Horsemeat: where's the beef?

Unbridled flavour

Thanks to recent government tests, we at last know the shocking truth that half the food in Britain actually consists almost entirely of horsemeat.

It turns out that the Aldi shepherd’s pie I enjoyed yesterday evening couldn’t have contained more horse DNA if it had taken it up the arse all night from Black Beauty.

So it seems it’s not even safe to tuck into a plate of mashed potato these days without checking it first for mane hairs and chunks of hoof. Unless it’s Halal cuisine served up in a British prison, of course, in which case you need to be keeping your eyes peeled for trotters and a curly tail.

I can’t say I’m entirely surprised that it was the French who shipped us this disgusting shite. People who routinely put molluscs, amphibians and unshaved beaver into their mouths are hardly likely to turn a hair when faced with a dish of dobbin tartare. The only thing that really shocks me is that they wanted to send it over here instead of eating it all themselves and belching loudly across the channel.

A Romanian peasant enjoys a picnic

Surprisingly reluctant to take the blame for this culinary scandal entirely upon their own broad shoulders, our Gallic cousins have nobly decided to point an accusing finger at the organised crime-free, social utopia that is Eastern Europe. Why the hell not, you ask?

Well, I’m sure there are villages near the Russian border where tucking into a nag omelette is a great way to celebrate a wedding, but why there should suddenly be half a million dead horses ready for the table over there, I’m not exactly sure. If it’s true, there must be a gigantic stable next to a meat packing factory somewhere in Romania where they’re herding the bloody things into a chute around the clock.

And come to think of it, why would European Union food inspectors notice anything suspicious? Especially if there’s a hand painted sign on the rusty gates that helpfully proclaims:  “Is nothing to see here. EU spies please be go away thank you or we kill.”

Yep, there seems to be so much equine based protein in the British food chain now, that I think all we can do is just get used to it. We must learn to look forward to popping into KFC for some Suffolk Punch nuggets, or visiting MacDonald’s to try the new Hindquarter pounder, where kids can go large with filly fries, a foal flavoured fizzy drink and amuse themselves with a complimentary plastic donkey called Yumyum.

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Of course, language will have to evolve. It won’t be long before you hear people sighing: I’m so hungry I could eat a Findus Lasagne, there’s no point flogging an Iceland readymeal, Aldi bolognese sauces for courses etc…

But don’t despair there’s always an upside: the next time your daughter relentlessly badgers you for a pony for her birthday, just fry her up a burger from Tesco and stick a candle in it.

Christmas Jeer

You might think it strangely ironic for the Devil to be a big fan of Christmas, but let’s be honest: to most of us, a couple of days cooped up with relatives that we can barely stand the sight of for the rest of the year is the closest thing to Hell that we’re likely to experience this side of the grave.

Yes indeed, this is the time of year when the traditional seasonal values of hatred, bitterness and greed are guaranteed to spurt from the back end of the year like the unwelcome and scalding revenge of ten pints of cheap lager capped off with a bad curry.

You shouldn't have...

Don’t believe me? Then look into your own heart and imagine the loathing that you feel when you snatch the wrapping off your last present, hoping to Christ that you’re going to get at least one decent gift this year, only to find that it’s a cheap pack of knockoff bath salts from the “special” Christmas shop that won’t even exist anymore on Boxing day. Bath salts! If it’s the ruddy thought that counts, then why didn’t the bastard put some bloody thought into it?

Then all you need is for some sanctimonious toe rag to start banging on about the “true meaning of Christmas”. This is bad enough when it’s some Bishop Gobshite’s Christmas message on ITV, but god forbid it should be someone you’ve been foolish enough to invite into your own home. The worst of it is that no one has the minerals to shake off their fixed grin and tell it like it is: “Shut it, you miserable slag or you’ll be walking off that mince pie on the way to casualty to have these blasted bath salts removed from your eye sockets. That is, if our local hospital isn’t one of the ones that’s had to close to stem the spread of winter vomiting.”

This simmering undercurrent of barely contained rage is clearly reflected in the TV schedules. I remember the days when the BBC used to makes us sit through vacuously cheerful rubbish like “The Sound of Music” & “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” every year, when the only rush of adrenaline came from nodding off and dreaming about doing Julie Andrews over the bonnet of a magic car. Now they’ve mercifully dropped the pretence and spike our seething glands with Mission Impossible 9 where Tom Cruise pulls the skin off his own face and blows a hole in some Russian Mafoisi’s face with a handgun.

That’s the magic of Christmas, comrade, “hasta la vista” Now pour me another large one.

Then there’s the Christmas music. Much like the films, playlists used to be dominated by garbage like “Mistletoe and Wine” by the appalling Cliff Richard, a man who apparently models himself after the Saviour by constantly asking himself, what would Jesus do? Well, I’m sure Christ himself didn’t gallivant around spouting nauseating crap like:

Christmas is love, Christmas is peace,

A time for hating and fighting to cease

But if he did, I’m not surprised they ended up nailing him to a tree.

Pucker up

No, these days, the Best Christmas Song Ever is usually voted to be the unforgettable “Fairytale of New York”. This charming ditty was penned as far back as 1987 by the Pogues, a musically talented Irish band, originally called Pogue Mahone, which apparently translates from the Gaelic as “kiss my arse”. Wholly appropriate I feel, in light of the fact that when confronted by the prospect of lead singer Shane MacGowan’s remarkable face under the mistletoe, I’m guessing most people would rather pogue his mahone.

I think what makes this song a perennial yuletide favourite is the touching and appropriate verse that truly captures the spirit of the season:

You scumbag, you maggot,

You cheap, lousy faggot.

Merry Christmas, you arse,

I pray God it’s our last.

I remember watching the video of this on MTV back in 1989. Back in those days they used to bleep out the word “arse” for fear that the evil of swearwords might tarnish the sanctity of our joyous celebrations.

I saw the same video again the other day. They don’t bleep out the word “arse” any more, but they do bleep out the word “faggot”, presumably because the revolting thought of traditional Welsh cuisine might put us off our turkey. It’s strangely reassuring to know that there’s an F-word that even Gordon Ramsay might be loath to utter at this time of year.

If you get ticked off with the film & music channels, you can always sit back with a stiff drink and enjoy the news reviews of the year, most of which will certainly revolve around killing and death. I’ll put good money on the prospect of many of us settling down behind a glass of port to relive the enjoyable sight of excited gunmen playing a game of catch with Colonel Gaddafi’s flabby and lifeless corpse.

Where does it hurt?

We’ll suck our teeth and nobly voice our concern that he wasn’t brought to trial at the Hague, but what’s really needling us is the fact that he was hauled out of a concrete pipe by a heavily armed lynch mob in front of several hundred mobile phone cameras, but there was no footage whatsoever of his infamous all-female bodyguard, or that buxom Swedish nurse that took care of all his “medical” needs.

Frustration like that is bad enough at any time of year, but even worse when, with a houseful of guests, there’ll be no way to find some private space to trawl Google Images while we’re still sober enough to remember what it is that’s causing that warm feeling of curiosity.

No doubt at some point Robert Peston will be dragged back from speech therapy to yodel on theatrically about the global financial crisis, which basically boils down to the fact that the Germans don’t want to pay for the thirty-five year holiday that Southern Europe has just enjoyed on tick. Incidentally, I find it amusing that for many years, the medical profession have been puzzling about how it is that the Mediterranean diet protects so effectively against heart disease and strokes, and now it’s been finally revealed that this is because the Mediterranean diet involves not doing any f*cking work.

Expecting someone else to settle your enormous credit card bill isn’t the only eccentric Christmas custom to be found in the Single Market. No indeed, many of our European neighbours have a fine tradition of seasonal stories to tell their little ones, most of which seem to involve the abuse, kidnap and murder of children.

In Austria, Father Christmas is accompanied by the Krampus, a charming cross between an evil clown and a hideous scarecrow wielding a cudgel that it uses to savagely beat kids that misbehave. I can’t tell you how many articles of the European Convention this monstrosity can claim to violate in its annual frenzy of correctional zeal, but I can promise you that they’re having none of it in Holland.

No, in the Netherlands, this apparently vital punitive role is taken on by Black Peter, who in typical Dutch fashion, is far too trendy and enlightened to assault minors. Instead, he merely abducts them and takes them, for some reason, to Spain. I think we do something similar for young offenders in this country. At least that’s what I’ve read in the Daily mail.

Travel East across the continent, and Santa Claus mutates into the dark and sinister figure of Grandfather Frost, a vicious and evil sorcerer who used to steal human offspring and ransom them back in exchange for presents, preferring sometimes simply to freeze them to death instead of returning them at all. Now given a clean bill of mental health by the alarmingly liberal yuletide parole board, he does community service, visiting children’s bedrooms to reward them with gifts for good behaviour. Russian youngsters unable to sleep on Christmas Eve must presumably hope that he doesn’t suffer some kind of terrifying relapse while he’s stuffing presents under their beds.

But of course, the prize for the most horrific legend must surely go to certain parts of rural Finland, where the spirit of Christmas is simply a child murderer with the head of a goat. I don’t think presents even come into it.

So my final message at Christmas is this: you might hate your family so much that it hurts your eyes to look at them, be so sick to your ruddy back teeth with turkey that it doesn’t even smell like food anymore, and be hundreds of pounds out of pocket with nothing to show for it but a case of heartburn that would bring a camel to its knees and a jumper that you’ll never wear because it’s such a disgusting colour that even the dog barks at it.

Hyvää Joulua!

But at this time of year, we must always remember someone less fortunate than ourselves, and at Christmas, it’s a five year old child, lying awake in bed  in a small village between Helsinki and the Arctic Circle, waiting to be decapitated by a half human monster wielding a machete.

Happy Christmas!

Korea Change

I was deeply saddened and shocked to hear of the death of my old friend, the Supreme Leader of North Korea. I had no idea that Kim Jong was so, er, ill.

Mind you, I’m not convinced by those videos of his loyal subjects weeping and gnashing their teeth at the news of his sudden demise. I’d put good money on the fact that those poor sods are just crying because all they’ve had to eat since he came to power are a few mouldy turnip husks and the dry shin bone of someone else’s child.

Kim Yum Yum

I understand that his successor is to be his son, who I think is called Kim Young ‘Un which sounds like it should translate as Little Kim. Looking at the emerging photos of the heir, I suspect he’s been dealing with the harsh legacy of having grown up with a girl’s name by eating most of the food that’s been denied to the rest of the populace for the last 20 years.

It seems that his official name is to be: The Great Successor. I would tactfully suggest that, in the light of this recent photographic evidence, the title Fat Controller would probably be more appropriate.

While he continues in his father’s philanthropic mission of selfless leadership, and the halls of his palace echo to the moving refrain of his country's new national anthem: “Who ate all the pies”, he can get on with the really important North Korean tradition of winding up whichever semi-detached and free spending loon happens to be President of the United States.

Kim The Elder managed to do this very effectively for years by conning Uncle Sam into believing that this shining, communist utopia, a country that makes Haiti look like a technological investment opportunity, actually has nuclear weapons. Of course, the closest thing in North Korea to a nuke is a half empty box of matches that fell out of a BBC journalist’s pocket back in 1984. My spies tell me that in 2006, one of Kim’s top physicists finally figured out how to strike one, and was so stunned by the miracle of this advanced fire-making technology that he managed to drop the burning end back into the box, setting off the whole ruddy lot in one go.

Inadvertently “doing a genie” in a land which, thanks to Kim Jong-Il’s visionary economic leadership is nearly as dark from space as France, created a flash of light clearly visible to the American military satellites that hover permanently over North Korea in case its fearsome, million strong standing army starts trying to eat the barbed wire that marks the edge of the demilitarised zone. It was this mini mushroom cloud that fooled the dolts at the Pentagon into believing that KJI had the A-bomb, when in fact, all he had was a chief scientist with no eyebrows.

Should've gone to Specsavers

The ill One has been suckering the yanks out of millions of dollars worth of aid ever since, even though all he ever had to show for these vast injections of cash was a gigantic pair of horribly unfashionable glasses. I understand that this is to be the inspiration behind a new Specsavers ad due to run in the new year.

But still, even if Fat Boy Kim doesn’t turn out to be as good at plutonium poker as his old man, I’m sure that he’ll be able to rely on China to keep him supplied with those live frogs that he likes to dip into his martinis.

Oh no, sorry, that’s Jabba the Hut.

French Stick

So David Cameron stood up to the French over the Eurozone crisis did he?

Bollox! I don’t know why we don’t just settle things the old fashioned way by invading each other’s countries and hacking lumps out of each other with badly made, bladed weapons for the best part of a century.

Not now, Dave! I'm decorating the nursery...

OK, so maybe in the light of public reaction to the recent wars in the Gulf, European stomachs may not be as strong as they once were. But perhaps our respective leaders could engage in some sort of contest on our behalf.

Single combat seems to be ruled out by the fact that the Frenchman is a midget and our guy is a public school toff whose hands have never done anything rougher than yank down his posh wife’s agent provocateurs after a night on the Pimms with Boris and Ozzy. But that gives me an idea.

Big Dave’s obvious height advantage favours a pissing contest, though if it was their countries’ cash and not the contents of their respective bladders, Sarkozy would win hands down when it came to spunking that up a wall.

Alternatively, we could send the England Rugby team over with William Hague. Those mannerless thugs could stand at the end of a Calais pier with Little Bill, Sarkozy and Angela Merkel. The nationality of the dwarf that gets flung the farthest gets to run Europe forever.

The Royal Wedding: a (very) common person’s guide

I can’t say I agree with the notion that the spectacle of Kate & William’s wedding helps us to feel closer to the Royal family. I don’t see much in common between the young Prince and myself. Regrettably, I’ve never been heir to one of the world’s largest fortunes nor flown a helicopter, and now, less regrettably, I’ve never married any of the girls that I slept with at university either.

On the contrary, I’m sure we all agree that Friday’s happy event was the culmination of a return to glorious traditional values amid the vulgar insanity of the modern world. It’s so reassuring to see that in this politically correct, post-feminist age, a girl still can aspire to one of the highest offices in the land, simply by letting a posh bloke smash her back doors in. She really does deserve hearty congratulations for making it all the way to the top on her back. Or perhaps it was her hands and knees. Or maybe they have one of those special swings. We can only imagine. At any rate, it brings new meaning to the phrase “climbing the greasy pole”.

But the vicar told me to go up the back

Celebrating the relatively humble heritage of the bride, it was billed to be a spectacle of commoners mingling with the great and the good, and to be sure, amid the ambassadors, kings & queens, stalked David & Victoria Beckham, who are indeed as common as shit on a dungheap. I also noted with affection that Elton John had accepted his invitation, despite the sobering realisation that Kate would one day be Queen of England instead of him.

There was a further heart stirring moment when I saw Kate’s father looking skyward as the Red Arrows soared overhead. Lip readers tweeted Sky News to relay his whispered words: “F*ck me, am I paying for that lot, too?”

Now, I come from a family of Irish Catholics, where weddings are hard drinking affairs, and having less than three fist fights at the reception is considered to be an omen of ill-fortune. In this respect, this decidedly quiet protestant union was somewhat disappointing, but I see from the Sky News ticker that there was apparently one incident of public disorder. No details were given, but I suspect that the Queen may have overdone the sherbet at the cake-cutting and lumped someone. Trust me, it was bound to happen.

Despite this, there was a very disciplined order to the rest of the proceedings, with William wearing the uniform of the Colonel of the Irish Guards and Miss Middleton’s dress making her nipples stand out like alarmingly large calibre bullets, adding still further to the decidedly military ambience of this remarkable display of British pageantry.

And we shall always remember that heart-stopping moment in the ceremony when it seemed that the ring was a little too small. Unfazed, romantic Wills gave his bride-to-be a wry “reminds me of our first time” grin before shoving it rather roughly into place.

There was then a more serious interlude when some ecclesiastical bigwig in a funny hat gave a stern lecture about his needing to be “faithful” and her needing to be “amiable” that roughly translated as:

“You, boy! Don’t you dare cheat on her like your old man did with that awful Godzilla woman. And you, girl! If you nag him like a fishwife he’ll end up shagging some old boot and you’ll be left to go shopping in Dubai on the end of some lonely billionaire’s cock.”

At least I think that’s what he said…

Just between you and me, I don’t know why people get so angry about the thought of Camilla becoming Queen one day. She doesn’t seem to mind canoodling with that hideous bald bloke and if that isn’t serving one’s country then I don’t know what is. Mark me, she’ll do well at those state dinners where you have to eat creamed monkey brains and smile. I’m sure by now she can crack a grin with just about anything in her mouth.

But back to William & Kate: who can forget that touching scene on the balcony. Actually, we weren’t able to see the touching because of the large concrete railing in front of their hips, but judging by the way the crowd of loyal beggars were baying “give it some tongue!” and “grab me a handful of that ass, Windsor!” we can be sure from the delight on both of their newly-wed faces that our impatient and crowd-pleasing Prince was already getting busy with his royal fingers out of sight of the cameras.

Then there was the lovely touch of irony as the royal couple appeared in an old Aston Martin, decked out with tin cans and ribbons in the fashion of common scum tying the knot and then trying to look rich for the day. I understand that the young lovers took inspiration from for this from the Channel 4 series: “My Tacky and Disgusting Chav Wedding”, and had even toyed with the idea of pulling into a lay-by to “give it some” on the back seat just to warm the hearts of the cheering grannies lining the route. Sadly, at the last minute, the couple decided to opt for a two-seater sports car, ruling out the possibility of any royal, chassis-rocking action. An opportunity missed to be sure, but there you are.

I’d like to finish by wishing this lovely young couple all the best. They should enjoy the flower of their youth while it lasts. She looks like she’s stopped eating already and he’s inherited his father’s haircut. They therefore need to get as much serious sex in as they can, before the staff start looking attractive.

A souvenir to treasure...

I was considering buying the BBC DVD to commemorate the occasion, but as luck would have it, there is already a “Wills & Kate Wedding Night Special” which you can download for £9.99 from RudeTube with any major credit card. This high definition masterpiece, beautifully filmed in close-up, is the kind of souvenir you’ll watch again and again, trust me on this one.

It was all very educational. I can tell you. You wouldn’t believe how big the Middleton baps really are when His Royal Highness pops them smartly out of that wedding dress. And she has a lovely tattoo on the small of her back which I didn’t know about before. But she’s a very talented girl – very flexible.

I’ll never eat wedding cake again without first rinsing it under the tap, of course, but as for the groom, well let’s just say they won’t be calling him King Willy for nothing!