Monday 18 August 2014

Russell Beard - skinny, hirsute revolutionary comic, massage enthusiast, and Jemima Fishpaste's consort - tells it like it is, yeah?

Goodness me - what an exciting day! England smashing India at cricket, Roger Federer winning his first Masters 1000 title in two years, then, out of the blue, an email from one of the most colossal colossi of the world entertainment industry, and one of this country's leading purveyors of compassionate hatred. Not just an email taking me to task for my failure to appreciate his extraordinary eulogy of Robin Williams - but an extended essay which he practically orders me to publish. I am only too delighted to oblige: the Guardian's loss is The Grønmark Blog's gain. If you want your conscience pricked by a prick, read on:

-- People who read your bloggy-wog tell me you're never in tune with my personal zeitgeist and the profound analysis and innovative political thinking which is me and my writings and globally acclaimed edgy gigs. But, as Ghandy said to Jean Claude Rousseau, "I may not agree with what you say, but I shall defend your right to say it to the deaf." As a lifelong admirer of the Magical Mysterious Mahatma (friends tell me it is mutual), as well as a supporter of the hard of hearing, I can only agree.
-- Failure of Capitalism Part One. Yes. We need a revolution. Not yesterday. Not tomorrow. When do we want it? Yea! Right fucking now, that's when. Just as soon as the butler has cleared away afternoon tea. Capitalism is in existential crisis. The world cries out in pain. The sweet bird of truth has landed awkwardly on the hot tin roof of greed and materialism. Ticket sales are down. My political guru, Buckminster Fuller (or Bucky Wucky as I call him) was the first to point out that 1% of the population owns 99% of our wealth. Think about it people. We need to turn that statistic right round the other way! Only a revolution can do it. Wake up! Smell the Lapsang Souchong! Boycott Israeli peaches!
-- Last night at one of Jemima's dinner parties, some old dude sitting next to me interrupted my flow by pointing out that if indeed we did manage to turn that situation the other way round, it would mean that 99% of the people would own 1% of the wealth and was that what my revolution would regard as a good outcome. The entire table laughed. They obviously saw that the daft old twat was struggling to keep up. "What the fuck do you know about it, grandad?" I replied wittily. I wasn't paying the old git much attention but I think he claimed he was Oxford University Emirates Professor of Economics or something. So obviously a Tory plant. Emirates Professor my arse! He didn't even look Arabic. Should have asked for his granddaughter's phone number.
-- Jemima's accountant has pointed out that my revolution's plans to confiscate the property of the rich might have, as he put it, "an undesirable consequence for my client's and indeed your own property and investments" and had I really thought it through? Details, fucking details, the preoccupation of the small-minded petty bourgeois. Did anyone ask Mao about the fine print as he started the long march into snowbound Stalingrad during the Hungarian uprising of 1948? No? Thought not. Ignorant peasant.
-- Failure of Capitalism Part Two. "The system is in a paradigmatical miasma of regression back to the womb of materialism, brought on by the inexorable exploitative contrapuntal worker/boss paradox as it hurtles towards an episiotomy of its own making." I am quite proud of that sentence, exclusive to your blog from my new booky-wook on the Revolution to Come. It would have been even more deeper in meaning but I never found my Thesaurus since I threw it at the masseuse.
-- Some one has pointed out that in my first post above I referred to your blog in my usual trademark vehicular (eg posty- wost, beardy-weard) and unwittingly used a hyphenated term that might be offensive to my brothers from the ethnic minorities. Sorry brothers, nuff respect, big admirer of your kulcha and stuff but an egg wasn't never hatched without breaking an omelette or two.
-- I was looking at some of the films of late comedian Rob Williams - as I said to my manager, just get the good ones and courier them over and J and me will watch them in the private cinema in one of the other houses. Some of them was funny. It is sad to think what he might have become if he'd developed a more political, dare I say, revolutionary style, enhancing it maybe with expensively torn jeans, an unironed T- shirt and growing long hair and an edgy beard, while calling for the overthrow of capitalism rather than pulling all them funny faces and voices all the time. But it was not to be. I guess I must carry the banner on my own. It gets lonely sometimes.
-- One of Jemima's other guests at the party where I put the Economics Prof in his place said as he was leaving: "Beard, you are a living illustration of the aptness of the saying 'a little knowledge is a dangerous thing'". I thanked the dude. He got it, oh yea. The guy understood, hence the compliment. Soon society will reel in shock as it sees how dangerous me and my knowledge is. 
Russell Beard © 2014

4 comments:

  1. You get those moments in history, don't you, when there is a sudden glut of intellectual talent and energy.

    We are lucky to be living through one now.

    It's not just Mr Beard, but Mr Me as well, please see – if you dare – Will Self Q&A – as it happened, e.g.

    Q. Has psychology replaced morality?

    A. Well, was it Nietzsche who said that in illneess is the beginning of all psychology? I think so... anyway, our own age exhibits such a florid concern with illness - and by extension psychology - that I thinbk we can say that the notion of the autonomous moral subject has itsely become sick...

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    1. Excellent recommendation - I particularly enjoyed: "A personal afterlife - let alone immortality - would strike me as a cosmic solecism on a par with the hereditary monarchy..." Coo, ain't he clever!

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  2. I think it was from your blog that I discovered that Joanna Lumley used to "date" Scottish gargoyle Rod Stewart which upset me at the time. When I read about Jemima Kahn I refused to believe it until I confirmed it via Google [ my usual celebrity magazines like "Heat" or "OK!" have not mentioned this - possibly because she is not serially pregnant and he is not a rap singer]. The ex-wife of the great Imran. What is she thinking...?

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    1. I think she must on some sort of "journey", which has so far taken her from the sublime to the fantastically bloody ridiculous. Given that she is an associate editor of the New Statesman and that she was one of the six people who posted bail for Julian Assange before he slunk into the Ecuadorian embassy, I don't hold out much hope for her doing anything remotely sensible in future. She converted to islam before marrying Imran Khan - I wonder if she is still a believer.

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