Once more unto the breach, dear friends...

I've been trying my best not to say any more about the cataclysmic faecal maelstrom that is the Ross-Brand-Sachs scandal. Too much had been said about it already, and by adding to the blogosphere's already hefty wordload on the subject I'm probably helping to validate a Daily Mail campaign and prolong the lifespan of a particularly nasty bout of mass hysteria. Only to a fairly imperceptible degree, of course, but it all adds up in the end. This one's like a bothersome dental abscess, though. I know I shouldn't, but I just can't leave the bastard alone.

Truth be told, I wasn't there at the very beginning. I first became aware of what would later be called Sachsgate whilst driving home from Kent last Saturday night and listening to The Russell Brand Show on Radio 2. By Gregorian standards that was a full calendar week after the previous show - the show - the one in which Brand and Jonathan Ross left their ill-advised messages on Andrew Sachs' answer machine. Still, I won't berate myself too harshly for tardiness. I might have turned up at the party late, but most of the people who subsequently complained arrived long after me.

Clare, Lily and I had gone to Hythe on Friday to visit Clare's parents. Clare and Lily were staying there for the half term holiday, but I had to get back to Brum the next day as I couldn't get the time off work. 'So it goes,' as Kurt Vonnegut used to say, at least before he died.

Anyway, after making a quick pit stop at Chorleywood to change my tyres, fix my engine and visit my old friend Nicky, I continued on to Birmingham. It was a long drive, I hadn't stuffed enough CDs into my glove compartment to last the journey, so I put the radio on. It was the Russell Brand Show, and the first I heard about the notorious lewd answerphone message scandal was when Brand apologised for them on air.

It was the night before the story broke in the Mail on Sunday, and he must have known they were onto him because this is what he said:

'I would like to remind the Daily Mail that whilst it is a bit bad to leave a swear word on Andrew Sachs' answerphone, what's worse - leaving a swear word on Andrew Sachs' answerphone or tacitly supporting Adolf Hitler when he took charge of the Third Reich?

'When he became chancellor in the late 1930s, the Daily Mail printed a letter from a Lord going "This Hitler might be all right". And once old Blackshirt Oswald Mosely came to prominence in this country the Daily Mail went, "Hurrah for our blackshirted chums".'

Although Brand's apology was widely publicised, the links he made between the Daily Mail and fascism weren't. It was a pretty snappy and articulate comeback, but unfortunately he wasn't dealing with a drunken heckler at a comedy club: he was up against with an unstoppable media juggernaut with a time-honoured political stance that's just to the right of Genghis Khan.

Of course, that doesn't mean to say that what he said wasn't true.

At university I read a book by Richard Griffiths called Fellow Travellers of the Right: British Enthusiasts for Nazi Germany 1933-1939. This introduced me to the whole sordid world of British upper class Nazi-sympathising twits like Daily Mail co-founder Lord Rothermere. Every time the Daily Heil launch a sanctimonious 'moral' campaign like this, I feel the urge to re-read it. Unfortunately, it was a library loan back then and its out of print now.

So, once again, it goes.

According to Griffiths' book and numerous other sources, Lord Rothermere was a friend and an active supporter of both Hitler and Mussolini and, in the years leading up to the Second World War, the Daily Mail was the only British paper to consistently support the Nazi Party. According to a Guardian story published in 2005, Rothermere had written to Hitler in 1939: "My Dear Führer, I have watched with understanding and interest the progress of your great and superhuman work in regenerating your country."

In the same year, The Indepenedent reported that "the former owner of the Daily Mail wrote to Adolf Hitler congratulating Germany on its annexation of Czechoslovakia, and urging the Führer to march into Romania, British secret service files, released by the National Archives for the first time today, reveal.

"Lord Rothermere even hired a glamorous German spy to introduce him to leading Nazi figures in the run-up to the Second World War. MI5 papers reveal how Rothermere, owner of Associated Newspapers, paid Princess Stephanie Hohenlohe-Waldenburg-Schillingfurst to further his contacts with Hitler, Goering, Goebbels and Ribbentrop. The Austrian-born princess, described as London's leading Nazi hostess, was closely watched by the secret services after she arrived in Britain in the 1920s and began "worming her way into society circles". (For the sake of political balance, I should also point out that the same story was reported in the Daily Telegraph)

Of course, as Russell Brand mentioned in his 'apology', the Daily Mail also had fascist affiliations that were a bit closer to home. In 1934, Rothermere penned an article for the Mail entitled 'Hail to the Blackshirts', in which he praised Oswald Mosely and his British Union of Fascists. In a contemporary article, the American news magazine Time reported:

'Off galloped the London Daily Mail, lead horse of Lord Rothermere's huge team of British newspapers, last week on a Fascist crusade. Pear-headed Lord Rothermere wrote the Mail's clarion call to young Britons "to break the stranglehold which senile politicians have so long maintained on public affairs." The man to do it. he said, is Sir Oswald Ernald Mosley, leader of Britain's Fascist Black Shirts, a man '"willing to act with the same directness of purpose and energy of method as Mussolini and Hitler have displayed." Predicted Lord Rothermere who has long felt like playing Dictator himself: ''There will be a prolonged swing either to the Right or Left. At the next vital election, Britain's survival as a great power will depend on the existence of a well-organized party of the Right."'

The Daily Mail likes to present itself as the moral guardian of Middle England, but once you do a little digging you'll soon find that this "moral guardian" has a rather shady past. Last Saturday, Russell Brand invited listeners to text in to his show saying:

'On one hand you have upset Manuel, on the other you have millions and millions of dead people supported by a powerful media institution. It's up to you, the listener, to decide which is worse: offending Manuel, for which I apologise, or tacitly supporting the death of millions.'

He might be paid a lot of money to be rude, obnoxious and controversial, but I think he might have a point.

Sachsgate

This morning I paid a visit to the corner shop to get some milk, bread and Marlboro Lights. As usual, I made a beeline for the fish 'n' chip paper rack and scanned the headlines. The one on the Daily Mail jumped out at me:

THE DAY OF RECKONING

Holy shit, I thought, it must be Election Day in the US. Had I really overslept by a week? Of course, it wasn't and I hadn't. The Daily Mail headline - in fact, the front page story on every tabloid, broadsheet and freesheet this morning - wasn't about the US elections, the violence in Congo or anything really important. It was about two famous blokes who get paid a lot of money to be rude, obnoxious and controversial getting into a lot of trouble for being rude, obnoxious and controversial.

I quite like Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross, but on this occasion I think they acted like a pair of thoughtless and sadistic eejits. Broadcasting a series of lewd messages left on a 78 year-old veteran comedy actor's answermachine is not what you might call best foot forward behaviour. Of course, the production team didn't help matters. They might have been trying to repackage Derek and Clive for the iPod generation, but I'm sure the producers of Ad Nauseam and Come Again were savvy enough to keep Pete and Dud away from the telephones.

I hate to think that I agree with anything the Daily Mail has to say, but I do think its right and proper to treat older people with a modicum of respect. I suspect, however, that the relentless media shitstorm they've kicked off has less to do with respect for our elders than it has to do with feeding our atavistic resentment towards highly successful people. I guess that means that I can carry on respecting old people, then.

In any case, the next time high profile iconoclasts feel compelled to piss off the Daily Mail by verbally abusing a senior citizen might I suggest they pick on a target that's a bit more deserving than Manuel from Fawlty Towers? Perhaps, say, a ruthless military dictator, a power hungry press baron or maybe even a former prime minister.

There's plenty of names that spring to mind.

No, I'm Bill Murray

I wouldn't normally do this sort of thing, but Bill Murray is God and this flash animation is one of the funniest things I've seen in ages.

Wait until the very end - it's worth it.

Thanks to the public spirited souls of the Brum Bloggers Meet for the heads up.

Dunkirk

From 4Talent:

Film Dash took place over 48 hours in Birmingham, with teams putting together films of less than five minutes in length, in a competition organised by Created In Birmingham’s Chris Unitt, honouring the memory of Birmingham-born Ealing comedies producer Michael Balcon. 4Talent Commissioning Editor Catherine Bray was one of three judges.

The winner was Dunkirk, by Rachael Marchant, Danny Smith and my old mate Pete Ashton. The film is a five minute Brum-based saga about love, loss and urban decay that features a rather groovy Bleep Labs' Thingamagoop synthesiser as its protagonist. In what will surely be its breakthrough role, Thingamagoop effortlessly combined fragile empathy with a captivating sense of wonder. It's only a matter of time before Hollywood comes knocking on it's door.

Pete's done a production diary here, here and here, and the film itself is here:


Dunkirk from Pete Ashton on Vimeo.

The Virtual Cinema

Following on from something I posted fairly recently - and blathered on at great length about at last night's Brum Bloggers Meet - King's Visualisation Lab at King's College London seem to be working on a virtual reality reconstruction of Birmingham's magnificent Kingstanding Odeon. This, of course, would be a VR simulation of its glory days as a cinema, not a VR simulation of its subsequent life as a bingo hall. There's currently no need digitally reconstruct bingo halls, although if attendance figures continue to slide there might well be soon.

There's more (but not much more) about it here.

PJANG

"People Just Ain't No Good" is a. a song by Nick Cave & Bad Seeds, b. a catchy mission statement for misanthropes, and, c. the title of a UK small press vet Rol Hirst's excellent comeback comic.

As you might expect from the title, the three stories that make up PJANG serve up a not altogether sunny-side-up view of the human condition. That's not to say it's a depressing read - there's plenty of wry humour and at least one happy ending to be found amongst its three stories - but the overarching theme is that we're living in a world full of no-good shits. Of course, you can't really argue with a theme like that. In your hearts you know it's true.

That being said, the three stories that make up 'PJANG' are very different beasts. The first, Grotesque, features nicely atmospheric art by my erstwhile drinking buddy Mr Tony McGee. A time-lapsed tale of infidelity born from insecurity, it's harrowing stuff.

Next is Get Creative! a blackly comic tale about an advertising exec who turns (a gun) on his industry and embarks on a Bill Hicks-inspired killing spree. It's vicious, funny, has a great twist at the end and features some lovely, stylised art by Andrew Cheverton which reminded me a bit of the work of 2000AD legend Mike McMahon.

Finally, there's Rooms for Writers by Rol and Kelvin Green. Despite it's subject matter (it's about what happens to writers after they die), it manages to end on uplifting, optimistic note that suggests (to this reader at least) that Lord Hirst of Slawit is not quite as gumpy a Yorkshireman as he sometimes makes himself out to be.

PJANG is very good, costs £1.75 and is available from here. Don't be a tight-arse - go buy it now.

For fear of obliterating my last and, frankly, endangered shreds of credibility, can I just say - for the record - that I am now, officially, getting rather excited about JJ Abrams' forthcoming Star Trek movie.

Here's a few reasons why:




Call me shallow, but it's those old-school, Original Series' uniforms (complete with obligatory miniskirts) that are doing it for me. Not so sure about the design aesthetic of the bridge, though. It looks like the kind of place you'd go to buy an iPhone.

Let's hope there's a sequel. I for one would like to see a young Kirk, Spock and McCoy go head to head with Javier Bardem as Khan...

Images via Ain't it Cool News, UGO & MTV.

"All that is, is metaphor"

From YouTube, a condensed version of Robert Anton Wilson's Maybe Logic DVD:

"RAW talks about the sanity of using maybe, E-Prime (the english language without IS or Being), imprinting and conditioning, optimism, awakening and how 'the map is not the territory'."

Well, whaddaya know. I didn't even know there was a Maybe Logic DVD, let alone a condensed version of it.

Robert Anton Wilson (1932-2007) will always be one of my favourite writers. I spent a large chunk of my 20s trying to hunt down and devour just about every goddamn book he ever wrote. In the days before Amazon, this was no mean feat. By contrast, I stumbled upon the above clip after spending ten minutes or so loitering on the superinformation highway.*

It's at times like this that I love YouTube.



* Is it still called "the superinformation highway"? I've got a feeling that I just made myself sound very Windows 98.

Thor Blimey!

It's not every day you see an item of news that will excite fans of Marvel Comics, Norse mythology and popular Brummie playwright William "The Bard" Shakespeare.

Here's something from Variety that might:

"Kenneth Branagh is negotiating to direct 'Thor' the next Marvel Comics property that will be turned into a live-action film by Marvel Studios. Pic will be released in 2010."

Well, maybe not the Norse mythology crowd. They're never easy to please.

The prospect of Kenneth Branagh directing a big-assed superhero flick might seem like the maddest idea since, I dunno, Ang Lee directing a big-assed superhero flick. Then again, this one's about a hammer-wielding God who's partial to a bit of blank verse blather. It might not be too much of a stretch.

I suppose that over the coming months there'll be all sorts of feverish speculation amongst fanboys as to who should play the God of Thunder. Me, I don't particularly care - I'm more interested in the supporting cast. I'm hoping that Branagh once again calls upon his regular company of performers to lend a bit of much-needed gravitas to the project. I want to see Thor's dad Odin played by Richard (The Good Life) Briers. I want to see stately, plump Volstragg played by Brian (Z Cars) Blessed. But most of all, though, I want to see Thor's arch nemesis played by a truly great British performer. Someone who has worked with Branagh before. Someone who'd be perfect for the role. Someone who was born to play an evil trickster god.

I want to see Ken Dodd as Loki.

The letter writing campaign starts NOW!

Bank Bailout Scheme “To Be Extended To Riverbanks”

Fot the first time in ages, I've submitted something to the satirical website Newsbiscuit. Here it is:

Financial markets were in turmoil this morning following news that the British government will soon be extending their momentous £500bn bank rescue package to include ailing riverbanks. This comes in the wake of the Irish Government’s controversial decision to prop up the banks of the River Liffey

The news sent shockwaves through the financial markets both here and abroad. Following the announcement, the FTSE 100 share index plunged by a staggering 20%, setting a new record as its largest inter-day drop since Tuesday lunchtime. Transactions were suspended throughout many of Europe’s derivative exchanges as “absolutely bloody gob-smacked” Futures Traders were forced to spend much of the morning frantically rewriting history.

According to waterways campaigner Canal Phoenix, Britain’s riverbanks had been hit particularly hard by the credit crunch. “High Street banks aren’t the only victims in all of this,” claims Phoenix. “Thanks to global warming, there’s just not as much water out there as there used to be. Britain’s riverbanks are facing an unprecedented liquidity crisis.”

“Industrial pollution has always been a problem for our riverbanks,” claims Phoenix. “Over the last year, though, we’ve seen a dramatic increase in the number of toxic assets. You should see how many dead cats, used prophylactics and broken bicycle parts we’ve dredged up.”

A global collapse of the riverbank sector will have a devastating knock-on affect for other industries. “Riverside taverns, fishermen’s pubs and boat hire firms will all be affected,” claims Phoenix. “The sub-prime mortgage crisis has really hit property development along popular riverside locations. You have to remember, in this part of the world ‘sub’ usually means ‘underwater’”.

Opposition politicians, however, were quick to condemn the bailout. Jodie Marshland, Shadow spokeswoman for Riverbanks, Tow paths and Global Financial Catastrophes said: “While we sympathise with the nation’s riverbanks, throwing taxpayer’s money at this problem is no solution. If you ask me, the prime minister has behaved like a bit of a riverdunce.”

“This reckless policy decision has set a dangerous precedent. It has, quite literally, opened the floodgates. Where will it stop? What other bank-related institutions will British tax payers be bailing out next? Will we be offering emergency financial assistance to Jodrell Bank? To sperm banks? To England footballing legend Gordon Banks?”

Phoenix, though, is adamant. “Action has to be taken now. Nobody wants to see a run on the banks, but a run on the riverbanks can be far more dangerous. It can be very slippery and can result in drowning. You should always walk at a leisurely pace.”

In a related development, many of the world’s great rivers are currently involved in merger talks with former rivals. The US Mississippi has confirmed that it is in advanced talks with the Latin American Amazon which could lead to the creation of the world’s first super megariver, which will be known as the Ms. Ippi.

Artful Dodging

While we're on the subject of credit crunch-themed neologisms, here's another one I made up:

Faginomics (ˈfā-gən-ˈnä-miks), noun

Controversial economic recovery strategy designed to alleviate the self-inflicted hardships of the rich and powerful few by surreptitiously removing money from everyone else's pockets.

Schadenfreude, Baby!

As I've mentioned elsewhere (and even elsethere), I'm into neologisms in a big way. When I get bored, I make up a new word. Last week I wasn't bored, but someone invited me to make up a new word all the same. That's never happened before.

The author Laura Lee invited me to take part in a neologism contest on her blog. She's written a book called Schadenfreude, Baby! and as 'schadenfreude' is one of my all-time favourite German words, I thought I'd give it a go. Schadenfreude, in case you don't already know, is usually defined as deriving pleasure from the misfortune of others. See, I told you it was a great word. Once you know what it means you'll wonder how you ever got by without it. According to Laura:

'The kind of Schadenfreude many of us have been feeling in the wake of the financial crisis has a different quality and character than the celebrity downfall gazing of a year ago. It's darker, blacker and angrier. Over at Psych Central John Grohol is talking about his emotions: "I find a strange melancholic amusement to learn that many of these investment banks’ CEOs and boards of directors — people being paid millions of dollars every year to purportedly know what their own companies are doing and how they make money — didn’t have a clue as to how deep their companies were into questionable financial practices."

'I'm looking for suggestions for a new word that encapsulates this "melancholic amusement"- Schadenfreude tinged with a touch of sadness and foreboding.'

The word I came up with to describe this strange mix of emotions was:

SADENFREUDE, noun

An emotion that combines joy in another's misfortune tempered only by the overriding sense that the misfortune is going to have some serious and sad consequences.

See what I did there? I created a new word by amputating two letters from a preexisting one. Nifty, eh?


Believe it or not, I won the contest.

Thanks for the good news, Laura. I look forward to reading your book.