Scotland’s Jesus. Frankie Boyle
important to him than his political career and, like Blair, business will reward him amply when he goes. Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez died and thousands of Venezuelans came out to mourn his death; if David Cameron died the biggest outpouring would be against the news over-running when we wanted to watch The One Show. If Cameron died tomorrow so few people would turn up you’d be able to cater the funeral with a packet of Monster Munch.
• • •
I was shocked to hear of the death of Lady Thatcher. They say the good die young, so I’d just assumed she was immortal. But we must look at the positives. By all accounts, everyone now has a little more leg room around that big oval table at SPECTRE HQ. Sadly, many of her friends weren’t able to attend the funeral as they’ve been hanged at war crime tribunals. She was cremated. That’s what happens when you leave nobody in Britain who actually knows how to dig any more. The funeral brought central London to a standstill. The last time she managed that was the poll tax riots. I was all for a lavish, publically funded cremation. Right up until she died.
It’s never a tragedy when a Tory dies. The tragedy is that they never truly lived. I’m not sure that Margaret Thatcher got many women into politics, in the same way that Myra Hindley didn’t get a lot of women into hiking. All that Thatcher achieved was to ensure that people living in garbage camps a hundred years from now are going to think that Hitler was a woman.
A friend said of her that in retirement ‘the nice side of her came out’, something that only took eighty-five years and three strokes. It was speculated that Thatcher left an estate valued at £66 million in her will. It appears that she made her money by investing in a plastic-surgery company just before the Falklands War. She actually survived two attempts on her life. One being the Brighton bomb, the other when her assailant, after wrestling her onto an altar, stabbed the Daggers of Megiddo into her chest in the incorrect sequence.
Thatcher was desperate to end the days of governments bailing out lame-duck businesses, determined that they should stand on their own two feet. Hence the big switch from manufacturing to banking. Nick Clegg said, ‘She drew lines we are navigating today’, mainly as we weave our way home round the various companies digging up our gas pipes.
Several MPs mentioned Thatcher’s beguiling sexuality. They say she had the ankles of a twenty-year-old – they were paperweights given as a gift by her chum General Pinochet. She did always come across as a very cold woman – I can’t help feeling sorry for poor old Denis. Going down on her must have been like licking a lamp-post in winter.
Many of Thatcher’s friends were quite emotional at the funeral. I think I saw a tear forming in the burning eye of Sauron, and when it was time for the cremation Simon Weston threw himself on, for old times’ sake. The political guest list was a damning indictment of the inefficiency of the IRA. The only thing John Major ever did of note was having sex with Edwina Currie and not getting his head ripped off like a male praying mantis. I was surprised to see Sarah Ferguson there; I’d have thought she’d have sold her ticket on eBay. Fergie had a great time, though. She could finally sit in a room full of dictators without worrying if any of them worked for the News of the World.
Osborne cried. The world thinks George Osborne is a sensitive soul. Coincidentally, the man who sold him his new contact lenses has turned up dead in a forest. I think the stress of lying to us about having no money made him finally crack when the man in the silver cape stepped into the gold box. Osborne can apparently produce tears at will, just by picturing his policies’ effects on the weakest in society . . . safe in the knowledge no one watching could differentiate between tears of sadness, and ones of joy. Of course, the saddest part of the funeral is when the curtain shuts around the body. I just have to be grateful that I found Amanda Thatcher’s hotel window in the first place.
Seeing Cameron and Clegg united despite their warring parties reminds me of Romeo and Juliet – in that I hope this ends with them both killing themselves. The deputy prime minister now holds weekly radio phone-ins. So there you go – an answer to the question, ‘Could any radio DJ be less popular right now than Dave Lee Travis?’ It’s not all bad though – as part of this job swap the Secretary of State for Business is now Tim Westwood. I can see this sneaking into other aspects of Clegg’s life – when Cameron was reading a speech the other day Clegg punctuated it by shouting out ‘Shabba’.
Clegg wants to create more construction opportunities to give young Brits jobs. I wonder how many media graduates it takes to make a docusoap about the qualified builders that will have to be brought in from Poland? He also wants to raise the speed limit to 80 mph – so that his motorcade can pass through any British city without being destroyed by angry locals.
The Lib Dems are now so extinct they’ll exist only as a memory on I Hate the Noughties, being recalled animatedly but slightly inaccurately by Russell Kane in a segment even shorter than the one about me. Most people hate all three major parties. You’d do as well to put your X straight on to the polling booth and have the country run by a collection of portable balsa-wood cubicles.
A poll revealed the Lib Dems face becoming a political irrelevance right across the UK, not just in coalition meetings. As far as the coalition goes the Lib Dems now have leverage directly comparable to trying to open a five-litre tin of emulsion with a lolly stick.
It came as no surprise that MPs voted to keep the Lords – they were never going to get rid of a second house. Nick Clegg’s worried without Lords reform he’ll achieve nothing in this parliament. Of course you will Nick. At the very least you’ll have destroyed your party.
As for Ed Miliband he has emerged as a leader more faceless than a highly buffed marble statue of a baby’s arse, whose idea of passion is undoing the top button of his pyjamas. It’s strange that he’s so forgettable because he’s got a face so weird it could make a police horse cry. I’d like to make different jokes about Miliband but we know so little about him it would literally be easier to put together a five-page Match.com profile for coastal fog.
At least no one can accuse Labour of a lack of policies or vision. I certainly felt the spirit of Nye Bevan sweep the party conference when Ed Balls rallied his troops with his proposal to part-fund a temporary reduction in stamp duty with money he hopes to raise by selling off the 4G phone network. 4G is going to be a boost for business. Salesmen tend to be way more focused in meetings if they have the technology needed to crack one off in a lay-by beforehand. Miliband has revealed he’s afraid his young sons can access violent porn on his smartphone. To prevent this from happening do what I do – before giving the phone to the kids make sure you’ve deleted the contents of the history page.
I was surprised to learn Ed Miliband went to the same primary school as Boris Johnson. I’d naturally assumed both were failed prototypes for a Geppetto-like toymaker before he successfully made a real boy. Miliband’s parents fled Nazi Germany. But let’s not forget Cameron’s forebears were some of the first to describe Hitler as a monster – after he drank claret with the fish course when over for dinner.
Ed says he wants to make us ‘One Nation’. Sadly that nation is Greece. We are united in one nation, one nation that thinks ‘Not Ed . . . Anyone but Ed.’ Sixty-three per cent of Labour supporters say he’s not fit to be in Number 10. But he needn’t worry; that never seems to have been particularly important.
Predictably, at the party conference the delegates stood for the leader’s ovation with the weary disinterest and emotional disconnect of a nine-year-old Catholic boy unbuttoning his shorts for choir practice. Yet he shouldn’t feel too smug. It’s a fine line between a standing ovation and everyone just wanting to be first out of the room.
• • •
At a luxury five-star golfing resort in Northern Ireland the G8 leaders discussed plans to tackle world poverty, in much the way as you’d try to solve the AIDS crisis in a brothel. Syria was high on the G8 agenda. As far as arming the rebels goes, I think it’s a good idea. As it must be some help militarily if our troops know exactly what’s being used against them in eighteen months’ time. We can arm the Syrian rebels just like we armed Afghanistan, with an agreement to pop back after twenty years to show