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BoFdate 29th March 2007
Usually the BoFdate would endeavour to bring you some witty
musings on national or international issues from the past 7 days. However, this
week it’s all too depressing. You can’t switch on the TV, open a newspaper or
intercept Martian transmissions without being confronted with morale-draining
unpleasantness. There are only so many Iranian diplomatic crises and inner-city
stabbings that one can take. At times like these, when the proper news serves
up nothing but woe, there’s only one thing for it and that’s head for the
sanctity of local news utopia. Whenever it all gets too much, its good practice
to immerse yourself in the patheticness of local news. Because the world is
filled with people with petty problems who aren’t going to let silly things
like global catastrophes reaffirm their distorted views on what’s important.
Local news has many levels to it, and if escapism is to be gained, it’s vital
that you enter at the correct tier. At the very top there’s the local daily
paper, usually called ‘The Gazette’ or ‘The Chronicle’ or ‘The Standard’ or
something like that. They’re filled with stories about local fly tipping and
local drunkenness with the odd local stabbing thrown in. In other words,
they’re like national news stories only the chances of you being able to say
‘Hey, you see that lad who nutted that ex-footballers daughter? I went to
school with him’ are greatly increased. This is not the kind of news in which
you can submerge yourself to relieve tension. For that you need to sink a level
lower on the sliding-scale of newsness: the local weekly paper. Almost
immediately you can feel the stress ebbing away with ‘headlines’ such as:
‘Angry girlfriend threw ornament at caravan’…’man decided to buy cigarettes
after drinking wine’…’woman drove over limit in pyjamas’. This is the level of
involvement you look for – where you can have a good laugh at the stupidity of
other and the banality of existence without seeing pictures of burned orphans
and beaten grannies. A word of caution however: do not be tempted to head
further down the aforementioned sliding-scale of newsness. All you will find is
pain, in the form of the neighbourhood watch (or similar) newsletter. Written
by someone who is unable to use the spellchecker with an all-consuming love for
clipart, it’s sure to send the blood pressure soaring again. The only thing
lower than that is the family Christmas newsletter. You know the one – it tells
you all about where people you barely know went on holiday and every other
sentence ends in eight exclamation marks!!!!!!!! Know your limits. When awfulness on a nation al scale gets
you down, go looking for local news. But be sure to stop at the level that has
stories about pigeon Olympiads. Because that’s where peace can be found.
In one bit of news that didn’t fall under the category of
‘hope-crushing’ (unless you feel strongly about vitamin C), Ribena have fallen
foul of the Commerce Commission in New Zealand for claiming that their drink
contains ‘4 times as much vitamin C as oranges’. Alas, it does not. In their
defence, Ribena claimed they were being victimised. They put forward the
allegations that Irn-Bru was not made from girders and that Smarties didn’t
always have the answer.
And Steve McClaren relieves the threat of an unceremonious
sacking as his England side
thump the masters of global football, Andorra, by 3 (count ‘em!) goals to
nil. Step up now the England cricket team. There’s a void to be filled lads: a crushing defeat to the Irish
if you please…
BoFdate 22nd March 2007
Andrew Flintoff’s timing could not have been worse. He chose
to participate in late-night nautical high jinks just as the government stepped
up its high-profile campaign to highlight the dangers of pedalos. It all began
on the 7th August
2003; a pedalo in Lanzarote became self aware, ate a family of 4
from Doncaster and slipped below the waters
surface to live with the mer-people. Then there were the two teenage lads from
the Isle of Wight who were on the verge of a Guinness
Book Of Records entry by getting their pedalo up to 88mph on open seas – only
to accidentally transport themselves back in time and get eaten by
Pterodactyls. Despite these and other high-profile pedalo catastrophes, the
international community didn’t really begin to take notice until the government
of St. Kitts recorded an 800% increase in seafront ram-raidings that utilized
the pedalo as a deadly weapon. Something needed to be done: so step forward Mr.
Flintoff – a high profile scalp via which to warn others of the gross
dangers…For those of you not viewing The BoF with the aid of a helper or in the
public library it does not need to be revealed that the above is merely a
sarcastic rant aimed at the over-the-top treatment of poor old Freddie. So he
got lashed and came over all Captain Birdseye. What’s the problem? Cricketer’s
civil behaviour on the field must surely account for some allowances to be made
off it. After all, this is the sport that upholds gentlemanly conduct, where
participants respect officials, that breaks for tea for God’s sake. This is the
same game that allows the rotund to participate and indeed excel. Even Flintoff
reputedly once weighed in at a pie-threatening 19 stone. The whole incident
really isn’t as serious as all that is it? It wasn’t the eve of a big game and
Freddie’s commitment on the field is not in question. And it wasn’t as if he
was caught roasting some teenage girl and videoing it on his mobile phone (We
at the BoF are led to believe that Sunderland footballers have the monopoly on that pastime). As a former sports personality
of the year, surely it’s important not to drain the personality out of Andrew
Flintoff? Otherwise they’ll have to officially change the name of that whole
competition to ‘British Sportsperson Who Didn’t Capitulate Quite As Badly As
The Others Of The Year’
Captain Flintoff
Budget time again! And that means its time for the
opposition parties to scoff at the efforts of the chap at No. 11 Downing
Street. Scoffer In Chief this year is George Osborne, shadow chancellor. One can’t
fail but be envious of that title: surely the most sinister-sounding political
moniker. The ‘shadow chancellor’ should sit atop a throne of skulls, directing
an evil (possibly robotic) army of badgers. But alas, Mr. Osborne has no army of
small, nocturnal carnivorous mammals with short legs and long-clawed toes. He
has only a pathetic whinge about Labour stealing their best ideas about
corporation tax.
This week saw a glass skywalk over the Grand
Canyon open. It hangs some 4,000 feet above the canyon floor and
can sustain 800 people, 100mph gusts and an earthquake measuring 8.0 on the
Richter scale (or one American tourist with wind).
BoFdate – 15th March 2007
It’s not difficult to find
reasons for total despair in contemporary society, but once in a while there’s
a tale of the unexpected that wallows even lower in the depths of depravity.
Following on nicely from last week’s tirade about phone-in charlatans, the
story rumbles on. We all secretly suspected that Richard and Judy were total
bastards, but Blue Peter? The British institution? With the badges and washing
up liquid bottles and everything? No…surely not them…that would mean there’s
nothing pure left. Anthea Turner will be spinning in her grave. But yes, the
producers of BP decided that, rather than face the global shaming that
accompanies admitting technical failure, they’d get a small child to lie on
national TV instead. Because that’s much better, and an eminently sensible
decision that’s bound never to come back to haunt them. Is this just the
beginning of the Blue Peter revelations? Perhaps it’s just the first admission
in a long list. Maybe the ‘ones they prepared earlier’ were in fact constructed
by NASA using Titanium and ‘No-More-Nails’, which would explain why your
version looked so pathetic in comparison. Could it be that when John Noakes and
Peter Purves supposedly watched the elderly zookeeper go sliding through that puddle
of elephant piss, it was merely CGI from the people that brought you ‘Godzilla
vs. The Sea Monster’? In fact, could it be that the infamous Blue Peter badge
is a tracking device launched by the crappy confectionary firm Haribo to
monitor kiddies eating habits. So many questions, and who can say for sure now
what the truth is…?
Aghghhghghgh…it’s all going
green. It’s the hot potato. It’s the buzzword. It’s the fourth colour of the
rainbow. Green issues are here to stay (until they’re not fashionable vote
winners) and we’ve all got to do our part. We at the BoF notice that
increasingly large numbers of the general public are taking advice to heart:
saving water and energy by neglecting personal hygiene. But there’s more to
being environmentally friendly than not washing and using ugly light bulbs.
Apparently if we pay more tax, that will help. Perhaps people could consider
not breathing, or simply moving to Saturn. Maybe we could offer Jeremy Clarkson
up as a sacrifice, in an attempt to appease Hedorah, the God of smog. Or maybe
we could just insulate our lofts and recycle, stop using the standby button and
club any cardigan-clad moron that says ‘this global warming things just a
conspiracy invented by the government to raise taxes’.
A sacrifice to the God of Smog
As the Cricket World Cup is
underway, spare a thought for the hundreds of reporters stuck in the sweltering
tropical heat with only a Cornetto and a Pina Colada for company. It must be a
tough assignment, sometimes forced to watch two cricket matches in a day whilst
surviving in a tropical paradise. But you have to take the rough with the
smooth, and it looks increasingly likely that things will take a turn for the
rugged when the same reporters are traipsing off to the Commonwealth games in Glasgow in 2014. We hear
it rarely rains and the deep-fried Cornettos are to die for…
BofDate – 8th
March 2007
The more pessimistic ones amongst us have long-since thought
that entering phone-in competitions was akin to pissing your hard earned wedge
straight down the drain, and now we all know for sure. ITV this week suspended
premium-rate phone-in competitions in the wake of the Richard and Judy ‘You Pay,
We Laugh, You Moron’
debacle and the BBC’s Saturday Kitchen competition which could only be won by
those members of the public with a time machine. What narks The BoF most about
this set of shady shenanigans is the fact that it’s totally unnecessary. These
phone-ins already prey on two of humankind’s more prominent features: greed and
stupidity. There is simply no need for further exploitation of the unemployable
and holders of double-figure IQs. For those uninitiated with the late-night
bilge that is the phone-in marathon, further explanation is required. In
addition to the various prime-time shows that offer the chance to win luxury
goods for a mere £1 plus standard text costs, there are hours upon hours of TV
time dedicated to such things in the middle of the night. This offers a continuous
stream of opportunities for those lonely souls still awake come the witching
hour. Its fair to say that in addition to the insomniacs, the pay-per-view porn
ponderers and the socially unacceptable, such programmes are aimed at a
specific target: the ‘just home from the pub and steamin’ drunk’ demographic.
Lured in with ambiguous questions such as ‘which of the following power tools
would you expect a clothed baboon to carry in his briefcase’, Mr ‘Off His Face’
becomes Mr ‘On The Phone’ before you can say ‘mehhh…thisss iss juzzzt so
eeeaasy…that moneyz in the bag…bleeughgh’. However, when, at the 37th
attempt, Pete Pie-Eyed is still greeted by the cheery message ‘Sorry, you’ve
not made it through this time’ and relieved of another 75p, it finally dawns
that it may not be the prize Valhalla that it
first appeared. Its easy to blame ITV et al for separating the desperate from
their readies, but as ever the real blame can be spread evenly over the whole
of society like a farmer fertilising his field. We want it all, we want it now,
we’re not going to work for it you tosser and what’s more we sure as hell don’t
want to move from the sofa to get it.
Brace yourself for a barrage of pictures showing Naomi
Campbell mopping floors later this month. Rumour has it that Naomi needed to be
told what a mop looked like, having never encountered the implement or indeed
the task of mopping. ‘A long thin stick with a bushy bit at one end’ came the
reply. The sanitation company responsible for supervising Ms Campbell’s mopping
asked for her vital statistics for uniform fitting and security purposes. ‘A
long thin stick with a bushy bit at one end’ came the reply…
Mop Campbell
Tesco’s this week referred to the Big British Rail Book Of
Apologising when admitting it unwittingly sold silicon-laced fuel to customers
at its petrol stations. Never a company to miss a marketing-opportunity they
dived straight in with offers of refunded repair bills. This is a dangerous
precedent to set and could open the floodgates for the compensation-made
British public. I know of more than one bicycle repair bill that can be traced
all the way back to the chafing caused by Tesco Value Underpants…
BoFdate –
1st March 2007
The UN Security Council has come under some scrutiny recently
due to its underwhelming methods of dealing with nuclear crises. Coincidently
we at The BoF like to think they do all their research at the local library, by
grabbing the nearest apathetic library assistant and asking ‘If they’ve got
anything in their Iranian section on nuclear enrichment’. What has been mooted
once again in the past few days is the inclusion of more permanent member
states on the Council, as other nations feel like they’re missing out big time
on high-profile paper shuffling. Brazil, renowned world wide for
their nuts and pubic hairstyles, are amongst the nations clamouring to get in
on the action. The temptation must surely be to let them, if they can survive a
12-month period of initiation during which they have to change their national
flag to a picture of Keith Harris and Orville and adopt ‘The Chipmunk Song’ as
their national anthem. However, surely the fairer way to decide on new
permanent member states would be by way of an international lottery. Imagine if
you will the voice of the balls presiding over the following:
“Good evening and welcome to the first ever UN Security
Council lottery. Tonight we’ll be using ‘Mussolini’ and set of balls number 4.
We’ll just wait for Noel Edmonds to press the button and we’re away…and first out its Tonga! Last seen 13 draws ago,
they’ll be sure to put their experience of accepting a Tortoise from Captain
Cook to good use on the Council…"
Brazil meets the UN halfway
Lotteries have been in the news elsewhere this week. In Brighton and Hove the
council have decided to dish out school places via lottery. Cue much
disgruntlement as this means that little Jimmy may have to travel 5 miles
across town to be schooled. Even worse, when he gets there he might have to sit
next to someone from the council estate. Who knows what will come next in the
lotteryesque society we seem to be living in. Places at local NHS dentists
allotted via scratch-cards? Pensioners offered ‘lucky dips’ on hip replacements?
What do you mean that already happens.
And on a final lottery related note, Colin Jackson this week
claimed it would take a miracle for Britain to win a track and field
gold medal at the 2012 games. It would appear that in Great Britain, a country desperately
lacking in fields and tracks, £9 billion can’t even buy you some optimism these
days.
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