Jack the Ripper's identity revealed

Who was Jack the Ripper? History has made him (N.B. for the sake of ease, common sense and overwhelming statistical probability, I will be referring to the perpetrator of the 1888 Whitechapel murders as a male throughout, although I am in full agreement with all feminists that women can be psychotic prostitute-killing maniacs too) into a monster, but the simple fact is that he was made of skin and bone and regularly visited by the all-too-human desire to eviscerate whores like everyone else. He had a face, he had hopes and dreams, he had at least one knee and maybe more. Putting a name to that man eluded the police at the time. It was only in the 20th Century and the birth of the silver screen that the greatest mystery in the annals of crime could begin to be solved.

Five Jack the Rippers, yesterday

Because the Jack the Ripper case has spawned countless film adaptations, almost all of them helpfully providing us with a definitive answer as to his identity. For some reason, so-called "serious" historians have ignored this vital resource, but I am not a "serious" historian so I do not. We all know that films can teach us a great deal. Forrest Gump, for example, taught me a lot about the nature of the self, of anger and whether or not Tom Hanks is a bag of shite.

Today, I look at some of these crucial pieces of evidence in order to be able to exclusively reveal to you, my long-suffering readers, the name of the most notorious murderer of them all.

THE LODGER: A STORY OF THE LONDON FOG (1927)
MAN IN THE ATTIC (1953)

The Lodger (1927): "Good evening, madam, may I please use your shitter?"

Most Jack the Ripper films are based around a handful of stories. The most common of these is The Lodger by Marie Belloc Lowndes. This story was itself inspired by a number of urban legends that circulated around the time of the Whitechapel murders regarding the unusual and unsanitary habits of the tenants of any number of paranoid, curtain-twitching, nosey old moo east-end landladies.

Jack the Ripper's Bedroom by W.R. Sickert,
a striking confession of guilt made by an
innocent party

One of them, the Finsbury Street lodger, was identified as G. Wenworth Bell Smith, a knock-kneed Canadian gent with an unfortunate habit of turning up after murders had taken place with blood on his shirt. Another, the Batty Street lodger, is suspected of being the deeply eccentric American quack doctor, determined pickler of wombs and red hot Ripper-suspect Francis Tumblety. A third was a veterinary student in Mornington Crescent, whose landlady told the next occupant of the room - the impressionist painter Walter Sickert - was definitely the culprit. It inspired the Ripper-obsessed Sickert to paint Jack the Ripper's Bedroom, which itself later helped the dazzlingly misguided American crime novelist Patricia Cornwell to finger Sickert as Jack the Ripper in the early part of this century.

These two films are both based on Lowndes' rendering of this tale, although the two have different endings. Lowndes' lodger is a idiosyncratic young gentleman of peculiar habits who keeps rather odd hours, largely thanks to his "research", and who has no great love of the paintings of young women on the walls of his room.

The Lodger is a silent film made by Alfred Hitchcock which is now justifiably considered the first true example of Hitchcockian cinema. Alas, the first feature-length telling of a story based on Jack the Ripper does not reveal the killer's identity: the titular lodger (played by the actual real-life Ivor Novello) in fact being the brother of The Avenger's first victim, his absences from the house at the time of the murders explained by the fact he is out walking the streets trying to capture the culprit. Man in the Attic, however, is much more forthcoming with the truth, THE TRUTH. Here, the titular Man in the Attic's (played, in an unlikely twist, by Western stalwart Jack Palance on horseback with a six-shooter) absences at suspicious times and the fact he frequently burns his clothing in the kitchen sink are explained by his job as a medical researcher and also all those prostitutes and showgirls that he is killing. Jack the Ripper was Jack Palance. We should have guessed, the clue was that they had the same name: Jack.

A STUDY IN TERROR (1966)
MURDER BY DECREE (1979)
FROM HELL (2001)

The second-most popular avenue for Jack the Ripper fiction is the avenging aristocrat story. Here, a libertine member of a family of high social standing - usually, but not always, royalty - will have married a prostitute, presumably with a view to getting a discount. The crazed defenders of the family name will then carry out a series of retributive ritualised murders in order to protect their legacy. Masonic plots are common here, as are top hats.

A Study in Terror is the film which finally gets Sherlock Holmes on the case. It was about time, too. It is also my favourite film adaptation of the Jack the Ripper case, for a number of excellent reasons. Firstly, it's got Jack the Ripper AND Sherlock Holmes in it which frankly should be enough on its own. But it keeps on giving: secondly it is shot in magnificently lush British horror film of the 1960s style, all gaudy technicolour, period costume, high-camp acting and gleefully nasty make-up and special effects. Thirdly, it is perhaps the Jack the Ripper film which keeps closest to the actual facts of the case.

The greatest loss yet to Western culture

But fourthly and most importantly, it features Barbara Windsor as Annie Chapman, the second canonical (but third in this particular incidence) victim of The Rip. This is a monumental piece of casting, principally as it comes heavy with ideas of the greatest film never made, Carry On Ripping.

The cast list of Carry On Ripping would have been as follows:

JACK THE RIPPER: Sid James
SIR CHARLES WARREN: Kenneth Williams
INSPECTOR ABBERLINE: Jim Dale
CHIEF INSPECTOR LITTLECHILD: Kenneth Connor
GEORGE LUSK: Peter Butterworth
POLLY NICHOLS: Angela Douglas
ANNIE CHAPMAN: Hattie Jacques
ELIZABETH STRIDE: Fenella Fielding
CATHERINE EDDOWES: Joan Sims
MARY KELLY: Barbara Windsor
DOCTOR BAGSTER-PHILLIPS: Charles Hawtrey
QUEEN VICTORIA: Bernard Bresslaw

It's best that you don't think about this too hard, I find: the poignancy of the fact that it will never be almost too much to bear.

In A Study in Terror, Jack the Ripper is finally revealed to be Lord Carfax, the avenging younger brother of an aristocratic family. He decided to eliminate prostitutes one at a time until the his offending sister-in-law finally felt his wrath. But, after Carfax's demise, Holmes reveals that no public good would be served by the revelation of his identity. If all of this still isn't selling the film to you, just take a look at the poster. BIFF! BANG! AIEEE! Are any three other words in the English language more evocative of the Autumn of Terror?

From Hell, based on the graphic novel written by Alan Moore, focuses on the traditional royal plot: the son of the Prince of Wales catches syph off of a manky old brass - as well as marrying her in secret and fathering a child - so the Queen's private physician Sir William Gull sets out to dispatch all the witnesses according to Masonic rites. This is probably the glossiest and most Hollywood of all the Ripper-based films, starring Johnny Depp as the skagged-up-to-the-gills Inspector George Abberline and Heather Graham (or Ivver Gruyumm, as she would have pronounced it in the film) as his love interest Mary Kelly. A prostitute. Do these people never learn?

From Hell reveals Jack the Ripper to be the Tony Award-winning actor Sir Ian Holm. This seems fundamentally more unlikely than John Fraser's Lord Carfax. Perhaps it even explains why Mr. Fraser has never been made a knight of the realm.

The Venn diagram of these two films meets in Murder by Decree, a 1979 film where the royal/Masonic plot is investigated by Holmes and Watson. The film itself lacks the excitement of the other two, but the cast is arguably far superior. Holmes and Watson are played by Christopher Plummer and James "James Mason" Mason, with John Gielgud, Donald Sutherland and Genevieve Bujold also featuring. The Holmesian role of Police Inspector Lestrade is essayed in both films by Frank Finlay. Two films, thirteen years apart, one set of facial expressions.

HANDS OF THE RIPPER (1971)
JACK THE RIPPER (1976)
TIME AFTER TIME (1979)

Thankfully, there is still room in the Jack the Ripper film canon for another type of storyline: batshit crazy crazy shit. This is perhaps the most exciting and compelling area of them all. They deviate from the traditional scripts and explanations to explore more dark, illogical and shit crazy bats areas of the case and of the human psyche.

Johannes der Rippenhausen

Jack the Ripper is a German-Swiss film of 1976 where a general practitioner, haunted by his mother's vaginal indiscretions when he was a child, makes amends by killing prostitutes. There is considerable sexual content to this film, Doctor Orloff (played by Klaus Kinski who, by virtue of being the leading man in a film called Jack the Ripper, is Jack the Ripper) usually choosing to undress and hump the tits off (literally, in one case) his quarry before dispatching them to the beyond. For the purposes of body disposal, the criminal uses the botanical gardens and river, an unusual choice and one that proves to be his downfall when it turns out that his knackers are allergic to root powder.

But it is the attendant cast of characters which really give this film the edge in the preposterousness stakes: an old blind man with a sense of smell that would put a bloodhound to shame, a griping old fishwife and a mercenary fisherman with a big hooter (played by the splendidly-named Herbert Fux) being the standouts amongst them.

Hands of the Ripper, meanwhile, is Hammer Studios foray into the subject and it takes a typically daft, camp and wonderful approach as the Ripper's daughter, Angharad Rees, sets about her father's old beat with gusto having witnessed him murder her mother as a child. With Rees getting all wide-eyed and murdery every time she is kissed, can Freudian psychoanalysis save London in time? It's not quite as magnificent a premise as the title promises - Hammer, after all, have frequently thought nothing of having actual disembodied hands roam around the place to really mess up someone's day - but it's not half bad. It is particularly blessed to have Eric Porter cast as the psychiatrist, Porter being a man who distinguishes any batshit crazy film with a certain pointy-bearded, bulging-eyed gravitas. A selection of immaculate period sets, bright orange-red baked bean juice blood, gristly special effects, seances and dazzling overacting across the board make for eighty minutes of superior entertainment.

The hands of the Hands of the Ripper's hands, ripping

As an extra twist, the Ripper's daughter - a deeply traumatised young woman - has ended up as a prostitute herself, which makes her deep-seated psychological loathing of whores fraught with complications, but none that can't be solved by impailing Dora Bryan to a door with a fire poker. Her possession by the spirit of her father provides her with great strength, although whether or not her hands take on the other physical properties of man hands - hair, anchor tattoos, etc - is not directly addressed aside from a brief glimpse of some Ripping stigmata, also present on her father's hand on the fateful night and which look not dissimilar to spilt ketchup.

It's a film that, arguably like psychoanalysis itself, offers more questions than answers. Could Jack the Ripper himself have been under psychic possession when he committed his crimes? Could Jack the Ripper have been in Poldark? Like so much in this mysterious case, we may never know. The fun, as always, is in the speculation.

Meanwhile, in 1979's Time After Time, Jack the Ripper has used a time machine to transport himself to modern-day San Francisco. The time machine was the must-have gadget for Victorian gentlemen. It is also a continuation of the ongoing theme in film representations of Jack the Ripper: that the killer was upper crust, or at the very least a man of means. Means sufficient to acquire himself a time machine, at least. Everyone back then had one, to such an extent that it was a wonder there were any men in Victorian Britain at all. However, as a result, it's not all plain sailing for the Ripper, who has H.G.Wells hot on his heels. It's one of those marvellous things: a completely preposterous idea, done well. In many ways, it's what cinema should be about. Cinema should certainly have Jack the Ripper in the future, as frequently as possible. The only problem is their casting - David Warner as Jack the Ripper feels strangely off. I'm willing to suspect Ivor Novello or point the finger at Angharad Rees, but David Warner? I'm still reeling from his decapitation in The Omen and there's only so much that time travel can do.

David Warner in Time After Time - not fooling anyone

So, in conclusion, what have we learned? Nothing. Nothing at all. But it's probably safe to leave your wife with David Warner.

Animal mathematics

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Dude over there, got two heads

I've been watching a programme called Abby and Brittany recently. Abby and Brittany Hensel are 22-year old conjoined twins from Minnesota and are followed around by a documentary crew as they live their lives. The thrust of the programme is that these lives are fairly typical lives for that of 22-year old women. They went to university, now they have graduated and are looking for their first job. In the meantime, they are living it up with their college friends, travelling around the United States and visiting Europe before settling down to their career.

Being conjoined twins, then, presents them with no obstacles to living normal, humdrum, mundane lives. Their friends are interviewed at cattle prod-point throughout to tell us all how they admire the way they are able to live such normal lives.

But here's the thing: I think it's a bit condescending and offensive. In emphasising how normal their lives are and yet slavishly filming it the whole way, the programme is doing exactly what it is trying to avoid, raising the twins up and making everyone go OH NOW HOLD ON LOOK AT THAT. Abby and Brittany Hensel are fascinating people because they are conjoined. There's no point pretending otherwise. Because without that aspect, they'd just be two very normal 22-year old women doing brain-meltingly ordinary things.

It's a good reminder that it's always good to celebrate our differences. Pointing out that conjoined twins are conjoined is hardly offensive stuff, after all. For one thing, they already know. For a second, being a conjoined twin is not an offensive thing to be. Conjoined twins who are the subject of mockery and ridicule by idiots are equally able to mock the idiots back for not being conjoined. It's a plain of reference thing: for Abby and Brittany, they don't know what it's like to not be joined to one another any more than we one-heads know what it must be like to have your twin sharing your anus.

But the huge majority of people are not conjoined, and so have created almost indefinite amounts of documentation - art, literature and music to name just three - about that experience. Abby and Brittany will, I'm sure, be able to understand, and empathise with, my predicament more easily than I can understand their situation. This is why Abby and Brittany is such a missed opportunity. There's so much that we can all learn from each other if we embrace and celebrate what makes us different, rather than focus on the fact that we all like eating ice cream or looking at fountains.

In the latest episode I watched, Abby and Brittany went on holiday to Italy. They first went to Venice and then visited Rome. The public reaction to them was predictably understated. When someone sees conjoined twins, they don't scream, set fire to their children and then jump in the Po. Instead, the following happens:

BEPPE: Oh look, there's some conjoined twins.
MARCO: Where?
BEPPE: Over there, by the fountain. Dude with two heads.
MARCO: Oh yeah. I wonder how they shit?

These are the basic questions that I want answered! I don't care what Abby and Brittany are going to do with their lives. They are two otherwise unremarkable 22-year old women making their way in the world. I have no interest in what anyone I don't know personally is up to, unless it has some impact on me. What IS interesting, however, is the experience of being conjoined. I'd like to know how they sleep, how they poo, how they go about having a crafty wank, what they do if one is watching a TV show that makes the other one bored as shit but unable to wander off, what they do if one of them decides to join a gym. Basic, nuts and bolts of life stuff. You might argue it is prurient, but then so is filming the largely typical lives of two conjoined twins and then ignoring the real meat of the issue.

To that end, I have designed the twins AN INVENTION. It is called The Pillow Helmet. It is, as the name suggests, a helmet made from pillows. Essentially, it's a boxing helmet but with more goose down filling. The Pillow Helmet serves a double purpose: firstly, if either of the twins is someone who likes to sleep on their side, it allows them to do so without using their sibling's face as a support (which is just rude). Secondly, it acts as a buffer and a baffle so that neither girl need see the other's Doing A Poo face when they're sat on the toilet.

And the thing is, I reckon that the Hensels could find lots of other uses for it that I'd never have thought of. Because they have a lot they could teach we one-headed folk. We have a lot we could teach them. It's time the world as one realises that tolerance, acceptance and equality is not about pretending everyone is the same.

Causal determinism

Arthur Wellesley, the First Duke of Wellington,
no good beefy sumbitch

In Shoreham-by-Sea there is a pub called The Duke of Wellington. I've never been in it, possibly on account of the factor that I am about to relate. Above the door is a very large stone boot. This is presumably a Wellington boot. Maybe it's even one of the Duke of Wellington's very own. He was an impressive man, after all, and ate a lot of beef.

But this great big stone boot hangs there all the same. Sometimes I have to walk under it as it overhangs the pavement outside the door. And this always worries me. It is only suspended by chains, you see. Should they ever fail, that boot will fall earthward with terrifying force. If I know only one thing about physics - and I do - I know this: stuff that is up in the air will always want to go in a downward direction. This is because Sir Isaac Newton invented gravity.

One day I'll be underneath that boot and it will fall on my head, I just know it. I tell you what I will do to prove this to you. I'm going to go there right now and stand there. I'll stand there for a thousand years if I have to. But one day I'll be underneath that boot and it will fall on my head.

And that will be just my bloody luck.

Goose news

Horrific as this may seem, it's Christmas Day in two months. This is likely to be causing you all profound grief especially if you, like me, hate the world and want it to suffer.

However! This year I've decided to stop being a part of the problem and instead become part of the solution. I am doing this via the means of my very special and uniquely offensive Christmas card range, now available on my Etsy store.

I am mindful of the fact that some of you may not want to go via Etsy to acquire these precious, precious things, though. For one thing, you have to create an account to buy shit, which would certainly put ME off. Although, of course, I do already have an Etsy account, so it isn't a problem.

Long story short, if you would like to buy any cards but would prefer to do so more directly by (almost) speaking to an (almost) real person, you can email me instead. This goes for all the offers you see on the Etsy store now or in the future. There are currently 68 cards left available from this particular print run: should these sell out I will be ordering more, including two designs not currently available. Specifically, these two here:

Turkey

Wink wonk

If you would like to have cards of this design, I'm afraid you will first have to put your hand in your pocket - or spread the word to friends, relatives, co-workers and enemies - to start to make a big enough dent in the stockpile to get my slothful, lackadaisical arse back off down The Print Wagon.

Also available from today, exclusive to the blog - this bona fide piece of genuine zoological art, depicting a rhinole.

It is A6 postcard size (175mm x 125mm), acrylic on card-mounted canvas, all for the low low price of £40 (inclusive of postage and packing within the UK). Email me at the same address if you are interested or just wish more animals had holes in.

Sad Clown Etsy Store | Sad Clown Facebook Page | Sad Clown Email

Bayeuxsaurus

Christmas cards now available from THIS location: http://www.etsy.com/shop/SadClownIllustration

Let me explain how this thing works

The big man

"I just know that my mother/ father/ grandparent/ teacher/ mentor was looking down from heaven at me today and would have been very proud".

We've all heard this one. It is a charming thought, too. Unfortunately, it's a thought which is at best only half-formulated. Because people who are "in heaven" are now immortals, unhindered by the same rules of temporality or dimensionality as us poor bastards slogging away on this damp rock. They don't need to be in one place at a time, or have to rest.

This means that your mother, father, grandparent, teacher or mentor will also have seen you do any of the following:

1. Fuck a dog.
2. Have to worm your cat and then the cat poos everywhere and you get a bit in your mouth and swallow it.
3. Fuck a kid.
4. Have a really gnarly and involved shite.
5. Have a really sweaty, grunty, hollow wank over some really exceptionally grotty porn.
6. Vote Conservative.
7. Tread on your sister's hamster's head.
8. Steal money from a tramp's hat.
9. Murder a prostitute.
10. Stuck things up your bum.

This may be painful to find out now but believe me, you'll thank me in the long run. You filthy, disgusting, freak.

It's a rhinole

If you'd like to ruin someone's Christmas, how about finding something to send them from my Etsy store? http://www.etsy.com/shop/SadClownIllustration

Telecom problems

As you probably already know by now, my hatreds are many, varied, almost always unjustified and barely thought-through. But I will tell you this, some fountains of bile never seem to run dry and besides, I have genuinely managed to convince myself that I am always right, so my more enduring pet peeves I consider to occupy the same status as a Papal edict.

So yeah, adverts that have ongoing storylines. What the shit?

We've had to endure these throughout my lifetime. The Bisto family brought pathos to powdered meat, as well as dodging a major bullet when they successfully sidestepped casting Jimmy Savile as the father. The Nescafé Gold Blend couple made us all sick before Anthony Head finally got up the courage to pump Sharon Maughan in their twelfth (TWELVE!) commercial together. I remember Nescafé taking out adverts in the press advertising their advert on the day the denouement to this particular series hit our screens.  I remember specifically tuning in to see it, too. In the days when there were only four television channels, this was event TV! The specific event that I was hoping to see was a asteroid striking their flat, or them getting the clap. Perhaps the failure for either of these to materialise is the root cause of my hardline aversion to commercial series? I think it's more likely to be the fact that they are fucking shit, but anything is possible.

The biggest repeat offender in this hideous sweating gonad are BT. Seemingly without any regard for my feelings, blood pressure or pursing anus, British Telecom have decided that the best way to sell their services is vignettes of family drama. We've had Beattie the meddling gossipy housewife. Beattie wasn't so bad. She was more a chance for Maureen Lipman to bring her almost inexplicable worship of Joyce Grenfell to bear. But it was a shot across the bows, a warning that should have been heeded.

Because now they're on a roll. Kris Marshall became the new young daddy to a hideous family in a seemingly unending series of adverts which successfully managed to become more mawkish, turgid and ghastly by the installment. Eventually, Marshall got himself in a pickle with a traffic violation in real life, which saw his character cast out into a gloomy, takeaway curry in a bedsit, grindingly Onanistic nightmare before the plug was finally pulled. The nation (i.e. me) rejoiced and wondered why Marshall had taken so long to make a social faux pas. I mean, I alone must have sent a hundred hookers to his house in the hope he'd get caught out.

But the horror was not over. Now BT's spokespeople are a hideous group of housemates. A snot-nosed studenty male and an avuncular landlord at least twice his age coexist in perfect harmony until the new girl, who the elder one wants to fuck, arrives. But these commercials are so half-arsed they can't really even be bothered to keep up any sort of narrative strand beyond the fact the people are the same in every new outing. Simon's need to get some filthy bingo begins as being sufficiently strong that he is willing to download the entire back catalogue of Duran Duran. But come the Olympics, he's perfectly happy to chase after a room full of Spaniards. Now, at Halloween, he's concerned only for the integrity of his carpet.

At least the Gold Blend couple had some semblance of dramatic tension. The new BT gang are completely lackadaisical. A series of seemingly unrelated events occur to them without ever really ruffling too many feathers. So dead inside are they, maybe Simon and Simon's Bit Of Fluff bump uglies every single day but they're both such profound psychopaths that it doesn't even register with them the following day?

I hate all these people. Which, sadly, must mean that I do care about them. And that is exactly what the advertisers want. The fact that the majority of my investment in their story is that I want to see them all dying of the shits is neither here nor there. At this present moment in time I rather fear that I would buy anything Simon suggested I should, and I would like to protest about this state of affairs. No-one that I actually know, whose ongoing story arc I am familiar with, could make me do anything at the drop of a hat in the same way.

Television advertising has rotted my mind in ways I had rather hoped would be reserved for the rotting of the BT housemates' private parts. When they all die, screaming, of Atomic Crabs.

Bloody bastarding hell.

Home decor for beginners

Coffee problems

There is a general tendency for any discourse taking place online to resolve in a reductio ad Hitlerum, leading to the evocation of Godwin's Law and the end of the discussion. So one must tread very carefully when making any form of broad, sweeping statements but coffee house baristas are the worst thing in history and should be rounded up and shot.

Oh OK, not the people themselves, who I am sure are all very nice and give money to the Dogs Trust and buy the Big Issue and worry about the environment. But the word needs to be expunged from the English language and the prevailing attitude that created it crushed like a BAG OF ADDERS.

A half-caf demi-frap caramel macchiato, please.
With a pube from your beard in it, yeah why not.

Self-aggrandising pricks are not a rare commodity in the United Kingdom, but until baristas came along they didn't have a union. There've always been people who gift themselves preposterously overblown titles for the job they do and there always will be, so I'm not quite sure why the concept of a barista so riles me. But it does, oh how it does.

We live in a society where people train for decades to earn the title "Doctor", and for even longer to become a specialist, at which point their title reverts to "Mr." or "Mrs.". So your GP is technically able to lord it up over your prostate specialist. Meanwhile, the muffin-shovelling beanlackey (GCSE Mathematics: "C" grade, 2006) who makes them both their morning cup o' mud is lording it up over everyone. What kind of example does this set for our children? Where will the dentists of the future be coming from, when high-fallutin' honorific titles can be yours simply by dint of a successful application to Beans Beans Beans? This is actually a particularly pressing concern, as I seem to have ground all my teeth down to a powder in a fit of uncontrollable rage.

But don't mistake this gibbering outburst of insanity to be one which is negative towards people who work in coffee shops. Theirs is a perfectly respectable job, as much as any other. And I'm sure that most of them wouldn't introduce themselves to you at a wedding by saying they are a barista. But I am equally sure that some of the bastards fucking would, and that's far too much to be able to stand.

The next step is surely to find a similarly vaunted moniker for the people who work in the kitchens at Burger King and Chicken Cottage. They, too, are providing comestible items that are uniquely different to the sort that you could make at home. Meatista? Chookista? Gristleshepherd?

It's a work in progress.

If you're still talking to me, maybe you might like to buy your Christmas cards from my Etsy Store this year? A percentage of at least some sales will almost certainly be heading a barista's way: http://www.etsy.com/shop/SadClownIllustration

Serial killers, day 30: Monster Killer

You can order my Christmas cards here: http://www.etsy.com/shop/SadClownIllustration

Osaurus

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You can order my Christmas cards here: http://www.etsy.com/shop/SadClownIllustration

Celebrity problems

It's been quite a week for Britain's beloved celebrities. Accusations and revelations abound and with both Justin Lee Collins and Jimmy Savile now feeling the full force of public anathema, I'm finding myself beginning to wonder just who the next celebrity who it was patently obvious to everyone beforehand that they were a cunt that it will be revealed that they were in fact a cunt, is.

But I'm going to do some thinking outside the box here and say that the problem is not these celebrities at all, rather it's Britain's bewildering expectations of them that are all broken. People rarely lead blameless lives, and celebrities are - for all the pink-top wiffling - just people after all. Like everyone they eat, they sleep, they poo, they watch golf, they have one off the wrist, they walk dogs, they psychologically abuse women, they buy Ryvita, they sexually abuse underage girls, they look up recipes for Brandy Alexanders online and they subscribe to Bird Watching magazine. These are things that we all do, to a greater or lesser extent.

So, my radical solution is that you should do what I do. It's not that I am always right, more that everything I do turns out to be the considered and ultimately correct solution to all problems. Celebrities are famous because they do things. So if you must worship a celebrity, worship their ability at that thing that saw them rise above the herd in the first place. That's the only aspect of their being that anyone else has any right to feel ownership of. Leave the being a person to them, just as they leave your being a person to you. And if they transgress in some way, then they will be disciplined in the same way that you or I might be.

Even if they do fuck a dog.

You can order my Christmas cards here: http://www.etsy.com/shop/SadClownIllustration

Serial killers, day 29: Aileen Wuornos

You can order my Christmas cards here: http://www.etsy.com/shop/SadClownIllustration

Buy my Christmas cards

Hello.

You may remember me mentioning that I'll soon have some of my wares for sale via Etsy. Well now I do. I'm starting with four Christmas card designs, but the new year will see all sorts of other things: cards, prints, tea towels and colouring books are all on the agenda.

cards (plus unrelated stegosaurus)

The designs available are limited in number, future print runs may well include different designs but there'll only be four different pictures available at any one time so don't hesitate to order if you are interested.

Needless to say, you should also not hesitate to share this information with your friends, relatives and bitterest foes.

You can order the cards here: http://www.etsy.com/shop/SadClownIllustration

Serial killers, day 28: The Suffolk Strangler

Serial killers, day 27: The Wests

Serial killers, day 26: Jack the Writer

Mercenary art update

Hello.

If you like my pictures you may be interested in Sad Clown, my forthcoming Etsy store where you'll be able to buy cards, prints or specially commissioned pieces. If you think this could be just the very thing to tickle your individual pickle and you are a computer person, you can now like my Facebook page or follow my new Sad Clown Twitter for updates and details. If you are not, rest assured that you obviously read my blog where I will also be putting up pertinent information.

Hello.

Serial killers, day 25: The Yorkshire Ripper

Let's box

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The Long Man of Wilmington is a prick

Heritage.

If I went out and broke my bloody back digging out a huge great big long man-shaped trough in a hillside and then filling it with limestone, frankly I'd expect the rozzers to catch me in the act and gently dissuade me from continuing by the means of a swift kick in the knackers. Even if I were able to finish it, I imagine that the National Trust or some other group of beardy people to say outraged things on the breakfast news and fix the damage to their hill - A HILL! - as soon as possible.

However, if I somehow managed to carve a 200-foot tall figure in the side of the hill and no-one kicked me in the spuds or noticed for about a thousand years, this piece of gibbering insanity becomes heritage and art and important. I understand this point of view. Heritage is a very important thing and should be protected.

This is not to say that the Long Man of Wilmington isn't a cunt. Because he is. I'll say it again. The Long Man of Wilmington is a cunt. Always has been and always will be. It hurts me to say it because Sussex Pride Should Never Be Denied. It's a bit of a stinger that the UK's finest county is also home to its lousiest hillside figure.

The Long Man of Wilmington: dreary

The UK, a global leader in heritage after all, only actually has two such human figures. To be honest, that's for the best. If there was shit drawn on every hill they'd start to lose their impact. There's the Long Man of Wilmington in East Sussex and the Cerne Abbas Giant in Dorset.

the Cerne Abbas Giant: hung

And therein lies the problem. Every day, a million conversations about the Long Man of Wilmington run thusly:

"I saw the Long Man of Wilmington yesterday."
"Oh yes?"
"Yep."
"Eh, you could have your eye out on that, eh? eh? Lads? Am I right? Cor."
"Ah no, that's the other one."
"Oh."
"No, the Long Man of Wilmington is the one who just stands there holding two walking sticks."
"Ah."
"Yeah, it's the Cerne Abbas Giant you're thinking of, with the knobbly club and the love truncheon and the face and the nipples and the awesome."
"So..."
"Yeah. The Long Man of Wilmington is just a cunt."

Global heritage sites shouldn't be this disappointing. It'd be like finding out that the Taj Mahal is made of Lego. I'm clearly not the only person to have felt this way. On the night of 17th June 2010, someone painted a 20-foot high phallus on the Long Man. This is by turns a disgraceful act of vandalism and a desecration of a world-famous historical site but also a brilliant thing to do. Such acts of wanton brazenness should, of course, be frowned-upon and discouraged but when they are just done with the line marker from a sports stadium (as was the case) and no permanent damage was done, we should probably try to retain some sense of perspective and sense of humour about it. Heritage is only worth anything if it helps to shape and inform the present. Plus, it gave a million conversations a moment of blessed respite.

The Long Man of Wilmington, June 2010: like a baby's arm

"I saw the Long Man of Wilmington yesterday."
"Oh yes?"
"Yep."
"Eh, you could have your eye out on that, eh? eh? Lads? Am I right? Cor."
"Yes, some cunt's drawn a massive boner on it."
"Really?."
"Yep."
"God, what a cunt."
"Funny though."
"Yeah."
"Shall we go and see it?"

Serial killers, day 24: Ahmad Suradji

Serial killers, day 23: Moses Sithole

Serial killers, day 22: Doctor Shipman

Serial killers, day 21: The Green River Killer

Serial killers, day 20: The Night Stalker

Serial killers, day 19: The Terminator

Serial killers, day 18: Dennis Nilsen

Serial killers, day 17: The Beast of Birkenshaw

Serial killers, day 16: Henry Lee Lucas

Serial killers, day 15: The Monster of The Andes

The America Project - New Hampshire

New Hampshire (NH) size 9,350 sq.m population 1.3 million

Bordering states Vermont, Massachusetts, Maine (3)
State capital Concord
Most populous city Manchester
Other notable places Berlin, Claremont, Franklin, Rochester, Dover
Notable landmarks and natural features Presidential Range mountains, Canterbury Shaker Village, Lake Winnipesaukee, Strawbery Banke
Statehood 21st June 1788 (9th)

Ten famous Granite Staters
Brooke Astor (socialite and philanthropist; born Portsmouth, 1902-2007)
Dan Brown (author; born Exeter, 1964 -)
Eliza Coupe (actress; born Plymouth, 1981 -)
Paul Michael Levesque (aka Triple H) (professional wrestler; born Nashua, 1969 -)
Bode Miller (skiier; born Easton, 1977 -)
Mandy Moore (actress and singer; born Nashua, 1984 -)
Herman Webster Mudgett (aka Dr. H.H. Holmes) (serial killer; born Gilmanton, 1861-1896)
Franklin Pierce (politician, 14th President of the USA; born Hillsborough, 1804-1869)
Sarah Silverman (comedian and actress; born Bedford, 1970 -)
Earl Tupper (chemist and inventor; born Berlin, 1907-1983)

Three important events

1. New England Hurricane, 21st September 1938

The first hurricane to strike New England in almost 70 years, the New England hurricane of 1938 was a category 3 storm by the time it made landfall in Long Island. Virtually every eastern seaboard State was affected by the storm, and whilst New Hampshire got off lightest in terms of total rainfall, the hurricane destroyed ten bridges in Peterborough and sparked several fires which burned out of control downtown as floodwater prevented firefighting efforts. In total, 13 people died in New Hampshire alone.

2. The Shaggs, 1968

In Fremont, NH there's not a lot going on, so when the mother of sisters Dot, Helen, Betty and Rachel Wiggin had a vision that her daughters were set for global stardom, their father Austin Wiggin knew exactly what to do. This represents the last stage in this story when anyone knew what to do, as the four sisters then formed an unforgettable pop group at Austin's insistence. With Austin's investment, the sisters wrote and played their own songs, culminating in the monumental studio album Philosophy of the World, released in March 1969. The band's unique approach to lyrical construction and sonic structure bewildered a world and the album proved to be their only record. The Shaggs continued to be a popular live act in New Hampshire until Austin's death in 1975 freed them, and everyone, to do other things with their time. Frank Zappa called The Shaggs "better than The Beatles", although thus far he is the only person to do so.

3. Old Man of the Mountain, 3rd May 2003

Like on my curtains, if you looked at Cannon Mountain in the New Hampshire White Mountains from a certain angle you could very clearly see a face in profile. This craggy old rock bastard became known as the Old Man of the Mountains and was quite the local and national celebrity. His image eventually appeared on coins and postage stamps. But as it always must to granite OAPs, death came to the Old Man of the Mountain in May 2003, as generations of freezing and thawing, wind, rain, sun and snow finally saw him collapse. Although he was in fact a big pile of rocks, floral tributes were left at the site. Which was a big pile of rocks.

My day in someone else's fake kitchen

I could literally watch the television channel Food Network UK all day. The reason I am able to make such a bold statement is that I have literally watched Food Network UK all day. It has crept onto the channels available on Freeview in the past year, first for only a few hours each evening and now, joyously, all day long. It is completely dominating my life and the people on it are filling my every thought.

As usual, I am probably reading too much into everything. There's certainly no need to try and impose some kind of narrative story onto these programmes, filled with hopes, dreams and broken promises. There's probably less CIA involvement than I am imagining. Far less lost love and bitterness. However, as the people who make cookery shows seem hell bent on turning them into aspirational vehicles to sell the virtues of the lifestyle of every new grub pedlar who appears on the TV, I think I'm probably justified in doing so nevertheless. Besides, who's to say that Nigella Lawson ISN'T building a jet camel?

As well as avidly watching some of the familiar names and faces who make daily appearances on the Food Network, I have also discovered three new TV cooks who have made me feel like a schmuck for missing out on their lives for so many years. Through gritted teeth, narrowed eyes and pursed anus, I watch them perform their culinary machinations and grow grimly, obsessively, fascinated by every part of their programmes and of their lives. By this stage, they can't even halve a lemon without me trying to figure out their voting intentions, judging by their words or mannerisms alone.

Guy Fieri is the smiley and ebullient face of the Food Network, albeit a face with an improbably distracting beard. He's a big name in US cookery shows, which makes it all the more unusual that he is so determined to pronounce it "Fietty" in spite of all evidence to the contrary. But for all his fame and success across the Atlantic, there's no ego here: Guy is perfectly happy to let his children, or his wife, or his parents, or his dogs join him on centre stage to make clams. This is unfortunate and one of those excellent, timely demonstrations of the importance of ego. Ego is unfairly maligned.

Guy Fieri: in Team Kale

Another thing that is unfairly maligned, in Guy's eyes at least, is kale. Does Guy ever love kale. Crispy kale. Boiled kale. Steamed kale. Baked kale. Sun-dried kale. Cannon-fired kale. I have never seen an episode of Guy's Big Bite or Guy's Big Bite: Backyard where his meal plan doesn't include at least one kale element. His devotion to kale is almost touching, until you remember that it's as likely as not the result of a deal with a major multinational kale concern. Kaleco Enterprises. A convoy of kale-packed 18-wheel lorries head towards his house every hour of the day or night containing all his gratis kale. His potassium levels must be such that his urine now reacts violently on contact with water. Kale, ladies and gentlemen.

I like Guy Fieri. I like his recipes and his general no-nonsense, flavour-first approach to cooking. I'm far less sold on Kelsey Nixon, the host of Kelsey's Essentials. In every episode of Kelsey's Essentials, our titular star - one of those people who seems to be simultaneously 8 years old and sixty - tells us all about the ESSENTIAL ingredients, tools and techniques that she has laying about her pretend kitchen. Kelsey was a front runner in a Food Network competition to find a new TV chef and so there's every chance that this programme represents the culmination of all her wildest dreams. This alone could express the slightly frenzied look in her eyes. She doesn't so much look at you as see all the cuts of meat marked on your body. Kelsey is magnificently excited to be cooking on television. It troubles me.

Kelsey Nixon: planning what to cook next

But it is at least a straightforward cookery show. Kelsey cooks. Kelsey eats. Kelsey goes home again. Barefoot Contessa is more like a magazine programme for a life you will never, ever have. Barefoot Contessa is presented by Ina Garten, the absurdly wealthy middle-aged wife of an absurdly wealthy unspecified business scion called Jeffrey. Ina lives in The Hamptons surrounded by frighteningly wealthy friends, many of whom pop by during the day to try out a new recipe, perhaps inspired by Ina's recent trip to HyperParis: the Paris that only rich people know about. Then she'll tootle off to a florists to give you some flower arranging tips, apropos of nothing, nothing at all.

Before you know it Ina (she introduces herself on her most recent programme, Barefoot Contessa - Back To Basics, as "I'm the Barefoot Contessa", an act simply bound to earn a chorus of "no you're not" from my end) has been hanging around the kitchen of one of New York's most insanely exclusive restaurants shooting the shit with the head chef and is now back to finish the three course meal inspired by the time she went to space for Jeffrey's tea. Jeffrey looks like a man who'd be happy with sardines on toast and a wank, so a full banquet is always likely to go down well. Until, that is, he realises that all of this gourmet indulgence has come at the expense of that wank.

Ina Garten: considerably richer than you

The thing that really bothers me about Barefoot Contessa is the theme tune. Here is a show where wealthy people with dream lives cook delicious things for other wealthy people with dream lives. The music should just be the opening titles from Duck Tales with maniacal laughter and the unmistakable sounds of unfettered glee. Instead, it is an oddly-threatening electric piano doodle, replete with a building dramatic tension entirely absent from the programme, the food or Geoffrey's post-prandial shit, which comes out like a buttered adder.

I'm completely obsessed with Barefoot Contessa. For weeks I saw it coming up in the schedules and avoided it. More fool me. Ina Garten is a hero for our times.

Serial killers, day 14: Lake and Ng

Serial killers, day 13: Jack the Ripper

Serial killers, day 12: H.H. Holmes

Serial killers, day 11: The Acid Bath Murderer

Serial killers, day 10: Ed Gein

The America Project - Nevada

Nevada (NV) size 110,567 sq.m population 2.7 million

Bordering states California, Oregon, Idaho, Utah, Arizona (5)
State capital Carson City
Most populous city Las Vegas
Other notable places Henderson, Reno, Sunrise Manor, Paradise
Notable landmarks and natural features Las Vegas Strip, Area 51, Mojave Desert, Sierra Nevada mountains, Lake Tahoe, The Hoover Dam
Statehood 31st October 1864 (36th)

Ten famous Nevadans
Andre Agassi (tennis player; born Las Vegas, 1970 -)
Mädchen Amick (actress; born Sparks, 1970 -)
Kurt Busch (racing driver; born Vas Vegas, 1978 -)
Glen Charles (TV writer and producer; born Las Vegas, 1943 -)
Brad Dexter (actor; born Goldfield, 1917-2002)
Brandon Flowers (musician; born Henderson, 1981 -)
Jenna Jameson (actress; born Las Vegas, 1974 -)
Jack Kramer (tennis player; born Las Vegas, 1921-2009)
Patricia Nixon (former First Lady and Second Lady of the USA; born Ely, 1912-1993)
Amanda Righetti (actress; born St. George, Utah (raised in Las Vegas); 1983 -)

Three important events

1. Comstock Lode, 1859

The making of Nevada was the discovery of Comstock Lode, the largest deposit of silver ore in the United States. Discovered by enterprising miners with one of their number, Henry T. P. Comstock, lending it his name, it sparked a predictably frenzied silver rush all across the United States. With the surface pickings quickly exhausted, deep cast mining quickly followed. By 1880, nearly 7 million tons of gold and silver had been extracted from the site, making the State wealthier and more desirable than its largely unfarmable and unpromising dusty surroundings  - Nevada is the driest of the fifty States - would immediately suggest.

2. The Northern Club, 1931

Quite contrary to the self-flagellation which gripped the United States following the stock market crash of 1929, Nevada instead looked to mankind's many delicious vices as a guaranteed source of income.  With unemployment skyrocketing and Prohibition still in place, Nevada legalised gambling in 1931. The first licensed "gaming" venue was Northern Club casino in Las Vegas, guaranteeing financial ruin for generations to come. Nevada has never since gone back on its decision, although gambling remains taboo across much of the country to this day - Nevada remains the only State where casino-based gambling is legal throughout - and the gaming industry accounts for over a third of the Nevada's income. A further boost to Nevada's liberal reputation and its coffers is that it is also the only State with legalised prostitution.

3. The shooting of Tupac Shakur, 7th September 1996

A hugely successful and influential figure in the Hip-Hop music scene, Tupac Shakur was also a key player in the East coast - West coast rap wars of the 1990s, during which the United Kingdom remained neutral. Shakur was from New York City but in Nevada for the Mike Tyson - Bruce Sheldon heavyweight boxing match in Las Vegas. Upon leaving the MGM Grand, Shakur was shot four times in a drive-by assault. He was taken to hospital with mortal wounds to his internal organs. He died 6 days later. When his body was cremated, some of the ashes were mixed with marijuana and smoked by Shakur's group, The Outlawz. Which is the way Chelsea Pensioners do it.

Take you to liver school

Last year I first watched Man v. Food and frankly it changed the way that I thought about eating everything in the entire world. Back then it was still something of an underground hit. Now, everyone in Britain has seen MvF and it is changing the entire country's cholesterol level.

Not least because, off the back of it, I am starting to see pubs and restaurants instituting EATING CHALLENGES of their own. This is terribly exciting stuff. It's taken longer than most American cultural staples to make its journey across the Atlantic, possibly because we still had food rationing from the end of the second world war up until 1998. But now it is here, what will become of us? Best case scenario: we all get hugely fat and happy. Worst case scenario: we become laughing stocks.

Because, frankly, we're very much beginners at this sort of thing and I worry that our efforts will be quaint at best. American tourists will have to start ordering the eating challenges just to get a portion size akin to that of their ordinary breakfast. We'd be literally a side of coleslaw away from a pat on the head and a friendly-if-patronising chuck under the chin.

I find this prospect quite unappealing. After all, the British Empire is the Empire that taught the world all about excess and self-loathing, so our failing to out-eat the colonies would be a humiliating backslide. However, there is still one area in which us plucky Brits can still compete with the best in the world.

Step forward my new television programme idea: Man v. Booze.

Serial killers, day 9: Garavito

Serial killers, day 8: John Gacy

Serial killers, day 7: Jeffrey Dahmer

Serial killers, day 6: J.R.H. Christie

EDIT: lawks, lots of new visitors today. Hello. Just a reminder that there'll be a new one of these every weekday morning until 9th October.

Serial killers, day 5: The Rostov Ripper

EDIT: lawks, lots of new visitors today. Hello. Just a reminder that there'll be a new one of these every weekday morning until 9th October.

Match of the Day problems

There's been far too many blogs and podcasts beating up on Match of the Day in the last few years that it feels like it would be wrong of me to join the chorus. However, I'm going to have to. It was a toss up between that and just going mad and ranting with a recursive impotence at the television every weekend. However, I am pretty good, so I have in fact managed to do both.

I'm not going to focus on some of the problems that other football correspondents and commentators have levelled at the BBC's venerable old football show. Yes, considering the advances in TV technology and social media, the football highlights show has started to feel a bit anachronistic, lumpen and omni-directional. But it does the job and it is, lest we forget, a television institution. We Brits like those. My problem is with the cast of characters.

Back in the day, all you needed to present a football show was a magnificently patterned terylene shirt, a desk with an oddly redundant telephone atop it. Brian Moore would tell us who was playing, then probably also be the commentator on the highlights before popping back to the studio and giving a succinct summary of events without editorialising. The reason that Match of the Day appears so dated is not that it fundamentally follows the same structure that football highlights programmes have always done, but that they felt the need to tart it up. Extra guests, prolonged tactical analysis and needless graphics packages when really all we need is the games and Jimmy Hill.

This blunderbuss of opinion and flapdoodle that BBC1 fires into my face every Saturday night and Sunday morning has left me resigned to the adoption of a number of coping mechanisms. Namely, I have turned it into a soap opera. Every single one of the regular cast are a character, all with their own problems, struggles and burdens. And like their EastEnders counterparts all cramming into the Queen Vic, they are not entirely always in control of whose company they will be in as their storylines develop. Sparks can and will fly.

Gary Lineker is the landlord. He's contractually obliged to be there every week, no matter how bad a seven days it has been or how odious that night's punters are. His strategy is to damn his enemies with faint praise and low-level jibes about their past, but mostly he just farts strangely odour-free platitudes and half-puns into the air where no-one in particular will hear them or care.

Alan Hansen is the most long-standing patron. His seniority means that few will cross him or even make a helpful suggestion about his skincare and moisturisation regime which would stop him from looking like a smoky bacon flavour tortoise. He remembers every single failure and mistake that all of his friends, colleagues and acquaintances have suffered (except for the number of times Alan Shearer kicked someone in the head, oddly) and this makes him a distinctly dangerous competitor.

Mark Lawrenson is the drunk old aunt propped up in the corner, leftover from a wake that took place some time around lunchtime. He's fed up with everything, wishing it could have been him that they had put in the ground but still happy enough to complain endlessly to anyone who will listen, until that great day finally comes. The fact that no-one is listening any more is of supreme disinterest to him as he just runs through his well worn sherry-scented monologue day in, day out.

New blood comes in the form of Lee Dixon and Alan Shearer. There's a little friction between them too, which is always exciting. Alan Shearer is basically Benny from Crossroads, a bungling but largely aimiable village idiot. It's impossible to get too upset by Alan Shearer unless you forget yourself and start to attach any credence to whatever he's spouting. But the sheer amount that he shovels out makes it more and more likely that this will happen, just due to the laws of probability. And this bothers Lee Dixon, who has probably the freshest ideas of the bunch but finds it hardest to get a word in edgewise. Force of personality, rather than intelligence of opinion, is what always prevails in this particular soap opera, which is what makes it so compelling.

That and the ever-present possibility that Alan Shearer might kick someone in the head.