McCartney speaks to News direct

Henna haired pop legend and all round nice guy, Sir Paul McCartney, takes time out from his hectic touring and divorce schedule to speak to News direct about life, love and the meaning of Pinball wizard.

News direct- Sir Paul, before we begin can I say I'm a massive fan of yours and that I have all your records, I'm constantly playing Sympathy for the devil.
Sir Paul McCartney- Actually that wasn't one of mine.
ND- Was it not? Are you sure?
SPM- Yeah I'm quite sure.
ND- Oh right, anyway can you tell our readers what it was like being in the biggest band of all time? Just give them a flavour of what it was actually like being a Rolling stone.
SPM- Well I couldn't even begin to tell them what it was like being a Rolling stone.
ND- Because it was so crazy?
SPM- No because I wasn't in the stones, I was a Beatle.
ND- Was you?
SPM- Yeah.
ND- Oh right, which one was you?
SPM- The one they used to call Paul McCartney.
ND- Not the one that got shot?
SPM- No.
ND- Well thats thrown a bit of a spanner in the works as all my questions are about you being in the stones etc. You should tell people before you agree to these interviews that you weren't a Rolling stone. It would save a lot of confusion further on down the line.
SPM- Well I would think most people know I was a Beatle and not a Stone.
ND- That's a bit arrogant isn't it?
SPM- Look if you don't want to carry on with the interview just say and I'll leave.
ND- No, you're here now we might as well push on.
SPM- Right.
ND- Sir Paul, did you ever meet the Rolling stones?
SPM- Are you taking the piss?
ND- No, not at all I have just found my Beatles questions and this was the first one.
SPM- Alright, Yeah the London scene at that time was pretty small and everyone knew everyone. The papers used to say there was a big rivalry between the two bands but we were actually all very good mates.
ND- Did you ever sleep with Mick Jagger?
SPM- No, why?
ND- Well he is famously Bilingual and I thought you may have slept with him at some time or other. Have you really slept with him and don't want to say in case people read this and think you're a puff?
SPM-No.
ND- Sure?
SPM- Yes.
ND- Could you have been high on acid juice, or whatever it was you took back then, and accidentally blew him?
SPM- No.
ND- You seem awfully certain.
SPM-Look you have ten seconds to move on or I'm walking right out that door!
ND-God alright! Keep your hair on, by the way is that your own hair?
SPM-Yes I have been lucky, a lot of guys my age lose it, I have even managed to retain my natural colour.
ND- Your natural colour was neon purple?
SPM-No, Horse chestnut.
ND-Anyway lets concentrate on music.
SPM- Sounds good to me.
ND-When you were writing Pinball wizard, did you have a particular pinball machine in mind or was it just pinball machines generally?
SPM- I didn't write that.
ND- You bloody did!
SPM- It was the Who.
ND-Who?
SPM- Yeah.
ND- You sure you didn't write it? I have this mental image of you sat there at your grand piano dressed in your big glasses and crazy costumes belting out Pinball wizard.
SPM- You're thinking of Elton.
ND- Nah, he is a crap comedian and writer.
SPM- I meant Elton John.
ND- My names not John.
SPM- Move on.
ND- What songs did you actually write then? Anything I might know?
SPM- Well I've wrote hundreds, but I suppose you might know about yesterday.
ND- Why what happened?
SPM-When?
ND- Yesterday.
SPM- No, thats the title of the song!
ND- It's called no?
SPM- It's called yesterday!!
ND-Ohhh, no I don't know it. Anyway lets move on I sense you're disappointed with your musical career and it feels like I have hit a raw nerve. Tell me about your divorce.
SPM- Well as you can obviously imagine....
ND- That was yours!!!
SPM-No it wasn't and yes I'm sure. As I was saying it has been a hard time for all the family and heather and I are doing our best to minimize the effect the situation has on the life of our young daughter.
ND- I bet she didn't get much in the divorce settlement.
SPM- Why would you think that?
ND- Well with all your money you could afford OJ Simpson's lawyer. I bet she didn't have a leg to stand on.
SPM- Right that's it this interview is over.

At this point in the interview Sir Paul decided to terminate the interview and has requested his lawyers to issue all News direct employees with a restraining order barring them from being within two hundred and fifty metres of any member of the McCartney family.

Living the swingle life

Cleckheaton- Someone once said "It's grim up north" and a visitor's cursory glance at the row upon row of identical terrace houses clinging unhappily to the steep streets might tempt them to quickly agree with this less than kind observation.
But as with all things in life, if you scratch the surface and take time to look beyond the drab uniformity, hideously clothed in bland conformity you may just see something you never knew was there.

News direct sent me to this Small northern town to delve into the recently revealed fact that Cleckheaton is now the swinging capital of Great Britain.
My entree into the Cleckheaton swinging scene was to be provided by two of its most senior and respected members, Cleckheaton news agents Ken and Doreen Tasselthwaite.

Once seated, in their small but comfortable front room, and made welcome with the obligatory cup of strong northern tea, I asked Ken and Doreen how such a "normal" couple could have developed such an unusual hobby.
The pair smiled at each other and after beginning to answer at the same time Doreen gestured for Ken to enlighten me on their first strides into what has been called Britain's secret shagging scene "Well it really started for us in 1978 at a friends rather raucous macramé and fondue party, before we knew it we were both ankle deep in strangers sex fluid and loving it."

Doreen nodded her agreement and continued the story for me "Well the morning after we didn't know what had hit us, we were tormented by huge hangovers and felt so guilty about what had happened that we avoided talking to each other for just under a year. When we finally sat down and discussed what had happened we realised that it was the first time in all our years of marriage that we had both actually enjoyed the physical act of sex at the same time.
You see I have an unusual medical condition, which has some awfully long and complicated Latin name, but the upshot of it is that it has given me an enormously proportioned vagina.
One Doctor examined me and said that the inside of my vagina could easily accommodate a family of small Yorkshire terriers and then said to Ken that if he ever wanted to enjoy sex with me he should invest in some potholing equipment, Ken always says that it is like throwing a cocktail sausage into the Royal Albert hall, don't you?"
Ken smiled lovingly at his apparently cavernous wife and nodded for her to continue.
"So what with my condition and Ken's rather smallish equipment we decided that the swinging lifestyle could give us both some measure of sexual fulfillment while allowing us to continue with our happy marriage."

After declining Doreen's polite offer of an Eccles cake, I asked them how their hobby had progressed over the years.
Ken settled back into his Shackleton high seat chair and began to slowly explain the ins and outs, so to speak, of the swingle life "Well after our heart to heart we decided to plunge right in and that has led us to where we are today really, they call us the 'pearly necklace king and queen of the swingers' and our parties have become legendary within the Cleckheaton swinging scene.
We really try to pull out all the stops at our monthly sexual soirées, we theme them, the last one was a banana's and pajamas party which actually didn't work out all that well cos the local fancy dress shop only had one banana suit. So most men turned up with just a Fyffe's sticker on their forehead and then when the guy who got the only banana suit tried to take it back he had hell of a job cos they said they were 'inappropriate stains not commonly associated with bananas' all up the front."

Doreen poured me some more industrial strength tea while Ken, through half chewed mouthfuls of Eccles cake, continued his story.
"What most people don't understand is that we are normal average people, the only exception to this being our monthly sex orgies. Most people would imagine them to be riotous roman style sexual free for alls, but in reality they are usually very sedate affairs. People will typically start arriving about seven and will be shown into this room where Doreen will have prepared a large buffet table, no one puts on a spread like Doreen, all the men say to me I have never known anyone who can spread like your wife Ken!
So while people enjoy the Vol au vents and fish paste sandwiches we will have something sexually provocative like Hollyoaks playing on the TV, just to get people in the mood.
After some polite conversation and a few dry sherrys thats when the action really heats up and all of a sudden there are pink bits and sexual fluids everywhere.
Doreen likes to go into the box room lie on her back and challenge all the men present to 'Hit the bottom' No one has ever managed! but there have been loads willing to try hasn't there love!"

Doreen pats Ken's hand and takes over storytelling duties while ken begins to polish off another one of Doreen's huge homemade Eccles cakes "I call it the 'Have a go at the Grand canyon queue' they never manage to get to the bottom but as Ken says the view from the top is worth the wait.
Things usually wind up about ten cos I have to get up at five to do the morning papers, Ken will usually get out his pinny and clean up before coming upstairs about midnight for his special treat."
My mystified look makes Doreen laugh uproariously and has Ken coughing up flaky pieces of Ecccles cake as his wife heartily slaps his back.
"Well Ken's special treat is to clean me up down there, he calls it his 'knacker milk treat' and believe you me, on a good night there is gallons of it sloshing about up there. Usually takes him over an hour to get it all out and usually I just fall asleep and let him get on with it, as long as he is gentle with the spoon its not a problem."

Ken fully recovered from his coughing fit, puts down his unfinished Eccles cake and explains to me how they are just average people with an unusual hobby "We are no different to any other couple really, we pay our taxes, complain about the government and spend our two weeks holiday in Blackpool trying to forget our day to day drudgery.
The parties we hold are just a a bit of naughty fun. Where else could you enjoy the pleasure of other mens wives and then wrap it all up with a special treat from the vagina of the woman you love?"

Being some what at a loss for words I tried to block out the mental image of Ken poised spoon in hand before Doreen's mighty vagina and hurriedly asked if they could send a message to the non swinging world what would it be.
They looked lovingly at each other, smiled and then said in unison "Come have a go at the grand canyon!"

Amy Wineshop lighter fuel shame

London-Heavily tattooed alcoholic and Billy Holiday impersonator Amy Wineshop has today found herself at the centre of a new media storm after being caught sipping from a can of cheap own brand lighter fluid.
Miss Wineshop,58, was spotted by shocked onlookers as she left Patel's mini mart in Camden high street swigging from a bright yellow tin of her favourite new tipple and telling passers by to "Fuck right off"

Ever since the semi talented karaoke singer burst onto the international music scene she has seemed to positively court controversy.
From her homemade tattoos, bad hair and drug abuse right through to her shocking rendition of "I left my cunt in San Fransisco" on the BBC's flagship Children in need telethon, Miss Wineshop has gone out of her way to make her self into the "Anti Yentl"

But the lighter fluid episode really does seem to be the low point in a career littered with embarrassing low points.
Friends of the star are now said to be so worried by her unusual drinking habits that they routinely lock up all household cleaning products in case she decides visit them in the early hours.

One worried friend told News direct that "Of course we are very worried by Amy's constant substance abuse and troubling penchant for the kind of tattoos a drunken sailor would refuse to have.
If these lighter fuel rumours are true it really does seem that she has hit rock bottom.
It was only a few months ago I found her laid in my front garden out cold with her legs akimbo, at first I was delighted as I thought she had brought George Micheal round for a night cap then I realised she wasn't wearing any knickers, it was awful, just awful."

The irony of the dreadful situation is that as Miss Wineshop's personal life has spiraled out of control her fame and celebrity have risen to the dizzying heights of tabloid super fame.
Bernie Clifton, celebrity PR guru and arch media manipulator, told News direct how he would handle the lighter fuel scandal the scarecrow chanteuse has suddenly found her self embroiled in "This is solid gold publicity, it really is!
If she were my client I would follow this story up with something sexual, something the public could really get their teeth into, maybe "Wineshop panda sex fury!!" you know the sort of thing, something that will really make middle england spit up it's cornflakes.
All this talk of rehab is career suicide and if she was my client I would be doing my utmost to push her away from that career option. Rehab is for has beens who need to get their name back in the papers, Amy's doing just fine and I would advise her to only consider the rehab option once her record sales begin to drop."

All eyes will now be trained on Buckingham palace where Miss Wineshop is due to receive a Dame hood from Her majesty the Queen, in recognition of her tireless work to promote a positive image of Britain abroad.
Miss Wineshop will receive the coveted honour before being whisked away by unlicensed mini cab to appear before Bow magistrates court on three charges of drunk and disorderly behaviour and two charges of indecent exposure in a built up area.

The curse of cenxorshxp

"All censorships exist to prevent anyone from challenging the current conceptions and existing institutions.
All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by supplanting existing institutions. Consequently the first condition of progress is the removal of censorships."
Zippy.
(1972-1992)

Doncaster-Arthur Krispnagel is an ordinary man, he lives in an ordinary house in an ordinary street with his ordinary wife. In fact, Arthur's most extraordinary facet is his sheer ordinariness.
So what is it about the ordinary Arthur Krispnagel that is drawing an unprecedented level of unwanted attention and constant harassment?

I met Arthur in a pub close to his house and, staring glumly into his half pint glass, Arthur began to tell me how his nightmare began.
"It all started about a year ago really when my wife, Edith, bought me a computer for my birthday. I didn't even know what it was at first and thought she had bought me some kind of huge calculator.
I wish now I would have gone with my first instincts and told her to take it back and get me a toasted sandwich maker, I love those cheese ones."
To try to build some kind of rapport with Arthur I agreed with him and mentioned my liking for cheese and ham toasties.
He looked slowly up from his half finished warm beer "I don't really like exotic foods, plain Cheddar toasties are fine for me, never saw the sense in damaging your taste buds with unusual flavours and fly by night, look at me combinations."

Undaunted by Arthur's damning indictment of the cheese and ham toastie, I pressed on and asked him to continue with his riveting story.
"Well against my better judgment I kept the computer and at my wife's insistence I connected it up to that interwebby thingy. After a few weeks I was quite enjoying it, I would spend hours looking at pictures of man hole covers, you know dreaming that they were mine, like you do."
An over eager barmaid emptied our empty ashtray at this point and I filled the created silence by asking "Man hole covers?"
"Yeah, that's been my hobby for over thirty years now as a kid I'd cycle all over the country just to see a new one, the Hollinger d420g was always my favourite though."
Arthur suddenly became animated and the words just tripped from his usually dour tongue "Oh yeah the Hollinger d420g, now that was a man hole cover, cast iron, raised anti slippage bumps, it had the lot! I think I have a photo in my wallet if you want to see it?"
I politely declined Arthur's offer and asked him to tell me more about the harassment he was suffering.
"Oh you don't want to see it? Suit yourself. So as I said, I was really enjoying searching the web and looking through the myriad of "Holie" sites I found."
"Holie?"
"Yeah that's what we call ourselves. we are all mad! You should see us when we get together, it's like bedlam! One night at a meeting of the Yorkshire and district manhole cover society, we stayed up till half ten looking at Maurice Clapperwaite's video of Bulgarian man hole covers. We are mental!"
I nodded and agreed with Mr Krispnagel's sage diagnosis.
"Anyway, after reading through a lot of these "Knowledgeable" sites, I realised I could do just as well if not better, half these people didn't know the difference between a Tattler 680 and a Moleston 2gf!
So I set up my website UK manholes.com and was immediately flooded with huge amounts traffic, at one point I was getting twenty thousand hits a day, which surprised me as I had believed man holes to be a minority interest at best.
After the first sixteen thousand thousand E mails, I had to add a disclaimer to my site saying that it contained no male nudity and was glad when the traffic dropped to a tolerable level of two visits a week."

I sympathised with him over the intolerable levels of pervosity prevalent upon the world wide web and asked him to explain what happened next.
"Well I was kept busy updating my site you know adding new hole covers and such and everything was going great until I decided to write a feature article on the Gladman 260, which as I'm sure you're aware is a big favourite among the Holie fraternity. The thing is it's a man hole cover I've never liked, far too decorative for my tastes. So anyway, I wrote an article expressing my heartfelt opinions on its unnecessary detailing and, in my opinion, its down right unacceptable showmanship.
If I knew now what a fuss it would cause I would never have wrote that damn article. Almost as soon as I posted the thing I began to be inundated with a deluge of hate.
I was getting up to 3 E mails a month saying what a disgrace I was to the Holie community and if I hated man hole covers so much why didn't I go live in Laos, which I believe uses some sort of bamboo arrangement.
But as bad as this electronic abuse was it was nothing compared to what I have endured from former "friends" the Yorkshire and district man hole cover society immediately barred me from all future meetings and trips and have requested I send back the coveted golden man hole cover badge awarded to senior members.
But worst of all Maurice Clapperwaite wrote an article in the Yorkshire man holes digest castigating me for treachery and what he called "Maverick tendencies unbecoming for a connoisseur of man holes" he even compared me to the Tom Cruise character in Top gun saying that I was "Displaying a dangerous tendency towards unconventional views within a community that prided itself on its total conformity"
It really has been a total nightmare and all because I think the Gladman 260 is the show pony of the man hole cover world."

I commiserated with Arthur and agreed that people don't like to be shaken from the comfort of treasured ideas and will fight tooth and nail to protect what they see as the rightful way.
I then asked Arthur how his world had changed since his heartfelt attack upon the golden calf of the Gladman 260.
"Well for a start I'm persona non grata within the Holie world, I've heard that they will not even use my name and only refer to me as the "Heretic" not everyone has been so judgmental though, I have had a lot of support from the born again Christians who for some strange reason are overjoyed that I have renounced my love of man holes.
Sometimes I wish I had just kept my mouth shut and let them continue to praise something which deep down in my soul I knew was wrong. But as my wife says, you can't live your life with the opinions of a stranger."

My meeting with Arthur Krispnagel left a deep impression upon me and I truly admired the man they now call the "Heretic" for his steadfast refusal to float with the tide of conformity and his magnificent one man fight to show the Gladman 260 for what it really is.