As you read this I will be settling into my headphones onstage at the University of Chester preparing to take part in day-long BBC Radio Five coverage of the General Election fallout, whereto I have been summoned to provide a taste of North-east opinion on the outcome.
Frankly, loosening the fairness leash a little will come as a welcome relief. The past five weeks have been very trying.
My domino form at the Red Lion wasn’t helped by the eternal sniping from the Byreman and those bibulous old Tory farmers he hangs out with. Calling every drawn game “a hung parliament” hardly smoothed things over, either.
And my earning power was frequently reduced when the BBC, agonising over compliance with its Charter, would cancel planned studio debates because some redneck journalist of the Right had pulled out, thus destroying the careful political ’balance’ demanded by the party spin doctors armed with stopwatches.
Naturally, The Journal and its editor have been entirely, nit-pickingly fair in their approach to election coverage and I pay homage to the spirit of decency blah-blah-blah…( as you can see from the above, dear reader, my annual contract negotiation is underway).
Anyway, as I was saying, the Great Pow-wow is over, at least until we grow to hate the next lot and demand they, too, face the guillotine. I hope you’re happy this morning. I can almost certainly promise you that I’m not.
So to cheer us all up, I was going to unveil my favourite, least-politically correct election joke. But even that has been stymied.
“I think NOT, Banksy,” said The Powers That Be when I submitted my column for perusal. “Britain might still be counting the votes if the result is as tight as everyone thinks it will be.
“This so-called joke,” said t’Editor, painfully puncturing my week’s work by metaphorically consigning it to the spike, “is hardly presented in the spirit of fairness, honesty and decency.”
So I argued. I pleaded. And finally (contract negotiations being at a ticklish point), I capitulated and rewrote my political joke “snowy white“, naming no names, in the spirit of fairness (and in exchange for an extra five quid on my fee). Here goes...
Hi-ho! Hi-ho! The Seven Dwarfs left for work early each morning, leaving Snow White at home to do her housework. As lunchtime approached, she would prepare their food and carry it to the mine.
One day as she arrived at the pithead with lunch she saw that there had been a terrible cave-in. Tearful, fearing the worst, Snow White began calling out, hoping against hope that the dwarfs had somehow survived.
“Hello? Hello!” she shouted. “Can anyone hear me? Hello!”
For a long time there was no answer but just as she was giving up hope Snow White heard a faint voice from deep within the mine, singing: “Vote for Change!”
Snow White fell to her knees, sobbing and praying.
“Oh, thank you, Lord!” she wept. “At least Dopey is still alive!”
By the way, if you think that’s still a bit one-sided try the bolshie old Byreman’s definition of the word ‘bigot’: Brown Is Gone On Thursday!
POLITICAL correctness now stretches to food where kids are concerned: sell-by dates consign cases of yoghurt to the kitchen bin, day-old bread can’t even be used for toast, cheese with a rind is “off”, they insist.
Only the poverty brought on by leaving home adjusted my pair’s commonsense acceptance of the Real World, but I wonder what even they would make of the remedy for mouldy jam that I found in Marguerite Patten’s 1968 Every Day Cookbook the other day?
“Remove the mould from the jam, tip the remainder into a pan and boil hard…use VERY quickly!”
First published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne, May 7, 2010
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