Scotland’s Jesus: The Only Officially Non-racist Comedian Read online

  In 2012 we had the disgraceful spectacle of the Diamond Jubilee. I’ve got to admit I was out on the streets cheering her on, although I’m not sure she fully appreciated my chant: ‘Sixty years since your dad died, do dah, do dah!’

  Michael Gove suggested celebrating the Jubilee by building a royal yacht. To be honest, I was just going to get her bath bombs or a book token but it was typical of Gove to try to show me up. I hate him, the unctuous, wet-lipped, Dickensian freak. If you asked a football stadium full of people if they’d like to see him kicked to death by a minotaur wearing plimsoles – so it would last longer – you wouldn’t find a single person who wouldn’t masturbate while it was happening.

  I suppose a boat would be immune from a below-the-waterline al-Qaeda attack, as it’s nearly impossible to get a watertight seal on your mask with a big, bushy beard. That’s why the kids in Atlantis never get Christmas presents . . . but they don’t cry about it. It’s under the sea, so crying would be pointless.

  A barge is totally in keeping with the royal tradition as typified by Liz and Phil. Engineering and shipping – you can’t get much more German and Greek than those. And nothing says recession solidarity more than waving from a throne atop a golden barge. It looked like something Liberace would have rented if he’d taken a break on the Norfolk Broads. The whole thing was car-crash television, which made it strangely apt for a royal occasion.

  Actually, I didn’t go to see the flotilla as I failed to find a pair of clear-plastic water-skis to add a ghostly ‘walk-on-water’ quality to my Princess Diana outfit. Still, congratulations, Ma’am, on sixty years of feigning interest in an assortment of bland hats while a sycophantic media faithfully recount your occasional nondescript remarks as witticisms. Hers is an inspirational story. The meteoric rise of a girl born simply the daughter of a humble king. And let’s not forget her role as Supreme Governor of the Church of England, a position that I’ve always thought must piss God off quite a bit. A little boy gave her some Werther’s Originals to pass on to Philip. I understand that he prefers to receive jelly babies, as when the bag’s destroyed by Special Branch in a controlled explosion there’s less chance of the corgis getting shrapnel wounds.

  All the royals were there – Princess Anne, the Duke of York, the Duke of Hazzard, Prince Harry, the artist formerly known as Prince, Lord and Lady Gaga, the Duchess of Cambridge, Duchy Originals Sausages, Viscount Biscuit and Sir, would you please put your trousers back on, the other diners are getting upset? We had a street party with jelly and ice cream and games for all the local children. It wasn’t to celebrate the Queen’s Jubilee – we were trying to flush out a paedophile.

  Unemployed jobseekers were forced to sleep under London Bridge and work unpaid on the Jubilee river pageant. It wasn’t all bad as they did get to watch the world’s richest family sail by them in a golden barge. Sleeping under a bridge? That’s Victorian, medieval even . . . what place could it possibly have at a royal event?

  In honour of the Jubilee, Madame Tussauds unveiled their new waxwork of Her Majesty. Apparently, to re-create the effects of aging they just moved the old one next to the radiator for a couple of hours. I’m definitely going to take a look. Especially after the success of my trip to see the Prince Philip last Christmas, when I managed to land a couple of darts right in his chest. The Queen’s waxwork has had its own special alarm ever since 2004, when the head was stolen and used to forge loads of big stamps.

  God, the Queen must’ve been in a lot of photos – all the official ones, obviously, and she also loves to jump in the back of tourists’ pictures for a laugh. We’ve all got our favourite memories of the Queen – mine was when she played Superintendent Jane Tennison in Prime Suspect. But she’s great for tourism. Mainly because the sort of people dumb enough to want to see her are also the ones dumb enough to pay £5 for a warm Tango and a mechanically recovered meat hotdog, and £45 to watch roller-skating cats banging out the hits of Bucks Fizz.

  By way of a gift for her Jubilee, the Queen was given 169,000 square miles of Antarctica, which she accepted with her trademark gracious scowl. Barack Obama said that while many presidents and prime ministers had come and gone, the Queen had endured. Barack, that’s because you can vote for them, you prick.

  Much is made of the Queen ‘not being able to answer back’. As if a multi-millionaire with access to harems of devoted apemen and to drugs that let her taste chamber music really aches to be involved in a Twitter spat. The royals actually wield a lot of power. The Queen demanded to know why hate cleric Abu Hamza couldn’t be deported. The police had been trying to arrest Abu Hamza for years but for some reason he just kept slipping out of the handcuffs.

  I think it’s great that the Queen’s showing an interest in the sort of evil people who shouldn’t be in this country instead of having them over for lunch, like she did with Robert Mugabe, Mswati III, Idi Amin, Hamad Al-Khalifa and President Assad. The journo who revealed the Queen’s annoyance apologised for his breach of royal protocol, adding, ‘From now on any pillow talk stays in the bedroom . . . Oh, no, you’re not going to print that, are you?’

  The royals have been unwell recently. The Duke of Kent had a mild stroke. He said he wanted to be back at work as soon as possible. It must have been more serious than we first thought, otherwise he would have remembered that he’s never worked a day in his fucking life.

  Meanwhile, Prince Philip was told he can no longer hunt as it may dislodge his heart, presumably knocking it into a place where it can receive its long-dead messages of love. There’s a small metal tube that is holding his heart together. That would be a spectacular death, though, as he rips his own heart out to desperately load it into his shotgun.

  I wonder if he got the NHS treatment we all get? I can’t help thinking there’s a twenty-year-old rugby player coming to in a field somewhere, his chest stitched like a 1950s football, barely able to get to his knees with his new nonagenarian heart.

  I’m being unfair – the royals do pretend to do their bit for the community. Prince Andrew abseiled down the Shard for charity. He didn’t raise as much money as everyone had hoped, as he made it down alive. He had to quit as Trade Envoy due to his links with a convicted paedophile, Jeffrey Epstein. A member of the royal family shouldn’t be making us look stupid overseas. That’s clearly the job of the SAS, the MOD and Jordan. The Sun referred to Epstein as the ‘Paedophile Billionaire’, which reminds me of the old children’s rhyme: ‘The grand old Duke of York, he had ten thousand friends. Not one of them what you might consider babysitting material.’ Perhaps all paedophiles should be forced to have celebrity friends. It’d be an end to them being able to loiter anonymously around school gates. ‘Get in the car, kids, quick! I don’t like the look of that man playing conkers with Bono!’

  Fergie took £15,000 pounds from Epstein. How many people would turn down fifteen grand, no strings attached, because it came from a child abuser? I mean, many people give more than that every year to clothing companies who tie six-year-olds to sewing machines. Fergie said, ‘I would throw myself under a bus for Andrew.’ He’d be very touched, if he knew what a bus was.

  • • •

  Prince Harry fought in Afghanistan. They kept that pretty quiet, didn’t they? It’s good that he went. If you want a flag waver for democracy it makes sense to send a prince. I say hats off to him. It’s about time we had a few more positive role models for downtrodden ginger people. It might finally inspire them to turn their back on witchcraft.

  Harry admitted that he’s killed people, which should put an end to the question of whether he’s really a member of the royal family. Saying that he’s killed members of the Taliban hasn’t made him a target; it’s made all the gingers in the army who aren’t surrounded by personal bodyguards twenty-four hours a day targets. It shows how sensible he’s been, though. Nobody can get near you with a bomb belt if they have to be naked to get into your hotel room.

  Prince Harry underwent hostage training in preparation for Afghanistan.
It can’t be easy having a royal hostage. You’re supposed to cut off bits that serve no useful purpose and post them back. Where would you start? I hope he never gets killed on active duty. I hate to think of someone saying they need to inform his next of kin, then all the generals just looking awkwardly at the floor.

  Harry was in the US to attend the Warrior Games. If he wanted to watch injured servicemen fight among themselves he should just nip down to any soup kitchen in the UK and throw a slice of bread on the ground. I’ve a fascination with watching disabled people play sports that has developed naturally from years attending Scottish Premier League football matches.

  Cheryl Cole revealed she had a dream about marrying Harry. Something that in real life would surely end in a car crash bigger than her solo career. Cheryl doesn’t seem like she’d fit in with the royals, but who knows, maybe the Queen also has a barbed-wire thigh tattoo. In most of my dreams I’m a princess as well – although I then unfurl into a half-horse, half-Gok Wan centaur who plays just behind the front two for Spurs, so I don’t know what to think.

  2

  POLITICS

  I suppose my political overview is that this five-thousand-year experiment to see what would happen if we let the cunts make all the decisions is going really badly. Anyone who doubts that power corrupts should have a think about what arseholes tall people are.

  A key thing in the politics of Britain is the idea of consensus opinion. You see it in comedy where people say such and such a thing shouldn’t be joked about but will joke about it themselves in private. They mean you can’t say it in public because it would outrage consensus opinion. They’ll maintain this even after you do it in a theatre to a few thousand people and nobody gives a shit. Even people in the theatre will laugh and think, ‘You can’t say that in public.’ By which they mean the press will get a hold of it and jump on a stool shrieking and holding their little skirts. So public opinion really is almost synonymous with media opinion, and the dangers of that are pretty obvious.

  For a comedian – someone whose job it is to deal with taboos and language – consensus is the idea that you shouldn’t talk about the world as you see it but instead about some socially agreed version. But it shouldn’t be a very hard decision. If you live in one of history’s rare pockets of free speech it’s kind of your duty to use it. Basically, the choice is between drawing freehand and colouring between the lines.

  ‘Consensus’ is something that most people have to make allowances for, yet, contrary to the word’s literal meaning, most of us have very little say in what it is. The symbolic importance of public opinion is only allowed so long as people themselves are utterly marginalised. What’s your real ability to influence the idea of what public opinion is on an issue? Tweet to two hundred followers, write a letter to the Sun, apply to be in the audience on Question Time? Who gets to decide what the public are saying they’re outraged by or interested in? Well, Rupert Murdoch; corporate think tanks; the BBC. The public’s idea of what the public thinks is almost entirely controlled by vested interests. Interests usually completely contrary to the public interest.

  What is party politics in Britain? I mean, what is it? It’s like support groups for a series of hysterical personality disorders that have embezzled other people’s money to hold a competition to find the world’s most boring sentence on board a crashing Zeppelin. Yes, anyone can vote. A fact that warms my heart each election day as I watch people yanking at the polling station door despite the obvious ‘Push’ sign.

  People are outraged over plans to increase MPs’ wages. Well, if they’re not allowed to fiddle their expenses anymore then what are they supposed to do? Buy their own Kit Kats? MPs’ current salaries are only £66,396 a year and when you take off how much of that goes towards housing, transport and general living costs, that only leaves them with £66,396 a year. We should remember that MPs do a very difficult job, and they do it very badly.

  • • •

  The Tories’ role is essentially to make you eat their arseholes and simultaneously sneer at you for not knowing what kind of wine goes best with arsehole. As a Scot, whenever I hear George Osborne speak I instinctively start gathering up my belongings, expecting there’ll be a knock on the door from the local sheriff telling me that this area is to become grazing land for sheep and that we’re to be cleared off by dawn. And when I see Theresa May – wearing those weird clothes of hers – demanding the abolition of human rights I keep thinking I’ve stumbled upon a Star Trek I’ve never seen before (instead of the new version). I only keep watching in the hope that Kirk will come on from the side and punch her in the head. Meanwhile, in the audience Spock screams, ‘MOTHER!’

  Osborne’s still insisting he never took cocaine as a student, claiming the only time he snorted at Oxford was when told stories of the troubles of the poor. Osborne on cocaine? Well, there’s the answer to ‘Whatever gave this tit the idea he could run the economy?’ The man is so rich I can’t imagine he’d use a rolled-up twenty. Maybe the deeds to Hertfordshire.

  Cocaine makes you arrogant. If I were Osborne I wouldn’t deny my cocaine past, I’d use it as a great excuse to cover for my array of God-given personality defects. I actually think it should be mandatory for the Chancellor to take cocaine, particularly before making the Budget speech. Instead of fiscal plans and growth forecasts he’d spend three hours pitching a screenplay he’s writing about a dog who’s been given his master’s brain.

  At the GQ awards Osborne joked that no teenagers reading GQ wanked over his picture. I think you’re wrong there, George. I think the ones in Pakistan holding machine guns might do. If his current public image is the face that, after careful consideration, Osborne chooses to present to the world, then in reality he must be like a rogue android of Uday Hussain. He behaves as if Ted Bundy – experimenting with meditation – had found his mind conquered by a powerful telepathic crocodile. An amazing person, who, even when regularly advised not to sneer in public, just can’t bring himself not to. The other plausible explanation is that his PR team is headed up by the time-travelling Sherriff of Nottingham. Perhaps the Chancellor’s red box is actually made from Robin Hood’s skin.

  Osborne also announced that benefit payments are to be linked to the ability to speak English. So that’s everyone on the dole in Glasgow fucked. Immigrants will lose benefits if they fail to improve their English at the same time as the government has been cutting language courses. It’s got to the stage where immigrants are being taught English from the words spray-painted across their doors. Immigrants will only keep benefits if they take English lessons up to the standard of a nine-year-old. That’s apparently the level necessary to understand barked instruction but with insufficient vocabulary to make it through a tribunal.

  Foreign sex workers are being given free English lessons to help them understand the filthy things they’re being asked to do. It’s like a modern Eliza Doolittle: ‘Why, I’ll wager I could take a common streetwalker and turn her into a high-class prostitute!’ It makes you proud to be British that we’re willing to give immigrants a leg-up, as long as they’re long legs attached to sexy bodies that offer inexpensive blowjobs.

  The Tories also unveiled the new citizenship test and I’d like to see everyone take it. A question such as ‘Which admiral has a monument in Trafalgar Square?’ would give most X Factor contestants a stroke and enable us to deport the entire cast of TOWIE. At the top of each test would be the most pertinent question of all – ‘Why the fuck would you want to come here?’ They’re also placing tougher restrictions on benefits to immigrants. We don’t want our tax money spent on foreigners; we want it spent on going to the Middle East to pointlessly shoot foreigners.

  Of course, what the Tories really think is ‘Why don’t we save time, stop all judicial decisions, the offering of evidence, defence arguments; just deport anyone who doesn’t know that Starburst used to be called Opal Fruits.’ The flaw in the idea that we need to educate immigrants about British history is that a lot of them
have a better grasp of it than us, particularly of the bit where the British blew up their granny.

  Immigrants often have to do totally different jobs from the ones they trained for in their own country. For instance, the bloke who took my appendix out told me he was a cleaner back in Poland. The guide to the test costs thirteen quid – save your money immigrants. If you want to be British then get pregnant when you’re twelve and state that your greatest ambition is to see Rylan in a shopping centre.

  The Tories are like some deranged sex killer who breaks down and tries to confess his crimes at a murder mystery weekend only to have people laugh and applaud at what they assume is his wonderful acting. At every Tory Conference the party outlines its priorities: building a Deathstar; killing Harry Potter; and creating a doorway into our dimension so the Many-Angled Ones can harvest our souls to the accompaniment of several previously unreleased Fleetwood Mac albums.

  Boris Johnson usually gives a keynote speech that sounds like a Labrador having a ketamine-induced psychotic episode. And all the Tories speak of the Lib Dems like a celebrity speaks about the heavily sedated sibling they’ve sprung from hospital long enough to make up the numbers on Family Fortunes.

  It’s been said that Boris Johnson doesn’t have the skills to become prime minister. He doesn’t seem to have the skills to get dressed, but it happens. Sort of. Many Tories want Boris to lead them into the next election. I wouldn’t trust Boris to lead me into a revolving door.

  That said, Boris has done surprisingly well for a man who resembles a bouncy castle with Alzheimer’s. On Mumsnet he described himself as a chocolate digestive: consistent and reliable. And also because rugby players regularly masturbated on him at Eton. If British politics were a film, Boris would be a character they’d put in just to sell toys. A teenager from Lancashire had Boris tattooed on his thigh. He might as well just have had two eyes tattooed on his arse.