Life-alteringly wonderful

I first happened upon this performance in 1985, some 18 years after it was first broadcast. Twenty-six long years later, and forty-four years after the event, it remains as spine-tingling as ever. The fact that the show was transmitted in monochrome makes it, for me at least, even more atmospheric and special.

I hope you enjoy it every bit as much as I continue to.

Are others excited about this season's crop of "X-Factor" hopefuls?**








** me neither.

Happiness is a wet pussy

Move, and Kitty gets it. Hooray!

In recent years, the garden to the rear of my house became something of a giant litter tray to the neighbourhood's feline population. Not a day went by when a trip to put my bicycle into the shed for safekeeping did not involve my stepping into one of Tiddle's little warm cat eggs, pungent in their aroma and dangerous to the touch.

I perhaps have to declare an interest here, and state that I am emphatically not one of the world's millions of "cat lovers". To me, they display the same innate smugness and mendacity I associate with some of the more unpleasant members of the human race, such as Ms. Fearne Cotton, Mr. Timothy "Timmy" Mallett, and Mr. William Kenwright CBE. I fail to discern the attraction in keeping an animal as a pet which rewards your love, care and affection by shredding your soft furnishings, bringing you occasional "gifts" of mutilated sparrows which you are obliged to "finish off", urinating over your prized geraniums, and shitting in your muesli.

Perhaps as a response to the recent bouts of civil unrest in my local area, there has been an upsurge in vigilantism; now that the riotous assemblies have melted away, however, the brave Joe Publics appear to have selected other "deserving" targets for their ire. To address the problem of cats defecating in my pea gravel, I also considered the deployment of a battrey of air weapons; however, despite my intense distaste of feline excrement, I do not wish to cause any damage to the creatures on the grounds of my latent Buddhist beliefs and the fact that, unlike many of the local suburban paladins, I cannot afford the time to peer out of my back window all night with a loaded air rifle in the hope that an incursion occurs at some point. Additionally, I may incur the fearsome wrath my neighbours, cat owners both, if I were to spread the skull of one of their adorable little angels over my waney lap panelled fencing, like a tackhammer hitting a punnet of overripe strawberries.

Having discounted this option, I then took advice from others on how to deal with the problem. One well-meaning individual suggested the liberal dispensing of orange peel on the areas where cats tend to deposit their mess, on the grounds that they find the scent offensive. The cat's response to this was merely to urinate over the orange peel, do their business, scatter the pea gravel with their rear paws, sneer at me and turn away with their tails in the air, prominently displaying what appeared to be a small pink tea-towel holder.

Another suggested placing milk bottles around the garden, the theory being that the cat would cast sight of its own distorted reflection, sense a rival in the vicinity, turn tail and flee. This merely resulted in the cats posing in front of the milk bottles, admiring themselves in a manner akin to Narcissus. The only way of disengaging them from basking in their reflected beauty was to seek to deliver a hefty punt up their posteriors, but they were much too efficient in their evasive action.

The myriad sprays, plastic decoy animals and ultrasonic sound devices simply do not work, resulting only in an empty wallet and a shed filled with useless gadgetry, which may only be disposed of at so-called "car boot sales" at a hefty discount to another desperate individual with the same issues. I was at the point of purchasing two Jack Russell puppies with the intent of leaving them out to "play" in the garden all day; this would act as an obvious deterrent to any feline intruders, but would cause me the secondary problem of having to feed, inoculate and groom two stupid, yapping curs with an vicious temper and a propensity to eat the buttons off my shirts as they lie in the laundry basket. Plus, of course, they shit and piss too (in more obvious places than Tiddles and his ilk, however).

And then. Salvation arrived. In the shape of this:

This marvellous piece of apparatus combines a PIR motion sensor with a jet spray, effective to a range of ten metres. The apparatus is placed into the ground via a spike, preferably in a bank of foliage to render it invisible to even the keenest-eyed kitty. A garden hose is attached to the bottom of the unit, and the water is turned on. Then, one waits... and as Tiddles pops into the cone of fire to perform his ablutions, he is drenched by a high-powered arc of water, an event accompanied by a cacophony akin to a Mattel toy machine gun.

The unit has now been installed for two weeks. No cat's eggs have been laid in that time. The hilarity continues, however, as the unit does not discriminate between species, and the fat pigeons attempting to gorge themselves on the fruit of my elderberry trees also find themselves a target. Squirrels, too, have attempted many hilarious manoeuvres to attempt to outwit the sensor, with little or no success.

The success of the unit is such that even the urban foxes, which would often venture into the garden under cover of darkness in order to rip open my refuse sacks, or mark their territory in their atrocious-smelling vulpine piss, or indulge in group sex on my lawn, have not returned for quite some time. However, this may also potentially be attributed to the lingering scent of the festering carcass of one of their number which I captured, dispatched in the "halal" manner, divested of its skin, and hung from one of the branches of the tree at the rear of the shed. The sparrows seem to like it. They liked the eyes, especially.

Do others applaud this marvel of space-age motion-sensing technology?

Compare and contrast, part two

"Och Harry, ah'm skint, cannae get any bawbies ootae Bill, any tips fae wheeler-dealin'?"

"Fack orf, I'm a fackin' football manager!"

On  May 10, 2005, in the Liverpool Daily Post, the manager of the Everton Football Club Company Limited, Mr. David Moyes, had this to say, regarding his expectations for the future of the football club:

"I don't mind if people expect a lot from us, not one bit. That has always been one of my objectives - to raise expectations here. This season we had no expectation but I wouldn't want that to be the norm. I want people, the fans, whoever to expect Everton to be challenging for things. Otherwise, I am not doing my job." 

Five and a half years later, and Mr. Moyes now opines thus on the same subject:

"I think we have to be careful in what we believe Everton are capable of achieving"

Oh, dear. Five and a half years, and Mr. David Moyes has gone from ambitions of scaling the lofty heights of the English Premier League to paving the way for the club's better players to be sold to appease the bank. However, despite the seemingly endless adversity, much of which has been engendered by the antics of the club's chairman and board of directors, Mr. Moyes hangs on in there. Many have marvelled at his tenaciousness and loyalty as the ship sails towards the iceberg, and remark on the evident closeness between him and his chairman. I, personally, never cease to be surprised at just what loyalty can be garnered by the simple application of a small stipend of £3,000,000 per annum.

So, what, one wonders, would tempt Mr. Moyes away from the indulgent, ingenuous,  avuncular, ever-popular man of the people, Mr. William Kenwright CBE? Well, it has been mooted on several occasions that Mr. Moyes would succeed the manager of The Tottenham Hotspurs Football Club Company Limited, Mr. Henry J. Redknapp, on the occasion of the latter man's "inevitable" gravitation towards being the General Manager of "Team England", following the departure of Sgr. Fabio Capello.

However, this has given me cause to ponder... What, if anything, disbarrs Mr. Moyes from applying for the position of manager of "Team England" himself?

It would be a marvellous appointment by the Football Association mandarins; a manager with a good track record, performing miracles on scant resources to produce teams who perform above the level expected by the sum of the parts, a man who has displayed unquestioning loyalty to his employers in the most trying of circumstances, and (perhaps best of all for the Football Association) without a whiff of salacious scandal around him, unlike some spivs we could mention.

For Mr. Moyes, too, it should be a lucrative move; a salary way in excess of even his current one, without the worry of having to sell off his better players to balance the books. Plus, idiotic though the Football Association's committee are, he has surely dealt with worse individuals for the past 12 years.

The obvious stumbling block is the fact that Mr. Moyes is a "proud Scot"; but, as he has recently demonstrated, such principles come cheap. Parity with the £5,000,000-plus annual stipend currently awarded to Sgr. Fabio Capello should quash any such unease, and then some, one should have thought. And at least he is reasonably proficient in English, and will not blame the Football Association for the inevitable failings of  "Team England".

I feel that his case is compelling, and that he should "clinic" his Curriculum Vitae in readiness for the call from Sir Trevor Brookin', or somebody of that ilk.

What do others think?

Relationship Maintainence Clinic; The Lost Art Of Lashing Your Dinner

The best picture of a man casting his repast across the room that I could muster at short notice.

Picture this little domestic vignette. A hard-working, well-meaning family man arrives back at his domicile after a hard day on the building site, or directing traffic in a busy city centre, or perhaps earning his crust by destabilising the currency of a developing nation or two. He is tired, he is jaded from the stresses and strains of his chosen profession, but most of all, he is ravenous. His stomach is labouring under the misapprehension that his throat has been cut, such is the depth of his hunger.

On entry, he finds that the repast cooked by his significant other is imprisoned behind the oven door, slowly drying out with the oven set to 85°C, whilst his partner attends to the bedtime routine of their misbehaving, giddy children. He rescues the burnt offerings from their arid tomb, pops the hot plate onto a tray, runs cold water over his scalded and blistered hands, grabs some cutlery, douses the indiscernable, steaming mass in salt and pepper to taste, sits down in the armchair endowed with the gentle patina of five years straining under his arse, turns on the television set, and settles down to gratefully devour the product of his partner's domestic science education whilst watching yet another repeat of the "QI" televisual strand on "Dave".

All our man wants is to satiate his hunger and empty his mind of anything resembling thought; he craves nothing more than peace, quiet, and a full tummy.

His partner, however, has other designs. She "wants to talk". Beneath the veneer of her faded, weather-beaten allure lies a bubbling, critical mass of hormonally-driven ire. Her darling children have got on her sagging tits all day, the one day off a week she has from her dreadful non-job in Customer Services at Marks and Spencer. The door of the washing machine does not close properly. The bathroom is full of dirty laundry. The ceiling in the hall needs painting. There is a mass of bric-a-brac which must be taken to the local recycling centre. Her "friends" all have well-paid, rewarding careers, and their conversations made her feel inadequate when they met up in "Ask" earlier that day. One of her friends has a pretty new dress that flattered her figure beautifully. Nobody gives her a second glance in the street anymore. Her face is increasingly lined, her arse looks like a vanilla blancmange in tights, she "has the painters in" in three days time. Everybody else's life seems so... perfect. Whilst hers is shit.

All of this stoked-up tension is looking for an outlet. And our man is the unwitting victim.

She enters the sitting room. Our man grunts, through a mouth laden with chicken, mashed potato and spinach, in order to acknowledge her presence. She is filled with nothing but contempt for this slighty overweight, seemingly uncaring troglodyte in the armchair. An exploratory verbal sortie begins; an inquiry about the hall ceiling is met with a curt "yur, I'll do it at the weekend", as is the news that the washing machine door has malfunctioned. 

Après ceci, le déluge. All bets are off at this point; our man is swamped with the full force of the hormonal, emotional tsunami, as he is blamed for everything from the fact that she can't get into her jeans to the 1969 Sino-Soviet border conflict by this screaming, combustive harridan. His dreams of peace and quiet lie in tatters; he must now carefully choose his response. He can put his meal to one side, sit next to his partner, place his loving, manly arms around her, and try to calm her down in tactile fashion whilst listening to her litany of complaints, offering tender words of reassurance and understanding. But fuck that for a game of soldiers, he's knackered and she has chosen to push all the wrong buttons.

Alternatively, he can simply stand up and land a massive swing right onto the point of her jaw, sending her sprawling across the settee. However, our man (though angry) is not of such neandrethal stock that he would choose to counter a verbal beating with a physical one. After all, they have been through a lot together, and he still remains fond of her, despite her increasing disquiet about the miserable state of her existence. Besides, he could find himself serving a custodial sentence. And, when all is said and done, things could be worse; she could be Ms. Sinead O'Connor.

But wait. There is another option, a "third way", if you will, one which is oft overlooked in this age of equality and the "new man"... and our man takes it. Without saying a word, he stands up, takes the dish in his right hand, and lashes it against the far wall, before grabbing his coat and stomping out of the house to visit his local pub for a pint. This emphatic demonstration, on the face of it, seems to be the ultimate in childish futility; he has messed up his nest, he has allowed his emotions to get the better of him, and his dinner is now in the dog (and all over the chocolate brown, faux suede drapes). However, this simple, puerile act strikes to the very core of the female psyche; the rejection of the fruit of her loving domestic endeavours by the hunter-gatherer is such a viscerally profound gesture that it brings her up short. It conveys the irrefutable, insistent message that the delicate threads that serve to bind their relationship together, though complex, are fundamentally fragile; akin to cobwebs, as it were, and just as easily swept away.

Sobbing, as she cleans up food remants and broken crockery, she takes stock of her actions; by the time she has finishing rubbing the "1001 Dry Foam" into their oatmeal Wilton in a semi-circular, anti-clockwise motion against the weft of the pile, she has realised that all of her issues are mere trifles, and she has resolved to be a nicer person as well as a more sympathetic partner to her hard-working, much-maligned protector.  Sure, her partner has made a bit of a mess in the lounge, but in doing so he was merely reasserting his position of dominance at the head of the household, and she secretly harbours erotic fantasies in which he assumes an ultra-assertive demeanour. She might even let him have a bunk-up when she pulls the plug out next week on the strength of that.

Our man, having consumed six pints of Guinness on an unline stomach and endured a drab Champions League encounter between Bate Borisov and Viktoria Plzen on the television in his local hostelry, is also in reflective and conciliatory mood; she is not such a bad old stick after all, and this inspires him to demonstrate his love, affection and appreciation for her efforts in keeping the household together via the gift of "The Kebab of Peace". But that gift, dear friends, is quite another story.

Have others found that lashing their dinner has proved to be the unlikely salvation of their relationship?

Jack Straw's Cock

No, I did not say "Jack Straw's A Cock", but I suppose if the cap fits...

Jack Straw, looking like a refugee from a 1968 university campus. In 1978.

A friend of mine contacted me earlier today, via the gift of electronic mail, in order to relate a remarkable coincidence which he experienced last evening. After meeting some of his friends for a nice plate of supper, he travelled from Barbican to Kings Cross/St. Pancras on our metropolis's wonderful underground system. En route, he encountered a stocky, shaven-headed gentleman whom he at first glance took to be Mr. Bob Crow, the leader of the Rail, Maritime and Transport union. The gentleman then turned around, revealing himself not to be "the firebrand trade union militant" (© The Daily Mail).

Thus satisfied that he was not, in fact, in the vicinity of Mr. Crow, my friend alighted the underground train at St. Pancras, ascended the stairs to the main station concourse, and bumped into... Mr. Bob Crow, the leader of the Rail, Maritime and Transport union, "the firebrand trade union militant" (© The Daily Mail). The real one. My friend exchanged pleasantries with Mr. Crow, and alighted his train in a state of some bewilderment at the turn of events.

In my life, I have experienced coincidence, but nothing quite like that. However, it did take me back to one occasion where I encountered a figure from the murky world of politics in rather curious circumstances. I was driving back from Liverpool to London one pleasant Sunday evening some years ago, when I decided to take a "comfort break". I pulled off the motorway at the Warwick Service Station, parked my Jaguar motor car, and made my way to the gentleman's conveniences. 

Whilst at the urinal, I had cause to glance to my left, and there, at the urinal next to mine, was the "Right Honourable" Member of Parliament for Blackburn, and (at the time) Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth affairs, Mr. John Whitaker Straw, better known as "Jack". So surprised was I by the incongruity of the Blairite war criminal appearing next to me in order to urinate, I performed what I believe is known as a "double take", which had the unfortunate concomitant effect of my gaze alighting upon the ministerial penis.

I say "ministerial" advisedly. "Magisterial", it certainly was not. It looked a little sorry for itself, actually. Hanging its head in shame. In which capacity, I suppose, it was abjectly attempting to compensate for its master not having the humility to so do for his crimes against many thousands of innocents in Iraq.

Mr. Straw finished the evacuation of his bladder before I finished mine (several shakes, in his case, bordering on a wank), and scuttled off, pausing only to flick his fingers of his right hand (i.e. his "grip hand", as it were) in an insouciant manner under a running tap for around a second and a half. No soap was applied to either hand at any juncture during the course of this dexterity. At this point, I was grateful that his ministerial portfolio covered Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, and not Health.

I finished my ablutions, washed my hands thoroughly with soap and hot water (up to the elbows, in fact), and left the conveniences, whereupon mine eyes did alight upon the minister ,striding across the concourse of the building, clutching a copy of The Sunday Telegraph and a bottle of mineral water, both recently purchased, and probably at a cost to the UK taxpayer of several hundred pounds. At this point, he was joined by another man whom I took to be his ministerial chauffeur, and they strode off purposefully towards a  dark blue Jaguar car, to which Mr. Straw was entitled given his ministerial portfolio.

A thought crossed my mind; would it not be fitting, given the relative parity in performance in our similar vehicles, if I were to level my vehicle with Mr. Straw's and then suffer a slight "lapse in concentration" which would result in my veering towards the inside lane and forcing the ministerial Jaguar into the Armco barrier next to the hard shoulder, thus atoning a little  for the injustices perpetrated upon ordinary, innocent Iraqis by the West's insatiable greed for cheap oil? Thus, I dashed across the car park and, in the manner of a Le Mans start I jumped into my vehicle, fired up the engine, and sought out the mendacious member for Blackburn.

Sadly, however, my quest was fruitless; I was bound by the law of the land and my own conscience in maintaining a safe and sensible velocity, conducive to the prevailing driving conditions. It would seem that Mr. Straw's driver had no such reservations, and that he seemingly had mashed his handmade brogues into the Axminster and disappeared many miles down the southbound carriageway, conveying him and "The Demon Headmaster" on their way to Mr. Straw's "grace and favour" Westminster residence.

It is a source of eternal regret to me, to this day, that I did not snatch this precious opportunity to urinate onto the shoes of the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. However, I console myself with the fact that my conscience is clear, whilst his hands have the blood of thousands on them, in addition to his own stale, fetid piss.

Do others have similar experiences to relate?

A plea

If anybody can locate a better quality version of the footage above, anywhere; could you please point me in its general direction? If so, you shall have my eternal thanks and gratitude.

Do others recall this bunch of jolly japesters from the late 1980's?

Compare and contrast

Class.

 

Classless.

At a very late hour on Wednesday evening, 31 August 2011, The Everton Football Club Company Limited announced the transfer of Snr. Mikel Arteta from the club to The Arsenal Football Club plc. In the hours following the transfer, the manager of The Everton Football Club Company Limited's first team playing squad, Mr. David Moyes, was quoted thus:

"Mikel indicated to me that he wished to join Arsenal if a bid came in.  I am very disappointed to lose him but the prospect of Champions League football was something I wasn't able to offer him."

This seemed rather strange, especially given the very late hour at which the deal was concluded; the implication here by Mr. Moyes was that Snr. Arteta pushed for the transfer in his desire to leave the football club. This is completely at odds with a interview with the British Broadcasting Corporation in which Snr. Arteta stated the importance of The Everton Football Club Company Limited retaining its best players for the forthcoming campaign. 

Further supposition that Snr. Arteta was acting out of character, given the universally accepted truth that he is one of the most genuine men in the sport of professional football, came from Dan Roan of the British Broadcasting Corporation, in the following statement:

"Arsenal offered £5m on Tuesday and £10m on Wednesday afternoon - both bids were rejected. Any deal was dead until around 1900 BST, when Arteta told Moyes he wished to leave.

"Moyes spoke to the chairman, Bill Kenwright, and said he did not want to keep a player who did not wish to play for Everton.

"Arteta was Everton's highest-paid player ever on around £75,000 a week and took a big pay cut to join Arsenal."

Having read that, and knowing the parlous financial state of The Everton Football Club Company Limited, one began to smell the proverbial rat; every high-profile departure of a player from The Everton Football Club Company Limited in recent has been accompanied by more spin than one's washing machine generates at the final stages of a boil wash. It was now obvious that Mr. Arteta's departure was precipitated not by an ambition to join The Arsenal Football Club plc in order to participate in Champions League football (if that were the case, why not demand a transfer request at any time in the last four seasons, and why should he renew his contract only last year?), but by the desperation of the club to satiate the reasonable demands of its creditors.

And, when Snr. Arteta spoke on the matter, in order to defend himself from claims of disloyalty to The Everton Football Club Company Limited, he as good as confirmed this to be the case without seeking to be undiplomatic; asked by Sky Sports News if he wished to leave The Everton Football Club Company Limited, Snr. Arteta replied thus...

‘No. It’s true that I met the manager and told him that I thought it was a good opportunity for me and I think that the club is in a situation where they need to sell someone.

‘Leaving Everton means the world to me. This is my family and I can see from the reaction people have had with me that it is a proper family. Everyone was devastated.

‘I know I have left a mark here on the club because I get on with everyone really well. I want to thank my team mates, every one of them have been brilliant for me all these years. I want to thank the fans too. I never expected to feel so much love from them.’

‘I have Everton in my heart and I’m not going to earn more money, I just think it’s the right time to move and hopefully they will understand. I appreciate what they have done for me and it has been an absolute pleasure to play in front of them.

‘The chairman was on the phone telling me he didn’t want to lose me but I think they have to in these moments. They don’t want to put the club in a situation where in one or two years the club is in bits.

‘I just want to thank the fans. Some will get upset. What I can say is that I have given all I have for Everton….everything. I could play better or worse but I always try my best. I made my decision for the best of the club. Thanks a million times for the love, the support and how good they have been with me and my family. I am always going to be an Everton supporter…….there’s no doubt about it.'

Emphatically not the words of a man seeking a change in employment, I am sure you will agree.

So, what are we to make of this? It goes without saying that Snr. Arteta leaves the club with his head held high, and his integrity intact; he is one of professional football's finest ambassadors, and I sincerely wish him nothing but the best in his endeavours at The Arsenal Football Club plc. He will, without doubt, receive a marvellous, warm reception whenever he returns to Goodison Park.

On the other hand, Mr. David Moyes, a man whom I thought possessed equal integrity, now appears to have sold his principles for the sake of £3m a year in order to present the distortions and lies fed to the supporters by the board of directors of The Everton Football Club Company Limited, in order to deflect the well-deserved opprobrium due to them as a result of their incompetence. Mr. Moyes could have chosen to  contain his comment on the matter to, "Yes, I'm disappointed to lose Mikel, but these things happen in football, and we carry on"; instead of which, he chose to attempt to hang the responsibility on the player for his departure.

Mr. Moyes has now diminished himself in my eyes; and, whilst I still regard him as the only asset in the management of The Everton Football Club Company Limited, and the best possible manager for the club in their current straitened circumstances, I have lost the respect for him that I once had.  His recent pointed criticism of those seeking to broker change within the football club only serves to reinforce my opinion.

I speak these days with the detachment of the outsider, for the antics of the denizens of the boardroom of The Everton Football Club Company Limited have pushed me way beyond ambivalence and into my current state of not being interested in whether or not the club thrives or dies. The problem for the club now is that there are an increasing number of people just like me, a number which increases every time Mr. William Kenwright CBE opens his mouth, or when the club's camp followers "troll" internet discussion boards attempting to stifle criticism under the guise of assumed identities, rather than actually working for the benefit of the football club.

Do others remember when The Everton Football Club Company Limited actually commanded respect, rather than ridicule?

The Most Bummable Popstars in Ireland

Feargal Sharkey: third from bottom (ahem) in The Battle of the Bummed.

Well, well, well: it would appear that Ms. Sinéad O'Connor's quest to find a hirsute, middle-aged, leather-trousered bum chum has caused something of a commotion across cyberspace. Apart from the inevitable scurrilous gossip-mongerers affording Ms. O'Connor the oxygen of publicity of which she has been so starved since she tore apart a picture of His Holiness John Paul II live on American television all those years ago, there has also been a pertinent question posed by some of  Ireland's foremost academics; to whit, just how highly does Ms. O'Connor rank in the nation's wank bank?

Shortly before Ms. O'Connor embarked upon her mission to make a complete arse of herself (and rather fortuitously for such cyber-commentators as I), Doctors Patrick Fitzmichael and Michael Fitzpatrick, from the Faculty of Gender Identity, Sexuality and Uphill Gardening at University College Dublin, embarked on a research project to ascertain the desirability of the most prominent figures in the Irish music industry. 

Drawing on years of quantitative research, gender profiling, analysis of the correlation between celebrity and attractiveness, measurement of the physiological changes in students when shown images of their idols, and masses of anecdotal evidence, they came to the conclusion that they "hadn't a feckin' clue"; so, in order not to surrender their mammoth research grant from the Catholic Church of Ireland, they decided to intoxicate as many of the denizens of the Student's Union on free Guinness, then posed to them the following, brilliantly incisive and succinct question:

"Which Irish musician's arsehole would you most like to stick your mickey or tongue into?"

Their paper has just been published, and it is therefore my great pleasure to furnish you with the official list of The Top Ten Most Bummable Popstars in Ireland:

1. Samantha Mumba

= 2. Andrea Corr

= 2. Caroline Corr

= 2. Sharon Corr

5. Sinéad O'Carroll (B*witched)

6. Van Morrison

7. Keavy Lynch (B*witched)

8. Dolores O'Riordan (The Cranberries)

9. Edele Lynch (B*witched)

10. The Late Stephen Gately (but strictly post-mortem)

Mr. Morrison's (perhaps surprisingly) high placing was attributed variously to the enormous degree of respect which he commands within the hearts and souls of Irish youth due to the canon of his work, a subliminal connotation made by the intoxicated students between the act of sodomy and his 1967 hit disc "Brown-Eyed Girl",  and a desire to "make the big arl eejit smile for once in his feckin' life".

As can be seen, Ms. O'Connor failed to make the top 10... or the top 40... or even the top 500. She did, however, register in the bottom five:

13,648. The Late Ronnie Drew (The Dubliners)

13,649. Mary Byrne (slightly less hirsute Susan Boyle clone from "The X-Factor")

13,650. Feargal Sharkey (The Undertones, the Assembly, solo act, Alex Higgins impersonator)

13,651. Sinéad O'Connor

13,652. Chris de Burgh (cunt)

One interesting exchange occurred when one of the only two students who expressed an interest in "bowling from the Pavilion End" at Ms. O'Connor stated that in so doing, he should have to don at least three condoms before consummating the act:

Dr. Michael Fitzpatrick: "Is that 'to be sure, to be sure, to be sure', ha ha ha?"

Student: "No, it's because she's such a fockin' swamp donkey that any actual penile-anal contact between us would cause me such trauma that I'd turn into fockin' stone straight away... where's me fockin' pig?"

I feel unable to arrive at a better summation than that.

Do others wonder if Ms. O'Connor ever in her wildest fantasies imagined being between Feargal Sharkey and Chris de Burgh in the context of being bummed?

I do not want what I haven't got... even if it does take it up the Gary Glitter

And who wouldn't, eh, guys and gals?

Yesterday my interest was drawn to recent postings upon the cyberstrand of the Irish lady "singer-songwriter", Ms. Sinead O'Connor. The person who drew my attention to her musings did so as she seems to be advertising herself to engage in sexual activity, particularly the act of buggery, to seemingly all-comers, if you will pardon the unfortunate and rather clumsy pun.

It seems that your chances of smashing Ms. O'Connor's back doors in are enhanced if you are over 44 years old, are not named Brian or Nigel (though she later recanted on this latter stipulation), wear leather trousers, be of a hirsute demeanour, be a Gardai, or a fireman, or a rugby-player, or Mr. Robert Downey Junior. Personally, I should think that a middle-aged leather-trousered hairy flatfoot would be an unholy amalgam of all that is twatty in humanity, but I suppose there is no accounting for personal taste.

And as for Mr. Robert Downey Junior; I am aware that he is not a homosexual, but I should wager that he would not climb over me to get to her. But I digress.

She also states that the would-be dinner masher should be "blind enough to think I'm gorgeous". I feel that not even Mr. Stevie Wonder should be so inclined.

Having made her position quite clear, and reiterated it on several subsequent occasions using such twee, tender terminology as "doing anal", "the difficult brown", "bark up the wrong tree" and "let him in the tradesman's entrance", she was due to appear on the Raidió Teilifís Éireann "Late Late Show" televisual strand in order to discuss her cyberquest with a Mr. Ryan Turbridy, who it seems makes Ms. O'Connor's minge foam like Bottled Bass. However, after a chat with a researcher on said televisual strand, undertaken to pave the way for her appearance, she flounced; a small amount of verbal (rather than anal) probing had her issue the following statement (reproduced with original spelling and grammar):

This friday I was supposed to appear on ireland's Late Late show. Sadly I have had to pull out as, during the course of the conversation with the(male) researcher I was asked a number of questions which I found rude, patronising, insulting and disrespectful and which wounded me enormously and showed me it would not be either a safe or respectful environment in which to place my precious self. I value myself too much to allow myself to be so disrespected, patronised, and treated like a 'crazy' person.

I'm sure the show will claim they weren't disrespectful, rude, insulting and patronising, and will do the usual 'oh she's a crazy woman imagining slights which weren't there. They were there and I can honestly say that I have now as a result of that conversation an enormous physical pain in my heart. It is sickening to have it suggested by anyone that I am 'insane' for talking openly about sex. The researcher said to me that since I suffer from depression do I not think its insane behaviour to be talking publicly about sex.

While it may be called rude, inappropriate, naughty, silly, adolescent etc to talk rudely about sex, it is outrageous to call it 'insane'. THAT is insane.

It is extremely chauvinist and patronising to ask me, a woman of 44, what does my brother, the author Joseph O'Connor think of my 'behaviour'.

I will never as long as I live, consider appearing on the late late show again. And I might add that no apology or act of respect has been issued by either the presenter of the show, nor any one in a leading position on the show. I am tired of all this 'sinead is crazy' crap. Its a disgrace. It has caused me enormous pain in my life as an artist and has many times led me to consider ending my life. Thankfully I have four beautiful reasons not to. Those are my precious children. But no woman should have to walk around feeling like someone has driven a tree through her heart.

I can honestly say that is how I felt since my conversation with the Late Late researcher.

If anyone connected with the Late Late show had even the remotest thought that my having fun and talking about sex was a symptom of a mental illness then it would have been very exploitative of them to have me on the show as some crazy performing monkey.

We are still the same old squinting windows Ireland, the type which had women like me in industrial schools. When u start to feel good about ur self, sure enough someone will come and stomp all over your heart with their steel-toed docs, and tell u u deserved it. We are a country which should be spelled without the letter 'O'. 

Oh, dear. Who would have possibly thought that a middle-aged mother of four, offering herself to all and sundry for a spot of what she terms "buttfuckery", would get so upset about somebody gently questioning her mental state? Well, evidently she managed to get over her deep, heartfelt trauma quite quickly, as the very next day she stated that her appearance on the televisual strand was back on. Perhaps Mr. Turbridy has, indeed, offered to pack her fudge, live on air, whilst Podge and Rodge indulge her in a spot of bukkake fun. It seems that she also wants to engage in sexual congress with Mr. Bob Dylan. I should think he would rather wipe his rectum with a broken bottle, given that hers almost certainly resembles a prop-forward's ear.

So, what are we to make of all this bizarreness? It would be easy to dismiss Ms. O'Connor as something of a crank, as many others have. However, I am of the belief that she is in fact studiously "shouty crackers", in the manner of that other Irish iconoclast, Mr. Alan "Greeny" Green, saying things simply for the sake of being controversial in order to draw attention to her high-maintenance, self-possessed self. I should imagine that anybody who were indeed in the unfortunate position of wedging their tumesence up her fundament would actually be subjected to several verses of the catechism during the act, and all manner of random, bizarre vitrolic curses for ever after.

And, to return to the original point raised by the person who steered me in the direction of Ms. O'Connor's ramblings; would I submit myself as a candidate to smash one up her "Tex Ritter"?

Feisigh do thoin fein, Sinead...

Do others concur?