Saturday, June 30, 2007

SMOKING BAN

BBC NEWS 24 has just run a story about Bingo Halls in England and how operators of these establishments fear a drastic cut in revenue after tomorrow. A survey was done in Scotland post-ban and there the takings were down by over 30%. (It didn't say by 22% or otherwise it would have been down by two little ducks).

As a libertarian, I can't really be seen to support anything which affects personal freedom as one has to consider what "they" are going to ban next.

Drinking?

Fatty foods?

Contact sports?

Kosher & Halal meat?

Demonstrations?


posted by Nosmo King

The 15-minute dating blog

This is wonderful. Enjoy!

Friday, June 29, 2007

Jack Canfield: Finding a Mentor

I've heard Jack live. A great speaker

Graham Jones - Internet Psychologist

Graham has recently launched this. It's the Internet Psychologists forum.

Sex, sex, sex and speaking

I've posted elsewhere about this report. I guess it's a way to embracing those pre-stage nerves.

Indiana Jones v Brian Jones

Saw this at Raincoaster

How long has Brian Jones been dead?




CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE

Thursday, June 28, 2007

Tim Henman

So Henman's out again in the early stages of Wimbledon and Stephen Pollard has a bit of a dig at him on his blog.

Unfair! - despite Tim never having set Wimbledon alight throughout his career, he's done by British standards, pretty well. Lay off Tim I say.

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Blogpower Awards

I've been asked by Tom Paine to publicize this.............................

I am asking all the Blogpower bloggers to publicise the July 1st Blogpower Awards ceremony (1400 London time) on their blogs. I have a sidebar item on mine with a link to the venue in Second Life. Could you do something similar please, or at least put up a post this week encouraging people to go?

The SLURL (Second Life URL) which will take people directly to the event is as follows:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Nanga/132/161/507/?img=http%3A//lastditch.typepad.com/BlopowerAd.jpg&title=Blogpower%20Awards%2C%20July%201st&msg=Join%20us%20in%20at%200900%20New%20York/1400%20London

I have hosted suitable advertising pictures at my blog as follows - you can link to them or download them from there.

http://lastditch.typepad.com/BlopowerAd.jpg

http://lastditch.typepad.com/DKad.jpg

http://lastditch.typepad.com/JeremyJayad.jpg

Please help to make this novel event a success!

Cheers,

Tom Paine
www.lastditch.typepad.com

Sunday, June 24, 2007

Derek Dougan - R.I.P.

We recently lost Alan Ball at the tender age of 61 and now the "Doog" has slipped away.

Derek was a passionate supporter of UKIP.

Ball to Bell - two of England's finest............

James at More Than Mind Games posted this from 1975. He entitled his post with Gilard & Whitworth. They certainly played well but what of Alan Ball and Colin Bell? And what about the cheating Beckenbauer? Shame this was only a friendly match against the Bosch.

Online business - the future?

Graham Jones has outlined a vision of future internet use. Users will multi-task on-line, much as they do in real life and won't have time to search through all of your site. They'll have off-line media to read through as well.

Graham's message is quite clear - don't just rely on your internet presence to boost your business.

Saturday, June 23, 2007

Wanna Larf?

This from Harry at Chase me Ladies. Well it nearly is the holiday season.

ESSENTIAL HOLIDAY PHRASES

At the beach:
“J'ai un paquet charmant de noix de coco.”
I’ve got a lovely bunch of coconuts. (To a Frenchman)

“Ci bisogna il permesso del barone per scoppare.”
You need the Baron’s permission to fuck. (Italian)


At the hotel:
"Deine Katze ist ein moralischer Idiot"
Your cat is a moral idiot (German)

위대한 당의 령도밑에 조국의 존엄과 위력이 힘있게 떨쳐지고 사회주의강성대국건설을 위한 선군혁명총진군이 힘있게
I've got a lovely bunch of coconuts. Let’s mutilate US imperialism. (Korean)

“Vienen unos osos. ¡Que mamera!”
Some bears are coming. What a pain in the arse! (Spanish)

Friday, June 22, 2007

13 Great Bernard Manning jokes

A question to the PC brigade. What's so terrible about these? OK, so one or two are a little rude. (Tip - Blognor Regis and Shooting Parrots)

Two old maids on a beach, streaker ran past, one had a stroke, the other one couldn’t
reach.

Man says to his wife: ‘Pack your bags, I’ve won the pools.’
She says: ‘What should I pack? Something light, something warm? Where are we going?’
He says: ‘We’re going nowhere. Just pack your bags and f*** off.’

I don’t believe Scots are as tight as people say, but I did hear that when two taxis collided in
Glasgow recently 48 people were injured.

I also like the one about the boatload of Viagra that went down in Loch Ness — and the
monster came up.

I went to see that Pavarotti last week and he was a right miserable git. He doesn’t like it
when you join in.

So David, what about the stick after the Argentinian game?
Oh, she was fine with it.

I feel sorry for people that don't drink, because when they wake up in the morning, that’s
the best they’re going to feel all day.

I once got sacked for laughing. I was driving a hearse.

Tony Adams, on his first day in prison, was complaining because he wanted the walls back 12
yards.

A Scouser went to a prostitute. She said, ‘Do you want a b*** job?’ He said, ‘Will it affect me
dole money?’

What’s the difference between an Iraqi woman and a pilchard? One’s ugly, greasy, with
bulging eyes. The other’s a fish.

Quasimodo was running down the street chased by a group of kids. He said, ‘For the last
time, I haven’t got your football.’

I went to Anfield the other day to watch a match. A scouse lad said, ‘Can I mind your car for
you mister?’
I said, ‘No! And for your information, there’s a Rottweiler in the back.’ The lad said: ‘Put out
fires, can he?’

Bernard Manning R.I.P.

What a coup! Bernard Manning wrote his own obituary which appeared in the Daily Mail (see below). The last of the great joke tellers, one commentator said. I always found him funny.

Bernard Manning: His own obituary, in his own words

By BERNARD MANNING - More by this author » Last updated at 08:49am on 20th June 2007

Comments Comments (53)

Reviled by liberals, loved by countless people north of Watford, Bernard Manning always felt that his life's work had been misunderstood.

So four months ago, the Mail gave him a challenge: to write his own obituary. The result - complete with some of the most terrible jokes you've ever heard - nevertheless contains the essence of this extraordinary man.

Shortly before he died, my old mate Spike Milligan said he wanted an inscription on his tombstone to read: "I told you I was ill.'

Well, now that I'm gone, I want carved on my gravestone these words, in letters so small that any visitor will have to move right up close to read them: "Get off! You're standing on my privates."

Oh, I know there'll be a few who won't mourn my passing, like mothers-in-law up and down the country. I'll never forget the day I took my own mother-in-law to the Chamber of Horrors in Madame Tussauds. Suddenly, one of the attendants whispered to me: "Please keep her moving. We're trying to do a stock take."

The one bad thing about dying quietly in Manchester is that I cannot fulfil the solemn promise I made to the old battleaxe. "When you die, I'm going to dance on your grave," she once said. To which I replied: "I hope you do, because I'm going to be buried at sea."

Scroll down for more...

manning

I don't think the Commission for Racial Equality will be holding a wake for me, either. Nor will the Lesbian and Gay Rights lot or the feminists. They were always banging on about how I was sexist or anti-gay.

It was their campaigning that kept me off mainstream television for years, while filling the airwaves with a bunch of fifth rate so-called comics who were about as funny as a dose of bird flu and whose acts had all the humour of a funeral parlour. (Trust me, I'm in one now and there's not a laugh to be had anywhere).

In their obsession with turning comedy into a branch of Left-wing politics, they forgot that the only point of jokes is to make people laugh. And that was what I was good at, whether I was on the cabaret circuit in Manchester or at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.

Well, at least I won't be seeing any of the po-faced, politically- correct brigade where I'm going. I had quite enough of them in my lifetime.

What they never understood was that I was an equal opportunities comedian. Unlike them, with all their little check-lists and taboos and easy targets, I never discriminated against anyone or anything. I was quite happy to get a laugh out of any situation. All that mattered to me was whether the gag was funny or not.

"I had a distant German relative who died at Auschwitz. He fell out of one of the watchtowers."

Now that's humour, precisely because it's close to the edge, unlike so many of the tired, comfortable, right- on lines

about George Bush in which modern comics indulge, massaging the consciences of their middle-class audiences instead of giving them raw entertainment.

Oh, I can see the other obituaries already: "Bernard Manning, racist bigot", the smug types will say when they hear of my departure.

But that's not what the great British public, especially in Lancashire and the rest of the North, will say. They knew that I was a funny bloke. That's why they kept flocking back to my own cabaret club, even when I was barred from the airwaves.

And I was never a racist. That's just an easy, catch-all term of abuse bandied around by the media elite against anyone who does not follow their agenda. It was just meaningless.

When told by some toffee-nosed southerner that I was prejudiced, I used to say: "Have you actually seen my act?" They would then admit they hadn't. "Then you don't know what you're talking about. You're the one who is prejudiced because you are pre-judging me."

If they'd ever bothered to turn up at one of my shows, they'd have soon discovered I told gags about everyone, including all sorts of politicians and the Royal Family.

In fact the Queen once told me with a smile, after a Royal Command Performance, how much she liked my act. If it was good enough for her, it should have been good enough for anyone.

Racist? Rubbish. Did these selfrighteous critics know that Clive Lloyd, the great West Indian cricket captain, asked me to perform as part of his testimonial?

Or that I did a fund-raising event for the Lancashire and India wicketkeeper Farokh Engineer and another for the great black boxing champion John Conteh? For goodness-sake, I was multi-racial myself, a descendant of Jewish immigrants from Sevastopol. Throughout my life, a sign with the Jewish greeting 'Shalom' hung by door of my home in North Manchester.

I was born in 1930 in the Ancoats district of the city, and I never lived more than five miles from my birthplace. I always loved Manchester and her people, though that kind of loyalty and sense of belonging is never understood by the metropolitan elite who despise their own country.

My dad was a greengrocer and it was a tough upbringing, for the North was in the pit of depression and money and food were short. I was one of six children and was forced to share a bed with all my siblings, some of whom regularly wet the bed. In fact, I learnt to swim before I could walk.

I remember one night, my mother asked me: "Where do you want to sleep?" I replied: "At the shallow end."

I went to an ordinary local school and left at the age of 14, taking up a job at the Senior Service tobacco factory in Manchester. From my earliest years, I had a bit of a talent for performing, singing in choirs and at work. Then, when I was 16, my life changed dramatically on being called up to serve in the Manchester Regiment of the British Army.

Even though the war was over, I had to go out to Germany, where I was one of the armed guards watching over the Nazi hierarchy locked up in Spandau prison. For a 16-year-old, it was a bizarre experience, standing over the likes of Rudolf Hess and Albert Speer with a Bren gun.

Back home, I was a good enough singer to make it as a professional. It looked like I'd really hit the big time when, in February 1952, I was booked to sing at the London Lyceum theatre with the Oscar Rabin Big Band, with the show to be broadcast on the radio.

But the very day I was due to take to the stage King George VI died, so the event was cancelled. I'll never forgive the King for dying like that. He left me high and dry.

But soon I found that I was even better at telling gags than I was at singing and in the late 1950s I opened my own club in a converted billiard hall, Manchester's famous Embassy Club.

The venue attracted many of the biggest names in British showbusiness including Matt Monro, and even the Beatles. It also led to my show on ITV called The Comedians, which was so successful that in 1978 I was even asked to play at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.

Indeed, my act was an equally big success on the other side of the Atlantic, though I had to adapt his material for American audiences. So Irish jokes became Polish ones, such as: "This Polish man gets a job in Californian zoo. One day a workmate says to him, "For $2,000, would you have sex with the gorilla in that cage?"

"The Pole thinks for a minute and then says, "Yeah, all right. But on three conditions. First, that I don't have to kiss her. Second, that you don't tell any of my mates. And third, that you give me a fortnight to get the money together"."

I supposed the animal rights lobby would get me on that one.

But despite my TV appearances being reduced since the Eighties, I've still managed to enjoy a long and fruitful career. I wouldn't have changed any of it for a moment.

I was glad I managed to make it into my late 70s, but then there was always a very strong survival instinct in my family. I had an uncle who was still having sex at 74. Which was lucky, as he lived at Number 72.

It was also a contented end, which reminds me of another long lived uncle, a bus driver who went peacefully in his sleep - not screaming like his passengers.

And as I look down now on all the over-paid executives who have made such a mess of television and undermined true comedy, and as I sense the affection from the mass of the British public, I know that I am the one having the last laugh.

Well done Bernard



Thursday, June 21, 2007

Books to read

I've about 15 I need to get through at some point. Never seem to have enough time! However, I've been inspired by some of the thoughts by Ian Stuart at "Upper Fort Stuart"

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Corporate & TV Presenting

This evening, I completed a six-week presenting workshop. I guess it's the presenter's way of collecting CPD points!


Jeremy Jacobs

18 Doughty Street

Arrived back home at around 1.00am after a two-hour stint with Iain Dale. One hour on Vox Politix and then with the two other guests, Simon Marcus and Nicholas Bennett on the End of the Day show.

18 Doughty Street is growing in popularity. If you want to see the "best of yesterday's" programmes then click on the widget at the website or on the left!

Monday, June 18, 2007

This Blog is really funny

My Corner Space

Our ever increasing bureaucracy

The new edition of the Highway Code (due out in August) will have over 300 rules for the first time. 307 to be exact. The last edition which was published in 1999 had 278. The first edition which dates back to 1931 had less than 100 rules. The advent of sat-nav and rules concerning smoking at the wheel accounts for the increase.

As readers of this Blog are aware, I loathe officialdom and bureaucracy. Even the Highway Code isn't exempt.

Sunday, June 17, 2007

18 Doughty Street

Yours truly will be appearing with Iain Dale on Vox Politix.

The Time: 10pm

The Date: Tuesday, June 19th

The Place: 18 Doughty Street

Saturday, June 16, 2007

Summer Season

The football season has only just ended but the madness continues. Papers are full of who's playing who in the first match next season.

It's June for heavens sake. Let's have a proper summer for a change. For example, today one ought to be concentrating on the tennis at Queens. Very soon strawberries, cream and Wimbledon will be uppermost in the English summer zeitgeist. Cricket, with England taking on the West Indies today will keep my father and I glued to the tv. But let's spare a thought for some of the minority sports like archery, speedway, badminton and hockey.

Politics, stock market movements and bad weather can all wait until September.

Thursday, June 14, 2007

Disappearing London

For those of you who know the Hampstead Garden Suburb area of North London, you may be disappointed by the demolition, currently under way, of the old H R Owen garage on Lyttleton Road. This fine piece of "between the wars" architecture, which incidentally was a Rolls Royce showroom some years ago, will no doubt be making way for another block of flats. I don't suppose there was anything special about this garage, it's just that it's a shame to see an old friend disappear.

Add this to the recent closure of Hammersmith Palais (where my father went dancing) and Highbury Stadium in recent months, and you can see where I'm going with this.

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Those long summer evenings

Aren't they wonderful? And the challenge at this time of year is not to wake up at 4 in the morning!

Monday, June 11, 2007

National Carers Week

For a number of years, my father cared for his partner Rose who had Alzheimer's disease. Eventually, she had to be placed in a home. In recent times, my mother is doing a fair bit each day for my step-father who's not in the best of health.

This week, is
National Carers Week. Here are some little known facts:

There are almost six million carers in the UK

East 520,209 East Midlands 435,741

London 609,890 North East 276,593

North West 724,802 Northern Ireland 185,066

Scotland 481,579 South East 737,751

South West 495,442 Yorkshire & The Humber 518,211

Wales 340,745 West Midlands 558,421


2 One in ten adults in the UK is a carer


3 3 million people juggle work with caring responsibilities for a disabled, ill or frail relative or friend


4 The main carers benefit is Carers Allowance - is £48.65

for a minimum of 35 hours, equivalent to £1.39 per hour


5 People providing high levels of care are twice as likely to

be permanently sick or disabled


6 Every year 2 million people take on new caring

responsibilities


7 1.25 million people provide over 50 hours a week on their caring responsibilities

8 58% of carers are women, 42% are men


9 1.3 million carers are over the age of 65


10 27% of carers questioned said they had been offered a

health check; 88% believed that carers should receive

annual health checks


11 Carers save the country / Government £57 billion each

year yet the decision to care can mean a commitment to

future poverty. Many give up an income, future

employment prospects and pension rights to become a

carer.




Sunday, June 10, 2007

Lewis Hamilton

Pretty amazing first season in Formula One for him. Let's see what happens today in Canada.


UPDATE -
Well done Lewis!

Friday, June 08, 2007

Housing Shortage

This morning's "Thought for the Day" on BBC Radio 4 was made by the Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks.

He made reference to the fact that some people will need to borrow up to 10 times their salary in order to purchase their first property. The problem - a desperate shortage of affordable housing stock.

The Centenary of Hampstead Garden Suburb was mentioned. In 1907, when Dame Henrietta Barnett, the founder, would have been proud of her growing development of properties which were designed for ordinary people. Nowadays, some of the cottages are on the market for £500,000.

What should be done to help those trying to get on the property ladder?

Wednesday, June 06, 2007

Sir Alan Sugar and the Apprentice

Very compelling viewing this evening on the Apprentice, with not one but three candidates fired. For me the highlight were these words said by Sir Alan towards the end of the programme.

"I should have listened to my intuition" (referring to one of the candidates).

In life, I've found its always best to go with one's gut feel. Going for abstract rather than empirical seems to work for me.

Hasn't let me down so far.

Monday, June 04, 2007

Israel's Six-day War, 40 years on

Honest Reporting has issued this special report.

How often do we hear on the BBC about the 19-year occupation by Jordan, or the living standards of Palestinians?





Update:

I'm grateful to Bagel Blogger in Australia for this piece from the New York Times.

and............................

My mother reminded me about the charity performance of the film "Fiddler on the Roof". She laid this on at the Carlton Cinema, Westgate-on-Sea and raised a lot of money for the Israel in 1967.









Saturday, June 02, 2007

I had to add this.............

..............for those of you who still love the BBC and it's blatant anti-Israel stance try this piece of brilliance from Pixane

Friday, June 01, 2007

No Blogging this weekend

Far too busy with other matters. See ya on Monday.

On this Day - June 1st

In the early 1960's, and barely out of my nappies, I was taken by my father to see my first senior football match at Margate FC. It was the final of the Kent Senior Shield. Margate beat Bexleyheath & Welling 1-0.

Three interesting facts about the match.

1. Bexleyheath & Welling FC no longer exists. Their ground was taken over by Welling United.

2. The Kent Senior Shield has been condemned to history.

3. The lateness of the final was due to the fixture backlog caused by one of the the worst winters last century.



Thanks to Jeff Trice's excellent Margate FC history site.

The picture above shows Cyril Jeans ( No. 7 ) turning away after scoring the winning goal.

Top Jewish Joke

A New York judge is presiding over the divorce proceedings of a Jewish couple.
When the final papers have been signed and the divorce is complete the woman
thanks the judge and says, "Now I have to arrange for a Get."

The judge inquires what she means by a Get.

So, the woman explains that a Get is a religious ceremony required under the
Jewish religion in order to receive a divorce recognized by the Jewish faith.

The judge says, "You mean a religious ceremony like a Bris?" (male circumcision)

She replies, "Yes, very similar, only in this case you get rid of the entire prick!"