Frontline Al-Qaeda suspects
looking at the 15:05 from Euston

Trainspotters are now considered the top terrorist threat – what with their writing down of numbers of trains and making notes of how many wheels the engine has – and taking photographs of stations – and keeping the anorak business in – er – business – and supporting railway buffets.

Johnny Jobsworth (Rail Division) has banned train spotters from some stations and is demanding that all train spotters are registered before they flash their – notebooks. As telling the times of trains could be useful to a terrorist organisation. However we British have already beaten this threat as no one can predict when a particular train is going to arrive or leave.

Following the logic that train spotters are subversives – it suggests anyone sitting in a station buffet – looking out of the window – and – er drinking more than one cup of coffee – could be considered suspicious – I mean – have you ever tasted the coffee from one of these places.

So bin Laden – we know your plot – the total destruction of the British railway system – so were you behind the placing of the wrong kind of leaves on the line? We need to know.

Or could it be that all the companies running the railways are in fact Al Qaeda fronts? – sapping the British morale – again we should be told.

The above advertisement was banned for being in bad taste. Apparently we can’t had tasteful corpses advertising Channel Four’s new series ’6 Foot Under’ – however – we can see lots of really tasteless stuff in the tabloids day after day after day – in fact – there is quite a lot of sleaze on Channel Four – which is far, far worse – but only very late at night – so no wonder I’m always feeling tired.

Hi George, Hi Tony

Hey Donald get me a coffee – white – no sugar – there’s a good boy.

Well erm – we’ve looked into the matter and – erm – the actual translation was ‘Weapons of Moss Destruction’ – erm – and they are selling packets of the stuff at the ‘Abdul Al -Tichmarsh – Mother of All Gardening Center’ – 20 miles south of Baghdad on the main Basra road.

Apparently Saddam liked his lawns.

Our intelligence services have also suggested that in future if you want to identify dangerous weapons – that you ought to sell the chemicals and the germ containers with larger ‘Made in the US’ and ‘Made in the UK’ stickers on.

Thank you Donald – oh look – you’ve spilt some of the coffee in the saucer – get a napkin please -you’ll have to try harder – if you want to hold on to your new job.

bloody reality shows

You can’t make a feel good movie and more ‘feel gooder’ than Mostly Martha. Obsessive gourmet chef, Martha. has her world turned upside down when she has to take care of newly orphaned niece Lina. This pressure in turn means that she has to let a handsome Italian chef disrupt first her extremely well run kitchen and then her life.

Lina makes her life hell – by refusing to eat – and causing trouble at school – and Italian chefs are well – Italian – which means cheerful – noisy – happy – which clearly has an effect on the kitchen staff – which are mostly female – and of course a little less organised. Soon Martha is having child problems and feeling very threatened at work.

What makes this film extremely good is the charm of the direction, brilliant casting, the attention to detail and some of the side issues. I particularly liked Martha’s sessions with a psychotherapist – ordered by her boss – where she has difficulty talking about anything but food – and – clearly driving him to distraction.

Go and see.

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growing a beard.

Well if Sean Connery can grow one – why can’t I?

What do you mean – some things work for Sean Connery – won’t work for me?

So you’re suggesting that I’m growing a beard to compensate for growing thin on top?

Of course I am – what else?

After all I was 21 when Woodstock happened

erm – no – I wasn’t there – but hair is important to my generation.

It was a nice pleasant morning. I phoned my mother to see how she was getting on.

Stupidly I mentioned my daughter who was at uni – was giving up her flat and coming home .

She got thrown out as she was too untidy – you didn’t teach her to clear up – she should have had more discipline when she was young – etc – etc – etc.

Won’t she have to travel into the centre of London? Well she’ll get blown blown up – you’ve seen what they’ve done with the concrete blocks outside parliament – and can’t you see that Tony Blair is frightened – you see the way he jumps into his car outside Downing Street – he’s scared etc – etc – etc.

What do you mean she’s only got one exam and then’s she finished until next October – she’s bunking off – don’t they expect students to study any more – they should be doing more work – university makes students soft – what work will she do when she’s finished? etc -etc -etc.

She drinks too much – I’ve seen it on television – girls are worse than boys – girls wouldn’t behave like that when i was a girl – she’ll get into trouble – she’ll get pregnant – etc – etc -etc.

Then she wishes me well.

Arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The sun goes out and it starts to rain.

So there I was – naked to the waist – top down you’ll be glad to hear – with – both my trouser legs rolled up above the knees – holding a bell. So now I know what its like to be a freemason.

On my shoulder were 3 pins – on my wrist one – and on my legs around six. Told to clear my mind of everything – to get cool karma – I thought about ”               “.
Not too difficult.

Then panic – I could see legs under the curtain – legs I didn’t recognise – the curtain parted and in came a therapist. She stole my tray of needles. Then this started me thinking – karma – was slipping.

Erm – how can you play darts with an acupuncturist. I mean they stick needles in my leg to cure my shoulder.

So – you’ve just scored two on the board.

No – the two is really triple twenty.

You cannot win against them.

Also in America where you punch holes in cards to remove chards. Well does an acupuncturist mean – who are they targeting – do they mean the person they punched holes for – or – are they curing the political system – something that really needs doing – by putting their vote in one place – but meaning someone else. An ancient Chinese bloke living near the top of a mountain would know.

‘Welcome to Collinwood” is like a Ealing Comedy directed by the Coen brothers. It is a gentle caper film set – very much on the wrong side of the tracks – in the fifties – in the district of Collinwood – which could be called – ‘The Beirut of Cleveland’.

The first part of the film shows the setting up of a perfect robbery – in local parlance a ‘Bellini’ – the robbery of a pawnbroker’s safe through a wall – that a builder had fixed – so that anyone could break through it easily. The nice thing about the robbery was that it was from an empty apartment.

But it quickly goes all wrong – as the search for a “Mullinski” – a person willing to serve time in prision for money – in order to get the man who knows the details of the ‘Bellini’ out. Soon a whole rag bag of likable ‘riff raff’ get in on the act. This early part of the film is quite quirky with quite a few twists and development of character – such as the guy reduced to painting women on beer glasses to support his baby – as the mother is in jail – for not paying a $1,000 fine.

I feel the cameo – by George Clooney – of the crippled safe breaker – was not necessary – but probably had to be in to help market the film. The scenes around him slowed the development of the film a little.

The robbery was pure farce – one of the funniest sequences I have seen – and it got roars of laughter from the audience. It will spoil the film to tell you what happens – but one scene has someone high as a kite on drugs crossing a very high pipe section to break into a roof on the next building and of course – another of the thieves – is petrified of heights.

The film has a strong ‘feel good’ ending. Do they succeed? – well spend your money and find out – don’t get anyone to tell you the plot – it will spoil it for you – its an excellent film.

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