Alex Higgins is cool

by Twenty Major on July 6th, 2005

There was a really great program on RTE last night about the life of Alex Higgins. For those of you who have no idea he was possibly the most exciting snooker player ever. He was from Belfast, he drank, he smoked, he womanised, he won world championships, he threatened fellow players and told them he’d have them shot, he loafed tournament referees, he quaffed pints during each match, he was a disgrace at times and you just couldn’t help but love him.

And what’s so fantastic about seeing that program is the fact that the world champion, a professional sportsman, was a character. He was dangerous, different, funny and sad and you talked as much about Higgins the man as you did about Higgins the snooker player.

Sport was full of great characters back then and now it’s not. Now it’s chock-a-block with wonderfully talented and technically gifted men who have about as much personality as Pat Kenny. Where are the likes of Jimmy Connors, Frank Worthington, McEnroe, David Feherty, Harvey Smith, Nicki “Ow, my face” Lauda, James Hunt, Ille Nastase, Bill Werbeniuk - a Canadian snooker player who drank at least 10 pints a game to keep his hands steady? Nowhere. They’ve been forced out by robotic supersporties and that’s not good. The only one I can really think of at the moment is that fat Australian cricketer Shane Warne. He’s a remarkable talent coupled with an absolute wanker of a bloke and that makes him special.

Irish sport has never really had its bad boys. Eamonn Coughlan? Nah. Eddie Macken? Nah. Roy Keane doesn’t come close despite his all round stroppiness he’s just a bit of a scummer rather than somebody who’s actually interesting. What about Robbie Keane and his six-gun salute? Does that make him different? No, it just makes him look like a cunt.

So, this is a call to arms. All you heavy drinking, womanising, dispespecters of authority get your fucking shit together and become a professional sports person. The world needs you.

I think I’m going to become world table tennis champions. Those nips need a good beardy kicking to show them what’s what. Shake the game up good and proper. Oh yes.

What can Bob Geldof do now?

by Twenty Major on July 5th, 2005

After the incredible success of Live8 which finally proved the world that Pete Doherty is nothing more than a talentess crack head “Sir” Bob Geldof is now at home putting his big fat brain into gear about what other causes to champion to make the world a better place. Just in case he’s too busy wallowing in his own self-importance here are some suggestions from me:

Live AIDS: You often hear it said that if men had periods they’d have invented a cure by now (a simple and painless cure, not a hysterectomy). The same thing goes for AIDS. If it wasn’t just bennys, junkies and Africans they’d definitely have it sorted. So, to cure the world of AIDS we simply give everyone AIDS and the top scientists will be working on a fix before they get unsightly lesions while the politicians and drugs companies will redouble their efforts and soon the world will be an AIDS free zone.

Hive8: The gap between the world’s rich and poor has never been wider. Malnutrition, honey shortages, conflict and illiteracy are a daily reality for millions of bees. But it isn’t chance or bad luck that keeps bees trapped in bitter, unrelenting poverty. It’s bee-made factors like a glaringly unjust pollen trade system, a honeycombe burden so great that it suffocates any chance of recovery and insufficient and ineffective giant hornet protection. The bees need your help and a giant concert featuring some great acts like the Bee-Gees, the Bee 52s, Bee Rex and David Beewie will help raise awareness for the bees that need your help the most.

Jive8: Some cool cats from the 1970s, and in particular two extras from the movie Airplane, have fallen on hard times. They speak jive, they jive to the shops and back, they live to jive but the jive is barely alive. We’ve gots’ta dig togeda’ to keep de JIBE broders jivin’ cuz’ if we duzn’t de JIBE gots’ta die. Hugh Grant and Clive Owen gots’ta hold some wo’ldwide JIBE wo’kshop t’get sucka’s interested again. ‘S coo’, bro. Oh yeah. Lop some boogie. And so forth.

Wives8: The life of the wife is ended by the knife, as the song goes. Sadly that’s no longer true as wives are given rights like real people. Are you tired of your wife getting uppity, speaking when she’s not spoken to and voting in elections she simply doesn’t understand? Then join George Best who will show you to how to put your wife in her place and hopefully you’ll manage to avoid the bits where you get a vase in the eye and a solid thrashing from a lady. How embarassing!

Dive8: We all know footballers have hearts of gold and this campaign aims to raise money all season long. Football’s top divers including Ruud van Nistelrooy, Claude Makelele, Cristiano Ronaldo, Didier Drogba and the entire Spanish and Italian leagues will donate £5 each time they take a tumble when they haven’t come close to being touched. It’s expected about £97,000,000,000 will be raised by Drogba alone.

There are just five suggestions off the top of my head at an early stage in the morning. There must be quite literally 3 or 4 more. Come on then, let’s hear them.

Weddings make you realise things

by Twenty Major on July 4th, 2005

I had to go to a wedding this weekend. It was as fun as any event where you’re stuck with a lot of people you don’t know can be. The worst part is the dinner though, at least beforehand you can mingle about. If you’re talking to someone tedious and dull you can just say “Oh, I need to move my bowels” and when you come back you can talk to someone else.

Not at the dinner though. You sit down and lots of other strangers sit down.

“Hello, I’m Twenty. You? Hello Mary. Tom, you say? Hello, Tom. What’s that? Benjamin? Sorry, Jennifer….” - and so on until you’ve all been told each other’s name so you can promptly forget it again.

Anyway, I got sat beside a bloke who was the most tedious twat I have had the misfortune to meet in a very long time. He would only respond to things you said with one sentence and would never ask anything himself. Example:

Me: “So, how do you know the happy couple?”

Him: “I went to school with the groom.”

Normal people might then expand on their reply and say “And how about you? How do you know the happy couple?”, but he wouldn’t.

Me: “What do you do for a living?”

Him: “I’m a primary school teacher.”

Naturally there was no question as to what I did for a living. Of course had he asked I’d have told him to mind his own fucking business and stop being a fucking wanky nosed busybody. So while all the other people at the table got drunk and made ridiculous conversation about stuff they’d never usually talk about this bloke, who was with his girlfriend who was exactly the same as him, just kind of sat there smoking roll-ups and looking like an total cunt.

And you know what, as I’m writing this I’ve just seen an ad on the telly for Jamiroquai and it’s made me realise that there are very few cunts in this world who are bigger cunts than Jamiroquai. Not even this bloke at the wedding is anywhere near as big of a cunt as Jamiroquai. One of the funniest things I have ever seen, and I’ve seen some funny stuff, was one of those TV shows called ‘WHEN CELEBRITIES GO MAD’ or something like that.

Jamiroquai bloke was going up and down the road asking some paparazzi blokes which one had the temerity to lay a finger upon his Lamborghini. He ended up talking to one bloke and went face to face with him saying “Did you touch my motor caaaaaaaar? Did you touch my motor caaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar?” at which point the photographer just headbutted him as hard as he could. Seeing Jamiroquai bleed was one of the happiest days of my life.

So if you’re ever at a wedding and you’re stuck beside a boring cunt just remember it could have been worse. It could have been Jamiroquai.

I’m not just a grumpy old bastard

by Twenty Major on July 1st, 2005

Someone emailed me yesterday and asked me ‘Is there anything you do like?’

A silly question. I like beer, eating food and giving out about stuff. I like this blog. I like writing this blog and I often wonder, and have wondered in the past due to my previous professions, about my readers. What my readers look like, for example?

Are you all normal? How many of you are pig fucking ugly? How many are drop dead gorgeous? How many of you have birth marks, scars, speech impediments, enormous breasts, flippers instead of arms, beards, and other crazy shit?

How many of you are just normal workaday folk that I wouldn’t look at twice if we passed each other by in the street?

Readers are cool. Back in September when this blog started there were very few of you. Now there are lots more and that’s cool. There are people from all over, right-wing Americans, Canadians of all types, Brits, and lots of fellow Micks. Lots of people who like to swear and hate stuff and like to make jokes about stuff you really shouldn’t make stuff about.

Then it’s kind of funny when a new reader comes along and gets all uppity and just doesn’t get it and you can feel all these people you’ve never met tutting to themselves in a smug manner. I like that. I like that there are other people who are cynical and intelligent and can see through the haze of bullshit that covers the world today and that there are bowly haired muppets who take it all too seriously.

But I digress, here’s some other stuff I like.

- I like piña coladas and getting caught in the rain. Actually, that’s a lie. I hate that.

- I like to move it, move it.

- I like big butts and I cannot lie

- I like the way you run your fingers through my hair. And I like the way you tickle my chin. And I like the way you let me come in when your mama ain’t there.

So there you, conclusive proof that there is lots of stuff I like and that anyone who doesn’t like this site is a big fucking twat. Tomorrow I’m going to take a big lump of money and go down the bookies and spend it all on horse racing and not give any of it to Africa or Bob Geldof. I hope you have such a rewarding weekend.