Peter Simon and Clarry the Cockeral

Last night on Bid TV, Peter Simon was trying to shift this solar panelled cockeral called Clarry:



A tall order to be sure.

This weird item, resulted in an equally weird pitch; one of his best - and that's saying something.

I've transcribed it below (well, as best I could, between laughing fits). Enjoy:



Now, we're going to something that I love next. It's a cockeral. But this is no ordinary cockeral. This is the cockeral of the sounding of that wonderful tune in the morning. This is Clarence the cockeral.

Now, the cockeral has been with us since the beginning of time.

It's such a symbolic character and I don't know about you but in the eefo heebo stories (I think he meant Aesop's Fables) well, are just quite remarkable. (I'm not sure what that sentence meant)

The story of Clarry of cockeral goes back to Julia the Ceaser (Julius Ceasar - and I doubt that).

Ceasar used to have a cockeral in his individual palaces. The cockeral was a warning to Ceasar of the times of foreboding. If the cockeral didn't start the day with those early morning cries then Ceasar knew the day would be delayed and difficult.

The cockeral by Caesar was used in battles. He was not only proud, he was not only masculine, his sound in the morning was to echo around Rome. His wonderful chin with those beak lines. He's proud, he's masculine, he's Clarry the cockeral.



It's going to look delicious in a rockery, and certainly on the egde of a lawn. It's the sort of thing that creates an atmosphere and talking point in gardens. You will be asked about it. You can name it yourself, but it comes from the proud rooster that is the cockeral that illuminates the garden.

This is a large cockeral as well. He's 12 inches. And cock a doodle do, you've got it for £9!

Comment is Free - Amazon Reviews

Hello!

Sorry I haven't blogged for ages, I've been really busy.

(That's not me trying to subtly hint that I have some sort of exciting, high falutin lifestyle by the way. By 'busy' I mean dealing with a broken washing machine, stuff like that)

Anyway here's my only bit of news.

I've had another article published by Comment is Free, this time about Amazon reviews.

If you follow this blog you might be aware that I waste a lot of my spare time writing spoof product reviews, both under my own name and in other guises, including a born-again Christian character called Noel.

In the past my reviews have been picked up on by Radio 2's Weblebrity of the Week and by Olly and Helen who once nominated me for Web Jape of the Year. This is how one of the CiF editors became aware of me.

So when a string of suspect praise was posted for a self-help book on Amazon last week, they asked me as a professional* faker, to cover it.

Here's the article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/mar/07/online-books-reviews-amazon

Escape from Millbank Tower

So, yesterday was eventful!

In the morning I got a call from MENCAP inviting me for an interview. It's my dream job. Wish me luck!

…And then half an hour later, the fire alarm went off.

When the alarms go off, it’s usually over nothing, so we all filed out with no sense of panic, bemoaning the idiot who had left the toasted sandwich maker on.

However when we got outside we heard a lot of chanting, yelling and thumping. It was at that point that we realised the student demonstration had descended on us. We still weren’t worried though. Demonstrations are noisy but usually non violent.

It wasn’t until we tried to get to the front of the building that we realised the thumping sound was being caused by hundreds of protestors, throwing themselves against the glass façade of 30 Millbank, trying to smash it. We also saw fires being lit.

Hmm, ok, slight panic setting in at this point...

I pushed my way through to the front of both buildings and saw that the windows of my building – the larger, Millbank Tower – had been smashed and graffitied, and the sofas from our waiting room had been dragged out into the middle of the street, where protestors were sitting in them. There were also smoke bombs going off in our lobby.

I slipped back into the building and walked the 16 flights of stairs up to my floor. There was no way I was staying outside with that lot!

However, we had a constant, deafening fire alarm going off, so I couldn’t stay there either.

I called my boss who was in a meeting at a nearby hotel. God knows what he thought when he picked up. All he could hear was a fire alarm and me yelling about our building being smashed in.

He said I should try and get out and fight my way home. So I grabbed my stuff, as well as his laptop and bags, and headed back down the way I’d came.

My timing was, I was told this morning, impeccable. I managed to get my boss’ bags to him and get out of Millbank and over Vauxhall Bridge five minutes before the glass of 30 Millbank finally got smashed and things got really nasty.

By the time I got home the radio news was talking about riot police and people throwing fire extinguishers off the roof.

I brought my camera to work this morning and this is how things look right now:







30 Millbank is closed as a crime scene, and I just got an email from facilities management saying that the coffee shop next door to them is open for trading, but only out of the back door.

Millbank Tower is open, but security is very tight.

Oh and irony of ironies. I work for an education trust.

So anyway, scary smoke bombs aside, I was actually quite grateful for the early day. It gave me a chance to go to Tesco before dinner.

And I did enjoy channelling my inner Bruce Willis. Yippee kay yay motherfucker!

God Trumps

Just a quick blog to let you know that New Humanist is going on sale in selected stores across the UK from 26th August. (It used to be subscription only)



Part one of my God Trumps game (http://newhumanist.org.uk/1915) will be free with the current issue, and part two (http://newhumanist.org.uk/2002) will be free with the next issue, out in November.

So if you didn’t get a set of God Trumps the first time round, now is your chance.

Geek Heaven!

James's parents are getting their loft insulated - what a corking opening line to a blog that is - and during the clear out, we hit the mother load: A massive haul of James's 1980s Amstrad magazines.

We've been going through them all evening and here are some of the best bits.

A super cool 1980s kid:


Turbocharge your CPC...if you dare! Indeed:


A retro racing game as played by a man called Alan:


An Alan Sugar cake:


And an Alan Sugar game!:


A glimpse of the future:


Some of the excellent titles available - Knight Rider, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Daley Thompson's Super Test:


More Daley Thompson action:


And some Geoff Capes action too, grr:


SLAP FIGHT!:


Back when Tetris was new:


What a cool dude. With his ghetto blaster and walkman:


So, um, yeah:


My absolute favourite - 'Can you handle this much power?' Vroom, pow, blat, zap!:


Future Knight!:


Some fun code for you to enter:


And finally, arguably the worst game other than Mike Reid's Computer Pop Quiz:


Makes me wonder if James and I will be sitting around laughing at our back catalogue of Edge magazines in 20 years time. When first person shooters will look like pong, and we'll all definitely look like this. Definitely:

I SAW A GHOST!

That got your attention didn’t it?

Yes, like 'Take a Break' and 'Pick Me Up' magazine, I am not averse to using attention grabbing headlines to lure you in.

...and then disappointing you with a story that doesn’t bear much relation to said headline.

Although, unlike them, I’ve made the crucial mistake of admitting this upfront and undermining my blog entry before it has even started.

Darn!

Kudos to you, 'Take a Break' and 'Pick Me Up' magazine – it’s not as easy as it looks!

Well, for those of you who still want to read my ‘ghostly’ yarn, here goes.

Whilst staying with my parents last weekend I was woken up at 3:30am by a very loud hiss in my right ear.

I sat bolt upright, looked in the direction of the hiss, and saw what I took to be a person standing next to my bed.

It looked exactly like the outline of my mum, and my first thought was that she had come into my room to wake me up.

So I said, “Mum, what is it?”

The figure didn’t move and continued to just stand there.

I kept on saying “Mum?...Mum?...Mum?” but nothing. The person just stood there.

Eventually I got exasperated, and figured that my mum must be sleep walking, so I got up to turn on the light and guide her back to bed.

I turned on the light and nobody was there.

Being the rationalist that I am, I promptly ran out of the room and spent the rest of the night in another spare bedroom upstairs (because ghosts can’t climb stairs, obviously)

I was awake for some time afterwards thinking about what had happened.

All those stories you hear, about people waking up to see figures at the end of their bed, I’d laughed at those, but now I had apparently joined their ranks – please God don’t let Joe Power be right!

By morning I was over it and back to the land of logic and reason.

When you have your 3:30am head on, and everything is dark and silent, it’s easy to get freaked out.

But in the cold light of day I decided that the noise must have been either in my dreams or from an external source outside the room. And in my sleepy stupor I had seen a shadow, associated it with the noise, and given it form.

The only thing that I continued to find slightly weird was that by the time I was fully awake and aware the ‘ghost’ was still apparently there, and clear as day, but that’s the power of the mind I guess.

The reason I am recounting this tale of ostensibly nothing, is that the experience gave me an interesting insight.

I can now totally understand how it is that people think they have seen a ghost.

If someone as cynical as me can think they saw one, then someone who is given to believing in the supernatural is going to swear blind they did. Their mind will collude with their tiredness, the shadows in the room and their fear, to create a hallucination, and they, being open to such things, will convince themselves of what they saw.

When it comes to the unexplained, it’s tempting to fill in the gaps with ghosts, God, fate. (Sorry to any Christians I offend by adding God to that list. If it helps I’ll say Allah as well, for balance, and so I don’t get called politically correct)

Although having said all this, I was sleeping in the room where that satanic massacre took place, so you never know.

And so ends my ghostly tale. Don’t have nightmares!

Going once, going twice

A quick blog to let you know that there's an exhibition and charity auction of Martin Rowson's work being held at the Menier Gallery from the 8-12 June.

One of the things up for grabs is all of the original artwork for my God Trumps:

So if you want to get hold of it, pop along to the event.

I'd quite like it myself, but am not in a position to flash that much cash. So if any rich benefactors are reading this...