Flat Kitty – Presidential Candidate

On the eve of the US presidential election, some might say that attempting to put yourself forward as a candidate now would be a foolish exercise.

Such tomfoolery, however, has never been too far outside the realms of the Beans though. One who is strong of heart and stout of mind can achieve great things even with very little time to do so. It is with this in mind then that my fellow flatmate, Flat Kitty, would like to offer herself for this very prestigious of positions.

Why would she be the right person or squashed fabric soft toy for the job? What qualities does she possess that make her better than Clinton or Trump? I’m glad you asked because I have the bullet points directly below to answer those questions:

She has an honest face;
She is an ex-celebrity following the success of her Bosnian Herzegovinian smash hit of a television series with millions of fans;
Though she may not have an actual voice, she has a “voice” that can empower the smallest of people and inspire the brightest of voters;
There is nothing that she is not willing to do to get your vote;
She once popped a wheelie at the Royal Variety Performance (sources still waiting to be confirmed at this point).

As you can see, there is enough scrabbled together here to convince even the most sternest of individuals that Flat Kitty is a candidate that you can trust and is, ultimately, whom America is crying out for to lead them to a three dimensional multi-faceted glowing shoebox of tomorrow.

That and she makes a mean salad nicoise.

The Overwhelmingly Shit Chris Tarrant Impression Hotline

Do you remember a time when Chris Tarrant was everywhere? He was just wherever you looked. You could not glance towards a lady with the hope of stealing a gaze without his mug smearing into your line of sight. This wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, far from it. Everyone welcomed his enthusiastic noises and laughter, whether winning a million pounds on ‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire?’ or throwing a bucket of cold gunge over Lenny Henry’s head on ‘Tiswas’.

Come 2016 though and it is a different landscape. Your only chance of seeing his viso/volto is either from repeats on long-forgotten television channels or those lotto adverts that air at bizarre times.

What you need is more Tarrant in your life. What you need is our dedicated service: The Overwhelming Shit Chris Tarrant Impression Hotline!

Call our hotline 24 hours a day and be greeted with tedious and unrealistic impersonations the likes of which you have never heard before.

LISTEN… for all those confusing Tarrant-esque noises missing from you life.

SMILE… as you hear your favourite Tarrant catchphrases such as, “… but we don’t wanna give you that”, “take your time” and, “is that your final answer?’.

CRINGE… at the poor quality of the service you’ve received.

We have dedicated centres based in Leeds, London and Newcastle so you are guaranteed to find one close to you. As well internet services, part of our expansion plans will also incorporate a drive-thru and the experimental ‘Street Tarrant’ which will see droves of men and woman flood city centres to give bite-sized taster teasers to the general public.

You don’t need to suffer in silence anymore. You don’t need to handle that difficult interview without someone at your side. You don’t need to go on that first date all on your lonesome. Here at the Overwhelmingly Shit Chris Tarrant Impression Hotline we are here to help you in any way we can, as long as it involves crude vocal representations of Reading’s favourite son.

Call now!

Ultimate Party – De-Sade-ber

After the recent celebration of the work of both the band and singer, both called Sade, on this website I think it is only fair that we throw open the doors and try to organise something to carry on the party. Most occasions are only occasions and therefore are only allowed to be a day of celebration or, when you behave nicely, a week. It is very rare when an event will be allowed to run for a full month.

That is what I am proposing though. Given the gifts that Sade, both versions, have provided to the world it is only fair that the entirety of December is used to give them a much-needed pat on the back. I am therefore wanting to gather the world together to organise ‘De-Sade-ber’.

We take one overused and busy month, namely December, change the letters around and what do you get? ‘De-Sade-ber’! A full thirty one days of smooth, sensual overtones and jazz-like lounge lizard silken sounds. There are only sixteen tracks on ‘The Best of Sade’ so we will have to double up if we play one song for each day of ‘De-Sade-Ber’. But won’t it be nice!

You’ll be Christmas shopping in some horrible, sweaty shopping mall and ‘The Sweetest Taboo’ starts playing to ease the tension.

You’ll be wrapping presents to the gloriously swirly ‘Your Love is King’.

You’ll be, I dunno, swigging eggnog to ‘Cherish the Day’.

I think it’s a good idea. I think that you will think that it’s a good idea. I also think it has a catchy name regardless of whether you pronounce Sade the correct or incorrect way. I also think that people need more Sade, both versions, in their life.

Unconfirmed individual on nondescript greeting card

I like making cards. Making cards is fairly easy and fun providing you know what to draw or write on the front. If you don’t then it’s a painful and frustrating experience. Thankfully, most of the time I know what I’m doing, which makes a change (ba dum chish!)

It was recently my sisters’ birthday. Sisters plural, as in they both had their birthdays, in that despite being three years between them their birthday is on the same day. Which is weird. I decided to crack off a couple of cards in my usual manner.

Now I know what you’re thinking. This card seems like it was destined to be for one particular sister, but you would be wrong. Without looking in the top-right corner that is.

This card was for Sarah and despite the uncanny resemblance to a certain intepretation of a Christian deity that is not a drawing of Jesus Christ.

I now open up the floor to see if anyone can guess who it is supposed to be.

No clues now.

Ghostman Pat

Following on from the success of the BBC New Sitcom of the Year 2016 Awards, in which none of the entries won and the BBC decided just to plough a serious amount of bread into yet another series of ‘Mrs Brown’s Boys’, I have been commissioned to come up with some new ideas for that difficult 11-15 age gap that bridges the vast chasm between tiny children in uniforms to unkempt teenagers who can’t get into 18 certificate films at the cinema.

What kind of programming would these sweaty, nautical organisms like to watch on an evening? What would really get their bantwagons pushed up to the high twenties? We need something that is right on the fashions and I believe I have a good starting point. A (bad pun alert) spiritual successor to hugely-loved eighties children’s television programme monster ‘Postman Pat’.

Ghostman Pat

Pat has grown to become not only the nicest person in the history of Greendale but also the most respected due to his dedication to his job and in helping the other residents in their daily lives. He has an idyllic life with his wife and child, and not forgetting dutiful companion Jess the Cat.

Except one traffic accident later leaves Pat dead. Shuffled off this mortal coil.

The village engages in a month-long saga of grieving. His wife Sarah, inconsolable, is unable to move on with her life. One evening however, not long after the tragic accident, she is ironing some tea towels when she is visited by an apparition. The apparition of her recently deceased husband. It seems as though Pat is not quite done yet.

Fate has decided that his years of service are not enough. In punishment for the, quite frankly, dreadful Lionsgate film released a couple of years ago Pat must now deliver a total of 1000 parcels before he is able to leave and ascend to heaven, in a story that borrows heavily from Hiroaki Samura’s seminal samurai manga work ‘Blade of the Immortal’.

But how can Pat deliver any parcels when he has no physical presence and only his wife and son, Julian, can see him? It is up to them to help him finish his task and finally leave this world behind.

Along the way they must deal with fruit-polishing vampires, blancmange-toting merengue infidels and, of course, numerous cameos by everyone’s favourite all-round entertainer Gary Wilmot.

Can they succeed? Seven seasons and a TV movie, I think, should answer that question.

Romance Lives On

Let nobody ever accuse my family of being the beautiful budding bouquet of romantics that we clearly are.

For proof you need look no further than the words in my mouth. They’re right there and you can look at them whenever you like. For further proof, however, take a look at the smooch-tastic read below:

It contains as much passion as seven passion fruits which as any passion fruit enthusiast will tell you is a lot of passion. It’s brimming with bosoms. It’s erupting with enchantment. It’s arresting with amour.

Yes, the surname may be a slightly different spelling but you can tell whom the inspiration was, regarding of what the English language says. I only hope that they’ve got enough copies to satisfy the general public’s thirst for my scintillating life.

Brian May or Bryant May?

It’s a common occurrence. You go to pick up some matches from your local supermarket and accidentally end up trying to escort the guitarist from Queen from the premises who has just stopped by to pick up a crate of aubergines. When the police take you for questioning you explain the situation and all the charges are dropped. I mean who hasn’t confused the match maker ‘Bryant & May’ with perma-permed musician and astrophysicist Brian May? It’s not like mistaking Dave Benson Phillips for a tin of beans; that just wouldn’t happen.

When we peer a little closer though perhaps there’s something else to it. Bryant and May were a company created in the mid-nineteenth century specifically to make matches. Nothing else. People were suggesting various other pursuits, such as tailoring, monkey hampers and Louise cream, but they were all ignored for the single reason most of them didn’t exist. Matches were definitely the way forward. The company was made public in 1884. Brian May was born in 1947, exactly 63 years later. Surely that has to be something more of a coincidence.

Similarly Brian May was born in Hampton, Middlesex. The original Bryant & May factory was located in Bow, London. Only 22 miles or so between the two and, accordingly to Google Maps, it takes over an hour and a half to drive in current traffic conditions.

Why has nobody investigated these things beforehand? Is it a conspiracy that someone, possibly Roger Taylor also from Queen, tried to cover up?

The matter gets even weirder when you then take into consideration Arthur Bryant and John May, the two detectives created by Christopher Fowler for his series of crime fiction novels. They are primarily based in London. Bow is in London and Middlesex is but a stone’s throw away. One of them smokes a pipe which must have been lit by matches. It’s all coming together the more I think about it.

Also May is the fifth month of the year. There have been 15 Bryant and May detective novels, which is a multiple of five. Brian May has been an active guitarist since 1965. There are five letters in the name ‘Brian’. Somehow all three of them are connected in a way that is still yet to be fully deciphered. I think I’m up the challenge though, at least once I’ve finished my stint as a quarry sprayer. If I, or me, or maybe even myself can solve this puzzle then it will guarantee notoriety for the rest of my days.

Robert Koch – The Musical

I’m not very into musicals. The whole idea of spending two hours watching people burst into song every five minutes, quite frankly, gives me palpitations of a rocky and unnerving manner that no amount of marshmallows can settle. It seems as though a lot of subject matter has been turned into musicals, both in the theatre and also in cinema.

Even Spiderman has been turned into a musical. My friend Steve took a trip to New York a couple of years ago and paid a hefty price to watch ‘Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark’ which, apparently, has music and lyrics by U2’s Bono and The Edge. Which is just unbelievably crazy. I mean it is. Without even dwelling on it, that’s bonkers.

So what next? What will people look at and think that choruses and choreography can improve, that falsettos and furnishings can dazzle? It got me thinking though which, as most people will know, that’s generally a bad thing. Why not turn the spotlight on someone who I personally believe requires a bit more attention? One of those underdogs who never quite got the recognition that they deserve? Cast your mind back to Year 10 history, pull up a chair and listen to the story of good ol’ Bob Koch.

Robert Heinrich Herman Koch. Born 11 December 1843. The guy was so smart he taught himself to read and write before he started school. His research helped to identify the specific causative agents of tuberculosis, cholera and anthrax. I may be copying these details direct from certain wiki I mean certain websites but I deal in facts and not speculation. The man did a lot for medicine and microbiology and yet other than a statue in Berlin his name is relatively unknown.

Enter me. Amateur script writer and overall champion of the unappreciated. I think I’ve got the moxie to write a full play based on his life, with a dash of songs sprinkled generously over the three hour running time. I’ve been working on one this afternoon and I think you’ll agree that it has got something going on. I give you ‘Great Postulates!’:

Great Postulates!

It’s very simple, it’s on your tongue
I’ve got the recipe for an evening of fun
Down at the lab, test tube in hand
No time to dance, put down your jams

My report is imperative you see
It sets out what is necessary
To identify cultures, disease causing organisms
Those dark little things that mess with your rhythms
I’ve put pen to paper so read it loud
Something to make my country proud

Postulates!
I’ve established criteria
Postulates!
Erect your posterior
Postulates!
Cholera, tuberculosis
Postulates!
Here’s my prognosis…

I’m clearly onto a winner. If you would like to buy some shares in the production then please put some money in a brown paper bag and leave on my doorstep. Shares will be posted to you within 30 days.

Pouring
Beans

Author: Ian “Air Travel Regulations” McIver