Talk To Rex

Aylett watches Lark
Whilst eating calamari
Squid feeds off coral

Don’t want to write much, but I enjoyed it, so congratulations to all involved. I doubt I’ll have another opportunity to watch James chatting up Dave Gorman, so hooray for that.

Walking down the street today, hailed by someone looking vaguely familiar, so I walked over. “Is there a special women in your life?” she asked. “Does she like being pampered?” So I walked away again.

It’s not that I don’t have a special woman in my life, or even that she doesn’t like being pampered. It’s the sheer brazen cheek of assuming that I’ll trust a random (albeit vaguely familiar) stranger to help me pamper her.

People collecting for charity on the street, that I can cope with. But people trying to flog you something, especially something that really you should be doing yourself (pamper, vt: to indulge to excess) is just rude. If I ever descend to that level, please, just shoot me.

When I was younger, I was a member of a debating society. The format allowed for junior members to get some experience and test their mettle by doing somewhat throwaway debates before our seniors and betters arrived for the main event. My first such was “This House Likes Bambi”, or words to that effect; I was speaking against.

The first speaker for the motion stepped up and delivered a very credible speech, amusingly comparing the up-and-coming Tony Blair with his woodland nicknamesake, and generally providing some smug popular fluff with very little content – which was what these debates were for, so I can’t fault him on that. Then it was my turn.

“Ladies and gentlemen”, I confessed, “I only just found out that this debate is about Tony Blair. My speech is useless.” At which point I ripped it up, a very dramatic gesture that made me appear completely in control. And then I panicked. I knew who Blair was, but I didn’t know anything about him; he had only recently become leader of Labour (in a non-thrilling leadership contest I had missed, incidentally, because I was too busy worrying about my A-level results), and in any case Labour hadn’t been important in Britain for almost as long as I’d been alive. I remember concern at school when John Smith died, because some people thought he was the Bishop of Salisbury – the point is that I didn’t have any useful facts about Blair whatsoever. If only I’d read a paper that morning, I might have been able to discourse wittily for five minutes or so and survive unscathed. Instead, I went to pieces, trying to crowbar in phrases from my planned speech, descending to personal attacks, and finally rambling into incoherence. I sat back down in humiliation.

Something similar happened in the House of Commons on Wednesday, after the publication of the Hutton Report. Say what you like about Tony Blair (and I will: he was boring, pompous and arrogantly played to the media and the country for ages when he should have graciously accepted his complete exoneration, and then shut up), the speeches immediately after Lord Hutton’s findings made Michael Howard the loser. Left speaking at a debate whose shape he apparently wasn’t anticipating, he made the expected prepared noise of thanking people he’d rather not thank, before trying desperately to find something to attack Blair over. True, there were one or two – relatively minor – issues he could drone on about, but this hardly seems proper behaviour from someone trying to champion positive rather than negative politics – to say nothing of being insufficiently dignified, robust or moral for such a serious issue. In Labour MP Ann Taylor’s words, he wriggled.

He lashed out at Blair, at Hoon, and at Alastair Campbell, and might have gone further if he hadn’t sputtered out of steam in the face of rising dissent from the floor of the house, and the look of wide-eyed, gaping-mouthed incredulity from the Prime Minister.

After my own disastrous performance, it fell to my debating partner to try to salvage our side of the argument. As it happened, he hadn’t read up on Bambi-Blair either, so he was reduced to apologising for my behaviour, hoping that people might vote against the motion in sympathy. Perhaps I was ill, or fundamentally stupid? Surely I hadn’t just failed to prepare properly for this debate? As it happened, neither of our performances made any real difference to the vote – the debate was not well-attended, and those that were there had opinions on Blair that weren’t going to be changed, no matter what we did. I doubt anyone else remembers it now.

Michael Howard wasn’t so lucky. No one stood up to take his side, no one supported him, and a good number of people attacked him, both directly and indirectly. No chance to walk away from this debating chamber; in a few short, interminable, minutes, Michael Howard threw away his mask of political sanity and revealed an ugly visage of malice and pride. “That is what he says” as Labour MPs fantasised about smothering him. “That is what he says” as if a few short passages of mild criticism could bring down the Government. Like a bad comedian begging the audience when his jokes aren’t as funny as he thinks they are: “Isn’t it? Isn’t it?” “That is what he says.”

When an encounter with Tony Blair torpedoed my debating career, I turned away and found something else to do with my life. Somehow I doubt Michael Howard will have the grace to do the same.

As I was cycling into work this morning along a dangerously ice-encrusted cycle path, I observed coming in the opposite direction a gnarled old man wearing a filthy coat and hat and struggling along the same cycle path on a wobbly bicycle from the 1850s. On the same side of the road as me.

i.e. From his point of view, the wrong side of the road.

As this rather disturbing Ealing-comedy-inspired character neared me, he clambered down from his machine and proceeded to push it past me, muttering with a distinctly Scottish accent, “Stupid fucking lunatic”.

I have a feeling that at least one of us was confused.

I was bored of news stories about the BBC by midday. By late afternoon I was bored of the BBC itself. At this rate I’ll be bored of all media outlets by breakfast tomorrow, and of the whole of existence by sometime Saturday.

Yes, the BBC did some bad things. Smack wrist, go to bed early, the Government will dock some pocket money. Auntie will get a new nanny soon, and it’ll all be better.

There are more important news stories out there. International stories of horror and mystery. Local stories of … well, ice, mostly. Apparently a battleship somewhere is now captained by a woman. If I see Greg Dyke’s face once more I’ll arrange a pile-up between it, Alastair Campbell, and a steam iron.

Today I spent some time stuck in a lift. This is honestly something that I thought didn’t actually happen outside contrived narratives (where either a personal relationship difficulty is resolved, such as the two aliens who want to kill each other in Babylon 5; or everyone has sex). And yet there we were, five of us stuck in a lift in a refurbished jam factory.

Of course, everyone there was very nice, but next time I’m going to be stuck in a small lift with that number of people, I’d probably go for all the others being models, or a girl band or something. And it being a contrived narrative of the second sort, of course.

If everyone responsible for that dossier believed it was based on accurate intelligence – what the hell is our intelligence community doing? Surely a good indication that Saddam could launch WMD in 45 minutes would have been a photo of such a weapon. Or a little ‘X’ on a map. For that matter, surely they’d be required to believe that he had any at all, no matter whether he could launch them in 45 minutes or not?

Okay, so no intelligence is perfect, and we know from the FBI’s story surrounding September 11th that if you have lots of information it doesn’t necessarily make it any easier to pull out the right bits, but being certain enough that someone has something that you’ll go to war over it surely, surely, requires some sort of proof that they actually do. Like a till receipt, or a postcard from Basra with Hans Blix standing in front of a rocket with that three-pronged radition symbol on it.

It’s my taxes that are being spent on this. And I wanted a new DVD player.

I’m sure I’m not the only person who types my name into search engines to check how famous I am. Ever since my Footlights days I have had high placings on Google, which is very satisfying given that other family members and most friends don’t feature at all.

James Aylett is an exception, featuring very very heavily when you type his name into Google. But then, he’s into computers, so he probably has ways of cheating. And it is satisfying to observe that, at present, the first page of results includes the intriguing words “Turning James Aylett into a dog” – which I can take full credit for.

In the meantime I have to battle it out with James W. Lark III for my position. Today, I am happy to report, I have risen above this shady character to second place on the Google leaderboard. What is also interesting is that, for the first time, it is my location on the Uncertainty Division website rather than the Footlights website that has gained me this position.

Are people genuinely looking at me on this website more than on the Footlights website? And if so, who are these people? And why don’t they ever leave comments on the diary?

In the name of expanding my internet profile, I can now also be found at the London News Review website.

The Blairite quango in which I work continues, you will be reassured to know, to hand out money to any old crank who comes in with a new and exciting idea for development.

One of the more innovative recent proposals has come from a man who has invented an explosive which can blow rocks up without making any noise. The strength of the proposal rests upon the fact that he has, apparently, shown it to the Queen. And she was very impressed.

He’s a clever man. What he’s done, you see, is chosen a deaf old lady – albeit one with considerable influence and whose face appears on coins – to confirm that his explosions are indeed completely silent. Of COURSE she was impressed, she couldn’t hear a thing because she’s 78 years old.

The Queen is, in many ways, an inspiring woman. I thought her Christmas speech was very good. But she has no scientific credentials that I know of, and I am sure that she does not possess sufficiently accurate faculties to qualify her in any way to pass judgement upon the actual validity of this man’s claim that he can explode rocks without making any noise.

I just don’t believe that it’s possible. Rocks make noise even when you DON’T explode them. Kick a rock, drop a rock, hit a rock with a spoon, it will make a noise. Don’t try to tell me that you can explode a rock and make no noise. No, don’t even try.

I bet he’s using polystyrene rocks, or something.

Even if he CAN do as he claims and explode real, actual rocks without making a noise – what’s the point? He should be seeking a slot on the Paul Daniels magic show, not Government funding.

(Oh, forgot – Paul Daniels doesn’t have a magic show any more. ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha)

Now, I know a thing or two about explosions, and one of the things I know is this: noise is one of the things that makes it an explosion. I have seen a number of explosions in my brief life – here are some of my favourite ones (no doubt you can add your own favourite explosions to this list):

Daleks – Invasion Earth 2150AD: the explosion of the Dalek flying saucer at the end. We’re talking the Peter Cushing film here, not the original TV series, and it’s not actually all that great. But it’s an explosion from my childhood – a nostalgic explosion.

Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves: towards the end, when Morgan Freeman starts blowing up barrels. The brilliance of the first big explosion is of course multiplied many times by the exchange that follows between a Baron (“is this your idea of control, Sheriff?”) and Alan Rickman (“Shut up, you TWIT”).

The Italian Job: “You’re only supposed to blow the bloody…” etc.

Batman Returns: the explosion of the shop front, preceded by Michelle Pfeiffer saying “Meow.”

Some Mothers Do ’Ave ’Em: every time Frank Spencer touches anything, it explodes. It’s a hilarious joke which never gets tired.

Dr Who – Remembrance of the Daleks: in the final episode of this serial, a special weapons Dalek blows up loads of stuff. When they filmed it, half of London’s fire services turned up because they thought somebody had blown up Waterloo station.

The Death Star: I don’t even know which Star Wars film it gets blown up in, but it’s bloody fantastic anyway.

Mary Poppins: up amongst the chimneys, with the fireworks. Dick van Dyke is in it.

Dr Who – the Greatest Show in the Galaxy: the one right at the end, mainly because it happens right behind Sylvester McCoy and he doesn’t even notice it.

The Hindenburg: is it distasteful to like this explosion? We watched it again and again in science lessons at school, couldn’t get enough of it.

The Bridge on the River Kwai: the best explosion of a thing ever.

Raiders of the Lost Ark: the best explosion of a person ever.

In every single instance cited above, the noise of the explosions is one of the features that make them so memorable. Remove the noise, and the result would be far less satisfactory.

So when a man approaches my office and says “I’ve invented a noiseless explosion and the Queen says it’s wonderful,” my inclination is to tell him to get lost. “Go home,” I want to say, “put the noise back into your explosions.” Now – if he had invented a way of exploding rocks in a NOISIER way, perhaps so that deaf old ladies like the Queen could get the full enjoyment of a proper explosion, that would be something I’d be interested in funding.

Sadly, I am not in a position to make decisions like that; and he’s going to get his money, I just know it.