Harvest Festival …….

Hands up all those people that took a tin of beans with them to their school harvest festival….
Hands up all those people that took the beans wrapper off and replaced it with another wrapper from a posh tin of salmon….

I didn’t like Harvest Festival much. My Mum never gave me anything nice to give – preferring to say that we needed food more than ‘them’. More than who, I wondered?

One day, I asked her.

"Mum, where does all the food that we give at Harvest Festival go to?"

"It goes to the poor people in the slums, the old people in hospitals and the tramps who don’t have anything to live in other than a cardboard box……
"That’s why we give them ‘beans’ – good, wholesome food in a handy tin ….. as long as those poor people have a tin opener, that is"….

I don’t think my Mum very much liked giving food away to complete strangers at all really.

My most feeble Harvest Festival gift was a few apples harvested from our manky back garden tree and a nearly unopened jar of raspberry jam. My Mum assured me they’d be ‘fine’….. All the other rich kids brought hampers as almost supplied by Fortnum and Mason’s. I felt like a right 'chav' taking my flimsy, bulimic effort up to ‘Skip’ and his troop of senior Scouters. Well I would have – if I’d known what a chav was then….

But I do now. I was fortunate to be listening to Simon Mayo on FiveLive when the 2 founders of a cult web site I’ve never heard of were being interviewed. These bods were so concerned about their safety they were using assumed names – due to the numerous death threats their contentious web site had provoked.

Intrigued, I had a quick look at the totally non contentiously titled www.chavscum.co.uk and take in some ‘cultism’…. Wall to wall Burberry, ‘Chav’ of the month and lots of other chav types, such as Neds, Townies, Kevs, Charvers, Steeks, Spides, Bazzas, Yarcos, Ratboys and Kappa Slappers. It’s clearly ‘chavery’ at its worst.

All things bright and beautiful…..not.



Blog Shares

I’ve had a quick look on the Blog Share Index to see just how incredibly vibrant, bullish and gilt edged ‘Alfie Corp’ blog stock is performing. Let’s just say I’m quietly confident, in a smug bastard, red braces, pink business newspaper kind of way.

Bloody hell – and bollocks in a Wall Street crash sort of way. It’s a cliff, it’s a vertical drop, it’s an abyss – stopped only by the bottom horizontal axis of the graph. It’s like Barings after Leeson and Ratners after Gerald, rolled into one almighty void.

It’s clear to see, Alfie Corp is in the departure lounge.

If I were you, I’d keep your pensions and endowment mortgages well away……



Pension Dodge - idea number 2

Alfie has been thinking ever so laterally lately - and has come up with a cast iron cure for the British pension crisis. All you do is make everyone in the Country a Westminster MP - all 60 million of us. That way, as soon as we shoe horn ourselves through the door, we'll all automatically qualify for an index linked,non contributionary pension.... plus to die for travel allowances and exclusive membership of the Commons overseas travel club. You know the sort of thing I mean? Trips undertaken by MPs to investigate injustice around the world. Some of the biggest problem areas have, in the past included such appallingly awful locations as Barbados, The Seychelles, Acapulco and Las Vegas.......

Back to Westminster. Admittedly, it'll be a bit of a crush getting into the lobby to vote - but I reckon that's a small price to pay - and maybe, just maybe I'll be able to rub shoulders with his Royal Blairyness......

Democracy rocks, ok…..

That guardian of democracy, the freedom loving Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is having its first-ever nationwide elections next year. Admittedly, they are not elections to vote in a Prime Minister or a President – they’re just municipal type council jobs …. But hey, it’s a start, isn’t it?

Whooppee do! Democracy is sort of alive and well in the world’s biggest penninsula then?

Well, it is if you are a man.
If you are a man in Saudi, you are wise, informed, well balanced…. and entitled to vote.

And what about the laydees in Saudi?
They’re much too busy with cooking, looking after the kids, looking after their man and doing even more cooking to have time to vote……

So the Saudi Government have thoughtfully excluded them from their role in the electoral roll. Every single one of them.

Where’s Emily Pankhurst when you need her?





Alzheimer’s rules, ko…..

‘Alfie, the brain of a planet’ gave all the good folk down at the ‘Blood Tub’ Public House on Monday a right good laugh.

Our all stars quiz team, going under the tribute moniker of ‘Ken Dodd’s Dad’s Dog’s Dead’ truly spanked the opposition to a bloody pulp. We’d have got every single question right …. Except for the inspirational answer from yours truly.

Question: Which British cyclist won Olympic gold, silver and bronze medals at Athens?

Answer: "Bradley Walsh"

Reaction: Uproarious laughter…

"Aye up, I didn’t know the cockney Jack the Lad comedy entertainer and recent Coronation Street rag trade import was a bi-cycool-ist"…..

You know, I’m bloody sure I thought ‘Bradley Wiggins’ – it just came out ‘Bradley Walsh’….




Pension Plans…..

Alfie’s pension portfolio is currently looking thinner than Tony Blair’s little booklet of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction….. and faced with the March of time and the November of crusty old age, Alfie has decided to do something about it.

1) Stand for Parliament.
2) Become biggest Party.
3) Become Leader – and therefore Prime Minister.
4) Move into number 10 on the Thursday.
5) Resign on the Friday - telling my shocked Party that I'm just too weary to carry on.
6) Collect free, index linked Prime Minister’s perk £100k per year pension on Saturday.
7) Book ticket to Tahiti on Sunday.

Fog on the mind…..

Former brilliant footballer and friend of ‘five bellies’, Paul Gascoine wants to be taken more seriously.

He’s left fat ‘n’ jovial pal Danny Baker and sad ‘n’ ginger pal Chris Evans standing at the bar of life, waiting for last orders.

Paul’s gone. He wants to do more cerebral things with his post-footy career. Elocution lessons are being taken, with a view to break into Planet Punditry on the telly - and he is half way through his football coaching badges. There is even talk of him starting the odd ghosted footy column in a national newspaper.

There’s a problem though. Paul’s got baggage. Fifteen years of boozing, birding, wife beating, and playing crap practical jokes means Paul reckons no one will take him seriously in his new career move.

Paul’s answer is to change his first name via deed poll for the princely sum of just a tad under thirty quid. He reckons something like ‘Brad’, 'Shane' or ‘Jonny Gascoine’ will give him a really seriously mature profile. But he wants much more than that. When some adoring member of the public utters his new name, he wants them to think "God, this guy really knows his stuff – he’s a brain of a planet bloody genius"…..

Paul’s bound to be disappointed though. Someone else has already got ‘Bamber’……