Monday 31 October 2011

Fond Memories of Sir Jimmy Savile OBE RIP

"BY" PAUL MERTON

Apparently, this was actually recorded during the last series of "Have I Got  News For You" when Jimmy Saville was a guest on Paul Merton's team.  Incredibly, it didn't make our screens. (It seems that Mr.  Merton doesn't  like Mr. Saville very much)
Out-take 3:09'36  
During the headline round:  
DEAYTON: You used to be a wrestler didn't you?
SAVILLE: I still am.  
DEAYTON: Are you?  
SAVILLE: I'm feared in every girls' school in the country.  (Audience laugh)  
DEAYTON: Yeah, I've heard about that.  
SAVILLE: What have you heard?  
DEAYTON: I've...  
MERTON: Something about a cunt with a rancid, pus-filled cock.  (Huge audience laugh; Awkward pause)  
SAVILLE: I advise you to wash your mouth out, my friend...  
MERTON: That's what she had to do! (Audience laughs)  
HISLOP: Weren't you leaving money in phone boxes or something?  (Saville glares at him) Or have I got completely the wrong end of the...  
SAVILLE: (To Deayton, heavily) The question you asked was about wrestling.  
DEAYTON: Yes. And then you mentioned girls' schools. I don't know whe...  
SAVILLE: Well I understood this was a comedy programme. I realise now how wrong I was. (Audience laugh)  
DEAYTON: So were you a professional wrestler?  
SAVILLE: Yes I was.  
DEAYTON: (To audience) Glad we got that cleared up.(Pulls face; audience giggles)
HISLOP: Feared by every girls' school in the country...  
SAVILLE: That's right.  
MERTON: Due to having a rancid, pus-filled cock.(Huge audience laugh)  
DEAYTON: Erm...  
HISLOP: You're on top form tonight, Paul...  
SAVILLE: (Strangely) I'm...this is not what I...  
FLOOR MANAGER: (OOV) OK, do you...(inaudible section)...shall we, for pick-ups...  
MERTON: I'm terribly sorry. I don't know what came over me.  
SAVILLE: A pus-filled cock, I imagine. (Shocked audience laugh)  
MERTON: Oh, it's nice to see you joining in. We'd been waiting for you, you sad senile old shitter. (Audience appears to do double-take)  
DEAYTON: I think we...d-d-you you want to apologise to our guest, Paul?  
MERTON: Sorry, I do apologise. Sir senile old shitter, is what I meant to say. (Audience laugh; pause) Sir senile old shitter...who fucks minors.  (Audience unrest) 
HISLOP: Sorry, I'm just looking at our lawyer again. (Waves) Hello!  (Audience laughs) 
DEAYTON: Shall we get back on course with this, or sha...  
SAVILLE: I do fuck miners, that's quite correct. I have always done so. They can do the most wonderful things with cigars. The coal...  
MERTON: What, they stick them up your senile, pus-filled arse?  (Audience laughs)  
FLOOR MANAGER: (OOV): Come on...I'm getting an ear-bashing here. It's...  
MERTON: Oh they want to continue. Sorry, I'll contain myself. Carry on...  
DEAYTON: Right (Pause) You used to be a professional wrestler didn't you?  (Huge audience laugh)  
SAVILLE: (Calmly) I did.  
DEAYTON: You didn't have a nickname or anything?  
SAVILLE: Yes - 'Loser'. (Audience laughs)  

Out-take 4: 21'20  
Following a discussion about caravans:  
DEAYTON: Last month, Roger Moore sold his luxury caravan in Malta. Asked by the...  
MERTON: I visited your caravan the other week, Jimmy.  
SAVILLE: Did you really?  
MERTON: Oh yes. Interesting what you can find, if you have a bit of a poke.  (Audience laugh)  
HISLOP: He just told you, it was twelve years ago...  
SAVILLE: No, I lived in it for twelve years.  
MERTON: And fucked twelve year olds. (Audience laugh)  
DEAYTON: Here we go again...I'll be backstage if anyone wants me.  
MERTON: (Indicating Saville) That's what you said to the kids on your show, wasn't it?  (Audience laugh)  
SAVILLE: No, they never did want me.  
HISLOP: Not even Sarah Cornley?  
SAVILLE: She was an exception.  
DEAYTON: Who's Sarah Cornley?  
SAVILLE: Sarah Cornley is...  
HISLOP: About fifteen grand in damages, wasn't she?  (Uncertain audience laugh)  
SAVILLE: That's right.  
HISLOP: So if I was going to mention that you threatened to break her arm if she said anything...  
SAVILLE: You'd be very wrong. (Pause) I said I'd break both her arms.  (Audience unease)  
MERTON: Fucking hell. I mean, you're just sitting there, all shell suit and cigar wearing those fucking...I don't know what they are.  
SAVILLE: Chrome-plated SC-700 sun-visors, these are. Sent to me by...  
MERTON: We don't give a shit. Ladies and gentlemen, Sir James Saville OBE. Jim has fixed it for me to have my arms broken. Meet this depressing old fucked up cunt of a fucker on television who's riddled with cancer and fucking pubic lice.  
HISLOP: (To lawyer again) Hello! (Audience laughs)  
MERTON: Christ, I mean ha ha, big fucking joke - the fucking lawyers are involved, tee hee. It doesn't change anything.  
DEAYTON:  (Visibly out of character) Do you wanna stop, or...?
MERTON: No I don't fucking want to stop. It's all shit! You'll expect a comedy walkout in a minute, won't you? I mean, big bloody joke - I'm going to quote Shakespeare in a minute, how fucking out of character. And Ian knows about football - oh my fucking sides. 
SAVILLE: You've never fucked anyone in your life, boy.  
MERTON: Oh fuck off...  
FLOOR MANAGER: (OOV) ...About five minutes, just to...(Phil Davey enters)  
PHIL DAVEY: OK, well top that as they say. You're looking troubled by that, aren't you mate? I tell you, I came back from Amsterdam recently...  
RECORDING PLACED ON STAND-BY; CUTS BACK TO CLOSE-UP OF DEAYTON  AWAITING HIS CUE
DEAYTON: OK. Second time lucky. (Pause) Last month, Roger Moore sold  his luxury caravan in Malta. Asked by the New York Times about his relaxed acting style...
*******
An amusing, shocking story that's been around for years. However, if you Goggle "Sarah Cornley", all you get is references back to this "story".
The Internet is a dangerous place.................

Friday 28 October 2011

Where's my cut? Making people famous...







This guy was just another freak until he appeared on these hallowed pages.

Grateful? HA. Not a fucking word.


Thursday 27 October 2011

Pulp Fiction

Saturday 22 October 2011

The Grasshopper and the Ant


Every now and then I see cut and pastes on the internet forums, homilies and faux personal insights, parables and poems that have been posted by members, eager to share something that they really agree with, also forgetting to mention that they didn't write it, secretly hoping that 'friends' will think "Wow, WhiteWarrior111 really knows where it's at!"
They are usually full of conservative WASP moral values, with a punchline that's as easy to remember, and come in various hues of racism.
Being an old billy-no-mates who doesn't do social and can only look at so much bike related stuff on the Net, I occasionally track their antecedents down, usually wading through increasingly bizarre right wing fantasies before ending up with the BNP site, or some US conspiracy blog.
One such was this:

The ant and the grasshopper.

The ant works hard In the withering heat and the rain all summer long, building his house And laying up supplies for the winter.

The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while he is cold and starving.

CBS, NBC, PBS, CNN, And ABC show up to Provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant In his comfortable home with a table filled with food. America is stunned by the sharp contrast.

How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper
Is allowed to suffer so?

Kermit the frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper And everybody cries when they sing, 'It's Not Easy Being Green...'

ACORN stages A demonstration in front of the ant's House where the news stations film the SEIU group singing, We shall overcome.

Then Rev. Jeremiah Wright Has the group kneel down to pray for the grasshopper's sake, while he damns the ants.

President Obama condemns the ant and blames President Bush 43, President Bush 41, President Reagan, Christopher Columbus, and the Pope For the grasshopper's plight.

Nancy Pelosi & Harry Reid exclaim in an interview on CNN that the ant has
gotten rich off the back of the Grasshopper, and both call for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his fair share.

Finally, the EEOC drafts The Economic Equity & Anti-Grasshopper Act
retroactive to the beginning of The summer.

The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number Of green bugs and,
having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the Government Green Czar and given to the grasshopper.

The story ends as we see the grasshopper And his free-loading friends finishing up the last bits of the ant's food while the government house he is in, which, as you recall, just happens to be the ant's old house, crumbles around them because the grasshopper doesn't maintain it.

The ant has disappeared in the snow, never to be seen again.

The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident, and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the ramshackle, once prosperous and peaceful, neighborhood.



Note the spacing, to let the prose sink in, or allow room for an inspired underlining slash of marker pen. !! !
Put the first line in Google and the earliest reference to this particular version is 5 years old, on Right Truth, an American blog whose sub title, "counterterrorism, politics, religion, ..." doesn't promise a laugh a minute. And it's true to its promise.
The posts and titles I skimmed were typical of these sites, the POTUS is referred to Barack Hussein Obama and blamed for everything, the comments are surreal and the blogroll is huge, mutually linking other crazies in a webclick popularity Ponzi scheme.
This political spam seems to have cyclical popularity. Most of the other links are recent, near to exactly 5 years after the original, a strangely round number that would indicate some sort of sinister software, accumulating and timing for fixed periods to reactivate random propaganda. Well it would if you were as paranoid about things as the regulars on these blogs.
So, Right Truth, who and what are you? You're edited by Debbie Hamilton, a very wholesome name, very WASPish, pictured in front of The Stars and Stripes
Pretty tasty, huh, in a Barbie sort of way. She just has to have silicon tits and a horse. Anyway, no biog on the blog, no interviews on the Net, but she's on Facebook. She's 60 and lives in west Tennessee. Her husband used to live next door to Carl Perkins.
Her heroes are:
'The passengers of Flight 93 on September 11, 2001. LET'S ROLL! Our military men and women.'

This is the modern version of course, updated to paint recognisable hate figures as left wing wasteful grasshoppers, and the genuine American ants with a blue collar and a red neck.
The whole anthropomorphic comparison is shaky anyway, a true blue Tennesee girl would probably associate "ant" with "communist" in a word association test.
For the original, we go all the way back to the bloke who wrote most of the stories ever written, Aesop and his Fables, around 600 BC. This is number 373 on the Perry Index, drawing the logical conclusion often stated in the separate Moral of the Story punchlines:
"Idleness brings want"
"To work today is to eat tomorrow"
"Beware of winter before it comes"


These are echoed by none other than that most august of historical reference books, the Bible, in the Book of Proverbs, Old (Jewish) Testament 6:6-9:
"Go to the ant, you sluggard! Consider her ways and be wise, which having no captain, overseer or ruler, provides her supplies in the summer, and gathers her food in the harvest"

'....which having no captain, overseer or ruler...."
Which = evidence that G-d is a Marxist.

Number 166 presents a different interpretation, using a cicada beetle as the grasshopper character, as the early Greeks did.
Here the ant was once a man who was always busy farming. Not satisfied with the results of his own labour, he plundered his neighbours' crops at night.
This angered the king of the gods, who turned him into what is now an ant. Yet even though the man had changed his shape, he did not change his habits and still goes around the fields gathering the fruits of other people's labour, storing them up for himself.
The moral in this interpretation is that it is easier to change in appearance than to change one's moral nature.

The French identify the singing wasteful beetle with voluptuous females, hopelessly unequipped for the 'real world' as in this excuse for an ogle "When the north wind came" as a satire on Napoleon's failures in cold Prussia.


French fabulists even enlist a third character, the bee, whose presence breaks the deadlock and they all end up living happily ever after. The Catholics tacked a twist on the end, Updike, Joyce and Somerset Maugham played with different versions for differing reasons, but the modern US version is based on that great American Walt Disney's cartoon critique of that commie bastard Roosevelt's New Deal.
In his version however, the wasteful=artistic Grasshopper musician is cut a deal for food by the hardworking=responsible ant farmer, and allowed enough food to survive in exchange for music lessons and entertainment. This is a very soft line for Disney to take against his own ideological enemies, the spongers and wasters, possibly explainable by the parallel debate about the 'value' of artists to/in society, one of which he undoubtedly was.

In a hard line alternative, the ant refuses this deal when it is offered by the grasshopper, saying "I don't want my children to learn music, I want them to learn something useful to put food in the store."

But Debbie, if no-one learns music, who's going to be in the "rock and roll bands" (that you 'would most like to meat'... sorry meet'), and what sort of 'Lover of Freedom' can an ant really be?

Friday 21 October 2011

Tuesday 18 October 2011

Ninos Robados: my Favourite Church Strikes Again.



Los Niños perdidos del franquismo o niños robados por el franquismo, son aquellos niños que, durante la Guerra Civil Española y la posguerra española, fueron arrebatados a sus madres republicanas, bien porque estaban en la cárcel o porque habían sido asesinadas por el ejército golpista.
1) Los delitos de los que fueron objeto son: secuestro, tráfico de niños y adopción ilegal.
2) Los Niños perdidos del franquismo es un episodio poco conocido de la historia reciente de España. Hace referencia a la desaparición de hijos pequeños de republicanos y la separación forzosa de sus familias por parte de la represión franquista.




Conforme las tropas sublevadas de Franco ganaban terreno, las prisiones se llenaban de personas que habían sido leales a la República. Entre los prisioneros había miles de mujeres militantes de partidos políticos de izquierda o, simplemente, esposas, madres o hermanas de republicanos.
Las cárceles también se llenaban de niños que nacieron o que ingresaron en la prisión con sus madres y que pasaron los primeros años de su vida privados de libertad por ser hijos de republicanos.


Thursday 13 October 2011

Radio 4

"Stalin would order 5,000 prisoners shot. If there weren't enough prisoners, they would drag people off the street and shoot them."

Saturday 8 October 2011

For my next trick

Baalbek, Lebanon.

Wednesday 5 October 2011

Down the Strip with My Valk

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I'm customising the Valk over the winter and will be asking John to make a stainless 2" 6 into 6 exhaust, and rejetting the carbs appropriately, so I wanted to get some idea of how fast she is at the moment. She is fast, in the tradition of Honda, as with my 83 V65, the earliest are the fastest. On an Autobahn very similar to the M5, with a gradient to help at the start, she reached just under 145 mph on the clock, pulling redline 6500 in top.
Bill's dyno van is a bit crowded if you put a huge bike in it, and he's not very keen on doing them which is fair enough, so I decided to go 1/4 mile Sprinting at Westonzoyland airfield this Sunday, 2nd October, in our Indian Summer. Much more fun.
We'd been earlier this year to watch and had a good time. Also Cornish Terry had challenged me (or did I challenge him?) on his mystery Sporty, reputed to turn high 11's. He pleaded poverty on the day, understandable, £100 was well spent for me as an occasional treat but it's the end of the season.
Tractor v Turbine will have to be another time.
It was a beautiful sunny day and I pottered over from Porlock on the Valk, miles of double white lines and Jemimah's with horse boxes. Why don't they have two horses, one at home, and one where they need it?
Mark drove over with the gear, cold water and his dog's play ring, which Scrumpy promptly nicked.

We set up camp and the Valk attracted polite bemused interest. I told people it was in the Light Goods Class. The sun shone and I treated us to two teas for £3. Naughty, but merely a fly in a day full of ointment, sat in our garden chairs waiting for the Church six miles away to finish Sunday Service.
Gaffered taped the glass up and was delighted to be running under "M".

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Filled in enough forms to buy a house and was scrutineered politely and successfully. Slipped into my borrowed PowerRanger outfit and gold label motocross helmet,(thanks to Tim and Baldric) and had a quick riders meeting and a walk up the strip.
Interesting flora.
My scrutineer's sticker was yellow, and on the top of the timing van there were three flags, red, yellow and blue, one run per group of bikes in rotation.
Apparently it was poorly attended, due to other events and the cost of transport across a wide expanse of the South West at the end of the racing season. I was told this, and many other things, in a very kindly way by the 60 year veteran of sprinting, Henry Body of the beautiful Douglas'.

PowerRanged up, I get in a short queue in the left hand lane near my Fan Club (you know who you are), feeling totally calm and pleasantly focused. A light breeze keeps me cool in Baldy's open helmet, the jaw guard purses my cheeks like I'm sucking a lemon. I count the bikes in the queue to see what's in the other lane, but I'm not racing against it...
Unlike drag racing, in sprinting you race the clock, breaking the beam on green when you want, but you are still aware of the bike in the next lane, only if because you'd like to make sure they are staying there.
I eschew a burn out, taking on board the sound sounding advice that I should just concentrate on getting to the other end without crashing and burning.

And we're off!


Drop the clutch at 4000 and fuck me it's time to change into second and the back wheel is still spinning as I shift clutchlessly at 7000 and then the vague sideways drifting motion that I have been feeling resumes as the bike snakes elegantly up the concrete, weeds running for cover.
I have just put sintered HH pads in the back, and I stand on them gingerly and haul on the front after I cross the finish line and the end of the run off area gets closer. Very quickly.
The speedo was reading just under 105 as I crossed the line and that was confirmed on the hand written sheets churned out by the lady in the start caravan. 101 mph @ 13.48 sec.
There's something randomly satisfying about breaking 100mph terminal speed on your first run and I basked in the moment.
Anyway, I didn't crash and burn, and posed like I thought Stoner might on a cruiser as I passed the Ambulance and nodded at the rosy cheeked fat bloke with the chequered flag on the way back. Hardcore sprinters/dragsters boomed and roared up the strip, the sky was blue and I had a big grin on my face.

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My resident experts

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decide that traction is the problem, wheelspin up to about 70 mph, looked and sounded impressive, apparently, but costing me vital milliseconds. I had deflated the rear from 42 psi on the road to 25, so I went down again to 20 but left the burnout alone for the time being.
The second run was faster and slower simultaneously 96.3 mph @ 13.02, a common bizarrality that no-one there could explain.
Still spinning all the way through first and got a bit sideways after shifting into second, which is probably where I lost speed.



For the third run I dropped the start revs from 4000 to 2500 and was rewarded with the best run so far, 100.8 mph @ 12.79. That's approaching what Honda got when they first advertised the Valk 15 years ago, presumably ridden by someone with more than two runs experience.
Well chuffed.



The fourth run, the last before lunch, was right there too, 101.8 mph @ 13.05.
Over a cheeseburger, it was decided to go down to 12 psi and warm the tyre up with a burnout.
I really didn't want to damage the tyre and have to trailer the bike home, so I marked the rim and tyre to make sure there was no creep on the wheel.
OK, so, my first legal burnout in front of about 100 people, most of them highly experienced sprinters. On a 780 lb shaft drive bike.

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Put 4000 on in first and pulled on the front brake, gingerly letting the clutch out.

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No lurch, just the smell of burning Bridgestone for about 10 seconds, up to the line, much better traction and 104.6 mph @ 12.58, quickly followed by a 104.4 mph @ 12.64. That was particular fun because I was up against a very natty naked GSX1300.
I did a few seconds extra burnout and then crept forward for a false start, but kept pretty close to him until about 70 and then he pulled away.



I had originally thought that eight runs would be enough and that was confirmed when I had a brain freeze on the last run, inexplicably changing up just before the finish line and screwing up a good time.
I'd spoken to a few of my very friendly co sprinters during the day, and they all had that "looking for another 0.1 of a second off" look in their eyes. It's tempting, but I have a plan for this baby which does not involve titanium this and kryptonite that, alluring though it may be. Well, maybe a pair of turbos, but that's my limit. Very low boost.
Like most things, the last few percentage points of improvement are incredibly hard to get without spending a lot of time and $$$. I realised that I had probably reached about it in terms of the Valk's potential in standard form. A 200 sticky bike tyre or Darksiding might have helped a bit.
When I come back next year, the plan is to have a 6 into 6 exhaust and larger jets in the six carbs, which Americans would have me believe will give me 10% more power. It will be interesting to see how that translates on the track. Should she be 10% faster?

There was a subplot to the day, as there always seems to be with females, regarding a lost and found camera and Facebook. Thank you to everybody for their help.
It was a very British day out and I loved it.





HONDA VALKYRIE F6C, MADE IN THE USA, 1996/7 STANDARD MODEL.


RUN TERMINAL SPEED mph TIME secs
TYRE HOT/COLD
TYRE PRESSURE PSI
START RPM 000's
1 101.1 13.48
C
25
4
2 96.3 13.02
C
20
4
3 100.8 12.79
C
20
2.5
4 101.8 13.05
C
20
2.5
5 104.6 12.58
H
12
4
6 104.4 12.64
H
12
4
7 100.6 13.02
H
12
2.5
8 100.4 12.66
H
12
4




Tuesday 4 October 2011

If I was capable of Hate...



....I would hate Theresa May.







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Who does that remind me of?