what is now called Turkey. I have been to Turkey. Twice. And I never met anyone over there called George. This is why I believe that some tinkering with the history books has occurred.

“Thank you for saving us from that terrible dragon! What is your name oh dark stranger with a funny accent?”

“I am Ibrahim of Anatolia, slayer of of the quite-big-for-round-here lizard!”

“Thank you, George.”

“No, you must have misheard me, it is Ibrahim of Anatolia.”

“Yes, but George is such a nice….English name.”

“But…it’s not my name.”

“I know that, it’s just we’re going to have such trouble getting people to celebrate this day in the future as it is. If people thought your real name was Ibrahim, and that you were from Turkey of all places, then even the skinheads would start ignoring your day.”

“Right. In that case, I am George! Slayer of the giant lizard!”

“And can we call it a dragon? It scans much better.”

“Sure. Whatever.”

I am livid - Giving you the stuff they don’t put in our history books.

Yes, one of the hits of Saturday night television in the early nineties is coming back after being revived by Sky television. A huge plus in the new shows favour is that it will be presented by the very definition of MILF, Kirsty Gallagher.

When it comes to Gladiators, I have a small confession to make. I once went to watch Gladiators being filmed in Birmingham.  In my defence, I was taking my younger brother who was about eight at the time, so I have perfectly legitimate excuse. Sort of. All those telephoto lens shots I took of Jet were for my brother’s collage. On her part, I think the restraining order was a bit over the top to be honest.

However, society has moved on since those halcyon days. Today’s streets are full of knife fights, ASBO wielding teenagers and filthy paedophiles, so I hope the producers will be taking this societal shift on board.

I always felt that Gladiators was just a small step from becoming Arnie’s film, The Running Man. This Gladiator revival could be an excellent opportunity to make that final leap.

Who wants to watch a body-conscious pretty-boy stock broker trying to run up a slightly quick escalator against the clock? Wouldn’t you rather watch a skinny chav, who has been caught carrying a knife, have a fight to the death with Rhino? I know I would.

What about teenage cat burglar playing Hang Tough above a pit of poisonous snakes?

Wouldn’t that just be an enormous ratings winner?

What other events would you like to see brought into the new series?

I was shocked to see that John Prescott announced over the weekend that he was a sufferer of Bulimia.

Not shocked that he had it, more that the qualification criteria to be defined as a bulimic is so much lower than I had thought. I was always under the impression that bulimia sufferers would sneak off after every meal and make themselves sick. I did not realise that you were also bulimic if you threw up after every six hundredth meal. I would prefer to concentrate on the many MANY meals he consumed that were allowed to fix themselves to his ample waistline. I suppose we finally have an explanation for his second Jaguar, it was nothing more than a mobile larder.

I always thought that one of the nice side effects of being bulimic was always remaining skinny. How are we supposed to spot them now? We could always look out for traces and smell of vomit, but I do not wish to tarnish this country’s binge drinkers with the bulimia label.

There is of course the possibility that he came up with the story to help sell his book.  I am not saying that he definitely did, but it is a possibility.  It would be pretty difficult coming up with a believable and sympathy-earning failing after being part of that government.  David Blunkett bagsied the blind thing, and Jack Straw got the familial drugs shame, so I guess he had little left to work with.  He tried the adultery angle, but that didn’t seem to work, so I suppose an eating disorder was a logical choice.

I just want to know how big he would be if he had never thrown up a meal in his life?