From COLLINS ENGLISH DICTIONARY.

I went into the bank the other day. The guy behind the counter told me that I must pay a seventy pound charge. When I asked what for, he simply replied : For being born, you peasant.

Well I think these banks have gotten out of control. Did you know that Benny Hill and Diana Dors both left huge boxes of money, buried in mystery locations, then died without leaving proper maps? Its true. They didn’t trust in the banks.

So lets start searching now. The loot is out there somewhere.

But seriously folks. The rich have gotten out of hand. They’ve been bumming us in the mouth for too long now. Its time to stand up. To say NO!

And here’s how.

Have you seen those stupid adverts that are supposed to frighten benefit cheats- the ones that say: we’ve caught one hundred people this year! So the net is closing in around you, you twelve year old single mother scum!

OR WORDS TO THAT EFFECT.

Well, it seems to me that they are in fact rubbish at catching benefit cheats. So here’s my advice to the brave amongst you: open your eyes and see the true message of these adverts:

on a low wage? Why not double your earnings immediately!?

Simply carry on doing your job, but nip into the dole and sign on in your lunch break.

There is a tiny chance of getting caught. But far smaller, statistically, than the chance of spontaneous human combustion.

Probably.

AND JUST THINK OF THE THINGS YOU CAN BUY WITH THE MONEY:

Blakeys segs.

Plasticine.

Boxing lessons.

Everything you need to help you survive the Mad Max style world that is about to dawn, as the money system collapses, retarded nail bombers sprout from every nook and cranny, and the amount of money you are required by new BBC laws to spend on toy Daleks (to boost the license fee,) is so financially crippling that your life is destroyed as effectively as if real Daleks had invaded.

This society is a ludicrous farce isn’t it.

A BIT LIKE ‘ALLO ‘ALLO.

Its not funny but idiots all over the world keep buying into it. FOR SEVEN FUCKING SERIES AND IT WAS ONLY STOPPED WHEN A HURRICANE SENT A PLANK FLYING OFF THE BACK OF A LORRY INTO THE HEAD OF STAR GORDON ‘RENE’ KAYE!*

So all I can say is:

I hope a plank goes flying into the face of international laissez faire capitalism sometime soon, and this played out geriatric nonsense can be replaced by something trendy like The Mighty Boosh. I.E an anarchic fantasy world where the government can be trusted to help the weak and protect the planet, and Gorillas can talk.

Do you think I stretched the analogy too far?

Your humble savant,

THE VAUDEVILLIAN

*No disrespect intended to Gordon Kaye who’s probably a very nice man. If not a funny one.

As you know, when not lurking, Phantom of the Opera stylee, in the eaves of the green room arts centre, plotting which VAUDEVILLE acts to nurture and which to destroy;

I, THE VAUDEVILLIAN saddle up the elephants, link the wagons to the back of a clown and take the whole merry shebang to a quiet watering hole I know. There, in the seclusion and shade of the lime trees: I mix myself a margarita, pop my feet on the coffee table (actually fashioned from the skeletons of my Siamese twin sisters); and, with a loud sigh, I open up the paper and peruse the follies of the world of normals.

IN THESE BLOGS I GIVE VENT TO MY FURY AND MY WISDOM.

I see a very rich man has blown his families heads off, then did himself in. Apparently he had financial worries. These rich people, eh? You can just imagine the internal dialogue: “I can’t bear the ignominy of seeing my family poor! Better they have their heads gunned in, than be forced to live, love, dream and experience, in some lower middle class neighbourhood. My kids going to state school! My wife shopping in TK MAXX! It’s too horrible to contemplate.

I’d better murder us all.”

BUT WAIT. We must now speak of relative poverty.

Like all thinking people in Britain, I am obsessed with that monstrous and demeaning construct, CLASS. Probably I would have said to Chris Foster:

” You think you’re life is bad? You should see some of the people I know!”

But that is in fact absurd. Here is a man in such HELL that he’s killing himself and his family. So clearly, he’s about as poor as a man can be.

It just goes to show doesn’t it? I am the ultimate inverse snob, but I caught meself just in time! So remember, my friends: When you’re risking life and limb to rig the leccy meter, or turning to prostitution to put food on the table-

could be worse. You could be posh and mad. Or worse-

OFFSPRING OF THE POSH AND MAD.

Now. Let’s go and sell some sperm and get a pint, shall we?

Your mam’s special friend,

THE VAUDEVILLIAN

Hi folks.

I read with glee that Josef Fritzel has asked for a supply of anti-aging skin cream.

Of course this is probably a non story invented by those jokers at the news agency.

But just as we must either trust our senses to tell us what the world is like, so we must now trust the internet, BBC news and, worst of all, METRO newspaper, to convey to us all of the worlds news.

It is as if one had not one nose, but a billion. Plus multiple eyes, ears, nerve endings and tongues. All over the earth. Sending in multiple data- often, wildly varying versions of the same thing!

But what are you gonna do? Gotta trust these senses, like we trust our own.

Of course, some people DONT trust their senses, and resort to deranging themselves with psycho-active drugs, in an attempt to find some alternative truth which their own usual consciousness is denying them.

BUT I DIGRESS

Let’s take a leap of faith, a willing suspension of skepticism if you will, and suppose that the evil Austrian really is anointing himself with special balms, in a bid to stop himself from looking even more like a hundred year old stoat.

WE MUST BE GRATEFUL THAT THESE CREAMS DONT REALLY WORK!

Think on it: using only a paperclip, Fritzel overpowers his guards an escapes into the wild of Austria. No recent photos have been taken, so the new WANTED posters must rely on archive pics from the time of his arrest.

BUT DURING THE PAST SIX MONTHS, JOSEF FRITZEL HAS GOTTEN MUCH YOUNGER LOOKING!

Who will suspect that figure that resembles a young Johnny Depp, lurking in the back of the discotheque? Certainly not the naive young moppet who accepts his offer of a drink, is enticed back to his caravan hideout, and then superglued to the sofa for the rest of her life, living out a terrible mockery of an existence, as one by one, her offspring are also glued onto the hellish couch, never to see the light of day, and creating their own version of reality from the now deranged wittering of their mother, and from endless vhs tapes of Jeremy Kyle which Fritzel forces them to watch.

AND THEN: the terrible day when they escape- their personalities entirely forged, by the disinfotainment of the unctuous white trash exploiter?

What kind of warped, bendy version of the world, would they experience, when they tried to match up what they’d learned on telly, with what they find ON THE STREETS?

But then again- what about ourselves? Fed a constant stream of information about this that and the other- our very minds shaped, by the puppetmasters at ITV…

what if WE ever had to face the real world?

Are we so very different?

Just something to mull on.

Your humble savant,

THE VAUDEVILLIAN.

It was with a certain amount of wry, heartbroken mirth, that I perused the pages of my local newspaper, and beheld the spectre of Radovan Karadžić done up like an acid casualty Santa Claus, and caught redhanded doling out radical heath remedies to people with too much money.

Now I’m not saying that just because he’s an alleged mass murderer means that he may not also be a great healer.

But I’ve had it up to here with charlatans and blagmeisters, taking advantage of the mentally ill.

Karadžić has always been a man with his thumb firmly on the pulse of the zeitgeist. When it was hip to be squabbling over territory in disintegrating post communist Europe, there he was. Now, when that’s all old hat, he’s joined the most hilarious growth industry of our times- preying on the fears of hippies in failing health.

And then there’s his poetry.

You can check out some of Radovan’s wild poetic utterances, possibly translated by babel fish but no less mind boggling for it, at:

www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/karadzic/radovan/poems.html

Here, we find the lovely man ‘assuming authorial voices’ of, variously, a messianic demagogue - and a viciously self-righteous misanthrope.

And they say Daniel Day Lewis makes a big effort to get into character. Pah! This guy LIVES his characters! I mean, REALLY lives them!

There is a link between Radovan’s various incarnations, however. ABSOLUTE HATRED FOR EVERYTHING. Including SCIENCE and YOU.

You see, friends, I have terrible wonderful news for you. The only people who know anything at all about healing the human body, are those flawed, untrustworthy, over-payed monsters we call DOCTORS.

And if you have elephantiasis eating your face off, you can pump as much money as you want into the bank accounts of various deranged witchdoctors, and still nothing is going to change.

A bleak prospect, perhaps. But in a way inspiring: because if we embrace nothing else in this depressing post post post post post modern world, let us embrace this:

The TRUTH is always liberating.

Here’s my truth:

You are going to die. You will not regenerate into a new body except, perhaps, AFTER death (burial, reincarnation, who knows?).

THIS IS YOUR LOT. Live it like there’s no tomorrow, because you know what? There ISN’T.

And if you have already been diagnosed with a syndrome that gives you trees for hands or makes you grow an extra face…?

Then use your swiss bank account WISELY. Take inspiration from the great dying monsters of literature: the phantom of the opera, Doctor Strangelove, that guy from SAW- and start a FIENDISH MASTERPLAN of your own!
INSTEAD OF BLOWING YOUR MONEY ON POINTLESS PLACEBO’S, why not instead save all those suicide bombers some grief- after all, many of them are good looking and in perfect health-

strike a blow where it will really count- REALITY!

Whether you strap gelignite to yourself and walk into a meeting of the G8, or simply spend your money paying the rent of destitute failed asylum seekers so they don’t have to go into prostitution… PLEASE rich ill hippy fools, PLEASE-

Just promise me you won’t be paying for the champagne of Robert Mugabe when he sets up a colonic irrigation centre in Stoke on Trent.

Your Humble savant,

THE VAUDEVILLIAN.

No, not the irritating Hugh Laurie doctor off the telly. Nor the thing that you shout at bingo.

THE THING MADE OF BRICKS THAT YOU LIVE IN IF YOU’RE LUCKY.

Yes, my friends: It’s time to speak of HOUSING.

Now, I’m all in favour of shamelessly venal cartoon villains who rip off everyone they meet.  After all, I’m one myself.

What I despise is the spineless, flabby minds of people like a certain former green party councillor, who put out local email ’shouts’ advertising rooms to let for ‘decent people’ who want to pay yuppie- flat prices for an ex-council flat (no DSS, of course. )

You see, kids, I live on an estate which was once peopled by crusties, eco-warriors, reclaim the streets types. A hotbed of raves, wild parties, and righteous groups opposing the invasion of Iraq. The kind of place where you could hear a plummy basil brush accent emerging from a person covered in engine oil with hair like the predator. Where children were named ‘Fern’ and stuff like that.

YET US CRUSTY PONCES ALWAYS LIVED IN HARMONY WITH THE SMACKHEADS, AFRO-CARIBBEANS, AND WORKING CLASS WHITE SQUARES.

However there was this cliche you used to hear at parties: that people who join the green party or become ‘eco-warriors’ are after all often borgeouse hypocrites playing at being radical. That one day their true colours would show, when they returned to the pro- establishment class loyalties of their parents.
What an outrageous assertion! I hate cliches, don’t you? So I decried it. After all, ’stereotype not others, lest you be stereotyped yourself,’ that’s what I always say.

But I was wrong, damnit. Finally, I must admit it. I WAS WRONG.

I don’t know about where you live, but almost every one of the people in my area (HULME) who once espoused radical anti-establishment views, then went on to buy their council flats- has ended up selling or letting it, for a profit. While there are still homeless people on the streets. (My own father is one of them. Although he did bring that upon himself, the idiot…but that’s another story…)

The stunning bit is this: every single one of these new landlords has come out with a story about how they are not typical thatcherite/blairite/brownite selfishers; that somehow the way in which THEY are profiting from the corrupt state approach to social housing, is in some way a secret part of their cunning plan to make the world a paradise and save the icecaps.

You see folks, the people round here all recycle their bottles. They put them into huge glass smashing bottle banks, to be shipped to china and made into MORE bottles.

And the flat I complained about being turned into yuppie housing? Advertised by a green party activist? It’s OK because…

It has an eco toilet.

Well, I think I’d better go and take my medication again now, I can feel the red mist rising.

Your humble savant

THE VAUDEViLLIAN.

Postscript: What has all this leftist polemic got to do with VAUDEViLLE, I hear you ask? Normally I’d say cheerfully reply ‘Nothing at all!’ But do you know what? Actually, it has everything to do with it. It’s called CONTEXTUALISATION, fatso.

This is WHY I do Vaudeville. This is the reason for all of the performances, the writing, the comedy. For me, this is one way to oppose the terrible mediocrity of our epoch.

What do you think?

Hello everybody. It’s me- your favourite psychotic curmudgeon, THE VAUDEViLLIAN. Check out this interesting tidbit I just received from VAUDEViLLE STALWART ‘ONE MINUTE WANDA’:

Eleven-year-old James got a huge shock when he received a handwritten letter from the Chancellor, Gordon Brown.
In his report, James tells us why the politician wrote to him …

“Four years ago I had an accident at a supermarket. A bottle fell on the floor and glass flew up and hit my eye… Now I have an artificial eye.
Recently I was bullied quite badly.

They told me they were going to steal my false eye and smash it on the ground. They even burned me with cigarettes.

My mum could see that I was going through a hard time and she wrote to Gordon Brown telling him what had happened to me.

I was so shocked when I got a handwritten letter from the Chancellor.
He told me that having an artificial eye never stopped him from doing anything and has made absolutely no difference to him.
It made me feel very happy, I’ve never had a letter from someone that important before.
And it’s made me think that I can achieve anything I want to in life.”
James, 11, Halifax

(full version at: news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/newsid_4410000/newsid_4417600/4417641.stm

Well I never did. Gordon has a GLASS EYE! I couldn’t tell. It’s certainly a lot more convincing than the one fitted to ‘Rumpole Of The Bailey’. Who sadly does not exist, or he could use his brilliant barristering skills to defend that poor sod languishing in Guantanamo, what Gordon’s turned his back on because he doesn’t want to release mitigating evidence that the blokes confession may have been extracted using torture. No mention of being burned with cigarrettes but he does speak of having his knackers slashed at…

Yes of course it’s inspiring for this lad James to hear from a powerful man who is a cyclops like himself. Too bad it’s the same bugger who is presiding over a country that sanctions torture. Who knows, maybe those UK sponsored inquisitors will succeed in ‘creating’ more one-eyed people, who if they do ever get out of chokey, can in turn be inspired in life by the very man who presides over the social divides that create feral little bastards who assault disabled people for kicks.

If only James’s Mum had written to Columbo instead…he’d have gotten to the truth!

What all of this has to do with VAUDEVILLE, I cannot say…

Love and kisses and electric shocks to your fanny you terrorist cow,

THE VAUDEVILLIAN

I was thinking about KARMA today. That complex, much misunderstood notion of cosmic justice, summarized in the desirable- if unprovable- maxim : “what goes around, comes around”. You know, like in ‘My name is Earl’.

I read with interest Sharon Stone’s comments about the earthquake in China being possibly a result of their ‘bad karma’, after what the Chinese have done to Tibet. She was particularly offended as she is a close personal chum of the Dali Lama. As I am myself. (You know, I don’t know how many truly close friends its possible for one person to have, but that guy must be stretching himself. With all these millionaire buddies, it’s a true miracle he has any room left in his quota for the common people.)

Anyway, I don’t know how to tell you this, but I have long harboured a deep, sick desire, to tie up Sharon Stone, dress her in a gimp suit and cover her with marmalade, while a huge anteater licks at her with his long, long snout.

I suppose most people feel the same way.

America has done some pretty rotten things to the world over the years, I think we can all agree. So perhaps this stalker urge I’ve been suppressing, is in fact the forces of Karma, acting through me. If Karma wants to dismember the Chinese proles for what it’s leaders have done, why not also send the likes of me, to sexually assault America’s movie stars-to get back at George Bush for the invasion of Iraq? Makes perfect sense to me.

Who says misogyny can’t be a force for good!?!

Perhaps I am misinterpreting the sutures. After all, some of my best friends are Buddhists. But they are also ENGLISH. And the RAJ did some awful stuff in India. So it seems only right, that I should machine gun the lot of them in the willy, in vengeance for the Amritsar massacre, the execution of Mangal Pandey and, a bit more recently, the indignities heaped upon Shilpa Shetty. In fact, this horrific massacre of my Llama loving chums, could be interpreted as a noble attempt on the part of the people of England, to atone for the evil of Jade Goody.

It’s my duty, as an agent of Karma. Trouble is, what horrors will karma do, in turn, to ME for being so horrible? Seems Karma is a lot like the Godfather movies- the cycle of bloodletting never ends. Also, as regards reincarnation-

“just when I think I’m out of the cycle of life- they pull me back in!”

Oh and by the way. A lot has been said about the Dali Llama’s alleged homophobia this week. Well, he stumbled into ‘H20 Zone’ in Manchester’s Village this weekend. Apparently he mistook the gaggle of shaven headed men cuing up, for monks, and the popular cruising sauna for a temple of some kind.

Suffice to say that the his holiness has wiped the Karmic slate clean.

Well, that’s enough theology for one day.

Your humble servant of ‘god’,

the VAUDEVILLIAN.

I think all of us were completely bored to hear that Bruce Forsyth is eighty years old. But cast your mind back…a few years ago, the positively satanic war criminal Augusto Pinochet was visiting these shores, arraigned to appear and answer for the various mindblowingly painful things he did to people during his military dictatorship of Chile, back in the ’70s and ’80s. He got away with it, feigning illness I believe, THUS avoiding a proper trial. He died in his bed aged ninety one, the fucker.

During his stay in blighty, he was held not in a proper prison but in an actual MANSION- next door to-you guessed it. BRUCEY. And Tarby, and Wogan! Google it if you don’t believe me.

Did the good showbiz folk of Wentworth estate go and kick his head in for him? Alas, it seems your beloved Mr. Forsyth did NOTHING.

However, I like to fantasise that Brucey did in fact attempt to take on the bloated Chilean hardman, lunging at his face with a nine iron on the private golf course which they shared for a time. Further, I can’t help picturing Pinochet evading the blow, alas; seizing Bruce by the face; SQUEEZING like a demon: and then, somehow, horribly, pouring all of his hateful soul and mind, INTO the helpless, big chinned entertainer- through his EYES.

I dunno, I just feel that on some level, it was Bruce Forsyth who died in that Santiago hospital on that cold December night two years ago…and that Pinochet lives horribly on, with a bigger chin and a fitter wife…has it ever occurred to you, that although you will one day die, the COLD virus that makes your nose snotty, will live on forever, passing it’s way down through the years from nose to nose?

So, I think, it is with tyrants like Pinochet. Forever snotting his way from one body to the next, perpetuating the evil, slowly destroying the human race….

Just a little food for thought. Have a nice day now, y’all.

contact the vaudevillian at : vaudevile35@yahoo.co.uk

Yes, that’s right: NOONE EVER READS THESE BLOGS!

Which I think means it’s pretty inconsquential if i write:

All foreigners should be shot, in order to purify the ‘race;

lesbianism is a mental illness and should be cured with ECT.

This country is a soft touch for terrorists…

I can’t keep this up. OF COURSE I don’t advocate homophobia, nationalism, or ludicrous daily mail style fantasies about an imaginary terrorist threat.

See what a great guy I am? Progressive, with my feet on the ground. So why not repay my goodness: EMAIL ME AT

vaudeville35@yahoo.co.uk

and then, and only then, will i consider writing something WORTHWHILE…

Hi kids. It’s me, THE VAUDVilliAN here. This is my first post to this blog thing. I will be using it to share with you the amazing things I think, and to involve you more in the world of POST 9-11 PERFORMANCE IDIOCY.

You see, I love you. I love you so much, I could vomit. ON YOUR DAD.

This blog is about people who come to the sinister meetings which take place in the green room arts centre, manchester, england, once a month. We call these gatherings VAUDEViLLE. Here, you can hear THICK RiCHARD doing poem. You can SEE TaM hiNToN making a goat of hisself. Plus sometimes there’s half naked women playing the double bass. And othEr stuff. Occasionally a grEat band named MANiMAL pryze themselves from the pub and play a set… But not today. SO, if you live in Manchester and don’t come to VAUDEViLLE very month- why not? Are you some sort of APETH? Get on with it. We’ll all die one day, and you’ll be able to say you saw the legends live…