Shittest Songs of the Summer: An UNCUNT Guide

By UNCUNT staff

To mark the 2013 UK heatwave, Shortlist magazine asked its readers to vote for their song of the summer: Daft Punk's 'Get Lucky' or Robin Thicke's 'Blurred Lines'. Those were the only two options. It was like a two party, first past the post balloting system.

For those among us who'd rather slice off their own foreskins and squeeze lemon juice into their urethras than ever listen to those two songs again, Shortlist gave its rundown of 20 other "songs of the summer" from the years 1993-2013. Some of them were unforgivably shit.

2012, for example, we were told was the "summer of Psy." The chubby Korean's jarring, clumsy, piss take of a song 'Gangnam Style' was "a cultural phenomenon," according to Shortlist. Let me just mark that down in my world history encyclopedia... under B for bullshit.

2011 was a Calvin Harris "bonafide summer anthem" called 'Feel So Close'. Anyone remember that? Or were you too busy squeezing lemon into the sliced open slit in your penis? Yeah, thought so.

Going further back in time to a year when music reached its lowest ebb in the course of human history, 1999, the song of that summer was Ricky Martin's 'Livin' La Vida Loca'. Now, I don't know what you were doing in '99, but 'Livin La Vida Loca' will always remind me of a long, tedious summer working at a telecommunications equipment depot in Harlow in Essex. The shittest town in Britain. It was the same year there was a total eclipse of the sun. This once-in-a-lifetime astronomical phenomenon was not visible in Harlow because it was cloudy that day. At lunchtime I'd get in my colleague's VW Golf and we'd drive down the dual carriageway, through the series of 15-20 roundabouts that comprise Harlow to a drive-thru McDonalds (the best restaurant in Harlow). Every time we turned the car radio on Ricky Martin was blaring out at us. One day, enraged, I grabbed the steering wheel and yanked it hard, sending the car careering through the central reservation and into the oncoming traffic on the other side. It was not a vintage summer for me.

In 1997 I worked at the UCI Cinema (now an Odeon) at Lea Valley, Edmonton. 12 hour shifts. Men In Black was the blockbuster film that summer. I must have heard the title track 250 times. In the foyer, in the auditoriums, in the toilets, in the ticket booth, in the car park, in the kiddies creche even out the back by the fucking garbage compactors. It was inescapable. I tried walking around with earphones to drown it out but my manager told me to take them out. The cunt. Even now, 16 years later, hearing that song makes me want to stab someone in the face. 

I say "someone", what I mean is Will Smith.

It shouldn't be hard to write a decent summer song. Gershwin's Summertime from Porgy and Bess, Eddie Cochran's Summertime Blues, jesus even Will Smith aka the Fresh Prince and Jazzy Jeff's Summertime for fuck's sake! Yet time and again some cunt takes it upon themselves to produce a real piece of shit.

Here's UNCUNT's selection of songs that have ruined summers in years gone by:

Mungo Jerry - In The Summertime

1970 - 7 weeks at Number 1

This mindless excreta is one of the most succesful records of all time, having sold over 30 million copies. Its lyrics are an incitement to commit rape as well as drink driving. Just four lines into the song and already we're into a depraved image of a sloshed hippy cruising the streets in search of disenfranchised female victims: "when the weather's right you got women you got women on your mind. Have a drink have a drive, go out and see what you can find. If her daddy's rich take her out for a meal, if her daddy's poor just do what you feel..." Charming. Really encapsulates the summers of the 1970s. A time before government advertising campaigns told us that rape and drink driving were not ok

Shit summer rating 4/5

Bombalurina - Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini
August 1990 - 3 weeks at Number 1
 

The first novelty hit of the 90s? Certainly the shittest. Everyone knows the chorus, sung by two vacuous blondes, whilst Timmy Mallett takes care of the verses and the occasional "Oh yeah!" Younger readers might think Mallett's presence in this song was an urban myth, but no, he's involved alright, arsing about in a hammock for most of the video. The lyrics seem to be about a pervert (probably Mallett) watching a woman on a beach who is literally too afraid to come out of the water. She would rather drown than have Mallett's leering eyes all over her, and I for one can't blame her.
Shit summer rating 5/5

Puff Daddy ft Faith Evans - I'll Be Missing You
May 1997 - 3 weeks at Number 1

The best thing about this video is Sean 'Puffy' Combs stacking it off his motorbike 12 seconds in. The cunt wasn't even wearing a helmet. RIP Biggie, you didn't deserve this.

Five + Queen - We Will Rock You
July 2000 - 1 week at Number 1
 

Hardly one of Queen's best songs, but when you take Freddie and John Deacon out of the mix and replace it with four (four?) cunts from Five it's never going to end well. Overly angsty delivery of the lyrics coupled with a bit of a rap takes things down hill very quickly. Yet the lowest point comes about two thirds of the way through when May rips into a trademark solo whilst the Five boys chant "Go! Go! Go!" Like some boozed-up Malia lads at a wet t-shirt competition.
Shit summer rating 4/5

Modjo - Lady (Hear Me Tonight)
September 2000 - 2 weeks at Number 1

If you've ever abused a Spanish shuttle bus driver taking you home from a nightclub in Tenerife where girls puked into pint glasses filled with Smirnoff Ice and lads wearing Ben Sherman shirts smashed each other's faces in while dry ice engulfed the dance floor, the chances are this was probably the soundtrack to that particularly bad summer. You'll never get that summer back.



Blazin' Squad - Crossroads
August 2002 - 1 week at Number 1
 

Strider, Melo D, Reepa, and MC Spike E, are just some of the cunts responsible for this one. Nobody actually knows how many people were in Blazin' Squad at any one time. Some of them didn't even know they were in it themselves, they just thought they were on a really good school trip. The video for this song isn't on YouTube, that's how shit it is. But the CD:UK live performance looks like a dancing Sports Direct catalogue at the worst school disco ever.
Shit summer rating 5/5

Crazy Frog - Axel F
June 2004 - 4 weeks at Number 1
 

At some point in time a cunt in the marketing department of a record label thought that this was a good idea. Get a cartoon frog to cover the theme from the Beverly Hills Cop franchise and sell it as a ringtone. This piece of shit was the 65th biggest selling single of the decade, the YouTube video has had 48 million views. It's the shittest song on this list and one of the shittest songs ever produced.
Shit summer rating 6/5

Rihanna feat. a rapper - Umbrella
May - August 2007 - 10 weeks at Number1
 

The shittest popular song in recent times. Maybe it took off because an umbrella is an essential summer item in the UK. It starts badly with the opening dirge by Beyonce’s husband, telling us he's in "anticipation of precipitation", like some sort of hip hop Michael Fish. The chorus is one of the most unimaginative refrains ever committed to record, with Rhi endlessly chanting "umbrella ella ella ella ella ella ella ella ella eh eh eh eh eh eh eh eh eh." I'm not sure if it really does go on that long, but thats how long it feels.
Shit summer rating 5/5
  

Queen and Paul Rodgers (another one bites the dust...)

By UNCUNT staff

The other night I was flicking through the SkyGo channels on my iPad, like some sort of cunt. I use my brother's login you see. Which is, like, the cheaper way of having Sky. I watch two minutes of Game of Thrones, in which somebody gets raped and another person gets murdered. "Great", I think "heart warming how everything popular these days features either rape or murder."

I flick to Sky Arts, which is actually a great channel (thanks Murdoch, you limp pricked soon to be divorced mega rich elderly Australian cunt). Queen and Paul Rodgers Live. Ohhhhhhhhh dear, I think. Oh oh oh oh dear. What a shame. 

I watch one song, which happens to be Another One Bites The Dust. A shit song at the best of times. It quickly becomes apparent that this Paul Rodgers cunt is, well, not quite as good a singer as Freddie Mercury is he? Mercury had a powerful operatic voice that retained its power in any range high or low. Rodgers, well... he's just making a cunt of himself. "This is shit" I think, and I flick back to Game of Thrones. Well, a bit of rape and murder never hurt anybody did it?

The next day I tell Kevin about the concert (we are both big fans of Queen. Yes, that's right. That's what I said homie. Got a fucking problem? Queen are good. End of story. Chris if you're reading this, fuck you.) Kevin, laughing, asks me if they played 'Alright Now' by Free. "No, that would have confused the crowd" I said. "Yeah I suppose so" Kevin replies, "they might think are we watching Free featuring Brian May and Roger Taylor?". "And John Deacon" I say. "No, John Deacon wants no part in it any more." "Ah yes, I remember thinking that doesn't look like John Deacon. Fair play to him. He was always my favourite member of Queen, and again he's justified my faith in him by refusing to take part in this absolute joke. Why would they do that? Why?? Why didn't they just get a hologram of Freddie like they did with Tupac? Of all the singers in the world to try to emulate, don't try to emulate Freddie. It's like having Nirvana featuring Serge from Kasabian."

We both laughed. Because it's funny. What I said was funny. Nirvana...Serge from Kasabian....hahahaha. It's funny.

Then we decide it would be funny to carry it on. And we came up with a list. A list of bands, with dead members replaced by unlikely artists. Which is also funny. You'll like it. It's funny.

1. Nirvana featuring Serge from Kasabian
2. Bob Marley and the Wailers featuring Sean Paul
3. The Beatles featuring John Power from Cast
4. The Jackson Five featuring the main one out of JLS
5. The Rolling Stones with the bloke out of Reef
6. The Jimi Hendrix Experience featuring Lenny Kravitz
7. Otis Redding featuring Richard Blackwood
8. Ike & Tina Turner featuring Omar
9. The Doors with Pete Doherty
10. Pink Floyd featuring the keyboardist from Keane
11. Tupac and Biggie with Ant and Dec (blacked up)
12. The Bee Gees featuring the Mitchell Brothers Ross Kemp and Steve McFadden
13. The Bee Gees featuring Martin and Gary Kemp from Spandau Ballet
14. Boyzone featuring Julian Clary
15. Amy Winehouse featuring Katy Parry
16. T-Rex featuring Gary Glitter
17. TLC featuring Heather out of M People
18. Led Zeppelin with the drummer out of Def Leppard (if he's still alive)
19. The Who featuring the rhythm section from The Twang
20. Janis Joplin featuring Tulisa

Operation Yewtree Investigations

By UNCUNT staff

"Rolf Harris?!?" people screamed when the Australian didgeridooist was arrested for being a potential nonce. "Yes, Rolf Harris...why are you surprised?" was my stock reply. "Oh but I loved Rolf Harris!" they said. As if that somehow made him less of a paedophile. "You loved a paedophile" I told them. And they laughed, because it was true.

The Yewtree purges, it seems, could be made more efficient by simply rounding up everybody who was alive during the 1970s and making them prove they're NOT a paedophile, as opposed to the other way round.

In the wake of the investigations, office workers around the land have begun 'who's next?' sweepstakes. That's not a reference to which member of The Who will be next by the way...

(Roger Daltrey)

But while all of this is 'fun' for those of us who weren't raped by famous people, I feel we should offer some help and assistance to the brave police officers heroically investigating. 

So with the help of some friends and a facebook thread we've come up with a list of potential paedophiles which I intend to submit to the police for investigation. JUST IN CASE.

This list is by no means exhaustive. There were probably many more. And before we get sued, we're not suggesting these people actually are paedophiles, we're just saying THEY MIGHT BE.

It's better to be safe than sorry. The accompanying letter will read:

"Dear Operation Yewtree,

Wow. Paedos eh? Fucking everywhere aren't they, the BASTARDS. My nan used to say she'd cut off their cocks if she could get her hands on them. They do offer chemical castration as an option now don't they? Fair play. I've always wondered...does that corrode the cock? Like if you poured acid on a cock and it withered away. That would sting like a cunt.

'String 'em up by their balls' my nan says. Fair play to her. But you can't can you? Human Rights etc. Anyway, before I get all 'deep' and shit, I'll cut to the chase. I've written you a list of potential paeds. This hasn't been scientifically thought through and there isn't any actual evidence.... yet. But have you ever thought of bringing in these people for questioning? If you haven't, please do. I think we will all sleep more soundly in our beds.

I don't want to whip up a storm of vigilantism. That's just wrong. But I want to feel ok within myself that I did all I could. I want to look back in years to come when people say 'what did you do when Operation Yewtree was happening?' and answer, proudly, 'I notified Operation Yewtree about Dicky Davies.'

...for example.

So, in no particular order:

Dicky Davies (if he's still alive)

Andrew Lloyd-Weber

Michael Barrymore (no? maybe the man's suffered enough. ok, leave it)

Adam Ant

Terry Venables

Noddy Holder

Keith Harris

Ben Elton

Louis Walsh (will try to sue, approach carefully)

The 'Sun' from the Vitalite advert

Pat Sharpe from Fun House

Craig from Big Brother series one

Nasty Nick from Big Brother series one (archetypal paed)

Bryan Robson, Mark Hughes, Viv Anderson, Ron Atkinson (in fact, question the entire Manchester United squad from the mid 1980s)

Cliff Richard (BLATANTLY)

Chesney Hawkes

Captain Haddock from Herge's Adventures of Tintin

Captain Bird's Eye (always had loads of kids on the boat)

Uncle Ben from Uncle Ben's Sweet and Sour Sauce (interesting how there hasn't been any black paedos yet)

Prince Phillip (BLATANTLY)

Nick Griffin

Piers Morgan

Robert Smith out of The Cure

Pete Townshend (again)

Bruce Foxton

Foxton's the estate agents

Fleet Foxes

'Dr Fox' (Neil Fox off Capital Radio - used to insist on being called 'doctor'. Prick)

Simon Mayo (god forbid)

Any member of any glam rock band

The guy that sits at the laptop in 'Pointless'

Roy Walker from Catchphrase

Mat Osman from Suede

The bass player in the Bluetones

Martin Rossiter from gene

Guigsy

Steve Craddock

The cellist from the Auteurs

Charlie Simpson from Busted and Fightstar

The lead guitarist from Soundgarden

Eddie Vedder

S Club Juniors tour manager

Neil Diamond

The Righteous Brothers

Glenn Hoddle

Marc Overmars

Sepp Blatter (cunt)

Jaap Stam

Emmanuel Petit

Roy Wegerle

Matthew le Tissier

Ruud Gullit

Ruud van Nistelrooy

Gazza 

Ian Rush

Prince Charles

Jesus (archetypal paed)

God (archetypal paed)

Father Christmas (archetypal paed)

Do let me know how the investigations are coming along. I appreciate it may be hard to reach God. Or indeed Father Christmas. But do try.

Yours

Josh and Chris from UNCUNT"

 

 

The Rain Room

By UNCUNT staff

For months London has been agog at a piece of conceptual art at the Barbican. A room in which you can look at rain and even get rained on.

Why??? etc...

Creator, Hannes Koch (yes, Koch) describes it as a "social experiment" while co-creator Florian Ortkrass (yes, krass) claims it is "very different to having an umbrella."

Let's consider this. It rains about 50% of the year in this country. Any given week, sometimes for weeks on end, it's shitting it down. Often we have to stay indoors in our houses, like tagged offenders, to avoid getting drenched. Why, pray, would one want to leave their house, travel to the concrete bunker of the Barbican, queue for half a day only to enter a room and get rained on. You could just stay home in your own room and not get rained on.

What next? An overcast gallery? A room of slate grey clouds. A windy room, where you can experience an artificially created bitterly cold gale?

With prosaic Englishness in mind, we set about thinking of other humdrum, run-of-the-mill, everyday, non-descript facts of modern urban life that we might turn into cuntish art exhibitions. Things that basically occur naturally that mugs might find excitingly artistic.

Here's our shortlist:

The Pavement Room
An exhibition of paving slabs with chewing gum on them. Visitors are invited to walk around the pavement looking at the different wadded and matted bits of discarded gum and think depressing thoughts.

The Crane Room
A room full of cranes towering over an urban construction site. When you go to one end of the room you see the cranes from a different angle.

The Roadworks Room
Just a room full of roadworks that you can't walk through and nothing's actually happening in.

The Pigeon Room
Flea infested pigeons pecking about a courtyard. You go near them and they startle and flutter about.

The Overflowing Bin Room
Visitors are given a small piece of paper to put into a bin thats almost full.

The Taxi Rank Room
Taxis lined up in a room pouring out petrol fumes polluting the entire room while cab drivers sit behind the wheel reading copies of The Sun and using the N word repeatedly. Visitors have to find the corner of the room least polluted and where the cabbies are least audible.

The Doctors Waiting Room Room
A room with only one free chair, surrounded by coughing old people and horrible old children's toys and sticky golfing magazines. You have to wait for your name to be called. But it never gets called.

The Dual Carriageway Room
Similar to the Taxi Rank Room but more visceral. Visitors stand in the central reservation of a four lane motorway while simulated cars zoom past. Occasionally cars break down and children are sick out of the window. Watch out for the sick, you might get sicked on!

The Sunday Afternoon Room
An ambitious installation in which hundreds of yorkshire puddings and slabs of roast beef have been set out on plates with gravy jugs close to them. The Antiques Roadshow is streamed continuously on a giant screen and performance artists fall asleep in armchairs.

The Massively Long Queue for an Installation Room Room
You stand in a simulated queue for an installation while performers piss into bottles, complain to friends on their mobile phones, eat McDonald's, discard the rubbish and slowly get hypothermia around you. You keep thinking you're
getting to the front of the queue but you're not. Because the queue is the actual event. You have to queue for up to 3 hours to get into the "queue". It's like Alton Towers used to be. But there's no rollercoasters at the end of the
queue. Ironically, when you leave the exhibit you get actually rained on. By the actual rain.

A Season In Purgatory - The worst good book review ever

On my summer holiday staying at an old house in the remote countryside I'm perusing the bookshelves when my eyes fall upon A Season In Purgatory by an American writer called Dominick Dunne. On the cover a quote by Nicholas Coleridge writing for the Daily Mail offers a bold endorsement: "I doubt anyone this year will write a more satisfying or beautifully observed novel". I check inside and note the book was published in 1993. This book, according to Coleridge, is more beautifully observed than Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks. It shits all over Sebastian Faulks. According to Coleridge.

Does the cover illustration perhaps contradict his claim, I wonder? A broken baseball bat, smeared in blood, propped up on the stairs of a porch. "Satisfying."? Surely some mistake here? But no. On the inside cover are more unbelievable quotes. "There isn't a single tranche of dialogue in this book that doesn't sound authentic." Not a single tranche, you say? Fucking hell. Tatler magazine reckons "people in the know will be reading A Season In Purgatory this summer."  The Daily Express simply states "a compelling read". Fair play, Daily Express. I believe you. Really I do.

This is going to be quite a holiday read, I think excitedly. Quickly leafing through to get an idea of whether the prose is my cup of tea the first passage I turn to is this: "he dropped to his knees. There in front of him on the ground was Winifred Utley. She was wearing the same pink dress she had on at the dance at the club, but it was pushed up on her so part of the skirt covered her face. Her panties were pulled down to her knees.  I reached out to touch her but her face and head were covered in blood."

Beautifully observed. Really fucking beautiful. Touching.

I turn back to page one. A quote read aloud in a courtroom has the defendant allegedly asking the victim on the night of her murder, "do you mind dancing with a man with an erection?" 

What a totally fucking authentic tranche of dialogue. I challenge anybody, ANYBODY, to suggest that tranche of dialogue isn't authentic.

The golden nuggets of written English just keep on coming. On page two, PAGE FUCKING TWO, we are told that the narrator is at the urinal when Constant (that's the main deviant's name...I'll come back to this later) was "standing there next to me when, suddenly, without speaking a word, he turned and aimed the strong steady stream of his urine in my direction, soaking my blazer and trousers."

A piss attack. On the second fucking page of this masterpiece. You might be thinking page two is too early for a man to be pissing on another man's suit. Well, fuck you. It's not too early. It's the  perfect point in the novel for that to happen.

Let me fill you in on the main plot so you don't think this book is just a urine soaked rape fest (it is that, but it's also so much more than that...) The narrator, Harrison Burns, begins the tale in 1972. Aged 17, he is best friends with a rich spoilt brat, Constant. This rich brat waits in the woods after a dance and batters a 15 year old girl to death with a baseball bat after attempting to rape her but failing to establish or maintain an erection. We later find out that both he and his father have dick problems which fuels their loathing of women and causes them to repeatedly make attempts at rape. Burns is bribed by the rich kid's father to help cover up the murder which he does for years before finally buckling to guilt and testifying against his former friend at a huge high profile court case. At which Constant is acquitted. 

Whoops I just ruined the whole book. But it really doesn't matter. You're never going to read it. 

Woah , woah, woah I hear you say. That's all a bit nonchalantly reeled off... There's some heavy shit in their, man. Well, yeah. The author is a master of nonchalance. Take the scene where the rich kid's dad is empathising with his son's dick problems…

 "'well, as we know, there's no anger like the anger of a soft dick', said Gerald. Gerald's enthusiasm for his favorite son never wavered". Soft dick? Anger? Just a second…. being abused as a child. Having a loved one killed in a war. Being born deaf and blind. Being autistic. Being born in the poverty of a Mumbai slum. Being black in the Deep South in the 1930s. THESE things are probably worthy of anger. A soft dick? Take some fucking Viagra. Surely?

"Pa, you're not taking this seriously enough"' the tranche of dialogue continues... "'I admire a man with a healthy appetite for pussy', Gerald said. 'I'm not sure how healthy his appetite is Pa, we might just have a sicko on our hands here.' Well, duh. The cunt's bludgeoned to death a 15year old girl with a fucking rounders bat. "'Constant's no sicko', said Gerald firmly, " let me talk to him." 

And, I don't know about you, but I find that passage both authentic AND beautifully observed. Just like Nicholas Coleridge of the Daily Mail.

Did I mention that the villain's name is Constant? Bit of a weird name right? A word usually used as an adverb or an adjective. Not a name. But it's just one of many, many stupid fucking names in this beautifully observed book. Here's a shortlist of the best ones...

Captain Quish ('chief Quish' for short)

Piggy French (the clue's in the name)

Bridey Nora (the clue's in the name)

Esme Bland (the clue's in the name)

Eloise Brazen (the clue's in the name)

Fruity Suarez (racist?) 

Puff Rooney (I shit you not)

Rupert Du Pithon (get the fuck outta here! No, honestly...)

Cleanie Cleanie (a household cleaning maid, go figure)

Fatty Malloy (is he fat? Yep, he's fucking fat alright)

Weegie Somerset (sounds like a ghost story set at a traffic lights in Yeovil)

Johnny Fuselli (a bit like the pasta)

I am not making these names up. The author made these names up. To be fair to him, there is currently a member of the Great Britain equestrian team called Piggy French. Coincidence or unbelievable artistic foresight? I think you'll find it's the latter. The man's a fucking visionary.

The book unfolds dramatically into a hornet's nest of debauchery and, basically, evil. But there's still time for a legitimate sex scene along the way. At one point a woman named Kitt drops to her knees in the living room of her elderly mother's house and takes Harrison's penis in her mouth. (Not my words). Her sister walks in and sees them. Disgusted she says "cover your breasts Kitt, how could you stoop so low?" 

Er...how else is she gonna suck his dick? Right? 

But now is not the time or place for semantics. It's an incredibly authentic tranche of dialogue. All the tranches of dialogue in this book are really fucking authentic. 

A beautifully observed scene in which Harrison, the hero, is pulled underwater by a man in a wetsuit is rounded off with our hero smashing his heel into the assailant's nose, breaking it and "clouding the water with blood". The action takes place at a location called Shinnecock Bay. Lovely stuff.

As well as making light of disabilities ("if you weren’t a cripple I'd kick the shit out of you Jerry") not to mention HIV and AIDS in a couple of beautifully observed bits of dialogue, the book also deals with other heavyweight issues: Rape, murder, high school expulsion, theft, lies, adultery, bribery, more rape, sexual assaults on minors, more rape. Lots and lots of rape. This book is like Jilly Cooper's 'Riders' but without the riding and with lots of raping. He should have called it 'Rapers'. The publishing house might have objected to that I suppose.

If this novel were satirising traditionally hostile literary depictions of the vulgar, amoral American super-rich it might have worked, if only as a mildly amusing trite comic novella. But it isn't. It's serious and allegedly based on a true life case involving one of the younger members of the Kennedy family. The problem is it's written by a man who just might have got an erection while writing it, for an audience of readers who just might get an erection while reading it.

The final line is beautifully observed. The police finally discover the baseball bat murder weapon hidden in a plastic bag in a lake in Conneticut where Johnny Fuselli assured Burns it would be. Fuselli, now dead, is emotionally eulogised by the narrator. "Salvation at last. Purgatory behind him, I know now that Johnny Fuselli has ascended into the Kingdom of Heaven." 

And if that's not beautifully observed then, Jesus Christ, I don't know what is.

Eurovision Song Cuntest

Sitting on the tube yesterday I looked up at one of those Poems On The Underground. You know those things you imagine to be written by GCSE students or prisoners in the prison library. Turns out they're not. They're by actual poets. This poem was called 'Baku At Night'. "Hmm, I know where Baku is," I thought to myself "it's in Cameroon." It's not in Cameroon, that's the Baka rainforest people I was thinking of, so I'm the cunt there. Baku is in Azerbaijan. It's the city hosting this year's Eurovision Song Cuntest. Nobody quite knows how. Their 2011 winning entry was so catastrophically cuntish I thought I was having an emotional breakdown while watching it. I wasn't, it was just really, really cuntish. (I love how the singer says "thank you Europe" at the end. As if Europe was one single entity rather than a fragmented, multilingual, fiscally bereft collection of vastly diverse nations forced to abandon their old monetary currencies and adopt one single, slightly shitter, currency.)
  
If pop music wants to achieve a sustainable future, both culturally and economically, it should adopt Eurovision as its guiding vision. If Europe is to forge itself into the single EU state many progressive politicians feel is inevitable, then godawful pop is undeniably the key. Every year without fail this competition unites Europeans from Malmo to Munich in a smiling, flag waving frenzy of poorly produced europop bilge. 

"What?!?" You might ask. "What's happening here with this cunt?" you scream. "How is this good for anybody in the EU?" And, I'll freely admit, I honestly do not know... But it's happened, just like the collapse of the Euro, so deal with it. Yeah?

Eurovision is so epically shit it comes full circle and ends up being a work of unrepentant brilliantness. How it achieves this is largely due to the fact that most of the people performing the 'music' are cunts who would skin their own pet kittens alive to achieve any semblance of fame. This level of shamelessness makes for intense viewing. Hilarious, intense, ridiculously stupid viewing. Which is how pop music must be if it is to survive.

Look at these silly cunts Moldova, in the 2011 contest. Watching this with my mother she remarked that they were rather good. After I'd stopped choking on my Twiglets and dried my eyes I realised she had a point. What we were seeing was, essentially, a bad acid trip in which easy listening met shouty rap punk. In pointy hats. On a unicycle. With a trumpet. In broken English. It's like walking into a circus-themed gay bar in a scene from a Ken Russell film in the 1970s. It is so bad it is, in fact, good. That's the secret of Eurovision. It's so cuntish it essentially uncunts itself. Its disarming cuntishness peels away the facade of anything of any commendable quality and because of this we empathise with the poor fuckers on stage, making complete and utter cunts of themselves. This bare faced cuntishness reveals, perhaps unintentionally, a softer, humorous side underneath.

 

Paul Lester of the Guardian compared the Moldovans to Devo.  Fair play to him. I don't want to get into a debate here about whether or not Devo were cunts. So let's just, for the sake of efficiency, say that they were. 

(Sorry Devo, no offence. I'm sure you'd be the first to admit your career was generally based on arsing around.)

Enough about Devo. Forget I even mentioned them... 

Eurovision isn't a time to discuss artistic influences (there aren't any), it's a time for celebration. A time to freely and openly post xenophobic abuse on social media forums, to text your mates "look at these Icelandic cunts...lol :)", and to wonder what language the Bosnian entry is being sung in then realise it's in English.

Why are all the songs sung in English? The homegrown stars of Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Sweden et al don't sing in English when aiming for their national pop charts. So why here? Do they think the judges are such cunts they'll mark them down for singing in their own native tongues? 

As I write this the BBC News channel informs me Jedward have made it through to the final for the second year in a row (it never used to be a tournament when I was a kid by the way, that's a new cuntish twist... semi finals? What ever next, penalty shoot outs, using Sir Cliff Richard's head as the ball and Cheryl Baker's legs as the goalpost? Actually, that might work...) 

I actually thought Jedward were going to win it last year. And that's not something you're going to hear me say too often. I thought it had the right blend of vacuous minimalism, overt cuntishness and ludicrous haircuts to push it over the line. In the end all that got pushed was Jedward's own thumbs into each other's twin puckered anuses.

This year Jedward have turned up the Cunt-o-meter to absolute max. But, remember the rules of Eurovision - whenever a song is so utterly cack that you're forced, subconciously to exclaim "this has got no chance of winning in a million cunting years" - that's when you should get a bet on it to win. Seriously though, have you ever heard a worse song than this? Ever?

Wait, scrap what I just said about Jedward winning.There's worse. MUCH worse. Now, I'm not sure these Russian grannies could accurately be described as GILFs but... wait a moment... could they? Wait, maybe they... yes, yes they are! Brilliant. Absolutely fucking brilliant. Party for everybody? There's a party in my fucking pants my darlings and you're ALL invited. Genius. Fuck you Englebert, you might as well go home now. For you Mr Humperdinck, ze Euroz are over...

Cunt Tourism: A Day Out In London Fields

London Fields is lovely this time of year. One drawback though. It's absolutely teeming with cunts.

Armed with my camera, a notepad and a Thermos of minestrone soup I board the train heading east. I've planned a day of cunt tourism. Or cunt anthropology if you prefer. My reasoning is this: unless one gets amongst the cunts, tries to experience a day in their lives, observes them, studies them and perhaps even talks to them then one cannot fully understand what it means to truly be a cunt.

Inwardly I make a mental note: this day trip better be worth it, there were many better things I could've done today - stayed in bed hungover watching the lunchtime kick off, clipped my toenails, or simply masturbated all day. Instead I've dedicated myself to academic fieldwork. These cunts better appreciate my efforts.

The train pulls through the backs of terraced houses, occasionally crossing bridges with views of bleak litter-strewn streets. Rudeboys and rudegirls get on and off. Stamford Hill, Stoke Newington, Rectory Road, Hackney Downs, London Fields. No ticket inspectors, no barriers. Free journey. Fuck you National Express East Anglia.

I walk onto Mare Street. Not quite as fucked up as it was when I was a kid - when Hackney was a no go area - but still fairly fucked up. An Irish drunk and a stoned rastafarian discuss horse racing outside a betting office. I'm not having a good time yet.

I pass The Dolphin - great jukebox in there featuring Del Amitri's 'The Last To Know'. I pass The London Fields pub which the landlord has, perhaps unwisely, decided to decorate like a cross between a public library and a smack-ridden brothel. Turning the corner I see the large expanse of grass that Martin Amis once wrote about.... he's a bit of a cunt isn't he, Martin Amis?

It all looks quite pleasant. Quaint, Victorian, tranquil, well kept.

Then I see a cunt walking towards me...

At first I freeze, gripped by panic. How will I walk past this dick without chinning the cunt?

The cunt looks at me. Something deep inside me, something primal emits the words: "Don't look at me!!"

The cunt slinks away, possibly scared. I watch him walk away. Then another walks by, within metres of me. I recoil, fighting the urge to flee. He's wearing the season's Cunt outift of choice. Big sneakers, shorts just above the knee, a checked shirt worn under a chunky knit sweater with a dog's face on it, wide-peaked baseball cap (like this cunt has ever watched baseball) and thick-rimmed glasses. In his right ear, one of those big wooden circular things that cunts jam into their ear piercings, contorting the earlobe.

I feel afraid. A stranger in a foreign land. As Sting once said, I'm an alien, I'm a legal alien...

....he's a bit of a cunt isn't he, Sting?

Now I know how Conrad's Charles Marlow felt in The Heart Of Darkness. Or how Columbus felt upon first sighting an Amazonian native. This is The Heart Of Cuntness. I shiver.

Then something makes me get a grip of myself. I'm here to explore. This is a holiday. There's no point feeling afraid or alienated. They're not savages. They're just cunts. I have to try to engage with them.

"Excuse me" I call to a freak. "Yes you with the skin tight jeans....I'm not familiar with this place, I wonder if you'd be so kind as to show me around."

The cunt, whose name is Henry, turns out to be quite affable. He talks about The Old Blue Last and a mix tape he's putting together for VICE magazine. I tell him to shut the fuck up. He doesn't seem to mind.

We walk across the grass to where some of his "friends" are sitting. I say "friends", really they're just some divs he met in The Dove, pissed out of his mind and high on ketamine three weeks ago. Henry's been hanging out with them ever since.

I look at the two girls and a guy sitting on a bench smoking thin cigarettes.

"You know these people?" I ask him, horrified.
"Yeah man, these are my mates and stuff."
"But that girl's wearing a bra as a top. And this one's got a pair of ripped stockings on with a suspender belt and corset."
"Yeah..."
"Are you sure they're not prostitutes?" I say
"No man that's like, they're look."
"They've got undercut hairstyles," I continue "that wasn't even a good look for Mike Patton in 1991"

Henry shrugs. I feel a moment of clarity and realisation dawning upon his rich, upper class, Hampstead toff brain. He looks at me, then looks back at his "friends". He utters something quiet, almost inaudible.

"You'll have to speak a bit louder" I say. I take out my notebook. Whatever he's got to say could be interesting.

"Am I.....am I.......am I a cunt?" Henry asks, looking down at his red braces and pointy brogues, fingering his handlebar moustache.

"Yes, Henry" I say "I'm afraid you are."

He bursts into tears.

I take a few photos of his "friends" and their associates (for the purposes of visual documentation), then inform them that they should a) put some clothes on if they want to avoid a sexual molestation and b) text their mums to come and take them home.

Take me away from these people Henry" I demand. "And stop blubbering, you'll be ok now, you've done the hard part. You're no longer in denial. Oh and text your mum. I'm sure she'll be pleased to hear from you."

In The Cat and Mutton I buy Henry a pint of mahogany-filtered pomegranate cider and peruse the menu:

- Fillet of Hedghog with a jus of Apricots -
- Confit of Magpie in a Bovril sauce -
- Deep fried Seahorses on a bed of Tulips -

For Dessert I order Henry an anchovy muffin in balsamic custard. He looks like he needs it.

He points across the road to a bric-a-brac shop. "That's where I bought an original 7" copy of Hall and Oates's 'Maneater' for £75."
"Why?" I ask.
"Because I thought it was cool!"

He bursts into tears again.

"And down there..." he sobs "...on those clothes rails that act as an outdoor jumble sale, you can buy second hand Gola tracksuits."
"I got beaten up for wearing those when I was nine."
"I wasn't even born then..." he weeps into his pint.

Taking out his phone he calls his dad in Tufnell Park.

A trio of dickheads cycle by the window on what appears to be a three-wheeled Tandem-cum-tricycle. A man in a silver-sequined jumpsuit gets off his skateboard smoking a rolly. A girl in a very expensive looking 1940s vintage dress made in occupied France sucks on a lollipop. Alexa Chung walks into the pub wearing wellies. It's not even raining.

"Dad..." Henry cries down the phone "...I'm sorry I've been such a cunt."
"Good lad" I say "tell him to come and pick you up, I'll help you pack your stuff."

Later I stroll past the bistros and the bookshop selling classic 1970s Dutch porn mags. A cunt wearing Speedos and a rain mac tries to converse with me but retreats when I threaten to call the police.

I survey the scene one final time with a wry smile and a sigh. "What.a.bunch.of.cunts" I mutter, to nobody in particular.

Then I bunk the train fare home to reality.



[All names and photos have been changed. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. ....They're still cunts though, obviously.]