Interviewer: How do you want to be remembered?
Me: As a G.
Interviewer:How do you spell that?
As far as the vote goes, Alex Salmond has a job on his hands as many Scots were hoping to be able to vote for even more dependence. He says independence will win because he’ll show a positive vision for the future. So the next two years will mainly involve gassing alcoholics like TB-ridden badgers.
The independence vote will be an interesting time for Scots, especially as for most it will be a novelty to fill in official forms while still being allowed to wear their own belt and shoe laces. It would be more amusing if on entering the polling booth you were just faced with the word ‘Freedom’ written on an arcade punch-bag machine and to register your support you’d have to headbutt it above ‘Superman’ level. Salmond described the decision about whether or not to stay in the UK as the most important Scots will have to make in three hundred years. But to put that into perspective, the second-most important decision is ‘Salt and sauce?’ Alex Salmond said if granted independence the Scots will cease to act like ‘surly lodgers’. I’ve never thought of myself as a surly lodger; I mean, at least not in anything outwith my marriage, but I finally understand why we had that hole drilled in Hadrian’s Wall – so we could watch our sexy English landlords when they take a bath.
It would be a terrible shame if we had different currencies. Not least as Scottish notes are easily the best way of getting into arguments with London cabbies, especially now that shoe polish has started bringing up that rash on my face. I think the average Scot is mature enough not to mind whether we keep the pound or have a new currency. Just as long as there’s a coin heavy enough to throw at a football match. If we get a new currency I’d still like to see the Queen on it. Pleading on her knees in front of a muscular, tartan-clad stud whose semi-mechanical cock is spouting oil.
David Cameron said he believes passionately that the Union must stay together, skilfully managing not to add, ‘At least till the oil runs out.’ There’s very little oil left. Most of it’s just used to lubricate the battered leathery chuffs of the knock-kneed escorts, sitting on packs of frozen peas as they wait in Aberdeen harbour to greet the next group of riggers coming off shift. Staying together because we’ve been together for ages isn’t an argument for not splitting. God knows, I’ve tried that. And she even ignored her subsequent independence referendum despite me and the cat both voting no. It’s just like any relationship that’s gone a bit stale – we just need to spice things up. Perhaps Scotland should go on top for bit, while Wales watches and fiddles with itself. I don’t know why I’m bothering – she doesn’t even read my books.
Or perhaps England will become energy-independent. A huge gas field has been discovered under Blackpool. It could help improve the lives of thousands of people, if the gas companies drill down and set a match to it.
Alistair Darling described Scottish independence as a ‘one-way ticket to nowhere’, which is coincidentally the exact phrase I use at the Virgin counter whenever I want to travel to Newcastle. I’m not surprised the Tories in Scotland are using this phrase, but I just thought it would be appearing as the slogan on the front of their manifesto.
Scotland’s easily as fucked as anywhere in Britain. In Edinburgh council bosses sacked seven staff by drawing their names from a cereal bowl. The workers who kept their jobs must have been delighted, until they were told their next job was to go and clean up seven human shits that had been left on the council building steps. There’s talk that we might introduce a 5p charge for carrier bags. It’s caused uproar here in Glasgow, what with it coming so soon after the hike in the price of glue.
Look at Rangers – skint, with no prospects, constantly living in fear that any day now the bailiffs will be kicking in their door. Finally, the club now knows what it’s like to be a fan. Things appear to be so bad that they’ll have to decide who kicks off at home matches by doing scissors, paper, stone. They’ve had some great players. Paul Gascoigne, of course, lured not just by the money but by the chance to live in the only place that would fail to put his horrific alcohol consumption into perspective.
The shame of a top British team being banned from Europe for insolvency – rather than the usual fan violence. It’s easy to say that Rangers and Celtic accomplish little when it comes to sectarian violence. That’s unfair. They’ve certainly provided a couple of top-class venues and some regular time slots. Ah, well, the good news for Rangers fans is that at least there’s another team in Glasgow that they can throw their support behind. After all, it’s all about football, right?
19
RELIGION
I actually quite like religion, as it vindicates my bored contempt of humanity. As a kid I used to really love this comic character called Darkseid. He was a big, brutal sort of ultra-villain who wanted to destroy all life and replace it with anti-life. He lived on this war-world, where he’d pretty much killed everything, and he wanted to get a hold of this thing called the anti-life equation that would enslave everybody to his will. As a little kid I just found him hilariously gloomily over-the-top.
My mate and I had an idea for a comic book years ago. It was going to be about a suburb where all these super-villains lived. They’d been captured by law enforcement and had their minds wiped, so they went to work every day and suffered the various indignities of their workaday lives, occasionally having a flash of insight into how they would have dealt with it back in the old days. They’d have bad days where they’d be taking some shit off their boss and briefly picture everybody in the office hacked to bits, or find themselves idly speculating on how they could use their kid’s Meccano to build a deathless robot ninja. Every time they got too close to the truth, gas would fill the room and they’d wake up, giving it hip-hip-hooray at a family birthday party. It was a kind of metaphor for frustrated human potential, and its own potential was well and truly frustrated when The Incredibles came out later that year.
I had an idea that one of the super-villains would be Darkseid. He’d have got picked up unconscious after failing to extinguish the sun or something, and to the FBI he wouldn’t be this immense cosmic force, he’d just be another guy in tights who’d get his head wiped and go have a job in the suburbs. I imagined his wife coming home one day to find that he’d been hosing the whole garden with a flamethrower, with just charred ash remaining.
Do you like it honey?
I pictured him going to group therapy, trying to open up.
I want to destroy all life and replace it with anti-life. Does that make me a bad person?
I suppose I think that not only does blindly following science have a religious element, the counter-movement that says science is a religion is even more religious. With ideas of constant progress and man’s higher purpose from one side, and singularities and leaps of consciousness from the other, it all smells like church to me.
Religion permeates everything. Atheism has always seemed deeply silly to me. ‘Atheism’ comes from the word ‘theism’, so it’s already defined by religion. You might as well say you are a Satanist. Not much harm ever came from someone believing things, except the occasional time when a guy believed that his hands were talons and a hitchhiker was his mother. The real trouble comes when you decide that other people have to believe. How is the idea of a leap in consciousness different from that? ‘Everybody needs to join me, everything they think is wrong.’ We’re so surrounded by religion that even the ways we think to escape it are religious. Maybe atheists were created by God to bore us into accepting his love.
I wish for a world in which the concept of religion doesn’t even exist. I think this is finite, your life, that’s all there is. That the human experience is finite, that everything will die, that there will be complete heat death of the universe and then nothing. It’s a hard thing to accept but when you do it makes every moment so much more vital to enjoy. I think it would be better to forget our civilised attempts to process death and embrace the brutal reality
. I think people should accept death more, even the ultimate death of everything. Is that just my bleak religion? Or does that mean I just want to program everybody with the anti-life equation? I want to destroy all life and replace it with anti-life. Does that make me a bad person?
The pope stepped down. It meant a billion Catholics were temporarily leaderless, unsure exactly why they should hate themselves. Benedict talked of turbulent winds and rough seas. He was obviously speaking figuratively: by turbulent winds he meant child-abuse scandals, and by rough seas he meant child-abuse scandals. He left St Peter’s with the words that he was now just a simple pilgrim, before being flown by helicopter to his cliff-top castle. Many criticised Benedict’s anti-condom stance, but I suspect he just thought that if more kids are born HIV positive it might make priests a bit less inclined to shag them. I confess I’m no expert when it comes to popes, but surely the best one’s still Tom Baker.
When it came, the smoke from the papal conclave was created by a unique blend of fivers, witness statements and DNA evidence. As is traditional, Cardinal Bergoglio changed his name when he became pope. A tradition that dates back to when CRB checks began. Pope Francis was chosen to become the first ever South American pope, as they’ve got a history of shooting children rather than, well, you know.
The new pope always used to take the bus instead of a limo. Why? Well, would you want to turn up at your mistress’s house in a limo that has Church plates? Here’s my modernisation tip, if he wants it. Dips for those communion crackers. He’s going to try to improve the Catholic Church’s image, surely the religious equivalent of shampooing Ernst Stavro Blofeld’s cat. Buenos Aires’s priests love spending time in the slums. Well, if you think not many people take notice of kids, imagine how few bother listening to poor ones.
OK. Here’s a theory. Just a theory. After he’s elected, the new pope goes to that room in the Vatican and reads their biggest secret. It’s not priests that are horny for kids, it’s God that possesses the priests. Earth is nothing more than a sex farm for a malevolent, paedophile God. That’s what the pope compartmentalises that night. Why does Satan possess children? To make them spew bile; to be unattractive to the paedophile God. Satan is the good guy in all of this.
Or maybe it simply read:
Jesus came to us with an important message of hope. By his life he taught us that one in twelve people is a cunt. Fewer than you’d think. With Jesus dead for three days, Satan re-made the world in his image. Jesus ascended to heaven, defeated. Happy Easter.
A lot of people have been asking me what I think about celibacy for priests? I think it would be a good idea. A scrap of parchment unearthed by scholars suggests Jesus might have taken a wife. I doubt it. If he were married and disappeared for three days he wouldn’t have dared to come back.
There were rumours a priest in the Vatican was caught watching transsexual films just last year, although it turned out that the man in the dress was just a reflection in the screen. The Vatican is keen to stamp this practice out or else priests’ urges could be so greatly reduced they’ll no longer bother turning up for choir practice.
Web firm TorrentFreak has revealed that computers in the Vatican have been used to download porn films. I suppose that explains why the former pope always had to hold on to someone as he walked. Perhaps a little more tolerance of bondage in religion would be a good thing. After all, the Middle East would be a much more tranquil place now if Moses hadn’t been so uptight and vanilla about Pharaoh being so into the whole master/slave thing. It’s sobering to think that if only the Egyptian leader had been into a different fetish fundamentalist Jews might nowadays break bread on the Sabbath not in skullcaps and ringlet sideburns, but in naughty-nurse outfits.
Ultra-Orthodox Jewish men can now buy glasses with lenses that only let them see clearly for a few metres, thereby reducing the risk of viewing immodestly dressed women. I worry there’s a slight flaw to the plan. Ten thousand years of alcohol use would tend to suggest that girls being out of focus doesn’t make men less inclined to want to shag them. Surely it’s better to see attractive women when they’re at a distance; if they suddenly just emerge from the fug you’ve much less time to disguise a semi.
And farewell Reverend Moon, the cult leader who amassing an eye-watering fortune while demanding total obedience from followers. Followers could come nearer to God by having sex with Moon himself. I hear that although the process could cleanse your soul, he’d usually end up making a right mess of your tits. He built a business empire that included media chains and arms factories, and lived in a palace while his followers lived frugal lives. Amazing to think that someone like that was the head of a religion, and not a political leader.
• • •
The Church of England voted against women bishops. An outrage, as those old cathedrals can get so dusty. But it’s understandable that women bishops weren’t allowed. I mean, 80 per cent of a bishop’s job is map reading, unscrewing the lids off jars and disposing of spiders. Opponents argue that this issue is a lot more complicated than it seems and they certainly don’t have time to explain it to a load of women.
I’ve done everything I can to campaign for women in the Church. Whenever I play chess I insist on making tiny breasts from Blu Tac and attaching them to my bishops. Why not let women become bishops? If I’m to be told a fairy story I’d prefer it to come from someone who looks like my mum.
The Church of England then signalled its opposition to gay marriage by taking a 550,000-signature petition to Downing Street, although I must say I don’t know if it’s really appropriate to protest against sodomy by shoving such a big document through a poor wee letterbox.
Scotland, however, went ahead and introduced gay marriage. We’ve never had anything against gay people in Scotland. Unless by gay, you mean English. Cardinal Keith O’Brien said that proposals to legalise gay marriage were ‘grotesque’. Actually, it makes perfect sense for homosexuals to marry each other as they’re the only group of men that don’t actually hate going to weddings. The cardinal accused the government of trying to ‘redefine reality’. This from someone who worships a magical man living in the clouds. Of course, Catholics insist that a man should not lie with another man. I’m guessing that’s what’s led to their ‘under-fourteen’ loophole. To be honest, when it comes to same-sex matters like this I always reach for my trusty Bible. It’s just the right thickness so that when I kneel on it Ricardo can more easily get his **** in my ****.
And then, of course, Cardinal Keith O’Brien was accused of ‘acting inappropriately’. I heard he played a sordid trick on a blind bell ringer. Just imagine it. The young priest finishing his night prayers. The cardinal’s voice. ‘You’d better hope he was listening.’ Then the unmistakable rasp of a zip.
Why is everyone getting so wound up about this? They’re saying gays want to marry in church, not bum each other in the vestry. What are churchgoers worried about? Do they think that they’ll kneel down to pray and someone will stick their dick in their mouth? But there’s nowhere gayer than church – there’s loads of blokes wearing frocks, pictures of a half-naked man on the wall who they say they love, and they won’t allow women to join in. The Church of England has to realise that everyone has to keep up with progress. I mean, look at me – my VHS of Footloose isn’t worn out but it’s not stopped me updating to LaserDisc. Jesus would have been a great gay man – with those extra holes in his hands and feet he’d have been all sorts of fun. Lady Gaga says the pope’s opinion on gay marriage ‘does not matter to the world’. Most people don’t care about the opinions of a man in a silly outfit. But, sadly, millions do still care about what the pope has to say.
Jeremy Irons has claimed gay marriage could be used as a way to avoid inheritance tax if a son married his father. This is the latest in a long line of strange statements from Jeremy. It seems like every time he opens his mouth he ends up putting his dad’s cock in it. Sorry, I meant foot. It’s this bloody permissive society that’s warping my mind. I ca
n’t even think bent. I mean straight. Jeremy is possibly unhappy about gay marriage and he finds the best way to distract himself from the thought of two adult men agreeing to a loving relationship is to block it out by picturing himself shagging his own dad. I guess we all have different ways of dealing with stressful situations.
Lord Tebbit raised the same point about this. His son must be devastated that his dad only wants to marry him for his own money. Tebbit made his anti-gay comments in an interview with homeless newspaper The Big Issue, a publication he actually helped start – by being part of Margaret Thatcher’s cabinet. I suspect his dislike exists at a deeper level. He may have seen gay men stripped to the waist and glistening with sweat, and subconsciously thought they might be mining coal. Tebbit insists he doesn’t necessarily object to seeing a gay couple together at the altar, so long as it’s in boxes following a shame-induced suicide pact. Tebbit raised the possibility of a lesbian queen. She’d be a lot like the normal queen, but with fewer corgis and more cats. In private, Tebbit apparently confesses he’d be happy to attend a gay church wedding. He could cover then his body in gold paint in order to leap down from the crucifix at the crucial moment and shout, ‘Not on my watch, ladymen!’
The bill to make same-sex marriages legal was passed in parliament. Lesbians will now be allowed to marry – so if I were you I’d invest heavily in companies that make white dungarees. There’s too many innuendos involved in weddings – you don’t want to ask, ‘Who’s going to play the organ?’ and have half the congregation shout back, ‘Buy us a drink first, love.’
Scotland’s Jesus: The Only Officially Non-racist Comedian Page 22