We Are All Luddites Now

The Industrial Revolution led to the increase in machinery and the workforce reducing which the workers never took too kindly, especially the weavers who took a page from the Ned Ludd book and smashed up their weaving machines and The Luddites were born and we could be soon seeing a 21st Century version of the Luddites as technology does what the machines did back then, make people unemployed.
John Pugliano, author of 'A Survival Guide to the Age of Automation', has looked over the employment field and come up with a list of jobs in decline due to technology and to be avoided if you want to avoid looking the Job Centre worker in the eye at some point in the near future.
Due to the ease of doing it yourself online, Pugliano points to Travel Agents, Bookkeepers, Financial advisors, Insurance and Mortgage Brokers being in decline but the silver lining there is that Lawyers are also. 
Jobs as Shop assistants, Casino cashiers, Data Entry, door to door salesman and the book binding business should be shunned as they are all on their way out as is IT support, Photo Processor and Telephone switchboard operators which is surprising mostly because i didn't know that was still a thing.    
If you are considering a career as a Disc Jockey, Florist, Postal Worker, Cobbler or Furniture Restorer then think again and even Fast Food Cooks and Newspaper Reporters are on there way out of work.
The once safe career choices no longer viable thanks to artificial intelligence are Detective, Architects and Medical Consultants which all means that a vast majority of us could soon be unemployed so don't feel bad about that time you accidentally spilt coffee over your laptop, it deserved it, the job stealing fecker.

The Real Reason Trump Cancelled Trip To Denmark

Donald Trump asking Denmark if they would sell Greenland to America and being told by the Danish to go boil his head was my highlight of the summer, mostly because it annoyed the tiny handed American President enough for him to stamp his tiny feet and call off a planned visit to the Scandinavian nation.
Utter madness indeed but there are a few theories why the President came up with yet another harebrained scheme in the first place such as being a sign that he has lost the plot but for that to be true he had to have a plot to lose in the first place. 
Other theories are that it was purely a distraction as the American economy is tanking but the one which rings with the most truth is that Barack Obama is also going to Denmark soon and the previous President is far more popular there unlike Mr Trump who was due to face demonstrations and protests.
That the man he so obviously hates would be greeted with adulation just a few weeks after he himself was greeted with signs mocking his hair/weight/skin/racism/intelligence would be too much for such a thin skinned child man, so the rejected Greenland bid handed him the prefect ready made excuse to cancel.
As Obama's trip to Denmark was announced two days before Trump belched out the buying Greenland idea, it does make sense but we can now add Denmark to the growing list of countries where Trump isn't welcome, amusingly that also increasingly includes his own, but i'm sure he can watch his predecessor being greeted with such warmness in Denmark on Fox News next month.

Special Guest Blogger: Muhammad Ali

Calling a black man racist names is frowned upon these days but it wasn't very nice back in my day either but it never stopped white people from doing it which is why i said when i refused to go fight in Vietnam that 'no Viet Cong ever called me a nigger', that abuse came just from my own countrymen.
Such was the racism in America that even blood was kept separate so you had Rednecks with three teeth and their dungarees buttoned up wrong saying things like: 'you can't go mixing up white and black folks blood because you might accidentally make us white folk less intelligent', seriously, that's like don't pee in a swimming pool because it might make it wetter. 
I began boxing after someone stole my bicycle and wanted to find and whup them but despite winning gold at the 1960 Olympics, the racism continued and i joined the Nation of Islam and changed my name from Cassius Clay to Muhammad Ali which annoyed America because real Americans should keep their given name like American heroes such as John Wayne and Kirk Douglas.
As a black Muslim was due to fight for the World Heavyweight Title you can imagine how well that went down in 60's America, like a diet sheet at Donald Trumps house and it only got worse when i whupped Sonny Liston who i said was too ugly to be world champion, and he was, the man was one fugly mofo.
As America had got involved in Vietnam, it had to recruit it's youth to fill the tens of thousands of coffins and American flags that they had ordered but i said i wouldn't go when i was called up saying 'I ain't go no quarrel with them Viet Cong' which cost me my crown but kept me alive unlike the 60,000 young men who made the trip one way. 
I later regained my title by beating George Foreman in Zaire using the tactic of letting my opponent keep hitting me, a technique that Tyson Fury seems to have mastered.
I never did get my bike back which was the whole reason i started but i would like to think that as i held the Heavyweight Belt above my head there was someone in Louisville, Kentucky looking at the rusting old bicycle they stole from my garden and thinking 'Oh Crap'.

Brexit: How Did We Get Here?

You may have noticed that Britain is hurtling towards a no deal deal Brexit and all the problems that will bring to everyone except the same rich politicians pushing for it but how the hell did we get here?
So after taking a deep breath, David Cameron called an in-out referendum and the British voted 52-48 to leave the EU so Dave said he couldn't possibly do that so he resigned and Theresa May took over and she set the leaving date as March 2019 and negotiated a deal with the EU which she put to Parliament three times and each time it was turned down so she resigned and Boris Johnson has
now taken over as Prime Minister and he has set the date of leaving as 31 October 2019 and to limit the chances of Parliament stopping him, he has suspended Parliament for 5 weeks, or prorogued it as it is known, which has caused uproar and he now faces all sorts of scraps and protests next week when Parliament returns. Phew.
I'm sure that there will be all sorts of twists and turns before 31 October and there is talk of a vote of no confidence and Johnson's removal with a Unity Government made up of members for different parties taking over if only they can find someone to coalesce around with Ken Clarke the favourite but certainly not Jeremy Corbyn who even the Labour Party are shaking their heads at.
It's going to be interesting, an absolute disaster without doubt, but interesting.

Busy Summer For News Afterall

Another summer over and where generally August is a poor month for news, this August has seen quite a bit happening with a couple of mass shootings in America and after the obligatory mention of the victims being in their prayers and thoughts, nothing was done to prevent the next one so nothing new there. Bad luck Americans.
Jeffrey Epstein died in suspicious circumstances much to the relief of some big names including our very own Prince Andrew who has been accused of all sorts of shenanigans with under-age girls and the denial that he did anything untoward is lessened by the famous photo of him with his arm around the young girl who has accused him.
He has said that he is appalled by the alleged crimes but not that appalled that he stopped socialising with him after his previous prison time for paedophilia.
In a brilliant Trumpian move, the American President asked Denmark if Greenland was for sale and was told 'Skrid med dig!' which made him pout and stick out his lip and call off a visit to Denmark for a planned visit. Denmark dodged a bullet there.
In Britain Boris Johnson promised that he wasn't going to suspend Parliament and then went ahead and suspended it for 5 weeks anyway to try and ram through the no-deal Brexit he has been fantasising about.
So i'm back and tidying up the mess left on the sofa by 31 long dead guest bloggers and looking forward to more madness in a world which seems to have got a whole lot madder recently.

Special Guest Blogger: Oliver Cromwell

If i did nothing else i inspired Elvis Costello to write that fine song 'Olivers Army' although as it turned out we were not here to stay and it was the Royal's who would have rather been anywhere else but there today.
In the early 17th Century England the two largest factors dominating factors were the Church and the Royals and i hated the Royals as much as i loved God so one of them had to go, and i decided that King Charles was it as he keep putting up taxes so i raised an army and set about booting him out of power.  
As i was an MP it was labelled the Parliamentary Army and i gave it the cool name of The New Model Army and we faced off with the Kings Army, or Cavaliers as they called themselves which was not as cool a name as my army, and while many leaders in conflict claim they had God on their side, i really did, or so i thought.
Charles was caught, put on trial and charged with murder, treason and mischief and we chopped his head off and i modestly declared myself His Highness By the Grace of God and Republic, Lord Protector of England, Scotland and Ireland.
I set about making England more religious and banned most things including bathing as being too clean is ungodly, all that smelling nice, nothing good could come of it but i had a particular hatred of all Catholics so i said to God that i was considering handing them a good hiding and to not give me a sign if he agreed and i took his silence as a massive yes so laid siege to Ireland and kill over 2,000 of them, especially the Catholic Priests. God's will and all that.
It all fell apart after i died and Charles son, the imaginatively titled Charles II came to the throne and dug up my corpse, hanging it, beheading and putting my head in Westminster Hall, way to hold a grudge, jeesh.
England had never been so holy, or miserable, but i do look at all i achieved, all the struggle, fighting and the problems i had to overcome to get ourselves a Parliament, and we end up with this Boris Johnson twat.

Special Guest Blogger: John Lennon

It is often said that all the best musicians do their best work while high and i was off my tits for most of the 60s and 70s so how great must i have been! Bigger than Jesus as it turns out but me saying that didn't go down particularly well, even if we were, which we definitely was, even through our transition from cool dudes to drugged up hippies singing about submarines.
Drugs do affect you memory and my memories are hazy at best but i do remember George and Paul and there was some other guy who used to hang around us but i think he was just the bloke who went out and got our coffee.
Strangely enough my introduction to hard drugs came from a dentist who gave me LSD at a party and i started seeing and hearing weird things like angels and devils and we went to a club and Bob Dylan was playing and i said to Paul 'Wow, this guy has a great voice' so it shows just how off my face i must have been.   
Drugs though do affect your memory but i do remember George and Paul and some other guy who used to hang around us, he used to go and get our coffee i think.
There was always competition between Paul and I over who was the real song writing talent but my 'Woman' and 'Imagine' against his 'Mull of Kintyre' and 'The Frog Chorus' soon stopped that ridiculousness.
Fate decreed that Cliff Richard would live but i would be shot dead therefore removing any question about if there is a God but i don't recall much about that day, all those drugs i guess, some guy came up and asked for my autograph and then came back hours later and shot me which is a bit ungrateful, my handwriting wasn't that bad.
When i got to heaven i thought Jesus may be a bit miffed about my little comment about us being bigger than him but he turned out to be a big fan, even asking for my autograph but i said 'I’m not falling for that one again...'
I did a lot in my shortened life and left some great music and even made nerdy round glasses fashionable, at least until JK Rowling came along now everybody just calls then Harry Potter glasses.

Special Guest Blogger: Thomas Paine

If you ever go to England and mention the name Thomas Paine, they will stare blankly at you as if you had asked them to explain the LBW rule in cricket but i should be one of the most famous Englishmen ever as i was directly involved in all of the big events in the 18th Century and created some of the best fitting corsets ever designed. 
Of course i ballsed all of it up, i started out trying being a pirate with someone called Captain Death but never really had the heart for it so set up a corset making factory instead which naturally went into bankruptcy and then my wife left me.   
I met Benjamin Franklin, as you do, who told me i should go to America and as i got there the anti-English climate was reaching it's head and crates of tea were bobbing around Boston Harbour due to the tax increases and if there are three things Americans don't like it's small portions, spelling properly and paying taxes.
While all this was going on i wrote 'Common Sense' which set out why the Americans should overthrow the English King, a book that inspired George Washington to take up against the English and he even came around my house to chat about it and made me the Secretary for Foreign Affairs.
All was going well until i let slip that i supported the abolition of slavery which didn't go down well as most of the founding fathers including old wooden teeth himself kept slaves but it was when i suggested increasing taxes to pay for the military that the brown stuff hit the fan and i was sacked and thrown into a debtors prison. 
On my release i came back to England and wrote 'The Rights of Man' which supported the ongoing French Revolution and called for a revolution in England against the monarchy, oops, and i fled to France before i could be captured and executed and was made part of the National Assembly Parliament which had replaced King Louis XVI but i voted against executing the king which the assembly charged me with being a royalist and threw me in jail and sentenced me to death.
While in my cell i wrote 'The Age of Reason' which slagged off the Bible and wrote some nasty letters to George Washington saying what an awful job he was doing and he should take more baths because he stank but by a bit of luck the Assembly was overthrown by Napoleons mob and i was released.
I helped Napoleon with some inspirational speeches for his army but turned him down when he offered me a position in his military which Napoleon didn't take particularly well and fearing he would execute me, i planned my escape but i was unable to run back to England (way to hold a grudge England) so i wrote to Thomas Jefferson who said i could go to America which i did.
The subject matter of my 'Age of Reason' book had reached the ears of the American religious nutters who attacked me and i ended up sofa surfing and holding a steak to my black eyes until i died and even that went wrong as my bones which were meant to be sent back to England for burial were 'misplaced' and never arrived.
So in a name dropping competition i could mention the founding fathers and the first American President, the French Revolutionary Assembly, Napoleon and Thomas Jefferson and author of some of the best known books in history but to my own countrymen, i'm as familiar as a bar of soap to George Washington.

G7 Economic Madness

The G7 are the seven largest IMF-described advanced economies in the world, and describes its primary aim as  'acting as a forum to coordinate economic and financial policies free of any specific protocol'.
As the seven economic powerhouses of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, UK and USA are making decisions for the rest of us then you would be imagining that they are all successful and rich nations although you would be imagining wrong because between them they have racked up a national debt of £36 trillion: 

Canada - £570 billion (Can$ 1113.18)
France - £2.04 trillion (€2.23)
Germany - £4.37 trillion (€4.77)
Italy - £1.96 trillion (€2.1 trillion)
Japan - £8.52 trillion (¥1102.67 trillion)
United Kingdom - £2 trillion
United States - £17.92 trillion ($21.97 trillion)

Now you are probably imagining if the seven are so awful at running their own economies, what the bloody hell are they doing making the economic decisions and you would have a fair point, three of the seven (Italy, Japan, USA) are in the top 10 countries with the worst national debt-to-GDP ratios so it's a bit like asking Donald Trump to run a diet club.  
Experts are saying that another recession is coming but bear in mind that these are the same experts who missed the 2008 one so spectacularly which caused so much damage and continues to reverberate today so a whole salt field should be taken with those forecasts.
You wouldn't take spiritual advice from an atheist or go to an arsonist for information on fire prevention but we allow our economies to be dictated by people with combined debts of £36 trillion.

Special Guest Blogger: Mother Teresa

Einstein means smart, Rockerfella means rich but Mother Teresa means kind and caring so blessings be upon you for i am here to spread the good word about, well me actually because as i may have came across as meek and kind, i was a bitch really.
My parents said to me Teresa, whatever you do when you grow up be the best at it so when i got into the nunnery game, i aimed for the top and my picture on the wall of the Vatican.
That meant doing charity work with people who nobody wanted to touch, literally, people like lepers and the Prince of Edinburgh but it also meant a lifetime of celibacy which was fine all the time i was surrounded by men with body parts falling off but those nights in Calcutta can get very, very lonely.
Being so sexually frustrated all the time probably gave me the edge so when faced with a dying person looking for me to give them assurance that they would be going to heaven or to ease their suffering with medicine, i would just say softly 'You are sick and must suffer like Christ did on the cross' although whether Christ underwent heart surgery like i did when i was sick i am unsure, he probably did, guess i was lucky i wasn't the one caring for me.  
So now i'm on the wall so i can lay it all out now and be myself, to be the holiest you need to beat the holiest and i out-holied everyone.
Princess Diana tried to muscle in to my racket but there was no way on God's green earth that she was celibate and although i wasn't much of a fan, i didn't want to see her dying in a Paris tunnel, i specifically said in an alleyway.
Of course i died only five days after her but my work here was done and i was on the wall and now i have been canonised so i am officially Saint Mother Teresa and all it took was a lifetime of watching people die of painful diseases while not helping them very much. Sweet.

Special Guest Blogger: Karl Marx

I am most famous for writing the books Das Kapital and The Communist Manifesto which led to Communism becoming confusingly known as Marxism in my honour but i do wonder if those who adopted my reasoning, actually read the books.
How anyone can take: 'From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs' as meaning build a 40ft high wall with razor wire and armed guards in towers is beyond me but somehow they did and me and my little book got the blame for it.
To start with the Communist Manifesto was written as a kids story (Orwell would copy this later for Animal Farm) and i proudly showed it to Engles who threw it in the fire and told me to start again and for heavens sake he shouted, think of a new title because calling it 'Bertie Bunny Gives Away All His Carrots' doesn't scream of revolution.
As Communism is about caring and sharing and i had a massive white beard, i have been mistaken for Santa Claus a few times and as he is all about distributing things to people, especially the capitalist pig dogs with all the money, they have been feeding Communism to their innocent, capitalist offspring all these years, in your face bourgeois scum.
As the author of one of the most influential books ever written, i am buried in Highgate Cemetery in Marx Corner with other famous Communists and Socialists but as the father of Communism, i am the main attraction with an impressively large 10 foot headstone and the words 'Workers of All Lands Unite' in gold lettering on the plinth.
Imagine my disappointment then when i found out that someone decided to charge £8 to go see the grave of the World's foremost anti-Capitalist.
Seriously, did nobody at all read my bloody book?

Special Guest Blogger: Leonardo Da Vinci

Ciao, Leonardo here and i am a bringing you da love and da peace. I was called a genius because i came up with so much good stuff but really i did not do so much because i hardly ever finish anything i start.
A man come up to me and he say 'Hey Leonardo, i givva you a lots of gold for a robot lion and i say sure, and i take his money and i think about it, and think some more, and then some more and then i think of painting a picture of a flower and go off and do that instead and the man he say 'Hey Leonardo, where my lion' and i say 'will be ready by Friday', and under my breath Friday 1520.
I did gets a lot of commissions from the Church for alter pieces which i never did but i was no worried about them, not like a bunch of Friars is gonna turn up saying 'nice studio you got here Leonardo, be a shame if something happened to it if you know what we mean'.
Amongst my friends were Cesare Borgia and Niccolò Machiavelli, a couple of real spicy meatballs, so nobody mess with Leonardo, especially the Church when they came to ask where their alter pieces were and i say i haven't done them but i did invent a brilliant solar powered water jug.
I did toy around with flying machines but one of my best works was the mural of The Last Supper which i based on my family so Jesus is my Uncle Guiseppe, he standing up saying who had the fig rolls and John the Baptist is my father and he saying 'i'm not paying that much, i only had a glass of wine and a few sausage rolls'.
One of my rivals was Michaelangelo and i would go to the Sistine Chapel and shout up to him 'Hey Mickey, you missed a bit' or i would tease him from the bottom of his scaffold and say 'Hey, that David statue got a very little winkie, he based on you MickeyAngelo' and he would chase me out the room.
So my legacy would be of a genius that when it come to starting things and not finishing them i was...Arrivederci!

Special Guest Blogger: Albert Einstein

It's hard trying to live up to a reputation as the Worlds most cleverest man, people are always getting me to set up their computers or ask me if i'm so clever why haven't i worked out how a comb works. 
I am most famous for coming up with the theory of relativity and that famous equation of E=MC2 although nobody seems to know what any of the letters stand for or what it means but it makes me sound even brighter if nobody understands it which would explain why nobody got my nerdy joke about how we all matter until we multiply ourselves times the speed of light squared then your just energy. Seriously, if you understood it you would be ringing the hospital and asking for your sides to be stitched back together.
I was a pacifist but not against the German Nazi's so once i realised that energy of an atom could be released as explosive energy, i contacted President Roosevelt to warn of the NAZI threat if they got the bomb first and he initiated the Manhattan Project which led to the Atom Bomb and in a spectacular twist, the Americans decided to drop it on a different country altogether and as one extra neutron destabilised the nucleus in one atom which split the atom apart and in turn dislodged thousands of other Nuclei, E=MC2 and the instant death of hundreds of thousands of people in Japan.
The horror of what i had done led me to becoming a pacifist again and i tried to make amends by going on peace tours until i died and that turned out to be a bit of a cock up because i made sure my last words were something poignant, moving and compassionate but i made the mistake of saying it in German and the nurse present didn't speak German so i was a genius in many ways but in other
ways i was a real dumbass.
So my actual last words anyone understood were 'Hey Nurse, better grab the bucket, that suppository worked a treat' which are certainly moving, but not much poignancy there.   
Within hours of my death they had removed my brain and pickled it in a jar for posterity which had i known, telling them not to remove my brain would have been my last words.

Special Guest Blogger: Pontius Pilate

In my defence i was rushing to get to an orgy and it was getting towards the end of the day and my Personal Assistant Linda turned up with a death warrant just as i was heading out the door.
'A Jewish Hippy Carpenter who says he is the son of God' she said when i asked her who it was so i dashed off my signature and headed off to pick up the goat and a few extra long root vegetables before heading off to Flavia's orgy.
So while i was technically the man who sentenced Jesus to crucifixtion, i signed lots of death warrants, i was killing people left right and centre and he was on the list, and Jews saying they were the Messiah were ten a penny back then, odds were i would eventually kill the real one but the Jews were a real thorn in my side in Ancient Judea which was a great place to live apart from the Jews messing up the temples and you could get nothing done over Passover because they were all feasting and cluttering up the place.
You could even go as far as to say that i was the man who created Christianity because if i hadn't have crucified him in his prime, he would only have ended up like Elvis and been all bloated and massive sideburns in a stretchy white toga and there would be no Easter and that long weekend but where's my thanks for that?  
It almost never happened of course because i did give the Judean crowd the choice of releasing Jesus or a thief called Barabbas and the crowd, all made up of the Jews this guy said he was king of remember, said free the thief so he toddled off and in a double whammy not only did their king get nailed up on a cross but when they got home half found they had had their belongings nicked.
So my legacy should be i invented Christianity as it is known today although i was nailing up people like a madman so i could have killed any number of messiahs and their religions before they even got going.

Special Guest Blogger: Leon Trotsky

When it comes to the Russian Revolution, everybody knows Stalin and Lenin but mention the name Leon Trotsky and i was very much the forgotten member, the Michael Collins of the Revolution.
I was always protesting against something, my first was when i organised a strike in nursery school when they ran out of cuppy cakes but i got put on the naughty step and cried and wet myself until my mum picked me up but that set me on my path.
When i was exiled to Siberia i tried to unionise a group of penguins but i missed people and it was so fricking cold and the Siberians were not happy that i had been sent there, 'Our home is so shitty they sent you here as punishment?' they would moan. 
Lenin was a nice guy but Stalin and i never got along with, he would mock my little chin beard i would make fun of his stupid moustache although if i had known how touchy he was about it that he would later assassinate me, i probably wouldn't have called it his Snot Mop quite so much.
Stalin and Lenin are the usual historical Communist bogey men but for some reason, i seem to have escaped unscathed which irks me.
Apart from a mention by The Stranglers in their song 'No More Heroes', i hardly ever get an airing , it's always those other two hogging the hate which is even more stranger when you consider i was the one who advocated permanent revolution which would have spread Communism worldwide. The other two lightweights were content to hold what they had.
If it wasn't for the occasional joke about ice picks, i would just never be mentioned and i was as much part of the Russian Revolution as Joseph and Vladimir.
I did get one of the main roles in George Orwell's Animal Farm as Snowball and yet i am spared the wrath of nutty right wingers who warn that people protesting against banks will lead to a re-run of the Great Purges from New York to that place down the bottom full of oranges, old people and voting machines that don't work properly.
I say i should be treated with as much laughingly bad hyperbole as Stalin and Lenin by right wingers and Fox News who want to scare their viewers that not making you pay for your health care is a slippery slope to the workers controlling the means of production.

Special Guest Blogger: Nostradamus

Of course i knew that Lucy was going to ask me to write a guest post on her blog but then knowing things before they happen is my game.
In 1555, i predicted the Great Fire of London, the French Revolution, Louis Pasteur's Discoveries, the rise of Hitler, nuclear weapons and even the assassination of JFK although some of my lesser known predictions do not gain quite so much attention.
As well as predicting Vanilla Ice, i got Tamagotchi's and even Ginger Spice leaving the Spice Girls but there are some big things i missed but that was because my visions came to me in the form of dreams.  
One criticism was that i never got the birth of America but that was because the Pilgrims were haggling over the cost of the Mayflower when i woke up desperate for a pee.
When i got back to sleep afterwards, my dream was then about Madeleine de La Tour d'Auvergne doing something interesting with an aubergine so it kinda got missed out.
It was the same with WW1, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand was looking at a road map of Serbia and whoops, gotta pee, and then the dream was about Galileo Galilei sitting on a chair while suggestively eating a carrot. 
Aside from my predictions, i had a neat little sideline where i would sell rose pills as protection against the plague which was ravaging Europe at the time.
You don't need to have the power of prediction to know that a pill made from crushed roses really shouldn't have worked and surprise surprise they never, even my own wife and children dying of the plague, which moved me greatly, moved me to Southern France actually where i married a rich widow and died of gout years later.
If i had known that people would still be paying attention to my book 500 years later i would have written it better and if i had known people would still be believing it, then can i interest you in some plague stopping rose pills?

Special Guest Blogger: Mahatma Ghandi

I was all about the non violent protest so we, the oppressed, would say to the British 'Hey, stop oppressing us' and they would hit us over the head and we would fall down and then we would go back next day and say again 'Hey British, stop oppressing us' and they would hit us again and this went on for about 16 years.
To be honest, i really didn't have much of a plan to free India from under British rule and with hindsight maybe kicking a few of them in the balls would have caused them to focus a bit quicker but i was mostly barefoot and was stick thin and always on hunger strike so could barely lift my head let alone swing a leg but we live and learn.
The British were complete jerks, i lived in Britain for four years but the biggest jerk had to be Winston Churchill who called all Indians 'a beastly people with a beastly religion' and he considered me the beastliest of them all, even blaming me for any violence despite my whole schtick being non-violence. 
I was often asked what i thought of Western Civilisation and i would reply that i thought it would be a great idea, laugh a minute me but i had to be considering i spent so long either knocked out or being knocked out, it must have shaken a few grey cells loose.
One of my greatest accomplishments was the declaration that milk stimulated sexual passion and to prove it i abstained from milk and proved it by sleeping naked with hundreds of women as an experiment and as i was married, i did wonder just how many times the British had hit my wife over the head for me to get away with that one.
My milk 'experiments' were suddenly ended a year after Indian independence by an assassins gun and although the nation was split into two and religious intolerance has reigned ever since between the two, i proved that non-violent protest works and that even the most nerdiest looking six stone weakling can get to lay with a different naked woman every night as long as he calls it an 'experiment'.

Special Guest Blogger: Emperor Nero

Reading history books you could be excused for thinking that i was an arrogant, self-centred mummy's boy and there is far too much about killing my mother and executing my first wife and kicking my second wife to death and far less about what an excellent fiddle player i was, and damn i was good.
During the great fire of Rome, which may or may not have been started by me, i had called all the Senators to my place to allow them the pleasure of listening to me play and although they protested that the city was going up in flames, being the consummate professional that i was, i insisted that the show must go on and if i say so myself, it was an epic performance, like Hendrix at Woodstock all those years later only without so many drugs.
I don't think the Senators were really paying attention, the city burning down around them and all that and i detected a severe lack of enthusiasm when i asked them to wave their hands in the air like they just didn't care so on the one hand Rome burned to a cinder but on the other, i gave a truly cracking show.
The history books also make me sound awful, especially the using burning Christians to light my garden at night but i tried Muslims and Jews and they just didn't burn so bright, lack of pork in their diet probably, and an Emperor shouldn't be expected to risk tripping in the garden and getting his toga muddy.
Also something the greatest ruler of the largest Empire shouldn't do is commit suicide in the wrong way which is why i asked several of my friends to try it first, which they did but all that screaming and stabbing themselves and bleeding, there was a lot of bleeding, i decided i probably won't do it after all and went back home.  
With all of Rome baying for my blood i asked my secretary, Epaphroditos, to stab me when i wasn't expecting it and seconds later i was sprawled on the floor with a knife in my back.
My immortal words 'What an Artists dies in me' were true because a real Artist did die that day because if i say so myself, i really was one kick-ass Fiddler.

Special Guest Blogger: Elvis Presley

As well as making music i acted in 31 films and as an actor it was said i was a great singer but that wasn't always the case.
I got a C for music at school and in a singing contest at a country fair i came 5th so it could be taken as a lesson in not giving up your dream or as i prefer, thinking 'what do you know' to music teachers and country fair song judges because i went on to become so famous that i was called the King so f**k you, thank you very much.
As well as the films, i released 117 singles, 50 albums and have thousands of impersonators around the World but the greatest hit i am most remembered for is the one where i hit the floor in my bathroom.
There are more dignified ways to die than being found face down in the bathroom with your underpants around your ankles i admit and if i was given a choice it would be in bed surrounded by several buckets of fried chicken and a plate of banana, peanut butter and bacon sandwiches but as Old Shep found out, 'one day the doctor looked at me and said, I can do no more for him, Jim'.
Suspicious Minds was another one of mine and there have been a few of those regarding if it was actually me who was sprawled all over the toilet floor that day and the simple answer is of course it was, if i was going to plan my own death it would be dying saving orphans from a burning building or drowning whilst rescuing puppies, not dying form the exertion of trying to push one out.
Finally, on the subject of all those Elvis impersonators, why are the majority in my white rhinestone jumpsuit period when i was bloated and wheezy?    
Anyway, don't be lonesome tonight, I have now left the building

Special Guest Blogger: King George III

It may be a thing over there in America but the Revolutionary War is not so big in the UK but there has been so much propaganda about the whole thing.
Firstly i didn't give a flying fig about our colonies over there in America, they were all religious folk who i was quite happy to see the back of if i am being truthful with all their England is not Holy enough nonsense so i was all 'take it, run it into the ground, see if i care' but Parliament insisted that we send troops and i was all like 'yeah, whatever'. 
While all that was going on i was diagnosed as suffering from a mental illness called Old Loon, probably due to all the inbreeding amongst the Royalty (and there was a lot of inbreeding) so i was expected to make decisions of State but i didn't know if i would wake up thinking i was a Kangaroo or a Cockatiel.
One day i shook hands with a tree which i thought was the King of Prussia, but have you ever seen the King of Prussia, he looks like a tree and when it was gently explained to me that it wasn't him, i went around shaking hands with all the tree's and i was meeting him in a forest, we were there all day until i shook hands with a couple of pear tree's which turned out to be him and his wife.
When i was told by a giant Begonia in the garden that we had lost the American colonies i wasn't very upset, mostly because i had lost my keys that day and found them within the hour so a country shouldn't be that hard to find and I helpfully asked if they had looked down the back of the sofa.
My legacy is the King who lost America and admittedly i haven't been paying much attention since i died but from what i can gather all they have done with it is carve some big heads into the side of a mountain, invent Country and Western music and give everyone a gun in case us British ever invaded again.
If a country decided that 5 vowels is one vowel too many and drop the letter 'u' then i can't see them being much of a threat to the British Empire but as it was built by peace loving religious folk i'm sure it turned out okay but i am a bit concerned that the Old Loon tablets may need to be increased, i'm sure i just saw an orange beach ball balancing a bird nest on his top being declared American President.
Have to go, the King of Prussia needs pruning.

Special Guest Blogger: Che Guevera

If you go into any student flat you would probably see a poster of me on the wall in that famous pose with my beret, Lucy even has a mug with my face on it but as famous as that picture is, i never earned a cent from it.
Capitalist pig dogs have grown rich off my image and if i had earned just a small percentage of the merchandise sold then i could have stopped being a revolutionary and lived in comfort somewhere warm but that was against my whole ethos so i would never, ever accept sponsorship for money.
As i heard on my Sony CDX-GT424 radio that has amazing looks and great features which come together so you actually look forward to switching it on, i would never even consider receiving money for product placement.
As i draw on my Fratello Bianco Cigar which are made from a blend of the finest flu-cured golden Virginian, air-cured Burley and Oriental tobaccos for that mild taste, i contemplate just how money is at the root of all evil as i drove my Peugeot 307 1.6 (Peugeot are committed to leading the industry with style, flair and a relentless drive for aesthetic achievement) to the Asda Walmart supermarket where shoppers can buy top quality products at low, low prices such as the new BOSCH TAS4011 Coffee Maker which combines the great Tassimo system with Bosch's renowned looks and quality, and offers a world of flavour with perfect results every time.
Most evenings i switch off my affordable yet stylish Google Pixel 3ai mobile phone with its amazing 8 mega pixel camera and top tier security features and turn on my Panasonic TX-26LMD70A Television with V-Real technology, acclaimed for delivering outstanding image quality and think that the World is money mad and worse of all are the people who try to sneak in subliminal adverts when you least expect them.
Fight the power people, don't become a cog in the machinery of the capitalists!!

Special Guest Blogger: Joan of Arc

I am a hero in France but ask any English person and they will say that all i did was pick up a sword, get caught and then set on fire but there was so much more to my story, apart from picking up a sword, getting caught and subsequently being burnt to death.
Firstly, the 100 year War was called the 75 year war when i was only 16 years old i was visited by Arch Angel Michael who said he was sent by God himself to tell me to lead the French against the English.
I did initially question why God had picked a 16 year old girl with no fighting experience when he had millions of battle hardened Frenchmen to pick from, but the Arch Angel just shrugged and said as most Frenchmen fought like 16 year girls anyway, same diff, and the whole virgin thing, God had a thing about virgins apparently.   
I rocked up at the King's Palace and declared: 'Your Majesty, i have been sent by God to lead the French army and defend France from the English' and rather than laugh and get me dragged away as a nutter, he put down his baguette, wiped his mouth on a small peasant child and said Okay then' and sent me to Orléans.
The 100 Year War was then just changing it's name to the 76 Year War (we had to change the name every year) when i began and things started off well, i won a few battles and after each victory i would praise God for keeping me in his favour and when i was captured by the English, i did the 'you better let me go because God will be pretty angry if you don't'.
I was sure God would save me somehow right up until when the English tied me up and set fire to my pyre i was thinking come on God, a big gust of wind or something, a little help here but nothing.
I found out later that we had won the war (The English fought like 15 year old girls as it turns out) and i did my bit to save France and since i have made my peace with the English although their joke about me giving my name to French Fries was only funny the first 30,000 times i heard it.

Special Guest Blogger: Kurt Cobain

 A mullato, an albino, a mosquito, my labido, what was i smoking when i wrote that particular chorus people often asked me? Pretty much everything i would reply which is why i had to check Wikipedia to see exactly what i did in my lifetime as the details are a bit hazy.
I was out of my face on drugs most of the time but they gave me the oomph i needed. Would i have written Smells like Teen Spirit without bucketloads of Heroin. Probably not and i wouldn't have decorated that upstairs room a dark shade of brain grey without it either but hey, swings and roundabouts.
People were always trying to get me to go to rehab centres but the problem wasn't getting me there, the issue was that the walls were not high enough for me not to skip over and then go stab myself with a massive syringe full of heroin.
What many people didn't understand was that the 'Unplugged' show we did was a cry for help, anyone could see that as i sat there singing the sings that i did that it was the actions of a man who was smashed out of his gourd when he came up with that set.
I did have a persona of being a bit of a grumpy one and it is true that i hated everything, i even sang a song called 'I Hate Myself and Want to Die' which with hindsight may have been another call for help but was just passed off as Kurt being Kurt, the miserable sod.
As with so many celebrities, dying early turned out to be a boon for my career and 25 years on i see teenagers wearing Nirvana t-shirts and calling my lyrics all about teen revolution and the meaning and meaninglessness, playing upon the juxtaposition of my contradictory lyrics and the conflict of two opposing ideas which sounds great but really, Teen Spirit was about nothing deeper than deodorant and the message a friend left me telling me i needed to buy deodorant because i stank. The greatest stroke of luck was that my friend never wrote Kurt needs Lynx as that's a tough one to make rhyme.

Special Guest Blogger: Blackbeard

The city of Bristol does not have a very long list of famous people that have emerged from within it's walls but you ask anyone to speak like a pirate and it's the very best Bristonian accent that chunders forth and that's thanks to me so if nothing else i gave the world that and the Jolly Roger flag.
Being a lazy bugger, and razors not being invented yet, i had a long, luxurious beard, hence the name, and i kept it black by setting fire to it which never really caught on amongst later generations.
Setting your beard on fire as you board another ship was a masterstroke, they would say if that guy is crazy enough to set his facial hair alight then i'm not going to argue with him but the problem was ships move slowly so i would get a decent blaze going and then watch slowly as the ship's came together by which time i was horribly burned, scalded and screaming in pain which only added to the madness but hurt like a bandit.
Over the few short years that i was pirating i got together an impressive pile of loot but as my gambling and drinking debts grew i hit upon the bright idea of shooting members of my crew to increase my share of the treasure.
Things were going well until i found the flaw in my plan and began running out of crew and my enemies boarded my ship and cut off my head and stuck it on top of their mast. Arrgh, that stung a bit me hearty.
Probably the only pirate who could rival me for infamy was Long John Silver and he wasn't even real but he has propagated the image of pirates having a parrot and a wooden leg but a little known fact was us Pirates had a strict Pirate Code we lived by.
This included every man would have a vote in affairs of the moment, all must receive an equal share of any treasure, no cards or dice for money, all lights and candles to be put out at eight o'clock at night, no woman allowed on board, no striking one another on board and no music on the Sabbath Day.
So we were not so bad after all then and the face moisturiser in the afterlife is to die for, literally.

Special Guest Blogger: George Washington

I cannot tell a lie, well i can, but i became known for not lying which worked out well because i could swipe whatever i wanted and nobody would ever suspect me.
I was the very first President of the United States and to commemorate what a great bloke i was, i'm now on the dollar bill, have the Washington monument, the nations capital bares my name and someone carved a massive statue of my head into the side of a mountain.
The only problem i have with Mount Rushmore is that i have to share it with Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt
and while i have no problem with the first two, Theodore Roosevelt never freed slaves, took on the British or authored the Declaration of Independence, he gave his name to a soft toy and set up something called the Bull Moose Party, so you can you see why i wouldn't want to be sharing a mountain side for eternity with the weirdo.
As in the 18th century we were not that far removed from our British ancestors, i did help the Brits fight against the French in North America but then decided a year or two was long enough to then be far enough removed from our British ancestry and fought alongside them against the British in the War of Independence after the whole throwing the tea into the Boston river thing.
The battle that i am most proud of was the surprise attack i made on a British Barracks at Trenton which took place at Christmas where the British had been celebrating the Festivities and were as pickled as herrings when suddenly me and 2,400 of my buddies showed up with a present for them, a dirty great cannon. 
Because most of them was drunk and were either laying passed out on the ground or sitting around with the top button of their breeches undone after one too many platefuls of sprouts, we managed one of the easiest victories of the campaign and i even managed to get a few games of charades in with the General who was dressed at Santa Claus before carting his limey ass off.
Over time we have not only made peace with the British but America has grown and has gone from strength to strength in my vision of creating a nation for all men and women, where all are created equal regardless of race and colour.
Okay, so i goofed on those last two but i am proud of the part i played in making the land of the free and the home of the brave armed with semi-automatic weapons designed for military use, God Bless America.

Special Guest Blogger: Saint Nicholas

The last thing i want is to come across as grumpy, sure i appreciate the whole starting Christmas thing but in my lifetime i received a visit from the Virgin Mary herself, brought back to life dead children, calmed a storm at sea, saved innocent soldiers from execution and chopped down a demon possessed tree but mention the name Saint Nicholas and all i'm remembered for is throwing some coins into some prostitutes socks.
To make things even worse it led to the story of the jolly fat guy in the red suit who would replace my boss's kid as the face of Christmas and i'm not jolly or fat and wouldn't be seen dead in a red suit, i was always more of a grey smock guy.
At least the Beach Boys remembered me although at 5ft in my stockinged feet the 'Little Saint Nick' was a bit of a dig, you try clambering up on rooftops when your 5ft tall, not easy i tell you.
Anyway, at least i'm remembered all these years later, remember Saint Agathangels? Nope? There you go then, it's George, Valentine and me and i invented Christmas so that beats fighting dragons and zinging arrows into people butts.
As thanks for giving the World Santa, they made me the Patron Saint of Portsmouth and Liverpool for crying out loud. I know i'm a Saint with a hotline to the Big Guy but anyone who has been to either of those places know even i couldn't conjure up enough of a miracle for them, if i had known at the time i would have kept off the roofs and kept my coins in my pocket.
Still, enjoy the festive season that i gave you and remember me, the man who gave money to sex workers who then morphed into a fat guy with gout and high blood pressure who comes into your bedroom when your asleep and leaves you presents which isn't creepy at all.

Special Guest Blogger: Buddy Holly

Oh boy, i'm as excited as an excited man with a particularly exciting reason to be excited to be asked to write a few words here, lil' ole' me, the nerdy looking geek from Lubbock, Texas who gave Elvis Costello his look and was immortalised by the Song American Pie although why the good ole boys were drinking Whisky and Rye at the Levee in my memory i never understood, i was always more of a Sarsaparilla or a Grape Knee-High kinda fella.
Being the most famous of the three of us that died in the plane that day, i am the one usually most remembered for dying and we will never know just how my career would have panned out otherwise but if only i had brought an extra pair of underpants with me on that tour as we only hired the plane because of my constant bleating about having the wear the same pants and wanting to
find a laundrette.
That the Big Bopper and Richie Valens had to die because i wanted fresh undercrackers is a bit unfair but hey, didn't do me any harm, well, apart from the dying which could have put a serious kink in my career but even worse i didn't follow my mum's advice of making sure i had clean underwear on in case i had an accident.
Something i really need to tackle is the nonsense of a curse surrounding me for ignoring a warning given to my sound engineer by a gypsy which has been going on for years, just because of that plane crash.
Just because my replacement on the tour hanged himself and Eddie Cochran and Gene Vincent who had both earlier pulled out of the tour were involved in a car crash which killed Cochrane and left Vincent without the use of one of his legs doesn't prove anything and just because the new singer that The Crickets brought in died in a plane crash, that could have happened to anyone.
That the sound engineer that received the warning committed suicide and the guy who played me in the 1977 film was involved in a near fatal motorcycle accident which left him with brain injuries and the films writer committed suicide shortly before the film's release is weak proof at best.
Del Shannon, after playing a concert at the Surf Ballroom Clear Lake, Iowa which was the location of my last performance Shannon shot himself but i really can't see how any of this can be linked to lil' ole' me.

Special Guest Blogger: Napoleon Bonaparte

Bonjour, je suis Napoleon, you may have heard of me, ze short, overweight guy with ze little hands but massive battle plans.
I may have been a teeny tiny little man but i was ze man who tried to make France great again and i would have done too if it wasn't for those meddling British.
True, people often mistook me for a child as i rode down ze Arc de Triumph saying 'oh look at that little boy’ and pat me on ze head and give me a chocolate bar and i am not complaining about that but it was a real pain trying to get served in ze Paris bars, often i would be sat in ze corner with an orange juice while my Generals got drunk.
Finally discovering that if i wore a really big hat i would be identified, everyone loved me as i romped around Europe invading countries and soon i could not walk around Paris without getting free croissants, garlic and berets, everyone except my wife Joséphine who was having an affair with someone called Hippolyte Charlie while i was away invading Italy and arresting ze Pope.
Ah, Joséphine, i wrote her letters pouring my heart out and imploring her to end zis torrid affair and come back to me and if being usurped in ze love stakes by someone with a name like Hippolyte is not embarrassing enough, ze hateful British intercepted my mail and published zem in ze Daily Chronicle. Les Enfoirés!
Anyway, i decided to divorce Joséphine and ze only person who could divorce us was ze Pope who i had arrested and transported to a French prison so that was a bit of an own goal but i was ze Emperor so i got someone else to do it. Viva la moi!
I did put forward a referendum which asked if i should be made ze Emporer for life and much to my joy i won convincingly although critics will say that the part on the voting form which said that you are free to vote how you want but ze first man to vote against Napoleon being leader for life will be shot helped.
It was all going so well until those damned letter printing British took ze hump because i tried to invade zem and caught me and exiled me first to Elba and then to St Helena.
So my legacy was for me, a teeny tiny man, to make France great and i did for a while although i do regret never having the chance to pass a law which said anyone with the first name of Hippolyte should have a pineapple shoved up their derrière on ze first of each month.   
Bon soir and thank you to Lucy for ze phone books i am sitting on so i can reach ze keyboard.

Special Guest Blogger: Osama Bin Laden

The last time anyone saw me i was slipping off the side of an American battleship with several holes in my head but while i admit that was a personal low-point, i didn't do too bad, i was the World's most famous man at one point.
When i think about it, and not trying to steal any thunder from John Lennon, i was probably more famous than that other middle eastern man with a beard who inspired millions and was killed by those occupying his lands, only with more TV cameras.
Regarding the Holy Jihad against the infidel west, it did kind of lose it's edge slightly, i was all for the murder and mayhem at first but it isn't much fun being the World's most famous man and spending my time stuck in a small cave with only Al Zawahiri for company, especially after beans for tea, and that man ate a lot of beans.
Things got to a point that i was searching through the Koran to see if there is some Sharia law loophole that means i could force him to sit outside but despite there being a rule for pretty much everything else, there was not one for dealing with excessive flatulence.
Although it was widely thought that i hated all things Western, us Al Queada types did have a lot of time for some American actors, i especially liked Mel Gibson and i asked him personally to appear in my next video release entitled "Those Fecking Jews" but we failed to agree on a price. Shame really because i felt we had a real connection.
Despite being dead, i do try my best to keep up with what is going on in the Great and Little Satan and with my reputation i am of course attracted to the religious right in both nations although i don't think any of the current leaders could come close to what Bush and i shared, sending other people to a pointless death.
On the whole i had a few good years but i wish we had a few more make up artists coming over to our side, looking back on those video's i really could have done with a someone giving me a beard trim and dye.

Special Guest Blogger: Jesus

I don't think it is beyond doubt that if i was alive today, i would be a lefty and probably knocking out some cabinets on the side so it has always been with amusement that it is the right wingers who have picked up the religion mantle.
The right are the hunters and capitalists and the ones most likely to be found in dad's house singing hymns about all things being bright and beautiful at the weekend.
Obviously, the whole idea of being a good church goer is to ensure that when you die, you can get through the pearly gates but considering what the Bible says about these matters, i think they may be disappointed, the Bible even has a nifty analogy regarding camels and needles to drive home the point about money.
Without doubt i was a lefty but in a bitter irony, the people i most identify with are the ones who avoid church while the ones who are most opposite the things i stood for are the ones trying to suck up to my dad and i.
There have been many wars and religious movements in my name but i am just like any other guy, i put my sandals on one foot at a time and it's a bit rich to blame me or my dad for what happens in our name, if you get sick from spoilt milk, don't blame the cow!
I never really had a lot of face time with my real dad, and my step dad wasn't really big on the father-son chats so i never really got the chat about girls and things. 
Joseph could tell you all you wanted to know about a dove-tail joint but when it came to how to talk to girls he would suddenly have to go to town to buy a hammer and my real dad would just tell me go stand on a hill and tell people not to covert their neighbours ass and to not forget to mention the meek.  
I did once ask him if he thought that my birth in Bethlehem all those years ago changed the world for the better and made it more peaceful but he just gazed off into the middle distance, stroked his beard and told me the spice rack i made was wonky.
So thank to all people who live by my example today, thank you for your continued support, i know you have plenty of other religions to choose from so it is appreciated.

Special Guest Blogger: Queen Victoria

Being the Queen of Great Britain i had access to all the very best of British things, the finest tea from India sweetened by sugar imported from the Caribbean and the best clothing made from American slave picked cotton and despite eight assassination attempts on my life, i am regarded as my nations most well loved Royal.
With this in mind i was chatting to George Washington on Lucy's sofa and he was saying how he has his nations capital city named after him, his picture on the money, his face on the side of a mountain yadda yadda yadda and all i have for being Great Britain's most beloved monarch is a Train Station. People go to his namesake to see the seat of power, they go to mine to catch the 9.30 to Dover.
I came to the throne early at 18 years old after my father and all three of older brothers died but nobody questioned it because in the 19th Century there were lots of diseases, plagues and rat poison slipped in cups of tea of elder relatives back then although my relatives did prove to be a bit of a sore point.
Apart from my husband Albert also being my cousin, World War One was sparked off by my grandchildren George of Britain, Wilhelm of Germany and Nicholas of Russia so apart from the 17 million dead and the 70 million in the resulting 2nd World War, it also made Christmas family gatherings very awkward.
Something i must mention is the buttoned up, Victorian morals that i represented and imparted onto the nation during my reign.
My cousin/husband died when i was only 42, after 9 children and 11 short years of marriage, and it was said i then plunged into deep mourning but truth is i was horny as hell and i thought if i can't have it and i'm the bloody Queen then i don't want the filthy commoners to have it so i made it so nobody could indulge.
I am glad that my legacy is the best of British which is not bad for a girl with Saxon parents given a Latin name and who married a German.

Special Guest Blogger: Fred Trump

If there is one thing i get tired of hearing is that when it comes to Little Donny and me, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree which is terrible as my son and i couldn't be any further apart.
He lies but i was as honest as the day is long although my saying i was the son of a Swedish immigrant who turned out to be German was a sales manoeuvre, i was trying to buy some land from some Swedes so wanted them to feel i was one of them, dang, in my time i've pretended to be Japanese, Chinese and one time i was even a 17 year old peasant girl from Estonia which wasn't easy considering i had a moustache like a particularly hairy walrus.
Turning to the accusations of racism against my little Donny, he never got that from me because i was as anti-racist as the next guy, the pity was the guy i was stood next to was the Grand Wizard of the Klu Klux Klan at a meeting where i was busted for wearing Klan costume and dancing around a burning cross and inciting a riot.  
The part in the agreement with the estate agency renting out the shoddy apartments that read 'not to rent to blacks' and to 'decrease the number of black tenants by encouraging them to locate housing elsewhere' was just an unfortunate typo.
Finally, i was a businessman and like my rotund offspring, we sometimes had to bend the rules a little to get what we wanted and what i really wanted was to spirit away $3.5 of Government money, they called it illegal profiteering and stealing money from the state, i called it fraud and tax evasion, but you say tomato, i say tuck this away out of sight of the IRS Donny.    
So hopefully i have proved i'm not a racist or liar who partook in stealing money from others and i am as clean as the next man, just that the man happens to be my very own little, chubby Donny.

Special Guest Blogger: Winston Churchill

Never in the field of human conflict has so much been owed to so many by so few, especially me because while men were being ordered to run at German machine guns, i was 50ft underground in a bomb proof bunker with enough alcohol to sink a battleship.
I did occasionally pop my head up to make a speech and say we will never surrender whatever the Germans threw at us before nipping back downstairs sharpish but there were some days when i was just to pissed to make it up the stairs safely so we would dress up a bulldog, put a hat on it, shove a cigar in it's mouth and send that up instead.
Considering that i wasn't sober anytime after 1940, i didn't do too bad    and i was made an Honorary American for my services during the war, considering they amounted to being the safest person in England while people dug themselves out of their own houses i decided to keep that bit quiet.
I was even voted 'Greatest Britain', and i did have a great reputation, mainly because as i said 'History will be kind to me as i intend to write it' and though i did call the many wars fought in the name of empire as: 'a lot of jolly little wars against barbarous peoples' who doesn't like a bit of war, i certainly did, especially against the Indians who pathetically screamed 'aaaaah I’m dying', rather than giving thanks for being starved to death on the orders of someone who would later save our nation, so it’s hard to have any sympathy.
By todays standards i suppose i could be a tad racist but i know many who wish they could have been black in 1920, just so they could have had the honour of being racially abused by the greatest Britain that ever lived so maybe the shameful youth with their lack of respect for our steadfast British spirit, instead of being drunk, obnoxious, smoking and being obese, they should be more like me.

Special Guest Blogger: Buddha

When i was asked to write a guest posting on Lucy's blog i considered taking the opportunity to pass on my wisdom on the core of Buddhism and the belief in the Four Noble Truths of Suffering, the Cause of Suffering, the End of Suffering and the Path that Leads to the End of Suffering but after giving it some serious contemplation under another Bodhi tree, i thought stuff it and decided to write about the two things that really grind my gears.
First up is my image of me being a fat, bald guy whereas in reality i was seriously buff. Honestly, i could be found wandering around 6BC India all bulging biceps and a pair of firm, toned buttocks that would crack walnuts.
Not sure how i ended up being pictured as a baby faced chubster unless they got me confused with someone else, Muhammad possibly, he was always first in line for a feast and getting the waistband of his jubbah's let out.  
The second thing is that i quite clearly said that i could live for an eon or until the end of the eon, if i was asked to do so and i said it many times but not one person asked me, for cripes sake guys, i wasn't being mysterious or being rhetorical, it was as plain as the trunk on Garnesh's face that i was crying out for somebody to just ask me.
Instead of dying in a billion years, i popped my clogs at 80 years old and my last words were reminding the people gathered around me that they only needed to ask but a waste of a last breath that was, so i missed out on everything after 6BC so cheers, seriously, appreciate it that nobody could be bothered to ask me, yeah, big thanks for that. 
So i am adding to my four truths and the fifth is i was a ripped hunk of a man and the sixth if somebody tells you that they can live for eons if you ask them to, for crying out loud just ask them!

Special Guest Blogger: Abraham Lincoln

Although i become known as Honest Abe, the truth is i would pilfer all the White House toilet rolls, i had cupboards full of stuff with Property of the White House stamped across it, it was half the reason that i wore a big hat, perfect place to stick rolls of bog rolls which i would sell on the black market.
The other reason i wore a really tall stovepipe hat, despite being almost six and a half feet tall, was because Ismbard Kingdom Brunel wore one and i wanted a hat that i could write 'Make America Proclaim Emancipation Again' on it.
The hat did make me stand out in the crowd though which probably made John Wilkes Booth's job a lot easier, not hard to miss a 6ft 4" man sat with a chimney on his head even in a dark theatre. 
Strangely, on that night of my shooting i told Mary i didn't really want to go and see a play, 'need that like a hole in the head' i said although my joke about being like an 80s sitcom and being shot before a live audience always makes Jesus laugh, JFK not so much. 
I was always a bit of a joker although something i am serious about is the effects of excessive drinking, something which killed my mother.
You see my mother had an addiction, she would drink milk by the bucketful and despite our plea's and the funny white moustache she almost permanently wore, she carried on with the demon milk until it killed her, milk sickness the docs called it, i could never look at a cow again afterwards.
I am ever grateful for the Bill & Ted film for giving me some catchphrases, 'Be excellent to each other' and 'Party on Dudes' which is much more catchier than 'four score and seven years ago' which nobody can ever work out.
I am held up as one of the greatest President the USA ever had which is why the current President is always saying 'What would Abe Lincoln do to make America Great if he was me'.   
I have lost count of the amount of times i had replied 'go to the theater in a really tall hat' but he hasn't yet.
Anyway, Party On Dudes!! Oh, and i have 300 rolls of White House toilet paper if anybody is interested.

Special Guest Blogger: Grigori Rasputin

Any fans of 70's DISCO will know that i was the lover of the Russian Queen but something which Boney M didn't really capture was that i was an early 20th Century babe magnet which considering i looked like a donkey which had been hit very hard in the face with a house brick, was no mean feat.
My story begins when i passing myself off as a mystic and faith healer to get chicks and the Russian Queen heard about my magical touch and hired me to heal her son who was ill, the boy was so ill he almost died following a bumpy coach ride, true story, the kid was permanently ill and was puking up all over the palace and chucking up all in the Kings slippers just after taking his medicine, so i tell the doctors to stop giving him his tablets, mumbled something in Latin and waved my arms around like a maniac, and he stopped upchucking.
Suddenly i was the best thing since potatoes (well it was Russia) and the Queen was so grateful that she allowed me to not only lay hands on her son, but lay them all over her as well, which i did, several times a week.
Sweet deal, the Tsar found out but couldn't stop me from ploughing his wife because if i was taken out his son would die but he got so angry after hearing me being called Russia's greatest love machine once to many times through the bedroom wall, he ordered me be killed.
The first attempt was a woman stabbed me in the stomach several times while i was preparing to give her a Russian Queen special but i managed to escape and then in an eventful evening a few nights later, while recuperating, i was invited to a friends house who poisoned my meal but i actually felt okay afterwards.
Taking the hint that i might not be as welcome as i first thought, i tried to make my excuses and leave but someone pulled out a gun and shot me.
As i stood there with a bandaged stomach, poison flowing through my body and now several gun shot wounds, i thought, actually, i don't feel too bad but i was determined to leave so i jumped out of the second story window.
As i lay on the ground winded and with several broken bones i thought, blimey, i feel okay but as i was getting up the 'friend' arrived and shot me again and after i started to think, holy crap, maybe i'm invincible after all, he hit me repeatedly over the head with his shoe until i unconscious, rolled me up in a carpet and lobbed me off a bridge. 
Of course karma came in to play and the Tsar and his family were all wiped out by revolting Russians a year later (Nicolas killed by a single bullet the pussy) but i got the last laugh because i'm remembered as the almost unkillable Terminator like Love Machine and what's not to like about that!!