Andy's Glasses

Under our new manager, Thomas Frank, Spurs have opted for a revolutionary method of team selection. The model is familiar in NFL, where your team members are role specific. So your ‘defence’ team is 11 completely different geezers from your ‘offence’ team. Then you have 11 more on ‘special teams’. And a few spares. So Spurs now have a ‘home’ team and an ‘away’ team. What confuses the issue a bit is that the two teams call themselves by the same names. So you have one ‘Pedro Porro’, shirt number ’23’, for home games and a completely different ‘Pedro Porro’, shirt number ’23’ for away ones. Frank has installed this system to cope with the fundamental differences between playing at home, in Tottenham, and away, in foreign lands (Liverpool) and unfriendly places (Manchester). In that home games are generally… errrr… more… sort of ‘home-ish’ and the away ones… further away. Each has its own and unique set of problems.

Obviously we’re still in ‘prototype’ mode, currently, and the results are mixed. The ‘away team’ are quite brilliant. Stuffed Manchester City, thrashed Brighton and, just yesterday, showed the necessary contempt for the ‘we’ve never lost in our new stadium’ arrogance at Everton. Well, they have lost there now. Defeated quite magnificently by the Spurs Away 11. NOT to be confused with any superficial physical and nominal similarities to the 11 hapless, imbecilic, misguided, clueless and gutless morons who lost at home to Villa last weekend. And got beaten by bottom of the table Wolves in their previous attempt to try and play what they loosely call ‘football’.

So the answer is simple; just play the ‘away team’ every week, sell the entire home team and stop ‘shutting up shop’ when we have a lead in the game. And we’ll win the league!!!

Because if we don’t, its looking, even this early in the season, like it could be the doomsday scenario. Arsena-geddon. Liverpool have completely lost the plot, Manchester City go from ‘TOTALLY UNBEATABLE!!!’ to ‘heap of shit’ in a matter of days and Chelsea, thankfully, aren’t in the mix. So the main threats seem to be Spurs (hmmmm…), Sunderland and Bournemouth.

Well I’m up for the challenge. Not sure if my team is, but I’m fucking ON IT!!!

Happy increase-my-medication Monday

A xxxx

It’s totally amazing. The event of a lifetime. The most ‘must see’ event for 500 years!!

Pope Leo (little bald geezer, white dress, big hat) and King Charles (little grey geezer, dark suit, crown) are praying together!! At the same time! Like… together!!! For the first time in 500 years, an English monarch and a pontiff are doing a kind of ‘duet’ to God. Simultaneously. And at the same time. In the Sistine Chapel. They could have done it at White Hart Lane but instead opted for that most wondrously opulent place in all of Catholic opulence, so they can check out Michelangelo’s famous paintings.

A big fuss has been made. Which I like. Two geezers, ‘bonding’, over a quick pray, then out for lunch. But the thing is, praying is communing with whichever God you choose to believe in. It is possibly the most singularly singular, personal, internal thing any person can ever do. Other than fantasising about Labour front benchers involved in activities with donkeys and maple syrup. Praying is just about YOU and HIM/HER/THEY. Whoever you’re standing next to is completely irrelevant, when you’re doing it. Unless it’s ‘competitive praying’ and you both score points and the loser gets struck dead by lightening. Otherwise, basically, you pray ‘alone’, whether you’re in a church full of people or sitting on the toilet.

Which may account why such an event only comes around every half-millennium, because it is pretty much pointless and meaningless. Maybe it takes 500 years to forget that bit, so you do it again.

Charlie and Leo also pray to different Gods. Our King is the head of the Church of England, which is Protestant, thus his God wears a hair shirt, a scruffy beard and has no place for ostentatious displays. Leo’s God has a fuck-off, diamond-encrusted solid gold cross round his neck, 4 inches long. He dresses like a rapper and drives a Lamborghini, all the while swinging incense around in a ruby and emerald smoker thing.

But you know what; vive la difference! As they say in Burnley. Let them pray together. There are worse things they could be doing. Like discussing Charles’s family or historical child abuse. Given those options, I’d be praying too. But to MY God. Who’s the oldest of them all. But still plays tennis. And listens to old rock music on YouTube.

Maybe I’ll call them, see if they fancy a ‘threesome’ in the Sistine?

Happy Thursday

A(men) xxx

According to heroin addicts, one of the few addictions I’ve managed to avoid, the first time you ‘use’ gives you such an amazing ‘high’ that the rest of your ‘career’ is spent trying to relive that. And, obviously, failing. Tragically.

Chocolate’s the same. An addiction I know plenty about. When I was 10 months old (guessing, obvs) someone, probably my father, put a bit of chocolate in my mouth. And changed my life/ruined me forever. That would have definitely been Cadburys. Because in nineteen-fifty-whatever, there was simply nothing else. Ok, there was ‘Terry’s’ but no-one liked that.

Then along came the ‘chocolate revolution’ in 1993 (randomly selected, like all the best ‘research’) and people actually started questioning Cadburys and its constitution. “It’s not chocolate!!!!”, they cried, “it’s just SUGAR!!!!” To which I immediately thought: ‘yeah? And your point is??’

There followed ‘the wilderness years’ where no-one ever gave you a bar of fruit-and-nut, when they came round. It all degenerated into ‘Green & Blacks 85% Cocoa!!!’, and horrible, hard, bitter, inedible shit unworthy of the name Cadburys created. That really wasn’t what the Mexicans had in mind when they invented cocoa in 1500BC. They wanted a Flake. Ok, they put cocoa into savoury food, which is understandable because 100% cocoa is not for consumption but to be used more like cinnamon or ginger.

Anyway, the Times, today, this pic. A group of ‘experts’ have rated chocolate options. What they are ‘experts’ in, they don’t say. I’m guessing skiing. Possibly astronomy. They’re certainly not ‘experts’ in chocolate. Not because they disagree with me, (obviously, or we wouldn’t be talking about it) but because I deeply question their paradigm and their criteria. They’re judging these bars by their organic-ness, FFS, their lack of sugar, their disapproval of palm oil, their ingredients, their stuck-up, know-nothing preconceptions whilst missing the real point by a million miles.

ITS ABOUT TASTE!!! ITS ABOUT ‘THE EXPERIENCE’ ON YOUR TONGUE. ITS ABOUT ENJOYMENT!!!!

These are the people who label all really lovely food as ‘ultra-high-processed’ just because it wasn’t plucked from a nearby bush and eaten unwashed. Slugs’n’all. These people are ‘dieticians!’ For whom there really should be ‘registers’ to protect the public. Like paedophiles. They approach everything from a reductionist viewpoint. Forgetting that the ‘whole’ is far greater than the sum of the parts, when food is concerned.

So you can take your measly 2 stars given to the best chocolate that the world will ever know (even when owned by Crafts) and replace it with the confectionary equivalent of lettuce.

Glad I’ve got that off my chest.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

Virginia Giuffre’s posthumous memoir comes out today. I read it. Ok, I can’t read it, its not available here. Not sure I want to anyway. I like reading happy books. Like Stephen King. Slow Horses. Not the memoirs of a dead bird famous for shaggin’ a Prince.

But in fact, its much more than that. Its a truly tragic story of a lovely girl used and abused by exceptionally rich and powerful men for their pleasure and gratification. Not the sort of men who might have the teeniest shred of empathy sufficient to understand that what they were doing for their selfish enjoyment would scar their victims. For life. As all child abuse does. It is truly the worst crime. So much so that those convicted for it have to be kept away from the prison’s ‘general population’. Because even murderers, rapists, serial killers and burglars find child abusers immoral. They steal the lives of children.

Virginia Giuffre never got over what was done to her by Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein, Prince Andrew and possibly Donald Trump. Virginia was ‘spotted’ whilst working at Mar-a-Lago, when she was just 16. And whisked away to become a ‘private masseuse’ for Epstein.

I always want to know what the parents were doing at this time. Same as the ‘grooming scandals’ over here. Or Michael Jackson’s ‘young men friends’ who frequently had ‘sleep overs’ with the superstar. What the fuck were the parents doing? Who would allow a 16 year old girl to be flown up to New York to provide ‘rub downs’ for a sleazy billionaire? Either Epstein and Maxwell were amazingly credible in their duplicitous ways or the fact that it was probably Epstein’s private jet flying her up which provided a temptation they couldn’t resist. I make no judgments. But reserve the right to ‘imply’ a few.

Virginia was so scarred she never got over it. And finally killed herself. At 41. Either because of those terrible mental scars or because of the fact that getting people to believe her was so incredibly difficult in the face of all the money and power calling her a liar.

Her siblings are now trying to get Andrew’s ‘Prince’ title ‘removed’. Apparently only King Charles can do this. I mean, whatever his (so many) shortcomings (no pun), Andrew was born to a monarch, therefore is a Prince. Personally, I couldn’t give a shit either way. His title is now ‘The Right Disgraceful’, and whether you put ‘Andrew’ after that or ‘Prince Andrew’, the message is still the same. The crimes were bad. The arrogance worse still.

Happy Monday

A xxxx

I’d like to announce that forthwith and henceforth, I shall no longer use the title ‘Lord’, nor ‘Duke’, ‘Count’, ‘Viscount’, ‘Viceroy’ or ‘God’. From this day forth I shall just known as Prince, Master of all he surveys and Most Important Brother of the FUCKING KING HIMSELF!!!

I make this immense sacrifice in response to the horrendous allegations made against me and the relentless hounding by the press, which, when I was a working royal, were profoundly unwarranted.

I have spent my entire life being… errrr… being the brother to the future king of England. It has not been easy. Whilst Charlie was groomed for the throne, I was left to the life of possibly the world’s most over-privileged playboy, chancer and overall total tosser. It wasn’t easy. To establish myself as a man of principle and someone perfectly able to be successful, even without the 12 million a year my mother paid me, I became a ‘deal-maker’, a ‘conduit’ for a host of international projects. Most of them illegal, immoral or downright underhand. I liaised with Chinese spymasters and American billionaire paedophiles, sold my mother’s time to anyone with a few hundred grand to spare, and shagged anything that moved, regardless of either ‘its’ age or my marital status.

Its not been an easy life. I’ve spent the latter part of my ‘career’, basically, telling lies and giving denials that I’ve ever known any of the people I spent the early part cultivating.

Jeffrey Epstein? Who’s he?? Oh, the chap with his arm round me on his yacht in Bermuda… that Jeffrey Epstein. Barely knew the guy. Never involved in any of his ‘antics’, that’s for sure. And I’ve never met anyone called Virginia Diuffre. Even though there are many photos to the contrary of that statement. But abused her? Sexually? Do I look like the type of man who would do such a thing??? Yes, I suppose I fit the bill perfectly really, but that proves nothing!

And as for my odd meeting with Cai Qi, I honestly thought he’d come to deliver my take-away because, quite frankly, they all look a bit the same really, don’t they? I certainly never realised he was basically the spy chief for the whole of China; we talked about spare ribs and kung fu movies.

So in brief: I never did anything wrong. All the accusations about me are false. Any that might have some credibility I simply can’t remember a thing about and in future just call me ‘Your Royal Princeship’ as all my other titles have been returned, ‘for the sake of my country’, which I love deeply, and NOT just as something to be sold to the highest bidder, and for the sake of my family, none of whom will give me the time of day. Which isn’t a problem cos when I went to see Charlie about my titles, I nicked his watch.

Yours honourably,

Andrew xxxx

We have a expression. For when you’re team loses an important game (and please note: there is no such thing as an ‘unimportant’ game, other than when England are playing). And you moan, you cry, you shout, smash a few plant pots and call your therapist. That’s when your mate says: ‘its only football’. Its a term of ironic magnitude. It is the sort of thing your wife would say. IF SHE DARED!!! But indeed it is ‘only football’.

Because football is a game. A sport. A bit of fun. Ok, it all gets a bit emotional. A bit ‘partisan’, but a game is what it is.

And it shouldn’t be political.

Yet the City of Birmingham, our ‘Second City’ (though I’m going to suggest relegating it to 9th), a city incapable of collecting its own garbage (the ‘recycler’s strike is in its 473rd month), has the brilliant idea of banning Jews from its ‘borders’. Well, banning supporters of Maccabi Tel Aviv from attending the match against Aston Villa on November 6th. Because of ‘safety concerns’. Mainly that the Israeli team ‘may’ cause some kind of ‘protest’ and that the police cannot guarantee the safety of the away fans.

Which simply stinks of a ‘no jews allowed in Birmingham!!!!’ policy. And if they come; don’t expect us to protect them; we’re too busy enforcing 20mph speed limit zones in the suburbs.

Kier Starmer HIMSELF!!!! has said this is completely unacceptable and is reviewing the situation with the Safety Advisory Group. And inevitably, after masses of pressure, the ‘ban’ will be reversed and they’ll call in the National Guard (if we had one), the 5th Artillery and the Coldstream Guards to protect the Israelis.

But the damage is done. It is now a ‘big issue’ and will have Roger Waters screaming and Sigourney Weaver up in arms, plus all the ‘river to the sea’ mob taking their keffiyahs up to Brum for the 6th. And the Tel-Aviv guys are not really your stereotypical, torah-studying, hard-praying, type of black-hats. They’re hard. Aggressive. Will not be intimidated by crowds of baying Palestine flag-wavers. As they weren’t when they visited Holland last year for a match and mini-war. It was awful.

However, as Galatasaray fans aren’t banned here, for all their flare-firing, throat-slitting hostilities, nor Red Star Belgrade, nor all the other revolting East Europeans who come here to act horribly, the Tel Aviv thing is different. Its saying: we can’t protect Jewish people from the hatred in our nation. And that’s not just a little bit ‘wrong’, but totally fucking wrong.

Happy Friday

A xxxx

We, at the Oxford Union, at the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, at the Epsom Downs Crocheting Society for Ladies, and at the Association for Over-Privileged Tossers Wearing Keffiahs, have absolutely NO intention of stopping our weekly marches to Free Palestine, re-instal the terrorists, eliminate Israel, kill all Jews and declare the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea a sharia state!

The marches must go on. There is no ‘peace deal’, because it was put together by a very right wing man. And ‘ceasefire’ is an ‘oppressor’s term’!! (Please don’t ask me to explain that, because I’m only on the ‘sound-byte’ committee and the ‘anything sensible’ committee stopped meeting in 1986). The peace will not last. And Trump’s plan does not address the ‘root causes of the conflict’, which is the ‘apartheid that extends across all of historic Palestine’. I know that the Jew’s history predates this by a few thousand years, but THAT’S NOT THE POINT!!! It’s the Palestinian’s history we’re concerned with. Which is why, more than ever, we need to boycott the Zionist state and stop all arms dealings with it. We need to boycott Barclays Bank because they lent money to a company which makes shoe-laces, who have a pension pot in which are 263 shares in a company who once made the sticks which go in the middle of Israeli ice lollies. MURDERERS!!!! BABY KILLERS!!!!

We also need to consider boycotting all the nations who are condoning this so called ‘peace deal’, like the UK, France, Italy… Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, Qatar, (fucking) Iran… Australia, Canada… and whilst I appreciate that the only country thus remaining would be… errr… Palestine and they don’t actually produce anything, WE WILL ALL STARVE OURSELVES AND WEAR ONLY CLOTHING MANUFACTURED IN GAZA!! So we’ll be wearing suicide vests from now on. As you can’t really wear ‘a tunnel’, which is the other industry in our spiritual homeland.

We need to keep protesting until the Israeli colonialists of apartheid move out of the region. We need to leave Palestine to Palestinians! Like this week, when they’ve shown themselves more than capable of murdering each other, of the resurgence of Hamas into street cruising death squads for anyone thought, or even imagined, as being ‘complicit with the enemy’. And someone has to keep in check the Palestinian Liberation Army, the Army of Palestine’s Liberation and the Liberation Army of Palestine, because if Hamas weren’t murdering them, they’d all be going around murdering each other! And you can’t have that; it’s lawless.

So I hope I’ve made that clear: THE MARCHES GO ON! WHILST WE STILL HAVE BREATH IN OUR BODIES, THEN WE STILL HAVE HATE!!! AND EVERYONE LOVES HATE.

See you Saturday, Whitehall.

Pastor John O’Reilly xxxx

Its so nice to have house guests. You get mired in your empty-nest, calm, relaxed lifestyle, watching whatever tv you want, when you want, you eat at regular times, the house is kept neat as a pin, you go out ‘on a whim’, come back when you like. Ahhhhh, its a boring-as-fuck existence. All that freedom; tedious. But most enjoyably tedious.

And then you get house guests. And it all changes. You have to plan around ‘them’. You have to check diary arrangements with ‘them’. You have to clean up after ‘them’. Though you do get to ‘enjoy their company’, as they would tell you. You have to put your dressing gown on. No more ‘naked tea-making’.

Lila and Joey are staying. Their poor, stressed-out parents simply can’t take any more, so they’ve gone for rehab. Convalescence. Leaving ‘the cause of the problem’ with us. Just a few days, they’re in Sicily. Lying in the sun. Sipping cocktails. Relaxed. To the point of therapeutic. No rushing back from work to do a school run. No ‘homework’. No prolonged, hyperactive, house-trashing bedtimes. Just 2 chilled out dudes who’s only concern is ‘what book to read next’, or ‘is 9.35 too early in the morning for my third margarita of the day?’ Leaving US, with the ‘house guests’.

These are the things these ‘house guests’ will never be heard saying:

Can I help you with that?
…only if its not too much trouble…
I’m going to bed now; goodnight.
No thanks, I’ve already eaten.
I’m sugar-intolerant
Leave us alone, we need to study
Let me tidy that up
After you…

Though it must be said, for the 10 minutes in the morning when 2 warm little people climb into our bed, just charging their batteries before the mania begins and the high-energy chaos starts, its ALMOST worth all the destruction that will inevitably follow. And it is fun. Exhausting, but fun.

Happy surrogate parenting day

A xxxx

Much as I’ve never given too much credit to Donald J Trump, I’m kind’a in awe of what he has achieved. Something no-one else in the world, quite literally, could have done. It is a really beautiful thing, the most beautiful thing in the world. And he made it the most magnificent day in the history of the world.

Sorry, I find myself breaking into Trump-speak frequently today. Because today the hostages finally came home. A final end to that most horrible of unimaginable ordeals. Unfortunately, for many, the ‘end’ came before today and their bodies will be following the living survivors soon, I hope. So their heartbroken and devastated families can at least mourn properly. And its down to Trump. Who bullied everyone into agreeing with his ‘deal’. Not the complete set of proposals stretching to 763 pages (including footnotes) which every other world leader may have put together over 9 months, then sent for a further year for ‘ratification’, but just a very Trumpian ‘outline’ of moving forward. Sketchy. Short on details. In fact, no details.

Which is why every worthless, virtue-signalling, be-suited, clueless hanger-on to Trump’s shirt-tails, like Macron, certainly like Starmer, is now in Sharm-el-Shek to try and sort out some details along with all the leaders of the Arab world too. Its a big gig. And they all have something really profoundly in common. They all fucking hate Hamas. Though not sure about including Macron and Starmer in that. They’re too busy shoring up domestic issues and revolts to actually think beyond their own localised appeasement agendas. Like ‘recognising the Palestinian state’, which all now consider was both a hindrance and a delay in the ceasefire talks.

But Hamas are there. ‘At the table’. Will they volunteer to disarm and disband? I’ll leave that hanging whilst mentioning more about Trump. Who is childish, intellectually ‘light’ (you can’t say ‘retarded’ any more, so I won’t), and always big on headlines, little on structure. But some things he just gets. As he implored everyone to re-build a Gaza without hate and killing. Teach kids important things, not how to kill both others and themselves. Build prosperity and industry, not death and destruction. Build towards a lasting peace.

And you can’t criticise that.

Happy ‘got them home’ day, a truly happy day.

A xxxx

So the ceasefire’s, like, well installed. No-one’s died for over 24 hours in Gaza. Not from bombing anyway. Apparently lots have been killed there either by Hamas or by mafiaesque gangs roaming the streets, but the IDF? Zero. And you know it must be really quiet out there if Hamas have not claimed at least “25 children” being murdered on any given night. So it’s all hopeful. The hostages will return and then the ‘Board of Peace’ will step in and run the country for a bit, re-building (ok, a ‘big bit’ then) and keeping the peace until such a time as the Palestinian people can take over and govern themselves. Free from Hamas, obviously, everyone’s agreed on that part.

Oh, except for Hamas. Who have managed to find 7,000 of their finest to act as police on the streets. Yes, 7,000. All armed to the teeth, obviously. Which goes to show just how vast Hamas was before the war. When at least 30,000 have been killed. All disguised as ‘women and babies’, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

Donald Trump has sent in 200 American troops to help ‘hold the line’ which is the Israel self-imposed line of retreat. I wonder at what point these new policemen will be told by Trump to ‘lay down their arms’ and… errrr… and disband!!!

But that really needs to happen before the Board of Peace pitches up, unless they intend to run Gaza remotely. Like, from Bromley. Otherwise all those who believe, trust and have been listening to Hamas for the last 2 years may have a nasty surprise when their ‘Imperial’ group of foreign stuffed shirts sets up shop in Raffah. Hamas are insisting that Gaza must be run by Palestinians. Who have proved adept at self-government historically. Ok, they haven’t. Never. Not even once. Without infighting, outfighting, factionalising and resorting to violence. Hamas and Fateh have never seen things the same, never agreed on the power structure and even when Arafat was there, the nearest they’ve had to ‘stability’ since 1948, there was chaos. And he was the last leader to refuse a ‘2-state solution’ when offered to him. Then Hamas ‘won the election’ in 2005 to gain control of Gaza and promptly put an end to further elections.

In 2006 Israel withdrew from Gaza. As Gaza, in the election, had backed a terrorist organisation sworn to Israel’s destruction. In doing so this cut The Strip off from Israeli jobs and hospitals and universities that they’d enjoyed previously. But how can you keep a border open with a people who want you destroyed?

Since then Hamas have taken more international aid than any other country and spent it on arms and tunnels. So, just in case you’ve missed this: HAMAS DON’T GIVE A SHIT FOR PALESTINIAN PEOPLE OTHER THAN TO FURTHER THEIR OWN JIHADI AIMS.

I’d love for the ‘peace’ to endure. But reading the radically alternative interpretations of Trump’s very very ‘loose’ 20-point plan, if we’re still in peace on Wednesday we’ll be doing well.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx