The US army also wants all its troops to eventually carry military smart phones, with various battlefield apps. The apps will contain all sorts of useful military information, including phrasebooks. Though if you’re out of signal, a bit of paper with ‘You killed my wife, you western devil!’ should cover most of the things you’ll hear.
The US army are putting everything into this. They will have apps with training manuals, and the capability to order new equipment and downloadable maps of all the enemy’s positions. British soldiers will be getting a text message saying ‘Duck!’ Some soldiers are killed when protecting their squad, and some soldiers are killed when patrolling the streets. Future soldiers will be killed by replying slowly to a text message asking if you’ll definitely be home in time for Uncle Alan’s retirement party.
It will take a few years before the technology is developed for every soldier to carry a military smart phone. By that time, they will probably be quite useful because we’ll be placing phones in the hands of the first generation to have been raised by parents with mobiles. And if there’s anything to inspire a lust to kill strangers, it’s being given the object that prevented your mother from looking or communicating with you for the last 18 years.
I’m not sure why they say mobile phones are the weapons of the future? From where I’m standing, it looks like handing every child a cancerous stick of isolation and apathy has pretty much destroyed humanity already.
The US army also wants all American soldiers to have 24-hour internet access. It’s essential for operations that they continue to be anaesthetised by porn and Tekken, even when being begged to stop throwing grenades at a school.
The much-anticipated game Medal of Honor came out but it’s not realistic at all. You’ve actually got a chance of winning, and all the equipment works. The next one, however, promises to be just like the real thing. It takes 27 years to complete and, whenever your character dies, you get a crappy, badly spelt letter from the prime minister.
There was outrage because of plans to let you play as the Taliban. You can’t ban a game that has fighters in it just because they kill British soldiers. What about all the ones with US troops in? I’m quite advanced at it. The thing to do is be the Taliban. Then, when you get to Stage 3, sneak off and hide in a British coffin. Next thing you know, you can be pumping bullets into the till girl at Somerfields in Wootton Bassett.
France and Britain signed a treaty to share aircraft carriers. One week we’ll put nothing on them, then the next week France will put nothing on them. Having a military agreement with France feels like getting help with your school homework from Peter Andre. At a joint conference, French military chiefs told their UK counterparts they were looking forward to the cost-saving consolidation of their respective forces, and the English ones replied, ‘Hello, my name John is what I’m called, and my hobby I am cinema watching.’
David Cameron insists budget cuts won’t affect our fighting capabilities – we’ll keep losing. The army has to lose 7,000 soldiers. Probably the best way to do this is to put them on joint military manoeuvres with the Americans. I’m just worried that with thousands of unemployed troops, and Simon Cowell with a spare £100 million, The X Factor will move into its sinister second phase.
More than a quarter of the civilian posts at the Ministry of Defence will be cut over the next five years, following the Strategic Defence Review. Which will make James Bond films less interesting. ‘Ah, Miss Moneypenny … has gone … I keep forgetting she had to go off and retrain as a classroom assistant.’ Part of the defence cuts is the withdrawal of forces from Germany … Really? Do you think it’s safe yet? Do you think there’s a chance we could return them, only to have an 80-year-old Nazi try to destroy the tube network with a Doodlebug?
The British military are spending £8 million a year on parties. You can imagine how much they’ll spend if we actually start winning any of these wars. And there’s uproar that military bosses are travelling the country by helicopter. Why would they do that? I mean it’s not as if they’ve made it awkward for themselves to travel by tube. One general flew a military plane to Wolverhampton. But I suppose the only way to happily approach Wolverhampton is when you’re watching it through a missile-targeting system.
25 per cent cuts across the board for education, health, social services – yet only 20 per cent on defence? That’s like a family skimping on buying medicine, books and clothes so they still have enough money to catapult shit into next door’s garden. The army admits it’s lost more than £6 billion worth of equipment. That’s the problem when you cover everything with camouflage.
They’ve also scrapped HMS Ark Royal. What does it say about the safe future of our country when the first boat to be scrapped is the Ark? We’re building two aircraft carriers that, eh, won’t have any aircraft on them. Basically, we’ll defend ourselves by threatening hostile nations with a giant floating ironing board. What are they going to use all that space for? Sailors’ hornpipe practice or overflow parking? Why would you build an aircraft carrier if you had no aircraft to put on it? Probably for the same reason that my father built a sun room in Scotland. It’s a very handy place to store bulky furniture. Two giant boats that impotently travel about the world attracting ridicule. How on earth did they decide on the names Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Charles? Everyone is asking what will become of the Ark Royal? It will operate in the same manner as it did before being decommissioned. As a floating gay bar. Only now it will be docked in the Thames instead of prowling around the Persian Gulf in the dark like an old queen looking for trade.
Defence cuts mean fewer weapons – so at least it’s a break for Afghan wedding photographers. You’ve got to feel for them. Just setting up the tripod and in comes a NATO drone. You’ve got an 8 by 10 of shrapnel and body bits, and all you can think to put underneath is ‘The bride’s family’.
A beauty queen joined the RAF in Afghanistan. It’s nice to see someone in modelling who wants to kill someone other than herself. She has realised that there’s more to life than being beautiful. There’s being appreciated for your brave humour as they graft your bum skin onto your charred skull. Jodie Millward was pictured in a red vest and her RAF uniform – and I must say she looks better in blue – so I hope for her sake she’ll die in a gas attack rather than from shrapnel wounds. Most models hate bits of their bodies; Jodie will be able to have those bits shipped home ahead of her rehab.
Fears about women now being allowed to work on British submarines are just sexist – they are just as capable as men. And anyway, under the sea there isn’t as much call for being able to reverse. In the US, women have previously been barred from their subs because it was thought an unborn foetus would be affected from living near nuclear weapons and fuel fumes. It’s now realised that this child would still grow up to be a fully functioning American. Protocol is very different in the navy now. In the old days, a woman entered a submarine and all the sailors would stand. Now, for young male recruits, women being on board will mean they’ll be able to sit down for the first time in months.
Afghanistan has had a massive effect on me personally. Those shares in coffins and Union Jacks have gone through the fucking roof. I could retire tomorrow. According to defence chiefs, we have just completed the ‘first stage’ of the war against the Taliban. First stage? We’ve been there for ten years! What is the second stage going to consist of? Waiting for the tectonic plates to move and change the borders organically? Why is everyone talking about this as if it’s only just started? I’ve got news for the Ministry of Defence. If you thought you’d erased all our memories, it didn’t quite take. You may have to flash us again.
Support for the war in Afghanistan is at an all-time low. A lot of Scottish people used to say that Afghanistan was the only war we really needed to fight. But now that the street price of heroin is so low, even they don’t see the point.
Hamid Karzai won the corrupt election and now has sovereignty over, er, Kabul and a miniature golf course just outs
ide Kabul. In fact, even the capital isn’t secure – they’re thinking about renaming it Kaboom. He beat Abdullah Abdullah, who was unfortunately baptised in a cave with an echo. Karzai’s brother was shot dead by his personal bodyguard. Never mind training Afghan leaders in democracy, we should probably start with interview technique.
The US army had to apologise for photos showing their troops posing with the corpses of Afghan civilians. Generals have been quick to say they’ve insulted the dignity of the rest of the US army. Is that the dignity of pissing on a Koran in Abu Ghraib, or the dignity of dangling from a rope ladder off the last helicopter to leave the US embassy roof in Saigon while your illegitimate children scream beneath you?
The Taliban are finding it impossible to get hold of essential supplies, so at last we’re fighting on equal terms. But let’s not get complacent. Just because they’re running out of bullets, we mustn’t assume our boys won’t get shot. Remember, US troops have still got plenty.
Children of troops killed in Afghanistan are going to have their university education paid for. Kind of ironic that some girls will get highly educated thanks to the Taliban.
The British forces have handed Sangin to US forces. Many middle-class liberals are asking how we can leave these vulnerable people in the care of poorly educated, poorly paid, selfishly driven rednecks? And then they pick up their children from the two 16-year-old work experience girls that staff the best local nursery.
To be fair, British generals do a difficult job. Usually very, very badly. The Taliban are holding us off with regular prayer, and guns they stole from the set of Rambo III. Still, good to see it’s all spilling over into Pakistan. A whole load of nuclear missiles and a bunch of people with different ideas about what Mohammed said. What could possibly go wrong?
The other day I was reading a book about how the Israelis captured Adolf Eichmann (there’s a thrilling intelligence operation to check his identity, then they hit him on the head and throw him in a bag) and realised how little I knew about the Holocaust. In the course of reading up on it I found a collection of pictures – taken at the camps – of people on their way to the gas chambers, which is really something you should be certain you want to see before looking at it. It will remain with you. These are the people fresh from the trains, tired and bewildered. Children sit exhausted at their mothers’ feet as they unwittingly queue to become victims of this monstrous and inhuman crime.
It all seems so remarkably singular, and yet also you can see these sort of pictures every day – newspaper photos of refugee camps, of families in war zones, emergency rooms in Gaza, children from the dollar-a-day world. Some of these people are victims of dictators too, but most are victims of an economic theory, and of our affluence and indifference. Daily, you see pictures of people queuing for death and somehow the worst thing, the very worst thing, is that if you really tried you could do something about it.
‘Aye, it fucking is him an all’
Paul makes me a cup of tea – he’s one of those people who always makes half a cup of tea – and I get my panic list up on email. It’s the only group email list I’ve ever had, one I compiled to announce that my daughter had been born. It included anyone who might give me work. I’d just got home from the birth and knew I was so broke I didn’t have the money to get a taxi the next day to bring her home.
I’m flush nowadays – my company just landed a big advertising contract for an anti-speeding campaign. On dangerous stretches of road we are putting up family photos (the ones you get done in a photographers where the kids have been distracted by bubbles) of the actual people who have died there, over the words DEAD NOW. It’s a suggestion I made as a despairing joke after they hated our other ideas. Everybody loves it. It’s like the fucking ‘Glasgow Smiles Better’ of the post-Apocalypse.
I drag my suitcase out of a cab at Glasgow Central and take my glasses off. I’m trying to buy the papers for the train but I can see fuck all, accidentally picking up the Star, which has a front page about a mystery Old Firm player being blackmailed. I queue and wonder what Lovecraftian practice could set this young pervert apart from his peers.
The woman at the counter goes, ‘What’s with the beard, Frankie?’
I honestly can’t think of a single response. Eventually I say, ‘When I stop shaving, hair grows out of my face,’ and she laughs like I’ve made a joke.
I’m squinting up at the departures board looking for the London train. I’m normally OK without the glasses but some wee guys by the bank machine are nodding over at me. Eventually one of them walks over, stands about 18 inches away from me and blares, ‘Aye, it fucking is him an all,’ as dispassionately as if he’s noting that it’s raining.
On the train I’m trying to do some work on a pitch for tomorrow but every time I look at the screen I feel sick. There’s a slight smell of sewage but that’s normal on Virgin. My stomach pitches. The disabled-passenger alarm sounds continually. Someone thinks they are pressing the flush. I log onto the internet and check the BBC news. The top headline is ‘Prince William is a really good bloke’.
I look through the ideas I’m pitching. I was just going to be doing these for my company, but now I’m desperately trying to think how I can host or be involved.
Celebrity Land of the Giants. Eight of the UK‘s most recognisable celebrities have signed up for what they ‘think’ is a new game show. They are put up in a hotel and wake up the next day. What they don’t know is that overnight our clever set designers have built everything from cars to hedges to paving slabs outside at 10x scale, giving the celebs the impression they’ve shrunk overnight! How will they cope as each week the least practical star is eaten by what they think is a giant spider?
Unbelievably, that is idea number one. The other one is about a celebrity slave ship where young black rappers are made to live as slaves for a week. I can’t focus on the screen without feeling nauseous. Maybe it’s a psychosomatic reaction to this shit? Or the fucking roast-beef sandwich they gave me was so old it’s like a fast-acting poison. I sit watery mouthed in denial for a bit, then run to the toilet and puke loudly. The disabled-passenger alarm is painted red, illustrated with a ringing bell and the word alarm is written on it in large letters.
The young guy across from me recognises me and tries to start a conversation.
‘Feeling sick?’
‘Yes, I just puked.’
The sort of conversation dogs would have if they could talk.
‘Aren’t you Frankie Boyle?’
I put my earphones on and stupidly plug them into the side of my shut laptop. He’s reading a book called Confidence: There are No Coincidences. Confidence is only worth having if you’re not a fucking idiot. Try speaking German using just confidence. Start skiing with confidence and break your fucking neck, you cunt. I wonder why there are so many idiots now and whether in the past the big wars used to thin them out. I wonder if the free coffees are winding me up, or the rapist, or the work.
I look at the ‘War’ chapter of the book. That end bit is maybe everything that’s wrong with the world. Wanting to help but feeling it’s all to do with ‘you’, the ego that thinks it can make a difference is the same ego that wants a new car, praise, pussy, immortality. Still, maybe I’m just being honest, and what I honestly am is an idiot.
In London, I have to go straight across town and into a script meeting. It’s a voiceover thing I’m doing for a clip show, which is a pretty shit thing to be doing, but I get to write the jokes, so that’s something.
I sign the visitors’ book and walk wordlessly past the security guard. In the event of some terrorist atrocity they will have the guy’s signature. There are whole floors of talented people beavering away making shit. An infinite number of Shakespeares producing the work of a monkey.
I’m met by Gary, a tall, spindly production runner who looks like a freakish wind chime or insect king. He leads me to the meeting room, where there’s a pyramid of Diet Coke, and some fresh notepads and biros. During the a
wkward wait for the producer, Gary tells me at length about his new baby while I reflect that in the wild his mate would have eaten him now.
I sit down and start reading the stack of tabloids that’s in any writing room, whether the show is topical or not. Alex Ferguson is playing mind games. If only he would – telling the opposition that there is a sniper in the stadium, or staging a coach crash then sending out players everybody thought were dead in a macabre piece of gamesmanship.
The producer, Gerry, drifts in. He has the jovial air of a corrupt small-town cop. I’ve not seen him for years and, in the meantime, his face looks like it’s had kids. I go through the intros for the show
Welcome to The Frankie Boyle Clip Show. There’s nothing like being on television. And let me tell you, reading out this shit, to you pricks, for this money, is nothing like being on television.
Hello and welcome to the show that made the Crossbow Cannibal refuse to pay his licence fee. Feels good, doesn’t it, knowing that cock is currently watching video tapes of Minder wishing I had tits and he had a lifespan of 300 years.
‘I prefer the first one!’ says Gerry, and I agree, having included the second one so I had something to give up. I launch into the rest at a pace calculated to delay discussion.
The show that masturbates to the Oscars’ Obituary Montage.
The show that’s laughing with you, not at you. Ahahahahaa! Oh no, wait a minute, it’s at you.
The show of clips you could find for yourself on YouTube. If porn didn’t exist.
Work! Consume! Die! Page 3