Cheryl Cole: Livin' me dream, like

These are, indeed, the worst of times: I'm shuttling backwards forwards between the Doctor's office and hospital; Gideon Osborne officially doesn't know what he's doing; Tesco and Sainsbury's are predicting a Christmas shortage in potatoes, parsnips, carrots, sprouts, broccoli, cabbages, cauliflower and swedes; and party balloons will be far less floaty this festive season as the worldwide shortage of helium kicks in. Thank Santa then that two staples remain in place to keep us smiling during the long cold evenings, namely Stand Up Comedy DVDs and the celebrity autobiography.

Stewart Lee's Carpet Remnant World is by far the best of the comedy DVDs on offer, whilst the celebrity autobiography category is dominated by the colossus that is my mate Cheryl Cole's My Story. Not to be confused with Jessie J's autobiography with practically the same title, or Tulisa's Contostavlos' My Story So Far in which she tells us that Dappy has a penis which could conceivably belong to King Kong. Cheryl stopped by my hospital bed recently to share a bunch of designer Ruby Roman grapes and a chat.

It's so nice to see you again, Chezza. 

You too, pet. Hoo ye gannin'? Y'areet, hinny?

I'm not great, obviously, but thanks for visiting me and these grapes are amazing.

They're fooking champion! They're the most expensive fruit ever, like. They cost me an absolute fooking SHITE load, but I respect you, Basil and I like you too, so, y'know... No bother, like.

Thanks again, Cheryl. You've had an incredible 2012. You've hooked up with Tre Holloway, released a third solo album (A Million Lights), aired the Access All Areas documentary on ITV2, Girls Aloud have regrouped and your autobiography has just hit the shelves.

2012 has been so fooking crazy, man. Will.I.Am, he's, like, managing me (?), says it's going to get even crazier. Tre is my rock. My soulmate. We connect on every level and it definitely helps that he's hung like a Shetland Pony. This solo album was a real personal statement, the documentary was a chance to show ordinary people the real stresses of being Cheryl, Girls Aloud is just me getting back with me mates, and the autobiography is a chance to show ordinary people the real stresses of being Cheryl. Again. Revealing the real me, like. The Cheryl Cole who stays in of an evening reading Noam Chomsky in a tiger onesie, eating a meat feast Domino Pizza and farting like a good 'un. Lol.

You say that your album was a personal statement.

Aye.

Nothing exemplifies this more than Call My Name. Can you tell me a little bit about what you were trying to say with this song?

Well, first of all I didn't write it, Calvin Harris did, but what I had in mind when I was singing it was, like, me hitting back at the infantile, fundamentalist logic which is subservient to acquisition for its own ends and is impervious to compassion definining the world in a postmodern prescriptivism of black and white: they're evil and we're good.

Having been a solo artist for quite a while, how easy has it been for you to readjust to a group dynamic?

It's been great seeing the girls again... Well... Most of them. Nadine just keeps whining on about her failed restaurant. I wish she'd just bore off, like. Nicola Roberts is so pale sometimes, against certain backdrops she's literally transparent. At the moment we're rebuilding the set for our tour next year because there were points of the show where she disappeared completely and it looked like there was a microphone just suspended in mid-air defying the known laws of physics. Lol. No, but seriously, someone's got to drive the car and, given my phenomenal solo success and being the nation's sweetheart, the girls are willing to have me in charge.

You're as massive a fan as me, have you noticed the similarity between Chen Pacino's H-H-Humpin' Ya and PSY's Gangnam Style?

I know! Fooking mental, right? (Cheryl proceeds to sing H-H-Humpin' Ya to the tune of Gangnam Style) Chen was way ahead of his time. I reckon Will.I. Am is our modern day equivalent. Did you see him on The Voice?

Yes, I did.

What did you think?

When he talks he sounds like a malfunctioning R2D2 unit.

Lol. He's a musical genius though, just like Chen. When we win my case against Simon Cowell for sacking me off of X-Factor USA I'm gonna buy Chen's publishing rights and re-release his whole back catalogue as a 52 CD box set. I'm thinking of calling it Ay No Pacino. There'll be at least a couple of his protest albums in there.

How do you feel about PSY rowing back on his earlier position in criticising American foreign policy. Some of his earlier lyrics were a little incendiary. 

And he's apologised, yeah?

Yes, he has.


I see it like this, right. Americans have a President who is a mass-murdering psychopath and they apologise to absolutely fooking nobody for his behaviour. Nobody. Oh, sorry, Afghanistan. Those drones weren't meant to kill everyone at the wedding reception, only the terrorists, but the rest of the guests got in the way. And actually we're not going to apologise, because if anyone is of fighting age in the vicinity of a drone attack we've rewritten our constitution so that we're allowed to kill you just in case. Yet they expect, nay, demand, that a pop singer apologise for some lyrics in a song he recorded years ago? PSY has no blood on his hands, whereas Barack Obama could bathe in the blood of his victims, and for all I know, he probably uses it as shower gel.

If I want to hear to an apology from any pop singer, I'll take one from the gaggle of twat artists who endorsed Obama and conveniently turn a blind eye to the murders he commits daily. Snoop Dogg, Bruce Springsteen, Madonna, Michael Stipe, 50 Cent, Chris Martin, Nicki Minaj... I could go on, but I won't. These fooking assholes are the ones who should apologize, not PSY. Although, it's pretty piss poor that PSY is so desperate to get on Letterman that he'll say anything. Sell out. At least he brought MC Hammer out of retirement though.

People don't get to see this side of you. The politicised Cheryl Cole.

They don't want to see it.

Why not?

They're happy to see me as a piece of fluff. Trivia. A clothes horse with no discernible talent and absolutely nothing to say with dubious views on race, although I'm always gaggin' for the dark meat, if you get my drift?

And that isn't you?

Hadaway, man. Is it fook, like.

I see.

At the moment the way our government voted on that UN vote on Palestine is really pissing me off, like. The UN voted overwhelmingly to recognise Palestine as the world's 194th state. It’s a massive victory for the Palestinian people, for justice and for peace. Do you know why the UK abstained? Because we sell shed loads of arms to Israel - £2.4m between April and June this year - and we can't afford to cut off a gushing revenue stream irrespective of the unrelenting oppression and its illegality. Talking of gushing streams, I'm gonna have to go before I piss meself. Lol. No, no, no. You keep the grapes. Think of them as a Christmas present. Like I said to that black toilet attendant before I kicked her head in for looking at me funny, Season's Beatings. Laters.

* Girls aloud tour the UK next year between February and March

Four More Years, Mittches!!!

1. Costa Coffee using my favourite song this week - I Was Made For Loving You by KISS - is awesome, even if the residents of Totnes are trying to kick them out of town. They may well be a rapacious multinational, but Damn! They know music.

2. Ash Dieback, the fungal disease laying waste to the trees of the British countryside, sounds very much like the title of a Rammstein song.

3. A death in the family forces us to contemplate our own mortality. I've been doing that a lot and getting very maudlin. Wade Kojo Williams passed away on Monday. He was my Uncle on my Mother's side. The 'Williams' part is very important. When we were growing up ANY virtues or talents we expressed were explained by Mater as being "like the Williams", whereas any missteps, plainly, were due to us being "so Creese".

I can't speak for my Sis, or my Bro', but as a youngster I was of the opinion that these Williamses were a little bit up themselves, until we eventually met them when we took a family jaunt to St Vincent. They were pretty all right actually (apart from the relative who said I walked like a "bow-legged bitch"), and Uncle Wade was a bit of a legend: a journalist, a celebrated songwriter, parliamentarian and an active member of the community. In his time in Winnipeg he served as:

• President of the National Black Coalition of Canada (Winnipeg Chapter);
• President of the National Council of St. Vincent and the Grenadines Associations in Canada;
• President of the St. Vincent and the Grenadines Association of Winnipeg;
• President of the Manitoba Intercultural Council (MIC);
• Representative on The Visible Minority National Council on Canadian Labour Force Development;
• Chairman of the Black History Month Celebration Committee;
• Member of the Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination - Social Planning Council of Winnipeg;
• Chairman of the Martin Luther King Memorial Committee;
• Executive Member of the Afro-Caribbean Association of Manitoba;
• Founder and Chairman of the Manitoba Coalition of Organizations Against Apartheid and Racism;
• Founder and Chairman of the Forum for the Awareness of the Minority Electorate;
• Multiculturalism Director of the Liberal Party of Manitoba;
• President of the St. Norbert Liberal Association;
• Executive Member of the Assiniboine-Fort Garry Residents Advisory Group (City of Winnipeg);
• Founder and Chairman of Students Against Apartheid (University of Winnipeg);
• President of Caribbean Students Association (University of Winnipeg);
• Founding Executive Member of The Calypso Association of Winnipeg;
• Co-Founder of the Winnipeg Calypso and Reggae Competitions;
• Co-Founder of the annual Winnipeg Soca-Reggae Festival and Member of the Manitoba Senior Provincial Cricket Team.
• He was also a member of several Caribbean Folk Groups/Choirs in Winnipeg.

Truly an exceptional man, and a bit of an inspiration. He will be greatly missed.

His funeral is taking place in Winnipeg, Canada, and I'll be accompanying my Mother, which'll be a laugh riot. I get my sense of humour and sunny disposition from her. Ask my sister. She calls me 'Smiler'.

4. So I skipped over to Liverpool to sort out my passport. The last time I was in the city was a few years ago to rehearse with an early line-up of Damaged Gods, which disintegrated when the guitarist and bassist started banging each other - Gina, the bassist, went on to play briefly for all-girl metal maidens McQueen - so I was surprised at how well I was able to navigate its streets.

Having about four hours to kill before my passport was ready I popped into a Tesco Express to grab some overpriced sustenance, and scanned the newspaper stand for a publication which would entertain me whilst I sat in my car waiting for the paperwork to be completed. Obama's face beamed triumphantly from the front pages of the newspapers whilst, on the shelves above, a scarlet tressed Holly Hagan proffered her sizeable mammaries like shoddily constructed Blancmange desserts. I decided that Roger Moore's autobiography would prove more engaging and stuck with my Chicken and Bacon sandwich, Strawberry and Banana smoothie and a pack of Cool Breeze Extra chewing gum, resolving to check out the Obama reaction to, and analysis of, his re-election online when I got home.

Ah, Obama... He's as war mongering and as slavishly bound to the notion of the expanding American Empire as his half-wit predecessor. That Hopey/Changey thing didn't really pan out, did it? Drone attacks and Guantanamo aren't going away anytime soon, kinda proving that even if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck it still might turn out to be a bit of a cunt. On the subject of cunts, seeing the response of the sore loser Republicans was definitely worth it.

Donald Trump called for revolution. A subdued and sombre Ann Coulter intoned, "I'm pretty pessimistic about the country. We have more takers than makers and it's over. There is no hope," whilst Ted Nugent tweeted, "Pimps whores & welfare brats & their soulless supporters have a president to destroy America". Fox News host and attack dog of the bigoted right, Bill O'Reilly, lamented the erosion of the white establishment:

"The white establishment is now the minority. The voters, many of them, feel that the economic system is stacked against them and they want stuff. People feel that they are entitled to things and which candidate, between the two, is going to give them those things? Obama wins because it's not a traditional America anymore. The white establishment is the minority. People want things."

Poor fella. His whole world had fallen apart. He looked devastated. I almost felt sorry for him, even as he employed the stereotype of ethnic minorities being feckless spongers. And that's the Republican Party's problem: its hijacking by the extreme neo-cons means that it isn't inclusive enough and as a result Mitt only made inroads into the hearts and minds of the electorate each and every time he moved to the centre, which left him open to charges of 'flip flopping' and hypocrisy. Ronald Reagan would be too moderate for his own party now.

They and the purblind others of their type need to wake up and recognise that times are changing. Watching one's parents forced at gunpoint to engage in sexual intercourse in a bath of warm excrement would be more fulfilling and better for one's conscience than voting Republican. Compare their separatist language with the following from Obama's acceptance speech:

"The idea that if you're willing to work hard, it doesn't matter who you are or where you come from or what you look like or where you love. It doesn't matter whether you're black or white or Hispanic or Asian or Native American or young or old or rich or poor, able, disabled, gay or straight, you can make it here in America if you're willing to try."

Much nicer and genuinely inspiring, isn't it? But then, he meticulously employs a lexicon designed to be inclusive, which is a very good thing indeed. Just try to avoid looking at the detail, eh? At the very least the average American woman will have control of her own uterus for the next 4 years, which I shall address during my 2 hour stopover in Chicago later today. BOOM!

I'm kidding.

Or am I...?

Yes. Yes, I am.

* The Monkey Obama t-shirt comes courtesy of the white supremacist website Tightrope. Also in this series "Fight Crime. Abort Black Babies."and "Bureau of Negro Control."

What the f$%k is NLP?!?

I went to a party last night. I know! I don't drink and I don't socialise. But it was a surprise birthday celebration for my mate Irv. Or rather Ian Irving. So I had no choice. Right now he's a very big player in the Experiential Marketing scene, but back in the day he was part of a team who made a music video for my previous band and we've kept in touch ever since. The festivities kicked off in Londinium at 8:00pm, but having to wend my way via Britain's terminally blocked arteries (M6 and M1) meant my perfectly laid plans were fucked and out of the window as the tailback from Hades finally spat me out in Clapham 2 hours late.


For the duration of my arduous journey - soothing soundtrack provided by Miles Davis - I was thinking: "I could just drop him an e-mail or a text... Why am I even doing this?" The answer arrived most eloquently in the slack-jawed, joyous incredulity on Irv's face as I stepped into the venue. Awesome! It was fantastic to see him again. Many, many emotional, manly hugs later and Irv plays the perfect host as he introduces me to his guests (the great, the good, the beautiful and the celebrated) variously as: "The first celebrity I worked with", "The poshest man I know", "The coolest man I know", "He's an intellectual" and "Watch out! He'll NLP ya!" as he pulled a dramatic Bruce Lee pose.


The last of these intros generated the response which forms the title of this blog. Joel Beckett (Lee from The Office, Jake in Eastenders, Stand-up comedian and voice over artiste without compare) asked if it meant I could get inside girls' knickers really quickly: his enquiry accompanied by some extraordinarily sexually graphic hand gestures. Erm...


In those tumultuous and rambunctious surroundings it was difficult to give an appropriate response. So I figured I'd do a quick intro.


Ready?


Ok...


Whatever you do, do not think about a quaint little cottage situated at the foot of a mountain, the immense, glistening white slopes stretching ever upwards to a cloudless azure sky. Snow enveloping the cottage, covering the windows and piling up against the ornate wooden door. A beam of sunlight tumbling into the white, frozen valley and illuminating it with a bitter, glittering fluorescence.

What happened as you read the above paragraph? Did you picture in your mind's eye the cottage, the mountain and the snow even though I advised you not to? If so that's because the only way to make sense of what you read or hear is by engaging a little with the experience yourself. Once you grasp that truth the rest is all fun and games because just by saying a few words in the right way, you can transport people to specific places and influence the way they think. Richard Bandler and John Grinder, the founders of NLP, integrated Noam Chomsky's concepts of language and hypnotic patterns used by Milton Erickson to identify powerful tools of influence and persuasion. Thus, NLP is essentially the study of communication and its effects.

The most high profile exponent of NLP (amongst all his other trickery) in the UK is probably Derren Brown and in his book Tricks of The Mind he details how he attained his qualification in this discipline by attending a seminar with 400 other people for 4 days. My experience in becoming a certified NLP Practitioner was totally different. I studied with only 3 other people for about a fortnight under the tutelage of a world renowned NLP authority, Rintu Basu, and I had to competently demonstrate hypnosis, fast phobia cures, swish patterns and the accessing of eye cues amongst other similarly freaky things before I could graduate.

I volunteer this information so that you know that I know what I'm talking about. And whilst I may be an avid student of social interaction and its consequences, you're sitting there, reading this blog and that means you're already aware that language affects perception.

And politicians know this.

They know that in inter-personal communication if you're able to control the level of abstraction, you control the communication itself. The 'hierarchy of ideas' is a model which allows us to move (or 'Chunk') up and down, through and between different levels of abstraction from vague and ambiguous to definite and specific, and is one which everyone from Winston Churchill to John F Kennedy to Barack Obama has exploited.

If we take 'sex toy' as an example. The phrase 'sex toy' is at a particular level of abstraction. If we then chunk down on 'sex toy' we move to a lower level of abstraction - something more concrete and specific. So if the subject of the communication was 'sex toy' we might ask 'What type of sex toy specifically?' and chunk down to 'Rabbit Vibrator'.

If we required further detail we could 'chunk down' one more level by asking something like 'What type of Rabbit Vibrator specifically?' And we might get a response of 'Ultimate Remote', 'Aquagasmic Double Pleasure' or 'Wet n Wild Waterproof'.

With each increasing level of specificity we are moving down through the hierarchy of ideas and down through levels of abstraction. And, of course the further down you go, the more specific you get and the more opportunity there is for contention. For example, I might, as my personal political campaign platform, say we need to look to build a better, more vibrant Britain. Very few would disagree with that. However, were I to more clearly delineate the component parts of my policy and state that we would work our way towards this Utopian vision of Britain by feeding bits of Dermot O'Leary to a grizzly bear spazzing out on amphetamines on prime-time television every Friday night, the less creative amongst you might disagree with what seems a radical strategy.

When Obama talked about 'Change' and 'Hope' and 'Yes, we can' these were all concepts abstract enough for everyone, the world over, to be seduced by and rally behind. The specificity and day by day revelation of the detail of his programme of 'change' is what has so disappointed us all. And we see a similar tactic employed by David Cameron and the Tories. This is from Our Dave's website:

"David's vision is of a country where people have more opportunity and power over their lives; a country where families are stronger and society is more responsible; a Britain which is safer and greener."

See? It's impossible to disagree with ANY of those statements. Keep it vague and you'll invite complicity. In this instance most now perceive Dave as the Prime Minister in waiting. For now he'll avoid debate on definitive budgetary and taxation plans, for fear he and his party come across as cold hearted, Vampiric entities.


Pity, then, Gordon Brown who, at the last Labour Party conference, felt compelled to outline specific policy details with timescales. And figures. And percentages. And projections. All in an effort to make us love him more and instead lost the support of both his party - who recently staged yet another (failed) coup against him - and The Sun. Personally, I think the latter's a very good thing indeed. New Labour's lasting legacy will be that they presided over a near pornographic widening of the gap between rich and poor whilst grinding their collective tongue ever deeper into Rupert Murdoch's sphincter of supreme, nefarious darkness. Seriously, why would you want to consort with pure evil like Mr Murdoch? A man whom, it's fairly obvious, spends his waking hours hacking the limbs off orphans.

Anyway, Gordon is in desperate need of some basic instruction on the use of language to persuade, influence and reshape perception. If you see him, put him in touch with Basil Creese Jr. He'll NLP ya!


Now, take your knickers off and bend over.

Con Anniversaire

Today is the first anniversary of Barack Obama's inauguration as the 44th president of the United States and the election returns yesterday in the U.S. Senate race in Massachusetts, soaring budget deficits, the loss of 4.2 million jobs in the U.S. economy in 2009, an unemployment rate of 10 percent, unmanned drones killing civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Afghan troop escalations, inertia as a response to Israel's obduracy towards the notion of self-determination for the Palestinian people, bank bailouts redirecting funds from the worst off and the failure to close Guantanamo Bay... ALL of these mean that the romance has definitely soured.


I'm being honest here, I saw this coming, and not just because I remember the intoxicating days of 1997 when we had a new, young, dynamic, thrusting, impossibly moist and sexy Prime Minister in Tony Blair who, likewise, talked eloquently about effecting 'Change' (By the way, does anybody remember how that turned out? Anybody? Ah yes, it's coming back to me now... Blair turned out to be yet another lying, megalomaniacal, war criminal politician playing fast and loose with government at the expense of the nation's constituents). No, I knew it'd go tits up, because on Obama's inauguration day I got a text from an ex-girlfriend and I was able to parallel my rejoined relationship with her to his travails as president.


Let's call her 'Yachi'. She lives in Australia and I haven't seen her in well over a decade. We reconnected via Facebook and I was genuinely pleased that we were back in touch. I'd like to make it clear here that there was none of that 'flame still flickers' nonsense going on. We were very comfortable with where we were in life. Besides, I continue to transmogrify, day-by-day, like a caterpillar into a thoroughly breathtaking, and utterly pulchritudinous butterfly; whilst the passage of time has, regrettably, dragged Yachi down a very badly lit alley and kicked her face in. Repeatedly.


So inauguration day and she's all "Isn't this amazing?", "Never thought I'd see the day," and so on, and so forth and it IS amazing because she's on the other side of the world and we're in touch and she's dead funny. She'd let me know how things were with her daughter and her husband and her business and I'd let her know what was up with me and when she laughed I was transported back to a time when we were laughing together. It felt lovely and much seemed promised both for a new political dawn and a lovely mature friendship.


You know what's coming, don't you?


One day, a few months later, I got a text from Yachi telling me that she'd just been back through the history of my Facebook status updates (read them, if you have a spare weekend, they're quite the thing) and that she found me thoroughly despicable - a self-obsessed fop who plainly has emotional issues. She offered both a damning litany: detailing my imperfections and deficiencies and her hippy-ish nonsense/self-help prescription as a cure for what obviously ails me.


"What fresh lunacy is this?" I bellowed in a voice not unlike Brian Blessed. Internally, of course. I'm not totally unhinged. Who did she think she was?


Now, I'm a placid individual, but this remote commentary upon my very being agitated me severely. I mean, she's probably right. You think those things about almost everyone you encounter on a daily basis, but you don't actually tell them, do you? What kind of absurd, Kafkaesque world would that be? Can you imagine sashaying stylishly up to the window at McDonald's and the spotty faced assistant asking if you'd like some self-esteem with your fries? Ridiculous. I don't need 'friends' pointing out my shortcomings with such breathtaking frankness, that's what one's family's for. Besides what can one seriously glean from 'wall' postings filled as they are with almost exclusive reference to what's on TV, getting drunk and musings upon obscure, non-reproductive acts of coition? That would, essentially, cast every last one of us as couch-bound, alcoholic, sex addicts. Which is utter bollocks. Or not.


Anyway. What a crazy woman. Which, strangely, was precisely my opinion of her all those years ago.


Needless to say I de-friended Yachi in a hurry. I can do without someone that judgemental in my life, superpoking me with suggestions as to what underpins my escapist behaviour. The emotional process I went through in this episode - a crude bastardisation of the 5 step grieving process - mirrors almost exactly my response to Barack Obama's presidency: shock, denial, anger, disillusionment and, finally, acceptance.


A lot can change in just a year - disappointment upon disappointment heaped high can change a person and drive a stake squarely through the perfected image of those upon whom we have bestowed our deepest affection. That'll teach me to get my hopes up.


What in the name of Lord Brett Sinclair was I thinking?

Wanna See Something Scary?

Clive Barker is one of my favourite writers. His stories of lost, haunted souls searching for salvation and redemption, but instead finding themselves in a dark cellar having their skin untimely ripped from their bones by inter-dimesional entities, what's left of their screaming bloody form veiled in barbed wire, whilst nails are driven into their skulls are always entertaining. He paints vivid pictures in a prose so deliciously sensual it somehow renders his grotesquerie both intoxicating and alluring.

I've even got a couple of books inscribed by him. The first is Hellbound Heart - which became the Hellraiser movie - in which he wrote "I wish you my darkest nightmares." The second is Imajica in which, at my mischievous prompting, he giggled like a school girl as he wrote "Get down with your bad self!"

There are those who feel he's - and I'm using the vernacular here - 'fallen off' since he got married (and certainly Gallilee reads like a meandering 582 page love letter to his new Black husband) validating the assertion that those in love disappoint us as they too closely resemble conquerors who have laid their heads to rest. I've got my fingers crossed that his long-awaited Scarlet Gospels novel featuring his two best-loved characters - Pinhead and Harry D'Amour - is a return to diabolical form.

So, my addiction to the alternative means I dig Clive Barker and the scary stuff he writes - like you didn't see that coming. However, as massive a fan as I am his twisted imaginings are as an episode of Dora The Explorer in comparison to The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein. Her previous works (No Logo and Fences and Windows) have concentrated their beam on the atramentous, sinister nature of Multi-National Corporations highlighting their rapaciousness. No Logo in particular was a significant jump off point for me: what's the truth behind a brand?

Does IBM creating the first ever barcode so that the Nazis could track inmates in their concentration camps bother you? Would you ever forego Hugo Boss accoutrements and vestments because he was the clothing designer of choice for the Third Reich? How about Caterpillar constructing and supplying specially armoured bulldozers for the Israeli Defence Forces, the better to destroy homes in Palestine? For my part, being teetotal may make the following an irrelevance, but if I ever slummed it with the other plebs and drank a beer it wouldn't be Heineken since their MD sent a memo to the makers of a TV programme they sponsored complaining that there was far "too high a proportion of negroes in the audience." Or Coors, whose owner infamously told a group of minority business leaders that the best thing slave traders did was “to drag your ancestors here in chains.”

The basic premise of The Shock Doctrine is the exploration of what is called 'Disaster Capitalism'. A philosophy which sprang fully formed from the loins of Milton Friedman - the Anti-Chomsky and the fella who gave Thatcher her best ideas. Essentially if you get in quickly enough after a natural disaster you have access to the sacred Tabula Rasa of Empire, an opportunity to change the very social fabric of a nation: bending the will of the people and their resources to private enterprise and profit. Acts of God or Acts of War As Decreed by God ((tm) Tony Blair) offer opportunities not just to rebuild, but to create new democratic and market-oriented client states. The 'reconstruction process' looks to sell off the government-owned businesses propping up idealistic and ineffective economies which couldn't possibly work in the either the free-market or the real world.

From Iraq to Afghanistan and then to Aceh, the cast of characters in this shadowy endeavour are always the same: international financial institutions, consulting firms, engineering companies, NGOs, government and UN aid agencies swarming like locusts looking to pick clean the broken bones of a damaged nation.

Fuck Candyman. These are the unearthly seeds of nightmares right here. Whilst Clive Barker creates chillingly fantastical worlds The Shock Doctrine meticulously picks through the entrails of our bleak reality. It is a true work of horror which bespeaks so eloquently of the evil that men do that I took an age to make it to the end of the book. It was a harrowing experience. I'd finish a chapter, rivulets of sweat kissing my furrowed brow, anxiety and panic beating an angry tattoo in my solar plexus. I would attempt to abandon the book in a darkened corner of my study and it would glint mockingly at me from the murk and gloom emitting a sweet siren song which was so hard to resist... I'm glad I made it to the end eventually, because it opened my eyes to the 'play book' now being employed in Haiti.

Surfing like a mofo I recently discovered the website of an influential American Conservative Policy think tank The Foundry whose mission is to "formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defence."

As I write this their latest communication reads: "The world needs American leadership. The alternative to an America willing and able to lead is not a paradise of peace through engagement. It is a world where the undemocratic, the unsatisfied, and the illiberal powers of the world advance at the expense of American ideals, American interests." I don't know about you, but reading that makes me want to undergo a radical spinal procedure which would allow me to gnaw at the backs of my knees for comfort.

Last Wednesday and in the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti The Foundry reverted to type ignoring the human tragedy instead suggesting the catastrophe offers a chance to advance the Empire followed by what I swore was pure comedy gold when they advocated Bill Clinton and George W. Bush as frontmen alongside Barack Obama in a public diplomacy effort to help improve the perception of America. I actually laughed out loud in a manner not unlike like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day when Andie McDowell's character reveals she studied 19th Century French poetry in college.

But there it is, boys and girls. Announced today. George W. Bush and Bill Clinton flanking the current President of the United States of America for a photo opportunity signalling the march of the Venture Capitalists. It's like the overthrow of President Aristide, the diminution of Haiti to a sweatshop or the debacle in New Orleans never happened. The equivalent of employing your rapist as your Trauma Counsellor.

There's a bit right at the end of the movie Hellraiser when the agents of Hell return for an escaped prisoner. They suspend him from an elaborate series of chains, hooks and razors and tear him apart in a red plume of blood, flesh and sinew to exact retribution. Just before the grisly denouement the protagonist - a mask made from his dead Brother's skin slipping from his now mangled face - turns to the camera, licks his lips and intones in a dreamy rapture "Jesus wept." Not bad Mr Barker, not bad... But check out Obama, Clinton and Dubya posing together like some kind of freaky Busted reunion. Now that's scary.

Recognising Progress

I was recently asked to be a keynote speaker at an event discussing the Black contribution to History and its importance in a British context. Whilst I enjoyed the experience of regaling all with my mellifluous tones and it was plainly a thrill to have the Mayor as my warm-up act, the full-stop to my speech arrived just before Christmas in the form of Trinidad-born Ronald Samm: the first black tenor in the UK to sing the role of Othello in Birmingham Opera Company's production of the Verdi opera. In real terms this may not seem to represent much of an achievement at the end of the first decade of the twenty first century: the lead role in an opera taken by a Black man rather than a White man in blackface, but universally positive reviews for his performance assume a poignant resonance with far-right parties across Europe growing in popularity and 22% of those polled after Nick Griffin's disastrous Question Time appearance saying they would consider voting for his party. And late one recent evening, availing myself of the Knutsford M6 motorway services, I was confronted with a 'smiley watchover voodoo doll' which, as you can see, is essentially a cruder (!) version of a golliwog. I mean, it's even wearing a loin cloth and holding a spear for fuck's sake!

All of which begs us to posit this most vital of questions: what does it mean to be British? Can it be right that my parents' endeavours on behalf of this country (my Father was stationed in Germany with the R.A.F. and my Mother dedicated decades to the welfare of others in her work for the N.H.S.) become a mere sidebar to the colour of their skin?

Parliamentary debate on race and immigration has deliberately conflated these two separate concepts and now exists within an extremely narrow framework (so narrow, in fact, that here in the North West the BNP were able to pointedly quote Gordon Brown's "British jobs for British workers" epithet on their campaign billboards entirely without irony), whilst the system of filters in the media ensure that no other perspective is offered for debate. For example, the real causes of immigration - adverse conditions in countries of origin, global inequality, war (the UK sells arms to many of the countries topping the UK list of asylum applicants, despite the fact that military conflict remains a root cause of refugee flight), injustice and human rights abuses - and their connectedness to the impact upon us as a nation are ignored. The dominant mainstream discourses hint at immigrants as a dangerous 'other' in relation to Britain’s 'law abiding majority' whilst reiterating fears and reinforcing prejudices, thus securing a negative image of immigrants entirely disproportionate to their statistically insignificant impact upon society. Debates around themes such as belonging and nationality, ethnicity and xenophobia specifically target immigrants and refugees reinforcing the idea that the new societal danger should be associated with a newly arrived section of the population.

And so to 2010 which represents the sixty second anniversary of the Windrush arrival, and it is in an unfortunate climate similar to that in which my forbears alighted upon these shores that Philip Davies Conservative MP for Shipley recently enquired: “Is it offensive to black up or not, particularly if you are impersonating a black person?" and in a recent radio interview with George Galloway suggested that what one needs to consider with 'blacking up' is whether or not any offence is intended. He also asserted that Political Correctness is a recipe for disaster with zealots dictating what we can and cannot say. Somehow, he extrapolates that not 'blacking up' plays into the BNP's hands. Thankfully the nation has moved on from curling up on the sofa to watch The Black and White Minstrel Show and Love Thy Neighbour. And as we think back to those times of racial insults bandied about as mere banter, aren't we glad? He also suggests bald people and those with red hair suffer the same level of discrimination as black and minority people and asks, disingenuously: "Why it is so offensive to black up your face, as I have never understood this." Well, Phil, let me explain:

History forms the architecture of the present and ever since the European Age of Exploration, when white people first encountered and entered into sustained relations with those of a darker complexion, 'people of colour' have been the very special object of the white man's deepest - and perhaps primordial - fears and fantasies; they were seldom conceived as fully human, or culturally and intellectually equal. Blackface minstrelsy created in the 19th century was specifically designed as a sneering lampoon which revelled in asserting that Black people were inferior. A contemptuous shorthand for racist images and ideas which played an influential role in globally propagating, communicating and sustaining abhorrent stereotypes which still hold fast today. Enoch Powell and London Mayor Boris Johnson referencing 'Picaninnies' and 'Watermelon smiles', 34 years apart, quote directly from this 2 century old canon.

But it's plainly not just Mr Davies who needs enlightening. In a move as baffling as it was pernicious the October issue of French Vogue featured a 13 page spread dedicated to Dutch Model Lara Stone in blackface. Australia, a continent with a despicable history of racism and, according to Professor Colin Tatz, guilty of genocide on at least two counts, saw Harry Connick Jr appear on the Hey Hey It's Saturday television show where he was forced to endure a blackface 'tribute' to Michael Jackson. Harry, to his eternal credit, expressed his disgust. The host, performers and other panel members insisted it was harmless and certainly the all-white audience were grinning and clapping along and booed quite loudly when the routine was cut short.

Whether it's the Mexican government sanctioning a series of mocking minstrelsy styled stamps, Formula One fans in Spain jeering Lewis Hamilton whilst in blackface, Croatian football fans aiming monkey chants at black footballers or Oxford University Rugby students blacking up for a 'Safari Bop'; they are all of them at pains to justify their behaviour by saying they are not racist, it's just a bit of fun and when confronted by a negative reaction they go all Heath Ledger as The Joker and ask: "Why so serious?". Well, perhaps it's because the intent is always a lampooning mimicry designed to shock. There are those who'll question the veracity of the following statement, but as an adult I have a concern for impact: I take responsibility for my actions and if I'm insensitive enough to say or do something which hurts someone's feelings I apologise. That's what adults do. It's not a political action. It's just good manners.

It remains to be seen whether an aftershock from the cultural and political seismic shift represented by Obama's victory across the Atlantic ultimately reaches Britain where parliament has a mere 15 black and ethnic minority MPs out of a total of 646 (it needs at least 58 to reflect the demographic profile of the country). For now though what is thrown into sharp relief is the notion that Western Europe is intrinsically more tolerant than the United States. Despite a purported embrace of diversity and social justice, Europe remains very far from the harmonious ideal. Black and minority individuals in Europe are allowed to help shape fields such as sports, arts and culture, but are seldom found in the upper echelon of politics and policy-making. By contrast the United States, which often, rightly, has to bear quite pointed criticism on the subject of racism, is no stranger to successful, high-profile Black and minority politicians. The dramatic social change which took place in their Civil Rights era happened across the whole of the country at the same time and allowed an acceptance of minorities in elected office and positions of authority. Whereas the histories of Germany, France, Britain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy and Spain are not connected to one another in the same way nor have they experienced the same types of change at the same time. Each European country has had a very different history, particularly when it comes to colonialism and their quest for Empire, but what they have in common is a deep-seated belief in the inherent superiority of Western European culture.

It looks as though, for the next few years at least, Black and minority people of Britain will have to live our political ambitions vicariously through Barack Obama. In the meantime we should celebrate the fact that Ronald Samm has managed to manfully bury the emblems and motifs of racism and, in this arena, has rendered the point of contention one of ability not race. A mere trifle perhaps on prima facie evidence and, as discussed previously, restricted to a domain in which, traditionally, we're allowed to play, but this has a much wider cultural significance. Never again will it be the default position that the lead role in this particular opera will go to a white person wearing blackface, and when stacked up against the calculated cynicism of Philip Davies MP and dodgy soft toy manufacturers, that is real progress.