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Tom Bell rightly points out on his website that this is hilarious.

Actually, it’s so hilarious I was, for several minutes, convinced that Tom Bell had made it himself. This page, for instance, has all the hallmarks of a Bellish piece of whimsy.

The only reason I am now persuaded it’s genuine is the detailed knowledge it displays of Recessive Pieds. Surely even Tom would not be so obsessive in his lampooning of fading celebrities.

Surely…

But really – “Athlete, Strongman and Prize Winning Buderigar Breeder”… How can absurdist comedians hope to compete with real life?

Obviously there’s nothing funny about the riots in Afghanistan caused by an unwise piece of media satire.

But when I see a headline like Four Killed in Cartoon Protests, all I can think of is people hitting each other on the head with gigantic hammers while giant lumps appear on their heads and birds fly around tweeting, or dashing into doors which have been shut in their faces, or blowing each other up with ball-shaped bombs marked “bomb” which do little more than blacken their faces…

I hope Jessica Rabbit’s alright.

Evidently somebody has too much time on his hands today. Three posts from Mr Aylett in half as many hours – a treat indeed for his many fans.

Though I would point out that he’s copied the idea of posting about both Harry Potter and Iraq casualties directly from my previous two posts. Never has plagiarism been so brazen, excepting the work of Andrew Lloyd Webber.

The one about Tony Blair chasing women admittedly doesn’t appear to be based on anything I’ve written already, but I bet I had the idea first all the same.

To: James Aylett
From: Sendit.com Update
Subject: HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE only 15.99 pounds

Well, well. I remember when the only way you could see both at the same time involved dressing like Hermione and having in your possession some very obscure pages of the fama suturae.

These days he’s clearly just got desperate. £15.99 for a candid glimpse of Harry and the Goblet? You’ll be able to buy a lurid written account of his adventures scribbled by some hack, next.

Oh, hang on.

The Prime Minister is out hunting women, John Hutton as his wingman. When will politicians learn that ladies out shopping are not vermin, and deserve at least as much legal protection as foxes?

The Independent’s shameful (and somewhat unexpected) bias in favour of British military deaths in Iraq is worth pointing out, but what about all these words people keep on using incorrectly?

For instance, Metro today had a headline something like “Blair met 100th casualty”. Which he may well have done, but that isn’t important. What they meant was “Blair met 100th fatality“. If the two were synonymous then we wouldn’t have both Six Feet Under and ER.

Worse, however, was The Evening Standard saying that Corporal Gordon Alexander Pritchard was a “victim”. What was he a victim of? It pains me to say it, because I grew up amongst a lot of army kids and I have friends who are in the army now, but one of the few things you can guarantee about being in the military is a greater risk of dying. Using words like “victim” is attempting to hide behind the same fantasy that gave us “surgical” bombing, and it’s a dangerous fantasy because it makes us think that the norm is for a whole load of soldiers to run at a whole load of other soldiers, for one side to win (ours, naturally) but for no one to get hurt. Which is more disturbing, that soldiers get hurts and sometimes killed, or that we are being fed propaganda that suggests that they don’t?

Meanwhile I notice that Tony Blair has been defeated by John Wells. Next we’ll hear that Patricia Hewitt is asking George Clooney to be her new policy advisor.

Today’s Independent has a very striking front page listing all the names of the one hundred British soldiers killed in Iraq.

Which is all very moving and patriotic, but for the sake of balance I would point out that to list the names of all the Iraqi civilians killed by our military intervention would take at least 283 front pages of the Independent, and possibly as many as 319.

www.iraqbodycount.net

I think I’ve missed some Anglican directive stating that all sermons should contain an obligatory reference to Harry Potter.

I’ve now sat through several sermons where, for example, the dragon in the book of Revelation has been totally unnecessarily compared to the one in Harry Potter and the Burning Cuplet or whatever it’s called, or the ultimate sacrifice of Jesus upon the cross is said to be “a bit like the sacrifice Harry Potter had to make when he gave up one of his sweets for Hermione in Harry Potter and the Acrobat of Emmerdale.” I find it as much of an affront as it would be to discover porn tucked into one of the pages of my hymn book.

On that subject (sermons, not porn), I preached in my own church yesterday evening for the first time (lay preaching is, in my opinion, to be much encouraged) – and I was more nervous than I’ve been about any improvisation or even one-man show. It’s worse than doing stand-up. The fact that an fairly emminent theologian was in the congregation didn’t help. Not to mention an actress who held on to me afterwards and told me that I had a long preaching career ahead of me but she wanted more of my eyes (criticism noted, my next sermon will be accompanied by eyes aplenty).

As I stepped down from the pulpit I was also overcome by a sense of unease that the whole congregation might be shifting around anxiously, whispering to each other “why didn’t he mention Harry Potter?”

I just typed into google “what to do if you really need to go to bed but can’t quite turn off your computer” and it brought up this.

My word……….goodness knows what kind of dreams I’m going to have.

NB: James Lark is not responsible for the content of external sites. Nuff said.

Do check out the Video Nation website for our little contribution. Oh that they had used more of the hours of footage we shot…