Attack Of The Killer Light Entertainers

'Tis the season to get our panties in a bunch about contaminated food products it would seem. First of all, Country Life butter was recalled from branches of Iceland because people had been finding traces of rubber in the cartons. As a purchaser of 'spreadable' butter and various substitute spreads for most of my life, I can honestly state that I don't see what the problem is. I mean, those little chewy bits are the best part, right?..............

Do you think John Lydon might have anything to do with all this? I know he's an irrelevant old pantomime dame who no longer poses any threat to anyone other than himself and the odd personal assistant, but it's all a little too coincidental for my liking. They didn't let Him or Steve Jones do a tour of the Country Life factory perchance?

Then we have Irish pork. Or rather we don't. What an absolute bag of old bollocks!

The risk from dioxins in this situation is deemed to be very low. You'd probably need to eat nothing but Irish pork products for the next two years to become ill, but that hasn't stopped vast amounts of only slightly iffy food being binned to fend off the prospect of Daily Mail fueled mass hysteria. Fuck me! Does anyone realise how much filth and poison we consume on a daily basis? If you ate a supermarket apple, a Big Mac and drank a can of Coke today, then let's just say that a few dodgy Irish bangers aren't going to make a whole heap of difference to your general health. Look, I'm not advocating a laissez faire attitude towards food safety ("yes you are!" - blog readers), but can we all just accept that you might as well withdraw ready salted crisps because they carry a threat of scurvy if you ate twenty bags a day.

There, that made no sense at all.

Mind you, nor did seeing Bernie Clifton* on TV recently. (Caution ladies!, site contains semi naked Keith Harris/Bernie Clifton photos)

I quite like Paul O'Grady, I also like some of his show, but the moment Bernie 'fucking' Clifton appears with his blessed ostrich, well, I'm off to do something a little more entertaining, like rub salt in my eyeballs, or count my nostril hairs. I thought that guy was dead, but hell, I suppose those old lags never die, they just disappear into the anonymity of pantomime and local radio.

Or maybe, if they're particularly poor, they get gigs as opening night turn at slums like Lapland New Forest.

My first thought when I read of the Dorset hell hole was "Pah! What did you expect?". Having seen this article on the Kent Lapland experience, I can now honestly say that the notion that people would be mugs to think such a theme park could ever be anything other than a dismal rip-off, is a little bit inaccurate and unfair. The £75 per head entry fee is horrific, but there is something of a 'Christmas Experience' involved, with customers booked in small-ish groups, rather than the messy, disorganised, turn up on the day approach of the New Forest site.

Having seen Youtube clips of the the approach to the infamous park, I can tell you that it's the sort of place that had I been taken there as a nipper by my folks, they would have turned tail before they got to the pay gate. Therein lies the problem. Some folk most probably did smell a rat, but a promised day out in santa land for the kids is not easily weasled out of. It's very hard to explain the concept of cheap, shoddy crap to a six year old, and the attitude of 'best just pay the cash and keep them quiet' seems to prevail.

This sort of shit is everywhere, and even the sharpest folk get suckered in occassionally

The Nazz - Open My Eyes Taken from Lenny Kaye's Nuggets comp *Not Bernie Winters, of Schnorbitz & Glasgow Empire infamy