Chelsea Charms and Me
Posted by Freyja Peters PhD | April 30, 2010 | Comments Off
I’m walking along the King’s Road with a galpal of mine, who, like me, is a recent mother, but also a wildly successful Primrose Hill restaurateur and a barrister to boot. ‘Where does she find the time??’, thinks me, who got a migraine thinking about the mere logistics when one of the other mums at the Finchley Baby-Swim group asked me if I fancied joining her Yummy-Mummies Yoga Club.
My friend asks me if I’ve heard of Chelsea Charms. “Is that the new Conran shop?” I innocuously/innocently ask. My friend takes pity on poor, gloriously isolated from popular culture me (Me who enquired at a dinner party, just last week, “Does Amy Winehouse takes drugs, then?” Me who thinks that Tom Cruise is still a good Catholic boy.), and explains that Chelsea Charms is, in fact, not a new purveyor of exquisite talking pieces for the vibrant Chiswick household, but rather the owner of the world’s pair of largest (cosmetically-enhanced) breasts. “Gosh,” I squeak, when Calliope reveals that, at last measure, Charms vitals clocked in at a staggering 153XXX-23-34.
Yes, that was 153XXX.
These dimensions are completely alien to one such as myself, who kept waiting and waiting for puberty to really kick in in the chest section. I finally wearily admitted defeat when, at the High Michaelmas Ball in my second year at Oxford, my rather Pimms’d boyfriend of the time spent an hour telling me about the ‘wonderful’ advancements in breast augmentation procedures. ‘Not that you need it…’ Yeah right! Dumped!
I’m not sure I’d even like big breasts. When I was pregnant with Malachy, and then breastfeeding (and, by-the-by, are any other new mums concerned about what fluoride in our tap-water could be doing to breast milk, and – in turn – to baby’s health?? Email me), I reached the heady heights of a (leaky) D cup, but I felt like a grotesque. It turns out I was used to going unnoticed in crowds with my little crab-apples, and now I was schlepping round biffing people in the eye with a pair of granny smiths!
On the other hand, I have a Ugandan friend whose beautiful ochre breasts billow and flow under unbelievably beautiful busuti and gomci dresses and, every time I see her, cause me to rue the day I was born a porcelain-white stick.
But then, maybe Chelsea Charms’s breasts empower her. In a world STILL ultimately predicated on men’s tastes and desires, perhaps the only way for a woman to get power is to present a façade of complicity, but to really be manipulating those who seek to manipulate her, and all of us women. I really don’t know the answer.
I do know I’m now the proud owner of a divine Conran end table, though. C’est la vie!
The end of music
Posted by Phil Alderman | April 30, 2010 | Comments Off
At the time of writing, I find myself in mourning. For this past week has seen the tragic early demise of Harpenden’s finest proponents of what has become known(to anyone with the right ears in their heads) as “Herts-core”. Late on Monday afternoon, the news broke via lead singer Felton Mowbury’s brother’s livejournal page that the band that had been all too briefly known to a precious, willing few as The Spazkettles were no more.
To say that this Hertfordshire foursome(who’s sound roared from the sleepy suburbs of the south-east like an entire hive of genetically enlarged chainsaw-wielding hornets on speed) were an important band would be to do a disservice not only to the word “important”, but to the word “band” itself. For you see, the music of the Spazkettles forced those of us privileged enough to’ve heard it to redefine the very definition of what words actually mean.
As the frontman and principal songwriter it was Mowbury’s incendiary suburban poetry that fuelled the Kettles’ unique take on youthful alienation. His most gut-twistingly powerful lyrics were often bile-filled screeds aimed squarely at other towns in the Herts, Beds and Bucks area that he felt had unfairly overshadowed his beloved hometown. Perhaps the finest example was “So What If You Have A Bowling Alley”, four and a half minutes of searing rage directed at the more prosperous neighbouring town of Hemel Hempstead. When asked once why he had never written about nearby Chesham, Mowbury responded merely by distorting his mouth into an enigmatic sneer.
On the day the terrible blow fell, that the band were going their separate ways to allow drummer Simon Blitch to devote more time to his evening studies in Sage Payroll, it felt like some kind of hammer falling on my fragile cranium, before flying high up into the air and falling again, in the process destroying beyond repair the part of my brain that once allowed to me to understand what true happiness meant. In all my years as a music writer, I cannot recall the splitting of a band ever having such an effect on me before, not even when I found out Mansun had broken up.
On the other hand I found myself practically vomitting blood at the suggestion by Chris Shitta in this week’s NME that that the band were, in fact “not all that relevant.” Not relevant? I ask you! Only if it were possible to ignore the stinging social comment implicit throughout their already classic debut “Alison’s New Hat.” Or even the scathing political rhetoric displayed front and centre in the now legendary lost cassingle “There Are No Wheels On The Bus(Thatcher’s Epitaph)”. Would the Kettles have become more relevant to the NME crowd if they had added rapping and Lady Gaga covers to their repertoire? Somehow, I think not.
In my opinion, Mr Shitta cannot have been listening well enough. Or perhaps, he just didn’t want to. Perhaps the world wasn’t listening. And should they’ve been? The answer to that is yes. They should’ve been.
Alexis Petridis is away.
Manchester Egg Live Blog
Posted by Noel Oxford | April 30, 2010 | Comments Off
CMF’s resident food-i-mentalist takes the latest northern delicacy for a ‘taste’ drive.
Say what you like about Mancunian cretin Ben Holden and his ridiculous invention, the Manchester Egg – but Holden’s bold innovation marks the first true refinement to the age-old Scotch Egg recipe in more than a century. Indeed, the humble sausagemeat/egg combination hasn’t been enlivened like this since the 1863 invention of the breadcrumb, by bored Hebridean crofter Gunther McWhertor.
But to combine the familiar old cricket ball snack with black pudding and vinegar-soaked egg? Obvious perhaps, yet so much of our vaunted human genius seems thus in hindsight. The application of blood sausage and vinegar to the age-old ovoid treasure trove, traditionally retailed under joyless flourescent lights in deserted late-night petrol stations, is little shy of a culinary revolution. The single question on everybody’s lips is ‘how does it taste?’
Aiming to find out, I obtained one of the first Manchester Eggs to make it into the UK. Join me now, as I liveblog the taste test.
3.57am Got the Manchester Egg. Much harder to source than I expected. Ended up going through some kind of genetics research company. Thing looks similar to a Scotch Egg at a glance, perhaps marginally girthier? Yellow blotches luminesce on the surface, and the way it pulsates makes it look quite unappealing, to be honest.
3.58am Smell is quite unexpectedly pungent. Presumably the pickling vinegar combined with the metallic aroma of blood – although it has a cloying, sweet quality that reminds me most of nanny’s endlessly moist cleavage.
4.01am Have prodded the egg. Was rewarded with a puff of something like dust that showered the tobacco chips and congealed tears on my desk. Spores, perhaps? Racked it up and snorted it, just to be sure.
4.10am About to take a bite. Wanted to get cutlery for this, but… short notice, what can I say. Instead, I’m using a Spider-Man paper plate and a splintered lolly stick. The yolk is much liquidier than I am used to, and it seems to be sublimating upon contact with the air, fizzing out of its aperture.
4.11am I have dissected a fragment of egg. It quivers and steams coldly on the end of my stick, writhing like a maggot. Struggling to bring it to my lips.
4.12am I’m a journalist. The fourth estate demands sacrifice. Down the hatch.
4.13am It’s interesting, actually. Blander than I would have thought, and quite slippery between the teeth. The outer crust is springy like raw tentacles, while the molten core is oily like an oyster. The flavour is sour, yet sweet, like a bunch of hollyhocks stuck in a docker’s welly, for want of a vase.
4.15am the aftertaest juts hit my sinuusrs. Eyes waterrimg
4.18am crikey.
4.24am scuse me a moment
4.34am no panic, but does anyone know how to induce vomiting, like, quickly? I can’t blink.
4.36am I’m going to find the bollocks that invented this and stick the nut on I swear to god. Sweating, trembling, stomach cramping
4.40am gonna lie on the floor for a sec brb
4.41am ttę fffffffuckk my kidneys
4.42am send help sos sen
4.46am neck numm, vison cloudead, head angle tward desk bye
4.46.30am æaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaač
Cartoon – Brown’s Down (in the dumps)
Posted by Jedes Balldip | April 29, 2010 | Comments Off
Gordon Brown Reeling after Week from H*ll
Noel’s Election Twenty-Ten Drillbit Part Two
Posted by Noel Oxford | April 29, 2010 | Comments Off
Goebbels Brown hits the road in desperate credibility gambit.
It was the political clash that defined a British epoch. In the red corner, belligerent and incoherent, stood Rochdale gran Gillian Duffy, swaddled in a Primark anorak. In the other red corner, punctilious and puffing, with a face like a collapsing tower block, prowled Gordon Brown, the granite ogre. The tension was palpable from the off.
Some have called it Brown’s ultimate gaffe; the final knell in the death coffin of his election hopes. But Labour insiders are telling this blogger that this rare glimpse between the fissures of the Premier’s chiselled, igneous countenance has created an unexpected groundswell of support for Gorgon in the face of media manipulation. And, if nothing else, it’s given the party commissars food for thought.
“People didn’t react to Gordon’s candour the way we first expected,” said my source, last night. “In fact, our polling shows that many people are sort of squinting at this strange little toad of a woman all over the papers and saying to themselves ‘but you are a bigot, you batty old ignoramus.’ With only a week of campaigning left, that receptiveness among our core vote to jutting, naked honesty is something we need to be capitalising on.”
Official Labour Party concept art reveals the Win-E-Bago's side aspect.
Labour apparatchiks are, as at this writing, bunkered at party HQ busily planning the final, pulsing prong of Ogron Brown’s strategy; a brand new nerve centre housed in a state of the art H-reg camper-van. Brown will be seen taking to the highways of the United Kingdom this week, personally piloting ‘Grodon Brown’s 2010 Election Win-E-Bago’ up and down the land, and using a public address system to tell passers-by exactly what he thinks of them.
And a pilot scheme hastily set up in Brown’s constituency town of Kirkaldy has already brought encouraging results. A look-alike drove the camper-van around all yesterday, hoarsely breathing barely comprehensible opprobrium through loudspeakers in a dialect some described as ‘terrifying’.
“Voter indications have swung heavily our way in the wake of Gordon’s decision to drop all attempts at looking human or magnanimous, in favour of pure, unalloyed scotch viciousness,” the insider continued. “One voter was particularly impressed with the way our stand-in parked up on the double yellows in the high street and taunted a homeless man with a ten-pound note for upwards of 90 minutes, cackling all the while.” Some supporters reacted with indifference, however, as the ersatz PM later reduced a fat man to tears in the middle of the pavement for the crime of wearing a Hawaiian shirt.
“It’s a bit much, really,” said one nonplussed onlooker, as she visibly savoured the aroma of the delicious, fresh-baked chicken and mushroom slice she had recently purchased from the Kirkaldy branch of Greggs.
Watch out for Grodon Brown’s 2010 Election Win-E-Bago this week, coming soon to a Labour marginal near you.
Lost In Showbiz – Intrigue at the Royal Institution
Posted by Marina Hyde | April 23, 2010 | 7 Comments
A slight departure for Lost in Showbiz this week, as we turn our gaze towards Science – now officially a form of celebrity, thanks to lovely Brian Cox and his winning smile – and the machinations at the Royal Institution. Its all been pretty exciting.
To wit: Baroness Susan Greenfield, first female director of the Royal Institution - and looking for all the world like Ursula K Le Guin without a hunchback – was sacked from her role, and she didn’t like it one bit.
After having voted her out, she forced the board to take a vote on whether to let her back in or not. They voted not to let her back. She said she would abide by the decision.
Meanwhile, across the metaphorical road at the Royal Society, Lord Rees, Astronomer Royal and Emperor Skeksis, could be seen laughing viciously while eating a small rodent.
It’s not much to go on about, admittedly, but David Beckham’s injured at the moment and I’m at a loss.
This Shameful Waste of a Beautiful Life Sets an Example to us all
Posted by Noel Oxford | April 23, 2010 | Comments Off
200 job reject does the wrong thing for the right reason. But what a lesson for the ranks of the indolent ‘other’ clogging our town centres.
The horrifying loss of a beautiful, blonde, white princess over something as trivial as continual unsuccess at employment wounds all of us in our deepest sensibilities. Nobody should be made to feel that they are worthless or trite just because they haven’t made it off Skid Row and into a mid-range saloon by the ripe old age of 21. That young aryan Vicky Harrison felt she had no choice but to take her own life is a damning indictment of Broken Britain, and just highlights the lack of government resources and support being directed to those who truly need it.
Instead, they are going to workshy immigrants and people with ‘depression’ or ‘slipped discs’. To the tune of billions a year – and it’s your money!!!
But in every dark cloud, there’s an inspirational sliver of forked lightning just waiting to arc out and zap you in the forelobes. If only young Vicky Harrison had got herself pregnant, instead. But, failing that, if only her distressing example could get through to the shiftless crowds of non-white, non-female, non-attractive spongers, layabouts and wastrels that are turning our Island into a perpetual TK Maxx fashion show.
The bald fact is that these lower class scroungers and ‘asylum seekers’ are making a mockery of our good natures. They should all kill themselves, and save us the bother.
Editor’s Note: This article was originally commissioned by The Daily Mail, but was rejected because it didn’t mention the upcoming election. It is reprinted here in its entirety for reasons of spite.
Noel’s Election Twenty-Ten Drillbit Part One
Posted by Noel Oxford | April 23, 2010 | Comments Off
Poll of David Cameron reveals Tory leader’s ‘abject confusion’.
Nobody could fail to be riveted to the television as the political heavyweights of the United Kingdom come out swinging, mainly at one another. The new interactive debate format has enlivened and emboldeneded our national politics, even as it reduces them to a vacuous mockery of all the many principles and values that distinguish us and place us high above our counterparts on ‘the continent’.
But the question nobody is asking – and the one nobody is answering, as this new paradigm scythes a sweeping arc of invigorating change through Westminster, brushing aside our proud, centuries-long tradition of constitutional monarchy based upon sound understanding of geopolitics among the proletariat – is what does David Cameron think about this?
But a YouGov poll of the Tory leader today revealed that even David Cameron isn’t sure what he thinks – about anything!
“I just wish the papers would do their jobs, and devote a bit more energy to uncritically reporting everything I say, and giving me the last word on my opponents’ work, so that I am portrayed as the right-thinking arbiter of the truth in what is quickly becoming a tedious business indeed,” Mr Cameron said yesterday. “Instead, I’m having to find out what I think from my wife, but she has next to no blooming idea about EU agricultural policy, let me tell you that for nothing. That is, unless it’s where the croissants are kept at Waitrose.”
Mr Cameron’s frustration was highlighted earlier this week when he turned up for a lunchtime meet and greet at the Spume and Galoshes pub in Dunstable, wearing odd socks. He then appeared to dither for several minutes, in front of supporters, between the traditional ploughman’s and the hearty lasagne (with homecut chips). Mr Cameron was observed muttering under his breath, and at one point snatched copies of the previous day’s Daily Mail and Sun off the rack, and began scouring the pages for clues. And when a well-wisher asked him how he was feeling, he just sort of shrugged and made a grimace with his shrunken face.
Let’s hope that DavCam can get his act together in time for May 6, and decide who he’s going to vote for, in this election which is literally rewriting the map of British politics for the better, simultaneously giving us new choices, and showing the old guard in a new light – even as it spits thick, gooey lung oysters into the faces of Cromwell, Gladstone and Disraeli, not to mention the Queen. And the Queen Mother. And Princess Diana.
Doctor Who Live Blog
Posted by David N. Guy | April 21, 2010 | Comments Off
Today’s Doctor Who episode has been guest written by reknowned science fiction author Peter F. Hamilton. Join David N. Guy here from 6pm for up to the minute coverage.
6.02 PM: It hasn’t started yet.
6.04 PM: I’m quite exciting about this episode, though. For those of you that don’t know, Peter F. Hamilton is one of science fiction’s most beguiling authors. He makes Iain M. Banks look like a crippled child.
6.09 PM: It’s about to start.
6.10 PM: It’s started.
6.11 PM: God I love this new theme tune.
6.12 PM: The episode is called The Quantum Hole by the way. I like that. Very sciencey.
6.13 PM: I forgot to mention that the pre-credit sequence involved a heavily armed marine holding a gun. The camera then zoomed in on the gun, and lingered there for about a minute. It was a very nice gun. While I was telling you about that, the Doctor just landed the TARDIS in a futuristic hospital. Some guards fire machine guns at it, but the bullets have no effect.
6.14 PM: Doctor Who and Amy skip out of the TARDIS. There’s a quick exchange of scene-setting dialogue.
Amy: So this is the rejuventaion clinic, then?
Doctor Who: Yes. Isn’t it marvellous?
Amy: So you think the procedure is viable, then?
Doctor Who: Oh, it’s viable, all right. In fact, it’s much more proficient than the kind of rejuvenation treatments which are employed on Earth, in the future.
Amy: Really? I thought Earth led this particular field.
Doctor Who: Technically they do. But vwriting a whole human body is enormously complicated. You have to vector new genes into the individual cells of every organ and bone and blood vessel, not to mention skin. Those genes all have to be specific to their destination. The best they ever manage to revitalize in each organ is twenty to thrity-five percent of the gross. Enough to make a difference, but there’s just too many cells for all of them to be revitalized. That’s why there’s no point in extending rejuvenation past the third treatment. You run smack bang into the laws of diminishing returns.
Amy: So how does this facility overcome those limitations?
Doctor Who: They concentrate their rays on the most vital part of the body.
Doctor Who winks at Amy and she blushes.
6.23 PM: The tehcnical explanation over, Amy is rushed off to the breast enlargement chamber.
6.25 PM: While Amy is in the chamber, Doctor Who looks around the facility. Looking down a corridor, he sees some branches of a tree overflowing through the doorway of an office. “That’s strange”, he says. Then he removes his sonic screwdriver and shines it directly at the camera. I wonder if the new green light on the sonic screwdriver is significant here.
6.27 PM: Amy re-emerges from the medical chamber, suitably enlarged. At that exact moment, Doctor Who comes hurtling around the corner. “Run!” he shouts, before grabbing her arm and making her run.
6.30 PM: Doctor Who is explaining to Amy the problem with this facility.
Doctor Who: This whole facility is corrupt. I should have known. I should have noticed.
Amy: What’s wrong with it?
Doctor Who: It’s run by environmentalists. Didn’t you notice all the plants? The reason their rejuvenation techniques are so impressive are because they’re using plants. Plants! It sickens me.
Amy: Well, what are we going to do?
Doctor Who: I’m going to blow up the sun.
Amy: Is that really necessary?
Doctor Who: The only thing more immoral than environmentalism is pacifism, my dear.
6.32 PM: Doctor Who and Amy run back to the TARDIS. The guards’ bullets are still having no effect on its pristine wood veneer.
6.33 PM: Doctor Who dematerialises the TARDIS and then rematerialises it in space, floating beautifully before a sun. The special effects in this episode have been amazing.
6.34 PM: Doctor Who blows up the sun using his sonic screwdriver.
6.35 PM: Amy: You did it, Doctor! You did it.
6.36 PM: They kiss. And then it’s on to the preview of next week’s show.
6.51 PM: Next week’s episode looks quite brilliant. Doctor Who and Amy are trapped in a gigantic spiral staircase inside the world’s biggest clock, being chased by a Dalek that can fly up the stairs.
6.55 PM: That episode was a triumph, by the way. Fast paced and beautifully shot. I’ll definitely be watching next week. I hope you all will be too.
‘New Twitter’ Launched by Ageing Media Collective
Posted by Freyja Peters PhD | April 19, 2010 | Comments Off
In Euston Premier Inn’s Wendy Richards Suite, at precisely 11am this morning, an invited group of journalists and business investors were granted a sneak preview of a new website that, its creators confidently predict, will soon be on mobile and laptop screens everywhere
The application? It’s called Comedy, Literature, Art (or the more snappy, Clart for short) and is basically Twitter, but for those working in the media. Nothing massively innovative here – no tech for the geeks to get wet about, no bells and whistles content novelties to make Facebook sweat, and certainly no opportunities to reconnect with long-lost relatives.
What makes Clart stand out from the crowded circus of social networking applications, then, is its creators: a group of disgruntled Twitter celebs, led by a quorum including the artists formerly known as @glinner, @justinillusion and – providing a link to the vital Transatlantic Twitter market – @jimcarrey.
‘Basically, me and Jon [Ronson] and Jon’s son [@joelronson] and Nick [Frost] and some of the other guys got completely sick of having to read people’s little messages to us all day,’ explains Hippies creator Linehan. ‘I’d be happily bantering with Armando, but between all of our messages would be this utter dreck, you know? “I liked what you said about the NHS, Graham!” or “I saw a film you might enjoy, Wossy, creep creep creep!” or “Please like my fucking shit pun-based joke more than the other 20 which have been tweeted at you in the last half-hour, Charlie!!”
‘So we said, Enough! Enough of this shit, and enough of acknowledging these leeches’ puerile lives – we DO have more important things to do. So we basically brought some webspace, and Nick’s quite good at Dreamweaver, and we went from there. The deal is that anyone can join, but in order to post you have to have been approved as a member of the media – and we mean the proper media, not some fucking boom-carrier off fucking Essex Today – by the leader of the quorum, who is Peter Serafinowicz.’
‘What’s really special about Clart is that it provides no opportunity whatsoever for anyone outside of the media to actively contribute to our discussion,’ adds Ronson, ‘people can read and reflect upon our posts, but they certainly shouldn’t feel that they have any right to reply. Really it’s just a return to the fundamental tradition of writing, where we write stuff, and people read it, and if they like it they can read some more, and if they don’t they can fuck off and wallow in their own insignificant lives instead.’
One of the scenes demonstrated to us on Tuesday was Charlie Brooker and Justin Lee Collins having an hour long discussion about a game of online scrabble they were planning, and, it must be said, it really felt refreshing, truly exciting, to be seeing this dialogue appear before our eyes without any impingement or interruptive banter from your average @joe.
Another innovation we were shown saw Stephen Fry commenting live on news stories as they appeared on the BBC News website, in real-time. This was featured in a live demonstration, whereby BBC News was refreshed on a big screen (with the live Clart feed on another), whilst Fry tapped assiduously into his Blackberry in a specially puce-lit corner of the room. ‘Dreadfully sad’ was his response as a story on Judy Finegan’s autopsy appeared, ‘Haha, I like this :)’ came the timely rejoinder to the story of a tractor-riding piglet, and ‘Oh, it’s all just a lot of silly nonsense, isn’t it?’ in reaction to the story of a woman whose burkha had been burnt off her face by a group of youths whilst she shopped in Darlington town centre.
As if to confirm the heightening importance of Clart, just under ten minutes into Fry’s commentary, a news story appeared entitled, ‘National treasure Fry launches Clart news-reaction feed’. Fry’s response? ‘Golly! ;-0’
Also sensing the impending trend for non-interactive media, The Guardian announced on Monday the immediate closure of its website’s ‘Comment is Free’ section, citing the ‘fundamental miscomprehension’ of all the newspapers contents by an ‘intellectually-moribund’ readership. It further outlined plans for all its print and online content to be overlaid with a tessellating pattern of translucent, coloured octagons as of July 2011, in order to maintain a further sense of safe creative distance between its readers and star columnists, such as Bidisha, Tanya Gold and Derek Acorah.
Finally back to the press-conference, for the final treat that the day had in store for us. Just as we all thought that we had seen all that Clart could possibly offer us, a naked Richard Herring took to the stage and began writing his up-to-date thoughts all over his body in marker pen. If you haven’t seen a man writing ‘A little bit thirsty for some Ribena’ along the underside of his ribs, you really haven’t lived. Viva la Clart revolution!