Scotland’s Jesus: The Only Officially Non-racist Comedian (20 page)

It’ll be a nearly a decade before a manned mission to Mars. A three-month trip, but I suspect first in the queue to go would be our Cheryl Cole, once she realises Mars’s low gravitational pull would quarter her weight and she’d be on TV 24/7. Although I’d hate to think of her shivering in the landing craft when the water teat runs dry, looking at the stars and thinking, ‘The Cheryl Cole God must be angry with me.’

Scientists will first have to perfect turning urine into water. Tricky, though I’ve got away with passing it off as whisky when refilling a hotel minibar. The man behind the Mars space programme is Dennis Tito, who paid $20 million to the Russians in 2001 to be sent into space and who to this day holds the record for the longest period anyone’s spent being jiggled about in a blacked-out caravan in the car park of a Moscow Halfords.

There’s also talk that the European Space Agency is to mount a €1 billion mission to Jupiter. It would make more sense if Europe were going to Jupiter on a mission to try and find €1 billion.

No doubt these trips into space are to find other life forms to enslave. UFO expert David Clarke has argued that with so many camera phones around these days if there were any aliens on earth we’d definitely have had some good footage by now. I wish I’d read his comments earlier as I might have put up a bit more resistance to being anally probed on Tuesday night. Yes, we can all be wise after the event, and yes, in the cold light of day it was clearly more caravan than mothership. I did wonder at the time why a creature from another world would keep stopping to take orders for burgers and tea.

Sony has unveiled a mobile phone that works underwater. Which to me sounds like they’ve invented a new way for perverts to end up in court after they accidentally leave the HD video running and drop the phone into the ladies’ toilets. That’s the thing about Sony – they’ve really got their finger on the pulse of the international snorkelling community. I suppose a phone that can be used underwater would come in handy for the contestants of
Splash!
to phone their agent.

Super HD is on the way, with four times the definition of standard HD. Celebs are wary, not least Simon Cowell, as he believes it might lead to his enemies discovering the one ventilation duct in his hide through which they could get a missile into his interior.

There’s a new sat nav being developed especially for the elderly, although the trials haven’t been problem-free. It appears that most elderly drivers insist on unplugging it whenever they stop at lights. Is it safe for an elderly relative to continue risking life and limb on the roads? Well, you’ll need to have a look at their will to answer that.

Sussex Police are actually going to tag dementia sufferers who wander off. We did that with my nan. Now with just a simple tracker we can tell exactly when it’s time to hide behind the sofa and pretend to be out. It would be fun to ‘borrow’ one, take them to Paris and straight back on the train, then drop them off outside the front door of their care home with their hair frizzed up and wearing a cape.

Talking of flying, Austrian Felix Baumgartner reached 833 mph on a sky dive. It was the most-watched live-streaming event ever on YouTube as millions of people tuned in to see one man spiral violently to his death. Imagine how many more YouTube viewers he could have achieved if he’d been serenaded by a cat playing ‘Gangnam Style’ on a keyboard as he landed. I couldn’t watch the descent – I was too worried his ’chute would fail and he’d nut the ground, cracking open the planet to reveal the monstrous two-headed bird that surely lurks within, which would have meant I’d miss that
Bake Off
final. It’s dangerous going up that high, though. There’s always the risk you’ll get inseminated by aliens. That could really screw his forthcoming wedding. The vicar says, ‘If any of you know any reason in law why they may not marry each other you are to declare it’, then Baumgartner’s head slowly opens and a giant shrimp climbs out.

Baumgartner had a camera on his helmet so you could see what he was up to all of the time. What a pity Radio 1 didn’t have the same policy with their DJs in the 80s. Baumgartner was protected from exposure to the outside world by his weird foil suit. In many ways, much like Jimmy Savile.

They’re considering re-doing the stunt with Britain’s fat-test teenager to see if they can knock the earth into another solar system in a game of intergalactic billiards. Experts have warned kids not to buy a hot-air balloon, spend forty grand on helium, twelve grand on a spacesuit and jump out when the balloon’s twenty-four miles up in the air – at home; although there’s talk of banning helium balloons because of a shortage of the precious gas. I find you can get the same results by using normal air instead, and simply holding all your kids’ parties underwater. They were a must at my son’s fifth. To be honest, by the end he’d drunk so much the ones tied to his collar were all that was keeping him up.

There was an embarrassing moment at the end of Baumgartner’s descent when he landed in next door’s garden and they had to ring the doorbell to ask to get him back. He survived plummeting to earth at over 800 mph – which tells us Jeremy Clarkson needs to seriously rethink how fast he gets Hammond’s car going on the next series of
Top Gear
to make absolutely sure he doesn’t come back.

You know those ‘startled straight’ programmes you get where prisoners visit schools to warn children of the dangers of a life of crime? You could do that with pretty much anything. Have a married guy come and talk to them. Or just somebody with a job. Try taking a weeping toddler round a shopping centre and tell me you wouldn’t trade that for the excitement of bench-pressing three hundred kilos and thinking of ways to booby trap your own arsehole because you only had six weeks till someone called Mr Bojangles got out of the Infirmary?

Our whole society is founded on and fuelled by crime, and our middle and upper orders project their own vice onto those below them. The people angriest about benefit cheats are screwing their taxes; the people most concerned about Muslim violence are the ones who support blowing up Muslims in other countries; Batman thumps starving men as they try to hustle up their mortgages to Wayne Enterprise Housing Division.

Indeed, in our hearts we are all vicious criminals. Every film we make depicts the correct response to a drab job as being a bank heist; the reflex reaction to being wronged or threatened is to unleash a wave of violence/domestic terrorism. And who would watch if it were not? Liam Neeson’s frustration when trying to encourage embassy officials to look into his daughter’s disappearance doesn’t even sound like a film. Maybe he could start killing them till they did as he said. And then the ambassador was in league with the kidnappers or something, and Liam screamed and threw him out of a window into some kind of industrial furnace.

Theresa May introduced new crime prevention injunctions, which means violent thugs can get punished without being given criminal records. A bad move, as bouncers are going to have nothing to put on their CVs. The Tories also announced that we can now beat up burglars. Thank God! I can finally let that poor man out of my basement and give him the kicking he deserves. But the Tories are yet to clarify whether it’s OK – should your victim manage to crawl weakly out of your front door – to comically pull him back in by his feet and continue the punishment.

Now that you’re allowed to use ‘proportionate force’, being burgled is probably Justin Lee Collins’s best hope of forming a new relationship. In a shocking piece of news, Justin was found guilty. Surprisingly, not for crimes against TV comedy. He was given 140 hours of unpaid work – the best offer his agent will get him in the next five years. His ex-girlfriend recorded his awful rantings, although, to be fair, so did Channel 4 for many years. Justin forced his girlfriend to sleep facing him. I imagine every night she dreamed she was in an abusive relationship with a barber’s floor. If being a hopeless cunt were a crime, he’d have got longer behind bars than Ian Huntley.

These revelations have changed the way I think about Justin. Now I hate him for different reasons. Claims this damaging can ruin a person’s career, but fortunately for him he’s already taken care of that himself. In his heyday he was often referred to as a ‘loveable funnyman’, then soon after just ‘loveable’ and now he’s just known as ‘man’. He made a series of shows called
Bring Back . .
., in which he reunited the casts of old TV shows. But sadly for Justin Lee Collins, the only thing he hasn’t been able to bring back to TV is Justin Lee Collins. My new favourite game is to watch
Oops TV
and do his voice over the footage of home videos going wrong, but as he’d really want to say it: ‘Fallen over dancing at a wedding, have you, you dirty whore?!’

But I digress. ‘Proportionate force’ will probably be most exciting if you work in A&E, as for you it’s going to be like you’re working in a field hospital during a Viking raid. Hopefully, this law will also apply to members of your extended family that drop around unannounced.

The Tories do have other common-sense measures to reduce burglary, such as prolonging the recession to the point that few of us will still have anything worth stealing. And there’s no denying the government has improved security at rural post offices – very few robbers are now prepared to invest in the petrol needed to try and find one. Thousands of police officers are to be sacked and hundreds of police stations replaced with public-contact points in supermarkets. At least those who’ve kept keep their jobs can keep in touch with those who haven’t, as most will be tailing old ladies they think have hidden frozen chickens under their hats. Fewer police just has to affect response times. I bet we’ll now have to wait ages before they turn up to tell us there’s not really anything they can do. Police say it could mean more riots. I doubt it. Not with all the effort that’s been put in since the last ones to tackle inequality.

Forty per cent of female police officers consider quitting on account of low morale. I suppose not many things can be as depressing as having all the hassle of being in the police without the physical strength to cheer yourself up by barging an old man with heart problems to his death. Of course, it’s ludicrous to suggest PC Simon Harwood got off lightly for his attack on Ian Tomlinson. I believe he might yet be charged with wilfully damaging a baton.

The Met claimed they will save £300 million by closing sixty-five police stations. Officers will be moved into post offices, which could save on squad car costs, too, as officers will be able to cover themselves in stamps, write the crime-scene address across their chests and then just climb into a sack – which might have another benefit of a much-needed reduction in response times.

The government is to get tough on soft-touch jails. I agree that they’re becoming increasingly like holiday camps, as pretty soon they’ll all have their own washed-up 70s and 80s TV entertainers . . . and there are a few in Northern Ireland that could hold their own in any knobbly-knees contest. I’m not surprised prisoners sit around every day watching
Jeremy Kyle
. To be fair, it’s the only way they get to see their families. Of course prisoners are going to watch TV all day. What do they want them to do? Go on a tour of the National Gallery?

Should prisoners be allowed to vote? Surely the real question here is whether we can trust them to come back from the polling station. The UK’s blanket ban on prisoners voting has been found to be a breach of human rights, a very popular decision with the nonce wing, who are extremely excited at the prospect of visiting a primary school once every four years. We shouldn’t be governed by people in Strasbourg with no popular mandate. That’s the job of people in London with no popular mandate.

This’ll mean political parties will have to appeal to prisoners, too – Labour might win the next election on the promise to reduce the price of a bumming to one fruit and nut bar. I really don’t want to live in a country where a cake being brought into prison is used to smuggle a laminated copy of the Liberal Democrat manifesto. Politicians will have to take on prisoners’ ideas – like the best thing to do with the euro is put a load in a sock and hit a nonce in the eye with it. The criminally insane still won’t be allowed to vote, however, so the Lib Dems won’t benefit from the move.

Why not let psychopaths and mass murderers vote? After all, we’ve been voting for them for years. Perhaps the vote should only be for people serving short sentences – somehow I don’t think a lifer is really going to take the need for a new lollipop lady in Chiswick that seriously. Politicians will now have to canvass in prisons – and I’m guessing unless any of them are standing on an ‘Allow men to hide in bushes and follow women’ ticket, most will be leaving the beast wing with a ‘Don’t know’. I know who most rapists will be voting for: the Green Party. Their policy of more parkland in urban areas and dimming street lights to save energy is a rapists’ charter.

• • •

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.

A sex change didn’t help notorious Colombian gang member Giovanni Rebolledo, who was arrested despite having the operation and working as a prostitute. Hiding from the police dressed as a prostitute makes about as much sense as hiding from the police disguised as a giant doughnut. He thought they would never suspect him if he had a sex change, but there’s only one foolproof way to avoid detection by the police and that’s to have been on British TV in the 70s.

A £9 million nationwide database is being established to identify children who might be at risk of abuse. The project is simply to digitise every letter sent to
Jim’ll Fix It
. Speaking of which, former
This Morning
stalwart Fred Talbot has got people talking about the weather again. The whether or not he’s a paedophile.