Special Guest Blogger: Elliot Ness

I was best known for leading a special Chicago task force known as 'The Untouchables' whose mission was to bring down the infamous gangster Al Capone.
Pretty ironic that the first thing i did when Prohibition ended was have a drink or 20 and i ended up a alcoholic but we got Capone for tax evasion although all the later films concentrate on my team, a movie where someone breaks down a graph of the taxpayer income and outgoings wouldn't have been half as exciting.
Capone and i lived on the same street for about five years but that was before i became a cop.
Prohibition wasn’t exactly popular in the US, and possibly the only thing more unpopular were the prohibition agents but we dumped thousands of gallons of beer and alcohol in the sewers.
Chicago had become one of the most crime-ridden cities in the US and the Chicago Crime Commission promised to do something about Al Capone. The Bureau of Internal Revenue was already investigating him for tax fraud, but they were hoping to get him faster on prohibition violation charges.
Capone offered me $2,000 to look the other way, but i refused the bribe despite the fact that it would have been almost as much as i made in a year, untouchable remember.
Trying to take down mobsters is dangerous work, and i wasn’t immune to some of the perils of the job. I had my car stolen three separate times, my office phone line was tapped, my parents watched, and three assassination attempts were made on me as well as one of my friends getting shot in the face four times.
After Capone i got a job as Chicago's safety director tasked with getting the traffic problem under control. Cleveland was the second-worst American city for traffic-related deaths and injuries but that came to a screeching halt which is something my car never did when i drove it into a lamppost while driving drunk.
Not my finest moment and i didn't actually bring down Capone but that's what everyone thinks so let's just go with that.

Special Guest Blogger: Harry Houdini

There is a reason why career advisor's never suggest being tied into a straight-jacketed and lowered into a shark tank wearing trousers made from pork chops but despite coming up with ideas that always began with me thinking 'let's see if this will kill me', i hardly ever injured myself.
I was shackled and buried under six feet of dirt but the earth was too heavy and i couldn't breath so managed to poke my hand through like i was in a zombie flick before passing out and my assistants pulled me out but that was about as close as i came to dying.
I started out performing card tricks and simple illusions but i wasn't very good at it so began escaping from handcuffs and the tricks got more and more elaborate and before i knew it i was upside down in a tank of water but there was no great secret to my escapes, in many cases, i would have access to a key secreted in my hair. What, you thought i wore that weird centre parting as a fashion statement?
For a few years, i used trap doors in my illusions, it was just a stage i was going through. Yeah, i wasn't a very good comedian either.
While i fooled people, i took serious the “spiritualists” who claimed they could put people in contact with their dead loved ones and i had a huge bust-up with Arthur Conan Doyle but my death was a real punch in the gut, mainly because it came about due to a real punch in the guts.
After a show in Montreal, Canada, a punk kid wanted to test the claim that i could take a punch in the stomach unharmed and the snotty kid ran up and punched me in the belly, rupturing my appendix.

The Impressive Doctor

During an uncharacteristic bout of common sense, the Donald Trump team decided that him fronting the Coronavirus daily briefings where he advocated drinking bleach and playing down the hundred of thousands dead Americans was not a vote winner so they stopped them him doing altogether.
Seeing his poll figures dying like a Trump supporter who’s just mainlined a litre bottle of Harpic on the advice of their president, they decided to take a chance and let him infront of the cameras again and two days later he is defending his support for Dr Stella Immanuel who claims that people didn't need to wear masks and advocating the use of the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for Coronavirus amongst her other beliefs that women can be impregnated by witches and demons in their dreams and saying a vaccine is being developed to make people immune to becoming religious.
When questioned he said that: 'she was very impressive' which is more than he has said about the leading US infectious disease expert, Dr Anthony Fauci who he accused him of making mistakes in his coronavirus guidance to the American people.
Joe Biden and his team must be looking on and wondering just why they are only 9 points in front of Trump but i would be worried about the 41% of Americans who look and listen to their President and think, yeah, he's doing a decent job.
With 100 days to go, and with Trump getting more and more desperate as he sees his job slipping away, we can expect the fun and craziness to go to a new level, pending the Trump Election team allow him anywhere near a microphone that is.

Special Guest Blogger: Rosa Parks

The most any of us has ever gotten out of a bus ride is covered in pee and chewing gum on the seat of our pants but that famous bus journey i took got the American civil rights movement rolling and all because i refused to relinquish my seat in the coloured section to a white passenger, after the whites-only section was filled.
Almost certainly i was only one lady in a long line of black women who refused to give up their seats but for that i was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal, had my face plastered on a stamp and was named one of the most influential women of the 20th century which is not too shabby for a day's ride home after work.
My arrest for violating segregation laws led to the Montgomery bus boycott, which in turn increased exposure for the Civil Rights Movement and what went in my favour was that i looked like a mousey school-marm and my notoriety made me a target for every racist in America but i was nonthreatening and likable and that's how that's how over the next 65 years we ended racism in America forever. Didn't we?
Yes, i was fired from my job and received death threats for years afterwards but the real guy who kickstarted the whole civil rights movement was actually the racist guy who said to me, 'Get up, that's my seat', kinda backfired on him.
Ironically everyone keeps talking about how i stood up for civil rights but i didn't stand up at all, that was the whole point.

Special Guest Blogger: Mark Antony

I was one of the most well-known figures in the history of Ancient Rome, rubbing shoulders with Julius Caesar, Pompey and Cleopatra although it was famously various other body parts being rubbed together with Cleopatra.
I hooked up with her after Caesar found seven or eight knives thrust into his back and considering that Cleopatra's ancestors loved them some incest and the offspring were famously ugly mofo's, she was hot especially after a few jugs of some extra strong Roman wine and she had a brain which ancient scientists back then weren't even sure women possessed.
I had a great military career and had a talent for commanding which i certainly never got my from my father, he invaded Crete by mistake but i also had a talent for picking up the wives and girlfriends of my dead friends, my first wife was the widow of my friend Publius Pulcher and i had four other wives before Cleo.
It’s debated that i knew about what was being planned for Caesar and i did know and planned to tell him but i got distracted, distracted by his soon to be single, wealthy hot wife and anyway he had named his 19 year old punk nephew as his successor rather than me so pfft, whatever.
Weirdly, when the Roman Legion came looking for me, as there were no statues or paintings of me, they didn't know what i looked like but my death was a bit of a cock-up all round.  
After a series of battles, i heard a rumor that Cleopatra was dead, so i stabbed myself in despair. In an awkward turn of events, Cleopatra was still alive, but when she heard i had died, she poisoned herself soon after with a snake, she love a bit of drama that one.
My legacy didn't quite end there though, my daughters went on to give birth to three Roman emperors, Claudius, Caligula, and Nero so, one decent emperor and two murderous nutjobs which as it turned out was about right for Ancient Rome.

A Blue Christmas?

Looking out of the window today you would be forgiven for thinking that the British summer isn't that much different to a British winter but the experts are predicting that a second wave of Covid-19 is coming to the Northern Hemisphere and it will probably be in Autumn and winter which scuppers our plans for a pre-Christmas trip to Austria and Germany.
A medical person from London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine this morning explained gloomily that it will hit worse due to the other winter bugs, which will be circulating alongside Coronavirus and viruses survive outside the body better when it is cold and due to less UV light, which inactivates the virus.
We also gather indoors with closed windows more once the weather turns colder but their is a small hope that viruses can stop each other from gaining a foothold it the body due to the immune response to one infection preventing the next one from getting in which is why the UK is trying to immunise a record number of people against flu to triggers an innate immune response and inflammation and this initial response will protect the body from Coronavirus.
Christmas may look very different this year unless we have a vaccine by then which is looking more likely than the UK having a working app.

Trump Not Going Quietly

Although it isn't certain, it is looking more like America will get a grown up in charge following the Novermber Election but there are concerns that the 20 stone Orange lump currently sat in the Oval Office will just refuse to leave, claiming the result is rigged.
That America sits top of the Covid-19 Death League with 145,000 less alive Americans thanks to his decision making, it is hard to think that Trump considers he has done a bang up job but he is obviously deluded enough to think he has but could he just refuse to hand over the keys?
CNN has a scenario where swing states controlled by Republicans, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, all with a vested interest in keeping Trump in office delay the result due to problems with fraudulent mail-in ballots, something Trump is already setting the scene for, so citing irregularities and delays in the counting of the mail-in ballots, they declare Trump victorious in their state and award Trump their states’ electoral college votes.
The Democrats say they refuse to accept it and announce Joe Biden as the winner of these states and a lengthy court case ensues, meanwhile as Inauguration Day nears and the nation had no president-elect, the President declares martial law and the suspension of ordinary law and then all bets are off.
Seems a bit of a stretch but thats exactly what happened in the Hayes-Tilden election of 1876, when three separate states submitted conflicting electoral certificates declaring their side the winner and it was only the announcement that President Grant was weighing up declaring the martial law that a compromise was reached at the last second.
In 2000, the Supreme Court decided Bush was the winner when the 'hanging chad' votes were still being counted in Florida, the court stopping the counting so the Democrat Party are hoping that Trump gets beaten decisively and will indeed go quietly in November, probably to a Russian hotel room with waterproof bed sheets to lick his wounds.

The Pain In Spain

Such was the speed of the Governments change of heart on visiting Spain, that two of the Governments own ministers were holidaying in Spain and will now have to self-isolate for 14 days when they return.
Obviously that is not a bad thing, the less Government Ministers there are messing things up the better, shame the whole lot of them were not on a team bonding session in Barcelona when the call came so we still have Boris Johnson and his fat moon face on our televisions, although his fat face is not quite so chubby nowadays after shedding a stone and a half after he had been advised that being overweight make the consequences of Coronavirus worse, so he has made it his goal to make us all lose weight.
A ban on TV ads of unhealthy food before the 9pm watershed has been confirmed although as with everything this Government seems to do, it is contradicted by their 'Eat Out to Help Out' initiative to help the economy which grants everyone 50% off meals in restaurants, including fast food outlets.
As this is the Government who gave us such advice as masks won't help and then made them mandatory, that large public gatherings will not spread the disease and then banning them days later and our very own Prime Minister boasting how he was shaking hands with Coronavirus victims at the same Press Conference when he had the just told us to not do exactly that, it seems we shouldn't expect anything else really.
At least they haven't suggested a pint of Harpic Bleach as a cure like some other less than competent leaders but if you still have the Waterstone's receipt for that Spanish Translation book, you could do better than to return it and swap if for the Atkins Diet Book.

Special Guest Blogger: Kim Jong Il

Of all the Korea's in the world, North Korea is the best but you don't have to take my word for it, the ever-reliable North Korean state media has it all documented.
When i was born there was a number of miraculous events, a double rainbow appeared in the sky and a new star was formed but so is the nature of the imperialist west and people who were not otherwise required by law to believe it, they dispute much of what we said.
I can confirm that as the Supreme Leader and practically a God, i did not defecate and the real-life unicorn lair we found inside a cave was true, as was the world-record golf score of 34 across 18 holes including eleven holes-in-one but i don't like to boast, that's such an American thing.
The 1,500 books i wrote are all available in the state library but my son would say to me "Why doesn't everyone on Earth love our glorious state? and i deduced it was because of jealousy because i was so damned great.
Unfortunately, even god like supreme leaders have to make way eventually and as befits a god like supreme leader, when i died ice which had formed over a famous lake allegedly cracked, mysterious lights were seen on top of a sacred mountain, and snowstorms hit parts of the country but not before i installed my youngest son, Kim Jong Un as my successor.
The Kim family talent pool is getting rather shallow and my eldest son Kim Jong Nam had fallen out of favor when he accidentally got nerve agent all over his face then there's Kim Pyong-il but he was off enjoying himself and then Kim Jong-chul who makes Dale Winton look butch and finally my daughter Kim Yo-Jong, but she unfortunately has a vagina so is not eligible.
I am sure that my Kim Jong-Un will do well, he has a real toughness about him from the problem that he has always had with his weight, it's always tough being the fat kid in school but its even tougher when you are the only fat kid in your entire country.

Special Guest Blogger: Rodrigo Borgia

I didn't let being Jewish, having an impressive man-boob cleavage that a supermodel would be proud of and sweating too much stop me from amassing a huge fortune, slaughtering my enemies, and getting busy with the ladies, i was the original dodgy Pope with an equally dodgy family.
My story begins in Renaissance Spain where it's leaders were a shower so i ran out of patience and splashed my cash to all the Papal Cardinals in hope that they’d be bought, which being Catholic's they obviously were, and i became the Pope and i appointed my son Cesare as Archbishop and tomfoolery and hijinks ensued, and by hijinks i mean gluttonous feasting, drunkenness, gambling and massive orgies.
I started wars, poisoned cardinals and took their money but the Catholic Church was a little bit less friendly in those days, popes and cardinals back then almost all had to murder their way into the Vatican or be murdered themselves. It was a good day if you didn't have to whack a religious person on your way to holy communion.
I invented something called the Banquet of Chestnuts which sounds nice enough until you learn that the chestnuts were merely a pretext to have a pack of naked women crawling around the ground on all fours collecting them.
Another nut-related activity followed and i would keep track of the total number and quality of the party-goers' ejaculations and hand out prizes, they sure don't make religious celebrations like they used to.
My children were a chip off the old block, Cesare was a lovely piece of work, he was the model for Machiavelli’s The Prince, many people fell onto his knife that he happened to be holding towards them, such careless people.
When i died my family lost power but my successors described me as one of the most outstanding popes ever, but that was probably because  i saw them at the Chestnut Parties standing out themselves, yes, standing out very proud you could say.