Ten Years Naked

There's something wrong in this country when we allow style and improvement programmes who take their lead from tacky glossies and dubious fashion events dictate the way we eat, look, dress, undress, parent, decorate, spend money and rip off house buyers. Of course I, as so many before me, have made our views known on this subject and met with a wall of vacant silence. 'So why write a bitter piece which is five years out of date?' Er... because god made me do it, guv!

What is particularly hateful about hiring Gok Wan and according to Channel 4 the 'cool and collected' Miss Nicky Hambleton-Jones (who by the way looks at least in her late 40s. Maybe she's actually 58. Result!) is that some sadistic fuckers have looked at these new media reprobates, their lack of style and thought, 'Cool. Let's give them a series! Let's show the dumpy, frumpy public how to look good,' and then go and get it spectacularly wrong...everytime. Believe me in the media it is who you know if you want to get on. I've been there and back. I'm not adverse to confidence boosting makeovers or shopping jaunts but please spare me the condescending tone from so called experts who leave much to be desired. Mica Paris is no great example as well. She could probably scratch living for some poor souls as a BBW prostitute, or rather a BW.

But going back to 10 Years Younger there's a very naive and patronising notion where when selecting garments and accessories these Hambleton types base their decisions on the fact that just because the air-headed OK magazine wearing anorexics are being seen with them, such as beach bags for example, or that Ana Mantronic has supposedly made red hair fashionable, then these are decent, stylish measuring sticks. Honestly, it's all rather loathsome! I'd be highly dubious of anyone who takes their lead from WAG-inspired glossies. Maybe if it was a programme called 'How To fuck Up Your Life', or 'How To Become Dependent on Class A Drugs', or 'How To Look Like a Complete Laughable Fuckwitt in Public With your Faux Mrs Beckham Postboxed Mouth Posturing' then you'd have a reasonable point.

'Well if you don't like it, don't watch it...ner ner ner...' defenders of this shite might well say. 'I love it. It's car crash tele. It's harmless bit of fun!' Well, so is strangling IT girls but I wouldn't necessarily want to watch it on TV. Actually...

As for Gok Wan, you may wonder why he doesn't go naked. But let's be fair, fully clothed he still looks like the plastic surgery went very wrong following a train wreck. It's all very sad.

Open Heart Bitterness

In a new approach to interviews here's some answers I gave to the recently defunct Italian-English style magazine 'La Fashionata Espresso'. (It folded after two days on sale) To make it marginally more fun I've held back the questions.

It's hateful. Monkey TV and Will McDonald should be sent to the Hague for crimes against humanity. I thought Channel 4 couldn't get any lower than Balls of Steel or the Minipops but they've clearly proved everyone wrong. I've offered Channel 4 a way out with my sit-com 'Hart and Soul' starring Tony Hart and David Soul but are they interested?

Well she was always a natural successor to the stooge comedy of Bella Emberg, was Dawn. As for Pam Ann, she's crap as well. Lip Service are far better female entertainers.

I blame the concept of regeneration. I think we should have MORE Poles over here in the UK. We're not European enough. Even better why don't we kick all our scumbags out or swap Warrington for Kracow. The Salford dossers should go to Gdansk or Zimbabwe. Let Mugabe feed them.

I never saw anyone in 2006 wearing a trilby that didn't look like a complete shit.

Sonia from Eastenders inspires a harder erection than Nelly Retardo ever could.

Poor Edith Bowman.

He should design council estates, should Jonathan Ives. But it'd look good for about 2 days before it all gets pissed on, scrawled on and smashed to bits like the cheekbones of an abused whippet. I can see the streets now. There'd be shards of cider bottles scattered everywhere and tear stains left over from the insignificant lives of teenagers with their petty relationship woes. It's all ery sad.

Peaches Geldoff. Writer and DJ? OK then...

I'm bored with labels. The future is Primark.

There's not enough Jack Klugman's in the NHS.

I think Dolphin's have always been laughing at us. It's nothing to do wuth the structure of their mouths.

I've always found him a repulsive laughing stock. There's nothing endearing about him. It's an act, like he's pretend routine of jogging and cycling. He's also a nasty piece of work as that business with Kimberly Quin clearly displayed. If Cameron had down syndrome and wore a mop on his head you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between the two.

Bitterness is great. It's far from self-destructive. It's creative. Without it you wouldn't have had Kafka, Dosteovsky, David Icke or Shaylar. Bitterness keeps me going. It's my fuel. And it's green in more ways than one.

Findus have served up far superior meals than some of the shit I've tasted at the hands of Ramsey, Worral-Thompson and Oliver.

Who care's about Ariel Leve's hang-up's? I'm sure Sunday Times readers don't.You may think I'm an attention seeker but she gives the words 'attention' and 'seeking' substance.

I still don't know who Rod Liddle shagged to be so ubiquitous.

I'm nothing like Perez Hilton. Whoever they are. I get the feeling he LOVES the subjects he discusses, almost to an unhealthy sexual degree. His targets are far too soft and predictable, whereas with me everyone's a target, everyone's a bastard out to screw you.

The Ronsons: A fairytale that never was

I never told this anyone before but it's true. In the mid 90s, before I met Fritz, I used to be in a band called 'The Ronsons'. We were basically a crappy covers act doing what we thought were quirky, jazzy, cover versions of ska/post punk and new wave. Our look was a punky meeting between Edwardian and Victorian, with a touch of neo gothic thrown in...mixing it up...and everytime we spoke to anyone in this guise we'd always say 'yeah' at the end of every sentence.

We thought we were so cool and post modern. I'm positive George Lamb would have loved us. We were working on an album that would change the world, full of covers of 'yeah, yeah' pop, 70s disco, Manchester indie...but keeping it ever so LDN real. Record companies told us we were shit and our style and image would never work. Of course one of the members Mark left, made a really shitty annoying version of a Radiohead song and made an album of awful, awful covers with some dreadful people. (He couldn't sing then either) And currently George Lamb and every LDN record exec are spunking over him and his coke headed mates.

It's a funny old world.

Mind That Child!

For heaven's sake won't somebody please think of the children, please! It's been a while since my last post as I , like most of you, have been engaged in the hunt for Maddie, which MUST take priority over everything in our lives. Fears are now escalating since the recent sightings of the poor child in Greece. You wonder if only Elvis has had more false sightings for all the good it does anyone. It's clear that this campaign to reunite this blonde , white, middle class, christian aspiring girl to her painfully dedicated parents hasn't gone FAR enough. The banner ads, the avatars, the websites, visits to the pope, the FA cup final, the planned charity single and the projection on the moon are all very well but will it raise awareness to inspire a crook to go 'fair cop, guv!' Indeed, will anything? Perhaps a reward should go to the abductors. That seems to be the only way we might get a breakthrough and it seems no less cynical than the alternatives we've seen over last couple of months.

No, it's clear. We're not pretending to care enough? We're not releasing enough balloons! Has anyone contacted the UN? And what the hell are the witchunters on the Sky News Forums doing about it? Don't they realise that it's the sacred duty of the stupid and misguided to continually post how concerned and caring they are and marry it with the brutality and suspicion they give to anyone who 'may' be a suspect? If we want to raise awareness, and it's very well, appearing to 'mean well' but what about the hundreds of missing kids every week, who don't have or get access to the media, that don't have the same opportunities? 'Maddie' is not a mere symbol of all the missing kids and 'every parents worst nightmare'. She's become yet another example of media hype, moral panic and the drive to sell more copy, the cynical trophy of the newsworthy girl with well to do parents with looks to match. She encapsulates the cosy, perfect idea of the nuclear family, which is more heightened than that of the kids from the streets, the black kids, those from broken homes and council estates and all the other poor sods who get abducted, murdered and god knows what every day. I'm not suggesting they deserve out sympathy any more or any less but you probably don't need a 'blogger' like me to say that there should be balance, and yeah, it's shit that there isn't, but for fuck's sake, those of you, who haven't realised the other agendas going on are the ones to wake up, instead of posting your fucking banners to show what a great human being you are. In fact why not fill every single web page of all the banners of all the missing people of the world who undoubtedly have parents no matter what age they are? But hey, I guess I'm not saying anything that you haven't already read or thought about anyway.