“Ah Harkness, come in.  Happy Holidays.”

“Thank you sir.   And you sir.  Might I have a quick word?”

“Well Doris asked me to do some shopping on the way home…”

“This won’t take a moment sir.  I’ve got some good news.”

“Oh good.  Always room for good news.”

“Yes, you know the North Korean satellite?”

“Yes.”

“Well we’ve shot it down.”

“We have?  I didn’t know we could do that.”

“No neither did we actually sir , but we gave it a shot and…right between the eyeballs.  First time.  We were shocked,  And happy obviously.”

“Well,  well done.”

“Thank you sir.  Only one problem.”

“Yes?”

“The satellite.”

“What about it?”

“It’s falling.”

“Where?”

“To the earth. “

“Well gravity….”

“Quite.  And it probably has a nuclear source on board and it’s plummeting and it’s going to hit in about half an hour.”

“Oh dear.  Where?”

“Not in America sir.”

“Oh good, wow that would be….”

“Yes, it would. However, it is going to hit…”

“Where?”

“Sydney.”

“Australia?”

“Yes.”

“Oh dear.”

“Uhm.  Most unfortunate.”

“Can we shoot it down?”

“Well that’s what we’ve done sir.”

“No, can we shoot it down again?”

“Chances are about 2 billion to one.  Against.  It’s moving so fast you see.”

“I see.”

“So we have two choices, we tell them, and there’ll be panic.”

“Right.”

“And then everybody’ll blame us.”

“Or…?”

“We don’t tell them.”

“Blame the Koreans.”

 
“Exactly.”

“How long have we got?”

“A few minutes,”

“Those bloody Koreans.”

Master Idle newly returned from London to these former Colonies to tell the world by this Express of my most amazing Travels to a distant frozen Land, where the People speak English almost as well as in ye Beverly Hills, and where they celebrate the ancient tradition of Christenmas, whereby they get very drunk and exchange gifts and occasionally blows, and sing a lot about starry nights and little infants, and peace on earth and good will to all men, whereupon they exchange further blows and kick a ball about, which  I was informed was an ancient game with them, called Ye Rugy Foot, whereby thirty men chase up and down a field and endeavor to kick each other, and some were white and roundly cheered and some were called Ye Alle Blacques and were soundly kicked about.   And there was much singing of an ancient anthem “Swing Low Sweet Chariot, Coming for to Carry Me Home” but such a vehicle I could for the life of me not discern and they largely went home in Buses.

Upon my arrival I did find lodgings near to ye ancient Saint James’s Palace, where I might the more easily walk about the Piccadilly gazing at the shop widows, and visiting ye ancient Chop Houses of Ye Caprice, and Mister Sheekey’s Fish Emporium and Ye ancient House of Ivy.   Here indeed the streets were filled with lights and the Shoppes and the Emporiums bursting forth with pretty things and a multitude of passers-by passed up and down the streets at all hours of the day and night, wrapped in great coats, and apple cheeked, searching for ye Apple Shoppes and I passed through some areas that they called Soho, where many pretty girls did call to me to come inside and play with them, and yet I durst not for Fear of God, and Mine own Wife, who has ofttimes warned me of these frolicsome miftresses and the trappes they lay for the innocent voyager to deprive him of his gold and give him Herpef.

Oft-times I visited the Theater where Master Roylance and Master Fry performed the splendors of Master Shakespeare’s exceedingly droll comedy for Twelfe Night, which did bring me much mirth and merriment, for some were men dressed up as women and some were men dressed up as women who then dressed up again as men, and there was much joy and laughter and confusion.  And on another Night I did enjoy ye Master Russell Beale dressed moft amufingly as several diverse women, who did then discourfe on the sad nature of love in song and dance with Ye Privates on Parade, and there was much banging of guns and rushing about.  Thereto I saw the ancient Tragedy of Spamalot as performed by the Ambassadors Men at the Playhouse which was greeted with merriment and always looking on Ye Bright Side, which is an axiom with them whenever things become totally insupportable.

The whole town was dressed for the Season, singing ye Carols in the ftreets and filling the Alehouses with the jollities of  what they call Christenmas, somewhat like our Honiker Festival, where people send each other large Boxes to be returned to the shoppes upon Boxing Day, for the which reason no man might discern.

Indeed I saw many sights and wonders in the ancient British Capitol, the which alike alternately gladdened my heart, and sometime filled me with dread, for the Newspapers of which there are a Multitude on this odd Isle, were filled with Great Tales of Woe that they may in future not be allowed to write whatever they see fit about whomsoever they care to abuse, which is held to be a great freedom for them, and without the which honest right to purfue and print the most amazing made-uppe stories ye Civilifation will crumble and fall into the Thames.

But nothing prepared me for the mysteries of ye Courts, where I attended several days in a row to watch the discussion of a great Mystery.   For there in the Inns of Court I saw a multi headed Python exhibited openly, and some did argue that there were Seven heads and some said nay there were but Six, and yet none could decide for the evidence was exceedingly old and all wore wigs and the Festive Season being pressing the Argument was set down to be continued at some future time for the entertainment of ye Barristers and folicitors, and the ruination of all.

And so I shipped home, marvelling that such a people could exist on so far a frozen platform, and I declare this to be a true and honest account of my recent time spent among ye British.

I frequently tire of Twitter.  It’s not the reduction of all thought to 140 characters, which is an excellent corrective against unnecessary prolixity, it’s that it gives strangers a chance to be breathtakingly rude to you.   In fact being rude to the celebrated may be the main point of twitter for its adherents.

Ninety eight tweets will say extraordinarily flattering things, and yet it is the two who unexpectedly insult that one remembers.   Why should this be so?  Why should criticism matter more than praise?

I got one the other day, accusing me of being a money-grabbing bastard.  I’m not sure of the context in which they found it necessary to search me out and abuse me, but I know I hated them instantly.  I rarely concern myself with money, and almost never at the start of any project.   Here is the money I grabbed from my last three projects:

What About Dick?      Writing $0

Directing $0

Producing $0

Acting:    Scale.  (Probably about $2,000)

Olympic Games Closing  Ceremony $1

Writing and Singing new Galaxy Song for BBC  $0

(It’s true the BBC gave us about $1000 for recording, but of course we spent way more than that.)

Hardly money-grabbing is it?   But why should I care so much about a careless tweet from internet twits?    I think it’s because their shocking misjudgments of my character and what I hold dear is insulting, and while I can avoid insults and slurs in the newspapers by simply not taking them, or hateful reviews by not reading them, somehow an insult that pops up on your personal computer has come into your home, and my initial response is neither kind nor gentle.

When I foolishly tweeted something about Harry Redknapp (ironically the week before he moved to QPR) ninety percent of responses totally agreed with me but one aggrieved Spurs fan accused me of knowing nothing about football.  Well excuse me!   I have been watching football since 1956 when I began to watch the Wolves become the first team to compete in Europe.   I became enchanted by magnificent football when I watched Real Madrid (with the great Puskas) destroy Eintracht on a flickering black and white screen.  I was at Wembley in 1966 to watch England win the World Cup and there again two years later to watch Manchester United win the European Cup.

I gave away my Season Ticket for Chelsea on Capital Radio in the seventies when they got rid of Osgood, Cook and Hudson, the only reason to watch them, and I have subsequently devoted myself to watching every game I can without prejudice, for I will no longer support a football team.  It’s like dating a hooker:  they’re certainly going to let you down.

So how to counter such rudeness?   Usually a simple fuck off will suffice, but then sometimes people thank me for that, which is perverse.   It also seems rude to the rest of the Twitterverse who get to witness my bad manners.  Somehow it’s setting a bad example.   I have used GFY as a more polite form of response, since anyone who doesn’t understand the acronym can hardly complain, but that too seems unnecessarily bad tempered, and oddly the Glaswegian whom I used it on seemed to appreciate it, and it was quite a feather in his cap to his fellow Glaswegians.  But then Glaswegians have a much healthier attitude to abuse.   Perhaps I need to learn from them….

So, to Twitter or Twitter not?    Tweet me (like a fool).

My friend Jeff Lynne has asked me to write some liner notes for his CD.  In a cavalier moment when he was worried about writing them I airily offered to do the job.

“Oh would you?  You’ll be able to do it easily” he said “Because I can’t.”

“But Jeff” I said “you have done everything else.  All the writing, all the recording.  All the singing.   All the selling.”

“But I haven’t a clue what to do, or how to write liner notes” he said.

“Nothing to it I said.”    But I lied.  My only previous experience was writing liner notes for the second Wilbury’s album, and I think I just copied what Michael Palin had done for the first.  Clearly the thing to do was to find somebody funny and copy them, so my first move was to co-opt Billy Connolly into joining us for dinner.

“Liner notes” he said, “they still have liner notes?   I thought they went out with the Titanic.”  “That’s Liner, Billy” I said.

The story so far.   In a fit of egotistical madness Eric Idle has agreed to write the liner notes for Jeff Lynne’s album, but so far he has no idea what to do.  He is assembling for dinner with Jeff and Billy at an expensive West Hollywood watering hole, called The Expensive West Hollywood Watering Hole.  He has sat with Billy for half an hour and made a bad joke about Shark Infested Waiters at the Peninsular.  They are waiting for Jeff.  He appears.

“How are the Liner Notes going?” he asks.

“Nothing to it” I lie.

But it’s a dilemma. I have Billy Connolly to help me, but he isn’t much help, he just keeps collapsing into a pile of giggles and staring wistfully at the waitress.  The waitress is really worth a stare, but she has no place on these liners notes.   I ask Billy what he wants to eat.  He says “I want nothing bouncy or jiggly.”

“Seems to me”  I say “the waitress falls into that category.”

Billy stares morosely into the distance.   I know that look to mean he’s thinking.  “For the serious collector” he says “the vinyl CD.”

“Oh yes and you can download it” I say.  The idea slips into the sand and drains away.

“I like that” says Jeff.

“How about we say originally it was a Virgin record?  It had no hole in the middle.”

“That’s not funny” said Jeff.

“Alright” I say “we’ll improvise. Its 1932….” I begin.

“I had just woken up and was feeling wretched” continues Billy.

“I was lying in the street next to a donkey.   Nice ass I said.”

“’Listen to this mate’, said the donkey putting on a Jeff Lynne album and a small sleeveless Fair Isle knitted pullover…”

“Adding a small moustache he set off to invade Poland….”

“Because he couldn’t spell Czechoslovakia.”

This too sank into the sand.  There was a moment of silence as Billy stared at the long legs of the waitress.

“They’re all strumpets!” he said suddenly and very loudly in his Scottish pastor voice. “Whoors, harlots and strumpets the lot of them!”

“First of all they’re not strumpets,” I said, “One or two of them may be on the sluttish side, but I never met a slut I didn’t like.”

“Put that down” says Jeff, “that’s good.”

“For the liner notes?” I say in disbelief.

“Maybe” he says.

I know Armchair Theater very well.   It’s a lovely album isn’t it?  I mean either you know it or you’re about to, and either way you’ll love it, but nowhere is there anything in it about sluts.  Even I don’t think that’ll fly. We abandon our pathetic attempts to be funny and drift on to other subjects and an enormous amount of food is eaten.

“Are you still doing my liner notes?” says Jeff, as he reaches for the check.

“Oh yes,” I lie.

Jeff Lynne has two new albums out at the moment:  Long Wave, and  Mister Blue Sky, the very best of Electric Light Orchestra.  Amazon.com for details and downloads.