Hot Guilt

I've been pretty unequivocal in the recent past regarding my distaste for the free newspapers which clog up any remaining space on London's public transport system. The reasons for my antipathy are legion: no actual news; reams of coverage of pointless twats and non-celebrities spilling out of sleazy nightclubs; vapid columns with titles such as 'City Boy on his Blackberry' and 'Gay bloke all over the shop'; sports writers with names like Kirk Blows (- he really does); their sheer relentless ubiquity forcing the now dignity-free Evening Standard into the most over-egged advertising campaign since... since... (*fails to think of single egg brand, aborts pun)

But today, as I picked up the Metro with the intention of tossing it disdainfully onto the floor to show it, if nobody else, that I cared not for it, I was stopped in my tracks by the cover story - the tragic tale of a man who had gone apeshit with jealousy, shot his girlfriend and murdered her Jehovah's Witness father. A bloody sad story I figured, and an unusual one to run on the front page in this climate of Ashes-Gate, Swine Flu-Gate and Michael Jackson is dead-Gate. A second look, however, and the mystery started to unravel...

The murderer's name? Jonathan Cock. *Cue voluble snigger, followed by unconvincing "that was a cough" cover up. The name of the family he went after? The Hustlers. *Cue full-on seal-howl, followed by the least convincing straight face in history.

Immediately, I felt a flush of guilt - what a bastard I'd been! But once I had gathered myself, I realised that maybe I wasn't so bad after all. These guys knew what they were doing when they placed Cock and the Hustlers front and centre of their paper. It wasn't the Metro's fault that Cock did what he did, but you could just visualise their staff giggling at the thought of people's grave faces splitting into creases of remorseful laughter. Actually, I applaud them for their naked disingenuousness.

The story reminded me of a similarly wretched tale I came across a couple of years back, also in the Metro, in which a man named Brahnie Scott was alleged to have hanged himself in a telephone box (!) because his girlfriend Julie Toddhunter (!!) had attempted to prevent him kissing her by deliberately eating some mustard (!!!). Turns out Scott really didn't like mustard. Again, there was death. Again, inevitably, there followed laughter.

As the comedian and actor Chris Addison points out in an interesting article in today's Grauniad, sometimes we need comedy to remove us from, and elevate us above the bleakness of certain situations. Michael Jackson's death is a recent example of a wave of crass (and frankly mostly unfunny) jokes helping to provide a more recognizably human context to what was a truly unexpected and unsettling event.

But this is Hot Rant, not Hot Cod Psychology (which sounds like either Steely Dan's fictional main jazz-funk rivals, or the most inexplicable Fish & Chip shop ever, depending on your preference). Maybe this is all beyond analysis, and it is simple - we can't help laughing at funny names and dead people. Or maybe I am just a total bastard. Yep, that sounds about right. In fact, I'll prove it by concluding with my favourite ever joke:

Q. What's the opposite of Christopher Reeve?
A. Christopher Walken.

(I'm going to hell.) AC