Established in 1996, Kids Company is a charity which provides support for children with severe behavioural, emotional and social difficulties resulting from significant levels of trauma and neglect.

That support includes everything from hot meals, conversation and counselling, to opportunities in education, sports and art. Surviving mostly through private funding, Kids Company works in 32 inner-city schools across London, as well as at its own drop-in centre in Camberwell and an educational institute for older kids called the Urban Academy in Southwark. All of which sounds great, but for most of us, it’s another world, a million miles away from our own experience. Which is where the exhibition in Shoreditch Town Hall comes in.

The full title of the exhibition is ‘Demons and Angels – Does It Have To Be This Way?’ This provides a rough theme for the work therein, questioning the media’s portrayal of children as either vicious amoral gnomes or sweetly innocent cherubim, wondering how polarised our society has become and how much we really know about our children. The work has been produced by 500 inner-city London kids, guided by a small team of professional artists and Kids Company staff. Also featured is work from ‘privileged teenagers’, raising questions about the nature of having and not having. For example, is tossing money at your child and sending them to a private school enough to stop the little angel having to wrestle demons of their own?

The resulting work is astounding. It ranges in tone from the horrifically explicit – such as one boy’s installation mirroring his life as a male prostitute – to the fun and uplifting – such as the ‘Orchestra of the Ghetto’, an entire room given over to making music and sculpture from bits of junk and discarded pianos. We spoke to Valentino in the music and noise room. Valentino has been working with Kids Company for two and a half years and specialises in drama and music, helping kids perform role plays and stage puppet shows. He says that this room, when it’s full of kids using the interactive noise-making machines, can be deafening. He points out the ‘electro-manic caterpillar’ – so-called by the seven-year-old who created it – with all the pride of a doting parent. He points to a slightly disturbing mask-type painting on a dark back wall. ‘Children like to make scary things,’ he says. Valentino is in no doubt as to the therapeutic effects of giving kids the opportunity to express themselves through art and music. ‘There is very strong magic in here,’ he adds.

There is lots of confessional work in the exhibition, lots of text with bald declarations of what life is and what it means, much of which has the same kind of shocking and poignant appeal of the Post Secret project. There is a Wish Tree, which the public are invited to add to. There is poetry, there are dedications, there is damnation and forgiveness. This is part of a piece called ‘In the Beginning’, which – as far as our interpretation is concerned at least – questions the part religion plays in the systematic abuse of children.

This is a detail from a sprawling collaboration called ‘Seeking the Poetry Within’:

There is a small room given over to an installation called ‘My Mother’s a Rolling Pin’. This is the background:

‘When this young boy and his brothers were small their mother used to starve them, leave them in the house and disappear. The neighbours opened the cat flap and threw cupcakes in. Despite the abuse, the neglect, and the abandonment, the parent remains deeply loved. It’s a paradoxical position to be so profoundly in need and dependent upon the very person who is abusing you. The rolling pin can make cake, but it can also batter to draw blood. This is their mother all in one.’

What makes this particular piece one of the most haunting of the entire exhibition is the accompanying audio track. A trippy blend of nursery rhyme and hip hop on permanent loop with children’s voices repeating endlessly, ‘You’re not here’.

There is the labyrinthine basement of the Town Hall itself, the dank and flaking walls and disused toilets and sinks of which are incorporated into many of the installations to chilling effect. There are skulls and shoes and masks and smiling mouths. There are three floors of scary, startling and touching stuff. There is even a fashion label. There is far too much to see in the hour we had to spend there.

There are four poster-size photographs of various cloudscapes next to a caption which reads, ‘So much sadness is wrinkling the sky’.

This exhibition is heart-breaking. Yet at the same time, it manages to be uplifting. Just the very fact that these kids have survived the damage and neglect inflicted upon them – or are surviving it – and have been given this opportunity to express themselves, is something extremely positive, and something you find yourself clinging to as some of the darker exhibits start to tear at your innards and prick your conscience. The exhibition is also testament to the empowerment afforded by creativity. Through making this art, broken children have begun rebuilding themselves.

We asked Elizabeth Rodgers of Kids Company what she’d like people to take away from the exhibition. She told us that she hopes the exhibition will start a debate about the way we treat our children – the way they’re treated in the media and perceived by everyone else. She also hopes that the issues that these kids are addressing are brought more keenly into the public awareness. Rather than just crossing their fingers and hoping a debate might ensue however, Kids Company have already organised a conference for October. Called ‘No Bullshit: What Matters to Every Child’, the conference will be populated by policy and decision makers, those who can actually make a difference to the way children are treated. We’ll keep you posted when we hear more.

Finally, please don’t leave this review thinking that ‘Demons and Angels’ is good merely because it’s worthy, and because it gives mistreated a kids a chance to heal. It’s not. It’s also good because it’s full of images, ideas and emotions which are striking, powerful and incredibly affecting. There are some very talented kids at this show, and in most cases it seems clear that much of what drives them is their pain. It reminds us of a line from a Leonard Cohen song: ‘There is a crack, a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.’ It’s sad for sure. It’s heart-breaking, as we mentioned. But it’s also enormously inspiring. Sometimes you forget how astonishing human beings can be. ‘Demons and Angels’ reminds you.

As Valentino pointed out, there is indeed very strong magic in here.

First published July 2007.

Today we speak to Paul Rose, aka Mr Biffo, award-winning screenwriter, journalist, teletext cultmaker, patio stormtrooper, female impersonator and Sooty’s mouthpiece. We wanted to plug his new book because we think it’s funny. But it was also kind of an excuse to get him on the site because frankly, we like the cut of his jib. We asked him some questions about what it feels like to dress up sexy and play with men’s hearts…

So how did you get started pretending to be a lady on the Internet?

I stole my idea from another book. No, not really. But I did get an email from some guy yesterday accusing me of having done so. Apparently, he self-published a book along similar lines about 5 years ago. It sold 200 copies… therefore I’m bound to have seen it.

Nevertheless, there was me, being all smug, going, ‘It’s such a good idea I can’t believe it hasn’t been done already’.

Smug no more.

We heard a story once about you duping a friend of yours on some chat site. Could you clarify, please?

It’s not something I’m massively proud of, if truth be told. But here goes…

Many years ago (and we’re talking 15 years or more here) I had a falling out with this mate. With hindsight, we were probably terribly mismatched as chums, but when you’re that sort of age it’s all about quantity rather than quality.

The row was over something stupid and petty – he probably spilled Babycham on my shoelaces, or looked at my hair the wrong way – but I, as you do at that age, harboured a grudge for years. I say grudge, but that’s basically another way of saying he’d hurt my feelings.

Anyhow, after we fell out, I remained friendly with his brother, and through him I learned this guy’s email address.

It was so long ago now that I can barely remember what prompted me to do this, but I went online one day – this was when the Internet was still a relatively new thing – pretending to be a desirable young schoolteacher called Lisa. I basically hung out in chatrooms where I knew he’d be, and let nature take its course.

Of course, this became a bit of a sport between my friends and I for a while, and we strung the guy out for weeks, building up the relationship, and whatnot. We kept dropping hints, hoping that he’d twig, but he never seemed to.

As I say, looking back on it, it was a horrible thing to do. He didn’t deserve it, and I’m embarrassed that I felt the need to do something so spiteful and immature.

Certainly, compared to some of the victims in my book, he was pretty much a perfect gentleman, and nowhere near as seedy as most of the blokes I’ve chatted to online. I eventually, in a half-hearted sort of way, semi-confessed who I really was, and – as you’d expect – he didn’t take it terribly well.

Anyhow, I think I was probably drunk one evening, many years later, during a particularly strange period of my life, and in lieu of something better to do, I resumed the persona of LoopyLisa.

It was all quite mercenary, sadly – I just thought it would make a good book. Obviously, I have all my best ideas when I’m drunk, and going through strange periods.

So to speak.

The conversations you have in the book turn to come to a halt when you send a picture of yourself. Did anyone still say they’d like to meet you after they’d seen a photo?

There was only one, I think. Oddly, it isn’t in the book, and I don’t know why. I must’ve left it out by accident when I submitted the copy.

I kept sending increasingly masculine pictures to the guy, and he kept coming back with stuff like ‘I bet you’ve got a lovely chest’ and ‘I bet your tits are massive’. It was most bizarre; he wasn’t looking at the pictures, and it was enough for him that a woman was sending them to him, regardless of what she looked like. I’ll dig it out for the sequel.

The thing I found is that in most cases these blokes have already decided what ‘Lisa’ looks like before we’ve even started chatting. A couple of times I’d send them my picture, and – rather than acknowledge that I’m a bloke – they’d accuse me of messing about, and sending a picture of my brother, or someone.

There’s one guy who claimed to have fallen in love with me. I don’t think he was kidding either. In another life I’d have clearly made a very desirable transsexual.

Did you ever put a profile on a dating site as LoopyLisa?

No, alas. I’ve got a blog, and a homepage, but I’m not actually the most Internet-savvy person, to be honest. I did sign up to MySpace, but don’t really know what I’m supposed to do now that I have.

I did have a chat profile, though, which was the bait that lured my victims (he says, acknowledging that I sound like Dennis Nielsen). It didn’t really say much; just enough for them to fill in the blanks, and want to send me an instant message.

I’ve got a few ideas for a sequel, should I get a chance, and it involves getting a bit more elaborate with the deception. The photos seem to be the most popular aspect, so they’ll certainly feature heavily.

When you were writing these things, did you ever get aroused? Be honest now.

Oh, good heavens no! I mean… Jesus… no! It was just horrible. I felt seedy pretty much the entire time, knowing that these blokes were often playing with themselves while I tried desperately to discourage them.

From my side of it there’s nothing remotely sexual about it. If you look, Lisa never leads them on, and never really discusses anything sexual. She doesn’t even swear, and that was a very conscious decision from the start.

She’s an innocent, and the whole point of the book is to see how long those dirty perverts will spend trying to get off while she continues to spout utter guff.

Donning my pseudo-intellectual cap for a moment, I’d like to think that the book demonstrates some sort of profound truth about default male behaviour.

But I’ll let others decide what that truth may be.

Was there ever any sense in which – while you were pretending to be Lisa – you actually ‘became’ her?

Yeah, very much so. She did become very real for me at points, and I got quite protective of her. The chats in the book are arranged in roughly chronological order, and you can see that towards the end there is more of ‘me’ starting to surface, and a bit of weary cynicism creeping in.

I started to feel really quite unpleasant about the whole exercise, and I really had to force myself to continue to subject Lisa to it.

At one point I got talking to a girl, and the sense of relief I felt was incredible. It was ‘At last! Someone I can talk with about girly things! Handbags! And diets! And shoes!’ But then she revealed herself to be a ‘bi-fem’, and it became clear that she was no more female than I am. You had the bizarre situation of the both of us pretending to be women, and her – as they always did – trying to get me to send her my photo.

I appreciate that all of this makes me sound completely mad, but half the book was written over the space of a couple of years, and the other half was put together in a matter of a couple of months.

That sort of concentrated exposure to the unshielded perversion of the internet made my head go a bit funny – especially when you consider that for every chat that made it into the book there were another 10 or so which didn’t.

I remain genuinely quite rattled by how quickly people – well, men anyway – are prepared to drop the façade of civility once they think there’s no way of any social comeback.

The book is hopefully very funny, and obviously very rude, but there is a point nestling away amid it all.

Someone described it as ‘funny, sinister, and quite sad’, which probably sums it up.

Did you enjoy dressing up as Lisa? Are you a transvestite? Maybe even a closet transvestite?

If I’m honest, I do like a bit of dressing up, but I think that’s the repressed thespian in me, rather than any sort of sexual thing. It’s not really about women’s clothes. Ghastly geek that I am, I’ve got a full size set of Star Wars Stormtrooper armour, a gorilla suit, and a Wolverine costume, in my wardrobe. I’m just a stupid man-child rather than some old tranny.

That said, my eldest daughter wandered downstairs while my other half was putting on my make-up for the photos. She shook her head, and said, ‘Other dads don’t do this’.

I bet they do, though. And at least I have the excuse of a book.

Do you have any transcripts that were a little too repulsive to go in the book?

There were a couple of transcripts that we decided to drop at quite a late stage. They were between me and a guy who worked at some marketing company – apparently quite a successful executive – who revealed himself to be a really horrible racist.

I sort of just sat back and let him hang himself with his inexplicable ranting, but ultimately it just wasn’t funny, and didn’t sit well with the rest of the book.

I was annoyed that I didn’t challenge him more, but – having grown up in a very multi-cultural part of North London – that kind of ingrained racism always shocks me. I think I was just too taken aback by his anger to know what to say. That doesn’t happen often.

There were plenty of other chats that petered out, and weren’t worth including, and a few with blokes who – frankly – weren’t perverts, and just decent, ordinary, probably slightly lonely, men who wanted someone to talk to.

There was another character I occasionally used online, and I have a whole raft of transcripts featuring him. He’s a sort of pre-op transsexual, who – in my head – looks and sounds like a young Prince, and is obsessed with ‘ass’.

I do like Lisa’s warmth and innocence, though. I’m not sure the transsexual feller works as well.

Tell us something about what else you’re working on at the moment. How did Biffovision go?

Biffovision went great, I think. Considering we had very little time or money to bring the pilot together, it’s probably the thing I’ve done that I love the most. Considering it was shown in the middle of the night, the online buzz was phenomenal. There are some very out-of-context clips up on YouTube if anyone is interested (nothing to do with me, I should hasten to add).

Of course, we’re now at the mercy of the BBC’s decision-making process, which moves at something of a glacial rate.

As for other stuff, I did a pilot last year for a BBC1 sitcom, and we’re moving forwards with that, featuring a slightly different cast. It looks fairly promising, but as with all things in TV you never bank on anything until you’ve seen it broadcast. It’s sort of semi-autobiographical, and that can feel a bit strange at times. I’m much more comfortable hiding behind pretend Internet personas.

I’ve got a few other bits and bobs in the pipeline, but nothing that’s really at a stage that I can talk about. The thing with being a writer for telly is that you have so many commissions that go nowhere, that you start getting paranoid of jinxing projects by talking about them too soon.

Another book is quite high up my list of priorities, mainly because there’s less input from other people than there is in TV. It’s part of why I love writing my blog; it’s the one thing I do where nobody can stick their oar in.

A bona-fide travel book would be nice, and I’m in the process of doing some early research into that. Something related to video games is another possibility I’m toying with, but part of me feels I’ve rather left that world behind (in a previous life I was a games journalist).

And I’m definitely not done with LoopyLisa yet.

You write for Lenny Henry too. Is it difficult to have to write stuff that is deliberately not funny? He’s awful, isn’t he, Lenny Henry? Come on, you can tell us…

Well, I’ve only just started writing for him, and thus far have only done one day on the writing team, so it’s difficult to say whether Lenny Henry is difficult to write for or not. Certainly, as you’d expect, he’s a fun bloke to work with.

*Pfffft.*

The thing people tend to forget about him is that he is immensely popular still – he’s an icon – but he’s popular among a very ‘un-cool’, mainstream sort of audience, that tends to get sneered at. Certainly, his last series got great ratings. I mean, my kids absolutely adore him, much as I did when I was growing up.

The plan is to make a show that plays to his strengths, and what people want to see him do. It’s a TV Burp-esque clips show with an Internet bent, but we’re trying to break away from the old bloke-behind-a-desk format, and do something a bit fresher.

At the same time, I don’t think Lenny has always been best served by his material, but in a career as long and diverse as his, that’s inevitable. On the one hand I wouldn’t be doing his show if I didn’t think I could bring something new to it, and I more or less said as much when I first met him.

On the other hand, any writer worth their salt writes to their brief. I don’t just like writing one type of thing.

Biffovision and Confessions of a Chatroom Freak are at one extreme of the comedy spectrum, and the BBC1 sitcom and Lenny Henry are at the other, but I enjoy doing them equally. You just tailor your writing to your audience.

Funny is funny.

First published March 2007

Last night in Trafalgar Square, thousands of Londoners gathered together to break a rather silly world record: that of the largest number of people in one location playing coconuts at the same time.

The ‘coconut orchestra’ record was set last year in New York, at the one-year anniversary of the Broadway production of Monty Python’s Spamalot. Last night it was broken, smashed even, in an event arranged by the producers of the West End production of – you guessed it – Monty Python’s Spamalot. The atmosphere was electric. Python fans of all ages, but mostly in their 30s and 40s, revelled in this opportunity to take part in something genuinely ‘Pythonesque’. Some of them dressed up. There was to be a free screening of after the record attempt. Ni! Ni! A wonderful occasion then, and all the fun of the fairly amusing, highly organised, super-cynical PR stunt.

Near the beginning of the event, when people were still registering and collecting their coconuts, Ken Livingstone popped by and took the opportunity to point out how much better London is than New York – not only was New York not hosting the Olympics in 2012, it also wasn’t the first to come up with the idea of the Congestion Charge. Plus it was miles away. And full of Americans. Therefore, there was no way in hell London wasn’t about to trounce that Rotten Old Apple at banging shells together. It was a foregone conclusion. And of course it was.

Shortly after Ken escaped the throng and was ferried back to the lap of decongested luxury, a middle-aged African man began to harangue the people handing out the coconuts. He was angry about the exploitation of the coconut-producing countries. He was perfectly serious. He was ignored. Some say he was quietly bundled into a van and shot. He wasn’t. They lied.

Then came the moment of truth. The record attempt. But there were rules. Rather stringent rules. The man from Guinness was there of course, to make sure they were adhered to. As it happened, they weren’t adhered to at all, and the coconut cacophony which was supposed to be avoided was not. But it didn’t matter. This was PR. And nothing was going to ruin it.

The most exciting moment of the evening was probably when the two Terrys took to the stage in the record attempt build-up: Terry Jones, who seems to have actually become Mr Creosote, and Terry Gilliam, who in the name of good-natured anti-Americanism claimed now to be British. As their faces and chins appeared on the enormous screen in front of Nelson’s Column, thousands of Python fans held their breath – surely now something amazing was about to happen, some of the old magic was about to be recreated. Nah. Just a couple of gags about nuts and about how incredibly wealthy they both are. Ho ho ho. Ni!

It was all very safe, and very smug, and very self-satisfied. The only thing reminiscent of how dark and dodgy the Pythons used to be was the accidental juxtaposition of the giant inflatable foot and the limbless Alison Lapper. But this was no evening for dark and dodgy. At least not in a potentially funny way.

Of course what made the whole thing that little less tolerable and that little less honest was the fact that they tied the whole thing in with St George’s Day. You see, this actually wasn’t a PR stunt. It was actually about celebrating English culture. Or as the guy said into the microphone when the record was broken and the cast of Spamalot finally left the stage, ‘And if you haven’t seen Spamalot yet, make sure you go and see it immediately.’

Spam, spam, spam, spam. Spam, spam, spam, spam….

Of the review quotes featured on the front page of Scott Capurro’s website our two favourites are this one from Australian talk show host Rove McManus: ‘It’s like watching a car accident’, and this one from the Daily Mirror: ‘He’s evil and should be forced to leave the country’. When we met him for sausages and mash in Spitalfields earlier this week, we found Capurro intelligent, surprisingly serious but unsurprisingly acerbic, fast-talking and very funny, despite the fact that he’d been ‘watching Glitterball at 3.30 in the morning with half a sleeping pill and a big mug of white wine’. But still, we may well have missed something. So. Be warned: this interview may contain evil.

Scott Capurro spends about eight months of the year in his East London home. He loves it here, he says, but he’s ‘overlooking certain characteristics of the British and British culture.’ Which characteristic does he find it most difficult to overlook? ‘The autism. People have no spatial awareness here, when you’re walking in the street or in a club, they have no idea how wide their shoulders are, how big their umbrella is, how clumsy they are or how much they smell. And it’s an island mentality, a very insular culture, and I think that’s one great thing about Tony Blair, who I consider a hero.’ Then he’s off, spouting forth on Blair, unironically, and what he considers – the nightmare of Iraq aside – his multiple achievements. ‘I think you’re gonna miss him. I think people miss him already. He’s a true statesman, and he gave glamour to this country and brought it forward into the 21st century.’ George Bush meanwhile is ‘a lame duck now. I don’t think about Bush that much, I think about the CEOs of national corporations and international businesses. I think the presidency is run by economics and I think that Bush is just a figurehead. But anyway, I really like it here, socially. But the main reason is the work. London is the epicentre of comedy in the world.’

Scott Capurro likes to talk. He has a brain that flits from one subject to another and back again, always back again. He is a born stand-up, a born communicator.

A regular part of Capurro’s set involves him coming on to a guy in the audience, offering to visit all manner of sex act upon him, from tea-bagging to skull-fucking. Usually they play along. They laugh, because it’s funny. However, when we saw him in Covent Garden recently, the guy he picked on wasn’t particularly amused and at the end of the show refused to shake his hand. A low boo rang out through the rest of the audience. ‘That was a great moment,’ says Capurro. ‘A great moment.’

But messing with the audience can be a dangerous game. A couple of weeks ago in Manchester, ‘spaz-approved’ comic Jim Jeffries was assaulted. It’s not exactly clear why but presumably someone didn’t get one of his jokes. ‘I don’t want to give someone a reason to hit me,’ says Capurro, ‘but I did want that guy [in Covent Garden] to know that he wasn’t steering the ship. I was. And it’s my cruise, and he can stay on the boat or he can jump. It’s not about you, it’s about me. It’s always about me. So – I don’t care if you stay or go, but you’re not going to sit there and talk, and if you try to intimidate me, it’s not gonna work.’

When he talks about unwanted audience participation – heckling, chatting amongst friends, mobile phones going off – there is the same sense of annoyance, outrage even, as was present when Bill Hicks went into his notorious ‘Hitler had the right idea, he was just an underachiever’ rant. Basically both men are railing against retards who have no respect and will gladly, stupidly and usually drunkenly ruin something for the rest of us.

The problem with the guy who wouldn’t shake his hand though, was clear to Capurro: ‘Big fag-hater. That’s why he didn’t shake my hand. It wasn’t about my being white, or a comic, or American. It was about my being queer.’

Scott Capurro had no intention of ever becoming a stand-up comic. It wasn’t his ambition and, he says, ‘it still isn’t. They needed a compere for a variety show at my high school – just a couple of remarks and then it turned into a 15-minute stand-up.’ He then enrolled on a comedy course in which he learned ‘that actresses fuck their way to the middle’, but little else. Soon after he went away to college to study acting, but the die was cast. He was already a stand-up and even if he gives the impression that he would rather have done other things, comedy is what he does.

Capurro is very much a personal comic. His act is all about revealing things about himself. He’ll take in every subject under the sun along the way – AIDS, the Holocaust, Chinese food, Anne Frank, cancer, Ian Huntley, George Bush – but his act is essentially him communicating how he thinks and feels to an audience. It’s an intimate experience. It’s also quite shocking, and it’s not uncommon for him to split an audience in two: those who find him hilarious and those – well, those who suspect he may be evil. ‘I really don’t go out of my way to shock people,’ he says. ‘I would like to change their minds. I think I’m being unclear on that – I want to change their minds on how gay men are. That’s what I want to change their minds about. I don’t want them to think that gay men are all fat, wall-eyed, Irish cunts with one joke and no friends. I don’t want people to think that that’s all there is.’

Capurro was banned in Australia for doing a bit on children’s television about Jesus. More specifically, about fucking Jesus. ‘I’ve made a lot of mistakes,’ he admits. ‘And I stand in the way of my own success and happiness.’ Yet when he’s up on stage, he’s unflappable, infallible. And he was always funny. ‘When I was a kid, I was a weird, freaky, six foot two 14-year-old. It made grown-ups feel creepy to be around me. My father told me that once, that there was something wrong with me. We were in the car going home one night and I was singing along to a Sinatra song on the radio. He was like, “You shouldn’t know Sinatra. You’re 14. There’s something wrong with you.”‘

Are his parents happy with his career? ‘I think they’re happy as long as I don’t get AIDS or cancer. That’s all they care about… But they’re fine, they’re very supportive. And when I did movies it was a big thrill for them.’ He had roles in Mrs Doubtfire and The Phantom Menace. But this was a while ago. Now he suspects that along with the occasional TV appearance (he’s doing another series of 8 Out of 10 Cats later this year), ‘this is it’. Again that feeling that he’s not quite satisfied with his lot – that being one of the most respected and certainly one of the funniest comedians on the circuit is not quite enough. Yet at the same time he’s fully aware that, certainly as far as TV is concerned, ‘most people who work in comedy wouldn’t know a joke if it fucked them’.

When he first started coming to England, Channel Four were all over him to do something, but it never materialised. Although this is very possibly still a cause for some sullenness for Capurro, we can’t help but feel that he’s at his best in a room full of strangers, where he gets to say exactly whatever he wants and there’s no TV exec trying to get him to be more like Victoria Wood. It’s on stage where Capurro comes alive and where certain sections of the audience will always be wondering how he dares say the things he says.

We ask him what’s the worst reaction he’s ever got from an audience member. He tells us:

‘I had a lesbian throw ice at me once. And it’s really scary when things fly out of the dark at you and hit you in the temple. And I lost it, I lost it. It became a brawl. Chairs were turned over and stuff. Someone said afterwards that it was a masterclass in destroying a good audience and bringing them back. I can’t destroy a good audience. It’s not up to me. I wish I had that sort of power. If I had that sort of power, I would do both good and evil in my act. I’m not out to destroy the room. I’m out to just do my dick jokes and get off the stage. It’s the arrogance of the straight, white, middle-class comic that thinks that any of us can either make or break a room. And I just did a gig with some middle-class, white comics, and I gotta say, in this country, white boys, they got it all handed to them, the way they talk to cab drivers or waiters, that’s one thing, that’s embarrassing enough – like, they’re not your mother – but anyway, that aside, the way they talk about audiences and how their act went, and how that joke went – you know what? Tell your dick joke and get your fucking white ass off the stage.’

He goes on to tell a story of performing in a couple of working man’s clubs, one in Scotland, one in England, where his fellow performers were dissecting the shows afterwards, wondering why they sometimes lost the audience. ‘They would say, “Wow, it was weird because the audience really went for the one-liners”. Yeah, well, that’s what audiences do. It’s their Friday night out, you little cunt. How about doing your act? They don’t want to go on your journey, thank you. They’re not interested. They’re 45 years old and they have their arms crossed and they’re waiting for a punchline. Friday’s their big night. Fucking do your job. Do it. Do it! DO IT!’

Tomorrow night Scott Capurro will be doing his job at the Banana Cabaret in The Bedford in Balham. If you haven’t seen him before, we urge you to do so. He’s not evil. Just funny. Very, very funny.

First published on Fridaycities.com May 24th, 2007

Yesterday at noon, all across Europe, as well as in Bali and Afghanistan, human beings stopped what they were doing and stood still, and silent, for two minutes. In those two minutes, their thoughts turned primarily to the events of last Thursday; to the ordinary innocent people who were killed or injured; to the friends and families of those same people; to the people who helped and are still helping to try and put things right again; to the people who perpetrated those mind-boggling deeds; to the people who will do the same again at some time in the future, and to the people who will die or be injured as a result.

And as these thoughts swam through the silent masses, many prayed, and many wept. Doubtless there were those that seethed, thoughts of frustration and revenge simmering behind their eyes; as well as those that took the silence as an opportunity to indulge their chauvinism. Doubtless many others were too wrapped up in their own quotidian trifles to really concentrate that well. But that really doesn’t matter. What is significant and actually extraordinarily empowering is that so many human beings stopped what they were doing and focused on the same thing at the same time.

Much has been said about the silence affording time for respect for the victims, for reflection upon the tragedy as a whole, and for defiance in the face of those who made it happen. But what is really inspiring about a mass silence such as this is the act of solidarity itself. It is about people saying, in a voice that no amount of words could ever afford them, that they have been touched by some shared heartbreak and that they desperately don’t want it to happen again.

The fact that this has come on the heels of the collective push to try and solve the problem the poverty is seductive. There are similarities. People coming together. Consensuses of one shade or another being forged. Of course, yesterday’s silence was much less complicated than the Make Poverty History campaign, if only inasmuch as it involved no policy whatsoever. But there was tacit agreement, and tacit protest. We believe we can speak for every voice that held its tongue yesterday at noon when we say that all we really want – all of us – is for human beings to stop killing each other. Surely it really is as simple as that? Torture is out too of course. Right out. But the unnecessary killing of innocent people would be a good place to start. And we know for a fact that the unnecessary killing of innocent people is something that happens in this country far, far less than it happens in many other countries; and we know – surely we know by now? – that what goes around comes around.

This is not a time to apportion blame, so we won’t. It’s a time – as yesterday’s silence showed clearly – for coming together and sharing what we feel. And surely, if we can keep the bigger picture in mind at all times – the people not killing each other thing – we can then go some way to ensuring that ordinary young men are not so readily seduced by the prospect of killing themselves for the sole purpose of taking a bunch of strangers with them.

And without wanting to get carried away with the rose-tinted world of possibilities motif, it feels exciting. This is starting to feel like a particularly exhilarating time to be alive. More than ever before in the history of human beings, we seem to be coming together, or at least, and perhaps more importantly, we seem capable of coming together when we want to. It’s exciting because this, surely, is how we evolve. We transcend the petty barriers we’ve erected, achieve some kind of species awareness and…

Well, it’s a theory. And it’s one we dearly want to believe.

Unfortunately, what happens now is in the hands of a small number of men in a small number of rather self-centred government departments.

Unless of course – and you never know – unless a large number of human beings get together again and finally break their silence.

First published July 15th 2005

New findings concerning the intelligence of fish are causing ripples in Whitehall where government big-wigs are said to be considering moves to top the furore over the fox-murder ban with a total ban on angling.

The shock news that fish are actually fin-flapping brainiacs was dredged up in a seemingly ludicrous study carried out by Dr Theresa Burt de Perera at Oxford University. She told the Daily Telegraph, ‘The public perception of them is that they are pea-brained numbskulls that can’t remember things for more than a few seconds.’ Telegraph readers nodded knowingly. ‘We’re now finding that they are very capable of learning and remembering, and possess a range of cognitive skills that would surprise many people.’ Gadzooks!

But how are they finding this? How exactly do you test the intelligence of a fish? Well, there are a number of ways. You can make it watch reality TV for one, and monitor the expression on its face as Rebecca Loos masturbates a wild boar and Stan Collymore pants in the background. Alternatively, you can build it an obstacle course, and observe how it builds a ‘mental map’ of its surroundings. This was the method chosen, and the feat observed by Dr Burt de Perera. ‘A feat that defeats hamsters,’ the Telegraph gushed. Surely that should’ve been *even* hamsters.

Meanwhile at the University of Edinburgh, thanks to extensive interviews with an Australian crimson spotted rainbowfish, Dr Culum Brown has discovered that this creature is capable of remembering tank-layouts for as long as 11 months. ‘This,’ we are informed, ‘is equivalent to a human recalling a lesson learnt 40 years ago.’ And God only knows what that is in Dog Years.

The fear of course, is that animal-lovers (such as Ms Loos perhaps) will seize this opportunity to put an end to the quotidian barbarity of angling. Dawn Carr, the director of PETA, has already made this valuable contribution. ‘This research moves the debate along, by showing that fish aren’t just swimming vegetables.’ Silly woman. They’re not swimming vegetables at all. They’re meat. She goes on: ‘The more we find out about fish, the less likely people are to feel comfortable about impaling them on a hook for fun.’ No, no, no, no. Not so. This woman clearly knows nothing of human nature. If anglers wanted vegetables, they’d be gardeners. And neither do they do it for fun. Like those fox-hunting outlaws before them, they do it for the thrill of the chase. It’s man against nature, in a vicious one-sided battle to the death.

Bloodthirsty Rodney Coldron of the National Federation of Anglers knows this only too well. ‘Their intelligence just adds to the interest,’ he said. ‘It would be awful if people were only catching fish that were stupid. I think [the news that fish are erudite and witty] might attract more people to fishing.’

We can but dream. They are after all, vermin. It’s only a pity they don’t put up more of a fight, and maybe scream a bit when we bash their pointless little heads in on a rock. Memories and all.

First published October 2004

2005 is proving a worryingly anti-Semitic year so far in British politics. Excepting of course the total lack of anti-Semitism. This week it was Ken Livingstone’s turn to be taken out and shot for remarks he made last Thursday to Oliver Finegold of the Evening Standard.

What you don’t hear on the recording on the internet of course is Ken holding a comb to his top lip and goose-stepping off down the street. Neither do you hear him tossing his copy of Mein Kampf in Finegold’s smug faux-offended face. And of course neither of those things happened. Because although Livingstone may be many things – petulant, crapulent, annoying, whining, brash, insensitive, thoughtless – he isn’t anti-Semitic. Or at least that’s what those who claim to know him will have us believe.

To give him his – ahem – due, he certainly doesn’t come across that way. On this particular occasion he was merely telling a journalist whom he happens to consider a reprehensible scumbag precisely that. So he took the Holocaust’s name in vain in the process? Hey, we’ve all done it. It may be crass and boorish, and it certainly isn’t what they teach you at politician’s school, but should we really condemn him for that? He was pissed, and pissed off, and he tossed a spirited, hyperbolic pop at someone he loathes. Fuck it. Good for him.

Even better of course for Herr Finegold. We’ll bet the fillings in our teeth that he has *never* been so happy to use his Hebrew credentials to win points. (And if we’re wrong, we’ll say, ‘Yeah, whatever. Sorry.’ If you force us.) ‘I’m actually quite offended by that,’ he said, with the same tone you hear when you’ve insulted someone’s mother and they come back with, ‘Actually my mother’s dead and I really don’t appreciate your comments.’ Well, boo hoo. That was the frigging idea in the first place. Livingstone was *trying* to offend him. He did a damn good job. He should be fending off bouquets of congratulation, not exhortations to apologise.

Clearly, there are people who admire and applaud Ken Livingstone’s outspokenness, relishing each and every enhancement to his reputation as a slightly more enlightened Prince Philip. We count ourselves amongst them. In November 2003, he was the only member of the government with balls enough to describe George Bush as ‘the greatest threat to life on this planet that we’ve most probably ever seen.’ Ditto his comments six months later regarding the Saudi absolute monarchy: ‘I just long for the day I wake up and find that the Saudi royal family are swinging from lamp-posts and they’ve got a proper government that represents the people of Saudi Arabia.’ Over-the-top certainly, but surely a lot healthier for our democracy than the usual bland reactionary sound-bites we have come to expect from our politicians.

Having said all that, there are a great many people who think Ken should actually lose his job over his remarks. These tend to be the same ones who argue the anti-Semitism. How *dare* he liken a Jew to a Nazi? they whimper. What a disgrace. What an insult. What utter balls. These people seem to forget that Jews are people too, and it was only because they were expressly prohibited from doing so that none of them happened to find work as concentration camp guards. Besides which, would Ken’s remarks have been any less offensive if Finegold had been Christian? German maybe? If Finegold is also homosexual, will that make the insults twice as offensive?

What was truly offensive was Finegold’s piece in the Standard on Tuesday, headed, ‘I am at a loss why he felt the need to attack me.’ No, but seriously. Who do you think you are kidding, Mr Finegold? Surely you can hazard a guess. Later in the same crocodile-tearful, weeping-to-the-headmaster piece, he writes: ‘His refusal to apologise or see the harm he has done has only made the situation worse.’ Oooh, the harm. In this however, he may have a point. Observe after all, how Livingstone’s refusal to apologise has forced the Sturm und Standard to trivialise the memory of the Holocaust even further, dragging the dignity of the survivors through the mud of a wholly unnecessary round of political infantilism. The Friday Thing offered Finegold the opportunity to justify his and his rag’s heavy-handedly hysterical ‘Nazi Row’ embroidery, but he politely declined. Probably too busy repeatedly high-and-low-fiving himself to climax.

Then again there are those who point out Ken’s hypocrisy in damning all Daily Mail Group employees as Nazi sympathisers when he himself has written restaurant reviews for the Evening Standard. Ken counters that the Standard wasn’t a hotbed of reprehensibility under its previous editor Max Hastings. It’s that moral slattern Veronica Wadley he can’t stand. But speaking of hypocrisy, on Wednesday, Tony Blair was answering ’spontaneous’ questions from the public on Channel 5’s The Wright Stuff, a show brought to you by Princess Productions, currently winning almost universal admiration for their latest must-see, ‘The Friday Night Brand Theft Ideas Drought’. ‘Anne from Sussex’ called in. She wanted to know if it was time for Ken to apologise. ‘Yes,’ said Blair. ‘It’s a simple answer.’ Ha! What jaw-dropping chutzpah! Award yourself a fine gold star, Tony.

Tony Blair, ladies and gentlemen, will only apologise for something if it happened over 30 years ago and definitely, clearly, obviously had nothing to do with him. The day Tony Blair issues the following statement: ‘I apologise, without reservation, mitigation or hope of forgiveness, for every single one of the horrible, inhumane lies I have told over the last, let’s say, ten years’ is the day he can attempt to pressurise Ken Livingstone into apologising for speaking his mind to someone he has absolutely no respect for.

Sadly, we fear that with Tessa Jowell, Sally Hamwee, The Jewish Board of Deputies, The Holocaust Educational Trust, The Standards Board, the Conservative group at the London Assembly, various genuine Holocaust survivors, Michael ‘Fucking’ Howard, most of the world’s press, Balls-out Blair *and* Page 3 stunna Peta, 18, from Essex all asking Ken to roll over in the bullshit and beg forgiveness for having a personality and a spine, this bandwagon is set to roll for a short while longer.

Oy. This country is getting more like Nazi Germany every day.

First published February 18, 2005

On Thursday July 28th, the Evening Standard published an article entitled ‘Terror and hatred for sale in the heart of capital’. In the article, Standard writer Robert Mendick told of how an Islamic bookshop called Dar Al Taqwa sold books and DVDs ‘advocating terrorism’ and ‘urging Muslims to wage a holy war by arming themselves with bombs and guns’. They printed a picture of the shop, the address of the shop and even the shop’s phone number. You can probably guess what happened next. The bookshop employees were immediately subject to a rigorous campaign of abusive phone calls and personal threats. Quite right, you might think. Send ‘em back. They come over here, convert our women and threaten our freedom… Well, quite. Trouble is, it was all a dirty great lie.

Dar Al Taqwa, which incidentally translates as House of Awe and Wonder, has been selling Islam-related publications for 21 years. None of the publications it sells in any way support or encourage violence. In a letter written by the shop’s Managing DirectorSamir El-Attar, he says, ‘We have always promoted literature which encourages people to be law-abiding citizens from whose hands and whose tongues everyone is safe.’ Furthermore, having visited Dar Al Taqwa in the course of inventing his article, Mendick is sure to have been aware of this. None of the so-called hate-peddling publications Mendick claimed could be purchased at Dar Al Taqwa can in fact be purchased at Dar Al Taqwa. He lied. Furthermore, one of these publications, a DVD of a lecture given by Dr Zakir Naik in March 2000, is not supportive of terrorism. Rather, Naik has always spoken out against terrorism. But his lecture, and the accompanying video, is entitled ‘Terrorism in the Name of Islam’, so for a hate-peddling journalist such as Robert Mendick, it was simply too easy.

Sadly, it doesn’t stop there. The day after the article was published, El-Attar wrote to the Evening Standard, detailing the extent of Mendick’s defamatory and highly inflammatory article. The Standard refused to print the letter. However, to give them their due, they did agree to publish an article of equal length refuting the false allegations, together with an apology for having lied and incited religious hatred. So the article was written and a suggested apology drafted. Then, sadly, the Evening Standard changed their minds and refused to print either.

As El-Attar points out in his unpublished letter to the Standard, the only hatred and terror for sale in this case was the hatred and terror being incited by Robert Mendick and sold by the Evening Standard. They even removed the ‘Not In Our name’ posters in the bookshop window on the photograph they printed. The article then, was deliberately manipulated in order to give a false impression of an innocent bookseller. Surely we have laws against this? Well, yes. Thankfully we do.

This morning we spoke to Samir El-Attar. The situation sadly, has not improved. ‘Every day we receive threatening calls,’ he told us. ‘Even my daughter was threatened. People are still frightened to come to the shop, our customers are stopped and searched in the street outside the shop and our income has been slashed by half.’ Robert Mendick must be so proud of himself. As for the question of the Evening Standard being allowed to get away with it, El-Attar and his lawyers are still ‘giving them the chance’ to properly apologise and set the record straight, but if they don’t, which seems likely, he says ‘we are of course going to take them to court’. In the meantime, the paper that hates London will carry on as normal.

Might we suggest in conclusion that Charles Clarke extend his new, improved hate laws to British citizens, and for the crimes of fomenting serious criminal activity and fostering hatred which might lead to inter-community violence, the entire staff of the Evening Standard is sent as far away from London as is humanly possible.

First published August 26 2005

It’s weird, and it’s shocking, but it’s true – tell people you’ve joined a online dating agency, or you’ve put a classified ad somewhere, or you’re going speed-dating or signing up for the next series of Who Wants To Marry My Dad? – and believe it or not, even in this day and age, you still get the odd shriek of incredulity from the hidebound and blinkered; head-in-the-sand old fuddy-duddies who think there’s something ‘a bit iffy’ about not meeting your life-partner when you’re blind-drunk in a nightclub toilet. Well to hell with them. With the exception of Who Wants To Marry My Dad?, they couldn’t be further from the truth.

All of which is to say, with the autumn leaves turning to a rancid stinking mush outside and slugs like saveloys bolting for the gap under the kitchen door, this TFT contributor’s thoughts have recently turned toward Romance. Actually they’ve been firmly focussed on Romance for quite some time now, to absolutely no avail; none whatsoever; but with this year’s SAD bout just around the corner and soulless cruel winter already poking through the duvet with his old man’s elbows, now is the time to take serious steps. So I signed up to a thing called Love Puzzle, and got to meet eight lovely new ladies.

At least, that was the theory.

It is kind of unnerving, beforehand. Dressing for one date is bad enough, but dressing for eight is quite the trauma. Be yourself. Apparently that’s the key. No point turning up looking like the knees of a metrosexual bee, when you know for a fact that the moment she tires of that single shirt she so admires, she’s going to have to adjust to the reality of your workaday wardrobe, wanking socks and all. Just be yourself. When she sees how dreadfully low-rent you really are, she will assume that your disregard for the superficialities of personal appearance, and hygiene, mask a wealth of bigger and much more profound fish to fry. Encourage her in this folly. Tell her about the wanking socks on the second date. Get it out of the way. She will admire your honesty. Deep breath. Deodorant. Breath mint.

Here’s how it works: first up, you pay – £25-£30 per event, with the occasional last-minute bargain – so if you’re of the opinion that there is something slightly sordid about paying for the opportunity to meet potential partners, something that smacks of prostitution, then maybe this isn’t for you. Although in reality, there is no guarantee of any physical intimacy, so it’s really nothing like prostitution. No more than going to a club is. Less even, if that zombified spandex pimp Peter Stringfellow is anything to go by.

So once you’ve paid, about a week before the event the profiles of all of your potential dates are posted on the Love Puzzle site. You pop along and rate them. You get to pick from ‘Hot’, ‘Medium Hot’ and ‘Not for me’, with the ratings represented by, respectively, three cute little chilli peppers, one cute little chilli pepper and a cute little ‘No Entry’ sign. Yeah. But, to be fair, this is not about web-site design awards, this is about True Love.

The profiles however, could do with being a little more detailed. They consisted mainly of ‘How would you describe yourself?’ – to which the response was invariably ‘fabulous’, although not in so few words; and ‘Which characteristics do you look for in a partner?’ – to which the response was invariably one bursting
with futile idealism. Plus a couple of other simple guides to give you a slightly better idea of the person you’ll be chatting to: Favourite Music, Favourite Film, etc. My thinking was that unless someone answered ‘Agadoo’ and ‘Rocky V’, I’d be a fool not to at least have a little chat with them; check ‘em out, in the flesh. Out of 15 potentials, I plumped for 14. The only one I declined to meet was a woman who for some reason was totally unashamed of her admiration for ‘Dirty Dancing’.

One other minor quibble is that you’re only offered dates in your own, quite broad, age range, which kind of scuppers things if you happen to be some vile wretched old lech looking to get all morally reprehensible on the cling-film flesh of some 20-something’s buttocks. So yes, sorry; not a quibble at all. But a
good thing.

Once your choices have been processed, you receive a ‘date agenda’, a kind of ‘quality time-table’ with the names and allotted tryst times of all your fleeting partners. On the evening itself you get to spend 15 minutes with each one, followed by a 10-minute break during which, if you’re adequately engrossed or suitably smitten, you can continue chatting. Otherwise you can smile through gritted teeth, shake hands politely and skulk off to the bar, to drink and pray and wonder what on earth you’ll do if slow speed-dating fails *as well*.

But thankfully, I observed no skulking and praying during the evening. Rather the atmosphere was quite charming, not dissimilar to the upstairs of a pub which has been hired out for the evening by a distant cousin, who then proceeds to introduce you to lots of his friends. I had a great time. And the timing is just right, because even when you know – without wanting to sound indelicate – that you wouldn’t, you just couldn’t, not even in a million years, it is only 15 minutes. And there’s no-one who isn’t fascinating enough to warrant at least 15 minutes’ conversation. Really. Even if it becomes at best a kind of fascinating if rather creepy social experiment. (I saw that look in the eyes of at least two of my dates.)

Apparently most speed dating events allow you to speak for between three and seven minutes. But 15, with the option on another 10, is ideal. You’re also free to swap phone numbers as and when you desire – unlike some places apparently – or if you’re a little on the shy side, you can let a Love Puzzle person know after the event. On the whole, an excellent night out.

Of course, I might not have thought so had I not been fortunate enough to meet a couple of rather special ladies. In fact, I had my first ‘proper date’ with one of them just the other night and it went very well. So well in fact, that I’ve decided not to mention the wanking socks at all for a while. Not even in jest. I may even throw them all away. And buy another shirt.

First published 29 October 2004

A story appeared at the end of last week in a local South London paper suggesting that Brixton squirrels, after digging up rocks buried by panicky dealers, had become addicted to crack. Pretty soon broadsheets and tabloids alike were scrabbling after the story like frantic, balding dogs after a smack-stuffed bone. It’s clearly a load of old nonsense, but in a week full of fire, earthquake and Tories, it suddenly seemed worth looking into in slightly more depth. So we popped along to Brixton to have a little nose around.

One of the great things about Brixton of course, is that it’s very easy to enter into a conversation with a drug dealer – should conversation with a drug dealer be what you’re after – as they tend to speak to you first. So for half an hour or so we wandered around Brixton High Street and Coldharbour Lane turning down drugs and wondering if we could ask a question. ‘Have you heard anything about local squirrels taking crack?’ we asked. Of the half a dozen dealers we asked, only one of them had heard the story. The rest were either amused or distinctly unamused. The first guy we spoke to found the idea extremely amusing. He laughed out loud. We asked him if he found it very likely. He didn’t know. We asked him if it was likely that crack dealers would bury their wares underground in the first place. Again he said he really didn’t know. ‘Would you bury crack?’ we asked. ‘Nah, man, I just sell skunk,’ was his reply. ‘Do squirrels smoke skunk?’ we asked. He didn’t know. But he was amused, so that was something.

On the whole then, the dealers were not much help. Either they really were as ignorant as they were making out, or else they were hiding something. We decided to broaden our search. A barman in the Prince of Wales pub had heard the story. He said that he’d woken up to it on radio news earlier in the week and wondered for a moment if he was still dreaming. He went on to suggest that, although crack dealers might occasionally be forced to bury their stash or hide it in the undergrowth, it probably didn’t happen often enough for squirrels to get wise to it. Unfortunately he had no first-hand experience of local squirrels displaying any of the symptoms of crack psychosis. So sadly, he wasn’t much help either. Neither were the library assistants. Nor the local shopkeepers. Nor a passing traffic warden. It was almost as if they had more important things to think about. Thank God then, for the alcoholics hanging out in front of the Ritzy.

We spoke to a bunch of five of them, slumped on the low wall round the greenery where the crack-addicted squirrels are said to congregate, masturbating and spitting at babies. We said hello. One guy turned to us. ‘I don’t know who I am,’ he said. For a moment we were speechless. Then an old Irish man, with a bloodshot bloated gonad for a nose, grabbed our arm and bade us speak. When we asked him about the squirrels, he confessed that he wasn’t local, but he was in no doubt that squirrels do smoke crack. ‘Of course they do,’ he said. ‘It’s in their nature. We smoke it, don’t we?’ We? We asked him if he meant human beings. ‘Human beings!’ he roared, seemingly excited at the prospect. But squirrels are not human beings, we pointed out. He ignored this quibble. ‘The squirrels don’t have to pay for it,’ he smiled, conspiratorially. We insisted that they had no concept of currency. ‘Of course they do!’ he repeated. ‘They’ll be dealing before you know it.’

Fun though he was, we decided that our jolly sozzled friend was actually not particularly expert on the habits of dissolute rodents. So we gave up on Brixton and phoned around the professionals. Is it possible a squirrel could ingest crack and survive more than a few wacky seconds, we wanted to know. Cat expert and chief science man at the British Naturalist’s Association, Roger Tabor, didn’t get back to us. The swine. The woman who answers the telephone when the squirrel expert isn’t in at the office of the Wildlife Trust said that in the absence of any quantifiable tests, they really couldn’t say. And the RSPCA told us this:

‘Unfortunately at the moment we do not have a test in place which would tell us of the affect of crack cocaine on a squirrel, so we can not say categorically whether this animal could get addicted to the drug. A squirrel is a mammal, so there are similarities to a human body structure. However, it is small in comparison to a human which would suggest that the drug could have a greater impact on it. It is not always the case though as a drug can affect one species one way and affect another in a completely different way. There would be great concern that a wild animal had access to any chemical substance though.’

So the question is: Why has no one yet forced crack into squirrels under laboratory conditions? Until they do, it seems that no one really knows for sure if squirrels are on crack or not, but, let’s face it – they’re not. However, if you’re still undecided, it’s always worth going back to what may well be the original source for the story, one Rik Abel, a former Brixton dweller now residing in Toronto. On November 22nd he was posting on his blog, something about Canadian squirrels. He wrote: ‘I don’t think they would be any match for the fearsome Brixton Crack Squirrel, which feeds entirely on discarded rocks of crack cocaine and is generally rather bolshy for such a small creature. They used to hang out in the little park in front of the Ritzy Cinema, twitching spastically, dancing to music only they could hear and generally creating a malevolent ambience.’ After featuring in the Guardian last Saturday, Rik wrote on Monday: ‘Imagine my surprise and delight on Saturday morning to see my Brixton Crack Squirrels post quoted in The Guardian! Apparently it is a burgeoning urban legend, which is funny, because I just made it up.’ Bah.

Bloody bloggers.

First published 14 October 2005