Oooooh, it’s a tough choice this week; is it…

a) Atrocious leather-kicking multi-millionaire chav thug with the IQ of a rock sleeps with money-hungry tart allowing the tabloids to manipulate half the country into paroxysms of hypocritical moral outrage?

b)  Ghastly barking transsexual-looking she-chav with huge lumps of silly putty bizarrely sewn into her skin cynically marries money-hungry lunk-head to gain maximum publicity for her ex-husband business partner who just happens to be releasing a book on the same day?

Or is it…

c) Evil manipulative bastard with weird centre-parting singlehandedly responsible for the death of music figures out that a neat way to increase his public standing and get some lovely free(ish) publicity for him, Beryl Coles and his other “star” proteges, would be to subject everyone to a shit-ridden saccharine version of a lyrically-inappropriate REM song about suicide which, having previously had a serviceable melody, is now punctuated by said celebri-twats trying to outdo each other by fitting in as many unnecessary extra notes as possible, climaxing with Mariah “I’m pretending I” Care-y bracing herself, gurning and yodelling “Eeeeoooowwwweeveryyyboooowooodyyy Huaaaaoooooeeeeeuuurrrts” at the top of her incredibly fucking annoying squeaky voice.

Fairly evidently, it’s a) and b) - I give quite a big shit about c) - any high-profile “charidee” single always gets me contemplating. Whilst the bottom line is that the money raised will do some good on the ground in Haiti, it’s arguable that the publicity garnered by Cowell and his acolytes in aid of the furtherance of their crappy careers is worth far, far more (to them alone, obviously. Because I can’t see Cowell giving any of the nicely-boosted profits from his subsequent single - which will reportedly be a reworking of “The Girl is Mine” performed by SuBo and the reanimated corpse of Michael Jackson* - to charities in Haiti or anywhere else.)

Furthermore, the showbizification of disaster-relief is such a well-worn path now that it risks beguiling people into the mistaken belief that they just need to buy the single and everything’ll be OK. TM envisaged the typical consumer’s purchasing decision process thus** -

“I’m feeling beneficent today … I know, I’ll buy that Cowell / REM song from iTunes to help the people in Haiti…. ooh, look The Hills … OMG I can’t believe Heidi said that to LC … and hello! - when is she going to get rid of Spencer? Sorry, where was I? Oh yeah, Haiti. It’s, like, terrible what’s happened out there and stuff?… maybe I should assuage the nascent sense of guilt that I think I should be feeling… but how? Oh yeah! The Cowell single … click click, done - that should make everything OK. Now where’s the remote, I LOVE The Hills…”

So personally, I won’t be buying “Everybody Hurts”. I may or may not give some money via another conduit, but I figure that if my elected representatives have £20 billion of my money to spunk on Trident and another £5 billion to jazz-wank on a ludicrous idea like identity cards (next to a mere £20 million so far allocated to Haiti), my efforts would probably be better spent lobbying them to up the foreign aid budget (although I’ll almost certainly end up not doing that either).

Still, better callous than Cowell-ous.

(* - No it won’t.)
(** - Quite possibly whilst watching “The Hills”.)

The “No! For God’s sake! Too soon! Oh, the humanity!” deeply inappropriate lookey-likey of the week:

Jigsaw Killer Stephen Marshall:

… and wooden actor Neil Morrissey:

So, Tony Blair is giving his long-awaited evidence to the Chilcot enquiry about the lead-up to the Iraq war today - I’ve just finished listening to the morning session and, pretty much as expected, Teflon Tony is giving a robust account of himself in the face of some technically indepth, if not always particularly awkward, questioning.

What saddens me is the unholy alliance of screechers on either side accompanying this important event; on the one hand, you have the extreme end of the anti-war protestors imagining every possible US / UK blood-for-oil conspiracy in the world and calling Blair names like “war criminal”. Now I’m no fan of war, and there are serious questions to ask about the role of the “special relationship” in the decisions which were taken - but a war criminal? War criminals are people like Josef Mengele or Adolf Eichmann, who were personally responsible for the cruellest acts imaginible under the protective cloak of warfare. To use a highly-charged term so loosely and disproportionately and apply it to a prime minister who (whether you agree with it or not) did nothing more than make a difficult decision is demeaning to the phrase “war criminal”, and by extension massively insults the victims of history’s truly evil men.

And, on the other side, you have yer usual Murdoch / Mail mob; it doesn’t matter so much what these people really think about the Iraq war and its consequences, because they’re only ever interested in hurling childish insults at the Labour government. Yet and at the same time, they’re the types who are always caterwauling about our “brave boys” and their lack of equipment (etc). Now I don’t know for sure, but I suspect that pretty much every member of the armed forces who has served in Iraq or Afghanistan would agree that the Army’s (and the UK’s) interests would be much better served by a public which understood, or at least took an active interest in, what is going on on the ground, what has been achieved, and what the aims of our presence are, than by the current incessant hysterical politically-motivated name-calling stoked up by a shameless gutter press, which profits by, and delights in, feeding ignorance.

And me? I think that some very serious mistakes were made, and I’m certainly not absolving Tony Blair - but the situations in both Iraq and Afghanistan were and remain extremely complicated, and call for very careful consideration - not pre-school posturing. As I said, I’m no fan of war or killing, but there are several legitimate reasons for Western countries to be involved in these two and indeed many other countries around the world; mostly to do with cleaning up messes which we left in the first place.

Went to Calais yesterday for a liberal dip in the EU’s wine lake, and can’t resist a quick chest-puff:

A 75cl bottle of Banrock Station’s quality mega-selling environmentally-friendly Shiraz Mataro? £5.69

Being tight enough to cross the Channel to pick up 15 x 3 litre boxes of the self-same wine at a ludicrous 22.36%* of the UK RRP? Priceless.

(* - Discounting the £19 crossing fee. And future bills for liver treatment.)

Apologies to all regulars for the rather indimidating “403 - FORBIDDEN!!!” sign which has recently been greeting them on their attempts to visit VP. Of course, what I should really be apologising for is a) the abysmal lack of action hereon recently, and b) the fact that one of the aforementioned regulars actually had to bring the outage to my attention before I (or rather, of course, TM) did anything about it. The culprit, if you’re interested, was our hosting company, who are amusingly named “asmallorange”: “aridiculouslystupidjauntynameredolentofthefirstwaveofthedotcom boomwhichmakesyouwonderhowonearththey’restillinbusiness” more like.

Truth is, there’s not an awful lot going on down here just at the moment - but I’m afraid that’s not going to stop me posting a fairly exhaustive precis of my table-tennis season so far in the near future. In the meantime, I’ll leave you with TM’s very amusing appraisal of the new Apple iTab, or whatever it’s called, which was launched by Steve “Big” Jobs earlier today. (I’m sure I’d find it even more amusing if I weren’t far too old to have any idea how the iPad works or what it’s supposed to do.)

“I think it looks like a massive iPhone and that comments like “… it just feeeels right to hold the internet in your hands” make me want to vomit. I’m sure millions of Cult of Apple members of rushing out to buy one to then circle jerk with their friends about how great it is / how better Apple is that Microsoft / and how great / cool they are by virtue of ownership. Well done. You had $499. Now you’ve spent it. So yes, that makes you immeasurably better than me and everyone else who doesn’t have an iPad.”

A new and overdue TTOTDOWOHOHCBATCI - the wonderful “Hallelujah” by the equally wonderful Prefab Sprout. The Sprouts are one of those funny little ’80s bands cursed with an irredeemably stupid name (like another favourite of mine, “It Bites”) who lurk in the back of the consciousness, and whose output you’re probably not aware of, barring the odd hot dog or jumping frog.

They were, though, for two albums at least, right at the top of the pop tree - 1985’s “Steve McQueen” (known in the States as “Two Wheels Good” because the actor’s estate objected) often rivals The Smiths in the “best album ever” stakes amongst yer slightly twee romantic indie-ish types. The whole album’s well worth an investment, but “Hallelujah” is my standout track - special kudos for Wendy Smith’s ethereal vocals, the impossible-to-follow chord sequence, and the use of what I believe to be a muted French Horn halfway through…

Gnarled Welsh radio attack-dog who’s started so he’ll finish:

… and incident-oblivious gnarled French tactical doge who usually starts well, but will never finish above fourth:

Incidentally, I’ve always raised a dry smile at the synergy between the names “Arsenal” and “Arsene”; it’s as if Darlington were managed by Alastair Darling, or Scunthorpe were managed by Richard Littlejohn…

1989 - reeling from the departure of charismatic drunken giant Fish, Marillion prepare to face the ’90s with a new, more socially aware agenda. The title track of their album “Seasons End” deals with climate change (as it was understood by progressive rock bands at the time), and begins thus:

“Getting close to seasons end / I heard somebody say
That it might never snow again
In England

Snow flakes in a new-born fist / Sledging on a hill
Are these things we’ll never see
In England.”

Lyricist John Helmer is apparently thinking of applying for Michael Fish’s old job…

… or “COSPJs”, as all the cool kids are already calling them.

Q - What song would Gary Numan have written if he’d been Al Gore?
A - “Are Cars Electric?”

Q - What food would you serve at a Jamaican wake?
A - Rest an’ peas.

Final episode of “Gavin and Stacey” last night - as always with these things, there were positives and negatives. We’ll start with the latter:

a) - the winding up of the storyline was crap beyond belief. Despite a low sperm count diagnosed only one episode previously, Gavin mysteriously managed to get Stacey pregnant and they all lived happily ever after. And having shown no inclination to do so whatsoever, Nessa decided on the spur of the moment that maybe she would marry Smithy after all. And, yes, they all lived happily ever after. Ironically playing “Suddenly” by Angry Anderson as background music doesn’t gloss over the fact that it was worse than an episode of “Neighbours”.

b) - for something listed as a “comedy”, it was about as funny as a back spasm*. However, to be fair, “Gavin and Stacey” was never anything more than a silly twee thing which set out with very low expectations but warmed the heart of the nation - trying to wring three series’ worth of comedy out of things like Welsh accents and the eating habits of fat men is always going to have a limited shelf-life, which is why it became essentially a (crap) soap opera by the end.

On the plus side, at least the creators had the sense to end it here rather than letting the BBC convince them to scrape the last iota of gunk out of a fairly small barrel…

(* - I’m also currently wading through the DVD release of “Three of a Kind”, an early ’80s sketch show which launched the careers of Tracey Ullman and Lenny Henry, and it’s about as funny as having your spine surgically removed without anaesthetic.)