Friday 16 December 2011

YO HO HIC!...UUURRRPPPP!!!!....ITS THE MOST BOOZIEST NIGHT OF THE YEAR!!!!



As i sit here with my 47th mug of tea using up my 94th tea bag of the day and a good chunk of a sugar mountain....Every channel through the digital interference (those annoying little squares that freeze the picture when the weather does its stuff, like today ,as the snow is casscading down)....But all the channels keep announcing on the news that today is the 'BOOZIEST DAY OF THE YEAR!'......So as me n' the dog sit here watching the news slurping gallons of tea, everybody else is out BINGE DRINKING, apparently ....The jammy Bastards!!!!...... I can imagine all the old boozers in Liverpool will be filled to the brim with guzzling festive frollickers. I might managhe a glass of wine tonight when i'm catching up on my SKY+ ,somewhere between 'LAST OF THE SUMMER WINE', 'STEPTOE', and 'THE HIGH CHAPPERALL.' You have your booziest and i'll have possibly the boringest night of the year!.......Now they're calling it VOMIT FRIDAY......I hope i can keep my mug of tea and banana buttie down!

Tuesday 13 December 2011

AIR POO-LLUTION



'Up There!'.....Theres nothing there as its only thin gas we know as air and if you toss a stone or something up it flips and plummets straight back down again twice as fast as it went up. Theres no way anything should be able to stay up there. Then your argument hits its first hiccup when the first birdie flutters by and shits on your car windscreen. Birds are amazing creatures with the gift of flight.....Well their exterior ,the feathered bit is gifted their insides arent as gifted,but as long as the insides stay inside all is well. When the remains of their last meal decide to make an appearence as happens with all of gods creatures, gravity snatches the disgusting mess from beneath the tail feathers plummetting down to splatter across the pristine windscreen or shampoo'ed hair of some poor pedestrian. This ,in our little land is a mere inconvenience, but when we lived in India and Malaysia and EAGLES,FALCONS,HAWKS,etc constantly circled high overhead . Their 'do's' were like being shit on by a shire horse from 800 feet. Natures very pretty and all that, but dont look up too often.


If you look up where we live you see a sky criss crossed with aircraft vapour trails, when you see a jet flying through a clear cloudless blue sky i cant help thinking"What in gods name is keeping it up?" The moisture and fuel droplets filter down over us as do the billowing clouds from local power stations and the flagrant emissions that bubble and billow forth from RUNCORN and WIDNES and various spots around the fragrant NORTH WEST. It all eventually falls from the skies ,as did the radiation from CHERNOBYLL all thoseyears ago ,i remember the weather forecasts reporting the progress of the radiation cloud. And i was in LIVERPOOL as it drifted over during a rainstorm, little irradiated raindrops dripping over our heads.


All the SPACE JUNK building up ,sattelites and space stations,etc some losing their orbital velocity and turning into a fireball as they hopefully burn up in the atmoshere, but not all the time. Hands up all you old farts who remember SKYLAB falling out of orbit ,not NASA's proudest moment ,landed in Australia, i think. But while all these goodies from bird muck to space stations are constantly pouring and tumbling out of the sky, theres even more mysterious and deadly forces at work. Dust and rocks, meteors and meteorites are burning through the skies. If your not too worried about the effect of a fair sized lump of rock fresh from the KEIPER BELT or the OORT CLOUD at the limits of the SOLAR SYSTEM, just ask any DINOSAUR what he thinks about meteorites. I was looking at a picture of a place called TSUNGUSKA(i think!), but a meteor exploded above the ground and flattened forests for 500 miles around all the trees flush with the deck radiating away from the blast zone.


At the risk of spreading fear and paranoia, the sky looks clear ,fresh and emty ,totally harmless ,but its not, actually as i've been typing this garbage a bird flew into the window of my studio ,put the fear of god up me ,stupid little feathered get!

Friday 2 December 2011

LETS DRINK TO IRANIAN DIPLOMACY, POSSIBLY THE BEST DIPLOMACY IN THE WORLD!



The world is a wonderful place and we all love it ,and possibly we'd all love it n' each other ,not caring who lives how and where as long as we can live and eat, we dont need tellys, computers cars ,etc the paraphanalia that is the horrendous complex shithole of a planet we live in. My family used to live on a farm in the middle of Ireland and we tried that stuff they used to call,'fresh air'. We'd walk on stuff called grass and soil and when people complain about dog muck we had 3 foot wide cow pats to stand in. Actually i quite liked the smell of cow shit. couldnt stand horse shit though! Nowadays theres not a kid who'll leave the house to try fresh air or even to walk on grass and through trees etc. Whereas we lived and loved a natural life ,thats all gone now. We live on estates watching reality telly ,computer games ,etc claiming our benefits as nobody has a job in this land and world run by those in power.


The aforementioned arseholes who run our world are the ones who create and maintain borders create international conflict, create the weapons to fight the conflicts they drag us into. As i write this rubbish, over in IRAN, one of the most popular countries in the world. Theres millions of perfectly normal poor people who just want to get on with their life. They are ruled by a friendly looking big eared smiling little bloke who wants to build nuclear weapons to blow his neighbours and us swine and infidels in the west to smithereens. Oh oh oh wot a lovely world...Just spoiled by those who run n' ruin it!

Thursday 1 December 2011

TOP GEARS JEREMY CLARKSON SHOOTS HIMSELF IN HIS FOOT IN FRONT OF TRADE UNION MEMBERS FAMILIES....



JEREMY CLARKSONor 'JEZZA!' as he's oft known as has stuck his size 42 foot in his gob again after saying how public sector strikers should be taken out and shot in front of their families. Today i was amazed to find on the radio a intellectual studenty sounding girl who apparently represent the unions saying how disgusting it all was. It was sick, appalling and deeply offensive to the families of those involved. They played cobbled together bits that when later when they played the whole interview had a totally different context to the one initially pushed. Clarkson when collared at an airport said "just listen to the full interview!".....I actually like' ol Jezza!'. He's a cross between ALF GARNETT and JOHN CLEESE. He is a journalist, but a humourous writer and journalist and nobody should be suprised at what he says by now as he's almost a national institution. They invite him one to a daily magazine show ,get him started and feign shock and suprise when it blows up in their face ,just as planned and the complaints from the moral majority come pouring in. If the immoral minority ,which is the rest of us ,who thought it was funny,and who couldnt be arsed anyhow and definitly have more things to do with our lives, sad though they may be, than write to complain to the BEEBEEBCEE! Because if we did their computers ,etc wouldnt crash they'd vapourise with the flood of correspondance.....Another sign of how when we need it most the Great British sense of humour is being crushed. They never interview people who like or enjoy things, just people who have to think things to death spoiling it for themselves and the rest of us who've got to listen to that shit!...They're the ones who should be shot!

Tuesday 29 November 2011

CHARLES DARWIN WASTED HIS TIME ON 'ORIGIN OF THE SPECIES' ,HE COULD'VE MADE A PACKET WRITTING 'THE PLANET OF THE APES' FILMS.



Just to make the point that clever brainy people who devote their life to science can still change the world and make a 'few bob'. The 'origin of the species' said a lot about simian and human evolution which is covered in all the'PLANET OF THE APES' films.....But they dont have many birds, lizards, beetles, etc, but nobodies particually interested in'PLANET OF THE BEETLES', or 'PLANET OF THE FLIGHTLESS BIRDS', etc.....So if CHARLES DARWIN had given it a little thought he'd've got his message across and made a fortune......But they would've had to have invented films, but CHARLIE DARWIN was a clever bloke i'm sure he'd have been able to get round that minor obstacle.

IF EINSTEIN GOT IT WRONG ,MAYBE NEWTON DID TOO!....THE APPLE DIDNT FALL TO THE GROUND,BUT ROUND THE GROUND!



There was a time when people with a keen eye and a sharp mind used to see things and observe what was going on about them and this would spark thoughts and ideas which would drive them to discover why 'said' things happened and the forces involved. ISSAC NEWTON, supposedly sat in a garden watching an apple fall from a tree, some say actually onto his head. I would imagine the former being more likely to get a mind formulating the orbits, speed n' momentum of planets and moons within the SOLAR SYSTEM and unlocking the secrets of the force of GRAVITY, whereas the latter option would cause a mild concussive bump on the head followed by a torrent of bad language ,as ,apparently Newton was a bad tempered old fart.


ALBERT EINSTEIN imagined what it would be like to actually ride on a beam of light. This visualisation led to theories os special relativety and E=MC2, etc. In both cases these very special chaps changed the universe for all mankind ,having more effect on our knowledge of life, the universe n' everything than CAPTAIN KIRK, JEAN-LUC PICARD together....Maybe DOUGLAS ADAMS can claim to have made more sense of the universe.


My point ,yes believe it or not, there is one of sorts. Nowadays physicists are on telly in their own shows and guests on comedy chat shows of which there are a few. DR BRIAN COX, has a couple of series of him looking spiritual ,wind swept n' interesting on tops of mountains and glaciers, etc. But the main change is that the keen eyes and sharp minds that observe cause and effect of events around them now use that curiosity to formulate a stand-up routine for their LIVE AT THE APOLLO, or whatever ......Stand up comedy is the new science and discovery. Newtons apple would've gone into a sketch of how they land on your head and never in dog shit which you sit in when you sit under the apple tree, etc, etc. Or if you could ride a light beam, how could you get from home to the local ASDA carpark to get the shopping in, with our human reflexes we would have to put the brakes on instananeously ,but even then we would've circumnavigated the globe 846 times before we could stop at the store, then, of course at a 186,000 miles per second would it be better to use diesel or petrol and how long would it take to fill the tanks the size of Jupiter. Its sad, but the geniuses are being being taken over by smart arsed funny folk, not advancing humanity's knowledge of the universe ,but to get on a comedy panel show on SKY T.V.'s DAVE CHANNEL.

Friday 25 November 2011

DANIEL CRAIG N' STEVE McQUEEN ARE THEY RELATED OR AM I JUST A LOUSY CARICATURIST?...(That doesnt require an answer.)





As i'm sure many of you remember being dedicated followers of this font of wisdom that is this Blog, that i had a great deal of difficulty trying at one point getting a likeness of MR BOND!...JAMES BOND, himself ,or CRAIG ...DANIEL CRAIG as he is known in darling 'thesp' circles. I had another go at getting his craggy good looks from my brush to the inkpot to the paper. I think i got a 'likeness', but being the perfectionist you all know me to be it could've been better. I found an old attempt at 'THE COOLER KING' himself a certain mr STEVE McQUEEN, who looks a little like our DANNY. In my defence a few people mentioned how the two do have a similar facial structure, so i will claim that my keen caricaturist eye spotted that . So there they are ,if not brothers ,possibly cousins in caricature.


I've noticed that with the internet it was easy to get pictures of people on the computer and try and use the photographic reference as a template for your caricature. But now i've noticed , in many cases equally, if not bigger files exist of caricature images of the same people. I would say many people are using other peoples caricatures as the reference for their own work. Hopefully this wont cause a 'flattening out ' of styles as people just copy other existing styles and effects. The funny thing is ,if you look at DANIEL CRAIG caricature images ,theres not many that are any good. That made me feel a little better after my struggles.

EFFIN' N' BLINDIN' ;RACIAL ABUSE N' SHAKING HANDS, THATS FOOTBALL!

After a supposed racial comment uttered by one of those fine body of national heroes which constitute our footballers, the mucky stuff has hit the fan. The recipient of this abuse didnt seem to mind too much and was content to let it go, but apparently a lip reading member of the public wasnt and reported it. The police were pulled in and weeks later i think its still bubbling on. After a whole ruck of abusive remarks were reported , some people defending the abuser and the abused. Blaming 'the heat of the moment',etc,etc. The major sin it struck me ,now most of our football league is foreign players the mention of race is the sin, rather than the simple more basic act of being simply abusive.


I remember when i started watching and going to watch LIVERPOOL F.C. in the (gulp) 70's....There wasnt many Black or foreign players, but there was plenty of abuse. Those swearwords were viewed as utterly disgusting behaviour and players were punished for this totally ungentlemanly and thuggish behaviour. But now you can swear all you like at fellow players even referee's, like policemen ,apparently they expect to be sworn at. But the trouble now is if a racist element is tossed into the abusive stew, police investigations ensue ,players are stripped of their place in squads ,even international. People get angry and open their big mouths and nobodies got bigger mouths and smaller brains than those posing overpaid ,spoilt pains in the arse, the proffessional footballer. Their power and influence over their adoring fans is so immense that their behaviour and attitudes affect a lot of people so all of them ,whatever colour or race should have their arses kicked if they start shouting and yelling at each other or any decision made on the pitch. Bring back BOBBY CHARLTON, IAN CALLAGHAN, IAN ST JOHN, etc ,etc gentlemen of the game in a more decent innocent time.
The boss of FIFA, i cant spell his name ,he reckons that a firm handshake will cure the ills of the modern games, the firm handshake ,now theres no physical contact has been replaced by the petulant spit in the face.....Those who remember people like TOMMY SMITH and a mass of hard bastards from 'the ol' days', just imagine some of todays gobshites gobbing in their faces..."OUCH!"

Tuesday 15 November 2011

LOUIS ARMSTRONG INT' AIRPORT; JOHN LENNON INT' AIRPORT....JEDWARD INT' AIRPORT?



I have to admit to being a little dubious when it was announced years ago that LIVERPOOL INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, or SPEKE AIRPORT as the locals called it, was going to be henceforth known as JOHN LENNON INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT. I just thought it was carrying things a little too far. I'd imagine John sitting on No:9 Cloud pissin' himself laughing. The BEATLES are worl famous and beloved throughout the world ,but it has to be said the hallowed city fathers n mothers havent always held them lovable local rogues in such high regard and for years made no effort to push the legend of the BEATLES. Then respectability is pronounced upon them somewhere along the line and airports are named after them.


I was reading that NEW ORLEANS INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT was going to celebrate SATCHMO himself. LOUIS ARMSTRONG wouldve been 100 years of age , so they were going to call the airport after the great man. not SATCHMO INT' AIRPORT, but , i'd imagine LOUIS ARMSTRONG INT' AIRPORT.....I can hear the famous cackle now. I'd imagine in his time he didnt get treated too respectably being a jazz player n' black! It does seem respectability is something that comes long long after you've popped your clogs, so theres hope for me yet.


But the ideas caught on naming airports after musicians and popstars, etc . Any chance of DUBLIN INT' AIRPORT being renamed JEDWARD INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT?..oh i do hope so!

THE BEATLES AND THE MAGICAL INSANITY TOUR!




Over the weekend i spent hours watching telly programmes about those four Liverpool mopheads who stormed the world. They were and are superb ,but they were always Liverpool lads and it came to me in an interview with SIR MACCA' mCcARTNEY. He was on about GEORGE HARRISONS teddy boy greasy quiff when he first met PAUL McCARTNEY and JOHN LENNON....He said something along the lines of,"It's only a fuckin' quiff its not a fuckin' turban!"....I had to laugh as i'd never heard any of the BEATLES swear and when PAUL was imitating it ,it had the scallie scouse accent that they had before they had to become famously semi respectable and adopted that sort o' nassally drone. I recognised them. The coverage of their tours and BEATLEMANIA still stun and astound after all this time and their magic is still as powerful as ever .Liverpool is still crammed full of BEATLE TOURISTS.
Just recently with a single bound i leap from 2011 to 2015 , and partly 'cos of the 'popping of the clogs' of 'R' CILLA theres a lot of 60's stuff ,with Cilla ,the Beatles and the other night a documentary on GEORGE MARTIN. So i've been listening to a lot of 'THE FAB FOUR' and suprisingly stuff i'd never heard of. The thought of a BEATLE song i'd never heard ,well it's ridculous! But i'm back into the Beatles and not only the clever later stuff ,but the early 'FAB FOUR' stuff.

The MARTIN SCORSASE(?) documentary about GEORGE HARRISON showed interviews with Paul n' Ringo relaxed and enjoying telling stories and reliving those crazy days with their closest friends. Apparently the BEATLES did meet up on occassions and PAUL N' JOHN would meet up.
But what a journey ,from sleeping in cleaning cupboards behind the screen in porno cinemas on the Reeperbahn in Hamburg to the CAVERN in LIVERPOOL to SHEA STADIUM and on and up , what a story ,what a band!
And with a lot of the old CILLA footage being shown ,i remember watching her as a kid, but i have to admit it ,but i was never a fan of 'R' CILLA as a celebrity ,but i liked her as a sixties pop star..."Any one who ever had a heart!"...Great !

Tuesday 1 November 2011

YEEEEHHAAAAARRRRR!!!!!!....THE COWBOYS'RE BACK IN TOWN SPITTIN' DUST N 'SOUND EFFECTS!



When i was that pimply snotty nosed ,scabby knee'ed kid you know from my many fond recollections from my past we used to have the old black n white telly. With our 8feet wide flat screens of today the mere 12inches or whatever from them days seem tiny, and with the big switches that your dad had to try and click to change channels or later the press buttons which you almost had to take a run at to press them enough to change to one of the mere three channels that we had. For years we never had BBC2, although we could hear it through the on screen snow. GRANADA had on a Monday at 8 o'clock WORLD IN ACTION and the BBC1 had PANORAMA.....BBC2 had THE HIGH CHAPERRAL, or ,ALIAS SMITH AND JONES. The happiest Monday night of my life ,i wont say happiest day of my life as that would be fairly pathetic, was when after 5 minutes fiddling at the back of the box of valves that was the telly by some fellah me dad knew we suddenly got BBC2 and i could watch the 'cowies' for the first time on the monday night ,no more current affairs for me, buster.


Just recently on our masssive flatscreen telly with tiny touch sensitive knobs 5000 channmels and not a valve in sight telly theres been a lot of western television ,films and series recently .THE HIGH CHAPERRAL is one RAWHIDE with a certain young fresh faced CLINT EASTWOOD inbetween shortpants and a poncho. I'm loving it ,a few newer ones ,one called DEADWOOD with our very own IAN MACSHANE as the town baddie, yup ,LOVEJOY hisself!...They've even drug up BONANZA and GUNSMOKE ,which ,apparently was the longest running, but i actually dont remember it i dont think GRANADA showed them. I wonder if ALIAS SMITH AND JONES is next up ,but there was STEVE MCQUEEN in WANTED DEAD OR ALIVE. He was a bounty hunter who didnt have a pistol in his holster ,but a sawn off WINCHESTER RIFLE. There was a series with ROD TAYLOR called THE BEARCATS as they played good mercenaries who travelled around in a STUTZ BEARCAT car doing brave good things ; CASEY JONES, jeez! I'm sitting here humming the bloody theme. CHUCK CONNORS in BRANDED!.. i'm singing the dramatic theme "Branded!..scorned is the man that ran ..What do you do when your branded and you know your a man?" He was supposed to have deserted and they broke his sword to compound his dishonour ,but he was dead brave really and travelled around with his broken sword so everyone knew he was a coward ,he may have been really brave but he was really stupid. CHUCK CONNORS other series was THE RIFLEMAN. Ah and on it goes, every second series in them days was a 'cowie'...


I have to resist the urge to hop and skip around outside ,slapping one buttock with one hand while firing a pretend gun made from joining two fingers together and trying to make gunshot sounds like we used to do around the playground once upon a lifetime ago.

Monday 31 October 2011

HOW THE AMERICANS STOLE DUCK APPLE NIGHT TO FIGHT TERRORISM AND ABUSED OUR HUMAN RIGHTS BY GIVING US BLOODY TRICK OR TREAT!




When i was a young fresh faced ,scabby kneed and constantly snotty nosed schoolboywe used to look foreward to Halloween. For the life of me i dont know why. Me mam n' dad would lay a copy of the LIVERPOOL ECHO, a broadsheet in those days in the back room. (The one for guest ,without the black n' white valve filled telly....This is history taking place.)....Onto this makeshift paper groundsheet with HAROLD WILSON on the front and ROGER HUNT and IAN ST JOHN on the back. we would place the grotty green plastic basin we used for washing the dishes. Filled with water we would then tip in a pile of apples ,which'd been sitting in a bowl on the table for a fortnight or so. The idea was to stick your head into the freezing water and try and take a bite out of the apples. Eventually as you lay gasping and pantig with water streamin out of your mouth nose, ears amidst the laughing and gay banter of the rest of the family as you hoisted your spindly half drowned frame up to see, with much excitment if there was a slight nibble mark on the skin of one of the apples. We were simple folk in simple times , well yeah we were F****'in idiots. In them days families used to sit round bowls together and try and drown each other for fun. Who'd 've thought years later the yanks would steal our simple pleasures in their war against terrorism.




Over recent times our American cousins have had 'a bit of stick' over how they treat bad guys, or terrorists as we affectionatly refer to them. They are taken away to sunny tropical islands and their heads are stuck into bowls of water and when they've recovered from half drowning these 'bad guys' will tell the 'good guys' all they need to know. What we call 'Duck apple', they call 'waterboarding'. All human rights organisations are 'up in arms' over this fragrant abuse of their human rights. When i was getting half drowned for a bite of an apple not one person stood up for my human rights!...These mean nasty terrorists cant be that tough with all their whinging and whining. I was only a 9 year old schoolboy and that was one way 9 year old schoolboys enjoyed themselves before all day telly n computers.




Whatever you may think about the various human right issues committed by the Americans is one thing, but as far as i am concerned the worst violation of human rights is a far worse form of torture that the Americans have inflicted upon us. Like a sort of global virus the Americans have infected huge chunks of the world with TRICK OR TREAT.




Once this god awful custom was restricted to nice early 60's family sitcoms and stomach churning stuff like 'THE WALTONS'. Halloween is tonight and is devoted to ghosts, demons,phantoms,ghouls,devils,wee beasties of all shapes and distortions ,but theres also kids,kids,kids, n' kids all of which are horrifyingly real. The LOVELY LYNNE has stocked up with sweeties for the little darlings so we will be swamped wit, it has to be said some pretty imaginative and sick costumes. After an hour or two of taps on the door ,knocks and doorbells i'll be grinding my teeth and upping the volume on the telly. After a while the kids'll fade away to go home and rot their babyteeth on their haul of sweets. Then its time for the second wave, the scallies. They'll be in their own costumes ;tracksuits, hoodies. One'll be on a BMX bike ,some girl'll be texting and one of them who's best out of the group at stringing a few grunts together will mutter ,in that dull resentful teenage, braindead, monotone voice, "ertrickrtreat..." They used to talk about kids overbites ,now they've evolved under droops . The bottom lip hangs under the influence of gravity and spit, only the bottom half of their face moves when they mutter. It is at this point the childish innocence is replaced by intimidation and this is when my lovely wife makes me answer the door in case they scratch the car or burn the house down.

Friday 28 October 2011

THE EUROPEAN ULTIMATE POLITICAL IN-FIGHTING CHAMPIONSHIPS...SARKOZY V CAMERON......



Once upon a long time ago combat sports were bare knuckle events where two bruisers knocked seven bells out of each others battered faces ,taking turns to hit each other. Then , it all turned soft and moving about and dodging was allowed. Even throwing over the hip ,the 'cross buttock' was allowed. Afterwards it softened again with names like Figg and Mendoza, real bare knuckle sissies who turned good old scrapping into an arty farty form of self defence. Well, the rot had well and truly set in and as skills improved and times passed and truly skillfull pansy fighters evolved and started to wear gloves of all things and that noble girlie art of boxing came about.


Martial arts from all over had their beginnings in fighters who were there to fight ,kill and rip the throat out of their opponent. Over the years they became sportified and control wa required as you were scoring points ,rather than trying to kill your opponent. But what goes around comes around and with the phenomenal increase in various 'so called' full contact karate's and such of which there was various sorts over the 70's-90's mainly from the u.s. Evolution which is a runaway process in the good ol;' u.s. has evolved now into the ULTIMATE FIGHTING andMIXED MARTIAL ARTS which is a respectable name for what is commonly known as CAGE FIGHTING. I've been watching some of the increasing number of reality shows based on the fighters and training on ESPN . I've come to the conclusion they are totally nuts and the best place for them is in a cage knocking seven heaps o' shit outta each other. There isnt any rules that i can work out ,i've not noticed any firearms or sharp implements so maybe thats one rule. But out from that , fists ,knees ,elbows ,feet throws ,locks and the nastiest ,when their opponent is on the deck they can hammer their face with their fist. Even during training its the full works.


I was watching our glorious leaders arguing over Europe the other day and CAMERON and SARKOZY were both looking a bit flabby and comfortable as their middle jacket buttons strained to keep their ties covered. Stick the two of them in the cage i say and let them work out their differences ...I mean the French telling the British to "shut up and mind their own buisness"..Waterloo was faught over less!

Thursday 27 October 2011

ALL WILL BE WELL IF WE USE THE RIGHT WHEELIE BIN!

Once a fortnight i've got to drag me sorry arse out into the wind and the rain to put the grey rubbish bin out as well as the blue re-cycling bin, then the following week just the grey bin. Every odd Tuesday ,the frequency of which i've never quite managed to work out , i've got to get out of bed quick as the men are coming at some ungodly hour for the green garden waste bin. I leg downstairs yanking a scabby pair of shorts on ,race through the door shouting at the disapearing bin wagon and the severly hearing impaired bin men manning the wagon, they seem to respond to the shouts when they turn to high pitch screams as my bare feet make contact with the stones lying across the driveway as i drag the bloody bin half a mile up the road.


When the conservative party had their annual back slapping get together the other week in Manchester under the guise of the Conservative party conference . An occassion to spend a fortune on nice hotels food n drink after a day of telling each other what an absolutly whizzo job they're all doing to save the country after the last lot screwed it all up. Unlike at debates the only interuptions are the endless standing ovations.


As the country and the world turns to shit it was good to see they had things in perspective and they concenterated on sorting out the frequency of wheelie bin collections. There was a little talk about a broken 'Iron clad' promise to hold a referendum on Europe, but thats another political broken promise...I wonder what colour wheelie bin they need for all those broken iron clad promises!.....

THE NAMES ENGLISH!...JOHNNY ENGLISH....(re-Bean)!....



After a hard day slaving away trying to do an ace topical cartoon for HA MAGAZINE, the internet humour page(humour.co.uk) and linked on t'other side of the page ,they've took mercy on me lately and published a couple of my daubings and scribbles. As i sat gazing into space guzzling my 47 th gallon of tea trying to think of a good reason not to go out into the cold and go to Karate that evening it suddenly came to me in the form of a visiting mother and a wife who wanted to go to the pictures. I pondered long and hard, about the same time it took the neutrinos to beat the light photons in the race from Swiss Switzerland to Italian Italy the other week. It has to be said it was the part about going for a drink n a bite in the pub rather than the pictures that illicited the response in the affirmative.....Kwai Chang Caine and Bruce Lee never had these temptations dangled in front of them to interupt their dedication to mind and body beautiful. But i do and i succumbed and found myself stuuffing me face and guzzling a few pints of Guinness in a country hostelry. I wasnt so sure about the second half of the evening when i was given the choice of going to see TIN TIN, or, JOHNNY ENGLISH-REBORN.....


I'd had a hearty feed and a few pints and the guts were bubbling and gurgling not compatible internal conditions for spending in a cinema seat for the next few hours. Plus i'd heard the JOHNNY ENGLISH film hadnt much of a write up and i dont like the CGI 3D's so i really didnt fancy TIN TIN.... The Lovely Lynne wanted to see the JOHNNY ENGLISH so we went.


The seats were spacious and i was by the aisle if needed for a quick visit elsewhere was needed. But to be fair i enjoyed the film. It was a silly daft ROWAN ATKINSON film ,thats what i expected and thats what i got and it was fine by me. Especially as GILLIAN ANDERSON was in it ,yes AGENT SCULLY from the X-FILES ,herself with dark hair and an english accent ,looking a bit different ,but still decidedly fanciable.


So the critics were right in all they said as they criticised the 'silly' film and thats why i enjoyed it as it was just a silly film.

Friday 21 October 2011

SCRATCH ONE NUTJOB CRAZED DICTATOR, WHILE WE WAIT FOR THE NEXT ONE LETS STOP MAKING FIGHTERS, SACK THE AIRFORCE AND GET GOING ON THE GOVT CUTS!

Now our favourite crazed dictator has been shot to death in a sewer pipe in Libya and the people are free and the conflict is over until the next nutjob dictators take over, lets get back to the serious job of enforcing goverment cuts. They've shut down BAE Systems who made the international TYPHOON fighter bomber the staple of our air defences once the goverment at the time got rid of everybodies favourite vertical take off HARRIER, to pleaseour johnny foreign neighbours. So now we can lay off the airforce as they're not needed. If we have another scrap soon we'll have to round up all these out of work aero-engineers and pilots and start knocking together an airforce. I'm sure our prospective military opponents following the rules of gentlemanly warfare'll hang on while we 'bang' a few squadrons out.


During the second world war we had to rip up all our iron railings, etc to build SPITFIRES, etc. Now the railings wouldnt be able to be touched as , even more important and powerful than the Ministry of Defence is the DEPT OF HEALTH N' SAFETY. They will decide which is more unsafe the country on the brink of war or removing the railings from ancient village duckponds to the local communities. Ah what would ol' WINSTON CHURCHILL have had to say about it all.





Wednesday 19 October 2011

NEVER MIND WHERE'S WALL/...WHERE'S THAT WALLY BLAIR???



I remember 'our Tony' during his leadership days he will always stand out for me as the man who encouraged our politicians from all sides of all the divides to yank their tie off ,take their jacket off and roll their sleeves up to give the impression that they were getting down and getting dirty with the rest of us to save our great nation, The reality was they were doing bugger all ,but Tony had invented 'spin' so everything was a photo oppertunity to be taken advantage of and used. The country hadnt sunk, but you could hear the rocks in the shallows scrapping against the hull. The other fine thing he did was get us into an interminable war with our 'special allies' under a real nutjob of a president. This was a good excuse for Tony to spend lots of time across the pond 'cementing' our' special relationship.


The main reason for our politicians enthusiasm for this 'special relationship' is that its a good pension fund for them when they leave the 'house' . Tony handed power over to that other fellah we've already forgotten .Then he went home wrote his memoirs, went back to the 'states' and earned a fortune on the lecture circuit. Nobody over here' d be arsed paying to spend an evening listening to Tony.


Tony ,then got a job. With the blessing of the U.N. Russia, European union and America he's representing the 'Quartet 'bringing peace n' harmony to the Middle East. His ,charitable Tony BlairAssociates ,of which nobody knows nothing ,except Tony is raking in quidsinzillions for whatever he's supposed to be doing.


The Middle East is the most alien place on Earth. There has been war, strife ,blood snot n' tears since, never mind history ,but since time began. Today the powderkeg has gone up again ,but worry not ,this time they've got Tony Blair to 'sort it'. You can tell he's working on it as he's not wearing a tie ,shirtsleeves are rolled up and bugger all seems to be happening.

Monday 17 October 2011

ITS OFFICIAL..RUGBY IS A GAME FOR HOOLIGANS PLAYED BY HOOLIGANS!



The worst thing the English squad did whilst out in New Zealand attempting to do something ,in fact anything to bring some pride to our sadly prideless land in the Rugby World cup, was that they failed miserably not only on the pitch and off the pitch as well. On the pitch they sort of managed and muddled, but that was it. But off the pitch something very strange happened. Rugby players are big hard men who like a drink ,sing loud bawdy songs and have wild boisterous boys nights out making complete tits n arse'oles of themselves in the process.This is expected and accepted behaviour from these hooligan gentlemen . But for some reason when the English squad put on their dancing shoes and hit the New Zealand low spots they made themselves look totally sad n' pathetic and in competition with the other less than angelic big bawdy rugby chaps from all over, they lost that side of the rugby boozers world cup by appearing as a bunch of knobheads who couldnt take their ale and made everybody else look like good clean decent lads.


As the English squad arrived home to scorn and disgust ,did any body bother to meet or pick them up at the airport even? The Welsh were waiting to play their semi-final clash with them Frenchies. All of England were backing the Welsh to win, for gods sake thats almost as bad as wanting the French to win...... Thats how bad the English team have damaged national pride. We even had sympathy for the Welsh being just defeated.


But the Welsh had 'it sorted' , a man short they soldiered on. Its always more important to have an excuse for losing , than to win the match.

Monday 3 October 2011

ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND FALLING ABOUT AS THE NATIONAL ANTHEMS PLAYED!



If you were up Saturday morning chewing on your morning bacon butty as was i, you probably saw part of it fly across the living room closely chased by the dog as you blurted out something along the lines of "OH £$%&*@ YES, MY BEAUTIES!".....As ENGLAND in the dying seconds of the maul of a match against 'the ol enemy' SCOTLAND ploughed across the line to score and beat the Scots. Half the world blurted out the above comment whilst the restof the world blurted out a less than joyous, not so positive expletive as ,for some reason the sight of England beating Scotland didn't fill them with glee. Everybody loves the English, just ask the WELSH,IRISH,SCOTTISH,FRENCH, etc, etc ,we saved the world , if everybody didnt hate the English so much they'd hate each other a lot more and the world'd be a bigger mess than it is now. Mind you i'd say we've handed our loathsome crown to AMERICA and long may they be hated instead.


But back to the RUGBY, i kept thinking about the poor team coach driver thinking he's in for an extended holiday in NEW ZEALAND all of a sudden he's got to set the alarm to go home the next morning. Ahh but the English lads are flying the flag pissing it up every night ,upsetting and copping off with the Kiwi ladies who frequent international rugby players drinking clubs. And it makes you proud to see how pissed our national heroes actually get ,i can take me ale better than MIKE TYNDALL, judging by the news stories of his wild nights ,i wonder if his 'Granny inlaw' has been on the phone. If Zara ,her mum and M'am have their way he wont be playing in the England quater finals he'll be crated home to the tower.


But it was good to see them win ,i even didnt mind the dog eating my bacon butty, even if he was barking for Scotland being a WEST HIGHLAND TERRIER.

Friday 30 September 2011

PRISON OVERCROWDING SOLVED...LOCK THE CLAUSTROPHOBICS INSIDE AND THE AGROPHOBICS OUTSIDE!



(THE AGROPHOBIC CONVICT)



As we hear on a daily basis terrible stories about how the poor badly done to guys n gals swelling our prison system are up to 15 a bunk or something and still new batches of offensive offenders come flooding through the portals to all her majesty's holiday camps. As tax payers it affects us all. From the upkeep of cells to the upkeep of prisoners, to paying for the tablets of soap left on the shower floors????....


But ,as ever i'm here to help solve the problems that no one else can solve. I might have the wrong end of the wardens cosh, but i was lead to believe that prison was a punishment and as all good punishments afford a certain degree of suffering for those being punished. So to make it all the more miserable for all involved and make more room to help spread more misery to all the extra offenders able to be crammed into our splitting at the seams prison service.


There our lots of psychological fears , or PHOBIAS as the psychiatrists call 'em. There are an amazing amount of phobias with amazing names for everything, but they end in Phobia. The main ones are CLAUSTERPHOBIA, fear of confined spaces......Simple cram all them into cells inside the prison.


AGROPHOBICS...Fear of open spaces ,simple put them outside by themselves, as ably illustrated by yours truly.


Theres also a famous phobia ,a fear of heights, whose name escapes me for the moment and with this crappy computer i couldnt be arsed trying to find out on Google. I'd only returned to find all this hard written crap had dissapeared , so you look it up on Google ,anyhow i'm not meant to know everything .Ok nearly everything, but theres limits. But back to fear of heights, stick them sufferers on the higher floors, to compound the suffering , put them on the upper bunks.

Tuesday 27 September 2011

THE GRE(=mc2)AT RACE ?.....OR BACK TO THE BACK OF THE BEERMAT, ALBERT?



Everybody knows and loves ALBERT EINSTEIN, even people who cant count the thumbs on one hand for some reason know his SPECIAL THEORY OF RELATIVETY equation the infamous E=MC2, even if they havent got a clue as to what the hell it means and to be fair they wouldnt be the only ones. But basically it sums up the laws of the universe ,space, time ,and a few other odds n' sods that keep the cogs in the machine turning and squeaking. He's everybodies idea of 'The mad scientist ', Amass of unkempt white hair ,glasses on the end of his boozers nose and an old fashioned bent pipe pumping out clouds of smoke. He sat there and just thought and imagined what it would be like to travel on a beam of light . His imagination took him across space and time and opened these theories to him it was only later when he had to get the numbers to agree.


His basic law ,NOTHING CAN TRAVEL FASTER THAN LIGHT IN A VACUMN. This is the lynchpin on which every scientific theory and idea is based. And quite simply cannot be broken, up until last week that is.


In the DEAD BIG HADRON COLLIDER, or whatever size they call it they produced cute little subatomic particles called NEUTRINO'S which can travel through anything ,so they shot them through the earth from Switzerland to Italy and they arrived a billion zillionth of a megasecond ahead of time ,beating the speed of light.


Quel horrers!!!!!! ..As foreign scientists probably say ,in one billionth, zillionth of a megasecond the universe has been turned arse over tit . It even opens the way for time travel. Some wit cracked a funny ....


...........The barman said"we dont sell beer to neutrino's!" A Neutrino walks into this bar and asks for a beer....(geddit?)..... If they can beat time in the drag race, The law of Causality is broken , which means quite simply 'The cause happens before the effect!' Unless light can regain its title. If not you could read this before i've written it. So if you dont like it let me know , save me wasting my time.


There is questions about the accuracy of the timing and distances involved to measure these billion ,zillionths of megaseconds. If they want to get it spot on, get JEREMY CLARKSON, CAPTAIN SLOW and THE HAMSTER, from TOP GEAR with their trusty stop watch to measure the speed and time round the top gear track. In fact THE STIG can road test the LIGHT PHOTON and THE NEUTRINO, that should solve the problems.

IS ALL THE LIFE IN OUR RIVERS AND STREAMS 'COS OF CLEAN WATER OR 'COS THEY'RE USED TO THE SHIT?



As you go through life you take things for granted...One of those things was , ever since i was young was how rivers and streams were dirty and you should never drink the water, etc, (where would we be without out mummies, eh?).. The simple fact was all those factories pouring out smoke ,smells and chemicals were filling the nearby water supplies with nothing but 'pure shit'. The fair city of LIVERPOOLS, own shit filled tributary THE RIVER MERSEY was legendary amongst shit filled rivers. Upstream we had the fair villages of WIDNES,WARRINGTON,RUNCORN,ETC....All plied high with factories with chimneys pumping shit into the skies and a little more descreetly pipes pumping all kinds of crap into the once crystal waters. All this was washed out into the Irish Sea to meet up with all the shit pumping out of DUBLIN BAY,there was a patch of sea water that the mere thought of is enough to put anyone off ,never mind their dinner ,but eating for life.


Then for some reason it was said that the rivers were becomming cleaner. The whole of the country laughed, never mind all of Liverpool when it was announced the Mersey was getting cleaner. Everyone whose ever sat on a MERSEY FERRY has been astounded at the junk and crap floating on the waters. I used to be very embarressed and jealous at the number of condoms floating about ,it meant most of Liverpool, Birkenhead and all points up stream were having a lot better time of it then i bloody was. Some of them condoms probably still had the wearer connected to them ,judging by the fair number of bodies that were pulled from the murky depths, and probably still are!


There came a time when people started doing ridiculous things like canoeing and wind surfing on the Mersey. "My god! They must be nutters!" going anywhere near the water of the Mersey. Then time passed and people swam in it, and survived?


So now Otters and all kind of creatures and fish are supposedly filling our streams and waterways, is this because the waters cleaner or because they are more resiliant to the quantities of shit?.....And did you know the water in rivers is see-thru?...I'm yet to be convinced about the Mersey, tho'. I notice DAVID WALLIAMS only swam a hundred miles or so along the THAMES, a little gut and bowel trouble aside ,thats easy ,lets see if he can handle 5 miles of the River Mersey.

Thursday 8 September 2011

PETE TOWNSHEND (WHO HE?) ON STEAM POWERED RADIO 2 , MY EXCUSE FOR ANOTHER PETE TOWNSHEND PICCIE!

Gawd bless the BEEB say i, They ran a couple of documentaries over the last two weeks by and about the amazing PETE TOWNSHEND. Something along the lines of GROWING OLD BEFORE I DIE'. As some of my readers will be stunned and amazed to find out ol 'pete' is one of my absolute heroes. It was good to listen to the man telling his astounding story ,but enjoying himself and making it funny and entertaining. But for me the other vitally important aspect of the shows is its an excuse to bung another Pete Townshend caricature on the blog. If highly august caricaturing genius's like SEBASTIAN KRUGER can get away with banging out loads of caricatures of his heroes THE ROLLING STONES, then i, who doesn't sadly deserve to breath the same air as Sebastian, can whack out a few PETE TOWNSHEND and THE WHO piccies . Another eason is that the STONES and THE WHO were possibly the ugliest bands in the world and so are so much fun to draw.


Not only have the BEEB done a documentary about Townshend, but last Tuesday they did one about a certain KEITH MOON....."I'M KEITH MOON ,WOTS YOUR EXCUSE?" I havent had a listen yet ,but i shall and if i can get my arse into gear may even have a drawing of the 'LOON'(r.i.p).

Monday 29 August 2011

"AAAAH GOON ,UNCLE TIM , GIVE US SOME MORE GOON SHOW STUFF THEY BEGGED ,SO BEING THE OLD SOFTIE I AM ,JUST FOR YOU DEADBEATS OUT THERE!.....

One of my very first attempts of using Acrylic paints to paint an illustration ,instead of going in with the old ink, wether i'll ever be able to do this stuff properly ,only time and my limited patience will tell......I still want to get the ol' ink n' brush out.



The next attempt was of Sellars ,like the MILLIGAN piccie of himself as a GOON and in later years. The two pictures lookbetter scanned and reduced ,thankfully.





The two proper drawings ,with ink and cross hatching and all those proper cartoony thingeys were all done as one drawing on A2, which to you many uneducated sorts is twice the size of A3 which is the limit of scan size for my new 'whizz bang A3 scanner', thats why they call it an A3 scanner ,ok ,ok ,i shall proceed, are we sitting comfortably?...I dont know if you can tell , but the 4 ,yes 4 original GOONS , Originally THE CRAZY PEOPLE, Along with the wonderful MICHAEL BENTINE, are bursting out of a box. It was done for a Goon show conference ,where SPIKE n' SIR HARRY where presented with A2 caricatures i'd done of them ,why they were punished and humiliated like that i dont know ,but both were very gracious and nice to me and didnt take offence. Funnily enough i met BENTINE and he was made up with a picture i'd done of him bursting out of a square planet Earth after his show MICHAEL BENTINES ,IT'S A SQUARE WORLD. We had along talk about comedy ,the goons and he was fascinated in ,my cartoonists 'visual thought processes'.....A really nice fellah, often forgotten these days ,but a comic giant ,up there with Spike .





The Goons were so wild ,surreal ,etc ,what people forget is how genuinely hillariously funny they were, at the time nobody was trying to be 'clever', surreal or all the intellectual labels heaped upon the show , which has scared people away from the total madness and hilarity of the total insanity of the shows. They were an absolute nightmare to draw cartoons to illustrate episodes for. The chaos the BEEB transmitted over THE STEAM POWERED RADIO, was as MILLIGAN often said ,in the mind, the imagination of the listener, thats why the GOONS would never work on the telly . The only way ,is like it was done on a couple of occassions ,the GOON SHOW performance was filmed as if it was being performed in the radio studio. I've seen them and loved them. The 3 main characters enjoying themselves often in tears laughing, then critics would complain it wasnt as good as it used to be ,couldnt the stupid ignorant educated bastards see that wasnt the point ,or see the audience and the band falling about crying laughing. They tried with puppets., but i've never actually seen an episode of what became the TELEGOONS. I know some people liked them ,so they couldnt've been that bad.


As i'm rambling on here ,i'd say the GOONS was the peak for all involved ,not because they faded off in later years ,they all did different things ,not so much together , but some good stuff all the same. But what happened was it all came together on the radio. It makes me realise that with our days of 3D telly ,computers ,SKY+, etc, etc ,CGI effects ,all visual stuff of hi tech and even hi'er costs, once the little wooden box in the corner that only had voices could whisk you as far and as fast ,the only limits were the limits of your imagination. It must've been wonderful!


If you dont believe me think of ORSON WELLES ,and his theatre group presenting H.G. WELL'S; WAR OF THE WORLDS. A huge chunk of the listening American public tuned in to a widely advertised weekly 'armchair theatre show' and soon the streets were filled with a panicked population convinced the martians'd landed and the invasion had started. I rest my case


GOON BUT NEVER FORGOTTEN!









As one of my faithful followers ,John the CARTOONMAN...(I'll bung a link on his site , but for those who cant wait ,have a look at various comments on the blog and you'll find the lad.)...I shouldnt advertise him as the' little get' is becoming a fairly decent caricaturist and i'd noticed he'd done a few' good 'uns' of the Goon show stalwarts of HARRY SECOMBE, PETER SELLARS, and ,of course SPIKE MILLIGAN. As i have a heap of GOON related daubings and scribbles ,i thought to save having to do anything fresh i could bung them on the blog and show this 'young pretender ' how its done with pencil and ink ,none of this new fangled computer nonsense. And , as we have an A3 printer now , i can scan some never before revealed A3 bits ,there thats one of the benefits of having an A3 printer, ahh ,see i'm not quite as stoopid as generally rumoured , understood and agreed upon by the people who know and love me! So if your not GOONED out yet ,you soon will be.

Friday 26 August 2011

FORGET THE BRITISH BOBBY,DIRTY DAVID CAMERON IS GONNA CLEAN THE STREETS WITH ADVICE FROM AMERICA'S TOUGHEST COP!



Forget DIXON OF DOCK GREEN; Z-CARS,even THE SWEENEY......What do you mean you already had? Well i'll have you know that many of us still remember when the BRITISH BOBBY reigned supreme . The toughest baddie was reduced to blubbering tears by GEORGE DIXON, saying "Evenin' all!, or ,"Put down that shot gun, lad don't be an idiot!", worked everytime. And everyone went to jail happily ,as they knew they jolly well deserved to be there. But sadly times have changed and things've gotten a slight tad nastier and meaner. So DAVID CAMERON, gawd bless 'im ,he's the Prime Minister y'know. Well, our glorious leader in the spirit of CHURCHILL himself has in the spirit of goverment cuts declared another war ,but this time at home, its far cheaper you dont have to worry about armies and airforces , jut get the police, or whats left of them and brace yourself for some overtime claims , the british taxpayer can cough that up easy enough. He's reolute and he wont be defeated , so to sort out the METROPOLITAN POLICE ,he's done the obvious....Ran to the Yanks for help?


America is , apparently ,the LAND OF THE FREE. Your free if you can afford to be. But in a land where theres murders every fraction of a second; Gang killings by the minute; Psychotic gunmen shooting up schools n colleges every day or so. The name, land of the Brave is apt, I think you'd have to be, it'd scare the bejabbers out of me . These are the places totally out of control and left to their own fun and devices. David Cameron has seen them places and ignored them and in his bright eyed and bushy tailed little way, looked at all the nice little towns to see how they combat robberies of 'moms apple pies,etc. But maybe i'm doing our glorious leader a diservice and maybe he wants to see how the yanks do it ,so he can ignore it completly, but i doubt it. He'll ignore the best police force in the world, the one on his doorstep that hes cutting up and take the advice much to the Met's disgust of a man whose probably only holidayed over here, and who ,incidentally 'Our David' had lined up to take over the metropolitan police. I'm telling you ,the next set of riots wont be scally kids , but disgusted police officers.



Monday 22 August 2011

ITS A WONDERFUL LIFE ...TWO OF THE DEADEST TOWNS IN THE WORLD AND I LIVE IN ONE AND GO TO THE OTHER ON MY HOLIDAYS!




I dug out this old cartoon as its another example of how in our hi tech world its not just animals becomming extinct. There was a time before computers ,now laptops, took over the world. When one of the cartoonists favourite cartoon situations ,almost as popular as the desert island, was the office IN TRAY , OUT TRAY and occassionally thePENDING TRAY. But ,sadly no more ,unless you can have an IN LAPTOP ,and an OUT LAPTOP,and ,of course a PENDING LAPTOP. In fact , dont be too suprised if said gag does make a showing in a fairly near future blog. Sorry about the use of the word GAG! For some reason that word has always got on my nerves, esspecially when in the context of cartoons .Maybe it reminds me of some old pain in the arse loudmouth American comedian from days of yore ,and ,of course us cartoonists are much better and classier than that .




Aside from the in and out trays the 'gag' is ,of course about Welsh place names and that famous one..LLANFAIRPWLLGWYNGYLLGOGERYCHWYRNDROBWLLLLANTYSILIOGOGOGOCH....Now Now thats a name ,i actually used to be able to say that ,one of the few things that me ol' dad ever taught me. But everywhere in Wales is totally unpronouncable ,esspecially to us English ,but that is a deliberate decision on behalf of the Welsh long ago. I used to drive to a lot of caricaturing jobs around Wales and i kept coming across signposts for what i thought was a town ,which threw my navigating skills ,limited as they were to begin with ,slightly 'skew wiff', until i realised much later the placename, or so i thought it to be was actually Welsh for SERVICES!




Theres a coastal town called ,or sounds like TOWYN, but its spelt nothing like it sounds ,and we sit in a caravan in between rain storms and read lots of books there. Actually its not a bad old place ,absolutly nothing happens there and basically we just 'slob out'.Occassionally we all go on a jolly jaunt to the market ,a car boot sale ,or the local SPAR. Then we return to the English 'Deadend' equivalent of WARRINGTON. Where excitment is a trip to ASDA,or even B&Q, Or cutting the grass,oh let joy be unrestrained.




I still like that old joke about the Welsh version of COUNTDOWN consisting of nothing but CONSENANTS,not a single VOWEL would be allowed. I dont know about numbers ,do the Welsh have numbers?. When my Father in Law reads this he's gonna rip my bloody Scrawny English neck off ,look you ,isn't it ,bach!

Friday 12 August 2011

DOCTOR WHO,OR DOCTOR WHAT?WHAT?WHAT?...NEDDIE SEAGOON AS OUR FAVOURITE TIMELORD!




Apparently it nearly happened instead of JON PERTWEE, or TOM BAKER, around the early 70's when they were looking for a new DOCTOR WHO, the favourite for our favourite time lord was a certain HARRY SECOMBE...SIR NED OF WALES...NEDDIE SEAGOON.....Just sit back for a moment and try and imagine how that would've panned out ,one of SPIKE MILLIGANS crazier GOON SHOW scripts could only have come anywhere near it. Just as well the TARDIS, is "bigger on the inside than outside!".....Which would've been handy for Neddies portly blubberous frame...Mind you the doors could've been a problem ,the BEBC special effects people only ever show one TARDIS door open at a time to avoid showing the huge inside ,with SIR NED, they would've had to have both doors open for him to get in and out. nEDDIE SEAGOON being chased by DALEKS and CYBERMEN, etc ,well i'm chuckling imagining it now.




I met SIR HARRY SECOMBE a few times and a lovely bloke he was as well. The GOONS were wonderful. SPIKE MILLIGAN ,the tortured maniac who writed all the insanity and suffered for it, a manic depressive ,tortured genius ,etc. PETER SELLARS, A gifted mimic and a wonderful actor but like Spike a dark tortured soul. HARRY SECOMBE was the heart and soul of the GOONS, as he was a comic super nova. A fat ball of manic energy and humour.He was like that whenever i met him, but as far as THE GOONS. The humour was there from all three ,but the joy and laughter was mainly down to SIR NED. Who knows maybe he has become a time lord and is whizzing through time and space in a slightly bulging blue box, look up into the sky one starry night and if you hear a,"Whay ,hey ,what?what?what?", followed by a loud raspberry ,you'll know who's who!

Tuesday 9 August 2011

IN THESE HARD TIMES KIDS CANT AFFORD NEW TRAINERS, COMPUTER GAMES,PLASMA T.V'S ,THE NECESSITIES OF LIFE FOR GODS SAKE!

Alls well with the world.....The police are being cut down to a few constables and a couple of cleaning staff. Just as DISAFFECTED YOUTH of our major cities as i've heard the hooded scally scum rampaging through the streets described as ,decide they need to update their necessities of life ;new training shoes; computer games consuls and a nice big plasma screen to play the computer games on; i-pads; mobile phones,etc. So lets all go and wreck our home cities and communities and help ourselves and destroy everyone elses property ,belonging to the rich .The rich ,as described by some of these scum ,are the targets of their 'attacks'. These are people who live nearby to their own poverty stricken hell holes, rich probably means people who actually go out earn a living and buy things using money. These signs of wealth like cars ,houses and appartments, high street shops owned by generations of families and employing local people ,well they all deserve to be blown to hell.


I would love to see the prancing shitheads have the shit kicked out of them by a police not terrified of getting whisked into an inquiry they could never win so fast their ears'd whistle and they're noses'd bleed if, god forbid, they struck one of the little bastards, who would then be a hard done to victim ,much like the gun weilding guy the riots are using as an excuse to get back at the police for opening fire on.


The damage has been compared to the BLITZ. If DAVID CAMERON had been around when the LUFTWAFFE had been bombing hell out of us inWW-2, he'd probably cut the RAF by 50% for greater efficiency and figures would've shown how less German bombers were getting through, etc,etc ,yakkity, yack, etc.....Same with the boys in blue now. But no weapons, rubber bullets, dye sprays or water cannons for these animals rampaging through our streets gathering their much needed toys. DAVID CAMERON will sprinkle his equivalent of a soggy teabag to quell the flames scorching our great cities(well i like mine!). Our national pride and spirit ,because although it's taken a hammering through the years with the shit our glorious leaders and powers that be have led us through ,it is still there. The good people of London and the other cities feeling the effects far outnumber the filth on the streets over the nights . Give them a chance to be heard and helped , they're the dissaffected victims , not the so called 'disaffected youth of community leaders and various politicians ,70%of the 'youth wouldnt know what disaffected means and about 80% couldnt even spell it.


KEN DODD,MAYBE NOT SCOURGE OF THE SEVEN SEAS, BUT OF NEW BRIGHTON PERCH ROCK...NEARLY!



Yet another week and i'm dragged from my bed kicking and screaming to do yet another days work!!!!!.....This time to a happily rejeuvenated NEW BRIGHTON ,on the WIRRAL across the MERSEY and up from the fair city of LIVERPOOL. New Brighton was a bouncing holiday resort in days of yore ,then hit upon hard times , but there does seem to be a little life left in the ol' resort ,yet and hopefully growing. On Sunday ,they had a huge ,pirate themed festival with fairs , music and a lone shivering caricaturist drawing a non stop line of kids n' mums n' dads .....But the highlight was a pirate seige of the old fort. They'd armed a sailing boat with cannons and gunpowder blanks ,but the fort and surrounding beach was laced with explosive charges to make it seem the barrage was taking effect. Flames and smoke and loud explosions abounded. A few days previously i was asked to draw a picture of KEN DODD as a pirate ,as he was due to be there, but had to cancel due to family problems ,which was a shame.


KEN DODD is the funniest and most amazing live show you will ever experiance , if ,as i truly reccomend you do, even tho' he's not a trendy 'Stand-up' .I mean he's not been on 'LIVE AT THE APOLLO; Michael Macintires thingy, etc, etc, but Doddy is the best and still at his advanced age the the widest ,liveliest ,funniest and hardest working comedian around. We saw him start a show at 7.30p.m and we had to leave after 1.30a.m. and he was only just starting to wind up. I listened to the manic non-stop ranting and raving ,the non stop outpouring of jokes .."Oh i'll remember that!".....At the end , i couldnt remember a single joke from the thousands i'd heard. The old jokes about having to suffer sore ribs through laughing are all true with this man ,believe me. Years ago Doddy was invited by the CARTOONIST CLUB OF GREAT BRITAIN as 'JESTER OF THE YEAR'. He asked me to join him on the journey from RUNCORN to LONDON. He was a really nice guy , even tho' being constantly pestered by passengers , he was totally friendly, accomodating and friendly with some real pains in the arse. What impressed me ,was that he was a listener. Most celebrities/entertainers prefer the sound of their own voice over anyone elses. I wanted to hear about Doddy's life ,but he was fascinated in my life as a cartoonist. When he arrived at the CARTOONIST PUB at the end of FLEET ST, he stayed the whole day talking and joking with anybody and everybody, unlike other celebs ,who were gone within 20 minutes. He is a true comedy hero of mine and theres nobody around to touch him ,long may he reign.

Tuesday 2 August 2011

AHOY THERE N A YO HO HO ,THIS SALTY OL' SEA DOG IS BACK ON THE KEYBOARD...NOW PASS THAT BOTTLE O' RUM WILL YA!

Hello one n all your hero has returned!....No more will you have to drag yourself baffled , befuddled and alone through the drugery of life ,as i'm back ,somebody whose even more baffled ,befuddled and alone then all of you lot. Your pathetic 'cos you read this shit ,well, what about me?...I write this shit! But after dragging myself through the pain n heartache of my 51 st birthday, literally as i nearly got myself a hernia recieving 'The lovely Lynnes 'birthday present.....A whizzo, zap bang ,cor blimey ,guvnor ,printer .....Its got every thing ,which'll be thouroughly wasted on me .I can sit there for hours and listen to the multitude of bleeps ,blarps and bloops that come from the mass of lighted buttons that cover the front of the bloody thing. I actually think that most are just for show, just to keep the kids , well not the kids ,as they understand how to work it all ,but its simple minded ol' farts like that have the problems. So with my hernia ,slipped disc and trusty printer i can voice my concerns over the strange life and world we're stuck with and in.


My nautical opening title was brought on by the fact my lazy bone idle routine was horribly interrupted by being dragged off kicking and screaming to Birkenhead Secombe ferry terminal ,where is situated the WALLACE AND GROMIT SPACE EXHIBITION. They wanted me to work??????.....Drawing superheroes for the kids. They come to me with ideas for superheroes and their powers ,etc and i have to draw them up. I tell you there are some strange childish minds lining the banks of the River Mersey. Coming home i jumped the great ol' Mersey Ferry and basked in the sun as it made its way along and across the fair river, it was great i'd forgotten how great the ferries are i used to love riding them when i worked for a company years ago in the Cunard buildings alongside the beautiful Liver building ,(100 years old the other week!).....Then to recover from the strains that inflicted work had done to my system ,we went off to the Welsh coast to wash sheep shit off the dog and count the jelly fish on the beach.


Anyhow i'm off to do important stuff like wash the dishes before the Lovely Lynne takes it upon herself to rip me balls off. So 'till we meet again ,probably tomorrow.

Monday 6 June 2011

APOLOGIES TO ONE 'N' ALL, BUT ME SCANNERS BLOWN UP SO NO SCANNED PICCIES FOR TIM'S BLOG FOR A WEE WHILE ,BUT I SHALL RETURN!!!!!!

As i said the damn blasted printer scanner thingey's gone 'n' blown up , so for all you fans 'n'n followers of whats really happening in the world with your ace 'finger on the pulse roving (between the studio and the kitchen) cartooning reporter, fret ye not ,it'll all come right and your leader shall return to educate ,entertain ,baffle ,befuddle ,irritate and annoy to the least best of my abilities!!!!!!!!

Monday 9 May 2011

THE ROYAL WEDDING! WE ALL SAW 'THAT' DRESS, BUT MANY OF US WONDERED ABOUT 'THE UNDERWEAR.




I have to apologise first off, as my ever alert finger on the pulse hasnt been alert or on the pulse ,due to a infilltration of the computer by stuff like viruses and trojans and worms and trojan worms, this was F**'IN up the computer and was nothing to do with a sky remake of JASON N' THE ARGONAUTS. But my alert finger and the pulse is back to entertain ,edjucate and no doubt annoy n bore the arse of the variety of weirdo's that read this shit. Anyhow fans and cuddly affecianado's of culture and crap here we go again ,no more excuses. But the world has turned a good number of times since these stubby fingers have battered the keyboard, and amongst the throng of stuff thats been n gone and been assigned to history was , that ROYAL WEDDING which suddenly came and went. The eyes of the world were set intently on 'THAT' dress!!!!!.....As the lovely bride left the family hotel to go and do the buisness at that big church. I listened to the women of the Leatherbarrow household "Ahh n' Coo" about 'THAT' dress. I couldnt help wondering about what was underneath .....'THOSE' commoner drawers from 'Marks n' Sparks' ?




Later on in the day i thought my questions would all be actually answered when that Welsh newscaster off the BEEB announced that when the new bride n groom left the palace they would do it in a manner which would be a suprise and a treat to all us commoners who'd parked their arses on the couch for the last hour or so, or those maniacs who'd parked their ,now soggy,grass stained arthritic arses outside the gates of the palace for 7 days or so. When the AIR SEA RESCUE helicopter flew over the palace i thought WILLIAM would attach himself to the rescue cable and hitch the missus up and carry her across the thousands of arched necks as the people swayed like reeds in the wind trying to see up 'THAT' dress at 'THE' underwear. But this was not to be. Instead they drove out in a good old JAMES BOND fashion in a wonderful ASTON MARTIN. I thought "Oh please, dear lord i will go to church every Sunday if you activate the EJECTOR SEAT in the button at the top of the gear stick!"....But ,alas t'was not to be. A simple request thought i, but the ol fellah wasn't in a granting meagresimple requests n' favours mood. Is it any wonder the numbers going to church on a Sunday are falling.

Thursday 5 May 2011

TIM LEATHERBARROW THE PETE TOWNSHEND OF SCRIBBLING CARICATURISTS AT THE SHREWSBURY CARTOON FESTIVAL

After returning to our dark gloomy n' damp ol' country after getting absolutly frazzled n' fried, boozing and stuffing our faces in Portugal, i had a night at home with a chinkey take away and a bottle of wine in front of the telly catching up on hours of SKY + recorded episodes of CORONATION STREET. Then the following morning i bade farewell to my beloved brood and made my way off to the fine town of SHREWSBURY, as it was time for the scum of the cartooning world to decend upon the pubs and backstreets of that fine and once respectable town. Whenever the cartoonists decend upon any place any semblance of ,class, style, order,decency, and general good n' nice things legs it out in the opposite direction as fast as their respectable legs'll carry them. This time would prove to be no different ,especially as a group of hooligans and deadbeats, generally refferred to as the IRISH CARTOONISTS' were coming over from the emerald bogs. I've not seen many of them for a number of years . I'm still recovering from the ravages of a variety of Irish cartoon festivals over the last 20 years or so.


Not long after arriving i got dragged into the main square ,where cartoonists were drawing on boards and sheets of various sizes from normal foolscap to 8 by 10 foot boards. I got dragged into the caricaturing for the public. There was a big queue ,so instead of carefully drawn brush pen renderings , i snaffled a couple of free A3 pads and some black markers and dived in doing ,as they say, 'lightening sketches'. People enjoy the fast almost frenetic scribbling. Once somebody called me a KEITH MOON of cartooning....I was telling one of my targets that, as i was stretching my arm ,swinging my drawing arm above my head . He said i was more like a PETE TOWNSHEND of caricaturing. I dont know if that was because of the swinging arm; The target badge i had on my shirt.....Or just my big nose! But being ever the showman i went into a TOWNSHEND WINDMILL AND LEAP in the air, very silly, but it got a laugh and a round of applause. I did consider ripping the drawing and smashing the marker pen on the deck, but i do draw the line, along with all the others.....I do have limits to my stupidity ,but it was probably the prospect of having to bend all the way to the ground to break this little chunky marker, doing me back in and probably smashing my fingers.


Then, at the first oppertunity we dissappeared into the boozer, finally meeting up with the Irish lads; GRAHAM KEYES, TOM MATTHEWS, JIM COOGAN and later TOM HALLIDAY. And much to my disgusted suprise GUY CARTER had been invited to film the chaos and disorder. The evening then degenerated into boozing, stuffing our faces then back to the boozing. The mixture of beer, wine and .....whisky ,all in vast quantities, at the time seemed a good idea, but time would tell...


And ,Jeez ,it did!....The following morning was a little like a scene from one of those zombie films. What the human being will do to themselves in the quest for a good night is beyond belief. But a good cartoonist is nothing if not experianced in the art of handling the worst of hangovers. After a few gallons of tea and coffee we hit the main square and scribble the fine people of Shrewsbury. Filled with stale drink; And festering hatred for myself, the suffering i put myself through and for the others who forced drink down my unsuspecting and innocent gullet; and hatred for everybody sitting in front of me , my jaws aching as i clenched my teeth with a couple of tons of pressure on my molars and fillings in an unflinching sincere friendly smile.


Its quite easy being a caricaturist in a festival ,as people are always saying things like,"Dont draw my spots, freckles, big nose, wrinkles, bald patch, double chin, etc, etc, ", half the time you dont have to look up. After a bit the locals genuine good humour bucks you up and its time to get 'THE HAIR OF THE DOG' down you. The LOVELY LYNNE n' THE LITTLE 'UN arrived in the afternoon. They had a wander ,as GUY CARTER, decided he wanted me to film the cartoonists and public. I took to it like a 'FISH TO CONCRETE'. Over the day and evening the language and pure insanity that came out on the attempt at serious investigative journalism was unbelievable. I reckon theres about 3 days of film, but by the time it gets edited down ,there'll be about 45 seconds of usable non offensive film.



That evening when we hit the hotel bar ,in the company of GUY CARTER and the EMPEROR DALEK, himself, JOHN LANDERS. John was driving Guy nuts, as Guy wanted John to introduce the festival in this incredible DALEK voice that he manages somehow and never fails to crease me up. He wouldnt do it so Guy was yelling n' 'effing n' blinding and ,after a while sounded more like a DALEK then JOHN, but for the second time in as many months i was in a totally uncontrollable fit of laughter ,crying and tearing of the ribcage ,but John picked up on it and took up laughing ,which set me off again and vice versa, neither of us could breath for an hour or so. Everybody looking over.."What the F*****'s wrong with them shit'eads? written across their faces . When i went to bed i was still in pain and the following day my ribs and throat were wrecked.


A good time, as ever was had by all, while the festival was on, afterwards you have to pay the ferryman for the overindulgences. As you get older the suffering lasts about 3 times longer than the sinfullness that was responsible for it in the first place.


The 'ace(but not pretty)face' HUNT EMERSON made a showing at SHREWSBURY, but after a mooch around the main square ,he looked for us in a few boozers, but couldnt find us, so returned home to BIRMINGHAM. Either Hunt needs to wipe the ink off his glasses;Missed us in the pub; Or he was in the pub when we were looking at museums and cathedrals and such places of cultural interest. It was a shame we missed him, as he's a grizzled veteran of the Irish festivals as well. Ah well, maybe next year.

Tuesday 29 March 2011

ROGER DALTREY: HE CAN STILL SING A MEAN PIN BALL !


My run-down Guinness soaked body is only just recovering from a few days down in the capital. As regular readers, there must be one or three out there...It's nothing to be ashamed of.....Well maybe a little ,just keep it to yourself and carry on reading your laptop under the blankets......Well as i was going to say , i was down in London and you'll not be too stunned shocked and amazed if i say it was to go and watch ROGER DALTREY perform TOMMY at the ROYAL ALBERT HALL. There! i bet your shocked , stunned and amazed.


We hit the big city and hit a few boozers quite soon afterwards. Later in the afternoon we met up with two caricaturists of my ,but hopefully not your aqaintance, a certain SIMON ELLINAS and a certain PAUL BAKER who forced us to drink even more beer .We gave Simon a spare ticket for the show ,i tthink it was on the roof of the R.A.H. We agreed to meet later ,shockingly ,stunningly and amazingly ...In a pub!. Just around the corner from the hallowed hall. The problem was we couldnt find the pub, so while Simon tried to find a decent 'spec' we retired to the bar. Whilst i gagged on the tin of Guinness ,because of the price ,my friend ,also called Simon, incidentally. Obviously a common ,nasty name , not like TIM. Well Simon (2) gagged on some Taiwanese lager ,for a number of reasons ,two being :It tasted of donkey piss with bubbles and it cost a bomb. But these arent big enough reasons to put a galavanting pair of northern lads off their 'pop', so we carried on guzzling away 'till a certain Mr ROGER DALTREY hit the stage. It has to be said him n' his band did a blistering performance ,his voice sounded years younger and was more than up to booming over the band ,who were a rocking bunch of chaps. After, they did a pile of real WHO oldies ,even LIVE AT LEEDS stuff, and pulled it off superbly. The biggest cheers of the night tho' were for a certain Mr PETE TOWNSHEND, who couldnt resist it and came on for two tracks. Both Simons agreed it was a great night.


The following morning Simon (2) awoke ,mentioned in his Geordie accent "worra grayte show tha' was!", let a loud fart out and rolled over to go back to sleep. Simon left London that day and i met up with a couple of caricature deadbeats and wasters in the form of GUY CARTER and later on PAUL BAKER They took an innocent northern lad to evil nasty pubs and dens of iniquity in the back streets of Londons fair city. Guy and Paul arent the most handsome of faces, in fact i'd go ,at a push as far as to say they are ugly as sin, but it was good to see their grotty visages again, and ,of course Simon from the day before. But the sun shone the Guinness tasted well ,i laughed more than i have for a long time, as KEN DODD would say in his analysis of "What is a laugh?"...It starts in the 'CLACK' and moves on up to the 'CHUCKLE MUSCLES'...Well ,my chuckle muscles were strained and pulled that day.