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.

Apologies once again for my protracted silence, which has been due to a combination of workin’ like a merkin and, frankly, not a heck of a lot to say which wasn’t easier and more lazily expressed in a 3-sentence Facebook update. (I’m even starting to find Facebook hard work, to be honest; the only thing stopping me getting into Twitter is fear of being harrassed by Kanye West.)

I’m moved to write because of the INCREDIBLE difficulty I’ve recently had in letting someone win a game of table-tennis. But why, you ask, would you, the mighty Tafkass, possessor of the “widowmaker” forehand, let someone win? Well, this week, I played a local friend who has recently been diagnosed with depression. We’d often talked about having a game of T-T; he claimed to have played at school, and we’d often engage in competitive banter to the point of it becoming a typical male “I’m going to kick your BUTT (and then whip you naked round the shower room afterwards with a wet rolled-up towel)” not-at-all homoerotic braggadocio exchange of views - but we only finally got round to a proper game this week.

Unfortunately, when my first seven chop-side serves were dunked straight into the net by him, it was obvious that we weren’t well-matched (which was fair enough, and to be expected; after all, he hadn’t played for nearly twenty years, whereas I play twice every week, possess a “widowmaker” forehand, and caress my bat for three hours solidly every night, before giving it a lingering kiss goodnight and sleeping with it under my pillow). We were only seconds into an hour-long booking - so I decided to “take one for the team” and try my best to make it look like an even game.

Christ, it was difficult. On the one hand, you’re balancing having to play easy shots (or miss the table altogether) with the risk of being found out, and it becoming an issue; he’s by no means stupid, and “why are you patronising me? Is this some lame-arsed attempt to make me feel better because I’ve been diagnosed with depression?” was not a conversation which I particularly wanted to intrude upon the convivial Corinthian spirit in which a game is ideally played. On the other hand, when I let him go 4 games to 3 up, and witnessed his frankly over-the-top whooping and hollering, culminating in an exclamation of “In your FACE, Tafkass!” followed by a rumination of “d’you know, I really don’t know why you bang on about table-tennis so much; you’re not actually all that good at it, are you?”, the force required to maintain the grittage of my teeth nearly made me swoon. (I was helped by the background consciousness of the fact that, in the grand scheme of things, I’m genuinely not all that good at table-tennis…)

However, all in all, I think I did a good thing. He was extremely cheery by the end of the match, and I coughed up my post-game forfeit pint with a liberal dose of faux chagrin at having been “beaten”. My next tricky task? Avoiding playing him again. He’s already asked me to keep next Wednesday evening free…

* - 100 VP points - heck, let’s make it 1,000 (although to be honest, it’s a fairly meaningless currency these days… in light of this recent hyperinflation, I reserve the right at a later date to devalue the VP Point, at which stage your 1,000 will become worth 1 New ReichsVP Point) - to anyone who can fathom this title. Clue - Dorset MP.