ODE TO A SWEARY TUCKER

In Burns week, I would like to pay my own special tribute to another great Scottish hero, to the tune of the Skye Boat Song. Yes I know Burns didn't write it but let's not quibble.

Loud is his howl, and fierce is his roar,
Obscenities rend the air;
Feart, his foes stand and shake by their desks,
Answer him they’ll no dare.

At number ten the PM can rest,
Everything's tickety-boo.
Down in his lair, Malcolm never sleeps;
Big brother is watching you.

Malcolm's the man who loves a good fight,
Well the Claymore does wield,
He doesnae tak prisoners, his victims are slain
Dead on Westminster’s field.

Burned are their homes, exile and death
Scatter the loyal men.
Yet ere his tongue cool in his mouth,
Malcolm will strike again.

Come the fuck in, or fuck the fuck off,
Goes the spin doctor’s song;
Malcolm’s defends his PM to the death
Whether he's right or wrong.

Woe betide those his ire falls upon,
Mercy he'll never give.
They shall be toast who stand up to him,
Malcolm knows where they live.

And in this week when Alistair Campbell and Tony Blair testified to the Chilcott Inquiry, what better reason to remind ourselves that a combative spin doctor is worth his weight in gold.

DAPHNE GOES TO HOLLYWOOD

I am busy booking flights and hotels and so on for my hols this year, so won't keep you.

I am bored with Europe. Always the same. Sometimes you just want to say the hell with culture, good manners, elegance, socialism.

I'm off to LA, New Mexico and Vegas.

SICK, SICK, SICK

Just a short one today as I've been poorly for over a week now and my glittering repartee system is weakened. I have whiled away the hours in my sickbed reading John Peel's "The Olivetti Chronicles", the wit and wisdom of the late, great broadcaster John Peel. I only read his autobiography "Margrave of the Marshes" recently and was overwhelmed by a warm fuzzy feeling. WHAT A NOICE GOY !!!!! John Peel must truly be remembered as the Queen Mother of broadcasting. He never put a foot wrong.


Being a bit too posh for punk, and also in the habit of going to bed before midnight, I never became a regular listener of his music programme when I should have, but it was in the 90's that I discovered the man through Home Truths. Through his lugubrious delivery, his genuine niceness shone through. And he was funny, God was he funny.


Only through reading these two books have I realized that he was also the coolest man who ever walked this earth, and although I feel I shall never really take The Fall to my heart, I see where he was coming from in the rock and roll department. It was all about teenage kicks. As his producer John Walters said, he had "young ears". The gap created by his untimely death in October 2004 has never been filled. The mere existence of Simon Cowell is an insult to his memory.


And so, here is something that John Ravenscroft, OBE, 1939-2004, would approve of.

HE'S BEHIND YOU

My kitchen

Since Bert left the KNOB*, I had hoped that they might have given me his place as First Triangle, but I am sadly disappointed. The male chauvinistic German schweinhunde are only keeping me on as general dogsbody, fetching and carrying for the orchestra, oiling their valves, wiping their finger rings and cleaning spittle off their bell ends. They let me do my 'ting' when one of them needs to go for a tinkle. Oh! That it should have come to this! That bounder Bert has abandoned me without so much as an Auf Wiedersehen Pet, and I sit in the inglenook fireplace cleaning out mouthpieces with my tears and one of Bert's old socks.

Dietmar and Manfred, Second Trombone and Flugelhorn respectively, are particularly mean to me. They were preparing to play at the New Year's Party at the German Permanent Representation to the EU and even gave me their lederhosen to clean. The ignominy! I polished them with Marmite, that'll teach them.

A better use for the instruments in my humble opinion

Baron von Hardeep, the current orchestra director, who was once so kind to me and treated me like his own daughter, has turned evil and wicked. Dietmar and Manfred are his new favourites and they can't do a thing wrong as far as he is concerned. Only McButtons, the orchestra's gopher and my confidante, wipes my tears. "Dinnae fash, hen," he reassures me. "We're - I mean they're - all gonnae die." It doesn't make me feel a lot better, but it's somewhere to rest my aching feet. He makes a great pouffe.

Talking of which, last Saturday afternoon Dietmar came flouncing in, clapping his hands.

"Great news, schatzi," he trilled. " We have just learned zat Prince von Mandelson is at tonight's New Year Party ze guest of honour to be."

When I had deconstructed his words and put them back in the right order, I expressed my great surprise.

"Prince von Mandelson? But he is no longer European Commissioner. Why is he to Brussels coming - I mean coming to Brussels?"

Dietmar struck a queenly pose and straightened his tiara.

"Because, Schatzi, rumour has it he is looking for a vife!" he giggled, camply.

"A wife! That cannot be, Dietmar! Everybody knows Prince Mandelson is .... "

Dietmar gave me an arch look. "Your point being?"

"He'll never look twice at you, Dietmar. You're too .... German."

The Teutonic Twat minced across the kitchen. "Haff you not seen Bruno? Er ist ein huge success, and he is only Austrian. I sink I vould make a wunderbar hausfrau" he primped. "I can kuchen, I can singen, I can ze trombone spielen UND I can ficken until ze cows home are coming. I vill make sure he notices me at ze party, I vill very lewd noise in his direction mit mein trombone be making."

"I think you mean LOUD noise."

"I know vot I said."


When he had flounced off, I took my feet off McButtons and threw another script on the fire. "Oh McButtons," I sighed. "We won't ever get a chance to meet the Prince."

"Bonnie Prince Peter ...." sniffed McButtons, "Fecking gorgeous so he is. I'd do him." I picked up a tarnished old trumpet and blew it, just to clear out the tubes. There was a puff of dust, a flash, a strong smell of Benson & Hedges, and a middle-aged woman in a slightly too short sparkly dress and fishnets teetered through the smoke in white stilettoes.

"Hello darlings," coughed Mrs Pouncer, straightening the sunglasses on her head. "I'm here to make your dreams come true. You SHALL go to the ball!"

She pronounced a few words in a strange tongue, it might have been Hebrew, and pointed her cigarette holder at a coal scuttle in the corner. "Boosh!" it transformed into a black stretch Merc. She then pointed her ciggie at the array of rusty instruments lined up for cleaning. "Whoosh!" they morphed, in a CGI fashion, into the UpTown Horns.

The Uptown Horns

"Now, get there before the KNOB and steal their thunder!" instructed Mrs Pouncer. McButtons and I looked at each other.

"But we can't go to a ball dressed like this!" I cried. I was wearing my Polish cleaning-lady style headscarf and a winceyette nightgown, and McButtons was still dressed as the Artful Dodger from a previous gig.

Mrs Pouncer apologised for the oversight, and waved her wand at us absently before starting to fade. Suddenly I was dressed head to foot in turquoise Max Mara and McButtons was in the full sporran.

The invitation card was addressed to "Dame W. Twanky" but anyone can make a mistake


McButtons ready to do the Gay Gordons

Mrs Pouncer popping out for some fags yesterday

"Milady?" said McButtons in a very poor attempt at a Cockney accent, opening the rear door of the limo.

"Thank you, Parker," I breathed in my best imitation of Mrs Pouncer, and stepped inside, followed by my new band along with their instruments. "Awfully nice of you chaps to help out," I thanked them.

"That's OK ma'am, Mick and the boys laid us off for the winter."

McButtons got behind the wheel and the limo glided off under its own steam, which was handy, as he can't drive. Mrs Pouncer materialized once more.

"Darlings, I'd forget my head if it wasn't screwed on, it's all the temazepam. I forgot to tell you to be home before .... oh dammit, where have they gone?"

TO BE CONTINUED

* Kurt Nachtnebel Oompah Band

A TRUE FAIRY TALE OF NEW YORK

Many a New Year's Eve, when Vera Slapp and I were teenagers, our grandmother would tell us this salutary tale of her time in New York :

"Your Grandpa Harridan was a terror, a bootlegger, a boozer, a wifebeater and a cheat. That Christmas of 1921 had been the worst ever. He had been drunk all over the holiday, he had spent all the money, there had been no Christmas dinner and no toys for the children. Evie was two and a half, Teddy was just a baby. I had shivered in that old tenement on Amsterdam Avenue (now the Lincoln Center!) trying to keep the children warm while he had been out enjoying himself with his pals and floozies since Christmas Eve.

"Just after midnight the door burst open, and in he staggered, drunk as a lord. I positioned myself between him and the children. However I needn't have worried. He didn't even look at me. He staggered into the bedroom where I heard him pulling off his boots and throwing them on the floor. He threw open the sash window and the noise of revellers bringing in the New Year drifted up from the street four floors below. Suddenly the sound of an alarm clock burst through the muffled crowd noises. I moved nearer to the bedroom door so I could see what was happening.

"He was leaning out of the sash window, with the ringing alarm clock in his hand, shouting "Happy New Year!" over and over again in that weird Scots-Irish-American accent he had. His boots lay on the floor, and as he leaned forward he balanced on the windowledge, one of his stockinged feet waving in the air. As I looked at him, right then, I thought, I thought I could tip his other leg up ... right now .... nobody would ever know ....."

"And why didn't you do it, Nana?" we would ask disingenuously, already knowing the answer. She used to look at us both with love, and answer:

"Because if I had, I would never have had you, Daphne, or you, Vera." she replied, and then, softly, as an afterthought, "and I would have had it on my conscience for the rest of my life."

Mind how you go. Whether you are going out or staying in, I wish you a peaceful transition into the new year, and most of what you wish for in 2010. I've greatly enjoyed your company in the last 12 months, I've loved reading your blogs and I've had the added bonus of meeting some of you. I hope for more of the same in the coming year and may all your outages be little ones. I will be with you again in 2010.





Thanks to McChe for the festive artwork on the banner, and here's hoping your anus is less horribilis in 2010.