Duke Luke

I've written here before about my vast affection for Luke Haines, the evil rock genius behind The Auteurs, Baader Meinhoff, Black Box Recorder and a slew of bonkers solo albums. His new album, 21st Century Man, came out last weekend and the neighbours have been treated to it on a deafening loop ever since. I seem to remember my girlfriend shouldering her way out of the front door laden with overflowing suitcases around about Wednesday. She's left a letter, probably about how much she likes the album.

The problem with loving Luke Haines is that so few other people do, and despite everything he does being packed with melody and intelligence he can be a challenging prospect to the uninitiated. Alexis Petridis of the Guardian brilliantly described him as "a lavishly gifted songwriter, but never a man likely to dazzle onlookers with the bewitching symmetry of his features". His voice can be harsh and reedy on the first listen, and the humour in his pitch-black lyrics is an acquired taste (as shown by the banning of Black Box Recorder's first single, Child Psychology, from UK radio for its chorus of "Life is unfair / Kill yourself or get over it").

Haines gives every impression of being happy to be a cult concern. By the end of The Auteurs he was already resigned to not getting his due credit on songs like Future Generation ("The future generation will take me to their heart...the next generation will get it from the start"). He also takes a patrician approach to fan relations, which is either admirable or suicidal depending on whether you're his biographer or his accountant. The forum on his website used to be a brilliant place for his cabal of dedicated followers to bicker over top 10 lists of b-sides. Rather than nuture this ragtag platoon of committed product purchasers, he took umbrage about complaints over a solo tour featuring no band and a 30 minute set and closed the forum down, although not before announcing a "Whinger of the Month" competition ("The winner will receive a prize of Luke Haines playing a set in their living room/ stone they live under. This prize is not optional. Haines turns up whether you like it or not. He will play an excruciatingly short set".).

But if you do get the bug and starting exploring the back catalogue there is so much depth and quality to get immersed in. I suggest either Baader Meinhoff (a concept funk album about German terrorism filled with brilliant pop tunes) or - why not? - the new one as being ideal for the newcomer. The epic title track is below - go on, give it a go:

Mr Mop

The flat had become disgraceful. A few weekends away and the darkening evenings had halted all forms of domestic management. So I got up at 8am and started cleaning. And carried on cleaning. Floors were mopped, bathrooms were scrubbed, the fridge was audited (the prize find being a jar of ancient sun-dried tomatoes that had turned into candy floss). I was being so sensible that I even emptied the hoover bag without the usual mushroom cloud of filth erupting over everything I'd just cleaned.

My girlfriend was banished to the spare bedroom with a bin bag to start working through the tonnes of unwearable clothes that, as an inveterate hoarder, she insists on filing in a growing pile in the middle of the room. Progress was made, although I expect to be finding items from Topshop's summer 2004 collection hidden at the back of cupboards and under the bed for the forseeable future.

And now it's all done. We celebrated with a large brunch only slightly ruined by me following her every move around the kitchen with a dustpan and brush. There's still 3/4 of the weekend left and I've achieved so much already. That tricky debut novel should be polished off in time for Come Dine With Me.

Web £2.0

The newspaper industry is in a rare old tizzy at the moment. As the Evening Standard chucks caution to the wind and goes free, desperately hoping that coating London in a sodden blanket of gratis copies will give advertisers the chronic horn, Rupert Murdoch has kangeroo-hopped in the other direction. Old lizard-face apparently blames the internet for the modern expectation of news being on tap for free (as opposed to, for example, his decades of competition-slaying price wars) and will soon be charging for his paper's websites.

As the mack daddy of modern media mogulling he can, of course, do what he wants. Good luck to him, although I wouldn't pay a penny for any of his sites. But what if my beloved guardian.co.uk wanted a piece of my pie?

To say I love the Guardian website is an understatement. Tooling around its endless nooks and crannies is the purest form of addictive contentment. At some point in the last few years I've convinced myself that eating pomegranate daily is crucial to my short and long term health, to the point where if I miss a day I start to feel genuinely uneasy. The same goes for my mental health and the Guardian site. To put it another way, if I ever end up in a Tom Hanks/Cast Away situation on a desert island, all that will remain of me (aside from a half-eaten basketball) will be crude images of the site's masthead daubed in blood and tears on all the palm trees.

As befits a newspaper group run by milquetoast liberals, the paper doesn't actually make money. Once the hessian office windfarm and free copies of the Female Eunuch for the cleaners have been paid for they'll need to find some dosh from somewhere, and I imagine at some point it will be the site. So fine - just tell me where to send the blank cheque. If anything, it might weed out some of the more tedious Comment Is Free contributors who pop up under the blogs, endlessly whinging and slagging each other off (whilst getting hysterical if anyone slags them off in return). A typical exchange is:

Shithawk1976: Oh God, another Guardian blog about Big Brother? I've never seen it. I thought this was supposed to be be a quality paper???!?!!!

Sir Gavin of Burpsalot: IF YOU DON'T LIEK IT WHY BOTHER COMMENTING??

Shithawk1976: I'll comment where I want to. And the low brow nature of your reply has only confirmed my prejudices about all reality TV and the sliding standards at the Guardian. Good day.

Sir Gavin of Burpsalot: this comment has been removed by a moderator

Waiting for quad

Yesterday I spotted this almost demonically self-fulfilling headline on the BBC website: "Are nervous women cyclists more likely to be killed?". The main problem for nervous drivers is the vicious cycle of being permanently liable to panic and do something catastrophically stupid, and the knowlegde of this making them more nervous. The BBC suggesting that the grim reaper is in the passenger seat can only lead to ladies across the country hysterically veering into oncoming traffic, off bridges and through busy zebra crossings.

I speak as a nervous driver myself. I don't remember if it took five or six attempts to get my license but, however many it was, the process beat out of me any residual enthusiasm for motoring. I did vroom about for a while but hung up my string-back driving gloves after an ill-judged trip through match day traffic to see a Nottingham Forest game that left a car full of schoolmates visibly ashen. I've not turned an ignition key in anger for about 7 years.

Luckily, one of the many ways in which living in London retards maturity is eridacting the need for a car but there's a revving, chugging cloud on the horizon. In November I will be at a stag do where the eyebrow shaving and mooning will stop for a brisk bout of quad biking. I couldn't be more uneasy if the BBC ran the headline "Are nervous Gareths more likely to be ground into the mud by the enormous chassis of an upturned quad bike?". It's inevitable that I'll perform the full Brian Harvey and run over my own head. And if by some miracle Saint Jeremy Clarkson answers my prayers and I survive, the relief will be short lived as within hours I'll be having my balls shot off in a hail of paintballs. Which idiot invented the stag do?

So. What do you do?

My school reunion was supposed to be next weekend. Unfortunately, despite the best efforts of the organiser, it was crushed by only attracting four acceptances on Facebook and has been cancelled. I think there were two problems. One is the hideously public nature of the Facebook invitation system which encourages lurking on a massive scale, with dozens of people waiting for enough of their friends to break rank first. That’s certainly what I was doing.

The other is more fundamental. Facebook has killed the meaningful reunion. I am friends with at least 20 people on there that I haven’t seen since the glorious day in 1999 when I strode out of the school gates and became a man (-ish, given that I looked like a lesbian hippy. Ah, last day fancy dress - what a hoot). I’ve got Facebook friends from school that I couldn't pick out of a line-up containing them, my parents and the Cadbury’s gorilla. Why would I go all the way to Nottingham to eat sausage rolls with them? All I need to know is who has a better job than me and who is balder than me - I can find that out at home and sob over my own sausage rolls.

Just to prove I’m not the dangerous loner that the paragraph above suggests, I spent Saturday lounging around on Primrose Hill with my girlfriend. Seconds after I alerted her to the high-celeb count in the area we chanced upon Alexa Chung and a Geldof. Chung was beautiful of face and terrifyingly skinny of leg. The Geldof, with her peroxide fright-wig, fag hanging out of messy red lips and bovver boots, looked she was in a Saved By The Bell ‘issues’ episode about falling in with the wrong crowd and ending up looking like a picture of a punk drawn by a dog. I expected Zack and A.C. Slater to leap out of a car and bundle her off to that shit canteen for some magic tricks from the creepy owner. Obscene hereditary privilege - just say no.

The blog of doom

This week brought the sad news that Keith Floyd has finally conked out after a lifetime of drinking like a pissed fish and smoking like a laboratory beagle. I have previously written about my affection for the old git, which raises the question of whether this little-read snicket of the interweb has somehow become cursed. I often brush off the heather-flogging gypsies in Covent Garden - perhaps the angel of death has been summoned to use these ramblings as a shopping list? If Jarvis or Luke Haines go next then I'm calling in Doris Stokes.

By all accounts Keith's last TV appearance (which he was settling down to watch when my evil eye polished him off) being interviewed by that rancid bully Keith Allen was almost unwatchable. Obviously on death's door, he raged against the TV chefs that prospered in his wake while he, in his own addled opinion, got shafted. Whilst this is a sad last gasp for someone who made a genuinely significant contribution to British TV, better that be his final appearance than this assault on common sense:

Fundamentally unsuitable

I really need a new suit. My expensive blue one suffered an unfortunate rear-end trauma last year when I hitched a drunken ride on the back grill of a friend's bike. For a glorious few seconds we freewheeled down the street like E.T. and Elliott flying in front of the moon before, with a great crunch, the grill cleaved in half and the jagged metal drove through my suit trousers and into my poor unprotected arse. My bum healed but in the name of idiotic false economy I took the suit to the tailoring equivalent of a back street surgeon, whose repairs transformed a small hole into a deranged scab of stitching. That I still wear it says more about my utter lack of interest in my physical appearance than its social acceptability.

Sadly I work in a professional services environment where people do care about their own and other people's clothes. As I only have my (now) tramp suit and one other I need to diversify. But buying a suit is such a FUCKING CHORE, made worse even than getting a haircut or buying new shoes by the expense and general fannying about involved.

I really did try yesterday, though. I asked my smartest friends for recommendations in advance and set off grimly determined to do the deed. But then the Jubilee line was shut and buggered up my tube route. And then the Victoria line was shut and buggered up my plan B tube route. And then I got to Jermyn Street, jostled through the hoards of upper-class congenital retards in mustard cords and burst through the door of my first recommended shop. A Bob Hoskins lookalike with a tape measure slung over his shoulder took one look at my trainers and adopted a protective bouncer stance in front of the suit display. I reversed and went to the second shop, blankly fingered suit fabric for about three minutes and then blacked out. What happened next is a mystery, but when I came to I was handing money to the nice man in Fopp in return for a teetering pile of books, CDs and DVDs. And then I had to go home and try to simultaneously watch, read and listen to everything I'd bought whilst eating a cake.

Maybe next weekend. Maybe this week I'll win the lottery and can hire someone to do this sort of dreary cack for me. Or I'll use my winnings to quit my job and just wander around London wearing a barrel held up with braces and never be troubled by this nonsense again.

Rank amateur

Hmmm. Have just noticed that the name of this blog and the URL are different. That may stop this site becoming a viral sensation and making me a billionaire by Christmas. Oh well.

Oasis: Hitler speaks

I know Downfall parodies are incredibly old hat, but this one is brilliant:

A French toast

All over Paris the word was out. The greedy Englishman is coming. Snails cowered in their shells, eclairs hid behind the macaroons and herds of cows donned false moustaches and raincoats and stampeded to the first Metro out of town. Some got away - I was only there for four days - but it was a long weekend of massive consumption.

I was in town to celebrate both of my parents hitting pensionable age in August, and an extremely good time was had by all. Paris and Parisians were at their best in the cosistently excellent sunshine, and we gawped around the various sights in a high holiday spirits. It really is a bloody brilliant city.

An early highlight was seeing the unmistakeable figure of Jarvis Cocker hopping off the Metro at Pigalle, probably on his way to sample its notorious fleshpots and sex shops. Shortly after that I spent about five minutes staring at this poster trying to work out if it was an obscure pun on the words 'shopping list' (probably not):



The Parisians maintained the national hobby of providing an almost surreal level of poor service. A call to room service asking for a kettle resulted in, after a suitably surly delay, two tea cups being thrust through into our room. The breakfast buffet featured a man allegedly on omlette duty who, having clearly developed a conflicted relationship with the omlette making process, watched the buffet from a porthole window in the kitchen and sauntered out only when no guests were within 30 feet of his spotless frying pan. On our last evening a receptionist at the hotel cheerfully promised to book a taxi for us in an hour. Sixty minutes later the street was conspicuously lacking in cabs and the woman on reception had no record at all of our request. This would have been more understandable if she was not the receptionist from before.

When not beset with Manuel-esque incompetence, we were beseiged with beggars. Parisian street folk have clearly held a meeting on the emotional blackmail of tourists and come away with several key action points:

1) Babies
2) Kittens
3) Puppies
or
4) Babies, kittens and puppies arranged in a drugged pile

I assume that the kittens and puppies at least end up chewing a brick at the bottom of the Seine the moment they hit adolescence. Surely this shamelessness makes as many people less inclined to hand over money as it provokes the desired reaction in others? We also visited a horrfic pet shop straight out of an RSPCA recruitment campaign where dozens of traumatized stares peeked out of tiny glass-fronted boxes. A spaniel puppy had stood in his own muck and was folornly making a dirty protest on the glass of his cage, while nearby enormous game birds clucked in panic as their tiny bird brains endlessly re-learnt the fact that they were stuck in a space too small to turn around in. Hideous stuff, although probably no worse than the pet shops in this country until a few years ago.

One thing the French do have in their favour (and this is something of a gear-mashing segue) is that their enthusiasm for the work of the vastly underappreciated awkward rock genius Luke Haines has kept the old weirdo solvent for years. He is back with a new work of madness in November (21st Century Man/Achtung Mutha) full of songs called things like "Russian Futurists Black Out the Sun", but no music has yet leaked onto the interweb so instead I'll leave you with "Off My Rocker at the Art School Bop" from his last album. Enjoy, and be extra nice to the next animal you meet.