Sexist Pig

Our sign language tutor told us a joke the other day. Woman driver (don't start - she's a woman who drives, okay?), driving in the country, down tiny, winding road. Man in 4x4 coming other way and then comes to a halt.

'Pig!' she shouts.

'Bitch!' He replies, before backing up - and promptly crashes into a pig.

It's funnier in BSL. Although, as with 'My dog has no nose' in German, it doesn't really translate, as the sign for 'pig' as in animal is one thing, whereas the insult is altogether more emphatic.

Aaaanyway, a friend just alerted me to a form of sexism I hadn't considered. The recent royal scandal about an unnamed Royal being blackmailed for having gay sex and drugs at a party had everyone leaping to their most likely suspect. But when Buck Palace confirmed that it was a minor Royal, everyone abandoned their 'From Nazi to Nancy' headlines and started thinking of lesser Royals. I had mental images of some Royal or other thinking 'Me? Minor Royal? The bounders!', but not once did I think that it might have been a lady.

The fact is, lesbianism has never been illegal in this country (aside from when it involved under-16s), so it's consequently maintained a sophisticated air for most men. Whereas by being driven underground by Old Queen Vic, gay sex has always had a level of horror for straight men for whom homophobia is more to do with being afraid of being labelled as gay themselves than of being afraid of poovery per se. But it's true that I didn't hear a single rumour suggesting it could be a female royal - a minor princess or daughter of a viscount.

Now, is that because the media has trained us to assume all gay sex scandals involve public toilets, or do we simply not think of women as likely subjects for blackmail? Would a bisexual woman feel the need to hide the fact as much as a bisexual man?

I dunno. But something tells me that having sex with a Royal would be as close to bestiality with a horse as one could ever get...

Gooood Morning, Sirrrr...

I can't believe these scams still exist - especially when they've been exposed so many times and they insist on using the same story:

Dear XXXXXX,

I am Barrister Danuel Wanger, a legal practitioner, I am the personal attorney to Mr.M. W.Sangster, a nationality Of your country, who used to work with Shell Development Company in Lome Togo. He used to be my client.

On the 7th of June 2004, my client, his wife and their only daughter were involved in a car accident along Nouvissi express Road. All occupants of the vehicle unfortunately lost their lives. Since then I have made several enquiries to your embassy here to locate any of my clients extended relatives, this has also proved unsuccessful.

After these several unsuccessful attempts, I decided to track his last name over the Internet, to locate any member of his family hence I contacted you.I have contacted you to assist in repartrating the fund valued at US$9.5Mmillion°(Nine Million Five Hundred Thousand Dollas) left behind by my client before it gets confisicated or declared unserviceable by the Finance Firm where this huge amount were deposited.

The said Finance Company has issued me a notice to provide the next of kin or have his account confisicated within the next twenty one official working days.
Since I have been unsuccesfull in locating the relatives for over 3years now, I seek the consent to present you as the next of kin to the deceased since you have the same last names, so that the proceeds of this account can be paid to you.

Therefore, on receipt of your positive response, we shall then discuss the sharing ratio and modalities for transfer.I have all necessary information and legal documents needed to back you up for claim.

All I require from you is your honest cooperation to enable us see this transaction through. I guarantee that this will be executed under legitimate arrangement that will protect you from any breach of the law.

Best Regards,

Barr.Danuel Wanger(Esq)


Now, try reading this again after watching this YouTube clip of a classic scam from Fonejacker:

Laid Them on the Green

They might be the cause of embarrassment if you reveal them during a karaoke performance, but the mondegreen is often a thing of pleasure. That wonderful moment when you realise that they lyrics to a song weren't quite how you thought they were.

My first experience of this was in 'I Will Survive' by Gloria Gaynor, in which my seven-year-old self was convinced the song was about a woman refusing to be friends with a boy who bullied her at school. After all, 'weren't you the one who tried to hit me with your bike?' Later on, one of my oldest friends tried to convince me that Madonna's 'La Isla Bonita' contained the words 'Last night I slept with some Dago' and 'Chocolate goolies, Ice for free.' I wasn't fooled.

Madonna seems to have a real skill for these things though. Who can forget 'Erotica', where she urges: 'Bill Oddie, Bill Oddie - put your hands all over Bill Oddie'? Or that glorious chorus from 'Ray of Light' where she eulogises over a former Brookside actress's obsession with glitterball-illuminated garden pond decorations: 'Anna Friel - is a disco gnome!'

A really obscure one is the reluctance of Liberty X to acknowledge how influential a certain Doctor Who writer has been on their career. Why else would they take time out from their cover of 'Ain't Nobody' to refer to 'The Russell T we cannot mention'?

Once you start noticing mondegreens, you begin to hear them all over the place. My own version of it is, I think, slightly influenced by Tourette's Syndrome as I frequently hear people say the most filthy things only for them to repeat themselves and I discover they were actually asking me if I could flick their cat out or something.

And that, your honour, is my defence...

(p.s. – I do love that my spellchecker doesn’t recognise the word 'Tourette's' and offers 'toilette' as an alternative. Is it trying to say I'm a potty mouth?)

An-nun-ci-ate!

My flatmate managed to get tickets for the first night of recordings for Jack Dee's Live at the Apollo - or as it's now called, Live at the Apollo as Jack's only hosting the first edition.

We took our seats in the circle and waited for the show to begin, and it took us just a few seconds to realise that the speakers in the circle hadn't been switched on. My flatmate went to investigate and was treated with utter indifference by the staff, as was I when I left the theatre and asked who the other acts were that night, only to be told by the grunt on the door that he couldn't possibly give that kind of information out. I felt the need to tell him that it didn't matter as we wouldn't be able to understand a fucking word they were saying anyway.

This coupled with a rude little hoodie who tried to push us out of the way as he walked down the street - which provoked me to punch him full-on in the back once I regained my balance - and it wasn't a good night all in all.

Anyway, as a preview for the broadcast of tonight's show on BBC1 this coming Friday, here's Russell Howard. See if you can understand him, because we couldn't.



We might have stayed to see the second episode, hosted with Jimmy Carr - at least he annunciates when he speaks. But his main act was possibly Alan Carr (he of the grating voice from Channel 4) and frankly, everyone so far that night had already sounded like a bee trapped in a jam-jar.

I'd like to dedicate this entry to everyone who was unfortunate enough to endure the rudeness of the staff on the door at the Apollo Hammersmith.

Oops

It worries me that, if tabloid news stories are to ever be believed, foot-fetishists might get beaten up by mobs of people who can't spell 'paedophile'.

I mean, while they're out on the rampage, who's minding their kids, eh?

BBC Journo Released - Jim Breathes Easy

It's difficult having comedy Tourettes; to have been grown up in a peer group where everything's fair game so long as it gets a laugh. It means that so many things leap out with comic potential that really, really shouldn't. I'll explain why...

Four months ago, a BBC reporter was kidnapped in Gaza - a terrible thing. Instantly, Alan Johnston became more famous within the BBC than he'd ever been for reporting - everyone knew his name and what he did. Everyone felt anxious about him, everyone prayed for his safe return.

Something struck me one day as I came into work though - what would he make of it all? How would he react to seeing the huge pendant posters of his face that suddenly appeared on the face of TV Centre; the weekly vigils; the front-page news and TV news bulletins about him, rather than his reporting. The videos that his captors made of him showed a man who was incredibly composed under impossible circumstances and I'm sure I'd have been sobbing my eyes out whereas he was so, so dignified. And of course, my first thoughts were always 'Please God, let him be released, safe and well,'

For a moment, my head became full of images of the nearest thing most people have seen to that moment when someone is released from captivity and is faced with a media hungry for news. No, not Terry Waite - Big Brother.

It's not the same - nowhere near - but the questions might be. How did you cope? What were your relationships like with your captors? What did you think of the food? Did you think you'd be in there for so long? It's what they asked Terry Waite and John McCarthy, and it's what they asked Makosi and Nadia.

A few weeks ago, these thoughts became too strong and I knew I had to channel them somewhere or else risk saying them out loud at the wrong time. I found myself writing a comedy sketch for my own amusement, in which Davina was there, interviewing Alan about his time in captivity. I asked a comedy writer friend of mine to read it, and while he was encouraging, he said that no-one would touch such a script until they new Alan was safe, and by then it'd be no longer topical. Even then, it'd probably be in bad taste and he couldn't think of a single team that I could send it to.

Quite right.

But now that we do know he's safe and alive, I can't help wondering again what he'll feel about the banners and the vigils. Wondering if any of the Big Brother contestants will get to see his reaction on TV and maybe consider that their own reactions to voluntary incarceration in a gameshow were perhaps a little over the top in comparison to the very real terror that Alan Johnston faced every day of those four months.

Coincidentally, this week saw the nearest the Channel 4 reality gameshow has ever got to having a housemate leave for genuine life-changing reasons, as businessman Jonathan was informed of his grandmother's death and chose to quit. That made difficult viewing on Channel 4 last night, yet I think it was handled well; we didn't see the moment that Jonathan was informed of her passing, which would have been way too invasive, and the shots chosen were distant, but even then, watching a contestant deal with something real was very upsetting - compared to the usual tantrums over who-ate-whose-chocolate-bar and who-said-what-about-who.

With that in mind, I hope the media doesn't rush too fast to be the first one to get Alan Johnston's 'exit interview'. I for one am not all that eager to hear about his 'best bits'...

Book Dropping

Apparently, Jeanette Winterson has left her latest novel on a train.

Well I mean, if she's not arsed about it enough to take it with her, that's a bad sign, isn't it?

It's a novel way of trying out Book Crossing though, but I doubt it'll catch on.

BSL Day

Had a fun Sign class today. Our tutor Terry is witty and always tries to illustrate his lessons with a few anecdotes, such as today's one, where he told us about driving from work on Monday, struggling to control his motorike against 60mph winds on the flyover, then getting home, driving his bike through the garage doors and being knocked off by the gate blowing shut and tipping him and the bike over. Six months ago, I wouldn't have got half of that. 'Motorbike' and 'wind' probably.

We've been learning direction verbs - that's verbs that change slightly to indicate different things, such as showing action to or from someone [I ask you / you ask me], an action that's distributed in various directions [ask upstairs / ask everyone], or repetition [keep on asking - ask, ask, ask] - all using the same hand-sign but changing the direction or position of it.

I need to practice more than I do, but it's good to have something to look forward to each week, and they're a nice bunch of people who all seem keen. I've signed up for the advanced course, so I hope I don't get out of my depth, but I seem to be coping okay so far.

18 March marks the fourth anniversary of the recognition of British Sign Language as a proper language with its own idioms and structure. Princess Diana did a lot of work to promote BSL, as its patron, but it took a long time for BSL to get any proper recognition.

I've just found this video on YouTube. As with most vids, there's no guarantee it'll be up for long, but the gist of it is that this guy is encouraging everyone who can speak BSL to celebrate the anniversary of it's transition into a 'proper' language.



I asked my pal Neil, who writes 'I Love London... Honest', why he learned to sign. One of his reasons was that more people should know how to, which works for me. We're both hearing, but Neil's very confident and articulate in signing, and he's been very encouraging to me.

Here's another YouTube video. This time, it's a very straightforward and patient guide to fingerspelling - the BSL alphabet, in other words. At the very least, I think everybody should know this:



Two posts in one day. Must sleep now...

News, not quite as it happens

Next to my desk at work is a small TV monitor so we can watch News 24 in case of major news stories. But because we work in an open-plan office, we have to keep the sound down. It means that sometimes we get the headlines from one story, with pictures from another, or sometimes the odd headline that just cracks us up.

A few weeks ago, David Cameron tried to maul Tony Blair with a few terrier nips, some of his focus-grouped soundbites designed to hide the real policies of the Tories and give away the fact that they agree with labour most of the time. As BBC News 24 showed us the footage, the rolling headlines gave us this little gem:



Of course, in the interests of balance, the headline was still there for the reverse shot of Blair:



As debates go, it was a bit of a train crash for both sides. I'd imagine. I couldn't hear it.

Sometimes, News TV offers up an unexpected treat, such as this expert on Climate Change (what we used to call 'the ozone's being fucked by big factories but my aerosol is getting the blame' in the old days). Fans of the TV sitcom Friends might remember one of Phoebe Buffay's old pseudonyms and get why I think this is so funny.



This reminds me of one of a sketch from The Day Today in which Gerry Adams (played by Steve Coogan) was undermined by having to breathe in helium before delivering his speech. How clever to get a man called 'Felangi' to be a TV pundit on global warming. Makes us feel like it's not even happening, doesn't it?

Oh, I Get it...

This from Monday, May 24, 1999 2:21pm, provoked by an email from Paully detailing a horrific encounter with a cabbie who supported the nail bomber's intentions:

Don't get me wrong, I've got nothing against cab drivers. Just wouldn't let one of them near me kids, that's all. No, really, some of my best friends are cab drivers. Don't mind those mini-cabs, but those BlackCab drivers should be strung up, driving round like they're from round here - they should all be sent back where they come from - the taxi-rank.