Prince Harry Wants Best Of Both

I was kind of hoping that once Prince Harry and his family moved away, we wouldn't have to keep hearing about him but he is back in the news again bemoaning his lack of privacy, whilst giving an interview on board a Double Decker bus driving around Los Angeles.
I would be the first to admit that some of the British Press is less than honourable, the tabloid press are still settling lawsuits and paying out millions for hacking celebrities phones which shows just how heinouis they can be and the coverage of Meghan Markle from some of the right wing was outright racist, despite how much they try to deny it.
Harry therefore has a legitimate claim against some of the Press but the rub is that while condemning them, the couple also courted them for their projects such as the Invictus Games and it is a very taut tightrope to try and walk if you are complaining about the coverage of the press while simultaneously craving the publicity from the same people.
What it says to me is that Prince Harry and his wife only want the 'right type' of publicity, none of the awkward questions which the likes of James Corden and Oprah Winfrey will certainly not throw their way so either step back from the spotlight entirely or take the publicity and good and bad from the the double edged sword of press coverage.
 

Special Guest Blogger: Saint John Bosco

When i was a kid i would play with the other kids but my family were God fearing church goers but the other kids were more interested in playing in the dirt and climbing trees so whenever i tried to bring God into the conversation, they would just ignore me and continue sticking worms up their noses.
Kids, it seems, are not interested in learning about God and that Churchy stuff and my approach of 'Hey, lets build a tree house and did you know Jesus died for our sins' wasn't a winner but i saw a traveling troupe of circus performers and was enthralled by their magic tricks and i realised that if i learned their tricks, i could use them to attract others and hold their attention long enough to ram religion down their throat, so that's what i did.
I would put on shows for the neighbours and developed an act of pull a rabbit from a hat, guess the card and then a bit of a pray.
I left home and worked as a hired farm laborer and as a grape picker at a vineyard before joining the seminary and following six years of study and preparation, was ordained as a priest.
I went to work in the slums of Turin and went into the streets and started to meet young men and boys and used my pick a card, don't show me and have you noticed how great God is method and it worked a bit too well because other kids from other areas would come to see my performance and other priests without my knack for making a pet disappear complained that i was stealing their flock.
I pioneered the art of what became known as Gospel Magic to engage the youth so think of a Grey animal in any country beginning with the letter D eating a Green vegetable. Got it? Now, i don't know if Jesus every ventured out to Denmark and saw an Elephant eating a pea but if he had...Thank you, i'm here all week, all month and for all of eternity actually.

Special Guest Blogger: Aeschylus

A small handful of great individuals are not content to get their names in the footnotes of history and then quietly expire. No, there are those brave few who achieve greatness and then top it off by kicking the bucket in a way so ridiculously implausible that people would have talked about them for years even if they hadn't done anything else.
I was a big hitter in the tragedy genre but before i picked up my quill as a playwright, i was working at a vineyard until the god Dionysus visited me in my sleep and commanded me to turn my attention to writing.
Not one to turn down the son of Zeus who could turn people blind and mad, i began scribbling away but it didn't start off as planned, at one play i was chased out of town by the audience for asebeia, a criminal charge in ancient Greece for the 'desecration and mockery of divine Gods'.
I did get better and became an absolute beast at writing plays that ended tragically but my own ending was a tragedy that even i wouldn't have written as unbelievable.
I began losing my hair at quite an early age and as every bald man knows, if you're balding you might as well kiss your love life goodbye.  
Even if you’re 16 and have a full head of hair, women can tell if you’re going to go bald and that spells trouble. Let’s face it, women hate bald men and it was a woman who told me that she had seen me being killed by a falling object so i played it smart and stayed outside as much as possible to avoid anything crashing down on my head indoors.
One afternoon, why sat outside writing, an eagle mistook my bald head for a rock to crack the shell of it's prey and dropped a tortoise on it, killing me instantly and although nobody could name two of my plays today, it made sure my name is remembered millennia later and i'll take that.

Special Guest Blogger: Saint Francis de Sales

You can always tell when it is a slow news day because you end up with headlines such as 'Dog Gets Head Stuck In Railings' or 'Squirrel Steals Knickers From Washing Line' but those are the days when i get a call because i am the patron saint of Journalists.
My father wanted me to be a judge and sent me to the best schools in France to prepare me for a lifetime of wearing powdered wigs but i always felt a tug towards the Church, only i was too scared to tell my father that so i took lessons in the gentlemanly pursuits of riding and fencing until i got up the nerve to tell him he had wasted his money.
What made me come out of the Catholic closet was falling off a horse three times and everytime i fell my sword came out of the scabbard and came to rest on the ground in the shape of the Christian cross.
A vision or even a dream would have been a lot less painful but i decided to take it as a sign and come clean to Dad that i didn't want to dress up in black, judge people and tell them what to do for a career, i wanted to be a Catholic Priest.
Pulling strings like a marionette's puppeteer on opium, he got me a job at with the Bishop of Geneva which just happened to be next door to Calvinist territory and boy they didn't like us Catholics.
The Bishop decided i would be a good choice to head into their territory and try and spread the word of Catholicism but after the first few assaults, doors slammed in my face and rocks bouncing off my head, i decided it would be safer to slip pamphlets extolling the virtue of Catholicism and how we are all one under God and Catholics are awesome with their wafers and wine and no amount of lotion would sooth a pitchfork up the backside in hell.
It worked, sort of, some shifted back to our side but it got me the job as Patron Saint of Journalists but even i cant do anything to make Rupert Murdoch's Newspapers readable, i'm just a Saint, for that you would need a miracle worker.

Special Guest Blogger: Colonel Harland Sanders

Most people probably thought that white haired man on the KFC shopfront was a corporate logo but that's me, Colonel Sanders, and i was a real person responsible for bringing slabs of meat from the factory farm to your plate and showing you why America is so respected culinarily across the world.
I wasn't actually a Colonel in the military sense, the title was an honorary one and selling chicken only happened after i tried my hand at being a farmhand, street-car conductor, steam engine stoker, insurance salesman and studied law by correspondence and practiced in justice-of-the-peace courts in Arkansas until a courtroom brawl with a client derailed my legal career, and then finally a filling station operator and then began selling fried chicken from old family dining room table wheeled into the front of the service station during the Great Depression.
I developed a 'secret recipe' and it sold so well i opened my first KFC shop in South Salt Lake, Utah in 1952 and embraced my Colonel title and tried to look the part by growing facial hair and donning a white suit, which helped to hide flour stains nicely, and bleached my mustache and goatee to match my white hair.
I painted advertising signs on barns for miles around but a rival kept painting over one of my signs so i put down my chicken, picked up a gun and got into a bit of a gunfight, wounding him but my charges were dropped after i was arrested.
I sold the Kentucky Fried Chicken name to to food conglomerate Heublein and once the cheque cleared, began to deride the chain’s gravy as' slop' and its owners as 'a bunch of booze hounds' although they kept my image as the public face of the company
I developed plans to franchise “The Colonel’s Lady’s Dinner House” restaurant which i opened with my wife in Shelbyville, Kentucky as a competitor and when Heublein threatened to block the plan, i sued for $122 million but we settled out of court for $1 million and a chance to give a cooking lesson to Heublein executives in return for my promise to stop criticizing Kentucky Fried Chicken’s food.
There have been protests from the tree hugging vegetarian mob but they can all can go to hell, the chicken is born to be chopped up and put into a fryer so what if the chicken’s short life is a sorry state, pumped full of chemicals and filled full of hormones, at least we no longer slip in a rat so eat up and if you enjoyed it, the chicken didn’t die painfully in vain!

Special Guest Blogger: Saint Pope Fabian

Most of the important positions in World History were made by dedicated people of singular mind and purpose, tirelessly exhausting themselves and their resources to achieve a clearly defined goal. Then there are others who by luck, find themselves stood in the right position at the right time and fall into major roles like a fat kid at a skating rink. I am the second type.
I was a simple Farmer and went to Rome after Pope Anteros died just to have a bit of a nosy around during the Papal election and there i was stood in the square along with thousands of other people when suddenly a dove come and sat on my head.
Now to anyone else i was a guy stood in the square with a bird on my head hoping it didn't crap down the back of my neck but to everyone else it was a sign that the Holy Spirit, in the form of a dove, had chosen me as the next Pope.
The prize for limbo-ing under that low bar was the Church agreed and i was handed the funny hat and told i was now Pope and to sort out the Roman's who had been persecuting Christians.
Luckily my time coincided with the mild mannered Emperor Philip who agreed that the bad blood between us and them was not a good thing and called a halt to the attacks on us, unfortunately he died not long afterwards and was replaced by the not so mild mannered new emperor, Decius, who wasn't quite so keen on the Jesus crowd and ordered all Christians to deny Christ.
Of course we said no and suddenly we were facing a horde of Roman Centurians with swords and the Christians looked towards me for leadership and help to keep out this vast army of lunatics, so i prayed.  
Obviously looking skyward and saying 'little help please?' is not the most terrifying obstacle to a large group of heavily armed men waving around very sharp and pointy swords and it turned out that it was about as frightening as a hamster with the word 'Boo' painted on its nose because they lopped off my head and the heads of pretty much everyone else they could get hold of.
Still, could have been worse, stood next to me that day in the Square that day was an ancestor of King Herod and that wouldn't have ended well.

Special Guest Blogger: Orson Welles

I am probably remembered for writing, directing, and starring in what is generally referred to as the greatest film of all time but i hardly made it out of childhood.
What with Malaria, measles, whooping cough, diphtheria, asthma, sinus headaches and congenital anomalies in the spine and if that wasn’t enough, i also had flat feet, which led to problems with my feet and ankles and i spent much of my childhood bedridden but i did meet Harry Houdini who taught me a few magic tricks and i thought i could be a magician if the acting never worked out, i went from your basic sleight-of-hand tricks to sawing a person in half.
During the Second World War, i went over to Europe to help entertain the troops, bringing along star Marlene Dietrich to saw in two but for some reason the men preferred her in one piece but appreciated the effort nonetheless.
Before the film for which i would become most well know, i did a radio broadcast of H.G. Wells’ short story, The War of the Worlds, which scared the living crap out of people who thought it was a real alien invasion, my idea to make it as realistic as possible with shockingly authentic newscast-style version and eyewitness reports, making it seem like Earth truly was being invaded by Martians.
Strangely HG Wells was driving through San Antonio, Texas not long after the broadcast, when he had to stop and ask for directions. The person that he asked was none other than me and we spent the rest of the day hanging out and laughing at the furore his story and my radio broadcast had created.
Although Citizen Kane has gone on to become recognized as one of the greatest films ever, if not the greatest, my portrayal of real-life publishing tycoon, William Randolph Hearst really wound up the real Hearst who refused to allow any mention of it in his newspapers and refused to publicize the film in his papers which drove people away from seeing the film and it bombed at the box office.
I then had a well known falling out with Hollywood after they changed the ending of one of my films and i went into self imposed exile and went on a tour Europe and ate, i did eat a lot and at my death i topped 300 lbs and suffered diabetes and died in the same week as Rock Hudson and Yul Brynner and that made all the newspapers.

Special Guest Blogger: Saint Sebastian

Statistically speaking, about 75% of you are either Christian or Jewish, and about 75% haven't read the Bible so to you it's probably explains why the book has a reputation for being some nice stories about how you should stop cursing or a man living inside a whale but i am probably best known for being in the REM video, that's me tied to a tree with an arrow in his side.
I was a Roman Prison Guard but i kept quiet about being a Christian to avoid ending up as lion food but i would allow people to visit their relatives who were imprisoned due to their beliefs.
The local prefect had a daughter who was mute and i prayed that she would speak again and she did and i decided this was my chance to come out of the religious closet so to speak and announced to the prefect that i had prayed and God had used his awesome power to get his daughter to speak and he was so thrilled, he changed to Christianity and released all the Christian prisoners and resigned therefore losing me my job and bringing in a new prefect, one who was not quite so keen on Christians and ordered me killed.
Yep, that's me in the corner, that's me in the spot-light, losing my religion and the feeling in my limbs as archers filled my body with arrows but they made the fatal mistake of not checking i was dead because when they came to bury me, they found i was still alive and a woman took me home to nurse me back to health and i decided that when i got my strength back i would go see the Emperor and demand he stop persecuting Christians.
So there we stood, two men of honour, who have jousted together in the religious glory of our maker, face to face and how often i had rehearsed that moment of destiny in my dreams. The panoply to encapsulate the unspoken nobility of a comradeship but what i didn't think was that he would seize me and beat me to death and throw my body into the sewer.
Not the ending i was considering but it got me into one of the most famous music videos of all time but if i had prayed a little harder i always wonder if i could have got into a Gun N Roses one.

Special Guest Blogger: Natalie Wood

Natalia Nikolaevna Zakharenko is not a very all American name so my mum changed it to Natalie Wood and it was her who pushed me to perform, my first role was in Happy Land and i was only four years old at the time.
That led to Tomorrow is Forever and then Miracle on 34th Street where i was asked to cry in a scene and for authenticity, my mother helped me out by ripping up a live butterfly right in front of me.
Hollywood makes you grow up fast and while idling around sets i picked up some very adult habits, such as smoking like a train.
I made the leap from child star to teen idol when at 16 i appeared in the James Dean classic Rebel Without a Cause as the surly teenager Judy, i was then dating a wannabe singer called Elvis Presley.
I always had an intense fear of water after almost drowning in a river as a child and wore a large bracelet on my left wrist to hide an ugly bone protrusion.
For my 18th birthday, my studio arranged a present which would affect the rest of my life, they arranged date with Robert Wagner, the man who i would marry twice and played a big part at the end of my life.
Hollywood decided i was washed up at 25 years old as i wouldn't make the transformation from child star to fully fledged actress and I also had a few 'personal problems' which included getting my stomach pumped three times after sleeping pill overdoses.
Despite that i got the the role of Maria in the film version of West Side Story, beating out Hollywood heavy hitters like Audrey Hepburn and Jane Fonda for the part.
On November 29, 1981, fate came for me when in the middle of filming Brainstorm, my husband, my co-star Christopher Walken and i decided to take a weekend boat trip on Wagner’s yacht Splendour.
A few drinks, some painkillers, an argument with my husband, a big scream for help and one big splash later and what the poilce officially called 'drowning and other undetermined factors'.
The last i heard the police had listed my husband as a person of interest in the case, maybe just a wild grab in the dark which, incidentally, is exactly the last thing he ever gave me. 

Special Guest Blogger: Saint Seraphim of Sarov

Do you live in the boring suburbs but dream of living in a lonely hut on a windswept moor? Do you long to trade in your suit and waistcoat for a smock? Do you eat microwave dinners all the while wishing you were munching on grass? Yum Yum! Is your next ideal home improvement a bucket under the hole in your twig roof? Well get ready because i'm the Saint for you!
After being ordained i wondered what could i do to prove to the man upstairs that i was on Team God and nothing says i'm with you big guy then going to live in solitude in a hut and eating nothing but grass.
Twenty five years i lived in that shack and people would keep turning up to ask me questions because living alone in a ramshackle log cabin and eating Grass in 18th Century Russia somehow qualified you as a wise man.
So people would arrive but rather than give me a potato or a turnip to go with my grass, would ask me weird questions like why did God make mosquitoes and if God sees everything, does he watch me peeing?    
One day, while chopping wood, a gang of thieves attacked me with the handle of my own axe but what they expected to steal from a man whose meals are grass i don't know but all they found was a whole lot of empty hut but it forced me to rethink my whole strategy because obviously living in a hut for a quarter of a century was obviously not enough for God so i decided a hut was too glamorous so packed up my grass and went to live on a rock and just for a special touch, i spent 1,000 successive nights in continuous prayer with my arms raised to the sky.
Still people came to ask me questions and i got a reputation for answering the questions before they were asked but that bit was easy, some fat guy waddled up and before he would open his mouth i would say 'Because you eat too much' or a man with pus filled pustules on his face would roll up and i would say 'because mirrors haven't been invented yet' but generally the generic 'because God will's it' did the trick.
I died while kneeling and praying before a picture of Mary and Jesus which came a quite a relief, not the religious moment, but because my arms were killing me.