Special Guest Blogger: Voodoo God Baron Samedi

When you think of a God's clothes you are probably thinking boring smock but just because you are a god doesn't mean you can't be stylish and sophisticated so that's why i wear sunglasses, a glossy top hat, black tailcoat with a tuxedo with natty matching cane and cotton nasal plugs.
A reanimated skeleton, my pastimes include drinking, smoking, swearing, and chasing women and general obscenity, chaos, debauchery, intoxication.
Y'know, those general areas but you wouldn't expect much else from a Voodoo god of the dead although Bondye is the real big cheese, us Loa (Gods) answer to him serving as intermediaries between man and Bondye because Bondye doesn't meddle around in the affairs of mortals, humans cooties and all that.
I lead the Guede family, a group of Loa's with strong links to magic and death and my job is to greet the dead when they die before leading them to the underworld and ensure their corpses rot in the ground to prevent them from returning as zombies so i generally tend to hang out in cemeteries because nobody wants hordes of stupid, brainless and unintelligent morons clogging up the place, they have their own place, the House of Lords in London.
When i am not busy with the dead i drink heavilly, smoke cigars and chase women and to be fair i do that when i am busy also but i'm also a curer of disease and protector from death as it is down to me if a person is allowed to cross into the afterlife as when someone dies, i dig their grave and meet their soul as it rises from the grave before guiding them into the underworld if i choose, i may decide they are not ready to die and refuse to dig their grave so they are safe.
I am also a curer of all any mortal diseases but that depends on whether the person is worthy and if they can give me a sweet deal, could be a drink, could be food or could be a ceremony that allows me to cross over into this world and the loan of their eldest daughter for an hour, really depends on my mood that day.
My wife is Maman Brigitte and we make a good team, she is as foul mouthed and often as drunk as me but her role is to watch over women and protect the dead, gravestones, tombs and cemeteries but she drinks rum infused with hot peppers so she is literally foul mouthed.
Now i'm not one to try and poach religious folk from other religions but from what i can see, things are not going so well over there on the mortal plane so sacrifice a goat and give me a shout, what is the worst that could happen?

Special Guest Blogger: Maurice Chevalier

I didn't have the best of starts, by the time i was 10 my father had left, my mum was in hospital and my elder brother decided that looking after me was too much trouble and moved out so i did the only thing i could and dropped out of school to become an acrobat.
I was pretty good at it too but acrobat is not the safest career choice and i rolled when i should have tucked and landed on my head and injured my spine which meant i had to hang up my leotard before my 11th Birthday but fortunately the local mattress factory had no qualms about taking on a boy to work a dangerous machine and the dangerous machine had no qualms about crushing the finger of a boy so i dragged my broken finger and crumpled spine along to an interview for a singer at a local cafe.
The crowd liked me and i got noticed by a singer called Fréhel who was quite a big name then and she introduced me to her bedroom, her drug habit and larger venues and then some other big names in that order including the very famous singer Mistinguett who offered to take me under her wing and give me a well rounded education and not only in showbiz.
We became a double act in every way imaginable and things were going well until Kaiser Wilhem stuck his big nose into things and i was drafted into the French Army and found myself on the WW1 front lines and suffered a serious shrapnel wound to the lung, was captured and sent to a prisoner-of-war camp for 26 months.
On my release i returned to the stage but struggled to get back into my groove until a dancer called Yvonne Vallée took me on to be her dance partner and something a little more intimate.
We got married and eight years later divorced to marry a dancer, Nita Raya, who i later found out was Jewish which in 1939 France was a bit of a problem for the invading Germans who agreed to not murder her horribly if i agreed to play for them in Berlin. The Germans tended to get a bit shooty at the word 'No' so i agreed if they released 10 French POW's which they did and i returned to France expecting a hero's welcome but instead got death threats from the French resistance.
I moved to Hollywood and made some films where i was bizarrely asked to performing in English with a heavy fake French accent, a Frenchman speaking English in a fake French accent.
After another divorce, marriage and divorce i spent most of the 60's touring and suffering from depression which got so bad i tried to overdose on barbiturates but it didn't kill me but badly damaged my liver and kidney's and i later died after an unsuccessful kidney operation.
Life gave me lots of citron's but i took them and made limonade. I read that one on a can of French lemonade once. I like to think it applies to life.

The Lunatics Have Taken Over The Asylum In America

On the news last night they were discussing America's forthcoming law change on abortion and there was a presenter talking to the crowd at a protest march and she was desperately trying to find someone who supported it and sure enough, standing watching was a man and a woman holding a placard which said 'Abortion is Murder' so she headed towards them and asked them their thoughts on the changes which appear to be coming to America.
Within 10 seconds it showed exactly what is wrong with America in 2022, she was a religious nutter and he was holding a huge gun and i thought yep, America is truly the asylum being run by the lunatics.
She ran through the whole repertoire of Gods rules which women who had undertaken an abortion had broken which ranged from pregnancy is a gift from God to the sinful nature of these women who will fry in hell while while her husband/brother or possibly both stood silently beside her holding his heavy duty weapon and looking around just in case some crazy ant-abortion sinner came rushing towards them.  
A few thoughts crossed my mind listening to her, firstly how it is always the woman who gets the blame for an unplanned pregnancy because as far as i am aware, every person that has ever been born included the involvement of a man somewhere along the line but men seem to get a free pass over it.
Secondly, why would you bring a massive gun to a protest? I know it's America and bat-shit crazy gun laws are a thing over there but over 40,000 people die each year from gun related deaths so if you are that concerned about protecting life, sort that madness out first and thirdly do they think that introducing a law that bans abortion in half the country will result in less abortions?
Don't they realise, or care, that if access to a safe abortion is taken away from women, inevitably women will seek illegal abortions which could put their lives at risk?  
My view has always been that it is far too important and life changing decision for someone else to decide, if you don't believe in it, then fair enough, don't do it, but don't limit other women and restrict their rights to their own bodies.
It should only be the decision of the people directly involved with the help of professional advice and then be left to make their own decisions and access to all the options but mostly it is far too important a decision to have someone else remotely force the choice on them.
Many people are saying that the country has lurched too far to the right, i say not only to the right but also backwards and has been for a while now and it will soon be in the same place as the Middle Eastern  theocracies where religion is the thing that holds sway over politics and rights. 

Special Guest Blogger: Sal Mineo

Think of the movie 'Rebel Without A Cause' and you will come up with James Dean, Natalie Woods and that other guy, well i was that other guy and all three of us died young, Dean in a car accident, Woods falling off a yacht and me at the hands of a delivery person in a messed up mugging.
Rather appropriately, both my parents were coffin makers but they encouraged me to go to dancing and acting school at a very young age which made me a target of the local toughs but after a fight at school involving the leader of one the local gangs, they recruited me to join them in wreaking havoc on the streets of New York.
Weirdly this led to my acting career after one fight landed me in court, where i received an ultimatum of either juvenile detention time or enrolling in an acting school.
I got a job as an extra in The King and I on Broadway with Yul Brynner and worked my way up to one of the starring roles which got me noticed by movie directors and after a few bit parts, and with a nod towards my troubled youth, i was asked to try out for 'Plato' in the Rebel film.
Suddenly, i had a bigger profile than ever before but that wasn’t necessarily a good thing because i was openly bisexual and Bible hugging America really didn't like that as they had a strange perverted obsession with other men's sex lives back then and the Plato character quickly became known as gay and in love with James Dean’s character, in real life i adored Dean but i will never know if he felt the same because he lost his life in a car crash just weeks before the film hit theaters.
Between movies i had a short-lived second gig as a pop singer, releasing several songs and even an album and became engaged to actress Jill Haworth but that ended with a bang when she caught me in bed with another man but i had my fair share of high-profile romantic partners of both sexes.
After my self imposed acting hiatus, i was just starting to revive my career in the mid-1970s and got a role in a comedy play and moved to Los Angeles and on my way home from a rehearsal, i bumped into a delivery driver who decided to mug me and in the struggle i got stabbed through the heart.
It was put down as a result of me being gay but that's America for you, a ridiculous place where they are more comfortable seeing two men holding guns, than holding hands.

Special Guest Blogger: Francisco Pizarro

As my cousin Hernan Cortes had already conquered the mighty Aztec Empire, i was forced to go and search out something and someone else to murder and pillage and luckily, there was another empire just down the road from the Aztec's called the Inca's that had cities full of gold but was conveniently unconquered.
The Spanish king was not keen on me invading as it would result in the loss of Spanish lives but i famously drew a line on the ground with my sword and invited those of my crew who desired wealth and glory to cross it.
Thirteen did cross the line and the rest sailed back to the Spanish fleet in Panama to get reinforcements so i went to see how the ground laid with the Incan's and i did try and negotiate with Atahualpa who was the leader of the Incans but he saw my relatively small army and obviously thought 'what can he did' so i did the rational thing and kidnapped him for ransom.
The price i set was for the room Atahuallpa was being held in was to be filled with gold and not only did his people do that but they also filled a second room with silver as a bonus which put me in a bit of a predicament because if i released him he would expect to be the top banana of the Incan's again so i mumbled something about plotting to kill my brother over in the Aztec part of South America and strangled him to death, predicament solved.
One of my officers tried his hand in Chile but he came back saying there was nothing there so rather than just sit around in my luxury, he assassinated me but by then my business was done and i am written in Incan history as Pizarro the Cruel, Pizarro the Torturer and somewhat less creatively as Pizarro the White Person.

Special Guest Blogger: Shinto God Hoori

My brother Hoderi was a lazy sod, while i was out hunting and dragging back heavy great dead animals, he was sat on the river bank with his hat over his eyes and every now and then he would yank a fish out of the water so one day i suggested we do a job swap.  
All was going well until the line snapped and i lost Hoderi's favorite magic fish hook. Now Hoderi was not of a forgiving disposition and demanded i get the thing back for him and took to throwing stones at me until i agreed to dive in and try to find it.
I swam around a bit but i couldn't see the stupid hook but i did spot Toyotama-Hime, the Sea Dragon’s daughter, and she was smokin' hot.
I 'accidentally' collided into her and we got chatting and i mentioned that i was looking for my brothers magic fishing hook and she said as her father Ryujin who just happened to be the Ruler of the Sea, she'd ask him to help find it so we went back to her place but he didn't seem very helpful at first as he presumed i was just any old fisherman and he was the goddamned ruler of the sea and not a lost property officer.
I explained that i was a hunter not a fisherman and anyway, fishing was boring and i wouldn't be doing it again and he seemed okay after that, so well that he found the fish hook and then gave his blessing for me to marry his daughter and live in their palace.
Life was good, the wedding took place and Mrs Hoori was pregnant and then one day i remembered the fish hook and planned a triumphant return to see my brother and reclaim my half of the Hoori and Hoderi kingdom but Hoderi was not happy to see me and buggered off fishing so i went back to the Palace and my expectant wife.
She made me swear that i would not attempt to see her real figure which would be revealed while she was in labour but what i didn't expect was when the labour started, she turned into a monstrous dragon, i sneaked a peak and screamed in fright, she she did the same and scuttled off swiftly into the sea leaving me holding the baby.
My son grew up and married Toyotama-hime's sister, Tamayori-hime, his aunt, and they in turn had a son called Jimmu-Tenno, who grew up to be the first human Emperor of Japan which is good but still not worth going fishing for.

Thank's For The Bank Holiday Lizzie

I'm no Royalist but i will take the extra bank holiday for the Queen's 70th year anniversary as monarch, so thanks Liz and if you want to pencil in the day after as the day you pack up Buckingham Palace and end the Royal's then that would be much appreciated.   
In Britain we have 9 days when we get paid to sit at home watching TV this year but that still put's us way down the vegging in our pyjama's rather than being at work league with Myanmar having 32 and Nepal 30 opportunities to wake up midweek at midday.
A few people have mentioned that the Queen is 96 and has been ill recently so its a bit of a gamble waiting until June for the day off but we get a day off even if her clogs are popped before then but if she still with us on 3rd June, they are planning on changing the name from a Bank Holiday to a Thank Holiday where we say thank you Queenie for all she has done over the last 7 decades so thank you your majesty for allowing us to hand you hundreds of millions for you to live in one of your two Palaces or one of your three castles or two sprawling estates.
There is talk of making the 3rd June permanently a bank holiday but the grumpy Government have poo-pooed that idea straight away citing the loss of productivity as each Bank Holiday costs the economy £1.4bn but across Europe, us Brits lag far behind the rest with some European workers able to put their feet up for as many as 16 times a year. Even the workaholic Germans have 10 but the Swiss only have 5 official public holidays and any other depends upon how charitable the Government feel in any given year so that should make us feel a bit better.

Putin Following The Bush and Blair Playbook

A world power invading a country with no justification and being shocked at the resistance it received, we have been here before and it wasn't that long ago but there are many similarities between Russia going into Ukraine and America and Britain's horrendous misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan.
For Putin read Bush and Blair, two men who ignored and suppressed inconvenient information or span advice to launch devastating wars in the name of Terror, surrounded by yes men who put out propaganda to try and justify their actions, Putin said Ukraine was run by fascists, Bush/Blair said Afghanistan and Iraq were run by terrorists and in Saddam's case, were armed with nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, none of which were ever found despite Colin Powell's best attempts to show otherwise at the United Nations.
The narrative is that we should explain to the people of Russia what their Government is doing in their name and try to stop it but i was one of two million who marched against the Wars in London and our Government took no notice so why do they think Putin would and the Russian media is being hammered for supporting Putin but almost every news outlet backed Bush's and Blair's Wars in Britain despite the obvious illegality of them.    
Just like Putin, they expected a quick victory, Bush was overly keen to claim 'Mission Accomplished' but the invading troops were in Iraq for a decade, they were in Afghanistan for two decades and left both nations in a continuing worse state than they found it and killing over a million people.
Putin is being held up as a war criminal who faces a future trip to the Hague but the Bush and Blair administrations faced no serious threat of prison despite Abu Ghraib, far too many gruesome massacres, extrajudicial killings and numerous probes by the International Criminal Court of crimes committed by US and UK forces.
There are many direct parallels between the horrendous action of Russia today and what Britain and America did under Bush and Blair two decades ago and as Putin is being rightly castigated for his actions, he is following the playbook we wrote to illegally invade two nations although many don't seem to see it that way, it was us after-all but warmongering leaders are not confined to only Russia.

Awful, Awful, Awful

You have to feel sorry for the journalists who are political sketch-writers because no matter how hard they try to satirize the goings on in the Government, the Government just satirizes itself even more.
The saying is that the fish rots from the head and the fishy head of the current Government is Boris Johnson who has made a career out of bouncing one from car crash to the next, sacked as a journalist for lying, resigned as Foreign Minister but not before getting the the prison sentence of the person he was meant to be negotiating the release for extended and as Prime Minister broke his own laws and now has a shiny new police fine to show for it.
Poland is blaming him for getting their Russian gas supply cut due to him blabbering that Poland was training soldiers to fight against them but if it was just him who was blatantly inept at his job that would be bad enough, but it seems the whole of the benches sitting behind him are just as awful.
Only today the Tory MP (Massive Pervert) Neil Parish was suspended for watching porn on his mobile phone in the House of Commons and The National Crime Agency raided Tory Peer Michelle Mone's home due to her fiddling £200m in PPE contracts during the pandemic.
Last week it was announced that three of the cabinet members were under investigation for sexual misconduct and another one, Imran Ahmad Khan, was convicted of child sexual assault and that's just over the past few weeks, previously we had illegally proroguing Parliament, lying to the Queen, using the pandemic to channel billions of pounds of public funds into the pockets of their friends, Brexit, Northern Ireland, wallpapergate, cummingsgate and partygate and one of the highest Covid death tolls per capita in the world.
John Major's Government was always held up as the high water mark of corruption and sleaze but this lot make put that one to shame and unbelievably the Government are running at 31% in the current polls which is below Labour but 31% of people look at the shambles before them and say: 'You know what, i would vote for them again'. Mind blown!!

Special Guest Blogger: Le Petomane

Some people will tell you they have show-business in their blood or in their veins but mine was in my digestive tract because i was the world's most famous flatulist.
Working with hot air also played a part in my first career choice as i was a baker and my bran muffins were famous in Marseilles but that all changed one day at the beach when i took a deep breath to dive below the waves when i suddenly felt an icy chill in my abdomen. After some experimentation i found that i could suck in air through my anus and then noisily propel it again and with proper control, i could even make it tuneful.
I was conscripted into the French Army and my first audience was my fellow soldiers who loved my party piece and once my time was up i considered going back to my day job but people seemed to enjoy my talent so i began touring but i needed a name so called myself Le Petomane which is a blending of the words 'péto', meaning 'to fart' and 'mane', meaning 'maniac', literally A Fart Maniac.
After touring around a bit, i really became a star at the Moulin Rouge starring alongside the actress Sarah Bernhardt who appreciated that what i produced wasn't actually stinky methane farts but pure, although not so fresh air, i doubt if the audience would have stayed aroung too long if they were proper stinkers.
The 19th Century was a great time for acts which were really good at farting and i was propelled to the top of the entertainment world, performing for the Prince of Wales, King Leopold II of Belgium and Sigmund Freud and even had a contract clause which stated farting anywhere outside of the club constituted a breach of contract and instant dismissal.
My act was animal impressions, smoking a cigarette through a tube and playing songs and sometimes a flute or recorder, i got great at playing 'O Sole Mio' but it all went wrong when i tried to help out a friend by giving an impromptu exhibition at his market stall and the Moulin Rouge enacted the clause in my contract and fired me.
I tried to set up my own travelling show but with the outbreak of World War I, i retired from the stage and returned to my bakery job and opened a biscuit factory where i worked until i died but i was immortalised by Thomas Edison who recorded me with his new camera but sadly, there’s no sound so it's just a grainy, black and white film of a man with a flute up his butt.