Blandness at Breakfast

This morning, Paul McCartney's wife Heather was interviewed on BBC Breakfast. I was only half awake, but it appeared she was trying to get more members of the public to carry a donor card by using George Best as an example of what such an act can acheive. (She also appeared to have a pound or so of chicken skin hanging from under each arm, and if I didn't know better, I'd say she was skagged up, but that's by the by.)

The interview was grotesque. Between them, the tediously inoffensive Sian Williams and the effortlessly nondescript Dermot Murnaghan managed to navigate their way through the five minute piece without demanding the obvious question of how the suffering fuck George Best, even in the wildest flush of post-funeral sycophancy, could possibly seen as a positive advert for carrying a donor card, but that's not to say that in breakfast nooks around the nation, millions of viewers weren't spitting their Weetabix out in disbelief and angrily making the same enquiry of their TV sets. They would also probably be demanding to know why Hop-Along's tits appear to start at her elbows, and why she was allowed on the telly to promote a cause she had seemingly only a passing interest in. (In case you're wondering, it took only two minutes thirty seconds for her to mention her missing leg - a record, I think.)

Yes, the interview was grotesque, but as breakfast entertainment, it was fantastic. I'm not used to having my jaw loosened by the telly before 9am, but today the BBC did me proud. It was not only the treat of having a repulsively self-involved and pointless 'celebrity' big up a repulsively conceived campaign in such a bizarre way, but also the stark contrast to the standard breakfast fare. Usually, the BBC serves up items that are blander than the Anglican church, such as the ten-minute piece last week on paper aeroplanes, or a fascinating and not-at-all excruciating OB from Hampton Court or some similar day-out destination for the heavily-medicated. But today, seeing a one-legged methadone user plead the case for donor cards by citing the example of the worst transplant candidate since history began lifted my heart and raised my bile in equal measure. What a way to start to the day!

Thing is, though, even when the BBC's being bland at breakfast (99.99% of the time), it is nevertheless more stimulating than what the other channels offer. GMTV is like having breakfast with call centre queers and overweight housewives as they discuss this week's issue of Chat. Sky advertises its early morning programming with the monument to tedium and vanquished dreams that is Eamon Holmes promising that whatever news he has to give us, he shall do it 'with a smile'. If that doesn't deep down make you want to shit into your hands and rub it into your face, then you really should question what use your continued existence could possibly serve.

Channel 4: Will & Grace (one unfunny joke, served 4,900 different ways, to varying magnitudes of whooping audience hysteria). BBC2: Lazytown (it's for children, but bland children). What is the telly trying to do to us?!

I'm not asking for pornography, or even the televised torture of the beardy old cunt off Hollyoaks. All I want is something vaguely interesting to watch whilst I put away my breakfast. I want interesting news items, not in-depth investigations into conkers. I want laughter and vitriol, not valiumed grins and platitudes. And I want Mishal Hussain to present it. Nekkid.

And one more thing - if Vanessa FUCKING Feltz appears during the BBC London news to announce today's topic for her radio phone-in, I swear I shall hunt her down, slit her throat, and see that Essex eats well off the result. However, I'll not dwell on the matter just now, for she is to feature in a future entry (to be entitled 'Vanessa Feltz is Alive - Why?').

The Funniest Joke I Ever Made

I was lying in bed on a few Saturday mornings ago, ruminating and cogitating like one does. Then somehow I thought of a joke. It made me laugh. I rang various people to tell them it.

It went:

I understand 50 Cent's latest song is about Weetabix. It's called 'Eat Six or Die Trying'.

Please now take a few moments to recover.

Obituary: My fucking phone

My Nokia 8310 mobile phone passed away on the 11h December 2005 after a short illness. It was well known in the world of Stevie Bee for its compact size, ability to send text messages, and for switching itself off whenever it was placed in a pocket.

Its career in communications began in 2001 when it left the Nokia factory in Finland (or possibly a sweatshop in the Philipines - I can't be arsed to look into it), along with thousands of its contemporaries, whereupon it lay in a warehouse somewhere in the UK until it was palmed off onto an unsuspecting Orange customer who was two years overdue an upgrade.

Amongst its striking features were a backlight, various ringtones and a ridiculous snowboarding game that was about as easy to comprehend as the appeal of Sudoku. After being unlocked in 2003, the phone saw active duty in Australia and then India, where it spent one night underwater when a hotel room flooded.

The funeral procession will leave for a kitchen worktop at eight o'clock this evening, where it will be hit numerous times with a hammer. Its remains will then conducted to my bedroom window, and from there they will be thrown into the Regent's Canal.

The phone is survived by a landline, three email accounts and a letterbox.

Stevie B's fucking Nokia fucking 8310
??/??/2001-11/12/2005

Let's Harass Local Businesses (slight return)

Alors,

Remember I emailed Dirty Harry's Contract Cleaners to suggest that their advertising slogan should be 'do you feel mucky, punk?'. Remember? Well they emailed back to say thank you very much. How nice is that, eh?

Well, let's perpetuate this niceness. Let's keep the good feeling going. Let's ALL email them with a suggestion for their advertising slogan (just in case they should they ever choose to advertise their services).

Here are a few suggestions for you to pass on to them (just one per email, please), but feel free to choose your own:

"Dirty Harry's Contract Cleaners - we're not afraid to bend the rules to get results."
"Dirty Harry's Contract Cleaners - hauling dirt's ass into the DA's office."
"Dirty Harry's Contract Cleaners - mops with Magnum Force."
"Dirty Harry's Contract Cleaners - all we need is 24 hours, chief."
"Dirty Harry's Contract Cleaners - this goes as high as City Hall's toilets."
"Dirty Harry's Contract Cleaners - telling dirt it's 'off the case'."
"Dirty Harry's Contract Cleaners - because the pen-pushers back at the station house are scared of getting their hands dirty."
"Dirty Harry's Contract Cleaners - we're all broken up about that dirt's rights."
"Dirty Harry's Contract Cleaners - we'll shoot unarmed suspect dirt in the back."
"Dirty Harry's Contract Cleaners - the maverick cops of contract cleaning."
"Dirty Harry's Contract Cleaners - a chaotic personal life, but one hell of a contract cleaner."
"Dirty Harry's Contract Cleaners - we've swapped our badge and gun for a mop and duster."
"Dirty Harry's Contract Cleaners - damn it, chief, we don't need no partner."
"Dirty Harry's Contract Cleaners - once we cleaned up the streets; now we clean sinks."
"Dirty Harry's Contract Cleaners - the uptown cleaner with the downtown reputation."
"Dirty Harry's Contract Cleaners - we've got two days until retirement, but we're going to nail this dirt, damn it."
"Dirty Harry's Contract Cleaners - this is a .44 Dyson, the most powerful vacuum in the world."
"Dirty Harry's Contract Cleaners - when we see a dirty sink, we clean the bastard. That's our policy."
"Dirty Harry's Contract Cleaners - the question is, do you feel mucky? Well, do ya, punk?"

Choose one you like, or make up your own and send it to enquiries@dirtyharrys.co.uk. Use the following format, just for consistency:

"Dear Dirty Harry's Contract Cleaners,

Do you have an advertising slogan at present? Cos if you don't, you might like to consider this:

(insert suggestion)


Thank you and enjoy your day,

(insert your name)."

Let me know how you get on in the comments section below.

Good luck!

Sainsburys: Primal Scream Retail Therapy

But for a select few hapless victims of protracted torture, nobody could reasonably counter the claim that the most irritating, painful, cuntiful place to be on God's green earth is Sainsburys, Islington on a Sunday afternoon. Circumstance weekly draws together poor design, tedious shoppers and a poor hungover me to do battle in aisles.

Don't get me wrong - I know ALL supermarkets are palaces of irksomeness, but Sainsburys Islington on a Sunday afternoon rarifies and distills the irk into something that would test the patience of three hundred Jesuses on valium. Firstly, it's the design: the aisles are wide enough for only two trolleys at a time. Not a problem, you might think - one goes one way, the other goes the other, no fuss, no muss. But when one factors in a second term - dithering, fuckwitted shoppers - then we have not a series of streamlined quick-flowing aisles but something that more closely resembles the cardiovascular system of a Glaswegian.

See, the dithering cuntwits are the lipids that clog the already strained Sainsburys veins leading to aneurysms of impatience building up around those shoppers who hadn't timetabled regular intervals stuck fast by the carrots or tinned soup. In any healthy supermarket, these occlusions are normally just the result of an old person or two who haven't yet been decent enough to die, and are quickly dealt with by the assertive shopper with an insouciant shove or jab, but Sunday in Sainsburys is about more than just the oldies. We also have the posh liberal parents with an entourage of under-disciplined children (children called things like 'Jemima' and 'Harry') who run a wide, excited orbit around their cunty parents, grabbing items from shelves whilst still being ordered to return the last thing they got their overfed, under-belted hands on; and Islington students wandering around in couples and getting excited and theatrical about frozen pizza and ice cream when really, if they were proper students (rather than mollycoddled trustafarian milksops), they would be shopping in Kwik Save and trying to work out how to make £2 last a week. When the elderly are added to the mix, what we have is the equivalent of a stroke at the same time as a heart attack.

And when you're dealing with this with a hangover, well...

I can't pretend to have the warmest spirit in North London. Or even one that gets mildly toasty at Christmas. And when I'm hungover, the forecast is for cold Arctic winds blowing in from the far frozen North of my disposition. And when I'm in Sainsburys in Islington, you better believe that it's raining as well. Frozen rain. Whatever that is.

Linger for a second too long in front of the vegetables that I'm trying to get to, and before you can dither over two carrots a second longer, I will have already graphically visualised your bloody downfall - beating you to death with your own trolley, or breaking your neck with my bare hands and tossing your broken body into the baking potatoes. Come to a dead stop at the end of an aisle to consult your shopping list unaware of the queue of people behind you, and I'll be fantasising about pushing your face through the deli counter glass before you can open your handbag. In short, I'm a timebomb of social unpleasantness. I'm an angry, nasty little twat.

That's why I shop at Sainsburys.

And do you know, secretly I love getting wound up with the fuckwits in there. It makes me feel alive. And it shows that I'm in no danger of becoming one of them. It means I'm maintaining a realist perspective. As long as I want to vomit at the piped Christmas music, I'm not at risk of becoming retarded. And as long as I snarl at students buying big steaks, I'm in no danger of becoming accepting of others. And I think it's a very healthy way to be.

And where better to explore these feelings than the bland laboratory conditions of the supermarket? It's a controlled, homogenous, strip-lit playground for psychotic desires. It's a padded cell where you can thrash out your murderousness until you wear yourself out. That's what they're for - they're where you go to find expression for your anger at the social strata either side of you. The supermarkets provide a safe outlet for this moiling rage. When was the last time you saw it kick off in Tescos? Supermarkets are social safety valves, where class differences are aggravated and soothed at the same time. Just look at Tesco Finest compared to Tesco Value - the battle is played out on the shelves before your very eyes. They're perpetuating the class system in order to continue to profit from the slavery of the workers! And you thought they just sold groceries...

By the way, remember I emailed Dirty Harry's Contract Cleaners to tell them that they should change their slogan to 'do you feel mucky, punk'? Well, they emailed back, said thanks, and told me that I'd 'made the girls in the office smile'. NOW call me anti-social...

All Americans Are Gay (Except for One, Who Was Just Me Pretending)

Remember in the last post I mentioned about an email I'd once got that was intended for someone else? Well, fuck it, I might as well tell you about it now.

Once upon a time, I had a hotmail account. It used to get lots of spam, and lots of shit, and lots of stuff that I wanted that got sent straight to the junkmail folder, but one bored morning, I arrived to work to find an email addressed to a Stephen Beckett, but it was for a different Stephen Beckett than the Stephen Beckett that's me. This one lived in America somewhere. (Note - by now, a lot of you will realise that you've heard this story before. Feel free to run along. I'll catch you next time.)

The email went along the lines of: "Hey, dude. How's your summer vacation going? Me and pop haved nearly fished all the trout out of the lake, and I'm doing plenty of swimming! Well, must get going - me and pop are going to take the boat out! Catch you later, Jim."

I paraphrase slightly, but that was the jist. When the above landed in my inbox, I quickly realised our American friend had got the wrong Stephen J - I'm quick off the mark like that, see. I also quickly realised that I could have some fun. I hit reply and started typing...

"Hey, Jim.

Your old pal Stephen here. I'm having a great summer thanks, though things are a little crazy!

You see, when I got back home, I decided it was time to come out of the closet and tell people that I'm gay. Most people have been really great, my friends especially, but some people have been jerks, but I suppose that's their problem really.

Anyway, I'm glad you're having a good summer. Keep in touch,

Stephen"

I typed this reply and sent it off, not expecting to hear anything more about it. It was a shot in the dark more than anything. However, next day, I had, in amongst the usual hotmail inbox detritus, there was a shiny new reply from Jim. It went something like:

"Hi Stephen,

Wow! That's pretty crazy! Well, whatever floats your boat, man!

What did Lisa say about it though?

Jim"

I couldn't believe my luck. Pure gold. It was like randomly throwing a pint glass over your shoulder and hitting someone off Hollyoaks. I couldn't reply quick enough....

"Hi Jim,

Thanks for being understading, because I know it's hard for some people to accept. Lisa was great about it. We're just friends now (unless she can grow a dick, that is... ha ha!)

I sort of had to admit that I was gay when I got a boyfriend. He's called Brad, and he's a great guy and I know you'll like him. He reminds me a bit of you.

Anyway, speak to you soon,

Stephen
x"

I'd upped the ante, and a reply wasn't as forthcoming as had previously been. I thought I must have pushed it too far, but two days later, there it was... 1 new message:

"Hi Stephen,

Well, that's great that you're with someone. I don't mind that at all, as long as you're enjoying yourself. Does that mean Lisa's available now ha ha?

See ya,

Jim"

Get in! Here I was fundamentally altering the relationship between two American teens, and I was loving it. Well, sort of. I was starting to feel a bit guilty about it, truth be told... But not so guilty that I didn't immediately blast off the following response:

"Hi Jim,

Yes, Lisa's avaiable. I'll put in a good word for you. I'll tell her what a great guy you are, and so sweet and understanding too.

I can't wait for you to meet Brad. I know we'll all get on so well. Have you met anyone special over summer?

Stephen
xxx"

From this point forward, the tone of our emails changed. They became less frequent from Jim's end, and more graphic from mine. I think I was coming on a bit too strong for him. All the talk of my imaginary sex life with Brad, combined with (frankly needy) come-ons and flattery were pushing the bounds of Stephen and Jim's friendship too far. I was taking things too fast, when Jim really needed some time and space to adjust to Stephen's new lifestyle. Jim did try to tell Stephen this, but I think he felt a little alienated. Emails four to seven were just a few short lines, and were taking longer and longer to arrive.

It got to the point where I'd waited seven days, and hadn't heard from Jim. What was wrong with him? Why wouldn't he write me?! Was it something I'd said?! The wait was killing me. I'd come on too strong and he'd got scared. Now he wasn't speaking to me. What was I to do?!

Well, reader, I'm afraid that I was compelled to do the decent thing and 'fess up.

I know, I know - if I was made of stronger stuff, I'd have asked Jim for all our friend's email addresses and spread the message a little futher, but I'm only human, damn it. I wrote and told him:

"Hi Jim

Stephen here. I'm afraid I'm a different Stephen Beckett to the one you think I am. The one that you know hasn't really been enjoying man-love with Brad all summer. In fact, there isn't even a Brad. And even if there was one, he and Stephen would probably just be friends.

See, Stephen's not gay. You've not really been emailing him all summer. You've been emailing me, and I've been responding as your friend Stephen rather than the real Stephen (i.e. me, though from your point of view, the real Stephen is the one that's not me, but I'm sure you follow...). Why? For a laugh. Sorry if I've caused any confusion.

May I say that the way you've responded to your friends imaginary choice of lifestyle is admirable. Stephen needs friends like you, especially at a time like this, and you were there when it mattered. God bless you.

Enjoy the rest of your summer,

Stephen. (The real one.) (I think)."

And reader, do you know, he didn't even reply to say thank you? Shocking.

Anyway, that just about does her for now.

Laters,

Stephen
x

Let's harass local businesses.

Hello,

Sorry I haven't updated this blog for nearly a month, but I am dreadfully lazy. I'll try harder in future, honest.

I've just emailed a cleaning company in London. Why? Because I thought of a stupid joke connected to their name and I thought I might share it with them. This is what I sent them:

"Hi,

I've noticed your plughole covers in various urinals in London pubs, and felt compelled to contact you.

Do you already have an advertising slogan? Cos if you don't might I suggest one? Might I suggest: 'Do you feel mucky, punk?'

Pretty good, eh? You can have that one.

Enjoy your day,

Stephen"

Now, I'd be the first to admit that that's a shit joke. But when considered in the context thus demonstrated, it becomes funny, dun't it? Well, maybe. It'll become exponentially funnier should I receive a reply, and so forth should I reply in a similar tone, and so on and so forth, for about three or four exchanges, whereupon the law of diminishing returns decress that value-for-money shall drop off unless I'm able to get them into an argument or something.

Oh, I've got something funny to tell you about this email I once got that was meant for someone else, but I'll tell you that one another time.

I shall post Dirty Harry's response as soon as I get it.

Until then, I shall leave you with this:

Today sees the start of the enquiry into the Britons killed in the tsunami. 'There's a lot of questions that the families of victims want answering,' said a BBC journalist this morning. That's fair enough, but I'm pretty sure that in 99% of cases, the answer is going to be 'a big fucking tidal wave'. Are taxpayers footing the bill for this?

S