– a cinema-sized bag of wine gums is the size, weight and colour of a psychedelic sack of coal.
The reason the food crap and drink crap are so large is an obvious one; so they can charge more. A table for two at the Savoy Grill, with both of you drinking champagne by the vat, and having cigars after, and some caviar in a bap, would be cheaper than going to a cinema and having a large coke and plate of ‘nachos’ (old library tickets boiled in cornmeal).
1) AND NOW! – A HEARTWARMING STORY OF TWO GENERATIONS! Wow! Thanks for the warning! Let’s make a really big mental note not to see that film.
2) Those are the best 30 seconds in the movie? They must be, if that’s what they used for the trailer. How the hell bad are the other three hours 29 minutes and 30 seconds?
3) Didn’t we see this trailer last week?
4) And aren’t we going to see it on every DVD that we rent?
5) Well, that was the entire plot of the film. Hardly worth going to see it now.
Wash your hair with this chemical gloop – which we’ve called oxycortiferogerontizine although you will know it better as ‘donkey widdle’ – and it’ll have more ‘body’. Later it will fall out, giving your carpet more ‘body’. Hair ads are the only places left, apart from crack dens, where you can still boast about how many chemicals you’ve put in something.
And who are all these scientists in science labs, working day and night to invent shinier hair? No wonder there isn’t a cure for the common cold. ‘Sorry Mrs Smith, your husband is going to die of Lassa fever but good news! We’ve cleared up his dandruff.’
What in the name of hell are you talking about? What’s that woman doing? Why is everyone mumbling in a French accent? Where are your trousers? Is that a plinth? What’s happened to the furniture?
Perfume ads may not tell you anything about the product they’re selling, but they do accurately describe the state of your mind if you drink some.
Only worthless TV presenter scum front these ads. Who else but a fourth-rate talking head who isn’t doing that well would think it a good idea to sell crippling loans to members of the public with bad credit records? The near-equivalent of actual conmen, loan ad presenters are inches away from being criminals. They are saying, ‘I am famous so take my advice and get more into debt than you were before.’ Vile grinning filth. See also ‘Have you been hurt in a trip or fall?’ You’ll be hurt in a fall in a minute, you ambulance-chasing ghoul. Get something bad and die.
These stupid ads are always set in glittering bars and discos, where the occupants are all in their 20s and have been going at the liquor like billy-o. They are always laughing and dancing and shaking bottles so the contents go everywhere. A real bar full of pissed-up 20-year-olds would be hell on earth. What these ads don’t show is that ten minutes after the camera crew left, a huge fist-fight broke out and one of the male models smashed an empty rum bottle and tried to glass the other male model.
Ever been to Ireland? Some of the pubs are lovely, but a lot of them are, in fact, concrete sheds that smell of damp and bad furniture. Lots of them look like quiet British country pubs. Quite a few are modern and trendy with lots of shiny metal. And until recently very few of them had any of the following in them:
1) Vintage Guinness posters
2) Old road signs saying DUBLIN 43 MILES
3) Green neon signs in the shape of shamrocks
4) Lager
5) 2 different kinds of Irish whiskey
6) A jukebox stacked with the complete works of The Pogues (from London) and The Waterboys (from Scotland)
7) The entire contents of a provincial Irish grocer’s shop or sub post office, circa 1956
8) A signed photograph of U2
9) A lunch menu that offers a choice of soda bread or mussels
10) Toilets with signs in Gaelic
And yet this is the old toot that passes for Irish authenticity in your average faux Irish pub. Around the world, from Chile to Moscow, from Nepal to Tierra Del Fuego, the fake Irish bar has spread, along with all the other vexing drivel of fake Paddywhackery. Designed to appeal to the same kind of cultural illiterate who thinks Scotland is in Wales, the Faux Irish bar is like some sick prop out of a brewer’s idea of Westworld, where animatronic farm labourers drink CGI pints of Guinness and sing The Men Behind The Wire to an mp3 accompaniment of Uilleann pipes and bodhrans.
Still, we should be grateful that the world’s most popular theme bar is not the ‘Essex Pub’. Dear God.
‘The only thing I get from the theatre,’ Paul McCartney said to Joe Orton, ‘is a sore arse.’ While this was a remark that Orton relished on several levels, it does have the force of truth behind it. Theatres are rubbish. In other cultures, theatre is acknowledged to be historically and ethnically an important part of a nation’s cultural past. In ours, we still let actors, directors and critics pretend that it’s important. It’s not; it’s a leftover art form from the olden days that’s about as relevant to the times as operetta, the York Mystery Plays and Morris Dancing. And a lot less enjoyable.
Where do we begin to tell the story of how crap a night at the theatre can be? For a start, most old theatres are the size of a kennel. Theatre designers spent so much time on the rococo balustrades and filigree whatnottery that they obviously forgot to put the seats in. The foyer is designed to prevent any swinging of cats. And the Royal Box is, literally, a box.
And then they want you to buy a programme. This is a piece of cheaply printed tat which looks a bit like a football programme but is spectacularly more dull.
And then they want you to buy a programme. This is a piece of cheaply printed tat which looks a bit like a football programme but is spectacularly more dull. A theatre programme contains the following rotten items:
1) A history of the play, which, had you read it before you booked the tickets, would have caused you to never set foot in a theatre again.
2) A biography of the director, who comes over as a cross between Rommel and a halfwit.