To Make the News, try Food or Rude!

Looking for items for my 'Grumpy's Alternative News', I was struck by how many stories were either 'rude' or all about food.

Bears all over the world are apparently foraging for food prior to their forthcoming hibernation. I know the feeling. And a Christmas flavoured Pot Noodle's gone on sale, having been tried out on British troops overseas. Called 'Pot Noeldle' its 'a festive fusion of turkey and stuffing with all the trimmings'. Looking even further ahead The Church of England has produced the first ever Christian Easter egg, priced £.3.99 in order to fight commercialism. Look out for it next year. I notice Greggs the bakers are going all posh, offering pain au chocolat and croissants. In the south-east, OK, I'm not so sure 'up north'. We don't mess about north of Watford. That's probably why two tram drivers in Blackpool have been suspended for being overweight. The council have given them a month to lose half a stone. Not sure about the food properties of gugas (young gannets) but they're serving them free at the Musa Restaurant in Aberdeen. Animal welfare groups aren't too amused. Wonder if they would go with Naga Hari, the worlds hottest chilli pepper, grown on a chilli farm in Devon. (If you want to impress at the next cocktail party you go to, mention the Scoville scale, evidently the way to measure a chilli's heat.) It certainly won't go with the seventy year old Mortlach whisky, (price for a full bottle £10,000) on exhibition at a trade fair in Stockholm. Somebody pinched it! Have a cigarette instead, preferably not made from tobacco, Almaty style. Its mildly narcotic and made from chicken droppings! And talking of smoking, though its not really food, did you notice Charlie the chimp has died at Bloemfontein Zoo in South Africa. Well known as 'a smoker', visitors thought it funny to give him cigarettes, Charle lived to fifty two years of age in spite of the publics stupidity. Good old Charlie.

'And now for something completely different', as they used to say in 'Monty Python'. Those of a sensitive nature, please go for a cup of tea!

I see Keith Richard's autobiography makes great reference to Mick Jaggers 'manhood'. Made even more interesting by Jerry Hall's comments that Keith was only jealous. She reckons that's just about the size of it! Whose telling the truth I suppose we'll never know. But don't these stories make you look small. Sorry!

Mind you, Martin Amis doesn't help. He suggests writing well about sex is impossible. He reckons sex lurked in the background of the works of Richardson, Fielding, Austen and Dickens. Then along came D. H. Lawrence and it was no longer in the background. Except that Amis suggests even Lawrence had no success 'describing the actual act'; strange man, Martin Amis.

If all this becomes too serious, Cliff's seventieth birthday 'bash' at the Albert Hall added an air of frivolity to the whole picture. A sex symbol at seventy indeed; The Daily Mirror suggested he was indeed a sexy boy fifty years ago. Well, the elderly lady who 'sashayed' up the isle to the rendering of 'Devil Woman' still thinks he fits the picture. Plus the hundreds of senior citizens who flocked to the front in his finale can't all be wrong.

I read the El Paradise, recently opened in Madrid, is Europe's first mega-brothel. Eighty bedrooms, an events centre for six hundred people and two other halls to host shows. I daren't make other comments. The mind boggles, and we'll leave it there!

It's difficult to decide what is merely funny and what is definitely in bad taste. I suppose it depends on many things. Frank Skinner wrote an article entitled 'Is this joke too rude.' He talked of regretting having no nude photographs of himself as a young man as 'It would be nice to have proof that my genitals didn't always look like 'Parky', (Michael Parkinson.') He actually said this on television. Funny or otherwise, there is a suggestion that some things are OK discussed privately but not publicly. I find that sort of thing almost hypercritical but I do concede our sensibilities vary. The first rule of blogging is never put into a post anything you do not wish to be read, an obvious point. Having said that, I would not wish to offend anyone. A young women teacher was recently sentenced for having sex with her pupils. The attitude to this varies, one small point, is the attitude the same where a male teacher is involved; I wonder.

Getting a mite serious, this post so lets lighten the mood. I notice staid, inoffensive, not really with it Marks and Spencer are moving with these less than delicate times. Have you seen their latest men's underwear. Called 'Bodymax Frontal Enhancement Pants' they have an in-built fuzzy codpiece protruding from the front of the boxer shorts. (You can also buy vests that enhance and padded socks.) What do the initials M and S now stand for, any suggestions.

The pants are definitely me, I can't wait to go to town. Mind you, it does seem a shame to wear trousers as well; might try them without, where I live it's fairy quiet! Mind you, sex and sexiness is a great attribute when you're young. But at my age, in my condition, what's the modern parlance, 'You're having a laugh!'