Work! Consume! Die!

by Frankie Boyle

  A French prisoner suffocated and killed his cellmate before eating his lung. Following an autopsy the coroner described the deceased as delicious. He always wanted to escape – now he can, through the toilet.

  There are plans to make prisoners work full time so they’re more employable on release. Then they can be told there are no jobs for them, as prisoners are doing it for half the price.

  Prisoners having sex changes in UK jails will be allowed to buy padded bras and make-up. And why not? Who doesn’t want to look their best as they’re slopping out or being savagely beaten with a sock filled with snooker balls? No matter how feminine they look, I can’t help feeling the fact they’re in a male prison is a bit of a giveaway.

  Young male prisoners are converting to Islam at an alarming rate, almost as alarming as the rate at which we are converting young Muslim men into prisoners. It’s a great idea. They’re going to be on their hands and knees five times a day anyway, so why not incorporate prayer? When they die they get bummed in heaven by 72 first-time offenders.

  Convicts are getting methadone in prison. No wonder – the last thing I want to feel in a gangbang is my nerve endings. It’s felt that these prisoners could not cope with life on the outside without drugs, which means their prison term was a success and they are ready to integrate perfectly into our society.

  Dealers could avoid jail if they’re carrying up to 50 wraps of heroin, an amount commonly known in Scotland as a ‘dowry’. The judges say they want to be tougher on the people who produce or grow the drugs, but we’re already at war with Afghanistan so how much tougher can we get? A recent survey revealed that half of all Scots know a junkie. While the other half have no contact with their father at all.

  A Democratic member of Congress was shot through the head. Ironically, with a large part of her brain missing, she’s still a keen supporter of the gun lobby. Everyone knows that guns should have no place in any democratic process, except The X Factor finals. Obama asked for a minute’s silence. Doesn’t sound like much but, remember, these people are Americans – that equals about 15 minutes for us.

  And what about Norway? A nation consumed with grief, sorrow and endless tears. Then the shooting began. You know a news story is truly tragic when five minutes after it breaks the jokes in your inbox are still only in single figures. The shooter was a racist who hated Muslims. Our news programmes went one further by being so racist they assumed that he was a Muslim.

  A devout Christian, Anders Behring Breivik saved 2,000 euros to spend on a top-class hooker. All I want to know is – where can I get a copy of this guy’s Bible? I don’t believe he’s as ruthlessly intelligent as they claim. Look at the evidence of his white-supremacist plan for saving Norway’s white population. Step one: kill loads of white people.

  Experts said there were some signs that he might be insane. What would they be? The cruel and heartless way he took the lives of 80 people? Or something more obvious, like writing his death diary in green ink?

  Breivik wanted to appear in military clothing at his trial, but the judge explained you can only legitimately wear the uniform of a European army when shooting young people if you’re somewhere in the Middle East. Breivik expects he’ll die in prison. Probably. I’m guessing, the day they let him out of solitary.

  Meanwhile in Britain, with three shootings Raoul Moat made himself the twelfth-most dangerous man in Gateshead. Goes to show, there’s one thing more depressing than living in Scotland, and that’s living downwind of Scotland. Moat said he wanted to shoot his ex so she would never look good in a bikini again. He needn’t have shot her; he could have just waited for her to turn 40. Actually, have you seen her? He could have just bought her a bikini. Why did she leave him? Because he looked like a hulked out Jimmy Somerville, with a face like a furious bun. Moat had vowed he would kill his ex, and yet the police ignored this. After all, a lot of men say this … but how many actually go on to do it? Only two a week.

  The prison service was baffled as to why Northumbria police did nothing when they were told Moat was going to shoot his girlfriend. Didn’t they realise that if they really wanted him arrested they should have said he was a Muslim teenager who tried to hire a meeting room? There is something about Moat I admire … he vowed to be a cop killer and that’s what he was until the day he died. Unlike Ice-T, who vowed to be a cop killer until he landed a part as a kangaroo in a Hollywood film. The Sun’s handwriting expert said that Moat had ‘abandoned general rules of convention’ – amazing how she could tell that by the fact that he writes in capitals, and had just shot three people at point-blank range.

  Why couldn’t they locate him? Look at the size of the fucker – couldn’t they just have found the tree stump that the curries were getting delivered to? The policeman Moat shot says he bears him no malice – although in fairness, he does have a shotgun cartridge lodged in the part of the brain that deals with malice.

  Gazza brought a can of lager, chicken, a fishing rod, a mobile phone and a dressing gown. What a generous man, to offer Moat his entire divorce settlement. That was a 20-mile drive – if Gazza arrived with one can of lager how many must he have set off with? It could have worked, though. Anyone’s problems are going to be put into perspective if Gazza turns up in his Y-fronts clutching a bag of potatoes and wearing a tea cosy on his head. This incident captured Britain’s imagination so much I think the BBC should consider it as the replacement to Desert Island Discs; a programme where Kirsty Wark asks faded 90s footballers which five items they would take to cheer up a homicidal maniac. ‘So, Gary Pallister, for your packaged meat I see you have chosen breaded ham. What exactly is it about Peter Sutcliffe that made you think of pork?’

  Ian Huntley had his throat slashed by another con. Looking on the bright side, he can now wear his tongue as a tie to parole hearings. Prison staff and surgeons did everything they could, but Huntley still survived the attack. Doctors weren’t sure whether to stitch his throat up or fill him with sweets and use him as a Pez dispenser. To prevent Huntley from using his neck to smuggle contraband, surgeons have made it easier to search him. If a warden steps on his foot, then his head flips open like a pedal bin. The man who attacked him was very angry. You know how these environmentalists get with people who choose to fill their baths instead of using a shower. Let’s hope this action doesn’t make his attacker a folk hero. After all, if he has one thing to teach us it’s that persistent drug use really affects your aim. Ian Huntley claims putting him to work in the kitchens was a dangerous move by the prison warders. No, Ian, surely it would be more dangerous to put you to work in the bathroom?

  Rose West complained that the actress playing her in a TV drama was ‘too dowdy’. Yes, it must be awful seeing yourself on the small screen hammering a child to death in a beige cardigan. To be fair, being a female sex-crazed serial killer and staying glamorous can’t be easy. It must be a nightmare getting brain and skull fragments out of a vejazzle.

  The Yorkshire Ripper is so mentally ill that he must be given a chance of parole. How does that work? If he’s sane he’ll spend the rest of his life behind bars but if he believes he is half vampire, half panther, he’ll be put in a bedsit and be checked up on by a social worker once a month. He plans to tell the court he’s been cured of his schizophrenia, before calling himself to the stand for cross-examination.

  Peter Sutcliffe will be a low-risk inmate if he takes his medication. We’re expecting a lot from a man who couldn’t remember not to kill women. I’m not saying he’s rehabilitated but he has learned some new skills in Broadmoor – apparently he’s retrained and now uses his eye socket as a penholder. Of course, if he ever did get released they’d have to give him a new identity. How about Jon Venables or Robert Thompson?

  We don’t need to worry about Robert Thompson. After Jon Venables cocked it all up, the only freedom Thompson will see is a Stonehenge screensaver during his half-hour monitored internet session.

  Chris Jeffries, the landlord of murdered Jo Yeates, was released
without charge. I always thought he was innocent … he just doesn’t look like the kind of bloke that eats pizza; shags dead women? Yes. But pizza? Never. Well, maybe ham and pineapple. He aroused suspicion when he was seen in his car outside the flat he lived in. If you look so weird that people think you’re a murderer just by watching you park your car, it’s time to get a fucking haircut. He was in a car? Outside his house? He may not have killed anyone but the country still despises him for being able to park so close to his front door.

  I feel sorry for Cumbrian gunman Derrick Bird – constantly arguing with people about the spelling of your first name must drive you mental. Normally, the countryside is a place where you can leave your door unlocked, as the police are always looking for a fresh place to hide. If Bird had been caught he would have got a life sentence … and a 3,000 score on Grand Theft Auto.

  It’s been suggested that policemen having tattoos could be a great ‘icebreaker’. As in, ‘Hey, Winston, have you seen my lovely swastika?’ Why do the police need an icebreaker? So that people on a protest march will feel like they’ve just been hit across the back of their legs by someone they’d like to get to know better? Why not go further – policemen’s tattoos could be sponsored. That way we’d be able to all see which newspapers are currently paying them. It could be interesting though. It’d be the first time I’d have been wrestled to the ground by a heavily tattooed man in the police outfit without having had to pay up-front.

  A teenage boy from Essex allegedly hacked into a government computer, causing chaos. It’s like something out of a 1980s film. As is visiting Essex. Following the hack, Nintendo beefed up security – they put up another couple of walls and told Donkey Kong to throw the barrels more quickly. That’ll now be the excuse teenage boys up and down the country are using: ‘Mum, don’t come in here, I’m hacking a website.’ He’s an agoraphobic who can’t bear to go outside. It’s a pretty common condition in Essex. A fear of open spaces probably won’t be a problem where he’ll be spending the next 25 years.

  The police had plenty of warning that the riots were going to happen. The Kaiser Chiefs predicted them back in 2004. After three days of pillaging and looting, London suddenly became much quieter. Understandable. Why would you want to be out on the streets risking getting your new trainers dirty when you can stay at home watching a recently acquired 52-inch TV?

  Cameron came back from his holiday. A couple of days with the family and any excuse to come back will do. His decision to take full control was probably due to Samantha suggesting that they visit a water park. He flew back to chair an emergency meeting of COBRA. David, do you ever sit there, chairing a meeting of COBRA and wonder if you’re the bad guy? Meanwhile, Michael Gove argued that it was ‘an insult’ to the hard-working majority ‘to somehow link poverty and criminality’. Which is why the riots seemed to contain a fair proportion of gentlemen cat-thieves and caddish bounders. Nick Clegg was booed by the public when he visited Birmingham, so much so that he accidentally blurted out, ‘Hello, conference …’

  Teenagers were so sick of the police treating them like criminals that they decided to protest against it through a mixture of arson, theft and violence. They were trying to smash the system. The system of earning money to pay for stuff. The demands of the people have been put into a manifesto – the Argos catalogue. But it’s not all bad news. Now that we have a population of violent teenagers with new TVs there’s a good chance that I’ll get another series.

  The Sun ran a campaign called ‘Shop a Moron’. Which coincidentally is Asda’s new advertising slogan. Rapper Plan B wrote an amazing column about the riots for the Sun. He asked the looters, ‘Would they like to live in a world where everybody was poor and everybody was on crack and everybody’s mums were on crack?’ Er, thanks for your contribution to the debate. I think Plan A was to read some books and go on a diet.

  A community leader in Hackney said he’d warned the police there could be trouble. Then again, he says that every week. These riots have put smaller boroughs like Wood Green on the map – and then burnt them off again.

  There have been some sickening sights, though. Like all these Twitter users trying to clean up their communities. You live in London, you idiots. You don’t have a community. I don’t know what the most used sentence will have been at those events – ‘We’ve got more brooms than Hogwarts!’ or ‘I’m not a racist, but …’ If I were a rioter I’d probably enjoy seeing the white middle classes having to clean up after an ethnic minority for a change. Hundreds of volunteers came out across Liverpool to help with the clean-up. They’d been working for several hours before they were told the riots took place on the other side of town.

  Actually, the real question here is ‘How shit is the telly at the minute?’ These are people who happily sat slack-jawed through 15 weeks of Britain’s Got Talent, and yet Show Me the Funny comes on and they have to run screaming into the street and throw a burning bin through the window of Halfords. I can only think that things will get worse, now that they have to watch 8 Out of 10 Cats on an HD plasma.

  It’s not easy as a parent, explaining the harrowing news footage to your child. Luckily, I dodged that job as he nipped out that weekend and wasn’t back till the worst was over. Many of the rioters were just 10 to 15 years old, making some of the coverage look like a black Bugsy Malone. The real tragedy here is that we have people whose life prospects are so poor they’d happily swap them for a pair of trainers. These riots have been an indication of young people’s lack of hope, ambition and aspiration. This was demonstrated when they decided to loot Aldi. Go in with a fiver and you still feel like you’re looting the place. I bet the manager of Comet was devastated when he discovered that every electrical item in his shop had been stolen and he hadn’t taken out the anti-looting warranty.

  Amazingly, Spurs’ match against Everton was postponed. As if they were going to riot at the match and steal Gareth Bale. And England had to cancel a friendly with the Netherlands, which avoided a great deal of national embarrassment. Though you will still have to play them at some point.

  Rioters communicated by encrypted BlackBerry messages. Where’s Glenn Mulcaire when you need him? Police reckon they can trace the messages. Although something tells me a lot of these people might have new phones by now … The riots revealed the awesome power of social networking. Never mind bringing down Middle Eastern governments, it can also get enough people together to force the shutters at JJB Sports.

  Many people have called for the reintroduction of National Service. I agree. It’ll be a lot more entertaining if next time this happens everybody has had some serious weapons training.

  But what can the police do? Well, I suppose for starters they could try arresting people without shooting them. There’s talk of police using rubber bullets. Doesn’t sound scary, does it? A bit like threatening to hang someone with elastic. Rubber bullets have never been fired on the streets of London, a statistic of which we can all be proud. I’m sure Mark Duggan is pleased that he was blown away with red-hot, garlic-coated dumdums, rather than have us break our duck.

  Crime is inevitable in an unequal society. John Maynard Keynes said, ‘Nothing corrupts a society more than to disconnect effort and reward.’ Thomas Geoghegan expands on this in his book The Law in Shambles:

  That’s what did it in the old Soviet Union: no matter how hard people worked, they could not get ahead of those who did not work at all. Here, if people don’t work, they would end up being homeless. Though if they do work they may still end up being homeless. And all the while they hear about dot-com riches and stock market winnings being showered on people who haven’t really done much of anything … So, quietly and to themselves, people start to wonder, as the country becomes fabulously wealthy: Why play by the rules?

  We live in a climate where big companies have a criminal outlook and often employ criminal methods. Where the City of London treats criminal money as indistinguishable from legitimate funds, acts as a tax haven and launders money. Meanwh
ile, people are told that more and more of their actions are illegal, as more of human experience is assessed and judged. Some people grow up to be a bank robber because their daddy was a bank robber. What do we raise the next generation to be in a country run by thieves?

  ‘The first time I ever played FIFA he beat me 6–0. Every goal was greeted with screams of triumph’

  Back in Glasgow I have to pick up my son almost as soon as my train gets in. I don’t really like him coming to the high-rise so we usually go swimming or to the park. We have lunch and play ‘I-Spy-Wee-Man-Live-or-Die’. Wee-Man features in lot of games; he’s a relentlessly optimistic tap-dancer played by my middle and index fingers. The idea in this one is that if we fail to guess the I-Spy he will be executed. My son’s only 3 years old, so I never let Wee-Man die, although I do sometimes have to touch the object I’m spying or even wave it under his face.

  In the pool we play a game where he throws his T-Rex dinosaur toy into the deep end and I have to catch it before it hits the bottom. I tell myself that if I ever let it hit the bottom I will be raped, and dive frantically at every throw, catching some while they are still in the air. There’s a kind of cold Jacuzzi with a waterfall that he wants to go in. As I get out of the pool I throw him the dinosaur but it rebounds back into the water. I dive down but it has already hit the bottom. I notice for the first time what a malicious face it has, what hateful little eyes. As I’m drying him off, I ask him if he had a nickname what would it be. He says ‘Nick’.