The Filter^

Jeremy Cl**kson

Clarkson: "outspoken".

"Wog. Spastic. Queer. Nigger. Dwarf. Cripple. Fatty. Gimp. Paki. Mick. Mong. Poof. Coon. Gyppo. You can’t really use these words any more and yet, strangely, it is perfectly acceptable for those in the travel and hotel industries to pepper their conversation with the word “beverage”. "

wrote Jeremy Clarkson in last Sunday's Times. He went on,

"I’m not a grammar freak — I can eat, shoot and then take it or leave it — but when someone says “myself” instead of “me” I find it more offensive than if they’d said “spastic wog”. "

And concluded,

I’ll leave you with the best example I know of this nonsense. It was a rack of papers in a hotel foyer over which there was a sign: “Newspapers for your reading pleasure”. All they had left was The Guardian. So it wasn’t even technically correct.

And that's why I want to see him on the next Celebrity Big Brother.

The Ricky Gervais Show

Exclusively available online from Guardian Unlimited:
The deconstructive discourse continues with Ricky Gervais, Steve Merchant and the shiny pated naïf that is Karl Pilkington.

Listen whenever and wherever you want as these weekly half-hour shows are offered as handy iPod friendly digital files for up to four weeks after they're first posted.

 

What makes a jape great?

"Students at Yale scored a big victory during last year's football match against Harvard when they passed out pieces of paper to thousands of fans on the Harvard side of the stadium. The fans were told that, when held up, the bits would spell “Go Harvard”. In fact they spelled something else (see photo below)."

[If you can't make it out it says "We suck"]

Was this the greatest college prank ever devised? The Economist has some more suggestions here, and you can write in with your own.

John Fashanu in a Pickle

John Fashanu, or 'Fash' as he has assuredly re-branded himself in recent years, is an unlikely orator. But the man is an engaging and confident broadcaster - at least it seemed that way as he glistened like a diamond nestling in a mound of turnip peelings on five's 'Secrets of the Fitness Video' (or some similarly named garbage) which the channel broadcast twice last week (the BBC must be quaking in their boots with such rival public service broadcasting as this).

Fash, if I can call him that, came up with the following pearl of wisdom, which isn't the 'logical nonsense' that Anthony has referred to, but rather an example of how you can all-too easily end up down a metaphorical cul-de-sac, especially when you've got a TV camera in front of you. Apologies if you 'had to be there', but for me, this was one of the funniest things I've heard this year:

"If you went into a supermarket and bought a can of baked beans, you'd expect there to be baked beans inside it, not pickled onions. But the trouble with these fitness videos is that a lot of them have pickled onions inside them".

Is it me, or did Fash get the equation of his metaphor wrong? Presuming X is a baked bean and Y is a pickled onion, you can't have X as a fitness video and Y as a pickled onion as well - you need to find a new X. Still, don't be disheartened Fash - you're welcome on my screen any time. Just don't venture off button five.

Ricky Gervais

If Little Britain isn't enough, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk/rickygervais and download the podcasts. Genius, as are the bears.

Little Britain

Enjoy three hours of Little Britian from BBC Radio 7 at the Filter^.  Download all 62 megabytes' worth of MP3, here.

Happy New Year!

A White Christmas

This from the Grimsby Telegraph, December 22:

Support for a councillor accused of racism has flooded into Grimsby Telegraph offices.

On saturday we reported that North East Lincolnshire's Jim Tattersdale has been reported to the Standards board for England and Wales.

The Independent Yarborough ward representative is alleged to have brought NE Lincs council into disrepute by making a comment at a Children's Services Scrutiny Panel meeting last month.

He said of the tragic eight-year-old Victoria Climbie: "Had she not been allowed into this country in the first place then she would still be happily playing in the warm African sun, eating a banana."

But the people of Grimsby were able to see through this 'slur' to the real message, and they made this evident with keenly written and insightful comments, such as:

This is just another example of the Mad Crazy World of Political Correctness we live in. Coun Tattersdale was absolutely correct in his comments. Anon, Grimsby.

Yet another example of the crazy ploitically correct lobby getting in a spin over nothing. No doubt if they had their way, she'd be eating a perfectly straight banana which had been genetically modified by those overpaid Brussels bureaucrats. Stop whingeing about "racism", the "environment", so-called "war crimes" etc and wake uip to the real issues people! Jon Rowett, London.

You can always rely on the provicial press to provide the real stories at Christmas.

Face Still Attached?

According to The Guardian:

British surgeons are preparing to carry out an unprecedented full face transplant operation next year after being granted ethical approval to actively seek patients.

I'll assume they're using my Dad's glue

A Merry Dance

"Cripes!" you all cry as you try and find any references to sleeping bags on the web-site 'snugpack.com'.

"Either I'm supposed to squeeze myself into a snorkle or Mr.Conolly has led us all a merry dance in the direction of scuba equipment."

My humble ones. Try this: www.snugpak.com, for all your 'sleeping inside a great big bag' needs.

On the contrary...

...my dear Mr Mellor. What I was actually thinking was

"where on God's green earth did I put my sleeping bag?"

Thankfully help is at hand, in the form of these wonderfully engineered and crafted sleeping bags for all seasons and situations. Whether you're enduring the blistering cold of Antarctica in order to stave off that looming mid-life crisis, or snuggling down with a group of your daughter's 15 year old friends for a "secret sleepover", your ass will (quite literally) be covered.

1 adult per bag though, please.

www.snugpack.com