Grown Up Gossip & Internet Villainy
Is it possible that there’s a direct correlation between Readers’ Letters going into hibernation for a couple of weeks and you lot losing your minds?
It certainly seems that way to us. This week has been a bumper Christmas annual of bad form and spirit crushing idiocy and we have you to thank for it. Yes, you the reader. You’re scum and we love it.
Gird your loins, it’s time for a trawl through the foetid hecklerspray post bag.
Alleged ?funny man? and renowned one-trick pony Sacha Baron Cohen is thought to be the only man on earth laughing as it is announced he has signed an exclusive three-year ?development? deal with Paramount Studios.
It is believed the ?developing? will involve churning-out yet more identikit cinematic ennui-fests destined to leave laughter-enthusiasts stony-faced and mildly depressed.
Announcing the deal, Paramount CEO Brad Grey described Baron Cohen as ?the rare global comedy star? which we take to mean:??He has the rare ability of being found desperately unamusing the world over, yet somehow makes sheds of money for film studios. Good toimes, as that other comedy genius Justin Lee Collins would say. But not to his ex-girlfriend. He definitely has nothing to say to her. And never has.?
Like Chris Brown in a boxing gym, we’re not surprised to see that you’ve come back for more.
Of course, the outraged backlash against our good pal Breezy has seen #TeamBreezy go into remission, hiding around the corner, waiting to spread into our lymph nodes as soon as we let our guard down. That’s not to say that Chris Brown and his sycophantic legion of slack-jawed domestic abuse apologists are a cancer of the world of entertainment. That would be potentially libellous.
They are though.
Every week it’s the same, nothing ever really changes. We come into the hecklerspray bedsit on a Monday morning, having been released to poison the outside world over the weekend, and find the same stinking pizza boxes, the same drained bottles of methylated spirits and the same greasy,?ignominious faces staring at us across the room.
Our ‘colleagues’ as we laughingly refer to them are actually lawyers who, down on their luck after losing a Tax Evasion case, have rented out the far corner of the bedsit which is sometimes known as “The Fred West Wing”. They look ill. Lawyers always look ill.
Perhaps it’s the smell which is putting them off their writs. The festering stench of the opposite corner, marked out by a laminated card which- in odious Comic Sans- reads “POST”. It’s enough to make anyone sick to their stomach.
It’s Friday and the hecklerspray bedsit has breathed a collective sigh of relief as they’re allowed out into the world to live among functioning humans for a couple of days. Unfortunately, I’m still here as there are Readers’ Letters to be analysed. Still, it’s nice to have a bit of peace and quiet to work. No Mof Gimmers shouting about codpieces, no Sophie Hall shouting at Kris Wood for making a reclining chair out of sausage and no Euan L Davidson, breathing heavily in my ear.
Yes folks, Fridays are the nicest time to be in the bedsit. It’s easier to sit in “the clean chair” and the stale stench of discarded cigarettes and methylated spirits is beginning to lift. Unfortunately, that means that the foetid stench of the hecklerspray post bag is coming through loud and clear.
It stings the nostrils.
God, look at you all.
Sat there in your ostentatious Ivory Towers looking down on us in our hecklerspray hovel as we scrap around trying to pick a living from the meagre bones of underweight celebrities. You sit in judgement of us like a Feudal Lord views his peasants with seeming omniscience.
You sit there with your lucky dip box at the ready, it loaded with randomly generated insults and put-downs designed to make us feel like the lowest of the low, like the dog dirt on the shoe of the internet, like Tim Westwood. Your words are designed to cut, to hurt but are said with the best interests at heart. You want to protect your favourite celebrity because you know- deep down- that they’re too disinterested or stupid to defend themselves.
If you're under the age of 22 then you will be familiar with the Daily Mail?s nemesis; common sense. Whoops! That should read Skins. If you're living like the characters in the show, then you're probably dead and we offer our sincerest sympathies; we died around the same time as Tony who was paralysed by youthful happiness and, you know, a bus.
If you're lucky enough to be a child now, then we can blame you for the continued success of what is shaping up to be a life affirming/sucking programme.
Either way you will all be suitably disappointed to find out that a new series is going to be cuming (see what we did there?) to E4 on Monday. There are mere days to prepare yourself. Here in the ‘spray bedsit we like to think of Skins as a disease and as you know, with diseases, you must inoculate yourself with small doses to become immune. Based on that logic and no small amount of self-loathing we subjected, or watched, the two ?webisodes? on that thing some of you are calling The Internet. It's a sharp learning curve for us all.
In honour of the birthday of Legs Larry Smith, the man who manned the drumstool in the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band, it only seems right that we should write about how brilliant Britain’s funniest band are.
Comedy and music? Does it make something awful run icily through your veins? Worry not, because the Bonzos were more than simple jesters.
Emerging in the stupid ’60s, the Bonzos were hip enough to ‘get it’ and smart enough to lampoon it, taking influence from the big groups of the time as well as tapping into the world’s penchant for the absurd and the archaic. Step forward, Britain’s finest Victorian Idiots Psychedelicists.
Every week, hecklerspray is inundated with people who have opinions about us, our lives, our right to do the job we do and the celebrities that we take the piss out of. It’s always delightful to sit and sift through page after page of people telling us that we should be killed or have various parts of our anatomies sheered off by a sharpened snowboard.
Of course, those ones are our favourites and they’re the ones that we keep for ourselves and take to bed with us at night so that the burning hatred of the reader can keep us warm in our cold beds.
These ones are for you…
Death is a certainty. It's one of those things that you can't escape from, like Witch Mountain. Or Monkey Island. Eventually, just like the rhythm, it's going to get you. Don't fight the inevitable readers – roll over and take out as many people as you can. It's what Guy Fawkes would have wanted.
Sometimes death is sad. Remember when Helen Daniels fell asleep and Hannah couldn't wake her up? Gutting. Or when that one off Cold Feet was hit by the truck while she was talking on her mobile phone. Tearful. But we wouldn't be antisocial enough to want to see them back. Anne Haddy had her chance and she blew it. Big style.
But sometimes death is good. It allows us to never have to see some things again. One of these things is Tim Lovejoy?s narcissistic misogyny and Louise Redknapp?s amazing ability to successfully imitate wet cardboard. We were all glad when Something For The Weekend was cancelled weren't we?
