Goodbye Mr Fry sketch

INT: 1950s Classroom, Black and white film

An elderly teacher walks in. We see two pupils, PERCIVAL and GATSBY

PERCIVAL: Hello Mr Fry!
GATSBY: Hello Mr Fry!

Mr Fry looks sad

MR FRY: Oh Hello boys
GATSBY: Are you ok sir?
MR FRY: Oh, oh yes my dear dear boy. It is marvellous to see you all.

GATSBY (TO PERCIVAL): I say, Mr Fry doesn't jolly well look happy at all. What could the matter be?
PERCIVAL (TO GATSBY): Oh, it's probably that he misses his wife, Gatsby. I've heard the other teachers mention it.
GATSBY: Sir! Are you sad about your wife?
MR FRY: Oh, no no boys, you don't want to hear any rot about that. Bally silly if you ask me.
GATSBY: But sir, anything we can do to help
PERCIVAL: Yes, sir
MR FRY: Oh, alright. My dear wife was the most amazing person. Could suck a golf ball through a hosepipe. We met through an advert she placed on one of those anonymous online dating sites. 'BBW MILF seeks MMF action'
(Smiles and looks into distance)
I'll always remember that. She was looking to get DP'd and film it to fund her crack and heroin habit.
We were married at once and for weeks and months we were happy, cruising the Basingstoke swingers scene. Oh boys, my boys, you're too young to know yet that life can start so hopefully, and so full of joy but before you know it you're in a darkened room with a gimp suit, a strap on and a pregnant dwarf. You can still Google it I think

GATSBY: Oh, sir. I'm so sorry.

MR FRY: Oh, my boy, my dear boy. Don't worry. She left me for the dwarf and they live in Norwich. They had a son. He went up to Cambridge, you know. Fine fellow. And I...I have my boys, my wonderful boys and my alcoholism and my pornography. I shall be just splendid.
And enough of this rot, turn your textbooks to page 77, quicksmart.

PMT Sketch

INT: Bedroom

Close up of an horrendous looking HELL-BEAST with salivating mandibles and red eyes

Camera pulls out slowly to a shot that frames the bed and the door to the left of it whilst

FX: sickening growling sound in time with HELL-BEAST's breathing

We see HELL-BEAST is sat up in bed wearing a tattered pink pyjama top. It's a double bed and HELL-BEAST is in the bed on the side furthest from the door.

HELL-BEAST: (in a woman's voice)
Dave! Are you bringing that hotwater bottle?

DAVE: (from outside the room)
Yeah, just doing it. Was waiting for the kettle to boil.

HELL-BEAST: Have you burped it?

DAVE: Sorry, love, what did you say?

HELL-BEAST: HAVE YOU BURPED IT? I LIKE IT BURPED.

DAVE: (Evenly)
I know, I'm just doing it, won't be a sec

Enter Dave in pyjama bottoms carrying hotwater bottle

DAVE: Here you go love. Was just switching off in there.

Dave hands over hotwater bottle and gets into bed. The both get settled. From the bumps in the covers we see DAVE extend a leg over and rub down HELL-BEAST's lower leg and foot.

HELL-BEAST: Dave, f**king seriously?

DAVE: (beat) Sorry, sorry.

End.

Plane Sketch

INT: The Cabin of a commercial plane

STEWARD A is standing at the head of the left hand aisle. STEWARDESS B is at the head of the right hand aisle.

Announcer's voice comes over the tannoy

ANNOUNCER: On behalf of Cheapskate Airlines we welcome you, ladies and gentleman, to todays flight from Winchester (beat) International Airport

FX: (From outside plane) A cow moos

ANNOUNCER Cont: To Tenerife
Please note, in the event of loss of cabin pressure a mask will drop from the ceiling in front of you. Place the mask over the mouth and nose like this

STEWARD A and STEWARDESS B are miming fitting the mask

Announcer cont: and then place a two pound coin in the slot provided to switch on the oxygen. Please note that the machine only accepts correct change. One of the cabin crew would be delighted to provide change for a mere two pound surcharge. Please ensure that you pay for your own oxygen before paying for that of children or other loved ones. Please note sharing is prohibited. The machine can tell and will cut off your oxygen.

In the unlikely event that we make an emergency landing on water, please note that life-jackets are available to buy from the cabin crew. They are currently priced at 9.99. Buy now to avoid disappointment. To be honest, if we have to land on water, the chances of us surviving are fairly slim, especially with this Captain, so perhaps you'd prefer to put that 9.99 towards one of our ham and egg sandwiches.
Please note that we do not give credit and we do accept sexual favours. Or at least Dave does. Don't you Dave?

Steward A smiles.

Music to watch

No comment really.  Found this.  It reminded me a my youth.  Enjoy.

Black Eye

Little exercise I'm doing for a course.  Not that pleased with it really but enjoy nonetheless.

I hadn’t wanted to go to that stupid party anyway but I’d been asked to spin tunes and you don’t say no to big Tony.  It was a terrible night, loads of drunken, flirty housewives who you have to carefully flirt back to without giving them the wrong idea.  You never know who they’re married to.  Their husbands might be friends of Tony’s.  I don’t like them kind of parties.  The crowd is too varied.  If you’re playing one from the seventies they want one from the eighties.  If you play a new one, they want an old one.  A sweet looking old lady came up to me and basically said I wasn’t very good, and requested Eartha Kitt or something.

I was supposed to be driving the lads home but they’d been acting up.  Apparently some famous footballer was staying upstairs in the hotel  and the lads had found their way into the mail room and ‘half-inched’ a package for him.  Turns out it was full of Armani underwear.  They needed somewhere to stash it so muggins here ends up with stolen property under the seat of his car.  It got ruined later, more by the dirty water than the fire.

So, anyway, there’s me, in an uncomfortable suit, playing music I don’t even like to people I despise, who seem to despise me and certainly don’t like the way I’m doing it.  The whole thing was hacking me off.  So, ok, I made a big mistake.  I admit it.  I could feel the energy rising up from my feet, through my chest and down my arms.  I was getting ready to blow.  I stuck a long player on and got over to the bar, gave the guy behind it a wink to keep them coming.  I bumped into Alex and he was looking very blessed; had his sunglasses on in the dark.  Thankfully, or unfortunately, he was holding and I managed to talk him into giving me tick.  I even got him to cover the decks while I went to the toilet.  I had to dodge some oldtimers talking about the birthday girl, Tony’s sister, and slipped into the toilet cubicle.  The sound of credit card plastic on porcelain was music to my ears.  Then, it was back to the bar, keep ‘em coming good sir!

The last thing I remember is talking to this pretty girl at the bar.  She was wearing a red satin dress, at least I think it was, and she had a lovely smile.  The next I remember I was sitting in a cell with plain breezeblock walls, a toilet with no seat and ‘Are you here because of drink or drugs. Call…’ stencilled red on the ceiling.  It was hard to read with one eye.  The other was starting to close up.  I was getting a fat lip too.  Worse than that was sitting there and not knowing why.  They tell me everyone got out alright, although they aren’t talking to me now.  No one was more surprised than me that I minded.

Chip Shops in Chelsea

So, I've somehow gone from a very modest life in a rural and quiet corner of the country to life in the big smoke. What such a unreconstituted culture-phobe as myself is doing in the posh and trendy chelsea kensington borders is quite beyond me. One thing I've really noticed; where the hell are the chip shops? Ok, I can buy a panini with chicken, mozzerella and pesto (very nice btw) in about 30 different spots on the king's road but where oh where can i find some good old fashioned british grease? No fucking where, that's where. Oh, there is apparently one place at the far end of the king's road but that's miles dude! come on! Having said that, i may have to embark on an expedition soon.
Other than that, and the army of plastics it's a very nice place. I've never really understood the attraction of London though. Pay unreal rents to live in a cramped house with a black hole of a garden (more of a square of concrete with 30 foot walls and dead plants), and for what? The paninis? Nope, still not getting it. So, in summary, London is a lovely place to visit but fuck living here permanently.

Ta ta.

What's with the anger?

A question I muse over often:- Was the world always this angry? Maybe I've just calmed down. I certainly used to be a far angrier person than i am today.

What's certainly true is that we live in a world with far more access to expression than we once did. Everybody can air their opinion on blogs, forums, comment sections of online newspapers. Maybe we were always like this and now we've been given a voice. Maybe that's healthy. Maybe it's better to know the less than sane views of some, the occasionally refreshing views of others.

But, in the main, the impression it leaves is of a cacophony of discord; thousands of voices all shouting at once. It's a wonder how anything gets done at all.

I must admit to being hooked on the The Guardian's comments section. I really wish I wasn't. Far from being the bastion of leftie thought, the comments it attracts are often of the extreme right. It's to be expected really; people want an argument; they want a fight.

It seems it's a given to hate something. People variously hate the lower classes, the upper classes, the middle classes, black people, pakistanis, indian people, racists, fascists, anti-fascists, socialists, capitalists, do-gooders, libertarians, anarchists, tories, labour, lib-dems, republicans, democrats, muslims, christians, jews, benefits fraudsters, greedy bankers, and on and on it goes. Everybody hates someone.

I don't pretend to know the answers but i'd bet my house that the problem is not what you hate but that you hate at all.

For starters, hatred of a group of whatever form is flawed from the very beginning. Social groupings of whatever type are rough and generalised. Unless you have personally interviewed every single person on earth it seems a little presumptuous to form an opinion of a particular social group.
"Yeah but black people are.." You don't know them all mate. Idi Amin and Martin Luther King were both 'black'. One was a genocidal monster of history, the other was a firm advocate of peace and equality. The only thing they probably have in common is a similar shaped comb.
"Yeah but the lower classes are all feral vermin", "Yeah but the upper classes are all chinless wonders". Again, you don't know them all. All you display is ignorance with statements like that.
Probably the worst thing about this is that some of the people who come out with all this are erudite, intelligent human beings, capable of very complex justifications for their views.

In a sense, sometimes i think what really unites the human race is our capacity for petty hatred. We are all capable of being foolish and reactionary.

The famous novelist and social commentator GK Chesterton was once asked to contribute an article to The Daily Telegraph on the topic of 'What is wrong with the World?'. He replied in the form of a letter which read

'Dear Sirs

I am.

Yours faithfully
GK Chesterton'

I take my hat off to the guy. I take it to mean I am responsible for my actions. That, when all is said and done, telling you what to do is all well and good, but it's how i live my own principles that really matters.

Ghandi once said 'be the changes you want to see' which, to me, means that if i want a peaceful world built on a foundation of justice then i need to be peaceful and just.

Well, thank you for reading this. I thank you even if you consider it a pile of liberal hogwash, hippy nonsense, pie in the sky, whatever, I thank you.