Work! Consume! Die!

by Frankie Boyle

  But Ashley’s taking his time. Friends say his tactic is ‘softly, softly, catchee monkey’. Let’s just hope it works with creatures of slightly less intelligence too. Ashley’s planning to consolidate his wooing with the gift of a new Chihuahua. Cheryl loves the little dogs, as a dab of Bovril on her ankles means they can give her a well-timed nip if she can’t muster sufficient tears in public.

  Cheryl is like the Greece of the celebrity world. The game’s up, but the press keep backing her because she now generates so much news copy that if we just admitted it you’d soon be paying your 30p for little more than a pair of tits and some racing advice. I doubt Cheryl will struggle for work; in a society as damned as this we will happily lay off teachers and nurses but there will always be a need for a perky-titted karaoke judge.

  Cheryl got back with Ashley on her 28th birthday – pretty young for Alzheimer’s to be setting in. They reunited at a barbecue. A barbecue is a fitting analogy to Cheryl’s career. It initially burns brightly, then the embers fade. Often it makes you vomit and it’s 100 per cent disposable. What’s more, they won’t let you on a plane to America with one.

  You could vote in one of the Sun’s online polls on whether they should get back together. Alternatively, why not lower yourself into a mincer and have someone post the result to a landfill site? I wonder if Cheryl will one day be able to pass away peacefully without her life-support machine being wired up to a phone vote.

  Ashley is a changed man. Nothing says commitment like a third wedding ring in four years. He’s looking for a diamond worth around £160,000 – which is roughly three times the size of Cheryl’s brain. Of course Cheryl wants to get back with Ashley – there’s nothing that pleases a Geordie girl more than seeing their man shoot a student. Since splitting with Ashley, Cheryl has nearly died and lost two jobs. Looking back, sharing her rarely seen husband with a couple of hairdressers must seem like the height of humdrum contentment.

  Ashley has agreed to Cheryl’s list of demands. They include a lavish new home, a hi-tech recording studio, a house in LA and a no-expense spared wedding and honeymoon. So at least this time they’re marrying each other for the right reasons. But in the end, it seemed they split because Ashley was shagging some air stewardess. Presumably, Cheryl found a pillowcase that looked like the Turin Shroud had been Tango’d.

  Ashley is opening a restaurant with Jay-Z. The thickness guide for the steaks takes the form of photographs of Ashley’s cock in different stages of arousal. ‘My husband wants the “nail technician has sent a picture message” but I’m on a diet so I’ll stick with a “Cheryl is walking towards my phone”.’ I confess I was addicted to sexy-picture messaging way back in the one-megapixel days. You never fully get over it – I still feel a stirring in my loins whenever we visit Legoland.

  Cheryl’s ex Derek Hough said he felt led on. He thought she was going to answer ‘yes’ to those four little words … ‘Are you a man?’ Derek made the comments in private phone calls to a female friend. We’re not sure how the chat got leaked to the press, but if I were Derek I’d make sure his friend hasn’t been murdered.

  Cheryl says she may give up show-business. Yes, I think you might do that, Cheryl. I think you just might be able to fill the ravenous abyss at the centre of your being that means you need more love than a planet of newborn puppies and drags the attention of strangers towards it like a collapsing star. You might use the remnants of your tortured psyche to heal the shrieking anti-matter wound that passes for your soul. Or maybe you’ll become a judge on The Voice, or something.

  They say money can’t buy you happiness. Jedward made £3 million last year. I think we can add talent, charisma and self-awareness to that list. I mean, they replaced the Coco Pops monkey on the front of the cereal box. I always said if those boys worked hard they would eventually be taken seriously.

  JLS, another product of The X Factor, had their faces printed on packs of Durex. Presumably with the slogan ‘Use a condom: don’t let this happen again.’ JLS say they’re trying to persuade their male fans not to have casual sex with women. As your male fans are all gay, you’ve succeeded. Well done.

  The band is passionate about tackling the important subject of unwanted pregnancy, unfortunately 24 years too late for their mothers. JLS are a great inspiration to wear a condom; their music has always led me to wish I had never been born. JLS feel they are well placed to teach other men about sex. After all, they did come second. Susan Boyle has also inspired a range of contraception. They’re going to compulsorily sterilise everyone in West Lothian.

  There was some hideous PR story where JLS singer Marvin tried to impress his girlfriend by making her some pasta, but he didn’t know how to cook it. Quite frankly, I’m surprised that a member of JLS didn’t try to impress a girl with pasta by glueing it to a picture along with some glitter. I can only imagine that going out with a member of JLS would be like dating one of those men that were in a coma since they were a baby. His girlfriend is a member of The Saturdays, so they’ve got a lot in common. They both go out with someone who they think is more talented than they are. And they’re both wrong.

  Nicola from Girls Aloud has been upset by people saying she has become too thin. We are worried that you have anorexia, Nicola, because we were using your body to distract us from your face and personality. ‘Everyone talks about my weight,’ she says. Wrong. Everyone talks about how they’d use you to try and pump one of the good-looking ones. The advantage is that after gigs she can be snuck out past fans in a poster tube. Never mind your figure, Nicola, I know that you’ve got a big heart – I saw it jiggling away through your paper-thin frame when you wandered in front of a spotlight. People say she could be the ugliest one in Girls Aloud. Which is unfair; she could be the ugliest one in Motörhead, too.

  Britney Spears is pumping weights, doing yoga and kickboxing. She will soon hold the title of fittest woman alive that no one wants to fuck. On her latest tour, Britney says she’ll dismiss anyone working for her who is hung-over. That’ll backfire at her Scottish venues. Let’s see how good a show she puts on after manning the ticket booth, hanging her own lighting rig and then selling her own merchandise. Then having to drive herself to her hotel, check herself in and the next morning cook her own breakfast before finally flying herself back to Florida.

  Apparently Take That earned £15 million each from their latest tour. Everything’s equal in the band this time – Gary, Robbie, Mark and Howard share the singing and songwriting duties. And Jason does the sarnies.

  Robbie Williams laughed off criticism of his onstage swearing. At his last gig he shocked fans by announcing, ‘My name is Robbie F***ing Williams.’ What’s the fuss about? That’s always been his middle name in my house. Who wouldn’t swear if they had to listen to Jason and Mark trying to sing every night? A friend was cross with him for teaching his toddler rude words. Robbie denies it, saying he just put on his new CD and the infant said, ‘Oh, not that sh*t again’ completely unprompted.

  Take That are a mystery to me. First time round, their fans were 14-year-old girls and now they are all women in their mid- to late-30s. They quit when their fans became legal and re-formed when they stopped being fanciable. Police compared the fans at Take That gigs to football hooligans. The difference is football hooligans have much better songs to sing along to. Their gigs loked like a cross between Loose Women and Dawn of the Dead.

  Teenage fans of Justin Bieber managed to sneak into his hotel room in Liverpool. Bieber was outraged as they could have been knife-wielding maniacs. I’m outraged too, as they could have been knife-wielding maniacs!

  Madame Tussaud’s (catchphrase: ‘Underwhelming tourists since 1836’) unveiled their waxwork of Bieber. I only really want Justin Bieber and molten wax to be brought together when he’s being tortured by Al-Qaeda. The dummy weighs 60 kg and stands at just under 6 ft. And was in London for just a couple of days before resuming his tour. I’d love to buy Bieber’s model when they’re done with him. Then I could put him in a
big suitcase dressed as a Nazi, take him down my gym and re-enact the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark in their sauna.

  Lady Gaga showed up to the 2010 MTV awards wearing a dress made of steak. It wasn’t the first time I’ve looked at a young female popstar and thought, ‘Fill it’. There was a great afterparty, where the singer put the outfit in the washing machine on a hot wash and threw in a few carrots. Is it just the latest in a long line of attempts to stir up controversy? Apparently not; at least so says her publicist, the tormented ghost of Madeleine McCann.

  Gaga visited Scotland and claimed to be celibate, a decision she made seconds after meeting her first Glaswegian. She says that girls should practise safe sex and get to know people before they sleep with them. It’s true. That’s why I make sure I always carry a condom, and fake ID. Gaga regularly wears net curtains, teapots and platform boots – it would be like trying to fuck the window display at Oxfam.

  She says she’s modelled herself on Princess Diana. It’s just a shame it’s not from how she looked before the crash. She seems to be going bald. Having dated a bald girl I have to say there are advantages. Draw a smiley face on the back of her head with a permanent marker and it really takes the sting out of her storming off after an argument.

  Gaga is learning sign language so her deaf fans can understand her songs. Oh, come on Gaga, haven’t these people suffered enough? Good luck with signing out her songs. When they attempt ‘Rah-rah-ah-ah-ah! Rom-mah-rom-mum-mah! GaGa-oo-la-la!’ it’ll be funnier than the time the late-night signer had to explain Max Mosley’s court case.

  She caused mayhem recently after turning up somewhere in just a discreet jeans-and-jumper combo. Trouble is, we’ve seen her baps so much they’re about as exciting as the back of my toilet door. And even that likes to tease me by being partially covered with a dressing gown once in a while. Poor old Lord Gaga, his monocle must be dropping from his eye on pretty much a daily basis. I suppose he might be blissfully unaware as he’s probably a Daily Telegraph man.

  Fashion genius Alexander McQueen famously dressed Lady Gaga. He hung himself in a wardrobe – how appropriate. I hope he popped some mothballs in his pockets out of respect for his cleaners. Gaga always looks like a cross between a Francis Bacon painting and a voodoo doll made in a secure mental home. McQueen’s outfits were essentially a crocheted suicide note.

  Duncan Bannatyne posted suicidal messages on Twitter. I know Dragons’ Den is worried about its ratings – but I think the live tweeted death of one of its stars might mean it wins at reality television and we can go back to watching nice comedy plays in the evening. Bannatyne asked, ‘Is death the end. Or is there more?’ Like he was even negotiating with God. A man who runs gyms gets suicidal? You mean paying to constantly run on the spot while breathing in someone else’s genital sweat won’t bring me happiness?

  Duncan is a very young-seeming 62. I don’t mean he looks young, I mean he thinks it’s appropriate to chat about topping himself on social-networking sites. I’m not worried about being out of line here; Bannatyne owns casinos and knows all about cashing in on people’s marriage breakdowns. I think this was just a cry for help. And the British public have responded with a resounding, ‘Anything on at the cinema? I fancy a coffee. Have you read the new Henning Mankell?’

  Twitter isn’t just a sublimated admission that the person you live with tunes your conversation out. There was that whole super-injunction malarkey. If your most secret and depraved acts can be described in 140 characters then you’re not trying hard enough. My sex secrets could never be described in one tweet. You’d need a pair of 3D glasses and a Nintendo Wii controller with a tongue.

  The names of celebrities with super-injunctions were being printed in foreign newspapers. It was a sad day for the British free press when I read the truth in the Tehran Gazette. This scandal has a lot to answer for. Mostly for burning the hideous image of Andrew Marr having sex indelibly in my brain. Even when I shut my eyes I can see the veins popping out on his baby bird’s head as he grunts, ‘You’re dodging the question so I’ll say it again, am I a naughty Mr Marr? Am I?!’

  It seems all these celebrities are at it like rabbits, which raises a very important question for me. Why aren’t I getting any of this? It’s good it’s come out because the injunction has been terrible for Imogen Thomas – like any ex-Big Brother housemate, all she craves is a quiet life, out of the limelight where she can relax in her pants in front of photographers.

  Scandal is nothing new. In the 1930s you couldn’t even hope to break into the movies unless you’d strangled a waitress in a motel room. It’s clearly time for our celebrities’ extra-marital sausage-hiding to be regulated and transparent. I propose a draw, like with the football. Number 6, Peter Andre, paired with Number 41, Sooty. All these revelations imply that celebrities are deeply troubled people, who only feel validated when winning the approval of strangers. At least I hope so. Their insatiable misery’s all that keeps me going.

  Then there are the celebrity drug scandals, like when George Michael crashed his car into a Snappy Snaps. George was quizzed by local police; I presume the main thrust of the questioning was, ‘Why the fuck do you keep doing this?’ George was very shaken and upset when he crashed – well, it’s always horrible to be woken up suddenly, isn’t it? George has only just come back from a two-year driving ban, which will be why he’s out of practice. How long before the impact from one of his crashes results in him being seriously injured? When his passenger bites his cock off.

  George was sentenced to eight weeks. Which is nothing, really; he’s gone out to buy milk and nodded off in an NCP multi-storey for longer than that. Eight weeks! George could do that with his eyes closed, the same technique he uses when turning left at traffic lights. It’s a tragic waste – all those drugs and not one decent song to show for it. I’d love to have seen him painting old folk’s homes and clearing the leaves out of people’s gutters. Though you could argue he’s taken enough work off Andrew Ridgeley already as it is. Poor Andrew Ridgeley. He took up race-car driving to forget about Wham!, and George still ends up more famous for his car crashes.

  One of the few moments when I was proud of being on the panel show Mock the Week was the time we were asked to slaughter poor old George for getting stoned and driving into something. I’d always had a real soft spot for him after he spoke out against the Iraq War. Of course, that’s a ridiculous thing to do if you sang ‘Club Tropicana’, but, to be fair, you could see in his eyes that he knew it was ridiculous but felt compelled to do it. Anyway, the subject came up and I said I didn’t want to do any jokes about him for that reason – that he’d done something vaguely heroic. Dara Ó Briain, who is a good soul, said that he agreed and we all just sat there in silence until the producer or whoever realised that we weren’t going to loose any arrows at the big, slow-moving target he’d presented us with. Sadly, for a panel show that’s like Spartacus.

  So why, you’re probably wondering, am I doing jokes about it here? OK, you know the story of the fox and the scorpion? Well, I am a scorpion. Wow, it really felt amazing to write that down. I advise you to live your life in such a way that one day you actually get to write that in a book, and mean it. I am a scorpion!

  Photos of Tara Palmer-Tomkinson show how drugs have wrecked her nose. Everyone says it’s because the cartilage is destroyed but I think it’s because her head is so empty it’s created a vacuum and her face has collapsed in on itself. This is the trouble with going to see a cowboy doctor – he took her money, he’s knocked down a supporting wall and hasn’t been back to finish the job. On the plus side, he did put a lovely serving hatch in the back of her head.

  Stephen Fry also admitted to ‘15 years of chronic cocaine taking’ and would tackle difficult crosswords while high. A stark warning to Charlie Sheen of what could happen if he doesn’t get help.

  Charlie made his webcast debut with a show he called Charlie’s Korner. Can’t be long before the guest presenter is Charlie’s Coroner. Charlie’s live show
didn’t go well. He couldn’t have crashed and burned any worse than if his act were as a fire-eater on the Hindenburg. Some said they expected the show to be funny ’cos they’d seen Two and a Half Men. What? If Two and a Half Men is evidence, I’d expect Charlie to be as funny as having my testicles stretched out behind a lorry then used as a show-jumping practice arena.

  He fiercely denies Warner Brothers’ claims his behaviour on set was unpredictable, saying you could set your watch by his on-the-hour moon-howls. The story’s effects are being felt right across Hollywood – there is now not a single rehab clinic in the LA area still offering a money-back guarantee. Is Sheen any madder than the rest of Hollywood? I’d rather be addicted to cocaine and booze than Prozac and flattery. One thing’s for sure, this is a lot funnier than Two and a Half Men.

  Poor Amy Winehouse. The grief only really hit me a few days after her death, when Ladbrokes explained that for my accumulator to have paid out, Gazza would have had to have gone first. Amy was discovered by her bodyguard. It came as a huge shock to him that she was dead, as in the past he’s seen her look far worse and still get on stage.

  There was widespread grief, both from fans and shareholders in The Priory. To be honest, if I fall off the wagon I can’t see me heading there. Judging by their recent results I think I’d stand a better chance getting back off the sauce by going on a distillery tour with Charles Kennedy and the ghost of Dylan Thomas. Among the tributes, some people were leaving bottles of vodka – the thing that killed her. But then again, I suppose it’s no different really to Christians wearing crosses. The best tribute had to be a single carrot left in the middle of hundreds of bunches of flowers. It made it look like everything had been put there to memorialise a dead snowman.