Work! Consume! Die!

by Frankie Boyle

  Of course, many people nowadays view joking about the royals as a bit passé. Indeed, the whole idea of republicanism seems vaguely historical. It’s one of many areas where leftist hipsters actually converge with Telegraph and Daily Mail readers. Sometimes I feel like saying to those people, ‘You know we’ve still got a monarchy, don’t you?’ It’s been a neat trick on the part of the Windsors to harness a sense of their own irrelevance to reinforce their position. ‘You do know that in a supposed democracy we don’t elect a head of state and devote an incredible amount of resources to some of the worst people in our society? You do know how much this country defines itself by that irrational act?’ For the Windsors, as for any corporation or billionaire, disinterest is a perfectly acceptable form of deference. Fuck yes, it’s great to be a hipster, but the world we pretend to live in is not the one we actually live in. Although, with just a little re-imagining, we could make them the same. I know it’s easier to pretend that it doesn’t matter who owns our land, whom our taxes fund, that you’d rather collect vinyl and original comic-book artwork and pretend that was reality. I really am very sorry but if you want things to get better, you’re going to need to wake up now.

  ‘He hates life … It’s pretty much autobiographical at the start’

  I get up when the air conditioning gives an otherworldly groan and spend five minutes sitting looking out the window trying to think what the fuck I’m doing back in London. I’m nearly dressed by the time I remember I’m meeting Adam Sandler’s production company and pitching a fucking movie. When you can’t find your pants that seems a ridiculous and alienating thing to be doing.

  At breakfast Mr Boyd reads the obituary pages in the Guardian. Inspiring people, viewed at the moment of their complete obsolescence as a kind of graph of their commercial viability. I always like that they put them beside the wee box of famous people’s birthdays, an added dig for the relatives to see that Richard Madeley is still alive. Today has Kenickie from Grease, Jeff Conaway, his life dealt with in the most harshly mercantile terms.

  In the late 1970s and early 80s, Taxi was one of the best American sitcoms. It won 18 Emmy awards and its stars, among them Jeff Conaway, who has died in hospital aged 60, became household names. Conaway played the narcissistic, ‘resting’ actor Bobby Wheeler, one of the characters working for the Sunshine cab company, all hoping for better jobs to turn up. In a way, the role mirrored Conaway’s own struggle for greater recognition as an actor which was not helped by his having been addicted to alcohol, cocaine and analgesics since he was a teenager.

  In Taxi, the handsome Conaway, sporting the feathered hairstyle popular in the 1970s, had to compete with more fascinating characters in the avuncular Alex Reiger (Judd Hirsh), obnoxious Louie De Palma (Danny DeVito), sexy divorcee Elaine Nardo (Marilu Henner), unvictorious boxer Tony Banta (Tony Danza) and English impaired immigrant Latka Gravas (Andy Kaufman). Most of the cast of the popular show went on to bigger things, while Conaway’s one moment of glory in the cinema was already in his past.

  I can’t remember him in Taxi so I google it and there’s a photo of him looking fairly fucked, but a lot happier than I’ve ever seen John Travolta or Danny DeVito.

  We meet in my agent’s office in Covent Garden. Her four staff are working in utter silence, with the demeanour of being under hypnosis. It’s the sort of place where in a movie you’d expect a distinguished old Frenchman to wander in and explain to everyone that they were all dead.

  ‘Basically, it’s about this guy who is just too critical, he can’t enjoy anything. He goes to the movies and just can’t get into what his friends enjoy … He hates life … It’s pretty much autobiographical at the start.’

  There is one of those polite laughs that end really suddenly. I have a big gulp of coffee.

  ‘So it’s funny, he rants about Twitter, he rants about Will Smith …’

  They’re nodding.

  ‘And then he walks right in front of a fucking car. He gets a brain injury and when he wakes up his IQ has gone down by 20 points.’

  ‘It’s a brain-injury comedy,’ notes guy with the beard. He’s chuckling but being serious.

  ‘I know, but it’s upbeat, because now he starts to fit in. He goes to the new Will Smith movie with his girlfriend and loves it. His stupid ideas make great adverts, because they’re just the sort of shit people could almost think of for themselves. He goes to an Adam Sandler movie and he loves it! We pick a really bad one, any of them will do!’

  This goes over surprisingly well.

  ‘Or maybe we do one specially for the film. Then, of course, his intellect starts going back up, his brain starts getting better. But he loves his new life so he keeps running out of meetings to smash his head in with a cupboard door or bang it on the floor. Eventually he gets smarter and smarter until he encounters this big alien consciousness that watches over us.’

  ‘Could it be God?’ asks Ron, suddenly all business.

  ‘Yes, call it God if you want. It tells him that it’s been waiting for a human to reach this level of consciousness and offers him the opportunity to change one thing about reality.’

  ‘One wish. Well, that’s different,’ says Clay.

  ‘He thinks about it. World peace would just break down. Heal the environment and mankind will just expand its bad ideas across the galaxy, destroying the universe in a consumerist jihad. Then he realises the value of stupidity and that his dumbass buddy Keith would be as likely to have a good idea as he would. He gives the wish to Keith.’

  This seems to be going over OK, so I breeze into the finish.

  ‘This consciousness, eh, God says that this will hurt a little and smacks him heavily on the head with a mallet. He wakes up in hospital and he’s his old self but the world is completely different. It’s a paradise where everybody is relaxed and helpful, people care about the planet and they care about each other. He tracks down Keith and he finds that he used the wish to create a sort of Viagra gel called ‘FUCK WITH IMPUNITY’. It makes you hard for hours but removes your memory of the sexual encounter. Humanity is getting what it always needed – it’s getting laid without all the guilt and bullshit.’

  I sit back and spread my hands in what looks like a parody of someone who has just made a pitch.

  ‘Ron’s making Will Smith’s new movie,’ Clay stage-whispers, and we’re all laughing. They are surprisingly decent old cunts. Clearly they wouldn’t lend you ten pence for a cup of tea, or even let you make a call from their mobile in a medical emergency but they seem nicer than British show-business types. Cultural confidence of the US maybe. Probably they are horrible to someone who brings them a bad idea, like a fickle classical deity. Well, an unprofitable idea. They like this one.

  On the way out Clay puts his hand on my shoulder and says that Catholics and Jews have had Shaolin training in guilt.

  ‘You know how in a movie, a Kung Fu guy will have forgotten he’s been trained and kick someone’s ass without realising it? That’s what we’re like with guilt. You’re minding your own business and then you’re like, whoa where did that come from?’

  I feel glad that I’ve struck a nerve with this guy, for the sake of the movie getting made, and immediately feel guilty.

  I run into a Scottish lassie in Forbidden Planet who recognises me. She’s normal looking, ordinary, which is very much my thing. We go for a drink and I stagger through some attempts at flirtation. After a few misfires we talk movies, thank fuck, but even then the breadth of my negativity clearly spooks her. If it weren’t for my panel-show profile she’d probably think I was a murderer. She looks innocent but from some hints she drops about her gap year, her fanny has seen more wear and tear than the space shuttle.

  At the hotel we are kissing on the sofa and I ask her to whisper her sexual fantasy into my ear.

  ‘Well … I’m in a butcher’s shop … and I’m asking for some mince and there’s a queue of people behind me …’

  ‘Uh-huh …’

  ‘But the butcher
just comes out from behind the counter and he pushes me down on the floor and he gets on top of me and everybody is watching …’

  ‘In the butcher’s shop?’

  ‘Yes! And I’m saying I just want my mince but he’s got my knickers off and he sticks his cock in me and everybody is watching, and I say just give me my mince but he just keeps pushing and pushing himself into me …’

  ‘This is your fantasy? Really?’

  ‘Yes! And he just keeps pushing and pushing …’

  There’s just something in the way she keeps saying ‘pushing’, and I start to get into it.

  After she goes I’m too hot and I can’t sleep. The internet dude has messaged Alan Hansen about his cancer.

  ‘Your joking? Alan, I am so, so fucking sorry. Is there anything I can do?’

  I picture Hansen introducing his distraught family to this random who is going to help him through his illness, perhaps announcing the illness through him and having this guy deal with everybody for him, some mad cunt from Manchester.

  I have friended this same roaster, Gary O’Donnell, on a page where I’m pretending to be a woman called Amanda. I’ve got photos from my pal Lyndsay in return for quite a lot of Valium. It’s a nice spread including some of those shots women often have where they’re messing about in a wig or a hat but they know they look fucking amazing. I’m disturbed to see that O’Donnell has messaged Amanda immediately after Alan Hansen (‘Hi! How’s it all going with you?’). Clumsy, Gary. Poor stuff. Amanda replies that she was trying to friend someone else with the same name, but there’s a wee edge of flirtation. I end with *tee hee*. I find myself trying not to judge Gary for trying to pull some stranger just after he hears that I, Alan Hansen, have fucking cancer. But it’s hard not to judge.

  Alan Hansen messages Gary.

  I am not joking Gary, it’s been a hard couple of weeks. Thanks for your kind words. By the way, it’s You’re, not Your. You are, rather than the possessive your.

  Alan

  When you think of the long and gloomy history of man, you will find more hideous crimes have been committed in the name of obedience than have ever been committed in the name of rebellion.

  C. P. Snow

  Chapter 07

  I read an incredible article in the Guardian describing the summer rioting in Belfast as ‘a marketing disaster’ for a city hoping to encourage golf tourism. But how could these young people, from an area of chronic unemployment and lack of opportunity, actually benefit from golf tourism? They could get minimum-wage jobs changing the sheets at hotels, hold that ‘Golf Sale’ sign in the high street or become prostitutes. I mean it – those are the options. Kevin Costner caused a stramash at a Scottish golfing hotel by apparently trying to get a masseuse to touch his cock. Because it’s the Third World to him and that’s what these places do. They invite you over to some golf tournament and they touch your cock.

  It’s ‘a marketing disaster’ for hoteliers, investors and the middle classes. For the people involved it’s a human disaster, one that is ignored. The effect the rioting has on their lives is not discussed. They are an inconvenience to capital.

  Criminals are the Other that nobody gives a fuck about. And ‘criminal’ is cultural shorthand for ‘working class’. In fact, ‘working class’ is virtually cultural shorthand for ‘criminal’. Cultural contempt for the working classes is largely a projection of guilt. In slave societies you always had these myths of black men raping white women, because white slave owners raped black women a lot. So in our society rich people brand the poor as thieves, because the rich are busy stealing from the poor.

  While you’re at it, look at some of the other stereotypes of the underclass and see if they are projections:

  • That they are unintelligent. Uh-huh? You’re watching a Swedish detective series instead of The X Factor and you’re throwing judgement around. Really?

  • That they don’t raise their children properly. No, they tend to have to get a sub-minimum wage raising your fucking children properly.

  • That the underclass is hedonistic. Actually, I’ve seen a lot of the English middle classes and let me tell you that you are, collectively, pissed.

  I loved that campaign in England a few years ago where they tried to point out the moral problems of cocaine use. The chain of misery involved in producing and transporting the drug. That might be the most misguided thing that ever happened – trying to appeal to the conscience of the biggest cunts on earth. Explaining that their habit will lead to peasant farmers being shot, to people who would really quite like to watch.

  Look, here is a fairly basic rule of life; it’s really obvious and caveman-y but everybody seems to be missing it. Cunts will always try to take all the cool stuff. You look at those pictures of Israeli settlers using these beautiful bathing places on occupied land with this incredible jade-coloured water and caves, and sure, there are lots of historical factors at play there, but basically they are just cunts who took something because it was cool.

  It’s the same culturally. Middle-class people grew up watching Hawkwind and Bowie play Glastonburys full of hippies getting high on acid and they thought, ‘That looks cool, let’s take it.’ Now they all go to Glastonbury and watch Coldplay and U2 and have picnics and be cunts. And how do you take something culturally? Well, you use money, because you have it and they don’t and now it’s probably hundreds of pounds a ticket. I mean I can’t even be fucked checking but it will be and that’s how they’ll have fucking done it.

  Look at the culture and most things are that. Stand-up comedy (huge generalisation) was pioneered into its current form by some extremely damaged examples of what might now be called the underclass. Billy Connolly and Richard Pryor were from unenviably abusive backgrounds. The middle classes saw that and they took it because it was cool. How did they take it? Money. You can’t be a successful comic now without going through the Edinburgh Festival system. On average that will take you five years and every year you will lose seven grand. So I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but your comics aren’t talking about the shipyards or being raised in brothels anymore.

  Of course, one of the main reasons for criminal behaviour is the narrow conformity that we are asked to adapt to. The last Labour government created hundreds of new offences and, naturally, the stated reasons for police powers (the right to disperse gangs of teenage loiterers, for example) are often a smokescreen for what they will actually be used for (the right to disperse peaceful protests). For all the talk of getting away from big government, people sit in meeting rooms drafting legislation to stop you having a fag in your car.

  Banning smoking in cars is going to affect one group in particular – the dogging community. What’s a woman supposed do instead of a cigarette once she’s finished pleasuring five strangers in the car park outside Carpetwise in Bolton? Listen to Radio 3? Two-thirds of people say they’ve had sex in a car. I’m in that group. Still failed the test though. Meanwhile, people who drink on buses will be barred from using them again. All very good in theory, but they’ll run out of drivers.

  Owners of dangerous dogs will have to take out insurance. It will be interesting seeing how the adverts change to capture this new market. Churchill the dog nodding in the back of a car will be replaced with Churchill the dog bleeding to death in the basement of a boxing club. ‘You challenged Churchill to cheaper dog insurance. He’s sorry he said “no” now, isn’t he?’

  And discrimination against vegans is to be outlawed. It’s about time that that something was done to stop people from making cruel and unjustified comments about these twitching middle-class hippies with their ungodly farts and pasty-faced brittle-boned children.

  Shoplifters cost every family in Britain £180 a year. Shocking news – I need to nick at least another 30 quid’s worth just to be in credit.

  Ken Clarke is annoyed at the suggestion he’s softening his stance on knife crime and says, ‘Anyone who thinks so is welcome to taste my steel.’ Of course, a complete knife ban w
ouldn’t work. Give it a fortnight and it’d be ‘Sarge, there’s been a spooning on the Cockcroft Estate, the poor sod’s ’ed’s caved in like Humpty Faaking Dumpty.’

  Clarke suggested shorter jail sentences for ‘less serious rapes’. So remember, if you’re a serial sex offender, always carry a whoopee cushion. I agree with him; some rapes really are more serious than others. Melvyn Bragg being raped by Martin Amis? That’s far more serious than, say, Joe Pasquale being gang-raped by Wallace and Gromit. Margaret from The Apprentice being raped by Sir Ben Kingsley? Very serious.

  Ken Clarke actually faced a rape victim, but unfortunately not in a mirror. Surely it should be the rapists that meet with Ken? Once they’ve got his image in their heads it should be so much easier for them to exhibit this restraint that the Tories keep saying is so impossible. Ken felt the meeting was a triumph of tact, in that she was an attractive woman and he somehow managed not to fuck her against her will.

  Critics of Clarke’s recent proposals said it was ridiculous to give violent and abusive offenders an easy way to cut sentences. Maybe, but if they’re out sooner it would mean they could plug employment gaps in the care-home industry. Tucked into the revised proposals are plans to criminalise squatting. It’s just common sense. Forcing people from empty buildings so they have to claim housing benefit to pay a landlord, how can that not save money?

  Apparently, DNA matches help to solve a tiny amount of crimes. That’s a relief, as I can stop carrying around my neighbour’s fingernail clippings whenever I go for a night out.

  A criminal who suffered horrific burns while breaking into an electricity sub-station has warned of the dangers of stealing copper cabling. On the plus side, if he hadn’t done this he’d never have found out just how delicious he smells. He didn’t manage to steal any copper but did manage to take about ten quid’s worth of electricity to the face.