Sunday September 2nd: Armando Iannucci, the brain behind classic programming such as The Day Today and I'm Alan Partridge, weighs in on the Diet Blair issue for The Observer. He, too, sees something slightly ludicrous about the prospect of a bare knuckle fight over the state of the NHS. Mr Iannucci also notes the tangible relief of senior Conservatives that they no longer have to tow the party line of hugging hoodies. It's back to the good old days. Drag the swine into the town square and let them feel the smart snap of the birch...
Elsewhere, Jasper Gerrard makes a stand for those who have not fallen under Gordon's spell. He finishes the piece, with what I think is an invite to revolution.
The main target of today's vitriol is The Sunday Times columnist, Rod Liddle for his views on Nelson Mandela's statue. "There was no room, either [on the plinth]," he says "for those black race traitors whom Nelson's organisation Spear of The Nation, which he once led subjected to torture and staggering brutality" in Angolan concentration camps." Mr. Liddle seems to forget that this country itself, was built on the a regime of cruelty that spread misery wherever it went and reached across most of the world. And as for it's legacy? Well, the National Portrait Gallery, one of the brightest stars in London's cultural firmament, was built using profits from the slave trade. Shall we talk about the High Street bank that used similar methods to fill its coffers?
Would Liddle have preffered Mr. Mandela to authorise a bloody purge of the White South Africans who had enforced apartheid, rather than looking upon his former captors as people deserving of pity? It would certainly have sat more easily with his 'interesting' views on African leaders.
Liddle also adds his tuppence worth to the story of Daniel arap Moi, the former Kenyan leader, who embezzled a billion pounds from his country's economy. "This is, by African standards, a bit of a letdown", he writes. He then goes on to say that Moi got away with it because "the western world's attention was concentrated upon those rather more in-your-face deranged African megalomaniacs, the ones who found time, between siphoning off the national GDP, to eat people."
Well, I've checked my bank account and if I spread it over a couple of cards, I can afford to give £10,000 to whoever brings me Liddle's head in a bag.
As I'm sure Rod would agree, there's nothing like the good old-fashioned type of scumbag politicians England has produced. Celebrity shits such as Jeffrey Archer, with their flair for perjury and mediocre novels, make the world a much better place.
I can say things like that about Archer all day. It's cool, we're represented by the same agency.
The way he talked you'd almost believe that British politics was a gentleman's sport and not at all run by rich morons, liars, adulterers, con artists, buffoons, arms dealers, control freaks and on the low cottagers.
Another surprise from the superstar who just keeps on giving last night. As well as the cover of Honky Tonk Women, Prince found time to cover a number by another piano virtuoso, switching up halfway through The One into Alicia Keys' Fallin. Will.I.Am of the Black Eyed Peas popped down to the O2 as a guest on Musicology and hung about for the aftershow jam. People tend to write Will off as the guy with the funny socks, from the group with the girl who wet herself on stage. They forget that the late Eazy-E signed the Peas, in one of their earlier guises to Ruthless Records - the same label which gave the world N.W.A.
And the band plays on...
