Andy's Glasses

I’ve always liked Peter Mandelson. He was always the cleverest man in
the room. Whether that was a room in 10 Downing Street with Tony Blair
or Gordon Brown or in a pub full of poofs in Old Compton Street.
Always clever, dry, funny and… clever.

So clever, it transpires, that back in the noughties he managed to cop
a load’a dosh off of Jeffrey Epstein. Allegations of 75,000, 55,000
and another 10 grand for Mandy’s husband to do an osteopathy course.
Probably why Mandelson always stands so straight. Not much else
straight about him. So it transpires. None of this money found its way
onto the MP’s register of gifts/donations/bribes as they’re supposed
to. And at the time Mandy was the Minister for Business. In which role
he lobbied government for lots of Epstein-favourable projects. And
passed the paedo lots of ‘information’, including confidential emails
from the Prime Minister and very ‘market sensitive’ stuff about
national debt payments and immense cash injections. If you gave me
that information, I could probably, given enough time, work out how to
make a few million quid before the news got out. Someone with the
resources and understanding of finances of Epstein, could make
billions.

And yet, with all that going on, there was one crime far more serious.

Not just wearing white Y-fronts, but being filmed wearing them. What
self-respecting gay man would ever allow such an act of fashion
suicide? Even straight men generally stop wearing Y-fronts when their
mums stop buying underwear for them. And it appears from several
photos that Mandy not only wore such horrible pants but spent most of
the day walking round in such a state of tragically uncool undress.

So now, another title falls to the sword of a dead sleazebag. First
Andrew became un-Princed and now Mandelson is banished from the House
of Lords and its only a matter of time before he is officially
un-Lorded.

Like Kier Starmer, (even though I don’t ‘like’ him), I initially felt
that all the ‘guilt by association’ with Epstein was a bit unfair, so
we all gave Lord Peter the benefit of the doubt and we made him
Ambassador to Trump. Because it is possible, but let’s face it, quite
unlikely, that Mandy didn’t know what sexual deviations Epstein was up
to. He’d probably needed to be blind and deaf, but let’s say its
possible.

But then he ‘got into bed’ with Epstein in a very different way. In a
way that is way more ‘treason’ than it is banter. And he got paid. A
lot of money. For selling secrets.

Mel and I had a ‘date night’, yesterday. We had adjoining appointments
with the same consultant Neurosurgeon. That’s true love. Then over to
Pita in Golders Green for dinner. Which is fantastic. Fabulous ‘street
food’ for which cutlery is not required. You just make all the mess
you like.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

We’re currently car shopping. Its my favourite type of shopping by miles. I love cars and as all showrooms have really good coffee machines, biscuits even!!!, what’s not to like?

Mel’s ‘lectric car goes back in March. We leased it because then the government paid for it, virtually in full. And its been wonderful. Except when it wasn’t. Which really was only when we had to charge it away from the house, or when it just turned into the computer it was built as and went into ‘hanging’ mode. Otherwise, its the dream; smooth, noiseless and fast-as-fuck.

So we’re getting a hybrid. We’re only saving half the polar bears from March on. As I mentioned before, Mel has pretty much one overriding criterion: it MUST have pre-entry climate control. When you can warm the car up and defrost it from your bed. Or even from other parts of the house. Long as you don’t have to get involved in any scraping, or putting your bum on a cold seat. Can’t have that.

And if you’re getting a hybrid, there’s no question that Toyota is at the absolute pinnacle of that technology. 10 million Uber drivers can’t all be wrong. And although everyone hates the Prius, they do make other cars too. ALL of which have climate control!!!! All we had to do was find one small enough, big enough, white enough (she likes white), cute enough, high enough, fast enough (well I have to drive it too) and climate controlly enough. And they have one. Ah, job done, we’ve found it.

Oh, but Lexus has one too. And not only are they part of Toyota but they also have a showroom bang opposite on the Edgware Road. You know the one: right by the bus lane where I GOT FINED 80 FUCKING QUID LAST FUCKING WEEK!!!!, when we went for the test drive.

So now we’re torn between two cars which are basically the same. Except… when you shut the door. The Toyota door sounds like a car door. And the Lexus one sounds like something sumptuous and smooth and very solid and luxurious.

Do you buy a car based on the sound of its door shutting?
If you’re not there, does it even make a sound when closing??? If so; who’s closing it???

Its not easy.

Just a mention of Spurs yesterday. Most amazing second half comeback by my lovely band of heroic superstars to draw from 2-nil down. Incredible. Even though Arsenal became the main beneficiaries. Whereas the team we put out in the first half, although they looked pretty similar to their replacements, were a hapless bunch of inept, half-asleep, lazy, good-for-nothing tossers.

Its only football.

Happy Monday

A xxxx

There are times when being a football fan defies all logic, all sensibility, any kind of decency. Times when your passions and your personal goals conflict in ways that defy any type of sane consideration.

Last night, as I was watching the absolutely fantastic match between Chelsea and West Ham, this problem raised its somewhat ugly but equally unavoidable head once more.

We hate Chelsea. Everyone hates Chelsea. You simply have to. There’s no choice in the matter. And most Spurs fans have less than zero love for West Ham. During the game I was messaging with Tory-boy, my son-in-law and ardent Spurs fan. And we shared our distraught that West Ham might win a third game in a row and possibly fight their way out of the relegation that they rightly deserve. Which sounds a bit ‘nasty’. But football is nothing if not ‘nasty’, so we both ended up ‘high fiving’ from afar with every Chelsea goal then scored. But we hate Chelsea. Obviously we hate West Ham more? I don’t know, but I really didn’t want them to win that match. Does that make me, and him, bad people? Probably, but we simply can’t help it.

So on to today. We play Manchester City. And, in terms of emotion rather than statistics, we’re in pretty much the same position as when we played City with Ange at the helm. On that occasion, if we had beaten City, which we didn’t, it would have almost secured a top four finish, and thus Champions League glory. But it would also have pretty much given Arsenal the title. And, along with most Spurs fans, because we’re all as stupid as each other, we wanted to lose that match. Sacrificing our own rather significant gain on the hope of scuppering Arsenal’s aspirations. We lost, Man City went on to win the title. Our manager raged against the fans. Because he didn’t understand. He couldn’t understand. He’s a Aussie. And his major footballing experience came from Glasgow. And everyone thinks that the Auld firm of Celtic and Rangers, driven by religious division, at times totally toxic in its extremes, is the epitome of ‘local rivalries’. Well, Ange, it ain’t. Never underestimate the depth of Spurs and Arsenal’s animosity. To the extent that you simply hate for them to enjoy success. Oddly, its not even about football. Its about fans. And although we don’t get to play, vote, make decisions or sack anyone, we create the general atmosphere of the club. And no-one wants to, or should ever, get ‘offside’ with the fans. Player, manager, owner, they can’t afford to lose the fan-base.

So this afternoon City will come to Spurs. Knowing that if they lose they will be giving Arsenal the title. Not that they’ll probably stop them, even if they win, but it will reduce the gap. And then we can all wait for the ‘slide’, the ‘slump’ or the ‘bottle job’ from Arsenal. If it comes.

Basically, you can’t help your feelings. And even if that results in acting in totally stupid way, its not ‘insanity’ as such, its ‘just football’.

I apologise in advance for any such feelings I experience later today.

Happy Sunday

A Very Bad Person xxxx

There’s a new movie coming out. On Amazon Prime. Jeff Bezos made it. It’s called ‘Andy’ and it’s the story of my life, told in ‘fly on the wall’ style, with particular relevance to the two terms of Donald Trump’s presidencies. Jeff paid me $40 million for this. And has put aside another 40 mil for marketing the movie. Which he’ll need because I don’t know anyone that would actually pay money to watch the movie. Trump fans will boycott it, on principle, and everyone else will say, ‘Andy? Who the fuck is Andy???’ Which is a real shame because the movie is really designed to show my modelling skills, my natural ‘beauty’, which is only ‘enhanced’ once or twice a month. Ok, once or twice a week. Strutting around in heels, wearing designer frocks and stunning jewels. All displayed magnificently by my natural pout. That Zoolander stare, which I call ‘ice, baby!’, and will be the poster picture for marketing. It’s a result for me, all I had to do was shag a fat, rich, controlling, narcissistic moron and I pocketed 40 mil.

And talking of getting a ‘right result’, Kier Starmer can be proud of his efforts during his 4 day trip to China. He’s proved himself not only to be a wonderful statesman, smiling at all those soldiers lined up to threaten him, but also an amazing negotiator, which is never easy in that nation. He did a fantastic deal in which British people can now enter China, visa-free!!! Obviously, most will then be arrested as ‘spies’, tortured and then we’ll never see nor hear from them again. But it’s a real ‘coup’ for Starmer. And in return for allowing half a dozen Brits each year to see the Great Wall, Starmer has given the Chinese carte blanche to build a massive espionage centre right in the heart of the City, giving it unlimited access to all the financial and defence details which it currently only gets by phone tapping and computer hacking. Now they can mainline straight in. Which in turn will enable China to basically ‘own’ Britain. They’ll put a few nuclear bases here, one in the gardens of Buckingham Palace, another down the Golders Green Road. Because Chinese communism doesn’t allow for such things as ‘monarchy’, so Charles will be deposed and we’ll have King Xi on all our stamps. So well done Sir Kier.

In other developments; have you read all of Jeffrey Epstein’s 3-and-a-half million documents, released by… some American, three-letter organisation or other? No!!! Why not? I read them all. Watched every video, scanned every photo and found… well, nothing of any interest at all. Not because he’s not guilty, though I think being dead trumps being guilty, but because if there was anything massively incriminating, juicy or nasty, that US department would have acted upon it, wouldn’t they? That’s why they’ve had them for years. Anyway, that’s not the point. We should all read every (fucking) document. As soon as we have a year or two free to do so.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

A few weeks ago we went round to friends for dinner. They’ve just moved, from ‘round the corner’ (where everyone should live) to… Hadley Wood!!! Holy shit! Where is that, FFS? Well, turns out, according to Waze, it’s 5.8 miles away. You could walk it in an hour and a half. I couldn’t, and didn’t have an hour and a half to spare, so we drove.

Last night we went out to dinner. To a hotel in… Hadley Wood!! I mean; what are the chances. I’ve never been there in 69 years and then it’s twice in a fortnight. And it is very lovely out there. Possibly a bit too ‘out there’ for an urbanite like me who gets panicky if not surrounded by bricks’n’mortar on all sides, all day. But you just drive out there, and it’s, kind’a, ‘normal’, with shops and houses and stuff and then… it stops! There’s trees and fields and all that ‘Cotswoldy’ stuff, and as soon as the McDonalds/Miles ratio drops below 1/2 I instantly get a bit ‘clammy’, trying to avert a panic attack, but we drove on and eventually arrived at a building. I hugged it. Sweating.

But whilst I was there, my football team was doing me proud. Now there’s a rare sentence. We went to Frankfurt and we beat those Eintrachts 2-nil. Easy peasy, Euro-breezy. As we’ve beaten virtually everyone in Europe, other than those Qatari Parisians at PSG. Then, generally, we come back home and celebrate our midweek victory by losing to Port Vale at home. It’s the Spurs way. Until this week!!! We’ve changed. And if there’s one team we do really like beating and often do, it’s Manchester City. If it was a really shit team, we’d have no hope of winning. But City… we are definitely their ‘bogey team’.

And if we do beat City, that’ll start to reaffirm our strength in belief of an ‘omnipotent and omniscient’ force worthy of at least some of the attention he/she/it currently receives. It’ll be a sign the world is turning for the better.

A concept borne out by events in Minneapolis. And Washington. Where, unaccountably, Donald Trump’s eyesight has miraculously been cured!! Because he re-looked at the death of Alex Pretti and it’s amazing. What he originally saw as ‘a terrorist, hell-bent on killing security personnel; an armed terrorist threatening havoc on innocent ICE agents’, has now become something much more akin to the video which everyone else in the world saw that day. An innocent civilian wrestled to the ground by 9 armed officers, he did have a gun, but it was legal and in the small of his back, and then gratuitously executed by a hail of completely unwarranted gunfire.

So, what I’m saying is: there’s hope. Not a lot, either where Spurs or Trump is concerned, but it’s enough. It’s a start.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

This is the table showing the standings as we prepare to play the final match of the league phase of the Champions League tonight. Which is so important to me that I’m going out for dinner. Not my idea, but faced with ‘free dinner vs despair’, it was a hard choice.

What’s interesting is that in the top 11 places there are 6 English teams. Once again showing, in glaringly unambiguous statistical certainty, that the other European leagues are shit. They’re a sham. Its all a bit ‘Scotland’. 2 amazing, fantastic and rich clubs, add in 1 or 2, but NO MORE, average ‘also-rans’ and fill the remainder with the hopeless and the dire.

The UEFA Cup final last year was contested by the two English teams who came immediately above the relegation zone. So you can be a crappy English team and still be better than 90% of the Europeans.

Ok, seeing Arsenal top of yet another table doesn’t do much for me. I should give them some credit for that. But simply can’t. Interestingly, during their most successful season, so far, in a decade, at the first sniff of a loss, last Sunday, their lovely fans immediately ‘turned’ and started booing their team.

You need your team to play much more consistent dross and lose far more games really badly before you have the right to boo. You have to be like Spurs. Then you have the right to hit the ‘sacked in the morning’ tape. Don’t those miserable, entitled gooners realise that booing your own team is not really the encouragement they’re going to need to win matches?

With Spurs, I just despair. To say that this league table flatters my team is such a vast understatement that I would question its validity in normal circumstances. But it is what it is. We’re flying high in Europe but can’t win a league match however flawed the opposition. We can out-flaw anyone in the Premiership.

So good luck to all those English teams tonight. Except Arsenal, obviously. Except Chelsea, certainly. Manchester City, on principle. Liverpool, because we must. And Newcastle, otherwise it wouldn’t be fair.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

I was an abused child. No-one knew. It looked like the perfect, happy, loving household and yet… and yet…
There was fucking sugar, everywhere!!! The worst, most harmful, addictive, nasty… DRUG!!!! on the planet. And my parents simply couldn’t get enough of it, and virtually ‘forced’ it on me and my brother. As you generally have to ‘force’ sugar on, or into, children.

Rationing in England finally ended, from the war, in 1952. Rich was born in ’53 and I bowled along (because I’d have strutted out, with serious attitude, right from birth) in ’56. And when rationing finished, the thing most people had really been craving, sugar, suddenly exploded back into virtually unlimited availability. Yeah, petrol for the car was good, but my parents didn’t have a car until 1962 when my dad bought a Ford Consul. I wish I still had it. Massive thing, column, 3-speed gear shift, class. Milk is nice, eggs being back in the shops was wonderful. But sugar just…

We always had bowls of sweets in the house. Toffees, chewy sweets, sucky sweets, chocolate things, always. Even 40 years later, my kids loved going round to my parents because there was always sweets around.

Yet times change. I was talking to Lila on Friday night and she told me how many ‘teaspoons of sugar’ are in a can of Coke, in breakfast cereals, crisps, McDonalds… they had the talk. The ‘sugar talk’. The evils of the world’s most wonderful product. And Lila held forth (as she does) about its health issues and obesity and diabetes and tooth decay, and all very intellectual and very Lila. But then offer her a lemon flavoured Mento and she’ll bite your hand off for it. Joey would too, but he actually likes eating hands as well as sweets.

Then in Saturday’s Times magazine was a long article about a woman who ‘cut out all the sugar in her life’. Wow. She must be glowing with health and vitality. Or possibly suicidal with the lack of enjoyment in everything she eats and drinks.

On a medico-scientific level, we all know sugar is really bad for us. But that doesn’t apply when you’re eating it. We all ‘need’ sugar, from a strictly dietary viewpoint. Because… because its very nice.

So not eating sugar, which is so wonderfully available and almost universally deployed by all food manufacturers to keep us addicted, would be as stupid as having wonderful, high-powered cars available and filling the capital with speed-bumps. Or 20mph roads.

God help us all.

Happy Monday

A xxxx

Oh. My. God.

2 days has passed since I last… passed judgment on the world? Spouted a load of unwanted opinion? Had a rant? Whatever you call it. But in those 2 days the whole world has fundamentally changed. DON’T I GET A MOMENT’S PEACE??? FFS???

Donald Trump, on Thursday, basically called every English soldier who fought in Afghanistan a coward, a wimp and virtually worthless. Ok, he actually said that ‘NATO troops from Europe weren’t on the front line, but just behind it’. Same difference. Kier Starmer went mad about that. I mean, how bad does any statement have to be before Starmer is even prepared to take an impartial, non-legal view about it?? But to have him screaming (almost) accusations against Trump!! And best of all; the great President actually heeded Starmer’s point that 457 of our ‘cowards’ died on the fucking front line. Thousands were horrendously injured. Prince Harry, who was there, in his helicopter, watching, stated his disgust with Trump’s words. So Trump did what for him is ‘the right thing’. And rather than apologise, which he is functionally incapable of ever doing, he issued another statement, gushing with praise for the British military, filled with all the normal Trumpian hyperbole and unlimited praise for our gallant troops.

Then, over here, and seemingly unrelated to anyone other than the most dedicated conspiracy-theorist, Andy Burnham, the virtual GOD of the entire north of England, the man who made Manchester… even more ‘Manchester’ than it was before, decided to give it all up and stand as a lowly MP. Well, some cynics would say, ‘for the expressed purpose of deposing Kier Starmer as leader of the Labour Party and PM of all of England!!! Plus bits of those other countries nearby.’ But before he was allowed to stand for the election in… some northern place of no interest, his application had to be approved by the executive of the Labour Party because he’d have to resign as mayor of Manchester first.

And that would be a bit of a problem for Labour. Because despite our Andy thinking himself ‘the northerner’s northerner’ and ‘the most Manc person since Liam Gallagher or Gary Neville’, the present government’s massive unpopularity would probably result in some neo-nazi Reformist getting in on a ‘kill all immigrants’ ticket. So they turned him down for the by-election. Which those same cynics might say was really to protect Starmer from invasion.

And if all that wasn’t enough, those fuckers from ICE shot dead another seemingly innocent civilian in Minneapolis yesterday. I watched it. As about 9 of the ‘officers’ beat up some guy, then shot him several times. ICE answer to no higher authority. They act with the President’s blessing and enjoy complete impunity and unaccountability, other than public opinion. ICE showed a photo of a gun. Allegedly possessed by their latest victim. It may have been his gun, could’a been anyone’s. Was he holding it? Threatening with it? Ah, that’s not really clear. ICE are effectively what Hitler’s ‘brown shirts’ were in 1936. A law unto themselves with the unrestricted blessing of the highest power to beat up and/or murder whoever they see fit.

And then we nearly lost at Burnley.

I’m not saying that’s in the same league of ‘importance’ as what’s written above, but as the equalising goal for us went in at the 90th minute, it was, momentarily, the only thing happening in the entire world.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

So the original ‘Board of Peace’ was going to be me, Donald Trump, Rubio, Tony Blair and one or two ‘make weights’, just because we over-ordered chairs. Then Donald invited Vladimir Putin to join. They don’t do irony in America, obviously and famously, otherwise we’d all be in hysterics over having the greatest war-monger on the planet joining a board of ‘peace’. Whilst he’s still directing the missiles over Ukraine.

And our brief was simple: sort out Gaza. Easy peasy. Just disarm Hamas, rebuild an entire little territory in which 2 million people are currently homeless, lose the jihadi mentality of the whole population and educate them about anti-semitism, eliminating all traces of the evils of Iranian-backed terrorism and the toxic education by the UN, of all fucking people.

That’s all.

But now, Don called me because he wants to expand it. In his truly rousing speech yesterday (I never knew he invented the wheel! Stopped 14 wars in 3 weeks! Removed the threats on Greenland and the tariffs in 7 days!!! Even though they were his ideas originally. He made the first ever push-up bra! Cured cancer!! Built Israel’s Iron Dome with his own hands!!!) he intents to increase both the remit of the ‘Board’ and also its constituent members. To include a whole host of ‘lovelies’ including Argentinians, Saudis, Qataris, Viktor Orban of Hungary (a man of similar views to DJT but less devotion to normal ideas of ‘democracy’), Israel’s in, as it has to be and then he even scraped the international barrel by inviting Kier Starmer.

But Kier is now torn. He’s always fucking ‘torn’. Which is why all the time he’s not actually sitting on a fence, he’s performing u-turns. And now he has to decide whether to sit on this ‘board’ with Vlad-the-Bad. So here’s our Prime Minister, a man obsessed with ‘diplomacy’ (rather than ‘action’), who always wants to ‘talk’. And here is the golden opportunity to actually speak to Putin, to have ‘talks’ with the man and possibly try to either dissuade him or at least understand him better. But no. Kier has his pride and his values (and a fair dose of stupidity) so doesn’t wish to ‘share the platform’ with Pute. What a tosser.

Basically, world peace comes down to Don (who’s name MUST always come first or he throws a wobbly and soils his nappy), Tony, Vlad and me.

I’ll keep you posted.

Happy Thursday. Or ‘World Peace Day’ as it will soon be known.

A xxxx

Every time Spurs win a football match I like to let people know. Most aren’t interested. Understandable. But the boys in my morning cafe are big football fans. Even though they’re Spanish and that’s a nation that thinks to run a first class football league you only really need 2 teams. They’ve been here long enough to understand the massive superiority of the Premiere League over all others in the entire world. Because I tell them repeatedly. I tell them how good our league is and that the only difference between LaLiga and the Scottish Premiere League is the accents. They appreciate that.

So this morning, I went in with my arms raised above my head in celebration of last night’s wonderful win over Dortmund in the Champions League. And ‘big brother’ (there are 2 brothers there; one small, whip thin, fit as a fiddle and yet just had 2 heart attacks, and one really big, massively overweight and is in peak health; go figure) sneered at me. As if to say ‘really?’ Like it was no big deal. Even though Champions League is ‘proper’ and Dortmund are good. Well, they were, when Klopp was there. And he should understand that, being a European, and a ‘forriner’ an’ all.

And I thought: when did I last strut into my cafe with my arms aloft? The last match Spurs won (in all fucking competitions), was Crystal Palace. I was in Tenerife and the cafe was closed for xmas break. The previous time we claimed victory was against Brentford on December 6th. A long time ago. If 24 hours is a ‘long time in politics’, how long is it in football years? We could get through 3 managers in that time.

On Monday I crept into the cafe in case Kevin the West Ham fan barrister’s clerk was in there. He’s a totally lovely guy, but I would have run away rather than have to encounter him on that day.

So much in life is just difficult when you’re a Spurs fan. Because we win so infrequently that when it happens I have to gloat. I have to mock. I have to be… possibly a caricature of the most annoying football fan in the world. And the rest of the time I pay the price for being so horrible. Or creep around avoiding people.

Do I think we need a new manager? No. I don’t. Keep him. He has ‘something’. Ok, that something isn’t working too well currently, but I feel positive. Today. After our win.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx