The Good Old Days

Well, with all these old films and TV programmes getting a makeover (or reboot, as they like to say in the business), I was thinking that maybe it was about time that we rehabilitated and revitalised some old favourites. Remember the Black and White Minstrel Show? I wish I didn't. A bunch of blokes with boot-polish on their faces singing terrible songs. I think it was Marty Feldman who once remarked "You'd think they could find half a dozen real black men who can't sing and can't dance". When I was a kid I could never understand why it was only the men who were blacked up, whilst the women were all white. Of course, the BNP would probably tell us of how it was all down to political-correctness-gone-mad at the BBC - thanks to their commitment to having racial minorities represented on-air, hard-working white performers were forced to pretend to be black. Now, I know what you are thinking - how in Hell could you possibly 'reboot' a hoary old format like this without causing massive offence to every right-thinking TV viewer? Perhaps the only way would be by being post-modern and ironical. This time around, the guys could be black, but wearing white face. It could be some kind of comment upon the co-opting of black musical culture by the white-dominated media. Or something like that.

Perhaps I'm remembering things wrongly, but I'm pretty sure that the Black and White Minstrels also used to turn up as guests on The Good Old Days. Now, there's a show ripe for reinventing - the BBC's popular 1960s and 70s Edwardian music hall recreation, featuring various contemporary acts in period gear, performing retro versions of their acts. It was all compered by the late Leonard Sachs, banging his gavel. These days, of course, you could have his son, Andrew Sachs, performing the same role, as various modern entertainers attempt to restrain themselves and perform their acts in such a way that wouldn't offend Edwardian sensibilities. Personally, I'd like to see Russell Brand, clad in a loud check suit, treading the boards in this virtual music hall - would his opening gambit be to shout at Sachs "I had relations of an intimate nature with your grand daughter, sir", whilst doffing his derby hat? Perhaps he could black up, as well - after all, if someone as obviously trendy and cool as Russell Brand was to put boot polish on his face, then it clearly wouldn't be racist, just ironic. Or am I being too cynical?

"We're All Going to Die Horribly!"

They couldn't let it lie, could they? I'm referring to the media, of course and its fixation on contagious diseases. Despite their best efforts a couple of years ago, bird flu stubbornly refused to become a pandemic, and all their predictions of a plague-induced doomsday came to nothing. It really must have been galling for the media, after all the effort they put into scaremongering and trying to scare the bejasus out of the public, to have to look on impotently as the bird flu threat fizzled out. So the tone of unalloyed glee which accompanied the first reports of the swine flu outbreak in Mexico, is hardly surprising. "We're all going to die horribly" is once again the order of the day. Best of all, from the media's point of view, there have already been reported cases of swine flu amongst humans in 'civilised' countries like the US and Britain. After all, who gives a damn if some Mexican peasants drop dead after shagging infected pigs? I mean, what do they expect if they insist on living in conditions of extreme poverty and abject shite? Or at least, that's what the British press would like to say, if they could only get away with it. Whilst not wishing to down play the seriousness of the swine flu outbreak, I can't help but feel that the relentless scaremongering of the media is going to be far worse and more difficult to endure than any pandemic.

As if pig borne plagues weren't bad enough, the press are still trying to ramp up the terrorist 'threat', despite the lack of any identifiable threat. Not that this lack of apparent threat deters the press from obediently trumpeting the security services' latest triumph in foiling some terror plot or other, the details of which are never clear. In fact, the details are inevitably so vague that no charges are ever brought against the alleged conspirators (who, more often than not, are foreign students), although that doesn't stop the Home Office from deporting them. Even reading the 'wrong' books can now be grounds for incarceration, it seems. Possession of literature espousing supposedly 'extreme' views was enough to get one group of alleged terrorists arrested prior to the G20 conference. The police claimed they might have been plotting to disrupt the meetings and had explosive devices - which turned out to be fireworks. But perhaps the most blatant piece of terror-related scaremongering came on my local TV news programme today, when it was reported that police were implementing new security measures to prevent terrorists from using shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles against passenger aircraft flying in and out of Gatwick Airport. Of course, they belatedly added, after ramping up the alleged threat posed by these missile-wielding terrorists, there is no actual intelligence suggesting that anyone is actually planning to do this. For fuck's sake, what's wrong with the press these days?

Under Surveillance

I may have been a bit hasty in my condemnation of the government's anti-terror measures as being too intrusive of people's private lives. I've decided that I can put up with the monitoring of my e-mails and web activity, not to mention being constantly observed by CCTV cameras and my car numberplate being tracked. Believe me, it's all worthwhile because what I've just realised is that the government has effectively legitimised stalking and spying on your neighbours. From now onwards, if you get caught peering through that attractive female neighbour's bedroom window whilst she undresses, you can simply claim that you suspected her of being a terrorist and were merely fulfilling your national security obligations as any responsible citizen should. That the government wants us all to become peeping toms is the only conclusion I can draw from its security ads - you know the ones, where they encourage you to go through your neighbours' bins on the grounds that if they're terrorists their wheely bin will be overflowing with empty chemical containers. Indeed, as if being hell-bent on destroying civilisation with home-made bombs wasn't anti-social enough, the bastards can't even be bothered to put those empty plastic containers in the recycling bin!

Of course, I'd like to claim credit for this whole new security initiative - way, way back in Issue 39 (I think, I'm too lazy to check), I wrote a story called Surveillance Creep, in which I proposed that MI5 should enlist the help of neighbourhood busy bodies and curtain twitchers in the fight against terror, partly on the grounds that their idle gossip and tittle-tattle was likely to be just as accurate as any of the so-called 'intelligence' they gather. I eagerly await the Security Service's adoption of my other recommendations - that they employ stalkers and peeping toms to carry out their surveillance operations. After all, not only are they experienced in covertly observing perfectly innocent strangers, they'd also be able to supply their own equipment. Trust me, if they were to implement such a measure, they'd have no shortage of volunteers. Not if the depressing number of search terms involving the phrases 'peeping tom', 'spying on neighbours undressing' and 'nude hidden camera pictures' on Google are anything to go by. So there you are - instead of bemoaning the way the government keeps curbing your civil liberties and freedoms in the name of security, you should be rejoicing in this new freedom to be a pervy voyeur they've inadvertently given us all!

Damned Lies

So, just what are these rumours about David Cameron and George Osborne that Labour spin-doctor Damien McBride was attempting to promulgate? Apparently, if you read certain tabloid newspapers you'd know, as they related them with lip-smacking relish, whilst at the same time telling us how awful it was that anyone would spread such lies for political gain. However, the rest of will just have to continue speculating. Just what was this embarrassing illness some senior Tory was meant to have? Did Cameron allegedly have athlete's dick as a result of some wild foot-fetish action with with a hooker with a fungal infection? And wasn't there something about an incriminating photograph of George Osborne? Was that the one of him with the dead prostitute? Not that I'm implying he murdered a whore. At least, not on his own. It was the entire Shadow Cabinet, after a gang bang at a wild sex party went horribly wrong.

Obviously, none of this is true - these are merely amusing stories told for satirical effect. But I'm betting that they're a bloody sight more interesting than whatever the real rumours were. That was McBride's mistake - he just wasn't inventive enough - if you are going to libel a public figure, go the whole hog. Come up with something so foul, disgusting and bizarre that you can always use the defence that no reasonable person would take it to be true. Safe in the knowledge, of course, that the sort of people likely to read such things on the web or in tabloids aren't reasonable - they're raving conspiracy nuts who'll believe anything. Even that Paul McCartney is dead and being impersonated by a double.

England and Saint George

OK, I've just come back from the pub and I really have to comment on this St George's day bollocks which the media has hyped up and has consequently ruined my evening's drinking. St George may be the patron Saint of England, but that's no excuse for every pub blasting out 'patriotic' songs at full blast, or for for people wandering around with crosses painted on their faces and wearing stupid fucking hats. It doesn't evoke any spurious spirit of 'Englishness', it just makes you all seem like a bunch of retards. Over the past few years there's been this growing pressure in the media for St George's day to be 'celebrated' in the same way that the Irish celebrate St Patrick's Day, or the way in which the Welsh commemorate St David's Day. There's actually a very good reason why it never has been - the fact that St George's identification with England is purely arbitrary. Unlike St Patrick, St David and St Andrew, Georgie boy has no connection whatsoever with the country he supposedly represents.

In point of fact, George is a bit of a whore, as he's also the patron saint of half of Europe, including Russia, Germany and Greece. In point of fact, we used to have an English patron saint of England in the form of Edward the Confessor, but he wasn't sexy enough, so St George ousted him. This obsession with celebrating St George's Day is just another example of this insidious, and very unpleasant, nationalism which has been creeping into public life for the past few years. I'm always suspicious of people who feel the need to indulge in displays of over-exaggerated 'patriotism' - it's usually a sign that they have no sense of personal identity. Consequently, they have to fall back on crude racial stereotypes to try and provide themselves with a sense of self worth. It's all bollocks, anyway. The fact is that, since the Act of Union which formed the UK as a political entity, there has been only one nationality in these islands: British. English, Welsh, Northern Irish and Scottish - they're just ethnicities. Which is why 'Black British', 'Asian British' and 'Jewish British', for instance, are just as legitimate expressions of British nationality as 'English', 'Welsh' or 'Scottish'. So, next April 23, just kick the St George's Day shit into touch and allow the rest of us to enjoy our evening.

Q for Quite Disturbing

I'm finding watching James Bond films of a certain vintage increasingly disturbing. I've already mentioned how, by the time Octopussy came round, Roger Moore was increasingly looking and sounding like a dirty old man, and that the Secret Service was appearing to be be ever more cash-strapped, with Q being forced not only to keep going into the field to equip agents, but also to carry out surveillance duties and even pilot hot air balloons for Bond. Things surely couldn't get any worse, could they? Well, actually they could. The other afternoon I found myself watching the 1985 entry, View to a Kill, in which Roger Moore's Bond was going beyond being simply a dirty old man and turning into a truly creepy perv, lusting after various women young enough to be his grand daughters. This time it seemed that it was the KGB which had suffered budget cuts, with its head, General Gogol, being forced to go and berate troublesome agents in person, before finding himself reduced to acting as a getaway driver for yet another of his agents.

At least the Secret Service seems to have got over its manpower problems since the previous movie, with Q only forced out of his lab and into the field once, right at the end of the film. However, I found this single field assignment very troubling, featuring Q using a remote surveillance device to observe Bond getting it on with the leading lady in a shower. Now, I don't know about anyone else, but I find that pretty disturbing. Could it be that all those years of carrying out surveillance operations has left Q addicted to voyeurism? After all, he does has form for it - I seem to recall that back in Moonraker he caught Bond in the act of having a weightless shag with Holly Goodhead - "I think he's attempting re-entry, sir" - while in For Your Eyes Only he eavesdropped on Bond's foreplay with yet another much younger woman. Perhaps all those years of having to sit by demonstrating castration devices disguised as wrist watches and cars with ejecting toilet seats, whilst Bond made smug jokes before going off and knobbing half the beautiful women of the world in exotic locales, finally got to him. Knowing that the ladies would never go for some gadget-obsessed pensioner, he instead decided to settle for the next best thing - watching. Who could blame him? He had access to all the equipment, didn't he? I mean, if you could get your hands on tons of super-sophisticated surveillance equipment and could get away with spying on people having sex by saying it was on 'national security' grounds, you would, wouldn't you? Nevertheless, the bottom line is that the sight of an old man abusing his position of trust by secretly watching colleagues getting their end away is pretty bloody disturbing, and isn't the sort of thing you'd expect to see in a piece of light entertainment like a Bond movie.

Bolshedicks-a-Go-Go

Russian emigre and self-professed former KGB agent Oleg Wytnnuklov has made further astonishing claims about his former masters in Russia, alleging that several former communist leaders had been involved in sordid activities on a pornographic web site. According to the renegade Russian, following his retirement from the presidency, the late Boris Yeltsin was forced to try a variety of alternative careers in a vain attempt to maintain his extravagant lifestyle of vodka, cigars and large women. In an early act of desperation he attempted to enter the world of professional wrestling and performed for the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) under the name 'Crawling King Snake' – a tribute to his idol Jim Morrison, complete with skin-tight leather trousers. His trademark move - the 'Tunguska Explosion' - involved raising one cheek and blowing his opponent over with a powerful fart. This move was successfully employed against masked Mexican wrestler 'El Bombasto' to win the WWF European Championship. After successfully defending his title against the wrestling Pope (in spite of being poleaxed with the Pontiff’s crook), his career in the squared circle was cut short when he suffered a double rupture whilst trying to lift another former politician turned grappler – one time UK Defence Secretary Michael Portillo (known professionally as 'The Butch British Beefeater') – over his head.

Before you could say “have a good week, till next week”, Yeltsin was in the gutter and desperately seeking new sources of income. His involvement with the notorious 'Bolshedicks a-Go-G' porn site was accidentally discovered by Wytnuklov when the former spy logged onto the site twenty seven times by chance whilst searching for a Russian Orthodox Christians Against Masturbation site. This site, apparently hugely popular in Russia, features various look-a-likes of famous communist leaders performing lewd acts. Bizarrely, however, Yeltsin did not portray himself, instead donning false eyebrows (and little else) to masquerade as the late Leonid Brezhnev. A web-cast could be downloaded in which Yeltsin, clad only in fleece-lined boots and a furry hat, performed a teasing version of the fan dance using the metal dividers from a filing cabinet drawer. This climaxes with him revealing all – and proving that his nickname of 'King Snake' was highly inaccurate. Another web-cast sees Yeltsin/Brezhnev engaging in a nude mud-wrestling match with a Richard Nixon look-a-like. Although it has been suggested that the 'Bolshedicks' site is financed by the CIA in order to further discredit the former communist regime, reliable sources have claimed that it is actually run from Tomsk by renegade MI5 agent David Shayler. The site was apparently devised by Shayler as a way of earning much-needed funds for his defence against charges of breaching the Official Secrets Act. There have also been persistent rumours that Mikhail Gorbachev once donned a stick-on goatee to play Lenin. It is claimed that he could be seen pouring hot oil on his bald head before rubbing it all over the naked body of a Rosa Luxembourg look-a-like. Sadly, the site was finally shut down after Yeltsin suffered a fatal heart attack whilst spanking a Trotsky look-a-like with his ice-pick during a live webcast.

Naked Affront

Over the past few weeks I've received a fair amount of visitors from a naturist site, which had linked to the story The Nude Hunters. Now, I don't profess to understand the attraction of wandering around stark naked in all weathers, exposed to the elements,so to speak, but each to their own, I suppose. Personally, I've always been of the opinion that wearing clothes has absolutely nothing to do with imposing some kind of repressive moral code upon the human race, but rather it is down to practicality - the human body is prone to injury and clothing serves a protective purpose. I mean - would you really want to stride through undergrowth stark bollocking naked, whilst on a country walk, for instance? Your bollocks would be torn to shreds by brambles and thistle in no time - there's a reason why native tribesmen in Africa and South America wear loincloths. Then there's the question of the weather - somehow, I doubt very much that there were many naturists wandering around in the snow back in February. Icicles hanging from your blue testicles isn't a good look for the season.

Anyway, getting to the point of this rambling post at last, one of the things that naturists like to emphasise is that there is nothing erotic or titillating about their lifestyle. Indeed, they go to great lengths to tell us 'textiles' that the vast majority of them are not gorgeous supermodels or body builders with six-packs, but instead just ordinary men and women like the rest of us, complete with beer-guts and sagging buttocks. There's nothing sexy about us, so don't bother spying on our beaches and camps, they seem to be saying. Whilst it is entirely laudable hat the naturists want to shake off the Carry on Camping stereotypes and be taken seriously, I can't help but be bothered by the content of their websites. If naturism isn't about titillation, then why is it that so many of the pictures on these sites depict attractive young women with firm breasts in full frontal poses? Strangely, those middle-aged overweight 'regular guy' naturists are in short supply. Perhaps they think that potential recruits to naturism might be put off if they thought that was all they were likely to see...

Outrageous Lies

OK, so let's get this straight - a Downing Street spin doctor sends an e-mail to another prominent Labour Party activist in which he makes various unsubstantiated allegations about various Tories, including David Cameron, but the contents of said private communication are somehow obtained by a Tory blogger and leaked to the press. Cue howls of outrage and demands for apologies from the Tories and press feeding frenzy which ensures that this story dominates the news agenda for days, pushing real stories about police brutality, North Korean missile tests and Somali pirates kidnapping American merchant sailors onto the sidelines. Now, bearing in mind that I regularly publish stories making completely unsubstantiated allegations about David Cameron on The Sleaze, I'm somewhat amazed at the attention this e-mail generated. Most of my stories create barely a ripple. Clearly, what I'm doing wrong is actually publishing them - what I should be doing is sending them as private e-mails to a friend or colleague.

I'm not sure why anybody should have thought that the revelation that Labour activists say rude things about opposition politicians surprising. Far from being a sign of the canker lying at the heart of this government, as the Tories would have you believe, smearing opponents has been going on for a long time. It was stock in trade for the Tories throughout most of the last three decades. Indeed, despite the media overkill with regard to this story, it seems that the general public really don't give a fuck about, collectively shrugging their shoulders and asking, 'So what?'. The only people who are remotely interested in this bollocks are those pustules upon the backside of the web, political bloggers. Which is hardly surprising as they were instrumental in fermenting the story in the first place. Still, on the up side, it did generate me some traffic as people searched the web trying to find out what these 'rumours' about Cameron were, and mainly alighted upon The Two Faces of David Cameron. I take solace in the possibility that some people out there might now think that Cameron has an evil alter-ego in the form of a slavering sex beast. Come on Tory bastards - get outraged at that!

Easter at The Sleaze

So, how was Easter for you? For me, it descended into one long orgy of chocolate eating, beer drinking and sitting up to four in the morning watching films I'd seen a million times before, but just couldn't stop myself from watching one more time. By Easter Day itself I was a sleep-deprived wreck and, after an afternoon of watching Big Jake and Flash Gordon back-to-back, for no other reason than I didn't have the energy to get up out of my arm chair and do something more constructive, I found myself listlessly looking at the Fortean Times message board. For some reason, I only seem to look at those boards when I find myself exhausted at the fag end of a religious festival. There's something strangely reassuring in the fact that, in the twenty first century, there are still cranks and crackpots out there who believe in all that supernatural schtick. However, unsatisfied by their tales of men in lion suits scaring children, evil stick men, whacked out conspiracies and lake monsters, I found myself following random links from Google Ads to try and get my fix of weird crap. (It's surprising how many of those Google small ads are placed by loons peddling their dubious wares).

Anyway, I eventually hit pay dirt when I stumbled upon Hitler's Fate: The Final Story , a web site plugging a book of the same title, in which one H D Baumann reveals what really happened to the Fuhrer at the end of World War Two. Pure unadulterated lunacy. Apparently Hitler didn't commit suicide - that was his double. Whilst the site obviously isn't revealing his true fate (you have to buy the book for that), I've a feeling it has to do with South American jungles. I love the list of important questions which are apparently begging for answers. These include "For what reason did three German submarines land off the coast of southern Argentina more than two months after the end of World War II in Europe?". Well, that's obvious - they were just stopping off to refuel before going on to that hole at the South Pole through which the hollow earth can be accessed. "Why were there no burned wood planks on the spot where Hitler and Eva Braun were supposedly be cremated?" Because it was a concrete surface?

Best of all, it assures us that: "The prospect that the officially sanctioned story of Hitler's suicide, based on the hurriedly written report of a former British MI 5 agent named Hugh Trevor-Roper, may not be true, will make some readers emotionally uneasy, to put it mildly." Now, there was me thinking that Hugh Trevor-Roper (later Lord Dacre) was, in fact, a distinguished Historian and author of many well-regarded books on the Second World War. How naive of me - he was clearly an MI 5 plant. Which, of course, begs the question of why MI 5, the British Security Service, which is primarily concerned with counter espionage operations within the UK, would have any interest in Hitler's suicide? Undeterred by such questions, the site continues: "Yet this official version of history was never accepted by the Russians, and it does not hold up to the facts since it was primarily based on the willfully misleading statements of Nazi witnesses in order to mislead the Allies. This book exposes these and other falsehoods based on years of research by the author and supported by the latest Russian publications from their archives." The fact that anybody would consider any documentary evidence originating in the Soviet Union as being more reliable than Western sources sets the seal on this book's lunacy. Really, coming across this site really restored my faith in the mental instability of mankind and gave me renewed hope for the future!

The Ascension of Jade Goody

Acolytes of the recently deceased reality TV star Jade Goody are eagerly awaiting her rise from the grave this Easter. "It's what Easter's all about, isn't it?" says Jody Trusspottle as, along with several hundred fellow fans, she holds a candle lit vigil at Goody's Essex graveside. "The return of a Messiah who is going to lead us all to the promised land of eternal fame!" Goody's acolytes are convinced that the former Big Brother star will rise again on Easter Monday to guide her followers into a reality TV paradise, where they will be guaranteed ever-lasting minor celebrity status. "Of course, not everyone will be judged righteous enough to ascend to the heavenly Big Brother House," explains Trusspottle. "Those found wanting will be called to the Diary Room and subjected to a public vote, with the sinners being cast out into the world of eternal drudgery, anonymity and work." The acolytes are firmly convinced of Goody's divinity, citing the level of adulation she attained during her last days and the number of visions of the stricken star witnessed by fans. "When she was most needed by her fans, she would appear," says an awestruck Trusspottle. "My mate Sadie was having a terrible time with a bad hair day - it just wouldn't come under control and she was due out on a hot date with this bloke from the Co-Op. She was in despair and called out for someone to help her - and Jade appeared and laid her hands on Sadie's rebellious locks. They just all settled down and she was suddenly perfectly coiffured - it was a miracle!"

However, as with all nascent faiths, a schism has already opened up in the Church of Goody, with some followers insisting that Goody has already risen once. "It's quite obvious that her 'crucifixion' was when she was pilloried over the Celebrity Big Brother racism row," declares Katy Wibblethorpe. "It therefore follows hat her successful return to the public eye after weathering that storm constituted her metaphorical rise from the grave. The trouble is that some acolytes are just too literal in their interpretation of the Gospel According to Max Clifford." Wibblethorpe and her faction are adamant that if Goody does arise on Easter Monday, then it will constitute her Second Coming, which will herald the end of the world of reality TV as we know it. "I very much doubt that it will be this Monday," she says. "According to all the portents she will not return until the Armageddon of Big Brother 10, when reality TV will descend upon the whole nation and the faithful will all live within the all-encompassing Kingdom of Reality TV, forever under the watchful eye of Big Brother." The faction believes that the steady spread of surveillance cameras in the UK is a sure sign that the 'eviction times' - when the non-believers will be cast out of the 'house' - are already upon us. Trusspottle and her friends remain undeterred, firmly believing that Goody will return on Easter Monday, although they are prepared for a long wait. "Well, obviously she won't reappear much before lunch time," she reasons. "It is a Bank Holiday, after all, and everyone likes a lie-in on those, don't they?"

Parliamentary Nudes

The government has found itself embroiled in a new row over MP's expenses after it came to light that a Minister and her husband had been making pornographic films and claiming the budgets from the tax payer. "This really is outrageous," thundered Tory backbencher Hubert Hergenjerker. "As part of the claim they put in for thirty pounds for a vibrator and butt plugs - if they'd bought in bulk they could have got a twenty percent discount, representing a huge saving for the taxpayer!" A Parliamentary Select Committee set up to vet MP's expenses claims has also been highly critical of the Minister's invoices, noting that the films themselves appeared to be extremely low budget, in no way justifying the amounts being claimed for. "They are clearly all filmed in the Minister's own house, obviating the need for sets," said a spokesperson. "They can't even claim that the on-screen 'talent' they were using was expensive - they played the leads themselves." Jane Arbolister, the Minister for the Prevention of Exploitation, has defended her actions, claiming that she and her husband had every intention of repaying the money they had claimed, from the profits of their films' sales. However, doubts have been cast on the ability of the movies to recoup even their modest costs. "Jesus Christ - who'd want to pay to see two flabby middle aged people grunting and groaning on their kitchen table?" asks Hergenjerker. "I don't see why the taxpayer should be expected to finance the revolting home sex movies of government Ministers!"

Arbolister has denied that the films were made as part of some bizarre sex game on the part of herself and her husband, claiming that they actually constituted research. "We were merely trying to fully understand the plight of the poor women who are exploited by appearing in such pornography," she told the Commons. "Consequently, as eliminating such exploitation is central to my Ministerial brief, I feel that the making of these films constitute a perfectly legitimate expense." This isn't the first time that the Minister and her husband have courted controversy with their bizarre behaviour, most notably when her husband appeared on a live TV sex phone-in channel, dressed in fishnet stockings and a red basque, taking calls from viewers. "It was truly horrible," recalls the station's programme director, Ron Widdler. "I don't know what we were thinking allowing him to go on there, but the Minister implied our licence would be revoked if we didn't. It was a disaster - when he bared his man boobs and started squeezing them provocatively, viewing figures dropped to a record low!" Once again, the Minister defended the broadcast by claiming that she and her husband were merely trying to highlight the exploitation of women on such programmes. "Clearly, when a man is exploited in the same way people find it disgusting," she told the press. "This merely underlines the inherent hypocrisy of the whole sex industry!"

On Her Majesty's Swinging Service

A Former KGB agent has sensationally claimed that various top celebrities spied for Britain during the Cold War. According to Oleg Wytnuklov, far from being considered a threat to British security, as claimed by various UK sources, John Lennon and The Beatles were actually involved in numerous espionage activities against the Soviet Union. “Nothing could be further from the truth! John Lennon was a very patriotic man - he and the Beatles did much undercover work for the British government during their foreign tours!” Wytnuklov asserts. “Why else do you think Harold Wilson gave them all OBEs? It was in recognition of John successfully obtaining the plans to a top secret Soviet trout-stretching factory whilst on tour in Berlin 1967”. Lennon apparently succeeded in slipping over the Wall and persuading an avid East German fan who had worked on the factory, to exchange the plans for several autographed nude photos of him and Paul and a signed copy of “Revolver”. Obtaining these plans gave Britain a vital edge in the trout export wars of the mid 1960s - enabling inspectors to spot the tell-tale stretch marks on oversize Russian trout, which in turn led to a UN export ban.

Worried about the Fab Four’s intelligence activities, the Soviet's apparently tried to undermine them by placing a KGB 'mole' in their midst. Wytnuklov has sensationally claimed that Yoko Ono was actually a Red agent provocateur sent to destroy the group. “Before he met her John Lennon was a staunch Conservative”, he asserts. “After taking up with her he grew his hair long and changed the lyrics of his greatest song from “Voting Tory Forever” to “Strawberry Fields” - a piece of drug-addled gibberish!”. Wytnuklov has produced no evidence to back up this claim. According to the renegade Russian, Yoko Ono was also once involved in an unsuccessful attempt to seduce mild-mannered country singer John Denver. Unbeknownst to his fans, Denver was a highly successful CIA agent who, during a 1969 tour of China, secretly obtained Chairman Mao’s elusive inside leg measurement. Experts at the secret Los Alamos research institute were subsequently able to construct an accurate life-size model of the yellow despot’s trousers. This proved vital in the fight against communism and altered the course of the war in Vietnam.

Whilst the CIA successfully deployed the low-key Denver against China, the UK’s Secret Intelligence Service took a different approach, employing legendary hell-raiser Oliver Reed in its battles with Moscow. Reed frequently donned a false moustache to foray behind the iron curtain disguised as a peasant farm labourer. He would frequently visit remote rural bars and challenge unsuspecting Strategic Rocket Forces troops to drinking contests - which he inevitably won. Whilst the soldiers were in a drunken stupor Reed would interrogate them in order to gain vital intelligence about Russia’s ballistic missiles. On several occasions he rendered entire squadrons of Soviet MiGs inoperative by drinking their hydraulic fluid. In 1972 Reed was eventually sent to Moscow to challenge then party leader Leonid Brezhnev to a drinking contest. However, before he could meet Brezhnev, he became drunk on cheap Russian vodka and was arrested for dancing on Lenin’s tomb whilst masturbating in rhythm to the Soviet national anthem. Reed was eventually exchanged by the Russians for a vacuum cleaner. “Household technology was still very primitive in Russia at this time”, Wytnuklov recalls. “We discovered many Western secrets from this vacuum cleaner”.

Wytnuklov’s claims carry considerable weight as, throughout the 1960s and 1970s he was a top KGB operative, charged with penetrating British intelligence through the back entrance. He was forced to flee the Soviet Union in 1989 after being accused of trying to sell pornographic postcards, apparently involving Raisa Gorbachev and her bear trapper’s hat, to Boris Yeltsin. “It was all a misunderstanding”, he maintains. “I was merely showing him the kind of decadent filth the West was trying to corrupt our socialist paradise with”. Wearing a false nose and testicles, Wytnuklov successfully evaded his KGB colleagues and defected to Britain. Nevertheless, intelligence experts have cast doubt on the Russian’s claims, suggesting that there was no evidence of his ever having served in the KGB. Some have even suggested that he was actually a black-marketeer specialising in the export to the West of fake pornographic religious icons. Wytnuklov now makes his living running a popular telephone sex service in London. “I love England”, he told us. “You British, you seem so reserved - but in reality it is not just your upper lips that are stiff, eh?” He recently hit the headlines when he attempted to sell a national newspapers photos of former East German leader Erich Honeker having relations with a dolphin. They proved to be fakes. His name has been passed to the Director of Public Prosecutions.

Riot!

So, were you amongst the protesters at the G20 conference in London this week? Personally, just as I did during the anti-Iraq war demonstrations, I followed John Lennon's example and held a 'bed-in' instead. Obviously, the bed involved wasn't in a hotel or shop window - it was in my bedroom - and I wasn't sharing it with a Japanese conceptual artist. Nevertheless, it was a 'bed-in', I was definitely thinking anti-capitalism thoughts whilst I laid there, right until I got up for work. Once again, these protests brought out the ludicrous, not to mention patronising, response from opponents that these people should think themselves lucky they live in a society which allows them to protest. The attitude seems to be that you should just be glad to have this right, rather than actually exercise it. Perhaps the idiots who come out with such sentiments would like us not to exercise a few more of our rights - the right to vote, maybe, or the right to privacy, or a fair trial? It was also pretty depressing to see the media focusing on the few isolated incidences of violence which took place, implying that these characterised the whole of the protests.

If nothing else, the G20 protests rekindled my interest in developing a boardgame on the subject of civil unrest. 'Riot! The Game of Inner-City Violence' has been an on-off project for me for over twenty years. The concept first surfaced when I was an undergraduate and I've periodically come back to it, with little success. Obviously, it would be a two-player game, with one playing as the rioters, the other as the police. The key to the gaming mechanics would be the concept of escalation, with various events - arrests of peaceful protesters, assaults on the police, heavy-handed policing, for instance - in the early turns would begin to escalate say, a civil rights march, into first a confrontation before becoming a full-scale riot. As the escalation factor increases, so the resources available to each side increases: body armour and tear gas for the police, fire bombs and barricades for the rioters, for instance . Naturally, the objective for the police player would be to prevent escalation, for the riot player it would be to ferment a complete breakdown of civil order by escalating the whole situation out of control. For the police player, there is always a risk that its actions to contain the unrest could actually escalate the situation further. The rioting player could try and further escalate the situation by deploying things like agitators and rumours of police brutality, but a too rapid escalation could result in the situation burning itself out before the objectives are reached, or in martial law being declared and troops deployed. Ultimately, I'd envisage the game offering a series of scenarios encompassing such classic examples of civil unrest as the 1984 miner's strike (perhaps focusing on secondary picketing), the anti-poll tax demonstrations in London and the Brixton riots. I really think this one could be a winner.

Scream and Cream Yet Again

Its a little known fact that many porn actresses, although talented physical performers, are completely unable to produce satisfactory vocal performances to match. Consequently, producers and directors are always on the lookout for suitable vocal doubles. According to Vernon Diddle, an expert on the subject, this practice has a long and honourable history, dating back to at least the 1930s and legendary stag-movie producer Irwin J Whipper. In the wake of King Kong’s success, Whipper produced a porno cash-in entitled King Dong, featuring an amorous ape on the rampage in Manhattan. For the climactic sequences where the heroine falls for the charms of the heavily-endowed primate on the roof of an apartment block, Whipper found that leading lady Fanny Lincolnshire just wasn’t able to provide the requisite level of decibels. His solution was to pirate Fay Wray’s screams from the original King Kong and dub them over the final scenes of his own film. (Finding Fanny’s lovemaking too demanding, Dong is unable to keep up his erection and, frustrated, leaps from the roof clutching his flaccid member, prompting a passing policeman to comment “It was beauty that killed his beast”). Wray’s pirated screams were also used in the 1935 sequel Son of Dong and 1948’s Mighty Joe Dong, essentially a remake of King Dong.

Diddle, a sound recordist in the porn film industry, told us that it wasn’t just Fay Wray whose screams were purloined for illicit use on porn soundtracks - although for many years her screams were the preferred first choice (just as Johnny Weismuller’s Tarzan call would be dubbed over subsequent inferior Tarzans, including Lex Barker and Ron Ely). Other horror film screamers such as Evelyn Ankers and Gloria Stuart also found their vocal talents misappropriated for such porno epics as Pootenanny Toot and Of Inhuman Bondage. This practice was finally outlawed by the Screen Actor’s Guild in 1949, and porno producers were forced to find their substitute screamers elsewhere. Their solution, Diddle reveals, was to secretly record female stars known for their vocal abilities whilst they made love. This practice started even before the 1949 ban - Irwin J Whipple succeeded in obtaining a recording of Bette Davis’ amazing screaming whilst she was being juked by Errol Flynn’s amazing bone flute. Her screaming was so loud that the sound recordist responsible suffered permanent damage to his hearing (he also claimed that Flynn’s banging stick was so long he was able to stand three feet from the bed and read a newspaper whilst he banged Davis). Davis’ cries of ecstasy were later used on countless stag-films, including Blow the Man Down and Susie’s Buttonhole Deelite. Other popular stars targeted by the porn producers included Joan Crawford and Mary Astor. Rumour has it that notorious peeping tom Oliver Hardy supplemented his meagre film income during the lean years of the 1940s by making many of these secret recordings.

April Fools

So, did you guess which of today's news stories was actually a 'hilarious' April Fool's joke perpetrated by your newspaper/radio station/TV news programme? Nope, neither did I. My money was on the story about Alan Sherarer becoming Newcastle manager. After all he - or anyone else, for that matter - would surely be a fool to go there, I thought. But apparently that one's true. I've probably mentioned before how much I hate those April Fool's stories the news media feel obliged to run every 1st of April, mainly because they are so bloody lame. You'd think that with the kind of resources and (alleged) writing talent available to the mainstream news outlets, they'd come up with something better than the kind of shit they usually serve up. Obviously, I've never bothered with running special April Fool's Day stories in The Sleaze - after all, I'm publishing that sort of stuff all year round. Maybe I should publish something true every April 1st instead.

Of course, this day does have a special significance for The Sleaze, marking, as it does, the site's ninth anniversary. Yes folks, the site first went live on 1 April 2000. Frankly, I'm amazed we're still here, particularly after the sharp decline in traffic we suffered over the past nine months. However, the past couple of weeks have seen a modest recovery in visitor numbers, so perhaps things are looking up. Anyway, as ever on this date, I've posted an 'official' anniversary story (quite how it can be anything other than 'official', I don't know, unless there's an outbreak of guerrilla posting by unauthorised contributors on The Sleaze). This year it's Lost Tribe of London, a story which has been years in the making. Actually, it has existed as a title in search of a story for years, something which quite often happens at The Sleaze. Whilst it so far hasn't generated the same level of traffic as, say, Celebrity Death Watch, it's done pretty well for such a surreal subject without an obvious link to any current news item. So there you have it - nine years. Who would have thought it?