Asil Nadir was in court today; the judge specified that he would charged with theft, and complicity in the cricket spot-fixing scandal. Nadir complained; “But the spot-fixing scandal’s got nothing to do with me!” - and the judge looked at his notes and replied, “Oh, sorry, my mistake; that’s next week’s trial. On spot-fixing, you’re in the clear Asil…”

So* Bono turns up at the recording sessions for “Do They Know It’s Christmas“; on the first night, he eats some dodgy undercooked chicken and cops a dose of salmonella**, and when the time comes to record his section the next day, he’s locked in the toilets chucking his guts up. Day 2’s even worse; he doesn’t even emerge from his hotel suite, and spends all day puking for Ireland. Finally on day 3, the final day of the session, he starts to feel a little better; he’s stopped barfing and manages to eat something; but at the same time, his temperature is going up, he’s sneezing regularly and his nose is completely blocked. Just as he’s shaken off the food poisoning, he’s caught the ‘flu! Still, he exercises his voice a bit, and it seems to be working OK; in fact, the cold has given it a rasping quality which he quite likes. He makes his way down to the studio, turns on his microphone and bellows….

“Well tonight, thank God it’s phlegm, instead of spew!”….

(If you have no idea what I’m on about, TM, go to about 1 min 30 on the video in the link above. That notwithstanding, I acknowledge that this is easily the worst COSPJ ever, despite some pretty stiff competition. But it’s my blog, so sod the lot of you.)

(* - AAARGH - what’s HAPPENENING TO ME???!)
(** - Bob Geldof later uses the incident as inspiration for a possible child name, but settles on “Chlamydia Spudulika”.)

Q - What did Shakespeare say when he was working at a camping store and wanted to shift some stock at the end of the season?

A - “Now is the winter of our discount tents”.

Anyone with the faculty of sight will by now have read about Mary Bale, a 50-something “silver-haired” bank clerk from Coventry, who, by dint of a random act of minor cruelty (picking up a cat and putting it in a wheelie bin, then shutting the lid), has quite possibly ruined the rest of her life. Our 24-hour media is “across” all aspects of the story; hundreds of radio reporters up and down the land are on the scene, feverishly answering questions from their anchors (always being careful to begin their answers with the word “so”*), and newspaper comment boards are going absolutely loopy. 1000+ comments in The Guardian in less than 12 hours! Even the paper’s ground-breaking hour-by-hour coverage of GreenEarthWildFriend activists cooking sustainably-organic-recycled-fair-trade-vegan nut roast outside Big Oil’s headquarters in protest against GM-global-warmed-capitalist-animal-tested-hedge-fund-factory-farmed whales didn’t attract this much attention.

Worse things happen to hundreds of thousands of animals in abbatoirs every day in Britain, never mind the rest of the world. Mediaevally barbaric Halal and Kosher practices (which some UK local councils are considering adopting wholesale in order to make suppliers’ lives easier and thus save a bit of money) demand that STRICTLY non-stunned and fully-conscious meat animals should be hung upside down and bled from a single cut to the throat until dead. And this is merely the tip of a massive, horrendously cruel, cheapy-meaty iceberg.

None of the horrors of the slaughterhouse appear to bother Mr and Mrs F. Acebook particularly; on the other hand, when a woman is caught putting a cat (who ultimately suffers no harm) into a wheelie bin, it’s armageddon; an overnight super-villain is created, police protection is required for the woman, the tabloids jump for joy, and everyone else froths at the mouth as if injected with rabies whilst orally ingesting an entire canister of shaving foam.

What’ll happen next for Mary Bale? My money’s on her seeking representation from Max Clifford; his expertly-managed “I blame bankers and MPs for my moment of cat madness” damage-limitation article will be followed by an endorsement of Whiskas, opening of a sanctuary for ex-service cats, rumours of a celebrity romance, a few tasteful long-distance bikini shots and maybe a spot as guest judge on the X Factor. A few months down the line, I wouldn’t even rule out a Christmas Number One (maybe singing “What’s New Pussycat” with Cat Stevens?)

(* - seriously: this “so” thing. What the FUCK is that about?)

Finally a new TTOTDOWOHOHCBATCI(WIMLETMTDTLS*) for your delectation - by common consent, the best song never to go to number 1 in the UK charts: “Vienna” by Ultravox. It was kept off by Joe Dolce’s “Shaddap You Face“, a fact which filled me, as a half-Italian 8-year-old with a pronounced sense of over-loyalty to all things relating to my fatherland, with a great sense of pride. In hindsight, I can see that even Mussolini would have preferred “Vienna” (had Hitler not anschlussed it already, guffaw.)

“Vienna” is a quite astonishing piece of brooding, portentous synth-pop, with atmospheric lyrics of indeterminate meaning over a heartbeat-style drum, and one of the greatest choruses of all time delivered by Midge Ure’s piercing tenor. It’s great stuff all the way through, but the way the speeded-up middle “railway” section slows into the final chorus is nothing short of hairs-on-the-back-of-your-neck utterly majestic.

To be brutal, the rest of Ultravox’s oeuvre is mostly stodge (I struggle to get through the greatest hits, let alone individual albums) - but “Vienna” undoubtedly sits in the very top echelon of all-time-great pop songs, and, however many times you hear it, rarely fails to get you standing legs akimbo in full rock-star-manque pose, gurning earnestly into the mirror whilst groping unsuccessfully for the high notes. Despite all this, many eminent critics have argued that the Vic Reeves version was actually the worthier candidate for that elusive number one position.**

(* Which Is More Like Every Two Months These Days, The Lazy Sod)
(** - No, Tafkass, they haven’t.)

This one came to me in a dream last night. I am truly blessed.

Q - What do you say to a woman who’s given you a sheet of strong, flexible water-resistant material often used in the manufacture of tents?
A - Ta, Pauline.

Last week’s manhunt to catch killer Raoul Moat in Northumberland involved hundreds of regular police from 30 forces nationwide, 40 elite firearms officers from the Metropolitan Police, 20 armoured cars from Northern Ireland, plus scores of psychologists, hostage-situation-negotiators, public liaison officers and sniffer dogs. All on double time.

All told, it represents the highest public expenditure on a Moat since last year’s Tory expense claims were submitted…

1989: whilst mere mortals contemplate switching from their Spectrum or Commodore to an Amiga or some valve-and-sea-water-powered games console, madman Tim Berners-Lee is writing proposals for a network of hypertext protocol thingummies which will come to be called the World Wide Web and which, he dreams, will eventually come to dominate the industrialised world. At the same time, Prince (soon to become known as The Artist Formerly Known as Prince, later known as The Artist Formerly Known As The Artist Formerly Known As Prince), still glowing from the critical triumph of his brilliant 1987 “Sign of the Times” set, is touring his subsequent slightly flabby, self-indulgent “Lovesexy” album.

They were heady, portentous times indeed - in the following 5-10 years, the globe’s political landscape would change beyond recognition; suitably inspired by these epochal changes and all they portended, I would blaze a ground-breaking trail through a low 2:1 degree at college followed by a couple of meaningless jobs at which I failed; and, of course, the internet would indeed go on to dominate the economies of the industrialised world, largely through work-time lost to pornography. (Oh, and Prince and his alter-egos would release a series of increasingly flabby, self-indulgent albums.)

Now in “Twenty10″, however, it’s clear that this “World Wide Web” upstart has had its day; it is no longer relevant - Prince has said so. Eschewing all traditional portals, and expert on irrelevancy that he is, he’s chosen instead to release his latest not-at-all-flabby-or-self-indulgent album exclusively via the thrusting new upcoming exciting media platform of (da-da-da-da-da-da-DAAAAA) -  the Daily Mirror.

Sorry Princey-poo-poos; I know it’s easy to be cynical, and I was VERY much a fan of yours; I still remember fondly doing my paper-round in summer ‘88 with “Lovesexy” exclusively on my headphones; I still remember the crushing disappointment when you cancelled that London gig in ‘87, the one I’d saved* for ages to see; and of course, I still remember your best stuff very fondly - but for Christ’s sakes, when your biggest hit is out of date by 11 years, it’s time to shut up about what’s relevant and what isn’t. Act your age: marry an obvious gold digger; adopt a poor Tierra-del-Fuegian orphan-child with no limbs and incurable palsy of the arsehole; get religion (oh, you did); go on “I’m a Celebrity”; hook up with Kaja-frigging-Googoo on an acoustic pan-pipes “’80s greatest hits” tour; do SOME flipping thing - just don’t hector the rest of the world about the internet (or iTunes / Friends Reunited / binary code / whatever.)

(* - OK, nagged my parents for the money and never paid it back)

Inspired by the rubbishiness of England (not to mention of my own Italian rabble), I give you a new low in crappy obviously self-penned jokes:

Q - Why are Holland like a three-wheeled car?
A - They’re both Robben-reliant

Q - Did you hear about the Spanish / Portuguese bloke who never bought anyone a drink?
A - He would never get Iberian

(A beer in? No? No, you’re probably right - that IS the worst one ever.)

A brand new COSPJ (oh come on, it’s been at least a month) which has been viewed, vetted and approved by Technical Monkey and his colleagues. I wasn’t actually going to post this one, but he made me.

Q - What do you get when a posh person pours salt water over an ex-Prime Minister?
A - Gordon Brine