The Boris Johnson Limerick Post

Roll up! Roll up!

It's the Boris Johnson limerick post!

Let's be having your limericks about the great man in the comments section.

The man who promised to stop the rail workers from striking, who promised to rid the city of knife crime, who promised to reintroduce Routemasters, who promised to reduce your Council tax bill and give you better services, who promised to get more black men teaching black boys, who promised to plant a tree with the money he saved from scrapping the Mayor's Londoner newspaper.

Well, actually he has ditched the Londoner and planted a tree with his own bare hands.

Well, actually he didn't do any digging, just moved a bit of earth from A to B.

Anyway, here's mine...

There once was a toff with blond hair
Who had not a singular care
Whether young men were stabbed
Or their killers were nabbed
But he don't sleep at night now he's Mayor

Gordon's Grin

Well what a season that was! Comfortably mid-table right from the word "Go!"

No nail-biting last-week relegation scraps. No heart-stopping promotion play-offs. Just nice relaxing Sundays watching recordings of Sky's excellent Football First highlights. No Match of the Day, with its insufferable smugness and bias towards the teams at the top.

Congratulations to Stoke City on their promotion. Stoke are my second team and the team of the mother-in-law I never met but wish I could have. Gordon Banks' fantastic save from Geoff Hurst's penalty in the 1972 League Cup Semi-Final deserved a winner's medal. And they went on to beat Chelsea in the final. Yes, the great Chelsea with all their history and glamour.

Here's looking forward to next season. The Top Four will be broken. The Nouveaux Riches are coming to get you!

Sweet Smell Of A Successful Relationship

We're talking about relationships, wondering what people's home lives are like and saying how we both thought we'd never find someone we could live with - soppy bollocks like that.

"But you can get too comfortable with someone," says Betty.

"How?" I say.

"There was this woman I used to work with. One day she said how comfortable her and her husband were in each other's company. So comfortable that when she took a bath, he often came into the bathroom, sat on the toilet and had a shit."

"Christ, that's disgusting," I say. "Did he purposely wait till she was in the bath?"

"I don't think so. He used to put a towel over his head while he did it. So he could concentrate on what he was doing."

"How could she say that in the office?"

"The strange thing was, the other women in the office didn't bat an eyelid. They were completely indifferent."

"Maybe that's the norm. Maybe we're not as close as we thought."

Madame Blavatsky

Tim has kindly set me the task to furnish you with eight facts about the phenomenon that was Madame Blavatsky. Madame Blavatsky was a real person, not to be confused with Madame Bovary who was a fictional character. But even a cursory glance at the Russian Madame's life story throws up inconsistencies and it is difficult to separate fact from fiction.

But here we go. In for a penny, in for a pound. 8 Random Facts about the great woman (at least one of which is possibly a Random Fib)...

1. Helena Blavatsky, in 1888, was the first person to use the phrase
“intelligent design” to convey her understanding of evolution. The evolution of the species was guided by an underlying purposeful intelligence in nature. So, Mr Scientist, there is no “chance” about it.

2. Madame Blavatsky was a founder of the Theosphical Society whose chief aim was to “reconcile all religions, sects and nations under a common system of ethics, based on eternal verities.” The creation, therefore, of a groovy Brotherhood of Man.

3. According to Madame Blavatsky herself, she married at 17 to a much older man, stole a horse to escape from her unhappy marriage, and remained a virgin her entire life. As a true practitioner of Theosophy should “live, if the esoteric instructions shall profit him, a life of abstinence in everything, of self-denial and strict morality, doing his duty by all men,” she seems to have done pretty well to control her sexual urges.

4. However, according to other sources, she had several extramarital affairs and even mothered a child. So did she really live a life of abstinence?

5. She claimed to have had childhood visions in the 1830s of a tall Hindu who eventually materialised in Hyde Park and became her guru and advisor. From Hyde Park, she went to Tibet where she was trained by Theosophy masters from 1868 to 1870. She spread the theosophy message around the world till her death in 1891.

6. She was also an Eastern Star Freemason, a member of the largest fraternal organisation in the world that men and women can join. The order is open to people of all monotheistic faiths, so one wonders which god she aligned herself to in order to join up.

7. One of her followers in the 1980s was Roger Taylor of Duran Duran. Roger kept an inspirational photograph (see above) of her taped to his drum kit. Simon Le Bon and John Taylor found this most amusing and wrote a 5 minute jam called Wanking Over Madame B which can be heard on the bootleg album Duran Live In Bogota.

8. In her later years she gained employment as a circus performer and seance assistant. In no way does this discredit the seriousness in which her works are held. In no way at all.

It's A Load Of Bollocks

That's it. I'm scrapping the Low GI Diet. I was so bloated this morning I was surprised nobody congratulated me on my pregnancy.

I'm going to try Prebio 7, a mixture of prebiotics and probiotics. The blurb on the packet says "Shhh...! The French Secret". Shhhit! Jolie Merde! I'll have a stomach like Ian Curtis in no time.

GI Joe, How Low Can You Go?

I never believed there was such a thing as middle aged spread. Until I went to buy some new work trousers a few weeks ago. It seems my waistline (and the waistband of the old trousers) have stretched by three inches in the past year or so.

"I'm spreading," I thought. "I've got to stop spreading NOW".

So how to cut down without feeling pangs of hunger? Not real hunger, of course. Rich, western world hunger, the feeling you get when you're used to overeating and now you've got to eat healthy portions.

My weakness isn't fat or sugar. I have a low fat, low sugar diet. My weakness is complex carbohydrates.

I can't get enough of bread and cereals.

So I was speaking to my old friend, Antony Worrall Thompson. "Wozza," I said. "How come you look so slim these days?"

Look at Wozza in the bad old days...



And Wozza now...



How did he get from being an overweight, unhappy misanthropist to a slim, happily full-of-energy-people-lover?

The Low GI Diet, that's how!

Eating slow release foods that keep you feeling fuller for longer. Throw away that Shredded Wheat, Ian Botham! Have a bowl of All Bran. Discard that wholemeal bread, Lucky Jim! Try some soya and linseed bread or a few oatcakes. Eat less, feel more satisfied and full of energy. Pour away that fruit juice! Eat real fruit. You'll be on your way to your five a day and you won't get the slumps!

That's the theory, anyway. I'm into my third day and it could be a load of bollocks but I must admit the beer I had last night gave me a sugar rush like nothing on earth. It was fucking amazing, man.

Goodbye Red Ken

Remember those early years of Thatcher? When any semblance of socialism in our national government died? So with London today.

Goodbye, Ken. I know you couldn't do much but at least I got to vote for someone I liked and who won for a few years. Now it's back to watching the others get in. Back to cold isolation.


*****


Remember those early years of Thatcher? Remember when we bought those Kid Creole albums to take us away to another place?

I'd heartily recommend Kid Creole: Going Places The August Darnell Years 1976-1983. It's a great compilation from a fantastic period for pop music. It's alright, he doesn't sing on that many of the tracks so if you don't like his voice, get it anyway.


*****


In other news, I've discovered this blog's the best place to find "green pin striped suit plenty of fish".

But I won't carp on about it.