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BoFdate – 25th July 2007
Celebrities are supposed to be the trend setters for
impressionable, cognitively-challenged underclass. However, this week it was
the turn of Britain’s
favourite D-list celebrity couple, Jordan and Peter, to follow in the footsteps
of numb-nut parents countrywide. We can all agree that what constitutes a nice
name for your newborn child is a personal, subjective decision. We can also all
agree that chavvy names are hilarious. Jordan and Peter revealed this week that
‘Princess Tiaamii’ is the latest addition to the family. Obviously, rather than
burdening themselves with the task of selecting a name that incorporated the
connotations and undertones of a girl considered to have the qualities or
characteristics of a princess, it was just easier to put ‘Princess’ on the
form. As for the second part, we at the BoF can only assume ‘Tiaamii’ was
chosen during a drunken Scrabble match where the parents pledged to make a name
out of whatever 7 tiles they had in front of them. The girl will be thankful in
later life, as rumours persist that Jordan was all set on ‘Khyxpuq’
before sneaking a look at Peter’s little rack full of vowels. This has
supposedly inspired Carol Vorderman to set up a premium-rate phone service for
baby-naming. New parents ring up Carol and shout out ‘consonant… vowel… vowel…
consonant… vowel… and another consonant’ until something classy and exotic is
made. Jordan goes on to explain to the
nice people at OK!!!! Magazine that ‘We’ve put an accent over the first A to
make it more pathetic and two Is at the end because we’re total idiots’. She
also goes on to mention that ‘She’s going to get a tattoo on the back of her
neck with a crown and ‘Princess’ underneath’. This is presumably a traditional
regal affair, and not tacky in the slightest. It is alleged that the Queen in
fact has a butterfly and the word ‘Anne’ on her lower back, a swallow on each
hand and the words ‘Edward’ and ‘Andrew’, and a tractor on her arse with the
word ‘Charles’ underneath. Apparently the Queen Mother went for the more
traditional anchor on the forearm with ‘Our Liz’ in barely legible scrawl. Of
course, all that Jordan and her equally irresponsible contemporaries are doing
is lumbering their offspring with a life time of difficulties. When in later life
Princess Tiaamii is in the midst of
attempting to explain to the chap in the New Delhi call-centre why the
cheque for her quarterly telephone bill is late, she’ll be somewhat
inconvenienced by repeated spelling of her forenames.
Rare Queen Mother Portrait
And
speaking of somewhat inconvenienced, it’s been a bit damp in certain areas of Southern England this week. Homes flooded, livelihoods
ruined and people forced to walk for tens of minutes to find plenty of clean
water to wash their pets in. People were urged to maintain a ‘blitz spirit’
when the going got tough. Which part of panic buying, looting and mass-hysteria
was encompassed by this spirit remains unclear. Whilst the flooding is
undoubtedly a big problem for those involved, a sense of perspective does seem
to have been lost. Northerners have grown angry over the blanketed news
coverage it has received, whilst the floods in Yorkshire some weeks earlier were allotted a 90-second time slot on the national news,
just after an interesting piece on recycling initiatives in Croydon. David
Cameron has been hung drawn and quartered for visiting the idyllic paradise of Rwanda whilst
some of his constituents are forced to manage without their Range Rover for up
to a fortnight. We at The BoF did our part, but sadly our efforts to pull
together the people from Ethiopia,
Somalia and Zimbabwe for a
charity fundraising concert has failed. Citing such pathetic excuses as civil
war, famine and mass-disease we were sure to tell them they’d been through
nothing until they’d had their DVD collection ruined and had to survive on
bowser-water for a week…
BoFdate 18th July
It's been diplomatic
handbags this week as old school political tensions returned with a vengeance
to liven up the damp British summer time. The Cold War officially ended
in 1985 when Rocky Balboa pounded the evil commie ass of Ivan Drago into
submission. However, thanks to the Bond-worthy assassination of
former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko using polonium-210 and Russia's
subsequent refusal to hand over the chief suspect, Gordon Brown has seized the
opportunity to dust down those iron curtains and declare "I must break
you". The expulsion of four Russian diplomats from Britain has
left the Kremlin a little bit peeved, saying the British actions illustrate the
depth of "Russophobia" running through British politics. Happily
it was later announced that a team of expert psycho-therapists are on hand in
Downing Street getting russophobic ministers to touch a Cossack hat, drink a
gallon of vodka a day and ultimately building up to taking orders from mafia
bosses and oil barons. But still the Russians are not happy. Dmitri
Peskov, a spokesman for President Putin declared "we don't want to be
provoked into a ping-pong game, although of course the Russian side will
provide a necessary response." Whoa there! Hold back the tactical
nuclear strike, the Russians are getting out the paddles and the little clip on
net! Just as well the row is with Russia and not China or Britain wouldn't stand a chance. But perhaps the BoF's flippancy is misplaced and
Dmitri has in fact shown the way towards a new diplomatic order. Instead
of political stand offs, no fly zones, invasions and warfare, could not all
international disputes be solved with a round of good old ping pong? Could
not Brown and Putin, lathered in sweat and cheered on by their supporters,
thrash out our differences across nine feet of green plastic, four nervous
diplomats hoping Validimir can pull off a V-grip loop drive against Gordon's
flailing push-block? Such a radical move could revolutionise the nature
of politics, as the cynical and apathetic electorate are engaged by politicians
who, in addition to debating prowess and economic acumen, now also require one
of those tricksy serves the Koreans do.
I win for me! FOR ME!
Despite the cold war revival, though,
this diplomatic spat will quietly fade away, the BoF confidently predicts (as
should nuclear Armageddon break out there will be no one around to highlight
our inept reading of international politics, a positive often ignored by
anti-nuclear protesters) Because ultimately, no one knows what diplomats
actually do. Apart from live in palatial apartments and eat Ferrero
Rocher. Should Russia retaliate and boot several British
counterparts out of the country we will not take to the streets demanding that Russia be invaded forthwith, but instead marvel
that we had more than one person titting around Moscow at our expense. In fact, could not the whole affair be a conspiratorial
attempt to raise the profile of the diplomatic corp and generate some much
needed work? Our diplomat exorcising
ping pong suggestion may soon see the BoF felled by a cup of tea/uranium sugar
lump attack. You heard it here first.
Away
from political rumpuses, this week saw the unveiling of two of the fantasy
world's biggest events: The final instalment of the Harry Potter series and
David Beckham's competitive football career in America. Harry Potter
and the Deathly Hallows follows on from earlier instalments Harry Potter and
the Series of Unconnected Random Events, Harry Potter and the Superfluous
Quiddich Match and Harry Potter and the Repeatedly Inconclusive Fight with
Voldermort. Those who can't live without
their yearly fix of derivative, middle class jolly hockey wands crap have
started a "Save Harry Campaign" and pre-orders of the book are well
into the millions. Contrasted with the
lacklustre turnout for Beckham's first 'sitting in the stands with an ice pack
on the ankle appearance' with LA Galaxy, the latest eruption of
Pottermania leads the BoF to suggest that the soccer giants should have tried
to sign the poncy sorcerer himself. Indeed,
having a team of wizards, three headed dogs and an owl up front would increase
the dignity of Major League Soccer no end.
BoFdate – 12th July 2007
When it comes to raising awareness on the big issues, the
powers that be seem to have run out of ideas. Rarely do they progress past the
‘big syndicated rock-concert’ option. Last week end it was Live Earth - 150
acts in 7 continents ensuring that billions of people knew about the dangers of
global warming. Of course, there can be no more appropriate way of promoting
green issues than flying in a plethora of overpaid, under-brained warblers and
have them spew out a mixture of classic and contemporary shite, interspliced
with public address notices on how to recycle bottle tops and turn off light
switches. We at the BoF despise being patronised, and the prospect of being
told to take our empties to the bottle bank by an ‘entertainer’ with a private
jet kind of sets our teeth on edge. What’s next? Keith Richards telling us how
to apply the green cross code? Perhaps Kylie can run a high-profile campaign on
Tetra-Pak opening for the elderly. Maybe Cliff Richard can pop round to help
the kids with their shoelaces…The message about global warming is an important
one and should not be ignored, yet the irony of the way in which Live Earth
delivered its message was surely lost on only the few. Why, we were only
celebrating the death of Princess Di a couple of weeks ago. Fat Elton and chums
wheeled out again for another bit of shameless self-promotion, singing an
uninspiring ditty to flog a few albums. The New Wembley has already seen more
charity bullshit than justgiving .com. Surely its time for other inappropriate
events to raise awareness of today’s burning issues. Charity bomb-defusing to
highlight the issues of stress in the workplace; sponsored ass-grabbing in aid
of victims of sexual-harassment; celebrity pie-eating contests to raise money
for famine victims…
Cows are farting and belching us to apocalyptic doom, the
selfish bovine bastards. The huge amount of methane that Ermintrude and pals
produce each year is spurring on climate change. The government has pledged to
treat the problem seriously, investigating the possibility of mixing Rennies
with cattle feed. Ian Botham has been hired to run a specialist team of
‘burn-off’ experts, seemingly based on his alleged experience of lighting
farts. Vegetarians are, quite naturally,
overjoyed. It’s yet another victory for the ‘it’s unnatural and I told you so,
if I had the energy I’d plant one on you for the sake of the animals’ crew. In
an ironic week, it’s another brilliant highlight: We bred these animals for
food. And now they’re farting us to death. Hmm, sounds like the tag-line from
Jean Claude Van Damme’s latest effort.
And continuing the animal theme, the BBC reports that, as if
your average Basra resident didn’t have enough going on, there’s a plague of man-eating beasts on
the loose. “My husband hurried to shoot it but it was as swift as a deer…It is
the size of a dog but his head is like a monkey…It tore the cow up piece by
piece…I tried to shoot it with my gun but it ran away into the orchards…”. What
is this horrific beast? Some kind of mythical half-man, half-griffin perhaps,
or escaped radioactive gorillas? No, the beast of Basra Moor is a badger. And what’s
more, British troops are being blamed for their introduction, leading a UK military
spokesman to declare that “We can categorically state that we have not released
man-eating badgers into the area”. He then went on to accuse North Korean and Iran of being
behind the badger bother. In a low tone. So only the BoF heard…
BofDate – July 4th 2007
The more observant among you may have noticed of late a
slight dip in the regularity of the BoFdate.
Well, we at the BoF can only offer our most insincere apologies. Even powerful multi media moguls like ourselves
are entitled to a break. Yes, it's summer holiday
time in Britain and that can only mean two things: Rain
and terrorists. To begin with the Koran
clutching latter, this week has seen a spate of attempted attacks around the country.
Threat levels were raised to their highest as failed car bombings closed
airports and sealed off sections of major cities. So widespread was the chaos that 1980s disco queens
The Weather Girls considered reforming especially to record "It's Raining
Terrorists". TV news channels tried
to calm the situation by broadcasting blanket coverage of flaming vehicles, gun
toting police and queues of stressed, harassed people trying to get in to and
out of airports.
Yet looking beyond the obvious horror of what could have happened, should we
not feel just that little bit comforted by the completely amateurish approach
to international terrorism? More
Keystone Cops than 24? The jeep at Glasgow Airport got stuck in the doors of the
entrance. Suspicions were aroused in London when a Mercedes was driven erratically into bins. Another explosive laden car was parked on
double yellow lines. TV shows and news coverage depict a world of fiendishly intelligent
terrorists armed with mutated strains of deadly bacteria and nuclear
devices. So far the reality has been gas
cylinders and nails. Nasty and limb displacing enough, but not the heights of
terror we expect via reports or fictional depictions of the feared Muslim extremists.
We are constantly remained of the spectre of al qaeda with it's worldwide
network of terror cells, evil genius at the helm ready to strike down the
foundations of western society. And when
this onslaught is loosed upon Britain it's carried out by disgruntled NHS employees driving cars full of things found
in garages. Badly. Clearly there is an urgent need for better
terrorist driving instruction. An
'Allah's School of Motoring' where eager holy warriors can learn to curb their erratic
passions for eliminating infidels and drive sensibly in accordance with the
highway code. "Section 1.6 Do not park
your explosive laden car on double yellow lines and always pay the congestion charge.
3.7 When manoeuvring in to the doors of international airports at speed make
sure they are wide enough for your vehicle. 6.7 Remember to ignite your bomb after exiting your vehicle. " Extremists would be able to achieve that
perfect parallel park, one foot off of the curb of the American Embassy and
sail through the "Show me, tell me" section of the test, answering
confidently questions such as "where is the break fluid?",
"where is the coolant?", "where is the detonator? Allah's School of Motoring,
where more gas doesn't just mean go faster!"
While London and Glasgow were paralysed by the terrorist threat, poor old Wimbledon was incapacitated by the unseasonably heavy rain. Fixture pile up resulted in the prospect of
fifteen matches being played simultaneously on one court while the umpire holds
a big umbrella. Despite specialists in climate change having predicted wetter
summers for Britain for
several years now Wimbledon is yet to take
decisive action. One obvious solution
would be to award the next 27 tournaments, including the doubles and women's, to Roger Federer without all this ball
hitting, cover pulling fuss. But those
pesky sport purists seem to disagree with that one. Surely the only sensible option is to detach SW19
from the earth, fill it with helium and fly it above the clouds. Play would be
uninterrupted and, except for the occasional line call being delivered in Alvin and the Chipmunk-esque
tones, the tournament would run smoothly.
Better to do that than some other ludicrous solution like, I don't know,
building a roof? However, intelligence reports
of an "Allah's School of Aviation" remain
a worrying threat to the airborne tennis championships. A man known only by the
code name "Dastardly" is currently training impressionable young
Muslims to shoot at a pigeon using a huge catapult attached to a plane with
eight wings. All MI5 reports so far
indicate that the pigeon has escaped unscathed and the planes have flown into
the side of a barn. The public are asked
to remain vigilant
Have you seen this man?
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