Messages

And yes, I wish these posts were editable too, having forgotten to delete the bit I realised was a bit too harsh.

"How many big heids can you fit in one wee bottle?"

Is what we used to ask about poppers thirty years ago when one of my pals had the great idea of each taking a big sniff then trying to play Street Fighter.

"Dude! That smells like ass."

Is what an American friend said to the young man who tried to offer us some in a Belfast nightclub ten years ago.

No further incidents to report.

The mate who gave me my first sniff assured me I'd feel hornier than I'd ever felt before. Unless being horny means your face feeling like it's going to burst in an explosion of blood, and having a pounding migraine into the bargain, he was very much mistaken.

I think I said it but I like Harrower Squad a lot. The absolute shitshow going on outside the cities is far more interesting than nonsense any radioactive whisky silliness.

I'll give it to you straight...

Early Lee told three jokes when asked for one.

Well, he was only a slip of a lad back then, writing into a Saturday morning kids' show and hoping for his first real grown-up record.


He was twenty eight years old.

I remember well (in 1985) when ColinYNWA & JayzusB.Christ (then employed as "Mek-Quakers" by Tharg) dragged Gerry Finley-Day out of King's Reach Tower by the hair and gave him a good kicking in an adjoining alley.

Yep, back when I was 10 we were punky punks from a punk background who loved punking around punkishly with other punks from the punk era.[/Pat Mills] [/Grant Morrison for that matter]

I love Pat Mills' classic work and I'll reread it forever, but I generally tend to take his angry reminisces with a pinch of salt.  It seems sometimes that apart from him, EVERYONE involved in the editorial teams of comics were various incarnations of the Antichrist.  The misogynist label I hadn't heard before, though, and just to be horribly petty, it's a bit rich from someone whose writing defines a female lover as someone 'who will stick one in your back'.  I don't really think he's a misgynist, of course, though I do remember a female Squaxx asking Tharg what Pat's 'major malfunction with women' was.

I tried to post this,  but no luck. Here it is again - read it and weep.

Sadly, Stew hadn't quite honed his craft yet as a prepubescent kid,  and the Trevor McDonald bit may possibly have been racist.

I'll watch the second half of it tonight- apparently Sting is going to give the shirt off his back away as a prize.  Apparently dads in their droves used to watch because of Sally James- went totally over my head as a 6 year old of course, but my grud, I see it now. Thin Kate Bush's slapstick sister.

Well feck me pink. I've got a bit addicted to Lee and Herring's old stuff so stuck on an old episode of Tiswas for a break from it. Twenty minutes in Sally reads out a joke from Stewart Lee from Solihull, who's trying to win an Ultravox album.  A little bit of research confirms it's very probably the same Stewart Lee. There's no escape.

HA! That's brilliant - did he win?

And also where does one find old episodes of Tiswas?

He did! I like to think he still has it - He's also a massive collector and hoarder, on a scale that would give any of us forum members a run for our money.

I found this on YouTube- the same episode had an art competition based around Rubik's Cube puns, which I vaguely remembered from my distant childhood. What I didn't remember was a kid's drawing of the 'Kube Klux Klan' - it was accepta-bulll in the eeiighties, I suppose.

Well feck me pink. I've got a bit addicted to Lee and Herring's old stuff so stuck on an old episode of Tiswas for a break from it. Twenty minutes in Sally reads out a joke from Stewart Lee from Solihull, who's trying to win an Ultravox album.  A little bit of research confirms it's very probably the same Stewart Lee. There's no escape.

I'd forgotten The Killing Fields was her work! I thought it was excellent- capturing both the absolute savagery and epic scale of the story with only one caption. That image of Sláine's hand dripping blood is indelibly burnt into my memory.

I totally get that, and fair play to her for going with the more financially rewarding path.  I paint and draw for a living, and I've tried drawing comics - I just can't do it.  It's insanely difficult and Angie Kincaid did a better job than I ever would.

I was just rereading the first Sláine story, and it struck me that it was a real shame she couldn't have stuck around the prog a bit longer.   I really liked her sole prog entry ever -  I mean, she created Sláine's look, and her version was the one that most artists stuck to.  I know it's easy to say what might have been, but maybe having such an influential female artist  in the prog for a longer period would have attracted more female creators over the years.  (Also, and I know it's not nearly as important as her talent, but I've just looked her up and she was an absolute stunner.  Of course, Uncle Pat cut quite the dash in his younger days too.)

Sure, isn't there a crock o' the stuff at the end o' the rainbow? Me, I got home at 7 and was asleep by 8. All-day benders are a thing of the past.

I heard somewhere the big lad was added to the big lad to fuck with Cromwell, who loved antiquities, but hated vulgarity.

Now that I didn't know.  Fair play though, I'm not a massive nationalist but I'm all about fucking with Cromwell. He was a muppet.

The "um... synthi sausage" line has gone down in history but taking a step back it's a pretty bizarre thing for Dredd to be saying. To what question, and to whom, is he answering? Why does he have one on a fork while on his bike? Is that fork part of the Justice Department's standard equipment for motorcycle officers? So many questions.

I think the simplest explanation is that Dredd has found the sausage-and-fork on the road.  He spots something on the ground in front of him as he patrols and thinks it may be a clue, but can't make out what it is at speed.  He scoops it up, stares at it and realises... it's a synthi-sausage?!  After all, I'm sure we've all been out driving* at one time or another and taken a fork in the road.

The second explanation is that Dredd felt something hit him in the head, and grabbed it as it bounced into his lap.  Again, he snatched it up and examined it, only to realise the offending item was a deliberately-hurled sausage on a fork.  Result: three-to-five in the juve cubes for Tucker, Gonch, Hollo, and Zammo. 


* Not together**
** Not until we club together for a forum-seating clown car that we can all squeeze into.

That always struck me as a very weird non-contextual thought-bubble too.  Whilst your explanations are far better, I'm going to be a boring twot. Most of us would spell it 'mmmm, synthi-sausage!' as in an expression of gustatory satisfaction, but it was an art editor rather than a regular writer on text duties.

EDIT - I've probably just drunkenly missed the joke that everyone else was alluding to.  Ah well, it's Paddy's day, so I have an excuse, so I have, so I have.

Thank, all.  I had a very nice day - as I say, with my brother in law and his mates, all over from Manchester for the weekend - and I'm finishing with a pint in a beer garden beside one of the small rivers in Dublin.

Paddy's day for me is always more about the start of the nice part of the year, with longer days, daffodils and cherry blossom. I tend to go all out for Bealtaine, or Beltain if you're Pat Mills, when a mate organises a massive pagan-style public May Day event with all the animal skins, mead and face paint you could hope for. I can't wait.

Edit - that's Pagan Rave in Dingle, Co Kerry, which is a free event if you fancy doing May Day like the Sessair would