"What's that, Mr Tony Blair...?"

Hmm, what's more disturbing: the fact it's approaching a whole decade since Brass Eye was first broadcast, or that it's been almost as long since Chris Morris did anything even approaching those standards on television?

In the recent light of the depressing Nathan Barley and his patchy cameo in the (more miss than h)IT Crowd, perhaps those old claims anointing Morris as the true heir to Peter Cook were just that little premature and wide of the mark - or, at least, if such a label really, really must exist, might have been better diverted to his old On The Hour collaborator Armando Iannucci, whose The Thick Of It has been a politically-pungent yet also expertly funny delight...

Okay, maybe Morris has just got a little rusty, and he has after all has set fearsomely high standards already.

But still, for the moment it's more enlightening to see Armando now appearing to find a regular berth in The Observer, replacing the monotonous old grizzlings of (Cook's former Private Eye mucker) Richard Ingrams, with his same-old-same-old obsessions with gay people, the BBC and the Archbishop of Canterbury (sometimes at the same time, other times separately...)

On a feeling-very-jaded and lethargic day (partly stupid Spurs-related, it's true, along with other dullnesses...), Armando in today's Observer was at least briefly perk-uppering.

Especially the idea of classing smokers as terrorists, because they're 'very slow suicide bombers'...

I just haven't earned it yet, baby...

A bit of a deflating day, Wednesday. I spent the morning fixing to finalise the details of a forthcoming four-day trip to Lesotho, to investigate the country's appalling Aids suffering (more than one-third of the country's population is HIV-positive, including 49 per cent of the women), speak to Government officials, aid workers, Aids-ravaged families and eight-year-old heads of households - and also explore the intriguing-sounding phenomenon of 'herd boys', kids sent into the mountains from the age of five upwards to live, fend for themselves and herd cattle well into their teens...
Only to arrive back in the office and find my boss, having enthusiastically approved the project not long back, now abruptly veto-ing it. Pah... And, furthermore, bah...
Meaning the only mild pleasure of my day was spotting Morrissey strolling down Bond Street this afternoon, tucked under a grey flat cap, looking even greyer in the face himself, and thoroughly weary with this world of woes...

As Jasper Carrott once so aptly put it: you lose some, you draw some...

"On a return to Waterloo..."

Is there a finer vantage point in, and over, London than the dead-centre of Waterloo Bridge, as the sun slowly sets and the sky seeps through various shades of blue, grey, bluer then finally black, the only illumination from sparkling dots of tacky lights along the Charing Cross Pier or the twinkling crown of Canary Wharf, as stern black taxis rumble along behind - occasionally pausing a moment for a gleeful camera-toting to hop out, flash a few snaps, then bound back in and back home again, while more leisurely strollers lean over the edge into the middle distance and just absorb it all in, stretching east and west along the river, along both banks, amid wintry drizzle or summer's evening breezes, eyes peering over those scurring minutely over Hungerford Bridge, then eyes wide-opening over the awesome architecture dipping all the way from Westminster to Wapping, then eyes shuttering softly in calm contemplation...?

Well, I don't think there can be, anyway...

As a teenager, I used to spend an unusual number of school-break days simply arming myself with a good book, a camera and a one-day travelcard, and simply wandering around London for the duration... Catching the train from Finchley Central to Camden Town, as a rule, then pounding the pavements from there and then onwards.

Regents Park, St James's Park and Hyde Park would be the most regular haunts, allocating a certain amount of time - and number of almost-random photos - to each one, before bustling along the likes of Whitehall, Fleet Street, the London Wall, Cheapside (fairly mainstream and obvious locations all, I now realise, as I try to head a little more intriguingly off the beaten track), all the while dipping into oddball reference books such as Benedict le Vay's Eccentric London or another called London's Ghosts, all the better to try to summon up mysterious memories I can never really have known, spirits of shared city-zen-ship...

And while I would occasionally venture as far afield as, ooh, Richmond Hill, I always, but always homed back in on Cleopatra's Needle as dusk began to fell, trying to memories the inscriptions on all four sides, and taking turns with the canoodling couples to nab the best shore's-edge vantage point and simply ponder...

Then, a few steps around the twisting staircase up onto the bridge, and I would spend at least an hour, often much longer, simply pacing from one end to the other, from one side to the next, guilelessly marvelling at this London, this sophistication and this simplicity, and somehow, just now, just here, no other care mattered...

Of course, it could never last. Neither the night nor the feeling. The too-chill wind of approaching midnight, approaching maturity, tends to start sweeping such blithely-for-the-moment moments away pretty sharpish...

But, but, but... Like Proust chomping on his tea-dipped cake (Pseuds Corner here I come...), I was there again suddenly, briefly, last night - both on the bridge, and back in time - while harrying, hurrying across on the way to wine and cheese off the Embankment, hastily-bought bunch of tulips in hand, and tightened tie, collar and suit where baggy jeans and Modern Life Is Rubbish sweatshirt used to be - and, despite running behind time, had to stop and simply stare.

And, gently, joyously, lose all thoughts all together - for just a few easy minutes, anyway, before snapping back into action and life and the crowd once more...

Oh, as long as I gaze on...

An odd moment of wry humour...

... in the tragic Damilola Taylor trial today:

"It isn't every day that someone confesses to a murder on a park bench, is it?"
- "It is in Peckham."

Put me in mind of Boycie's line in an old Only Fools And Horses episode:
"I'd like to get away as quick as possible. I've left my Mercedes parked downstairs and you know what they're like on this estate. They'd have the wheels off a Jumbo if it flew too low."

Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?

As a so-called rock rebel once famously asked...
Well, the other night I went to watch Walk The Line, the new film biopic of a much grittier, grizzlier, more inspired and inspiring musician than Johnny Rotten: Johnny Cash.
And a lovely piece of work it was too, enough to send me scurrying back home to very deeply croon along to the full Folsom Prison concert, and five discs of late-life Unearthed gems the rest of the weekend through...
Joaquin Phoenix looked very little like the Man In Black himself - too good-looking, really - but seemed to inhabit him with the right amount of intensity. Yet Reese Witherspoon was the real revelation, a delight as the equally-delightful June Carter, both in song and in sunny comedy.
The between-concert, cramped tourbus tetchiness was well-played too, especially the simmering 'Killer' Jerry Lee Lewis - even if the gauche young Elvis cameo seemed a cute and unnecessary nod and wink too far... Did Cash never tour with anyone who didn't go on to become a rock'n'roll legend in their own right?
All in all, the performances and the music helped transform a fairly straight, unspectacular, uncannily-Ray-like biopic into top-class entertainment (speaking of Ray, while Jamie Foxx was superb and certainly Oscar-worthy as the elder Ray Charles, I'm amazed more attention hasn't been given to the spellbindingly poignant portrayal of the young Ray by C J Sanders)
Into the same class must go Coal Miner's Daughter, from 25 years ago, featuring Sissy Spacek in an Acadamy Award-winning portrayal of the goddess-like Loretta Lynn (who wittily remarks in her stunning - sorry for all the superlatives, I'll get back to whingeing soon - 2004 album Van Lear Rose: "Some big folk in Hollywood thought a movie about my life'd be good - It was a big deal, made a big splash - what I want to know's what happened to the cash...?")
But, but, BUT: ay, here's the rub.
137 whole minutes devoted to supposedly the most intriguing, important moments in the legendary life of Johnny Cash.
And yet nowhere to be seen is the scene of his crazed farmyard fight with an ostrich called Waldo, which left the outlaw who supposedly "killed a man in Reno, just to watch him die" less heroically nursing five broken ribs and a torn-open abdomen...
History fails to record the precise damage inflicted upon the ostrich.
But still: surely this is the kind of thing any right-thinking movie-goer would love to see recreated on the silver screen...?
For shame, film-makers, for shame.

Let's just hope it's being saved for the special Director's Cut DVD...

Sometimes only one word will do...

All apologies, and thanks - accompanied by my own self-slapping yelps of "D'oh!" - to all those who have commented on my various indulgent ramblings below, and yet whose contributions have failed until now to appear.
Perhaps due to some inexplicable computer breakdown for which no-one can be blamed.
But, er, actually probably because I somehow altered my Blogger settings, meaning comments must be moderated before appearing - and then, very inconveniently, utterly neglecting to realise or indeed know how to fulfil my meagre moderating duties.
So, belatedly but enjoyably, here - or, rather, below - they all are, rescued from the Twilight Zone of my incompetence...
I'm off to learn some Beatles ukulele chords and shall try to look after this blog more responsibly upon my return...

I've suffered for my music.....

... now it's your turn.

What a lovely line. Think I'll steal it, to introduce any stint with a guitar any future family occasion/open-mic night/drunken party singalong/wedding, funeral or barmitzvah Fate might fling my always-willing way...

Though it comes courtesy of the frustratingly phenomenally-gifted Neil Innes, on the criminally-underexposed Rutland Weekend Television, which I've been belatedly enjoying recently, both screen and sound...
And which spawned the Rutles, the 'Pre-Fab Four', and their Spinal Tap-rivalling movie, All You Need Is Cash. And Innes' 1996 update, the Anthology-competing Archaeology, whose final song features the near-perfect lyric:

"Back in '64 before you were born,
People had no time for pouring scorn (or scoring porn),
On dreams of love and peace,
No one was obese,
Only tight trousers were worn..."

Of course, Eric Idle and his structured surrealism were the perfect verbal fit for Neil Innes at the time. I'll be intrigued to see how Spamelot fares and compares when it opens over here soonish. Hopefully, a damn sight funnier than Splitting Heirs, anyway...

Incidentally (very, very incidentally), I met Eric Idle, about 12 years ago. We were both browsing in the Virgin Megastore on Oxford Street, and after a hesitant double-take, I realised it was him - clad in a rather shoddy green Parka - and said 'Hello'. And how much I admired his work.
He smiled back, thanked me, said that made him glad, and signed an autograph, on a scrap of paper I fished out of my inside pocket.

True story.