BNP babes, Barrymore and Barnes

What should we do about Lenny Henry? Find out here, and consequently weep with anger, hilarity, rage, shame and confusion.

Credit where its due - I found out about this remarkable piece of entertainment/horror through broon44, a poster on the great music/culture forum Drowned In Sound.

Sitting back and branding the BNP and its various associates and acolytes as thick, ignorant, pathetic, laughable etc... is almost as passe these days as it is easy, but when you see something like this, it is simply a natural reflex for anybody of sound mind.

To elaborate on recent themes, here is an almost unbelievable audio-visual treat that similarly combines the name Michael, unfunny British comedy and disgusting racism (see above). Join me in celebrating the 25th anniversary of Michael Barrymore impersonating John Barnes. Live on BBC.



Winner of the outraged YouTube comment award goes to GreaserLeo;

Tonight, Michael Barrymore IS Anal Rape Murderer.
How can he still be on television. He refuses to comment on the night of the anal murder.
Disgusting.

Ranting at its absolute finest. AC

Michael Fucking McIntyre

It's fair to say that my Granddad and I have a different take on the state of modern comedy. Recently driving past a billboard featuring the looming visage of Russell Brand, he remarked without irony, "That man exudes evil". He visibly purples at the very mention of Jonathan Ross. And recently, as I tried my hardest not to laugh, he recounted, in a state of solemn exasperation, a TV stand-up's routine which apparently consisted of the comic saying the word "masturbating" over and over again. I feebly suggested that there may be have been some context that he had missed, he was steadfast in his disappointment with not only the state of comedy today, but clearly, the world we now live in. "Masturbating", he repeated softly, ashen-faced, head shaking slowly, eyes fixed to the floor.

But it turns out we do have something in comedy common after all. When I heard him bemoaning the act of "a Chinese fella who kept laughing at his own jokes before he'd finished, or often, started them", I knew he could only be referring to one man...


That's right - its Britain's new comedy hero, Michael Fucking McIntyre, who is in fact

• Not Chinese
• very, very irritating
• displacing Peter Kay as the doughy-faced poster boy for unfunny British comedy
  

Ubiquitous to the point of making me physically angry, McIntyre began spreading himself remarkably thin across every panel show going a couple of years ago, and has since graduated to the lofty heights of hosting his own BBC Comedy Roadshow. According to The Daily Telegraph, McIntyre is "quite simply top-to-toe hilarious". Above and beyond the obvious crapness of that review line (are anyone's toes, even Eddie Murphy or Dave Chapelle's, hilarious?), it is woefully inaccurate.

In fact, McIntyre's act seems to consist of giggling a lot, talkingreallyquicklyasthoughwewon'tnoticethatwhathe'ssayingisn'tactuallyfunnyatall and making 100% certain that every sentence he utters goes up in a questiony way at the end like a Californian schoolgirl?

Of McIntyre, one fan had this to say - an inane snippet of drivel which perfectly encapsulates what I despise about the man's comedy.

"He was on “Have I Got News for You”; he was funnier than Paul Merton. In fact, Paul didn’t get a word in. Not often that someone can get the better of him.’"

If your idea of being funnier than someone is talking so much that they actually get a word in edgeways, then your idea of comedy is very different from mine. I don't hate this guy as much as I hate the inexplicably overpraised Catherine Tate, but I do wish he'd give it a bloody rest. AC

Geezers

Guesting today is Jack Collins, a globe travelling, fast talking, Somerfield party food eating, skinny jeans wearing, geezer humour victim. Catch up with his travel blog at digitalpostcards.blogspot.com.

Just to clarify - a geezer is not a volcanic, water-spurty thing from Iceland. A geezer is someone who uses the phrases: "facking mastard!", or "You mappet!". The geezer's interests are: 1) birds, 2) tinnies, 3) Kasabian, 4) being a cunt. The geezer can be identified by his: A) awful tattoos, B) geezer mullet, C) A tendency to end every single sentence with: "yeah?"


Interaction with such fellows is unavoidable. However, I have personally had the misfortune of working in recruitment, a profession which is as packed full with geezers as the sun is packed full of burny bits. My colleagues had all of the standard attributes, but additionally possessed a brain-achingly twattish arrogance about them. Strutting around the office with their fat ties, and smug grins, believing they were "facking mastard" humans, because they had gotten the most IT professionals hired that day. Erm, wait a second Lock Stock! You haven't actually done anything. The candidate has done all the work, attended the interview and answered the questions to get the job, which incidentally is far more interesting than your profession. You have pushed a few buttons, and opened your cockney gob, yeah?

Recruitment is a geezer minefield. However, some of my most infuriating geezer encounters have occurred elsewhere. Once, a particularly burly arse-cheese actually stopped mid phone conversation (presumably when discussing "tits and arse and Millwall FC") and aggressively asked me: "How tight are your jeans mate, yeah?" Erm, very tight sir, thanks for asking and showing an active interest. What are you doing? At no point, repeat at no point, should you approach a stranger and make any kind of comment, positive or negative, in regards to their clothing. I would never approach a south-london rude boy to politely inform him that unfortunately the price tag is still attached to his baseball cap and that he looks like "a mappet". And by all accounts, I would never consider walking up to you, you gravy dribbling, white-collar-on-a-blue-shirt wearing, prize-winning turd of a primate; and tell you that your replica football jersey is particularly tight when stretched across your ever-burgeoning beer-belly, yeah?

Another geezer favourite which should be dispatched to oblivion is the following exchange-

Geezer: "Lookout mate, you've got something on the back of your heel."

Me: Oh, really (turning around, bending my leg slightly, and looking at my heel)

Geezer: Ay, ay sailor! Waaay! Hahaha etc.

What the fuck is that? That is not a joke. Oh right I get it: sailor = homosexual (your favourite object of derision). But how is bending your leg a sign of homosexuality? Just stop it. And please do not combine your violent geezer-laugh (an apocalyptic combination of both coughing and guffawing) with a heavy-handed slap on my belly. Don't touch me with your greasy, fake-tanned hands. My shirt, unlike yours, is actually all one colour: white. Hands off you fucking gorilla, yeah?

Annoying isn't it? Yeah. Jack Collins

Attack Cardio wth Vinnie Jones

Attack Cardio with Vinnie Jones from Vinnie Jones

Harsh Comment of the Week Award goes to:

Vettethrils:
I liked this skit better the first time i saw it. when it was on SNL 10 years ago as a personal trainer commercial parady. jones plays a great tough guy, usually, but in this skit hes just an unoriginal bastard.

Scathing stuff. Personally I love the "I'm taking your picture!" bit. FC

The Guardian

Being a fairly open minded but at times righteous, middle-class liberal I should literally love the Guardian. It should be my bible; leading me to some kind of organic food filled, climate change ending, equality centric mecca where everyone is unfailingly polite to each other. Instead it's starting to really piss me off.

The G2 section is the worst offender. I think it is purposely being turned into an horrific caricature of liberal views. Like a reverse Daily Mail where, instead of calling for the murder of all pedophiles and the deportation of anyone 'a bit funny looking', it campaigns for human rights for all free-range farm animals and the compulsory return to stone age technologies in order to avert the imminent global warming doomsday. It almost as if it's just a massive conspiracy, created to make all liberals look like the wussy, cotton headed cowards which right wingers so desire as targets. How else do you describe a front page headline which read "How do I tell my children about climate change?" The article was seriously about breaking the news about global warming to your children without giving them psychological damage. Seriously.

Secondly, G2 is also regularly filled with some of the most vapid pieces of writing ever. A recent article was entitled: 'Geoff Dyer: My secret life of crime' It continued: "There are three episodes in his life that Geoff Dyer prefers not to remember. He could have ended up in jail - but thankfully didn't. So did he just get lucky?" What were these terrible episodes? He threw a milk bottle at a window (but missed), almost crashed into another car (but didn't) and (finally something vaguely dangerous) accidentally smuggled a small bit of weed into the Bahamas. He seems to think that all of these episodes would have led to life in prison and the end of his life as he knew it, if he had been caught and if, in the case of the milk bottle and car crash, they had actually happened. Those are some big ifs. He carries on: "I would estimate that it was about 99% certain that I would pay the price for my actions. But I didn't. I got away with all three of them, scot-free, without a scratch." How on earth did this man come to the figure of 99%? Not by scientific means I imagine; two thirds of his crimes didn't actually happen. As if reading the tedious confessions of a man who has done nothing wrong wasn't bad enough, he ends his piece with a torturously awful simile, even by Hot Rant's standards:

I had a certain amount of random, unprotected heterosexual sex in the 1980s and 90s, but the chances of getting Aids was minimal compared with the chances of facing the consequences of these actions. Put it this way: given the limited extent of my sexual adventures I would have been extremely unlucky to have contracted HIV. These three incidents, on the other hand, would be the equivalent of having unprotected sex with a promiscuous homosexual IV drug-user.

No. They are the equivalent of going to a gay bar which contained one promiscuous homosexual IV drug-user, but not having unprotected sex with him due to you not being gay and only having gone to the bar to accompany a friend. About that risky. Or if you want a made up figure: 3.2%. FC

Micro-rant of the day

One of the greatest breakdowns in TV history - once again from the magisterial The Thick Of It, hopefully soon to return to our screens.



All together now... "I AM A MAN!" AC

Lewis Carroll's 'Darius in Wonderland'

I hate the transfer window - the churning, torpid, yearly funeral procession characterised last year by the numbing ball-ache of Gareth 'I'm not half the player Xabi Alonso is' Barry's coquetteish skirt-lifting in the general direction of Rafael Benitez. The transfer window is traditionally the time when agents get hot under the collar and take centre stage, when Sky Sports news becomes even more inane and repetitive than usual, and the time when football fans have to cruelly delude themselves into believing that they care about whether Bolton really will go through with their (free) swoop for Sean Davis (a surefire addition to the canon of players that mutate from young and promising into hardened stalwart seemingly without the bit in the middle - c.f. Danny Cadamarteri, Francis Jeffers)

This year's transfer window has been lent a certain edge by Real Madrid's manic, Brewster's Millions-esque spending spree and the tragi-comic publishing (in the Daily Heil) of Michael Owen's debut novel, 'I'm Not Actually Dead'. But generally speaking: so far, so glum...

... until today. Something has happened that has utterly defied expectation, sense, logic and, frankly, belief. I can't decide whether its a Frank Capra fairytale or a David Lynch nightmare made flesh. Either way, we have travelled, as a nation, at the speed of lightning, through the looking glass.

The pictures will tell their own story;





Ladies and Gentlemen, your eyes do not deceive you. This sequence of pictures really does document a vast number of people associated with Turkish football club AnkaraGucu beside themselves with joy at the capture of Darius Vassell. That's Darius Vassell. Darius. Vassell. A thoroughly OK striker with a pretty poor goals to games ratio, and no discernible star quality.

To be honest there is nothing I can add to the pictures. I'm mystified. Clearly, Darius (if the slogan above is to be believed) is more than a player. I just don't know what.

I'll leave you now to try and figure out this in your own sweet time. I'll be doing the same. E-mail any responses or comments to hotrant@gmail.com
AC