HELLO PEOPLE

Hello people! To everyone that checks out my website, this is a new personable section where I'll share what I think about stuff by writing a bit of a column/blog/editorial about stuff happening in the world and other more local based stuff. Don't take stuff too personally, I'm not a campaigning journalist, christ 20 years ago I was cutting steel bars all with an electronic band saw. So anyway here goes!

21st July 2008

THANKS

Thanks to all who came to my secret gig previews at The Live Theatre and The Hyena respectively. It's great doing quiet low key stuff. It gives you the chance to practice stuff and create new ideas. I'll be putting the information on my home page the day before when I'm doing secret gigs on Tyneside. Might do a few next year in one or two  pubs to warm up for my bigger theatre stuff next year so watch this space.

13th January 2008

FUNNY OLD WEEK

Yes it's been a bit mental at St. James' Park since Wednesday but what has been entirely predictable has been this outpouring of Southern based bile spouting over the airwaves on the phone ins and in print in our so called 'tell it like it is and pull no punches' tabloid press. The general mood has been that we should all sit down and shut up and accept our fate as Newcastle fans because we are after all a mid table/bottom half of the premier league football club. That's everyone's opinion but what they pass off as fact but is in fact total fiction seems to become part of other fans factoids for the next 10 years. The usual stuff is something like this:-

'For a football club that hasn't won a trophy in 86 years and has had 22 managers in the last 5 years, Newcastle fans seem to think they have the divine right to be at the top of the league and always challenging for honours. Us fans old enough to remember, smile at their lofty claims when before Keegan arrived in 1992 the average crowds were 3498!! One season I remember no one turned up for a derby match against Middlesbrough because the team weren't doing well, whereas Man. City  and Everton have never lost one supporter in all the years they've been in existence. They turn up even when they're dead, their family carries them there, well it's the least they can do considering they've been fans all their life. Also what's laughable is that the toon faithful think they've won a European trophy in 1969, when I'd heard from a Sunderland fan that it doesn't count because UEFA put out a statement saying that it wasn't very important and that it was an invitational tournament'.

Shit, we'll all have to go back in time and uncelebrate the cup run. We'll have to find the 60,000 fans that were at all the home games and give them their money back and tell them to make up for those great memories by sulking in a room and complaining that we haven't won anything.

Anyway it's terrible that we have the temerity to try to be great and win stuff isn't it. We should be like the rest of this Oliver Twist country and accept what we've got!! Sorry rest of England, we've really got a nerve! I am so ashamed to be a Geordie.

3rd January 2008

 HAPPY NEW YEAR

A happy new year citizens, let's hope for a great one where we stick it right up the credit companies arses, that would make me laugh. Not that I'm a bitter socialist though. We've had the buerocrats fuck our lives for too long as well, I don't know about you but I feel that there's a bit of hope in the air as people aren't prepared to spend money for the sake of it any more and making do and mending as all decent British citizens did in the past. We won't be pushed around by some American model capitalism where we get told we need everything and we must pay for it now on credit. Also we're sick of being told by the trendy left what we are as a nation, what we're tolerant of and what we're like without being asked in the first place. To the fans of mine (a small but dedicated bunch), have a great year and don't take any shit from the beurgoise (I don't care if I've spelt that wrong). All the best people.

Gav

25th December 2007

NICE BLOKE

The bloke who works in Corals the bookmakers on Whiteladies Road in Bristol is a nice bloke. He spoke to me at great length about how the gambling industry is changing and while I was talking to him even let an Eastern European bloke come in just to use the toilet. Hope you have a decent christmas mate.

12th September 2007

THE END OF AN ERA

I'd say that local TV broadcasting is just about at an end with the announcement from Michael Grade (head of ITV) that the 17 regional broadcasters are going to be cut down to 9. Could it be the end of Tyne Tees Tonight? Personally I wouldn't mourn that, but yet again this country is gradually being homogeonised, controlled by London and falling in love with everything that is English, and who is doing this? a bunch of fancy suited rahs, they are very much Margaret Thatcher's children, people brought up in a country where profit margin is everything even if the product they are selling is absolute shite, controlled very much by a red top tabloid media, getting hysterical about everything and always blaming stuff on Islington right on England haters. Ironically enough, these Islington right on English haters dine with these tabloid hacks regularly. They eat in Crouchend and run this country which to them doesn't exist beyond London Gateway services. They are one and the same and I don't know the immediate answer to the problem. The first thing someone could do is start a subscription cable channel for the people of the North East and then I think these pricks in London would be surprised how many people would watch it or certainly subscribe to it. In the meantime though we'll just have to remind ourselves of the great Mike Neville era and the great Tyne Tees programmes (some networked, some just for local viewers) in these dark days of home counties dominance.

To celebrate the glory days of Tyne Tees here is one of the most politically incorrect clips I've ever seen. Tell me any telly today that's as entertaining as this. It's from a programme called Friday Live which was so shit it was brilliant.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=OPisEeGEuVg

POSTSCRIPT 24th September 2007

In last week's Independant, 'journalist' Paul Ross said that it was a good thing that local news was going because all they ever talked about was cats getting stuck up trees and the like. What shit! That is so stereotypical, I've never known that particular story ever get told. I know he means in general that all the news stories are of a trivial nature but that doesn't hold any weight. It's always local news broadcasters that uncover skullduggery in local councils (think of the Poulsen affair), local police (think of the Felling coppers many years ago and what about the Ray Mallon affair) and many a mass homocide. I know for a fact that Tyne Tees did a fantastic documentary about a certain hoaxer who was at large at the time in a famous serial killer case that we all know about.

National news has, quite rightly been accused of it's triviality, certainly it does resemble Heat magazine on the telly sometimes and for cockney wanker personified (Mr. Ross in case you'd thought I'd strayed off topic) to say local news is largely piss poor is hypocracy in the extreme. Have a think of any good telly he's ever done..........still thinking, yes it's a bit like Harold Shipman accusing Fred West of being scum. If you want to get in touch with Paul Ross about this piece of shit article I think the address is www.independant.co.uk I'm sure if you put paulross@ before it then you'll be able to write to him direct. Actually if you just put This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it It'll probaly get to him as well. As the late great Peter Cook said in an unforgettable Derek and Clive sketch, to get a letter to the director general of the BBC, all you have to do is write on the letter CUNT LONDON and It'll get straight to him!