Happy New Year's Eve!

This time 10 years ago I was swimming naked and dancing on the beach at Byron Bay with me chap out.

Cop 1: 'Can you put some clothes on?'
Me: 'I'm not offending anyone!'
Cop 2: 'You're offending me!'

Ah mad weekend. Pulled that gorgeous girl from Inverness and then lost her after the 2nd bottle of whiskey. I must have done something terrible because when she turned up in Melbourne my name was mud. But then she got scabies, that'll learn her!

And I lost my shoes, and got dehydrated, and fell asleep on the nudist beach, and then lay moaning and dyhdrated on a mud path while everyone walked over me until a lovely Dutch couple rescued me. I've a lot of time for the Dutch.

Only time I have ever drunk two 700ml bottles of Jameson's one after the other.

I bought one for myself and this girl from Reading bought me another (whatever happened to her?)

I didn't really mean to start on the second one but I met this wabhead Aussie who started lecturing me on the Northern Ireland troubles with the conviction & arrogance someone who's only experienced the conflict at a distance of 8,000 miles through books & TV can manage...

He was fe&king me off so much I started taking big swigs from the Jameson's to calm me down. Always a good idea.

That's when I blacked out (but presumably finished the whiskey) and must have suggested something terrible to the girl...

Lord she was hawt. If I could hold her in my arms today.....

This year, to save me from tears, I'm going to get a dose of sexy and pull a cracker in Donegan's beer garden. Get her down the lough at midnight to hear the container ships toot their tooters at the stroke of 12. It'll be so romantic I'm bound to get my fingers & tops.

Rage against the Machine have reached number one. A nation rejoices.

It's good to see that in these commercialised times, people are remembering the true spirit of Christmas. There's something truly humbling & holy about 600,000 peole downloading a song they don't really like just to piss off a man they don't like. It's what the baby Jesus would have done.

Though I downloaded it too! Eff me I just did what they told me!
Part of me admires this tenacious, backs-to-the-wall, Blitz spirit effort to get RATM to number one. It was a triumph of good over evil, for sure. And I'm glad to have played my small part.

But wouldn't it be great if we could all club together to do something that wasn't totally fecking pointless? Shelter, the homeless charity, have made about £50,000 out of 600,000 downloads. If everyone had simply donated 29p to Shelter the world would be a better place today.

And I wouldn't have to hear that bloody song again, which was definitely NOT in my list of Great Songs of 1992. It brought a lot of long-haired moshers onto the dancefloor at the Limelite Club back then, and if the feckers didn't knock my pint over, they'd minesweep it as soon as my back was turned.

It's the Xmas musical equivalent of paying £70 to go to a premier league football match to shout abuse at the players, knowing that a fair whack of your £70 goes into their wageslip at the end of the week. And then in turn that gets spent on Bolivian ladyboys and useless racehorses. Dunno what Cowell spends his money on. He's probably going to buy his own Carribean nation, like St Lucia.

As far as Christmas songs go, I would like all DJs to play 'Rainy Night in Soho' by The Pogues instead of 'Fairytale of New York' and see how many people notice.

I'm astonished that it takes 600,000 sales to get the Xmas number one. I suppose that 29p downloads and one-click ordering make it such a painless process. I certainly wouldn't have gone traipsing down to Our Price to buy a 7" single of RATM at £1.99, pushing through a horde of whey-faced troglodytes to do so.

Thought for the day

Did anyone hear thought for the day on radio 4 today?

Some youthful sounding Muslamic bloke was telling us about how a scruffy beggar with a dog asked him for some spare change.

He looked down at him and began some internal hmmm-ing and ahhh-ing.

Would this bloke spend the money on alcohol?

Would he spend it on drugs?

Am I doing the right thing?

Without bothering to consult brer beggar, he reached into his wallet. He was about to draw out a low-denomination banknote when he remembered what Moh - blessedbehisname - ammed did.

Mohammed was confronted by a beggar, but instead of giving him money he took his hand and led him to the local hardware store. 'Here's an axe' said Mohammed. 'Take this ask and go into the woods and cut down the trees. Sell the firewood and you'll be set for life.'

And he was. Don't know what the contemprary prophet Georgis Al-Monbiot made of it, but when Mohammed strolled by a few weeks later our boy was choppin' and heavin' wood like the divil himself and keeping his family in chipolatas.

So back to the present. What did our thoughtful preacher do?
Did he give him the cash? Did he buy him an axe?

Er....

At this point he said a little prayer.
Something along the lines of 'Dear God, help the beggars and help everyone else at this time of year'



And that's it.

So everyone, before you make up, or even put on your wake up, say a little prayer for beggars, yeah?