MARK LITTLE

FROM THE SPORTS DESK

IN NOVEMBER 2010 MARK WAS ASKED TO WRITE A WEEKLY COLUMN FOR THE DAILY SPORT. EVERY FRIDAY HE PRODUCED THE FOLLOWING. MARK'S FINAL COLUMN WAS PUBLISHED ON APRIL FOOL'S DAY 2011, THE SAME DAY THE DAILY SPORT WENT INTO RECEIVERSHIP. MARK WAS NOT PAID FOR ANY OF HIS COLUMNS PUBLISHED IN 2011. THEY ARE POSTED HERE.........

Mark Little’s Cooee From the Bush

1/4/2011

Mayhem

The same way light from distant stars takes years to reach our planet. News from earth travels slowly to Australia. Imagine my confusion when I finally glimpsed news from London and all I see are masked angry people smashing it up. I rub my eyes and wonder. Is this London 30 years ago? 100 years ago? 250? I am amazed Comrades. Because those of you who follow my column know that in a Mayan calendar, ‘end of the world’ sort of way, I predicted these very same events in these very pages! I can only imagine that King Dick, David Cameron has continued with his public sectors cuts in an attempt to bulldoze the poor and helpless into the landfill of history. Have the ‘book burnings’ begun? The news footage of London events here was very short. All I have seen are snippets of a huge march with everyone wearing pink and purple. Did I see right? At first I thought I was watching some sort of gay pride march that had got a bit out of control. When the ‘girls in black’ had got a bit sniffy about an iffy coffee from Starbucks. I soon realized this was more than pedantic homosexuality as to what is a real macchiato love. This was serious. Before I left Blighty for my Australian Art Expedition it was obvious the cauldron of discontent was bubbling. That come summer the UK would erupt in protest at the scum that have greedily grabbed power and run with it like a pit-bull with a kid in its mouth. Savage and wrong! It seems that the Cameron/Clegg coalition need to be stopped. Even from this distance the scenes of protest, riot, destruction and dissent have made me feel well homesick. And I can’t wait to get back to ‘The Summer of Hate 2011’. I know it’s not the anarchists I will fear when I get home. It’s ‘King Dick’, ‘Cleggy the Jester’ and the ‘Council of Idiots’, that me quake.

Cooee Ode to Ricky

Farewell to you Ricky

You little Aussie Beaut

In your heyday you were tricky

Now Fuck Off in your Ute

For years you were a cricket God

From South Africa to Delhi

But now all you’ll be famous for

Is smashing that Fucking Telly!

Cooee Attacked

Australia lives up to it’s reputation for bugs and things. From blowies (flies) to mozzies (mosquito’s), Oz has the lot. Bear Grylls would end up as fat as Ray Mears with the amount of bugs here. Sydney however, boasts it’s own special plague. Cockroaches. Sydney loves a cockroach. If you’ve been here, you’ve seen ‘em. They should be on the Aussie Coat of Arms. The Kangaroo, the emu and the cockroach. Huge bloody things. I was chased around the yard the other night by one that was the size of a small dog. It bloody came at me and chased me. I had to kill it with my thong. It fed four of us. Beware the Sydney cockroach.

Cooee Nude Australia Day

Today all Australian’s get their kit off to celebrate the third Nude Australia Day. ‘Nude to work. Nude to play’ is motto of the day. In Sydney people will be climbing the Harbour Bridge nude. On the ferry, nude. Nude Nicole Kidman will cut the ribbon to start a nude walk over the bridge and a nude Australian Cricket team will take on a Nude Prime Ministers Eleven in Michael Clarks first game as Nude Captain at the SCG. Bondi Beach will be nude all weekend. That’s where I’m setting up camp. I love Nude Australia Day.

Cooee Getting Down with the Peasantry

Another piece of vital Royal news has trickled to the colonies as well. Prince Bill and Princess Kate will have two wedding cakes. Typical Royal carry on. Kate gets the fancy one done by the famous cake woman and William wants his favourite McVities cake. I’d never heard of a McVities cake but then we cut to the McVities bakery and I see all these digestives, a shit load of crushed digestives, a truck load of chocalate shovelled into a mould and out popped this tractor tyre of a McVities cake. It looked dense and dangerous. Like it would destroy a small city if it were dropped from a height. Tasty. So William gets down with the peasantry with his wedding cake. The Royal Family is reinventing itself. To be just like us! It’s a joke that certainly makes me laugh Comrades.

Mark Little’s Cooee from the Aussie Bush

25/3/2011

Cooee Woolloomooloo!

A Woolloomooloo man has been charged with the assault of his girlfriend, also from Woolloomooloo. Woolloomooloo District Council heard how the Woolloomooloo man in his defence claimed ‘he was pruning his flowers with a bowie knife’ when the argument occurred. Woolloomooloo police have declined to comment. Serious incidents are said to be on the decline in Woolloomooloo however. This story is quite irrelevant and only an excuse to see how many times I can fit Woolloomooloo into one short story. There will also be a prize of 100 Euros for anyone who can pronounce Woolloomooloo with a mouthful of bacon bap. Till then, that’s all from Woolloomooloo.

Cooee Fat Bastard

No wonder Australians are the second fattest nation on Earth to America. The food is so good. The rain has stopped ant the sun has come out again and just to make you feel right jealous we are firing up the barby for breakfast, lunch and tea. Pucker. Aussie produce is excellent. Steak is affordable and sweet little Sydney rock oysters work out to around £6 for two dozen. Yep! I’ve been on an intensive steak and oyster diet since I arrived. I haven’t worn a shirt or shoes since I left Brighton. As I have said, the Aussies are feeling the cold with the mercury dropping to a chilling 22 degrees C. The locals have all taken to wearing their Ugg boots and hoodies. Ugg boots of course were once footwear worn only by the ‘Boganista’ The Westie yob! To see ugg boots as fashion in Knightsbridge and Europe is a joke. Kate Moss would not look out of place on Penrith High Street in her uggs although she might get a slap for taking the piss. Anyway it’s been twenty minutes. Time to fire up the barby again. It’s oyster time. I’m trying to watch me weight but it’s bloody hard. Give me six months here though and I could end up as a Channel 5 documentary. ‘And here we see the local fire brigade taking Mark to the toilet. He was just that one dozen oysters over the line’!

Cooee Who’s flying this thing?

A huge hoo ha has erupted over here about who is or who is not flying the fucking plane. On all Qantas flights at the moment, internal and external, when it comes to the safety announcement, who should pop up but John Fucking Travolta. And it has everyone pissed off. There he is with that big fat insincere grin dressed up like that Johnny Car Robot in ‘Total Recall’. I hate flying and I shat myself for a second, because I thought he was flying the fucking thing. I had to be restrained by two flight attendants with a tazar until I was convinced it was just a publicity stunt. After one hostie (flight attendant) stopped beating me with here shoe she explained that the Hostie Union were upset that such a fake should be representing them. They think it should be a real pilot like the bloke who ditched in the Hudson River (New York). I could appreciate their anger. I was just glad he wasn’t flying the fucking thing. He’s quite obviously mad.

Cooee What the fuck is going on?

I don’t know how long I’ve been away but it feels like years. Like I’ve been dropped down a Libyan hell hole and forgotten. Not much news from the rest of the world here. I can only presume you are all still there. Speaking of Libya, are we at war with them? It’s hard to know from here with the Rugby League season in full swing. I have seen David Cameron’s putrid little face on the telly a couple of times so I can only presume something is going on. Has Nick Clegg topped himself yet? That was always inevitable. And what the fuck is going on in Japan? It doesn’t look good. We get snippets here between Netball results. I can only imagine the Daily Sports coverage is more comprehensive and that’s saying something. Is the water still safe to drink in Sussex? That’s all I want to know.

Cooee It’s tough

It’s a tough old area where we are staying. Penrith. And I’m really enjoying it. Not really the bush and not really the city. A sort of no mans land of existence. The real Australia. No tourist frills here. You have to be careful who you look sideways at here if you don’t want a screwdriver stuck in ya neck. A bit like Leeds. They had a Penrith fun day last weekend. We risked it and went for a look. There was a firetruck and a fiberglass panther ride for the kiddies, courtesy of the Penrith Panther Rugby League Football Team. Luckily the Australian Tae Kwon Doh team were there. About two dozen Korean, Japanese, Chinese Aussies who could kill you with their bare thongs. We followed them around. Just smiling and nodding pretending we were part of the team. It was a fun day and no injuries. My head’s still a little sore from smashing that breezeblock though. A small price to pay for a beaut day.

Mark Little’s Cooee from the Bush

18/3/2011

Cooee! Scorcher

Went to the first game of the National Rugby League season at the weekend. Centerbet Stadium in Penrith saw the opening clash between the mighty Penrith Panthers v the Newcastle Knights. It was a vicious, hot and sticky 35 degrees. Hot enough to melt ya thongs (flip flops). The Panthers were pretty confident as half the Newcastle Knights squad were out, pending an investigation into drugs dealing. (A big problem across the whole NRL allegedly) Australia is gripped by an addiction to stimulants. Apart from coffee another favourite is a drug called ICE. (crystal meth) Aussie crack. And it’s made it’s way on to the sporting field. One can only hope Ricky Ponting and the lads get stuck into some hardcore ICE treatment leading up to the World Cup Finals. Meanwhile back at the footy it was fucking hot. Even the Samoan players on both sides were feelin’ it. Statistics show that 43% of the NRL are of Samoan descent. They are big lads and hard to stop. But they were all feelin’ the heat on Sunday. It soon became painfully obvious though that the Newcastle Samoans were coping better than the Penrith Samoans. It was a massacre. 46 – 8 in the end. Penrith went down hard in a Newcastle upset. The Panther’s cheer squad could have done a better job. Certainly by the end of the game, most of the crowd were watching them than the footy. The pies were good. The beer was cold but the game was hot and disappointing for the locals as they trudged a scorching dejected way home. No doubt, to stick their heads in a bucket of ICE. It was a scorcher.

Cooee! Royal Barby

The word is out that future King William is in OZ prior to his wedding. He is visiting Queensland at the weekend which has been renamed Princeland for the visit. The hunt has been on for a ‘royal sausage’ to feed the Prince at a special barbeque in aid of Queensland flood victims. The contents of the banger are being kept secret until the big day in an operation being dubbed ‘Hide The Royal Sausage’. No doubt young William can’t wait. To hide the royal sausage that is.

Cooee! Too many rules

Bloody hell. It’s going to take me a couple of months when I get home to Blighty to get over being told what to do every second of the day. There are so many rules and regulations and signs and people telling you what to do and what not to do, it is mind-numbing. There are twenty three million people in Australia and sixteen million of them are security guards. The roads are spanned by huge banners ‘Look Out, People About’. I must admit, in this regard, Aussie drivers do need to be told. They do want to kill you. Beware being a pedestrian in Oz. There you go. I’ve caught the bug. Telling you what to do. Where to stand? Where to park? Where to smoke? Be assured in Oz, there’s someone around who’ll happily tell you what to do.

Cooee! Temperature Drop

It’s been a wet week in Sydney since the boiling hot weekend. Temperatures have plummeted to a 23 degree low. Bugger. It’s like a Brighton summer. A really good one. I’m still in shorts and thongs (flip flops) and the locals have dragged out their cardigans. So, I’m rained in at the moment. I’ve given up on the telly so I’ve been giving the radio a go. Bloody heck, it’s very hard to get a radio station that’s not 70’s classic or Talk Back. So many Aussies whingeing on the radio it beggars belief. I never thought I’d ever long to hear Colin Murray’s voice on Radio 1. But I am. Things are desperate. The only contemporary music I can get is American Gangster Rap. Not that I want to turn into one of the ten million Aussie whingers but if this goes on much longer, I will go motherfuckin’ crazy. Word up!

Cooee! Aussie KKK

A former Ku Klux Klan Imperial Dragon who has left the order and found another God, is touring Australia. He has told the press here that ‘the racism in Australia matches that of the deep south of America’. I think he might be right. In the town of Moree, the local council has banned swimming in the river. The swimming pool costs $6.50 to attend. One of the most expensive local pools in the state. With a healthy population of original Australians (Australian Aboriginals) in Morree, the council has basically made swimming in this dreadful heat unaffordable to many, or illegal. It’s just not right.

Mark Little’s Cooee from the Aussie bush

11/3/2011

Not Censored!

Everything I send back to you is being cleared by the Australian Censors. I’ve had no trouble and don’t expect any. Needless to say ------------------------------------------------------------------- but you probably already knew that. I’ve only had one moment of grief. I told a bloke I was from Brighton, England --------------------------------blood----------------------Accident and Emergency-----------------------------and that was at Sydney’s Gay Mardi Gras at the weekend. I’m much better now. So I’m cool, as long as I don’t mention ---------------and ---------------------the censors are leaving me alone. Australia. The Land of the -----.

Gone Bush

The holidays are over and the work begins. I’ve moved from Bondi Beach to a far western suburb at the foot of the Blue Mountains about 25 miles out of Sydney called Penrith. It’s in the bush. The home of the Westy. The Bogan. Yes! The Super Chav. True Convict stock. It’s also the home of Penrith Panthers Rugby League Club. It’s a notoriously ‘hard’ part of Australia. The local nightclub is called ‘PHRICTION’ to give you some idea. I’m here to do a play based on an old Oz radio serial of the thirties called ‘Dad and Dave’, a pair of right rural bush wackers. It’s gunna be a good play. Designed to bring culture to the Aussie suburbs. Yes, alright you can stop your sniggering right now. I’m also working on an art project at the local high school with The Missus. Based on poetry and photography and by crikey the poor little buggers need something. Apart from the Penrith Leagues Club, The Trots (Penrith Paceway), and the Joan Sutherland Performing Arts Centre, there’s not much else to do. Except fight of course. Went to The Trots on Wednesday and all four of us who were watchin’ had a good night. The rest of the crowd were in the clubhouse playing the poker machines and getting

‘blind’(drunk). I lost the shirt off my back. It was a beaut night. We went over to the Leagues Club at the weekend and had a coupla beers while the cage fighting played on the big screen and the DJ whacked off some Abba remixes. ‘No thongs or singlets after 8 O Clock’. It was right posh. I’m stayin’ out of trouble though. I bought myself a nice old suit from the Salvation Army and that has them all well confused. They think I’m either mad or important and they’re leaving me alone. Bullshit baffles brains. All this said, it’s great to be back in the bush. The smell of eucalyptus and some heat! Being woken every morning by flocks of cockatoos that sound like a million grandmothers flying overhead telling you to get out of bed. I’m lovin’ it. You can’t beat a bit of Aussie bush!

Turned Off

I finally got to see some cricket. Channel 9 decided to telecast the Australia v Sri Lanka game. You know it. The bloody thing was rained off. I give up. I managed to chase down the England v Ireland score too. We may as well all fucking give up. The way South Africa are playing this might be a good tournament to miss. I’ll tell you this for nothin’. Aussie telly is so crook (bad), it makes a person want to give up on life altogether. One of the top rating TV shows is Antiques Roadshow, circa 2008 with ad breaks. Fucking terrible. The presenters who front the morning TV shows here are either smug, arrogant, completely gormless or just plain dumb. Now I understand this can be a pre-requisite for morning TV presenters but these Aussie buggers make Adrian Chiles look like he has charisma. And brains. No mean feat.

One thing in OZ TV’s favour though… do you remember that sniveling, ranting little Thatcher fucker Ben Elton? When I arrived here, he was launching his new show ‘Ben Elton Live’. His big fat, ego-filled head was plastered on buses and billboards for weeks leading up to his launch. The show was so shit, so unfunny, it was axed after 3 episodes. Now that is funny Ben. Aussie telly is so bad, I’d rather go down to Phriction and get beat up by a pack of bikies. I’ve turned Aussie telly off. Or should I say, it’s turned me off!

Drive-In Movie Review

I’ve left myself 100 words or less to do my first ever movie review and it’s a 2 for 1 deal. I saw both films at a Drive-In in Blacktown. Sydney’s last working Drive-In. Like a museum piece! Drive up to a 60’s style multi-bulbed ticket box. Two films for $10. Bargain. Matt Damon’s new one ‘The Adjustment Bereau’ and something called ‘Scrotum’ by James Cameron or something. (More on that later). Drive onto the hump, lights off, attach a tiny, tinny speaker to ya window. Get popcorn from the kiosk. Sit back. Enjoy. They were both shit. ‘The Adjustment Bureau’ was like a New Age, kids movie. A shocker. Don’t bother. I’ve seen a bloke do better special effects with a box of matches. Emily Blunt was worth the $10 though. She had a very sexy pout. I couldn’t work out if her top lip was botoxed or if it just did that. Having said that, Matt Damon looks like his whole head is botoxed. It was hard to get perspective. Especially on a 100 foot screen. I’m giving Emily the benefit of the doubt. The second movie ‘Scrotum’ (Sanctum) was dismal. About a bunch of Aussie cunts, I mean cavers, stuck in a wet hole. It was like an episode of Neighbours underwater. A group of idiots trapped in a Eurodisney water park. Don’t bother. 2 stinkers for $10 though. Lovin’ it. They were the best bad movies I’ve enjoyed for ages. Only at the Drive-In!

Mark Little’s ‘COOEE’ from the Aussie bush!

4/3/2011

Cooee! Expensive!

Australia is bloody expensive. The days of 3 dollars to the pound are long gone. Not only is the exchange rate crook, everything is hiked up. Real Estate, milk, the Manly ferry and now, due to the extensive flood and cyclone damage, fruit and vegetable prices have soared. You won’t get much change from $50 for a pineapple and a bunch of bananas now days. What hurts most though, as a smoker, is the cost of a packet of fags! A packet of Winfields, the Aussie working class favourite will set you back $19. That’s just over £10 a packet. Bugger. Smokers are treated like lepers here too. I’m writing this from a small bared-wire compound and as I stare down at my treasured packet of ‘durries’ all I can see is a huge photo of some cancerous bloke trying to put me off. I’ve noticed this happening to British fags as well. Pictures of cancerous mouths, rotten hearts and lungs and the one on my current packet (you may have seen it) is the bloke that looks like Nick Cave with a sirloin steak strapped to his neck. Not pretty. It might be time to start cutting down. Not only can’t I afford it but who wants to end up looking like Nick Cave with a steak strapped to his neck. Not me.

Cooee! Beaver Fever

Mel Gibson, that famous Aussie American Scotsman or whatever, is about to release a film in Oz called Beaver Fever. I am not making this up. It’s about a depressed man who forms a relationship with a beaver glove puppet. The film production company Icon has squashed rumours that the film should go straight to DVD promising an Oz cinema release soon. Personally I believe the days when people long to see a movie featuring Mel Gibson with his hand up a beaver are long gone. We’ll see.

Cooee! Upside Downunder

The old joke about everything down under being upside down and round about face is no joke. It’s fact. Every newspaper I’ve picked up has sport on the front page and news on the back. Even during the NZ earthquake crisis, there has been news about Rugby League or Aussie Rules pre-season trials and tribulations on the front page. Fair dinkum. I went to an art gallery the other day and the exhibition was called NO 1 FAN. It was a rugby league exhibition. Fair dinkum. Memorabilia from fans and their banners! No joke. Giant screens were playing classic grand finals from the 80’s and 90’s. There was also a video exhibition of the ten best moments in rugby league. From Grant Kenny’s dummy pass to clinch a grand final for Parramatta to a double chip kick by Bobby Fulton from Manly to the largest on field brawl between all players from Newtown and Manly that lasted about ten minutes. Brilliant! Now that’s art. Well it is down under. If you’ve got rugby league mates visiting Sydney over the next month tell them to get out to the Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre in Liverpool. The rugby league exhibition. It’s a beauty.

Cooee! Pissed Off

Bugger. The apartment my work mob have put me up in doesn’t have cable TV which means I don’t get FOXTEL (the Aussie Sky Sports) which means I’m missing the fucking cricket. Shitter! This is the first World Cup Cricket Tournament I’ve missed since…..ever. And it hurts. I think Australia are doin’ okay but I can’t get any news about the English lads. I presume they cruised past Canada, putting behind them the wobble of the Aussie One Day Series debacle but I just don’t know. As a matter of fact it is impossible to get any news about the UK from the Aussie media whatsoever. Except the Royal Fucking Wedding of course. But that’s it. It’s like the UK doesn’t exist. I think Aussies still harbour a deep resentment and embarrassment that modern Australia is a nation built on the back of English convicts. Aussies align themselves much more to America nowadays. At least the Americans had a revolution and kicked the English out. The Aussies still have the British flag plastered all over their own and give a fuck about what Kate’s wearing to her bloody wedding. Weird. Complete denial. Anyway I’m just whingeing. I’m just grumpy because I’m missing the bloody cricket. As long as South Africa are doing shit, I don’t mind. C’mon Oz, C’mon England, C’mon Canada. Anybody but bloody South Africa.

PS I missed the England V India game. The best game of one day cricket ever. Fuck it. I tried three pubs and they hadn’t even thought of watching an England game. They were all watching the Netball. Bastards. I am not happy.

PPS Who knows what’ll happen against Ireland? I’ll never know.

Cooee! A Short History of the Thong

Apart from the ‘Budgie Smuglers’ another important part of the Aussie national costume is the thong. Invented by New Zealander Morris Yock in the 1950’s, they were originally patented as the Jandal (Japanese sandal). They soon made their way across the Tasman and the rubber thong was taken up by an Australian company called Dunlop. They were then popularized by the Australian swim team who wore them at the 1956 Olympics. Since then they flourished and Aussies wear them everywhere. I’ve got a collection already. They are cheap footwear. I have my yard thong, for mowing the lawn and stuff. My casual thong for the beach or the pool andmy dress thong for going out to restaurants and important functions. Well there it is. A brief history of the thong. Here’s a photograph of some locals enjoying their thongs.

Mark Little’s ‘COOEE’ from the Aussie bush!

25/2/2011

Cooee! Bikini Paradise…

I arrive in Sydney and it’s bloody hot. Stinking hot and humid. Like walking around in a vat of boiling water. Fucking hot. Luckily I’ve got a mate who lives in Bondi only 100 yards from the beach. Sorted. Bondi Beach is mind-blowing. Acres and acres of talcum powder white soft sand and acres and acres of flesh. Since I was here last, swimwear has got smaller and smaller till they practically don’t exist. It’s hard to know where to look but no-one minds where you look. It would be rude not to it seems! Bugger my mates flat. I’m currently living on the beach.

Cooee! A Carnival of Coppers

The weekend saw thousands of Sydney siders sprawled, semi-naked on Bondi Beach escaping the 35C degree heat. Even the coppers were in on the act. I stumbled onto a dozen of them on the main drag at Bondi in their fancy Police costumes, flouro yellow vests, smiling, waving and stoppin’ cars to say G’day. They had a little caravan set-up complete with awning and a very pretty Harley Davidson Police motor bike parked next to it. I thought it was New South Wales Police Open Day. I went up for a closer look at their display. Open, were all these little trays with small packets labelled ‘DRUGWIPE’. Whoops. This was no ‘fun fair’. This was a random Police check. The penny dropped. Coppers were pulling on rubber gloves, ripping open these little packets, sticking their hands in motorists gobs and swabbing for drugs. ‘DRUGWIPE’. Arse-wipe more like. Before I had time to run, I was accosted by a burley Aussie Police mountain. It was his Harley. I stood my ground. ‘Move on please sir’ he ordered. I stayed stood. ‘Why, what’s going on here?’ I foolishly blurted out. He informed me it was a random driver alcohol and drug testing station, all the while giving me the impression he would rather beat me to a pulp than answer any more questions. I pushed my luck. ‘How do you test for drugs’ I naively asked. ‘We swab the motorist for a saliva sample’ he spat, very annoyed now. I decided to push the envelope. ‘Is that legal’ I asked. This really threw him. He seemed very confused and agitated for at least ten seconds and finally answered ‘I’m sorry sir, I don’t understand the question’, reaching for his gun. I scurried off wondering why he didn’t just say ‘yes of course it’s legal’. Either he didn’t know or swabbing is highly illegal. What should be illegal is someone that stupid sticking their dirty mitt in your gob. On hygienic grounds at least. Bugger it. Too hot to think! Time for another swim. Here’s to Oz. The land of sun, sea, surf, flesh and the friendly face of fascism.

Cooee! Addicts

There was a time when the national drink of Oz was beer. No more. The Aussie national drink is now coffee and lots of it. Bloody strong coffee too. It would kill a horse or at least help it win the Grand National. There was a time when Oz was a tea drinking nation. Laid back and relaxed. Now it’s coffee, coffee, coffee. Go, go, go. No wonder they drive like maniacs and jog everywhere. I wrote this column on 3 coffees and it took two and a half minutes. I’m now going to throw on the ‘budgie smugglers’ and swim to Tasmania and back. Before lunch.

Cooee! Budgie Smugglers

Invented by a Scotsman in 1829, the accepted attire of the Sydney male is ‘Speedos’ swimwear or ‘Budgie Smugglers’ as they are affectionately called. Blokes wear them swimming, to work, weddings and funerals. Wherever you look there’s someone smuggling a budgie somewhere. I had to buy a pair to blend in. If it’s good enough for Thorpey, it’s good enough for me. ‘What size are you mate?’ asked the woman in the shop. A difficult question. She said ‘They range in size mate. There’s one, two or three budgies to smuggle, parrot, cockatoo and for the larger gentleman, a pair of emu’s.’ ‘Just the one budgie’ I reply, adding ‘it’s a very well fed budgie though’.

For those not familiar with Australian birdlife, just imagine a ‘hamster in a hammock’. I am now a proud owner.

Cooee! Anzac Unity

I start work next week so it’s not all beer and skittles for me over here. Sadly though my Bondi break has been shattered by the news of the earthquake in Christchurch New Zealand. There is a strong rivalry between the Aussies and the Kiwi’s. They hate us and we don’t give a fuck about them. However, the disastrous earthquake there has rekindled the ANZAC spirit. It’s hands across the water as old rivalries are put aside as Australian sympathies, condolences and support go out to our neighbours across the Tasman. It’s a shame that it takes disaster to truly bring people together but that’s what’s happened. All the best New Zealand at this terrible time. It has given Aussies pause for thought as we remember the true meaning of the ANZAC spirit and true friendship.

Mark Little’s ‘COOEE’ from the Aussie bush!

25/2/2011

Cooee! Bugger It

I’m buggered. Not literally. ‘Buggered’ in Australian means tired. In fact ‘buggered’ in Australia means many things. ‘Bugger’ seems to be the most common word in the Australian language right now. ‘Bugger this’. ‘Bugger that’. ‘Bugger everything’. ‘Silly bugger’. ‘Mad bugger’. ‘Dangerous bugger’. ‘Bugger’ is used in almost every sentence. ‘Would you like fries with that you bugger’? ‘No, bugger it’. It’s rife. Ricky Ponting is ‘buggered’. The Oz cricket team are ‘buggered’. The economy is ‘buggered’ and ‘buggered’ if I know. I don’t know where it comes from. Maybe it was a convict thing. Poor buggers.

Cooee! Dannii Minogue Spotted

Melbourne. Day 1. Overcast. No sun. Fuck. I drag myself down to the Yarra River. It’s a brown little gully more like. Dubbed ‘the river that runs upside down’. With all the mud on top. They’re right. You could plough the fucking thing. Then I see Dannii Minogue on the far bank and she walks across the Yarra. Right across the top. She doesn’t make a dent. Jesus Christ! I’m hallucinating. I then realize that even with the sun behind cloud, two layers of my face have peeled off. I strap my nose back on with my shoelace and drag myself back to the hotel. I take the bridge. I need to buy a hat.

Cooee! Exclusive Barefoot Interview with Victorian Premier!

By it’s very definition, jet lag is a bugger. Everything lags behind. Your eyes arrive in Australia but your brain and body are still havin’ eggs and chips in Brighton. The sun is supposed to be good for jet lag but there hasn’t been much in Melbourne yet. The weather is not right. ‘No real summer’ they say. (sound familiar?) When the sun does finally appear it would kill a brown dog. I ventured outside looking and feeling like someone who had been thrown from a jumbo jet at 30,000 feet. I felt shit. It was in this state I managed to get an exclusive barefoot interview with the new conservative

Premier of Victoria. I had found a park and crashed in the sun. Shirt open, shoes off. Passers by kept poking me with a stick to see if I was alive. I eventually woke up to this Vietnamese guy shouting’ You will burn. You will get cancer. Are you English?’ He was right. I was on the verge of igniting. I lied. I said ‘Yes’. This seemed to make sense to him and he want on his way. Now semi-compus I spy a media scrum clamouring all over someone in front of what I learn to be the new Treasury building. I make a beeline. I am here representing the British press. I must get the story. I stumble across. Shirt open. Barefoot. Looking like someone has beaten me with a cricket bat from the inside. It becomes obvious, almost too late, that this was someone important as he was fringed by two secret service body guard type blokes hovering like they were in a movie. I approached across a hot concourse. Jet lagged, it took a while to sink in how hot my feet were. Too late. The SS guys spotted me. They made a pincer type move with me as their focus. We all had sunglasses on. None of us knew where we were looking. I dared not move. My feet were sizzling. I nearly yelled out ‘Mark Little, Daily Sport, London, just two questions. ‘How long have you parted your hair like that and how fucking tall are you mate’. But that would have been asking for trouble. I had to move my burning feet. I did slowly and without threat. The SS guys moved again. I must have looked like a crazed Travis Bickle standing on that hot concrete. They dared not attack. I look deranged. All of a sudden the press conference was over and the SS guys didn’t shoot me. I asked a journo who it was. ‘The new conservative Premier of Victoria.’ ‘Is he doing a good job’ I ask. ‘ So so’ says the journo. ‘Is he popular?’ ‘So so’ says the journo. ‘What’s his name?’ ‘Ted Baillieu’ says the journo. Done. I may never play the violin with my feet again. But I got the story.

Cooee! Watch out for the Crocs

I arrive at Melbourne Tullamarine Airport and as you get off the plane and head towards Customs there is huge life-size photograph on the wall of the biggest crocodile ever caught in Oz. Measuring 8.1 meters. Bloody hell. It was huge. Like it could swallow a whole mini bus of German tourists in one bite. There’s been so much rain about over here, the crocs are on the streets. I’ve only seen one. The conductor was wrestling a baby six footer on the tram. Not really dangerous. More entertaining than anything else. Note to self. Keep your eyes open or the wildlife in Oz is gonna get ya.

Cooee! World Cup in a Spin

It looks like the Indians have prepared a spinning wicket for the cricket World Cup. Ricky Ponting is whingeing. Graeme Smith is whingeing. Obviously they both have a pace attack in place. This bodes will for the Poms. I don’t want to put the mockers on him but this could be Swanny’s chance to shine. Graham Swann seems to have been dormant over the Ashes and One Day Series in Oz. We shall see. There could be a lot of surprises in this tournament and Swanny could be one of them.

Mark Little’s Shocks of the Week

18/2/2011

SHOCK!! Australia Evacuated

With half the country underwater and the other half on fire, authorities are planning to evacuate Australia to New Zealand over the next couple of weeks. A sophisticated action plan is now in place which has already seen thousands of Aussie’s on surfboards, belly boards, canoes and lilo’s paddling across the Tasman sea to take refuge in NZ. Three million Aussies have already been welcomed onto the South Island. The north island of New Zealand has been less cooperative. Ugly scenes have been witnessed off the coast of Auckland where a boatload of Australian Flood Refugees, refused entry into New Zealand waters, sank in high seas. New Zealanders were seen beating Aussie survivors with sticks to prevent them coming ashore.

I have been contacted by the Aussie Prime Minister and asked to return to Australia as soon as possible to assist in the crisis. I speak fluent New Zealand, so my services will be invaluable as I help coordinate the evacuation effort. There is still a huge cleanup operation to help with as well. There are still sharks on the Brisbane High St and the outskirts of Perth are littered with unexploded koala’s. As everyone knows the most terrifying moments of any bushfire is the sound of exploding bloody koala’s. With the amount of eucalyptus oil koala’s consume tourists are advised to stand well away from the little buggers at the height of summer as they can ‘go up like a bloody Chechen rebel’.

Next week I will be reporting from OZ. Keeping you up to date with the latest from the bush. Both wet and dry. These are dangerous times. So stay up to date with my movements only in the Daily Sport.

SHOCK!! Top Gears Mexican Challenge

Here’s the pitch. Jeremy Fathead, Richard Thingo and the boring bloke are dropped in the middle of Mexico City. Naked! Clarkson has a wheel barrow, Hammond is on a bike and May is driving a Volvo. Each has 100KG of high-grade cocaine to deliver. They are set a route through some of the toughest areas of Mexico. Clarkson is even given the task of running naked through a Mexican prison. Hilarious. Just for a laugh, all Top Gear presenters have their favourite Mexican joke tattooed on their bare backs. And….Go! The one with the least bullet holes wins.

SHOCK!! Not Welcome

As an Aussie, a foreigner, who has decided to make Britain his home, David Cameron’s comments on the failure of multiculturalism at the start of the week have made me feel right welcome. Like the proverbial ‘turd in the swimming pool’. Twenty years I’ve lived here. Paying taxes, bailing out banks, standing politely in queues, putting up with shit weather, shit politicians and a suspect yet promising football team. Like a true Brit I endeavor to keep my pecker up. I try to retain my sense of humour. The most British trait of all! Havin’ a laugh and takin’ the piss! Maybe I’ve misread the PM here. As a ‘foreigner’ have I missed some deep irony here? Is Cameron taking the piss? He must be. The diversity of British life is what makes it great. Any trouble that brews is economic. When people don’t have jobs they will turn on each other. Give the working class work and they will be happy. Poverty, not multiculturalism breeds discontent. This must be an attempt at humour on the PM’s part. If not, I will seriously begin to doubt ‘David Cameron’s Britishness’ in all this.

SHOCK!! Meryl’s unlikely hero

Meryl Streep has revealed photo’s of here new film role. Streep says ‘it is an honour to play one of the toughest women in British history.’ Streep has fought off stiff competition to score the role of the ‘cast-iron lady’ from Northampton. ‘From the moment I saw Grandmother Ann lay into the jewel thieves with here handbag, I knew I wanted this role’ Streep says. ‘It is one of the bravest things I have ever seen’. Rumours that Streep was to play Margaret Thatcher in a new movie have been scoffed at by Streep. ‘Margaret Thatcher was indeed a tough woman and a deeply complex character, however nothing can match the heroics of ‘Super Gran’, Ann Timpson and the way she foiled a brutal robbery with just her handbag. It was indeed a superhuman effort’ Streep gushed. Super Gran 3D is released this Easter. Streep is tipped for an Oscar 2012.

SHOCK!! Top Ga Ga

Here’s another Top Gear idea. Get rid of the three silly buggers altogether and replace them with Lady Ga Ga. In her first episode she could road test skateboards in the nude. I know, I’ve gone mad. Top Gear will never change. The silly buggers will always be there and Lady Ga Ga nude with a skateboard is something we are never likely to see.

Mark Little’s Shocks of the Week

11/2/2011

SHOCK!! Charlie Sheen’s False Brain

Allegedly, Charlie Sheen has done so much Gak his porcelain teeth are falling out. Fuck! He’s already lost his real teeth now his falsies have given up the ghost. He’s told anyone who’s listening that he’s ‘going to get a set of gold teeth screwed into his skull’. Don’t panic! He won’t feel a thing. Charlie’s original brain fell out three years ago and his brain cavity was filled with Styrofoam balls from one of P Diddy’s old bean bags. However, after a scuffle with a photographer in 2009, Sheens head split open and fucking Styrofoam balls went fucking everywhere. Charlie’s brain was again replaced. This time with insulation foam squirted up his nostrils with an industrial hose. A procedure Charlie loved. Insiders say ‘The foam works much better than the original brain ever did’. Ladbrokes are taking bets on which part of Charlie Sheen drops off next.

SHOCK!! Walk like an Egyptian

In Cairo this week, proud, angry and in their bloody thousands they walked like Egyptians all right. Straight up to Mubarak HQ and set fire to it. Walk like a bloody Egyptian indeed. Walk like a million Egyptians and force a monumental change. Just goes to show doesn’t it comrades. People Power has forced the Cairo police to fuck off and flee in a manoeuvre codenamed ‘Run like an Egyptian’. What a momentous, historical week in Cairo and for the life of me I can’t get that silly bloody tune out Of my head. Like a revolutionary anthem. Sing-a-long comrades, ‘Walk like an Egyptian’. WTTT QR QR

SHOCK!! Murray Changes Name

At a rushed ceremony in Melbourne Andy Murray has had his name changed to Tim Henman. After his disastrous finals loss to Djokovic at the Australian Open at the weekend, Murray (now Henman) said he ‘would continue to raise British tennis hopes only to dash them at the crucial final stages’. He said ‘I will continue the great Henman tradition of bottling at big events when all eyes are on me’. Andy (now Timmy) said ‘There’s already one Henman Hill, why build another? The name change makes it easier and the British public now know exactly where I stand as a tennis player!’ Tim Henman (the real Tim Henman) declined to comment.

SHOCK!! Move to World Cricket, then the Ashes

As the dust settles on England’s Ashes victory all of a sudden they turn around and they are 5-1 down in the One Day Series against the Aussies. Shit! How did that come about? What happened to all that Ashes momentum? Don’t’ the Poms know there’s a ODI World Cup tournament coming up soon?

In all the confusion everyone seemed to forget the Aussies were the best one day side in the world. England just seemed to forget. Has anyone told the English lads there’s a ONE DAY WORLD CUP in a minute? It’s gunna be a cracker of a tournament. Lets hope England turn up!

SHOCK!!

The crowd is chanting ‘ICE PICK, ICE PICK’. Philip Schofield is whipping the audience into a frenzied froth. ‘ICE PICK, ICE PICK’ Christopher Dean tries to string two words together. He half manages it. The crowd go wild. It’s crazy. It’s the vicious cauldron of competition in the cold that is ‘Dancing on Ice’. The crowd are at fever pitch as the celebrities skate onto the arena. ‘ICE PICK, ICE PICK’. Amongst the skating celebs are a cricketer, a Loose Woman, Jade’s first husband, Vanilla Ice, the new Kerry Katona and ten others who we’re not sure of. ‘ICE PICK, ICE PICK”.

The skating is horrendous and a true insult to ice dance professionals everywhere and the crowd love it. All the celebs look a little too big for their spangly costumes except Vanilla Ice of course and Kerry Bloody Katona. I don’t know what she’s come as but she looked a treat. Literally. Wrapped head to toe in a ‘shrink wrapped packe’t it seemed. Like something you microwave from Iceland and serve on a large plastic spoon. ‘A family sized pack of Frozen Katona’s please’. And Philip Schofield keeps cranking it up ‘ICE PICK, ICE PICK’.

All the celebs skate badly in an orgy of ego as we thrill to their lack of shame and skill. Then somehow the two worst celebs are picked and brought forth for the skate off. Jade’s first husband and the cricketer are given ICE PICKS and they just go at each other like they’re in the final of ‘International Robot Wars’. Smacking each other with ICE PICKS. Glitter and blood everywhere. ‘ICE PICK, ICE PICK”. Then the other celebs join in, Killing the cricketer in an ICE PICK frenzy. Like ‘Lord of the Flies on Ice’. The cricketer is dead. Jade’s first husband lives to skate another day. Christopher Dean tries to say goodnight and Philip Schofield says ‘See ya next week’. You know what, he just might! ‘ICE PICK, ICE PICK’.

Mark Little’s Shocks of the Week

4/2/2011

SHOCK!! Honey I Shrunk the Economy

Authorities are on the lookout for a mad scientist masquerading as a treasurer in connection with shrinking the economy. Named as George Osbourne it is said that in a failed experiment in his kitchen to get the economy moving again, instead he has shrunk it like a crisp packet in the cooker. “I blame the snow” says Osbourne. Fair go George! We all know that everything shrinks in the cold but not economies. Finland, Sweden and Switzerland get pretty cold and this doesn’t usually shrink their economy like a cheap shirt in a hot wash. If Osbourne doesn’t turn it around quickly we could be in for a quick sequel ‘Honey, I blew up the Treasurer”.

SHOCK!! Dinosaurs Escape

Steven Spielberg has announced there will be a new film in the Jurassic Park series. In ‘Jurassic Park 1V 3D’, two of the most dangerous dinosaurs escape the island and make their way to London. Reeking havoc on the capital. At a press conference Spielberg said ‘I don’t want to give too much away’, but added that ‘the opening scene where the ANDYGRAYASAURUS sticks Richard Attenborough’s head down his trousers will have audiences horrified’. Football pundit Charlotte Jackson is tipped to play Sir Richard in the dinosaur epic. Spielberg also stated that ‘the final scene where the two rampaging dinosaurs are finally put back in their box by a brilliant onside decision by a line referee at a Liverpool United game will have audiences cheering. Helena Bonham Carter on the back of her ‘Kings Speech’ Oscar nomination has agreed to star in the movie as the brave line referee. Spielberg assured us all at the press conference that ‘these are the nastiest dinosaurs yet’ and expects the ‘ANDYGRAYASAURUS’ and the ‘RICHARDKEYSADACTYL’ lunchboxes to be the most successful merchandise yet!

SHOCK!! Two Ed’s are Better Than One

Finally Ed Balls, Shadow Treasurer has raised his head above the parapet. For a while there I thought Labour were going to let Ed Milliband fight the Tory coalition all by himself. Not so Comrades. Balls has come out fighting and if George Osbourne blames the dodgy economy on the weather one more time, Ed Balls may just rip Osbournes balls right off. With his teeth! That should liven up PM”s question time. Stay tuned.

SHOCK!! Library Shut down

The Tories are toying with the idea of closing down three hundred and sixty five libraries across Britain. The reason? Cost cutting of course. With the price of petroleum so high, closing libraries works out a lot cheaper than staging a huge rally at Wembley Stadium for a ‘book burning’.

SHOCK!! Clown Police

At an anti-war protest in Leeds, undercover police officer Lyn Watson dressed as a ‘clown’ was caught on video pleading ‘we are checking clowns, we need more clowns in this country, more clowns’. Officer Watson, I suggest you look no further than the National Public Order Intelligence Unit in charge of undercover cops. They seem to have plenty.

SHOCK!! What have they done to Shaun Ryder?

What he fuck have they done to Shaun Ryder? Poor bastard. I turn on ITV’s National Television Awards on Wednesday night and it looks like they’ve twisted his melon right off. The show started with a song from the Queen of the Jungle, Stacey Solomon, then out popped this bloke in a shiny suit, tie and somebody else’s teeth. Who is that? Shit. It was Shaun Ryder. Sort of. There he was soulless and sanitized like he’s been given a lobotomy. Shuffling across the O2 Arena stage like Jack Nicholson in ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’. It was a horror show. Like the end of ‘A Clockwork Orange’, Shaun’s personality had been torn out of him and he was paraded in front of everyone like a triumph of mediocrity and blandness. I looked closely and I am sure he had electrodes sticking out of the back of his head and on second glace I am convinced I saw Simon Cowell with a remote control. It was a nightmare. These are troubling times. When the ‘God of Bad Behaviour’ can be tamed, we must think again. Are they putting something in the milk? This is not good. Join me in my campaign to ‘Free Shaun Ryder’. These dreadful experiments must be stopped. If they can get to Shaun Ryder, none of us are safe!

SHOCK!!

As I go to deadline the ‘phone hacking’ scandal is about to crack right open. Murdoch, the press, the police, politicians and celebrities all embroiled in a devious and ominous state of affairs. This will run deep. Heads will roll and the general public will finally be made aware of how public opinion is moulded to the whims of a few. How do I know this? I’m not telling.

Mark Little’s ‘Shocks of the Week’.

28/01/2011

SHOCK!!

Undercover Flop

Here’s a hypothetical for ya’s. Imagine you are a friend of the earth. C’mon, you can do it! You are part of a gang of eco-warriors whose main form of protest is sticking large corks in polluting factory chimneys or dressing up as an ‘oil covered seagull’ or ‘playing dead’ outside No 10. You know the type comrades. These buggers who seem to have enough time on their hands to give a shit about the planet. So there you are with ya mates chained to a bulldozer and this bloke comes up and says he wants to join the gang. ‘What’s ya name?’ and ‘What do you do?’ you ask. The answer? ‘My name is Mark Stone, I am a rock climber’. What? Mark Stone the rock climber? Now, that sounds like bullshit right from the start don’t ya think? You wouldn’t touch him with a barge pole would ya? Well, that’s the name coppers came up with for their rock climbing undercover cop Mark Kennedy. However, eight years, two million quid and two eco affairs later, Kennedy AKA Stone AKA Flash, has been rumbled. The whole schamozzle has embarrassed the cops, wasted tax payers money as the case against the eco-warriors is thrown out of court and left a whole bunch of anarchists more paranoid than ever. The whole thing is a farce. Starsky and Hutch would have handled it much ‘cooler’ Now Kennedy has had a shave and a wash and plastered his face all over the papers (for a fee) claiming his life is in danger. What a knob! He doesn’t seem to get this undercover cop thing at all does he? Eco-warriors are notoriously non-violent. Kennedy doesn’t have to worry about them. The worst he can expect is for someone to chain themselves to his leg or abseil up him and plant a huge Greenpeace flag on his head. I wish someone would stick a large cork in him, that’s for sure.

SHOCK!!

Ricky ‘The Galoot’ Gervais

The Golden Globes took place this week and no I am not talking about the Daily Sports ‘Babe of the Year’ Awards, although a few of the frocks on the prestigious red carpet were particularly revealing. Not as revealing as host Ricky Gervais lack of ‘true wit’ though. Making ‘jokes?’ about Robert Downey Junior, Tom Cruise and John Travolta we all heard years ago. Jokes the South Park team have made much more scathing and much funnier. Poor old rich old Ricky. In Australia we have a word for him. A galoot. ‘Galoot’ as defined in the Penguin Dictionary of Australian Slang is a ‘stupid, awkward fool; clumsy dolt;’ Galoot indeed. Ricky should stick to wrestling. That’s his real job isn’t it? He’s got the right build for it! ‘And in the blue corner…..? Ricky ‘The Galoot’ Gervais. Stick to wrestling Rick. I’m sure you’re a lot funnier.

SHOCK!!

Dick in Oprah’s Ear

For a bloke who would probably get thrown off ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ after the first round, Piers Morgan has done well for himself. Morgan takes over from Larry King as CNN’s hard-hitting celebrity interviewer. As it was, Larry King was a bit ‘Paxman Lite’ and had nothing on our Jeremy when it came to the hard-hitting interview. As for Piers Morgan, based on his opening interview, he’s not Jeremy Paxman’s bootlace.

His first celebrity victim was Oprah Winfrey and her dry cleaning bill must be huge after having Piers Morgan piss in her pocket for well on forty minutes. The American critics have not been kind either, saying he was ‘too flirtatious and too friendly’. Friendly alright! It only takes a couple of seconds to remove an earpiece after an interview but sources say ‘It took Oprah a good half an hour to extract Piers dick out of her ear.’

SHOCK!!

Holiday Coup

Tourists trapped in Tunis, the capital of Tunisia got a lot more for their holiday dollar this week, experiencing events not mentioned in any of the brochures. ‘And to your left…..? A Coup!’ First the students took to the streets (sound familiar?), then the workers, then the police joined them, protesting about unemployment, inflation and corruption in their government (very familiar) forcing former President Ben Ali into exile in Saudi Arabia. The sleepy little tourist country has led the way and with food, fuel, tuition fees and inflation rising here and unemployment set to bite, this could be a rough summer for the coalition government. I wonder if David and Nick have got mates in Saudi Arabia because they may have to call on a few favours before Christmas.

SHOCK!!

Elton and David’s Baby

The first pictures of Eltons baby have been released and little Zachary Jackson Levon Furnish-John looks just like Elton. Fat, bald and beautiful! He’s got Davids’s eyes though! Congratulations to both glowing, lucky parents.

SHOCK!!

Wossie and Winkie are back

Life was so good without them. Now some numpty at Channel 4 thinks it’s a good idea to get Jonathon Ross and Russell Brand together again, live at the Comedy Awards. ‘5’ll get ya 10’ Andrew Sachs AKA Manuel will be involved. You can see it coming like all of Brands jokes. I just hope a huge custard pie the size of a small truck swings form the ceiling and whacks them both and I hope they choke on it. Now that’s what I call comedy.

Mark Little’s ‘Shocks of the Week’.

21/1/2011

SHOCK!!

Idiot Jailed

Obviously not a physics student, eighteen year old Edward Woolard has been sentenced to thirty two months jail for not calculating that the height to weight ratio for the velocity of a fire extinguisher lobbed from a seven story building might kill somebody. I support the students in their fight against raised tuition fees but acts of reckless idiocy will not help their cause. I also condemn the use of the police as a tool of an elitist system. However, they are just members of the working class in a costume. Senselessly injuring one can only cause grief. The judge praised Edwards mum for making account for his own action like a good anarchist and for not wasting 25,000 quid of her hard earned on uni fees for someone who is obviously not that bright. It was a gutless act and the ‘extinguisher lobber’ has paid the price. For any students confused as to what is peaceful protest, and when violence becomes inevitable, I suggest you google Gandhi and Malcolm X. Down with the system. Down with idiots.

SHOCK!!

Shooting Rampage

America is in mourning after the point-blank shooting of Democrat Congress Woman at a public meeting in Arizona. Leaving her in a critical condition, six people dead and thirteen (?) others wounded. Described as a ‘pot smoking loner’, the gunman Jared Loughner was foiled by a woman, hailed a heroine, denying him of his ‘suicide by cop’ he seemed to crave in a farewell note he posted to friends on his Facebook page. To my young readers – a word from the wise. If after smoking pot, you

Start believing the lyrics of heavy metal music
Get angry about bad grammar on a government web site or
You start believing anything Sarah Palin of the American right wing Tea Party says –

STOP SMOKING IT. It’s not for you. Not only are drugs illegal, they are supposed to be fun.

Mark Little’s ‘Shocks of the Week’.

14/1/2011

SHOCK!!

Undercover Flop

SHOCK!!

Ricky ‘The Galoot’ Gervais

SHOCK!!

Dick in Oprah’s Ear

SHOCK!!

Holiday Coup

SHOCK!!

Elton and David’s Baby

SHOCK!!

Wossie and Winkie are back

SHOCK!!

Never too Old

Miriam O’ Reilly has won an ageism battle against the BBC after she was dumped for a younger female presenter on Countryfile. Congratulations Miriam. You go old girl! The whole thing is ridiculous. In this age of HD and 3D TV the more wrinkles the better I reckon. I have never been a regular viewer of Countryfile but I’ll be tuning in now. I’m just going to kick back, wack on my 3D glasses and wait for Miriam to come on. It’s going to be like taking helicopter joy flights over the Grand Canyon. Now that’s entertainment.

SHOCK!!

Oz Floods

The city of my birth Brisbane and the town of my childhood Toowoomba are under water. People are still missing and up to twenty five (?) dead. These are the worst Oz floods in a century. I remember the Brisbane floods of 74 and they were bad. But gradual. This latest flooding has taken Queenslanders by surprise as a twenty six foot wall of water hit towns without warning. I know a lot of Poms are familiar with this part of Australia and share my shock and sadness. Cheering to hear though that the English cricket team are set to donate a share of any prize money from the 20/20 series to the Queensland flood appeal. The way the Poms are playing this could amount to a sizable donation. When the stinking deathly waters recede and the terrible clean up begins the famous Aussie sense of humour will not fade. It will shine through. If you know and love the area affected here is the number of the Queensland Flood Relief Appeal (Thanks Ed)

SHOCK!!

Jordan Bombshell

Katy Price set to divorce her long time partner Alex Reid. Oh dear. I suppose the best result we can expect from this is a cage fight between Alex and Peter Andre. With Alex’s luck he’ll probably lose that too.

SHOCK!!

Purple Prison

As part of Lenny Henry’s ad deal with Premier Inn, he’s obliged to stay in 55 of the bloody things on his upcoming 64 date tour. Having toured this country for the past twenty years, I fear for his sanity. If indeed he has any. I know this will not help me get an ad deal with ‘the inn’ but that is my ulterior motive here. From experience staying more than one night in the same purple room no matter how affordable fucks with your head. Not that I am a five star man, far from it. I would rather stay in the worst room in the worst pub in the worst town in Britain than spend a night in the purple prison. I would like to say I feel sorry for Lenny but I do not. He made his purple bed. Now he has to lie in it.

SHOCK!!

What Homegrown Talent?

Messi wins the inaugural Balloon d’or as he is named FIFA’s Player of the Year. No shock there. What is a shock is that no player from the English Premier League made it to FIFA’s best eleven. When in fact nine of the eleven play in La Ligua, the Spanish league. Also noteworthy is that ninety percent of the La Ligua are made up of home grown players. Actual Spaniards. Surely the Premier League has lessons to learn here. Well marketed it may be. But failing our home grown talent? Cold hard statistics would suggest yes.

7/1/2011

SHOCK!!

Boyle’s Shocker

Danny Boyle’s new film 127 hours is in the cinemas and it’s a cracker. Based on the true story of that bloke who fell down a ravine and found himself stuck between a rock and a hard place. Literally. In the end the poor bugger is forced to cut off his own arm with a pocket knife to ensure his survival. Heavy. At the launch, Danny Boyle beamed saying that ‘As soon as I saw Nick Clegg fall into the bottomless chasm of coalition government, I knew it would make a great movie’. The true horror of Nick Clegg trapped in a Tory hole climaxes in a way that has seen audiences feinting and running from the cinema.

The final scene in which Clegg savagely chews off his own arm rather that stick to his pre-election pledges is harrowing and difficult to watch. The film is a disturbing story of the desperate lengths one man will go to cling on to political power and ensure a prolonged life in government. See it if you dare!

SHOCK!!

Ramsay’s Flame-Proof Head

Gordon Fucking Ramsay has astounded the medical world with new surgery designed to make him an UBER SUPER-DUPER MEGA CHEF. With the use of radical technology from Germany, Gordon has altered his ‘Chef Head’ to withstand more heat in the kitchen. His real hair has been replaced with a special super alloy fibre that can withstand temperatures of up to 1000 degrees centigrade. All the cavities in his skull have been injected with liquid nitrogen, a procedure suggested by his good friend Heston Blumenthal. This super chills Gordon’s head to minus 2000 degrees centigrade, which has seen him joking with friends by sticking his head in a tandoori oven for an hour and a half just for fun. To publcize this radical new surgery called ‘Koolhëd’, Ramsay has released this photograph of what he looks like after 20 minutes in the microwave. Granted he looks like he’s been in a chair and ladder cage fight with Mickey Rourke. Of course! A bit wonky? Yes! But still cool. A miracle.

SHOCK!!

Anarchist Abuse

Most disturbing footage of the week was the hitherto unreleased video of the attack on Prince Charles and Princess Camilla’s motorcade. Not only does CCTV footage show the foolishness of the royal vehicles proximity to the trouble but also several ‘attackers’ have been singled out.

In particular one young ring leader woman in a hoodie who is heard clearly on the tapes hurling abuse at Prince Charles. Yelling ‘Your mum is old and has no idea what is going on’. Shocking abuse. Known to police as Charlotte Church, this young woman is still at large.

At one stage after repeatedly kicking Camilla’s car with her stilettos, she cries out ‘you don’t want to see a bunch of scantily clad dancers and shitty comedians’. Cruel. Little knowing that these are future King Charles’ favourite bits of the variety performance.

At a press conference, police said that Miss Church is known as a royal stalker having met the Queen seven times in the past and that she harbours deep resentment of the monarchy because the Queen never remembers her. Police have warned that after any sort of marriage to Gavin Henson, you are bound to become unhinged.

What Police psychologists call an ‘unstable anarchist’ or ‘loose cannon’. Very dangerous, very subversive. Authorities know that Charlotte Church has gone underground but are very confident that she will break her cover soon as he has a new album coming out. However, at this stage Charlotte Church and her ‘royal knockers’ are still at large!

SHOCK!!

England win the Ashes outright!

It’s hard to write this with tears drenching the page as I plough through grief and try to convince myself it’s only a game. But it doesn’t work. It’s cricket. Much more than a game. It’s a social barometer. A test of character. The gauge of a nations moral fibre. Cricket. The game of life.

For the first time in a long time, the English have completely demolished the Aussies at cricket. And it hurts. It hurts to see Aussie cricket in disarray and it hurts to see all that Glenn McGrath pink. How could the Aussie cricket team struggling with confidence concentrate with all that pink about. It may be great for breast cancer awareness but it’s obviously not good for Aussie cricket. No wonder cricket in Australia is losing it’s following to Rugby League and Aussie Rules. Pink is not the colour of serious sport. Do you know any great sporting sides that played in pink? No. Only jockeys play in pink.

It hurts to see old school values of fair play and good sportsmanship forced out of the game. I do not like the review system. It is a breeding ground for dishonesty and mistrust. Hawkeye proves that good umpires get it right most of the time and it was always swings and roundabouts. Let it be. To see an Aussie review a catch that obviously bounced three times before it got to him? That hurts!

What hurts most is to see Grandaddy Gower’s commentary clown troupe so cock-a-hoop. Sir Beefy and Athers the Clown doing cartwheels and somersaults. Bumble blowing on his little trumpet and the sight of ‘Smug the Clown’ Naz so happy and sarcastic. That really hurts.

I would like to say as a true cricket fan, congratulations to Messrs Strauss and co, especially young Alistair Cook for a great display of great cricket. But it hurts.

31/12/2010

2010 SHOCK

The year Stephen Hawking claimed that ‘As yet there is not scientific evidence for the existence of a God’. But what would he know?

2010 SHOCK

The year the mystery of Top Gear’s enigmatic ‘Stig’ was revealed. Was is Michael Schumacher? Damon Hill? Jackie Stewart? No, just some boring twat in a helmet.

2010 SHOCK

The year of Prime Minister David Cameron’s ‘Big Society’! Would you like fries with that?

2010 SHOCK

The year Mother Nature turned around and bit the world on the arse. Floods, droughts, storms, snow n’ cold on a biblical scale everywhere. One doesn’t have to be a scientist to wonder if the climate might be changing. Just ask my frogs in the back yard. Poor confused bastards. What surprises me most is how fucking cold global warming can get.

2010 SHOCK

The year the winner of the South African Football World Cup was predicted by an octopus. Spain remember. Not so impressive. After their game against Algeria, a plate of calamari could have predicted England weren’t going to do too well.

2010 SHOCK

The year the Mayan calendar predicted ‘great sportsman would chase their dicks and not their dreams’. Tiger Woods and half the England football squad came in for a big Mayan mention here!

2010 SHOCK

The year of the Banker. The Bankers have had the gall to announce record profits and bonuses this Christmas. There should be a law against it. Just a bunch of shameless Bankers!

2010 SHOCK

The year Mark Zuckerberg, creator of Facebook was named ‘Person of the year’ for amassing a staggering 500 million ‘Friends’. Mr. Popular or what?

2010 SHOCK

The year Australian cricket was put to the sword. England’s inspired batting, bowling and fielding crush the Aussies to retain the Ashes on the way to winning them outright in Sydney. Forcing Ricky Ponting to spit the proverbial dummy. Oh how the mighty have fallen. Like a large family sized ‘Esky’ full of shit. Congratulations to the English lads. It’s been a long time coming…a very long time. Of course if Australia win in Sydney and it goes to 2-2. It means the best England side in decades has still failed to beat the worst Aussie team in decades. Retaining the Ashes is not the same as winning the Ashes is it? I reserve final comment until the series is over sports fans!

2010 SHOCK

The year that saw the usual crap on the TV. Coach Trip, Celebrity Coach Trip, The Hairy Bikers Cook Off, ‘Dingbats in the Jungle’ and Noel. However, there were a few surprises. The BBC’s modern adaption of Sherlock Holmes was a beaut. The Apprentice’s Lord Sugar made us laugh. Shane Meadows ‘This is England 86’ was also a powerhouse. But the real gem was Channel 4’s Misfits. Smart, funny, surprising and wrong in al the right ways. A brilliant cast, well written with exciting direction prove that good telly is not beyond us. I can’t wait for series three. Set amongst a group of ASBO super heroes. I know. It sounds crap. It’s not.

2010 SHOCK

The year the British public lost all faith in government. The truth of the MP expenses came out. It seemed that outrageous claims were being made for cleaners, duck houses, second homes. Even the clearing of a moat was claimed. Outrage. I don’t know about you comrade’s but If I’d have known, I would have had my moat cleared more often.

2010 SHOCK

The year Generation X Box surprised us all as they descended on Whitehall to demonstrate against the government plan to raise tuition fees for higher education. And we didn’t think they cared. Nick Clegg, leader of the Lib Dem’s came in for most of the flack for his complete U Turn on his pre election pledge ‘not to raise tuition fees’. A cry of ‘Nick Clegg is a twat’ rang out across the land. Young Lib-Dem voters had been betrayed and they were angry. They decided to protest as is their right. The Government’s answer? Kettle them, beat them and charge them with fucking Police horses. What’s known in Tory circles as a ‘careful handling of the country’s future’. Oh woe is us.

2010 SHOCK

The year the ‘Ned Kelly of Cyber Space’ Julian Assange, rode into town on a horse called ‘Wikileaks’. Gunning for the powers that be with their own secrets. Computer activists known as ‘hacktivists’ are standing by to expose the fragility of the system and send the whole computer world crashing down. So, as the ‘cyber war’ rages and humans become more addicted to gizmo’s and technology like twitter, facebook, ipad, iphone, android and X Box, don’t be surprised if a nude Arnold Schwarzenegger appears before you in a flash of light comrades, because the future is definitely here.

2010 SHOCK

The year of the 3D film! Don’t expect a review, I haven’t seen any of them. To me 3D films are the things you do with your kids at Euro Disney. Don’t get me wrong, as soon as Francis Ford Copolla does ‘Godfather IV 3D’, I’ll be there! Until then? You can stick ya ‘Avatar’ up your 3D arse. There’s even 3D TV now. Even though that’s what John Logie Baird initially invented television to be. Three Dimensional. Until some old codger at the BBC knocked it on the head saying ‘it wouldn’t catch on, keep it 2D’. Oh how far we’ve not come. Premier league football in 3D. Darts in 3D. Golf in 3D. I don’t trust technology. Seems to me it’s going to take all the incentive out of getting out there and living. If you want to see the golf in 3D, why not just go to the fucking golf ya nong? I wonder if the Cohen Brothers are gunna to do a 3D film? Probably not.

24/12/2010

MERRY XXXXMAS TO YOU ALL

Mark Little’s ‘Shocks of the Week’.

SHOCK!! U TURN

Only two weeks ago comrades, I mocked the Prime Minister David Cameron on this page. Calling him ‘King Dick the Hypocrite’ for his hypocrisy in chasing a World Cup football bid whilst at the same time cutting the budget for sport in schools except rowing and polo of course. However, King Dick has flip-flopped. It seems he had forgotten his Olympic Legacy Pledge re the future of sport for kids in the UK. Oh! 2012? In London? That Olympics? King Dick has been around Cleggy so long he’s forgotten what a pledge is. U TURN. His lackey Sports Minister Andrew Gove has announced ‘now there will be sport in schools’. Merry Christmas kids. All hail King Dick.

SHOCK!! Tremors

England experiences tremors measuring 3.6 on the Richter Scale. Houses shake, cars rocked, animals frightened and the earth moved. Local authorities say there is no need for panic as there is a simple scientific explanation. Experts say ‘the tremors were caused by Lib Dem MP Vince Cable dropping yet another huge clanger’. It seems a small cluster of Lib Dem clangers could see parts of Westminster suffering aftershocks for some time. Experts warn of the Big One. ‘A clanger measuring 7 to 8 on the Richter Scale could bring down the government. Immediate measures have been implemented. The government is now operating under a Code Three Clanger Alert!

SHOCK!! Grit Britain

All those years of ‘Dreaming of a white Christmas’! It finally happens and it turns out to be a nightmare. It’s that old saying ‘be careful what you sing for’.

SHOCK!! TV Record

With the combination of Strictly Come Dancing, The Apprentice and snow, more people watched TV last weekend than ever before in the history of UK viewing. Roughly 35 million of us were in on Saturday and Sunday nights. Over half the country! A record. Mental. Two great finals and Ice Station Zebra conditions outside made the perfect recipe for snuggle-up telly and it did not disappoint! The dancing was spectacular. Sequins and flesh go so well on the telly. The eventual winner Kara Tointon danced like a pro, gliding about TV Centre like an angel. A truly wonderful night! Her partner Artem was like a Greek god. You know that Greek god with the head of a dog? Yes, that Greek god. Maybe that’s Egyptian. I think he’s Russian.

In one dance in which Kara was dressed like Jordan for some reason and Artem dressed like Freddie Mercury ripped her bloody right arm clean off. Kara didn’t miss a beat and her one armed American Smooth was a showstopper. Worthy winners. Congratulations Kara and Dogboy.

The surprise packet of the night was Matt Baker the dancing farmer. What an all rounder. Farmer, husband, father, TV presenter, dancer, even co commentates the sheep dog trialing on One Man and His Dog as if he knows what he is talking about. All at once! One minute he’d have his hand up a cows arse, the net minute he’s be giving Aliana a nice little surprise in the Argentine Tango! He was passionate about his dancing too. So bloody passionate he wanted to knock head judge Len Goodman’s block off for low marks. Judge Len seems like a nice fella but anyone with that much poise is asking for a slap. Matt nearly provided it. Top marks to the dancing farmer.

Then came Lord Sugar. Not the Jamaican rapper. Lord Alan Sugar. Entrepreneur and bulldog in a suit. Poor bastard. What a bunch of drongoes he had to choose from. Fun telly though. Big Al bites the head off apprentices as if they were just big fat Cuban cigars! Witnessing qualified idiots ground into the dust of obscurity is good for the soul. Lord Sugar, I praise thee. For his honesty, his humour and having a face that looks like Bob Hoskins has repeatedly slammed it into the keypad of an Amstrad. For all this I rate Lord Sugar as some of the best telly of the year.

The big buzz phrase in TV land at the moment is ‘role models’. So I say on behalf of all blokedom, Lord Sugar and Matt the dancing farmer, you are our role models. Keep up the good work lads. You make blokes look good. MERRY XXXXMAS to you both.

SHOCK!! 1-1 IN THE ASHES

The Ashes series has turned into a psychological thriller! Is Stephen King writing the Ashes script? England? What a horror show! So cocky! So ‘givin’ it all that’! SO SHIT! Expecting the Aussies to hand it to you as a Xmas present. Not bloody likely. The Poms have been hit right between the eyes with a psychological bouncer.

Mitchell Johnson (never doubted him!) and Michael Hussey have bruised England in a way no normal injection will fix. Johnson and Hussey have bruised England’s ‘MIND’ and as we know, cricket is the greatest mind game of all.

Since Michael Vaughan’s New England spearheaded by Freddie Flintoff, England have dabbled in the ‘dark art of sledging’, Freddie’s ‘charming banter’ lulling the Aussies of 2005 into a false sense of security before viciously ripping Aussie throats out to clinch the Ashes for England. Masterful sledging. But Freddie is gone now. So it’s left to Anderson, Prior, Pietersen, Swann to take on the sledging role. Mere amateurs. The Aussies are true masters at the dark art of psychological erosion that is sledging. Aussies are born sledging. When I play for my cricket team, the ‘Parham Rabbits’, Captain Andy says that’ I am the only batsman he knows that sledges the fieldsman’. Sledging is half the fun of cricket. What else can keep you out there for all those hours. However, in an interview after Perth, Mitchell Johnson said that due to an unsavoury incident in a match against India between Andrew Symonds and Harbhajan Singh, sledging had crossed the Frankie Boyle line of human decency. The Aussies were made to put a lid on it. John Howard, the then Prime Minister of Australia, banned the Aussies from sledging. Aussie cricket went into it’s shell. The fun had gone out of the game. Until Perth. The ban is lifted it seems. Australia unleash sledging hell. Let the fun begin. Johnson, Siddle, Harris, Haddin, even Captain Ricky Ponting. They were all at it. No love lost. The Poms seemed rattled by the sheer exuberance of the Aussie onslaught. I would pay Sky good money for ‘Listen per View’ just for a feed from the sledging mic’. ‘The dark secret world of cricket sledging revealed’. One can only imagine how Jimmy Anderson’s decision to pose for the cover of gay magazine Attitude is going down with a ravenous mob of Aussie cricketers rediscovering sledging. Like a blood sport.

Sports fan’s, in this very column, I predicted a blood bath and I could be right. It has got nasty and so it should. This is the Ashes, not a game of marbles. It’s going to be a hot crackling Christmas of crunch time cricket. Hurrah!

SHOCK!!

THE ARCHERS SOON FOR PENSION AT 60

Radio serial ‘The Archers’ is set to celebrate 60 years on air, which means it was around before radio was even invented somehow. Bosses are promising a big 60 year anniversary episode with a huge shake up. Look out! We all know what happened on Corrie. Not even Wikileaks has been able to crack the secret of the anniversary episode. However, because it’s radio we can expect a lot more than a tram dropping off a bridge. Suggested story lines are

Attack by North Korea
2. A marauding herd of spooked mammoth gallop through the frozen valley and crash into the shop
God returns to the valley and lays waste to all he sees with pestilence, locusts, raining fire, as the rivers flow with blood and the post off ice burns.

All this done by a bloke with a slide whistle, a tray of gravel and a fake door! To the magic of radio that is’ The Archers’, Happy Birthday and Merry Christmas.

17/10/2010

SHOCK!! Hurley bowled over

Warnie bowls another maiden over! Liz Hurley trapped leg before with Shane’s flipper. HOWZAT! Liz Hurley knows a handsome sport legend millionaire when she sees one. Liz imagines romantic nights with Shane snuggled up by a warm Barbie, sucking on a stubbie or two, practicing a few new ball grips and running her hands through Warnie’s hair. Well? Someone’s hair!

SHOCK!! Matt wins X Factor

Simon Cowell’s Fourth Reich of Musical Taste has been thrust upon us again and the winner is Matt Someone. What an anticlimax. The least Essex boy I’ve ever seen. Bowing like a Buddhist monk for fucks sake. Obviously recovering from a recent ‘Essectomy’ and triple charisma by pass surgery. As a winner, Matt came across as articulate and exciting as a sick eel.

I must have missed a couple. What happened to Cher? I thought she was a shoe in. Silly me. A young talented edgy female songwriter is obviously a recipe for disaster on the X Factor. No role model there. Cher looks like she’s been run over by a police horse. A hard sell for Christmas. The real winner is Simon Cowell’s ‘One Erection’. I think that’s what they’re called. A boy band. No really. Boys. Not like that motorway pile up of old men they call TAKE THAT. What a car crash of weekend TV with Take That poppin’ up on all my favourite shows. X Factor, four times. Strictly Come Dancing, artificially inseminating pigs on Countryfile, even singing the fucking weather. Don’t get me wrong. I am on no bandwagon here. I hated them the first time and that’s when they could dance. Call me old fashioned but I like my boy bands doing really complicated synchronized dancing while they sing. It shows a modicum of skill. Take that the maestros of boy dancing don’t even bother now. Just jiggling about in their own little musical worlds like a bunch of old lawn bowlers with the DT’s, warbling away at the clubhouse xmas concert. Silly old buggers. Robbie Williams is a funny one! He seems to have a smug bug so far up his arse it makes his eyes boggle with lust and confusion like a jack Russell being buggered by a horse. Just a classic demented pop star dry humping the glorious memories of an inglorious past. Bless.

With all respect to the beautiful Rebecca, the best thing on the X Factor final was the X Factor reject auditioners crucifixion of the Lady Ga Ga hit. Dreadful, brilliant, masterstroke. My tip for Christmas No 1. Check it on youtube.

To finish graciously, I say congratulations to the X Factor winner 2010. The Voice. The Essex Buddah. Mr. Personality. Um Err…..? Sorry, I’ve forgotten his bloody name already

SHOCK!! Joke not funny

When is a joke not a joke Comrades? Let’s analyze. At the weekend on Channel 4 show ‘Tramodol Nights’, comedian Frankie Boyle passed some remarks about Jordan’s kiddies that were pretty rough. More suited to a prawn night than a cutting edge TV show. Complaints were made to Ofcom the TV watchdog. Katie Price was rightfully pissed off. Frankie had released what is known in the trade as ‘the sick joke’ into the public domain. I won’t repeat it. Once was enough. Suffice to say, there are plenty of aspects of Jordan and Peter Andre’s lives that can be taken the piss out of without getting stuck into their kiddies. The love Katie and Peter show for their kids is the one thing that makes them both seem human. No mean feat.

We all know there is an underground network of ‘sick jokes’. After any disaster there they are on the mobile as if by magic. Terrible jokes that make us cringe, whince and giggle. Like watching a clown beat another clown to a pulp at a kids party. Funny. But not right.

We all know those ‘jokes’. The secret jokes! The wrong’ns! Jokes you share with ya best mates. Your loved ones. Jokes you get told. Not jokes you tell.

Frankie Boyle is like Bernard Manning on crack. Pushing the envelope of bad taste and censorship to their limits. Last weekend that envelope burst open and a large puff of the ‘anthrax of bad taste’ hit Frankie Boyle right in the face. Like a custard pie.

Fame can rocket people into weird stratospheres. I have seen the carnage wreaked on once decent folk as fame turns once likeable fun people into dickheads right before your eyes.

What is most distressing about this whole thing is that in his defence, Frankie says ‘these are the same sort of jokes firemen and policeman tell’. Not for a quid Frankie. They’re not paid to tell jokes. In the most stressful or dull of moments a sick joke might pop up on the mobile, in the firehouse but not on TV. Not for money. Sorry comrade Frankie, you have to carry the can on this one. You are a comedian. You can’t blame your bad jokes on a fireman.

SHOCK!! Escape

Sir Bobby Moore is no mug. Knowing Man U were in trouble, Sir Bobby mounted his own rescue, inviting twenty three of the unearthed Chilean miners as guests of the club for their clash against Arsenal. It worked! Who better to help Manchester United out of the hole they were in. A fireman told me that joke!

SHOCK!! Fattest

You would think that in these austere times, with cuts biting in, more people living below the poverty line than ever before, money scarce all tightening our belts as food becomes a luxury item, that as a nation we would just get skinnier and skinnier. Not so. Studies show that the Brits are the fattest bastards in Europe. How? The reason is obvious. The circumstantial evidence is overwhelming. The coincidence too great. A public enquiry must conclude. SNOW MAKES YOU FAT.

10/12/2010

SHOCK!!

Ned Kelly Rides Again

Not since Ned Kelly has an Australian hero stuck it to the establishment as much as Wikileaks Editor in Chief Julian Assange.

Sadly memories of Ned Kelly have been reduced to a souvenir tea towel and a dodgy fibreglass tourist sculpture on a forgotten by-pass just outside Melbourne.

With Julian Assange the spirit of the ‘Kelly Gang’ rides again. The ‘Assange Gang’ have ridden out of the ‘Cyber Bush’ and attacked the establishment on all fronts by opening up the worlds biggest can of worms ever. Wikileaks has turned the shoddy, vain, bigotted world of corporate politics inside out. At last the greedy, murky world of global government has been exposed.

Julian Assange is ‘Super Journo’. Whose quest for truth, justice and a better way has awoken journalists all over the world! During the Bush/Blair years of ‘Shock and Awful’, journalism had become comatose. Never seeming to get to the real truth. Merely embedded propagandists it seemed. Then! The miracle. A downpour of truth from Wikileaks has roused journalists like hibernating toads in a desert rainstorm. The torrent of revealed government cables has brought journalism back to life. Journalists everywhere are hopping for joy in the muck and mire and stench of global politics like crazed bullfrogs. The truth is not just out there. The truth is out. THEY LIE.

Like Ned Kelly, Julian Assange has been targeted by the establishment as Most Wanted Public Enemy Number One.

Can we believe the propoganda against him Comrades? Based on Government cables revealed recently? I don’t think so. If the ‘Assange Gang’ ride into town, I will take them in. They are the good guys. Dark times call for good thinking, a good sense of humour and heroes. Does anyone know where I can get hold of a colourfast Julian Assange souvenir tea towel? On line of course. Long live a well informed free press!

SHOCK!!

Right Royal World Cup Fuckup

With all respect to ‘Future King’ William, ‘ King of Football’ David Beckham, and ‘King Dick’ David Cameron, dare I say your majesties but re 2018 your priorities are all arse up.

England should be concentrating on winning the football before winning anymore fucking bids. We’ve already got the Olympics. Lets feel good. All this bullshit about a generation losing out? A generation is already losing out while English football continues to be rubbish and David Cameron cuts sport in schools. King Dick the Hypocrite! A big bid means big business. Look at the winners. Oil rich Russia and oil rich Qatar. Big money. Big bungs. Russia 2018 has Abromovich written all over it. Say no more.

England must look to winning in Brazil 2014. Then go on to trounce Russia 5-0 in the 2018 final. Now that’s revenge.

SHOCK!!

Lembit Opik not King of the Jungle

Stacey Solomon crowned Queen of the Jungle! Her Prince Charming? Shaun Ryder. What a lovely couple. Well done Dagenham. Well done Salford. Stacey and Shaun. It was like hands across the water bridging the North/South divide. A pleasing sight. True Brits are hardcore fun, hardcore tough and hardcore real. Congratulations Stacey. As they say in Oz ‘You’re a spunk’.

SHOCK!!

England Win

England finally master the game of cricket. Outplayed and out classed by England, Australia’s ‘Long Reign of Cricket Terror’ is defeated. Angry mobs of Aussie cricket fans have taken to the streets with ropes to pull down all the Ricky Ponting statues and chase Mitchell Johnson with their shoes demanding regime change and baying for blood. The sharks are circling Ricky Ponting like he was an Egyptian tourist with a toe bleed. I smell resignation in the air.

It’s heating up in the Sky commentary box as well. Grandaddy Gower’s clown troupe are up to their Ashes antics. The sparks are flying. ‘Warnie the Clown’ is on the verge of giving ‘Naz the Clown’ a bop on the nose. Beauty. There’s still plenty of time for some Ashes violence. Keep an eye on Warnie and Naz. There could be some biff.

SHOCK!!

Pope Burning

Sepp Blatter is quoted as saying that ‘FIFA is the Vatican of Sport and he is the leader’. Which means Sepp Blatter , head of FIFA sees himself as the ‘Pope of Football’. For fucks sake. Is this not the same Sepp Blatter who says NO to video referral of goal line howlers? The same way the real Pope says NO to condoms? It makes no sense ! The last Pope to be crucified was bloody Pope Sixtus 11 in 258AD. Obviously it’s long overdue. Pope Sepp. ‘The First Pope of Football’. It’s time for a burning!

SHOCK!!

Ice Age

Scotland has lurched into it’s own Ice Age. All by itself. Reported sightings of Great Woolly Mammoth in Glasgow City Centre whilst hoardes of Scotsman have been spotted just outside Edinburgh roaming the Arctic landscape hunting Polar Bear for food, wrestling Sabre Tooth Tigers and sleeping in their cars. It’s ‘Narnia’ gone horribly bloody wrong up there.

SHOCK!!

The look on that tram driver’s face just before he killed off half the bloody cast of Coronation Street.

Mark Little’s ‘Shocks of the Week’.

3/12/2020

SHOCK!!

No Bernard Matthews for Xmas

‘Bootiful’ Bernard has been shrink wrapped and shipped off to the Big Turkey Farm in the sky. Or has he? RIP Bernard Matthews and RIP the forteen million billion turkeys that you farmed and slaughtered and twizzled in your time on earth. If the Buddhists are right, it could be an eternally long slow roast on a moderate heat in Hell for Bernard.

SHOCK!!

Johnny Rotten wishes Royal couple well.

John Lydon has got to be the biggest piss taker in England ever. Be honest John. You are more happy about the day off, just like the rest of us! I do hope Johnny Rotten outlives the Queen! Then when Charles is crowned King we can look forward to the re-release. Because by then the way things are going there will be Anarchy in the UK! ‘God Save the King, he ain’t no human bing’. I’ll be downloading it. Johnny Rotten is dead. Long live John Lydon.

SHOCK!!

Snow is cold and slippery

Big freeze snow shock. Snow falls on roads and footpaths. Snow makes driving slippery. Shock! Snow makes walking slippery. Shock! Snow is cold. Shock! Time to get over the shock of snow I think. It’s obviously a winter thing. I do enjoy the chaos though. It seems to bring people together and any excuse for a day off. Since being ‘snowed in’ I have watched far too much daytime telly. Between The Hairy Bikers, Celebrity Coach Trip and Pointless my brain has gone as numb as my toes. I am a big fan of Countdown though. Rachel Riley is easily my favourite mathematician on the telly. She flips a wonderful vowel too! And another thanks Rachel. And another. And another. Rachel can flip my consonants anytime. Anyway, out to shovel my footpath now, rescue a sliding motorist or two and revel in the mayhem! Chaos. Bringing people together.

SHOCK!!

Wikileak Secrets

America is devious and crooked.
Everyone wants to blow up Iran.
North Korea behaves like a spoilt child.
Prince Andrew is a nob.

C’mon! Tell us something we don’t know!

SHOCK!!

Australia don’t win

Bloody Hell! A draw! The Sky commentary team has a better bowling line up than Australia and England put together. This could be a first. Five drawn Tests. Dreadful. Apart from Peter Siddle’s hatrick the most exciting moment of the Brisbane Test was when ‘Naz the Clown’ put his chair on Grandaddy Gower’s toe. (check it on Youtube. ‘David Gower’s Foot’) Let’s be honest. England and Australia are playing for the smallest trophy in sport. The wooden spoon. The loser goes to 17^th place just behind the Falkland Islands Eleven and the winner flies into fourth. This year’s Ashes is a Series of Tests. Who can play the least shit. A draw in Brisbane indicates that both teams played as shit as each other. So like the ‘Eggheads’ Australia and England are playing for their pride.

I hate to say it but Australia didn’t seem to have any. There was pride in a metrosexual way. Like Gay Pride. Showing off their new tattoos, muscles and moustaches. That’s lovely lads but as a cricket team you were uselss. Only three blokes stood up for Oz. Siddle, Hussey and Haddin. No wonder the Aussie crowd gave up. The Aussie team gave up. SHOCK! Has Mitchell Johnson no shame? He has now!

The English lads pride is evident even though they couldn’t manage a win against the worst Australian team since the first Convict Eleven. Despite this embarrassing fact, England are still pumped up and motivated. Prime Minister Cameron has said that if the lads win the Ashes Down Under the party is back at his! No 10! A chance to piss on David Cameron’s Petunias the same way Freddie pissed on Tony’s Azaleas. What more incentive does a cricket team need?

Roll on Adelaide. For the sake of Test Cricket and it’s future, let there be a winner. Sir Beefy. Warnie. Mikey. You better have a bowl.

SHOCK!!

Kiddie Kettling?

Is Ed Milliband old enough to lead a strong opposition? For Christ’s sake. In the right glasses he’d look like Harry bloody Potter himself. A Bollywood version anyway. Let’s face it comrades, have we not sent a boy to do a man’s job? Ed needs ‘blooding’! Send him down to Tory HQ in a hoodie to turn over a couple of police cars and prove to us all that he really is Old School/New School Labour or whatever he calls it! I make jokes comrades because I am ashamed. Ashamed that we are standing back and letting our kids be demonized, kettled and charged by fucking police horses. For what? For taking to the streets and voicing what we are all thinking. Especially that ‘Nick Clegg is a twat’ chant. We are now hearing that Lib Dems are seeking to abstain on the tuition fees vote. Piss weak. To not stand up for the young voters that helped put you into power Nick Clegg is shameful. ‘Generation X Box’ may be clever after all. For spotting the doom and gloom and carnage of ‘cuts’ before any of us? The students are right. David Cameron is wielding the Excalibur of spending cuts more recklessly than King Arthur on ‘Meow Meow’. Cuts that have already forced hundreds of redundancies causing widespread financial pain for many families across Britain leading up to Christmas. What about next Christmas? No Santa due to cuts? Thousands of Elves made redundant! It’s not funny comrades. Even the armed forces are facing cuts and those poor bastards are fighting in a war. It’s time for solidarity with the youngsters. Where are the Unions? Where is the opposition Ed? Where is the outrage? These are our kids, our future, and we are charging them with fucking Police horses. Lesson one for today kiddies. ‘Fascism: in the twenty first century’.

Mark Little’s ‘Shock's of the Week’.

Daily Sport 26/11/10

SHOCK!!

Widdecombe not taken out the back and shot

Fair go! It all started as a bit of fun watching the silly old Tory humiliate herself. Hilarious. But now it seems to have crossed the line, we just seem to be watching a silly old woman humiliate herself. I mean really! They shoot horses don’t they? Strictly Come Dancing is one reality show I would like to have a go at. All those ‘Strictly’ dancing girls to choose from! Natalie, Aliola, Katia, Flavia, Erin, Kristina, Ola. My goodness, they are all so… so… fit! And I mean that in an athletic way. Although I would not be normal if I didn’t admit to fantasizing about performing a ‘Celebrity paso doble’ or two with Natalie. Oh, to live the dream. It’s Brucie I truly love. He is the grand old man of British TV. Brucie’s Generation Game was mega when my family and I first moved to old blighty. Way back in the days when Michael Barrymore was funny. Remember him? Brucie though is ‘gold’ He can do no wrong and he knows it. Jibbering around TV Centre like an old granddaddy ape that can tap dance. I would like my career to end like that. With the golden chance to dance and jabber away on live TV like an old PG Tips monkey that’s been around just that bit too long. Splendid. He’s my favourite!

SHOCK!!

Les Miserables Eric

Eric Cantona leads the modern revolution. How? By giving Bankers a flying two-footed kung fu kick in the chest? No! By calling on all people to withdraw their money from their banks ‘en masse’ on the 7^th December and watch the system collapse. Hoorah! To help with his withdrawal, Eric has already organized a small fleet of ‘vans les remove et furniture’ . He is having a large mattress built somewhere outside Toulouse.

SHOCK!!

No Daily Sport?

Rupbert Murdoch wants to team up with the mob from Apple to create one computer newspaper called ‘Daily’. They are projecting forty million ipad users world wide by the end of 2011. All reading the same ‘news’. Rupbert Murdoch news. Spooky! It’s like getting on the train in the morning and everyone is reading that ‘same free newspaper’ with that ‘same news’ in it. It’s weird. A bit George Orwell I reckon. And we all know who George Orwell was. He was the bloke who came up with the idea for Big Brother. Now, he was clever. Long live a well informed free press!

SHOCK!!

Australian Bush Overrun by Convicts. Again!

What are those ‘dingbats in the jungle’ up to? I flick on the telly and I see a ‘bunch of Pommie convicts’ in a cage and another ‘bunch of Poms’ bumbling around a campsite. Neither group seemed to have a fucking clue what was going on! I thought I’d stumbled into the History Channel and I was watching a reenactment of how Australia was first settled by the ‘white man’ back in 1788. Complete dingbats! You know what would really hurt them? Apart from 100 lashes! No. Something far worse than any trial! More than any self suspecting celebrity could bear. To be voted less popular than Lembit Opik XMP. If Lembit finished up ‘King of the Jungle’ that would piss everybody off wouldn’t it? To quote and old Australian convict catchcry ‘Bugger them all’! Go Lembit. Go Wagner.

SHOCK!!

I say no to ‘TWATTER’

Don’t ever expect to find me on TWATTER. Personally if I get the chance I would rather sit around ‘doing nothing’ than sit around ‘TWEETING’ everybody every ten minutes that ‘I am so busy doing nothing but TWEETING everybody every ten minutes’.

Surely then, would I not, quite simply, be just ‘doing something’ that is more ‘nothing’ than nothing itself? Christ, I sound like Stephen Fry all of a sudden. TWITTER? No, TWATTER.

SHOCK!!

War Breaks Out

I’ve got three months supply of firewood and cornchips and I’ve dragged the bed into the loungeroom. I have hunkered down. This is war. England versus Australia. The Ashes have begun! Which means? The Sky team! Headed by David Gowers’ dad I think and his ‘Clown Troupe of Commentators’. There’s Bumble and Athers, Naz, Mikey and Sir Beefy! Not to forget Warnie the Clown (bring your own fright wig) I love cricket and everything about it. Strauss, caught! First over, psychologically not good. You beauty. Trott bowled. One South African down. Ponting takes a blinder, Pietersen gone! The Ego has crash landed. Colly! Wobble! England 4 down. Oops. Cook gets 50. Good work lad. Dropped early though! Tea, day 1, The Ashes. Looks like rain. I am fading. Must prepare better! Make note to self. Sleep all day. Then all hell breaks loose. Peter Siddle rains fire on ‘the tourists’. An Ashes hatrick! Mental. I will never sleep again. As I go to deadline (and sleep) Australia looks strong, the Koreans look jittery and England? Look out!

Daily Sport 19/11/10

SHOCK!!

Lembit might be a bit of a nob!

Brilliant! Those dingbats are back in the jungle. I love winter. To be fair the reason I’m in the Daily Sport is because “Limpit” is in the jungle. Without being too morbid, I fear I could be here for a bit. Because I really believe Nigel Havers is going to kill Lembit Opik. Lembit’s going to wake up dead one morning with his whittling knife up to its hilt in his forehead if he’s not careful. Nigel Havers could be on the verge of television history. The first celebrity to kill another celebrity. Clubbed to death with a lump of wood while they slept. Live. Who knows? Sean Ryder may just run amok! If he wakes up. I must say he oozes more charm asleep than half of them do awake. And goodness me. Kayla thingo, the playmate. By crikey she seems to be always bending over that fire with those little shorts on. Like she’s done this sort of thing before! I mean, fair go camera two, we can see what she had for breakfast! Which is not much as it turns out. Brilliant! They’re all hungry. So hungry they’d eat a raw Kangaroo’s dick! Raw! Stay tuned. This could be the series. Death in the Jungle!

SHOCK!!

(not really)

Buckingham Palace announces a royal wedding just as the country goes to shit. Bill and Kate to wed. The peasants are happy. The peasants are stupid.

SHOCK!!

Alive….

Those two poor buggers from Tunbridge Wells. The Chandlers? Kidnapped by pirates? They’ve been released! Now honestly, I didn’t think we’d ever see them again. Did you? Because they were seized by ‘pirates’ on the high seas. Real pirates. So we knew they weren’t poncing about in the jungle with Johnny Depp with hair extensions. These were real pirates. Tough little buggers running around heavily armed in shorts and flip flops and Arsenal tops. Sounds very much like the Holloway Road in some freak good weather. Frightening stuff!

SHOCK!!

Only one Apprentice gets the chop

What a bunch of dickheads.

SHOCK!!

Rampage

Students go on the rampage. A riot! A real riot! It wasn’t an X Box game, nothing virtual here. This was a real riot! What a shock. The Sun had pictures mid week! Students, they all look the same to me. Happy, fun loving, full of life! Little bastards.. I don’t know about you but I’d given up on students. I thought they had given up on themselves. Obviously though, they hadn’t. They got angry and decided to let everyone know “Nick Clegg is a twat”. And by Jove! It looked fun! It made me want to be a student, to be young again. Maybe I could do a doctorate in surfing. Doctor Kahuna. I reckon it would be worth getting into forty thousand quid debt just to have an excuse to run down to Tory HQ and whack it with a hammer. Oh to be young again. Oh to have a hammer. What a nice shock!

SHOCK!!

England get booed at half time of the footy

I know! It would be more of a shock if England didn’t get booed at half time of a game of footy. Bloody hell! Nearly twenty years I’ve lived in this country and I must say I have done my best to get behind my new country’s football team. But I don’t know, I might have to pretend I like rugby union. Year after year it’s been. I have to say the more let down I feel by the footy team the more English I feel. Don’t these lads know we’ve got an Olympics coming up and that England is trying to embrace a culture of winning. Dear oh dear. The rugby union boys did it last weekend. At Twickers. They carved Australia up. Destroyed them. I have not seen England players play in the England shirt with such purpose and confidence and belief in all the years I have lived here, except Freddie Flintoff of course and maybe Paul Gasgoine. I broke into cold sweats. I feared England had broken the cycle and embraced the culture of winning. A chill went to my bones. Was I being set up here like the sacrificial lamb on the barby? A column in the Daily Sport? At the same time England believed they could win? At the same time as the Ashes down under? Were the English cricket team going to Australia on a huge ‘Bubble of Win’?... No. Not after Wednesday night against France! Boo. Boo. I relaxed. No drama. It is going to be a long Ashes winter though. With no sleep till Sydney. It could be a bloodbath. Lets hope so. It wouldn’t be an Ashes series otherwise.