Work! Consume! Die!
Support for the war in Afghanistan is at an all-time low. A lot of Scottish people used to say that Afghanistan was the only war we really needed to fight. But now that the street price of heroin is so low, even they don’t see the point.
Hamid Karzai won the corrupt election and now has sovereignty over, er, Kabul and a miniature golf course just outside Kabul. In fact, even the capital isn’t secure – they’re thinking about renaming it Kaboom. He beat Abdullah Abdullah, who was unfortunately baptised in a cave with an echo. Karzai’s brother was shot dead by his personal bodyguard. Never mind training Afghan leaders in democracy, we should probably start with interview technique.
The US army had to apologise for photos showing their troops posing with the corpses of Afghan civilians. Generals have been quick to say they’ve insulted the dignity of the rest of the US army. Is that the dignity of pissing on a Koran in Abu Ghraib, or the dignity of dangling from a rope ladder off the last helicopter to leave the US embassy roof in Saigon while your illegitimate children scream beneath you?
The Taliban are finding it impossible to get hold of essential supplies, so at last we’re fighting on equal terms. But let’s not get complacent. Just because they’re running out of bullets, we mustn’t assume our boys won’t get shot. Remember, US troops have still got plenty.
Children of troops killed in Afghanistan are going to have their university education paid for. Kind of ironic that some girls will get highly educated thanks to the Taliban.
The British forces have handed Sangin to US forces. Many middle-class liberals are asking how we can leave these vulnerable people in the care of poorly educated, poorly paid, selfishly driven rednecks? And then they pick up their children from the two 16-year-old work experience girls that staff the best local nursery.
To be fair, British generals do a difficult job. Usually very, very badly. The Taliban are holding us off with regular prayer, and guns they stole from the set of Rambo III. Still, good to see it’s all spilling over into Pakistan. A whole load of nuclear missiles and a bunch of people with different ideas about what Mohammed said. What could possibly go wrong?
The other day I was reading a book about how the Israelis captured Adolf Eichmann (there’s a thrilling intelligence operation to check his identity, then they hit him on the head and throw him in a bag) and realised how little I knew about the Holocaust. In the course of reading up on it I found a collection of pictures – taken at the camps – of people on their way to the gas chambers, which is really something you should be certain you want to see before looking at it. It will remain with you. These are the people fresh from the trains, tired and bewildered. Children sit exhausted at their mothers’ feet as they unwittingly queue to become victims of this monstrous and inhuman crime.
It all seems so remarkably singular, and yet also you can see these sort of pictures every day – newspaper photos of refugee camps, of families in war zones, emergency rooms in Gaza, children from the dollar-a-day world. Some of these people are victims of dictators too, but most are victims of an economic theory, and of our affluence and indifference. Daily, you see pictures of people queuing for death and somehow the worst thing, the very worst thing, is that if you really tried you could do something about it.
‘Aye, it fucking is him an all’
Paul makes me a cup of tea – he’s one of those people who always makes half a cup of tea – and I get my panic list up on email. It’s the only group email list I’ve ever had, one I compiled to announce that my daughter had been born. It included anyone who might give me work. I’d just got home from the birth and knew I was so broke I didn’t have the money to get a taxi the next day to bring her home.
I’m flush nowadays – my company just landed a big advertising contract for an anti-speeding campaign. On dangerous stretches of road we are putting up family photos (the ones you get done in a photographers where the kids have been distracted by bubbles) of the actual people who have died there, over the words DEAD NOW. It’s a suggestion I made as a despairing joke after they hated our other ideas. Everybody loves it. It’s like the fucking ‘Glasgow Smiles Better’ of the post-Apocalypse.
I drag my suitcase out of a cab at Glasgow Central and take my glasses off. I’m trying to buy the papers for the train but I can see fuck all, accidentally picking up the Star, which has a front page about a mystery Old Firm player being blackmailed. I queue and wonder what Lovecraftian practice could set this young pervert apart from his peers.
The woman at the counter goes, ‘What’s with the beard, Frankie?’
I honestly can’t think of a single response. Eventually I say, ‘When I stop shaving, hair grows out of my face,’ and she laughs like I’ve made a joke.
I’m squinting up at the departures board looking for the London train. I’m normally OK without the glasses but some wee guys by the bank machine are nodding over at me. Eventually one of them walks over, stands about 18 inches away from me and blares, ‘Aye, it fucking is him an all,’ as dispassionately as if he’s noting that it’s raining.
On the train I’m trying to do some work on a pitch for tomorrow but every time I look at the screen I feel sick. There’s a slight smell of sewage but that’s normal on Virgin. My stomach pitches. The disabled-passenger alarm sounds continually. Someone thinks they are pressing the flush. I log onto the internet and check the BBC news. The top headline is ‘Prince William is a really good bloke’.
I look through the ideas I’m pitching. I was just going to be doing these for my company, but now I’m desperately trying to think how I can host or be involved.
Celebrity Land of the Giants. Eight of the UK‘s most recognisable celebrities have signed up for what they ‘think’ is a new game show. They are put up in a hotel and wake up the next day. What they don’t know is that overnight our clever set designers have built everything from cars to hedges to paving slabs outside at 10x scale, giving the celebs the impression they’ve shrunk overnight! How will they cope as each week the least practical star is eaten by what they think is a giant spider?
Unbelievably, that is idea number one. The other one is about a celebrity slave ship where young black rappers are made to live as slaves for a week. I can’t focus on the screen without feeling nauseous. Maybe it’s a psychosomatic reaction to this shit? Or the fucking roast-beef sandwich they gave me was so old it’s like a fast-acting poison. I sit watery mouthed in denial for a bit, then run to the toilet and puke loudly. The disabled-passenger alarm is painted red, illustrated with a ringing bell and the word alarm is written on it in large letters.
The young guy across from me recognises me and tries to start a conversation.
‘Feeling sick?’
‘Yes, I just puked.’
The sort of conversation dogs would have if they could talk.
‘Aren’t you Frankie Boyle?’
I put my earphones on and stupidly plug them into the side of my shut laptop. He’s reading a book called Confidence: There are No Coincidences. Confidence is only worth having if you’re not a fucking idiot. Try speaking German using just confidence. Start skiing with confidence and break your fucking neck, you cunt. I wonder why there are so many idiots now and whether in the past the big wars used to thin them out. I wonder if the free coffees are winding me up, or the rapist, or the work.
I look at the ‘War’ chapter of the book. That end bit is maybe everything that’s wrong with the world. Wanting to help but feeling it’s all to do with ‘you’, the ego that thinks it can make a difference is the same ego that wants a new car, praise, pussy, immortality. Still, maybe I’m just being honest, and what I honestly am is an idiot.
In London, I have to go straight across town and into a script meeting. It’s a voiceover thing I’m doing for a clip show, which is a pretty shit thing to be doing, but I get to write the jokes, so that’s something.
I sign the visitors’ book and walk wordlessly past the security guard. In the event of some terrorist atrocity they will have the guy’s signature. There are whole floors of talented people beavering away making shit. An infinite number of Shakespeares producing the work of a monkey.
I’m met by Gary, a tall, spindly production runner who looks like a freakish wind chime or insect king. He leads me to the meeting room, where there’s a pyramid of Diet Coke, and some fresh notepads and biros. During the awkward wait for the producer, Gary tells me at length about his new baby while I reflect that in the wild his mate would have eaten him now.
I sit down and start reading the stack of tabloids that’s in any writing room, whether the show is topical or not. Alex Ferguson is playing mind games. If only he would – telling the opposition that there is a sniper in the stadium, or staging a coach crash then sending out players everybody thought were dead in a macabre piece of gamesmanship.
The producer, Gerry, drifts in. He has the jovial air of a corrupt small-town cop. I’ve not seen him for years and, in the meantime, his face looks like it’s had kids. I go through the intros for the show
Welcome to The Frankie Boyle Clip Show. There’s nothing like being on television. And let me tell you, reading out this shit, to you pricks, for this money, is nothing like being on television.
Hello and welcome to the show that made the Crossbow Cannibal refuse to pay his licence fee. Feels good, doesn’t it, knowing that cock is currently watching video tapes of Minder wishing I had tits and he had a lifespan of 300 years.
‘I prefer the first one!’ says Gerry, and I agree, having included the second one so I had something to give up. I launch into the rest at a pace calculated to delay discussion.
The show that masturbates to the Oscars’ Obituary Montage.
The show that’s laughing with you, not at you. Ahahahahaa! Oh no, wait a minute, it’s at you.
The show of clips you could find for yourself on YouTube. If porn didn’t exist.
The show that three of your personalities only agree to watch because they’re scared of your dominant personality, a murderous lesbian midget.
30 minutes that will leave you sweating like Peter Andre on Countdown.
The show that eats your pussy with neither skill nor enthusiasm.
The show that knows you felt a hand running up your leg on a crowded bus. You grabbed the hand and held it up, saying, ‘Whose hand is this?’ Only to find out that it was your own.
Hey! Mongo! It’s evening. The bright ball of wonder has yet again left the sky, so take your hoof from out your pants and once more suckle at my TV teats.
Hey, friendless! Yes, you! Wipe the dribble from your fleece and once more feast on my distractions. Together we can get you half an hour closer to the dawn of another worthless day.
‘Ehhh …,’ starts Gerry.
‘We only need six or something,’ I interrupt. ‘It’s just intros, we can come back to it …’
We nod, both agreeing to different things.
The first clip we’re doing is of some hugely misguided children’s show from the 80s, teaching yoga to little kids. It’s set on a farm and hosted by a real sandpit haunter calling himself Yogie Okie Dokie. We see him bending the kids into various positions.
It’s amazing how flexible kids are when they’re drunk. Yogi Okie Dokie is only his first name. His surname is Pokey Chokey.
‘Now the lawyers are worried about that … we can’t actually imply that he’s a paedophile …’ Gerry havers.
‘The lawyers?’ I ask. ‘It’s a joke. I don’t think anyone would really think his surname was Pokey Chokey. Or that his first names are Yogie Okie Dokie …’
‘You can’t imply that he’s a paedophile.’
‘Fuck, look at the show. I mean … fuck!’
There’s a clip of that wee toddler that smokes in fucking Papua New Guinea or somewhere.
Of course, he doesn’t smoke any more. He’s dead now. His little brother uses his skull as an ashtray.
‘We can’t say that,’ murmurs Gerry.
‘Why not?’ I ask and open another Diet Coke because maybe this would be easier if my brain were dead.
‘He’s not dead.’ Gerry is getting exasperated. ‘So the lawyers say that we can’t say that he is.’
‘It’s a joke. They’re saying we can’t say anything that isn’t the literal truth? He’s going to sue? He’s out in the fucking jungle. He’s hardly … getting driven on a moped to a clearing where they all sit round and watch fucking clip shows.’
We keep hitting bits the lawyers have vetoed. They have suggested replacements, the lawyers have written jokes. I have met lawyers and these are the sort of jokes you would expect them to write. It’s not immediately obvious that they are jokes.
The final clip is a terrible video about how to use the techniques of a magician to pull women. We type the last joke up in a way that it can be altered if there’s a legal problem.
These are the techniques that Debbie McGee [an older magician’s assistant] warns [a] young magician’s assistant about, before heading home to another night of being sawn in half so Paul Daniels [a magician] can watch her [them] eat her [their] own arsehole.
I suggest that we start the show with me in an armchair, cradling a huge horn. I will explain that not all of the jokes are literally true and that when I say something not meant to be taken literally I will blow a note on my mighty horn. Perhaps we should change the title of the show to The Horn of Balathor.
‘Where is Balathor?’ says Gerry
‘I thought of it as more of a what – Balathor the Green. Balathor the Mighty.’
Another producer comes in and this idea sort of catches fire. Yes, we could call it The Horn of Balathor. It’s only a fucking clip show. Perhaps I could appear at the bottom of the screen when I blow the horn, like the guy on sign-language programmes. Maybe there could be different sizes of horn, depending on how offensive the joke is. There is a clip from the 70s that suggests black people can’t swim. I suggest we do the line:
Of course it’s a ridiculous racial stereotype to say black people can’t swim. How do you think AIDS got to Europe?
And then I come on with one of those huge Alpine horns that rest on the ground and give a blast so loud it would actually blow the speakers on people’s TVs. I’m thinking that will keep me in the papers long enough that my arse will remain un-raped. I maintain to the guys that it could work as a show. Fuck it, it could work as a show, or has my judgement just gone? Yes, my judgement has gone but perhaps I could be right by accident.
I look them both in the eye and beam, ‘Comedy is tragedy plus laughter!’
But I know the fucking thing is not going to happen.
The bright old day now dawns again; the cry runs through the land,
In England there shall be dear bread – in Ireland, sword and brand;
And poverty, and ignorance, shall swell the rich and grand,
So, rally round the rulers with the gentle iron hand,
Of the fine old English Tory days; Hail to the coming time!
Charles Dickens, The Fine Old English Gentleman
Chapter 2
Having travelled a wee bit, I’m convinced that Britain’s sense of humour – the sheer scope and breadth and complexity of our piss-taking – is unique. That’s what I hate about these various joke scandals. They have at their heart the idea that the public won’t be able to decode what was meant by the joke; that even if you understand, other people might not, when everyone here has a PhD in wind-ups.
People are struggling with the whole idea of comedy at the moment. I think comedy is probably a descendant of shamanism. The comic is some guy or gal covered in shit who’d live out in the desert and come roaring into the settlement every so often to tell everybody what was up with how they perceived life. Of course, this made them a pariah.
Comedy is a fictional space. Some of the things the shaman says are true, even heartfelt. Sometimes she says things she doesn’t mean; sometimes she says the opposite of what she means. And, admittedly, she isn’t always good, but nobody is. Sometimes you end up watching Peter Kay, but sometimes it’s Bill Hicks and sometimes it’s Loki.
There are a few problems. One, you get the soul-grinding mill of television, which sees that it can use a few laughs to keep people dumb and distracted. It likes to employ shamans with their eyes poked out. Two, you get some well-meaning types who would like the status of the shaman without the whole pariah bit. They could maybe skip the drugs and keep the status – or even just the cash? Sorry, those are all false paths. The shaman knows that the route to enlightenment is to lose the ego and, what with one thing and another, she’s going to get too much attention to get very far with that. So the joke is on her. The price the trickster pays for her existence is to be, ultimately, the butt of her own joke. Glad I managed to explain comedy to y’all before I died [tips hat].*
* I don’t believe any of this. The idea of the comedian as shaman is simply a different way for a practitioner to gather status and feed the ego. In man’s original nomadic tribal state, the role of social critic would have been vital in deciding when to move on. Comedians are just the descendants of the guys and gals whose job it was to say, ‘It’s fucking shit here,’ and moan until everybody upped sticks and headed west, into an ambush prepared by a rival tribe, or a barren wasteland.**
** This is all bollocks. Comics are sort of the opposite of shamans really. Shamans, poets, priests are all people whose role is to power-up symbols. In our scientific reality tunnel a hallucination might be a manifestation of the unconscious mind. In a shamanic one it might be a fairie, in a religious one, an angel. The comedian is actually there to de-power the symbolic world. With Lenny Bruce, cancer goes from being this big demonic taboo to being, well, just cancer. The best comics are really trying to wake you up from the symbolic world; they’re desentimentalisers, pointing out that those First World War soldiers who had a truce to play football at Christmas probably killed each other the next day, and not even remorsefully but muttering, ‘That was never offside, you cunt.’***
*** Of course, none of this is really what you would call accurate, but between these viewpoints there is something close to the truth. I think that by constantly undermining and subverting himself a comedian might be able to communicate quite profoundly, by a kind of triangulation. You can’t really ever defend a joke because at the point it’s getting dissected it’s not a joke. Is a dead butterfly in a case still a butterfly? Even a mermaid wouldn’t look too beautiful during an autopsy. This is as close as someone like me can ever get to explaining himself. Do you get it? [smiles hopefully with a brittle smile].****
**** Look, it’s not supposed to be analysed. You can’t create a space that asks what would happen if we abandoned all the rules and then start saying things are outside of the rules. There aren’t any fucking rules. OK, here’s something that should stop you dissecting comedy, something I could prove scientifically if I could be arsed. Do you know the main factor in whether you find something funny or not? The kind of day you’ve just had.
So, the Tories are back. If you don’t remember them, they were big in the 1980s – like dungarees and white people getting AIDS. The British people spoke, and they conclusively shrugged their shoulders and said, ‘Whatever. I’m not bothered. Him. You. Or the other one. Britain’s Got Talent’s coming on, you sort it out. See you in five years.’ So, we’ve got a new prime minister and, unlike Gordon Brown, this one was actually nearly elected. Obviously, Cameron got straight down to work while Samantha got all of his forehead polish into Number 10. Can Cameron really manage to create social cohesion? I mean, his head has only just managed to create some semblance of a face. Cameron is the youngest prime minister for nearly 200 years, which is odd, because he’s also been alive for far too long.
People who say we shouldn’t have royalty and an elected representative seem to be missing the fact that we have royalty as our elected representative – both David and Samantha Cameron have royal ancestors. In fact, now William is married to Kate Middleton, we actually have an elected first family that have more royal blood than our future king and queen. Do you get the feeling that Sam Cameron is one of the few PM’s wives to consider Number 10 a step down on the property ladder? It comes to something when our prime minister regards his trip to Buckingham Palace as part of his gritty contact with working-class people. He’s descended from King William IV and his mistress. Why did we vote for him? Even King William knew he didn’t want to take him on permanently.
It was claimed that Cameron has a fortune estimated at £30 million. Do you really believe he really gives a flying fuck as to when your bins get emptied or where your rat-faced children go to school? Does he even know how to use public transport? I can see him now, queuing at his nearest helipad, clutching an Oyster card.
For a while, Cameron was on the board of the company that owns Tiger Tiger. This is his idea of how Britain should enjoy itself? Rows of spandex-clad women trying to work out which former reality TV star they are least terrified of accepting a drink from?
Not long after the election, David Cameron and Barack Obama had a historic meeting in Washington and Obama rolled out the red carpet for Cameron. A lovely gesture, but Cameron really should not have tipped him a dollar for doing so. It was a low-key welcome. I feel a bit sorry for the PM. It can’t be good for your self-esteem, seeing a cabbie at JFK airport with a bit of cardboard with ‘Mr Macaroon’ written on it in marker pen. When Cameron first saw a black man standing in a white mansion he thought they were remaking The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.
The PM met with the president face to face, after breaking free from the White House tour group when they passed the door to the Oval Office. Apparently, Obama and David Cameron ‘swapped anecdotes’. That must have been fascinating for Obama. After telling David all about his rise to become the first black president of the most powerful nation on earth, he then had to listen to Dave tell a rather amusing story about going to Waitrose and buying chorizo instead of salami.
Reports also said the men were on ‘Christian-name terms’. Dave calls him Obama and Obama calls him Nick. When David’s in Obama’s company he always has a very serious, concerned, concentrated face – like he’s desperately trying not to fart, but knowing that only minutes ago he ate four catering-size tins of pickled cabbage. He flew to meet Obama on a standard BA flight, to save money. If he really wanted to save money, he should have flown Ryanair. During a recession, it would be inspiring to see the PM pissing into an empty Fanta can, just to save a quid.
Ah, the Big Society. Does Cameron really believe Britain would be a better place if it were run by the public? Have you seen the public? It’s hard enough to get through the laboured and tedious process of getting a pair of trousers dry-cleaned by someone who has been in the dry-cleaning business for 20 years. How’s it going to work when your lollypop man is in charge of a prison?