Comedy

Limmy’s Wee Vid

I’m sure this has been posted and reposted in the last couple of days but I am sticking it on here anyway.

I’m sure he’ll get hauled over the coals for it as well. Personally, I would haul him over the coals for his backdoor assertion that Britain’s Got Talent is the kind of thing we should be encouraging in any shape or form (I may be joking with that, then again, I may not).

Anyway, this was good…

Did you spot my little joke?

The Top Step On The Odium

Having saved The Labour Party, then the UK, then the Middle-East, then the international speaking circuit and many multinationals, the bLIAR wants to come back and save sport (or be Prime Minister again, he hasn’t quite decided).

Tony Blair is to contribute to a Labour Party review of its policy on sport in the aftermath of the Olympics.

The review will look at the lessons of the 2012 Games, which begin later this month, and how to make the most of the event’s sporting and economic legacies.

…

Mr Blair, who won three elections for Labour, recently revealed he would like to return to Downing Street but acknowledged this is “not likely to happen”. He told the London Evening Standard he had “learned an immense amount” since stepping down.

Maybe he has learned an immense amount but I feel I would be on safe ground if I suggested humility and how to show contrition for war crimes weren’t included.

Christmas Spirit

One of my friends is a doctor and he told me that in Glasgow in the hospitals the done thing is that all the doctors who are Muslim, Hindu, Jewish or Sikh volunteer to work on Christmas day so that the others can get the day off and spend the day with their families, which, for a non-believer, is really what this thing is all about.

So have a nice day with your families and spare a thought for those who have to work today.

On the not-christmas-spirit side of things there are still people deciding what you can and cannot see. In case you missed it, this song was considered too dangerous for  all your pretty little ears…

Who Buys Richard Clayderman Records?

One of the worlds great mysteries solved. This is an excerpt from the incomparable Douglas Adams book Last Chance to See. He was writing about visiting China in the 80s. I imagine it is somewhat different now…

The world-famous Peace Hotel Jazz Band was out for the evening but a deputy band was playing in their place. The promise is that this is one of the only places in the world where you will still hear the music of the 30s played as it was played, where it was played. maybe the world famous combo keeps the promise but their deputies did not. They banged their way through endless repetitions of Edelweiss, Greensleeves and Auld Lang Syne, interspersed with the occasional bash at New York, New York, Chicago and I Left My Heart in San Francisco.

There are two odd things about this. First of all, this wasn’t just for the tourists. This was the music we heard everywhere in China, particularly the first three titles. On the radio, in shops, in taxis, in trains, on the great ferries that steam continually up and down the Yangtse. It was usually played by Richard Clayderman. For anyone who has ever wondered who in the world buys Richard Clayderman records – it’s the Chinese, and there are a billion of them.

The other odd thing was that the music was clearly completely foreign to them. Well, obviously it was foreign music so that’s not altogether surprising but it was as if they were playing from a phrasebook. Every extemporary flourish the trumpeter added, every extra fill on the drums were all crashingly and horribly wrong. I suppose the Indians must have felt this hearing George Harrison playing the sitar in the 60s, but then, after a brief indulgence, so did everybody else.