Peter McFuckay and Yet More Daily Mail Polly Filler

Reading this tat in the Mail (yep, back on the strong stuff since coming back from holiday – it’s like knocking back the literary equivalent to meths after a stint going dry) and I’ve got a sore head and a bruised fist. My wall needs replastering and my neighbours are wondering what the hell is going on. Maybe I’ll get round to telling them one day I have a perverted compulsion in reading annoying ’stories’ in very annoying newspapers…

McKay, or McFucky as the Eye sometimes calls him, is one of these grossly overpaid commentators who writes for the Hate. The sort of Nigel Dumpster type character who keeps a well-leafed black book with the contacts of various glitterati and celeb types so he can do what that bitter twisted bitch Linda Lee Potter used to do for the Mail’s equally nasty bitter readers. Slag people, slag ‘em some more and when you’ve done slagging them, reminisce about the fifties for a bit, and sign off, leaving your ageing readership to look at pictures of tits, arse and camel toes dotted around the rag whilst summoning the courage to beat one off before Vera comes back in to top up the cornflakes.

McFuck takes a pot shot at Marco Pierre White for his ‘announcement’ regarding a new found love. Apparently this is impudent and vulgar and chefs of such calibre should be ‘punished’ and thrust back into their fiery dungeon kitchens. Eh? Firstly, I fail to see any remote scent of ‘impudence’ or vulgarity here. I can conjur a million examples of behaviour that fits this bill – Pierre White’s ‘announcement’ (it wouldn’t be such a fucking announcement if Mail hacks didn’t dredge such non-news up and write about it in newspapers with high circulations) doesn’t really count. Even by standards of yore.

The piece left me wondering more about what it is that TV chefs have done to offend Fucky, rather than anything said or done by this little niche section of society. To be honest, I’m not really bothered what sort of things are said by TV chefs, rude, foul or otherwise. I know my standards of conduct in this regard are a thousand light years below that of your average liberarian fundamentalist, but I actually think that people, regardless of profession, should be judged on their actions and achievements. Pierre White may be an arrogant cunt, but he’s obviously good at what he does or he wouldn’t be around. Same for Ramsay. In fact, I’ve just finished reading Gordon Ramsay’s book ‘Playing With Fire’, which is obviously riddled with swearing, but is absolutely awe inspiring and brilliantly candid. Why wank yourself up into a stupour about vulgarity when you can cut past that and see a man’s true mould and merit? I’ll possibly do a book review for ‘Playing with Fire’ in one of my next posts. Till then, back to slagging off shit annyoying Mail hacks and their pitiful excuses for national journalism.

After a few pieces of utterly boring, uninsightful garbage, McFuckFace turns his attention to the much Daily Mail – maligned ‘Rolling Stones’ (one of my favourite bands of all time) in small piece called “Jagger and Wood, growing old disgracefully”. The Fuck said: “Those of us who preferred the Rolling Stones to The Beatles in the 1960s did so because the former were outrageous while the latter sought to please parents as well as teenagers. So it has remained.”

Really? Because my understanding was that people preferred the Stones because they did different and often better music. Listen to the Stones now, they sound like a fresh band that’s just broken through with amazing jazz/blues infused rock of such immense calibre, it’ll sell millions of records in minutes. The Stones’ music is timeless, ageless, brilliant and it completely altered the musical landscape. It was pure genius, it still is, and it offered something entirely different to the Beatles’ supine, boring and now highly dated brand of pop. (At this point I am aware that when Mr Boatang reads this, I will thereafter die a Tarantino-esque death. My apologies to my fans for dying so young, but this is the price one pays for brutal honesty. Mr B…I am sorry to offend thee. But I’m no fan of the Beatles.)

To return to my original point, Peter McKay is wrong about the Stones and I do wish this moralistic agenda of the Mail would end. It’s weird. It belongs to an old guard of the ‘68-er years where society fragmented into the uber-puritanical moralists and Whitehousian church going types, and the sorts of people who went on to become the parents of my generation: spoilt, rich, free to do whatever, and the owners of annoyingly staid 3 bed semis in the burbs.

In truth, both parties have become the Mail readers and writers of today. Both out of touch, both utterly hypocritical, and both unable to grasp what has been happening to the world they have grown old in. Too busy being cunts to read, people in their 50s and 60s have singularly failed to realise that human behaviour and societal norms have exhibited remarkably similar trends through the centuries. Morality isn’t something that had a sell by date that was unjustly brought forward in the 60s by a careless shop keeper. It is not only a concept difficult to define, but get this…people were corrupt, dodgy and uncouth in various ways 100, 200, 300, 1000 years ago. Ain’t nothing new here, so why write about it?

Hacks slag people off, regardless of whether they deserve it, because we, the readership, just love to sit back and point our fucking fingers at people and say “Nurrgh, look at you, aren’t you fat / ugly / old / stupid / disgusting / wretched / immoral / promiscuous [add adjective here]“. And where there’s a market, there’s the next generation of Linda Lee Potter Polly Filler hacks to collect a pay cheque and throw a few paragraphs together for the latest bitch ‘n’ moan session. The Mail are good at this because they have chosen the biggest market. Not the best writers, fuck me, I could do their job standing on my fucking face in the bath. No, they have the market. All they have to do to make it work is get the paparazzi to file their daily saucy pics of dirty looking vixens and cellulite exposed D listers, and they’re away. Shit story + piccy = better copy that shit story on its own. Hence why the Online edition of the Mail has come to resemble Hustler minus the full pussy shots. To be fair, it’s not getting that far off it. Fairly ironic surely, given the moralistic droning of most Hate articles.

And so people like me lament, and the world goes on and tittle tattle and meaningless nonsence becomes ever more popular reading in national newspapers. It’s like the world has gone mad. Utterly insane – the sight of right wing papers lamenting dumbing down and sex and immorality and disgusting behaviour…only to exhibit it and encourage it. The Telegraph is at it, the Times, there’s no getting away. Everything has turned into Heat overnight, it’s like living in a nightmare you can’t wake from. This is what comes with getting bored at work and flicking through all the rags online…you see the British media dying on its arse slowly but surely. Every new day a victory for the paparazzi, the publishers, the media barons, all those vultures out to turn a profit.

The losers? The people. But they make themselves the losers, because if they wanted the real journalism they need to ensure a healthy society and democracy, they’d vote with their pockets and computer mice. They don’t so the market shifts and the people get the journalism they deserve rather than need: utter, utter, utter, woeful, unintelligent, completely-missing-the-point, shite.

There’s a reason why journalism has died in Britain (not to mention the States for similar reasons): there ain’t no money in good journalism. So what’s the incentive for hacks to leave the hotdog and the swivel chair and go get real news? There aint none. Excellent quality journalism doesn’t sell papers and make money. Tits, fanny, blabber mouthing and nicking stuff off news feeds is good enough. So why try harder? Plus, it’s far safer to fart around in your London office pod than it is to go do what the likes of Paul Foot and Joseph Pulitzer did. Find shit out, come what may, through hard times and tougher still.

If celebrity chefs failed to fill restaurants regardless of how good their food was, would they have made it off the starting blocks? Would they be rich, selling books and going on TV? Course not. Which is why we have the drought of good journalists, good journalism and worthy news worth gracing papers with. It’s why all the rags are seriously on the slide. There are so many online publications now, people are so in need of a quick easy fix in their insular, fast-food lives, there’s not the hunger or seemingly the need for proper news.

In a way it’s great for fuckers like me. More targets to sling custard pies at, more things to write about, more reasons to get worked up and have a go. After all, I’m no hack and I don’t pretend to be. I don’t want to be one, but I will say this: I crave the writings of a good one. Good journalism will get good write ups on B&D. Till that day, I keep my literary M16 at the ready and god fucking help those cocks in the press who provoke my ire.

Ante up, bitches!

Ciao.