Grandad 2.0

INT: Grandad’s house.

Dad: So, Jimmy. Looking forward to seeing your grandfather?

Jimmy: Yes, dad. I hope he is better.

Dad: Doctors say that he’s clean now, son. Two years without a drop.

Mum: Amazing to think he’s changed so much. You’d hardly recognise him.

Dad: Yeah, I think everything’s going to be fine. Jimmy:

Yeah! Grandad is great!

Grandad opens the door. His silver hair is neatly combed and his eyes glimmer with lively sobriety. He welcomes them in.

Grandad: Hello! Lovely to see you. Jimmy! My grandson.

Jimmy: Hello grandad. You look great!

Grandad: Thanks, grandad is all better. Do you all want a nice cup of tea? I have some orange juice for Jimmy.

Dad: Sounds good dad, place looks brilliant. You’ve taken good care of it.

Grandad: Yep. Keeping active, doing all kinds of stuff about the house. Let me just go to the kitchen and get the tea.

Grandad disappears from the room.

Dad: Brilliant. He’s really done well. Hasn’t he, Jimmy?

Jimmy: Yes dad. Suddenly, a smashing sound is heard, and the sound of screaming.

Grandad enters the room, swigging from a bottle, eyes red raw, hair caked and matted against a shimmering, sweating head. He is partially retching.

Grandad: FUCK! fuckinellldooyoocuntsget in…HIC…help her fuckin…fuc…self to my fucinstuff wontyer.. 

Dad: Dad! What happened to you? You were only in there two minutes!

Grandad: Been FUCKING WELL HAVING SOME GOOD TIMES inni EH? Fore I have to look at your stupid faces…what’s that thing?

Jimmy: I’m your grandson Grandad.

Grandad: SMALL face on that cunt, like yours but smaller. *Points at Jimmy* Getcher small face sorted out, ‘therwise you’re never going to grow up, small face.

Jimmy: I’m a kid, Grandad.

Grandad: TIT OFF SHITBALLS, WEEEEEEEEHE! OOS THIS PIECE OF ASS?

Dad: It’s your daughter in law. My wife.

Grandad: BIT OF FUCKING ALRIIGHT. SHIT THIS TWO CUNTS OFF SWEETHEA…..HIC..ART…I’ll show you some old dog’s fuckin’ tricks..

Mum: Sob.

Grandad: WWWWWWWWWWWOOOAAAH!!!!

'My Bastard Dog': Another sit-com idea.

INT: Man’s house.

Man: Oi. Dog. Come here.

Dog: Arf…woof!

Man: How original. As you know, I’ve been working my balls off for a year to keep us living and you in Pedigree Chum. Which by the way isn’t fucking cheap.

Dog: Yelp! Grr…woof!

Man: …..yes. Anyway, I’m going on holiday. I picked it out of a hat full of ideas. The Arctic. Sounds nice. Sort of continental. Anyway, while I am off sunning the fuck out of my cock and bollocks, you’re looking after the place.

Dog: Yip! Bark…

Man: What I absolutely don’t want is to come back to a house that’s burned down, empty of my stuff, or covered in shit.

Dog: Howl…

Man: Which means you need to look after it you cunt. Look. I’ve left the oven on so you can cook some potatoes or something. There are some baked beans as well and the stove’s on. REMEMBER TO TURN THE CUNT OFF when they’re done. My taxi’s in two minutes.

Dog: ARF! WOOF!

Man. Good. Glad we understand each other. Fuck, i’m late. Well, have fun, and don’t shit on the furniture, you absolute cockend. (Man walks down the path and leaves the front door open.)

Man: LEFT THE FUCKING FRONT DOOR OPEN SO YOU CAN WALK YOURSELF! Don’t forget to CLOSE IT WHEN YOU GET BACK IN!!

Dog: Yelp! WOOF ARF!

Man: (Does wanker sign at dog.) Fuck off, prick. I’m off. Two weeks of sun!

TWO WEEKS LATER:

Man: What a great holiday. I don’t think. Who’d have thought the fucking Arctic would be that cold. I should have gone in July, I suppo….FUCK! (The front door is open. Dog shit all over the floor. Man enters the house.)

Man: What the FUCK is this? Where’s all my stuff?

Dog: YELP! ARF!

Man: Fucking prick. I TOLD YOU TO CLOSE THE DOOR!!

Fade out to titles.

Alan overlord.

I am Titchmarsh, the single most terrifying beast in the world. I crush skulls in my fist. I paint trees with the blood of my victims. I wear a hat made from ears, and my car’s seats are made from the skin of sinners. I am Titchmarsh.

If you don’t listen to me, I will rend you asunder and leave your scarred bones on the floor of a public toilet, to be eaten by the dogs.

That said, I am here to talk about tea. Tea, if you will humour me, is the single greatest intoxicant of our time. It is better than cocaine, speed, or cracks. Tea makes me a God, tea makes my garden grow and my cock grow roots. You think you’ve seen a man fully erect? You haven’t until you’ve seen me consume tea and fuck my way through a good area of Sussex in an all night tea fuck-frenzy.

Tea was invented a long time ago, and used to be in black and white. Back then it was sold in giant bin-bags. There were no “tea-bags” back then. Tea would be strained in sacks, condoms, and pigskins. There was only two teas back then. White and black. Milk or no milk. In fact, the first cow was made by scientists for the sole use of tea drinkers.

There are many ways to drink it. It is very versatile. You can drink it in a prison cell. You can drink it in a bin. You can drink it at a funeral. You can even drink it while attacking your family with a fork. Tea can be consumed in any orifice, but must ALWAYS be finished. If you don’t, I will cave your fucking head in. Here are my favourite teas.

1. Earl Grey. – Aromatic, nice with a burned rabbit cock.

2. Normal. – You can buy it anywhere. Put it in a mug and drink the bollocks out of it. The most famous of these is PG probably. Or Tetley. There’s Value, but you’re a cunt if you drink that.

3. Camomile. I don’t know what the fuck this one is. I think it’s probably drunk by rich people or something.

4. Human tea. Made from the secretions of humans. I drink a lot of my own tea. I am made of me. I am made of tea. Do you see? So, to end this harvest of facts, if I see ANY of you not drinking tea, I will drape your intestines over my cock and wank myself to a screaming orgasm.

So there it is. Everything you need to know about my taste in hot beverages. Now fuck off. I have a cup of tea to tip into my juddering fucking maw.

Alan Titchmarsh is a writer of romantic fiction, and a lover of tea. He also does some thing in gardens I expect.

Optimo @ Hoults Yard Think Tank. Sat 27th July. + Live mix.

On Saturday, if you're ears are tuned to the correct frequency, all roads head towards Newcastles East end to the Think Tank space down at Hoults Yard for a long overdue visit to our city for both JD Twitch and JG Wilkes, collectively known as 'Optimo'.

I won't run off at the mouth too much about them as I'm assuming that if you're reading this you'll already be aware of the gravity of reputation they hold. For anyone who may not realise this here's a a quick potted history.

Launched back in the late 1990s as Britain's 'superclubs' began to imploded, Optimo, - Jonnie Wilkes and Keith McIvor – alias JG Wilkes and JD Twitch – founded a regular Sunday night hoedown in fair Glasgow (somewhere round late '97 to be more accurate) at the Sub Club. With a music policy and party attitude that crossed borders, religions and philosophies of all kinds. And the rest, as they say, is history. Optimo, then went on to first take Glasgow, then the world.

Like John Peel before them, fundamentally they are true enthusiasts, easily among the UK’s most catholic and discerning record collector, their sets (bloated with the kind of exquisite obscurities that most would kill for) reflecting this with post-punk and acid house sitting comfortably along side krautrock, psyche and dub techno, never less than bang on the money.

They gave up regular Sunday night party in late 2010, setting their sights on a more regular international touring schedule as well as clearing out more time to focus on production, but recently they have been popping up on a bi-monthly basis back at The Sub Club.

So, Saturday see's  both Twitch and Wilkes team up (first time BOTH have played together in Newcastle!) once more to reprise the sound which defined Glasgow's last decade and a half. In these jaded times, Wilkes and Twitch make clubbing once again seem like the most exciting activity in the world.

Details on tickets and other stuff here.

Big love. X

Optimo Live @ Honey Soundsystem (02/12/12) by Thoughts On Love And Smoking. on Mixcloud

First look at 'Cosmos: A SpaceTime Odyssey'

In a in a follow up to my post about the new series of 'Cosmos' it turns out that the makers released the teaser trailer for the new show on YouTube earlier this week. With a visual tone somewhere between Aronofsky's  'The Fountain' and Terrence Malik's 'Tree Of Life' is more than apparent that the producers have thrown some pretty serious money at the show.

Presented by Neil deGrasse Tyson, 'Cosmos: A SpaceTime Odyssey' picks up where Carl Sagan’s iconic 'Cosmos: A Personal Voyage' left off. With the series is set to run on Fox and the National Geographic Channel in the US and a yet undisclosed channel in the UK (although word has it that Sky are in advanced negotiations to snap it up). With production by Seth MacFarlane and Sagan’s widow Ann Druyan, fingers crossed we could be waiting for the next big thing in 'must see' television!

About the author.

For years, Mark has pronounced the word 'Faux' as 'Fox'. Which doesn’t sound like that big of a deal until you step into a PETA meeting and announce to everyone in the room to 'relax' cause the coat you are wearing is made "entirely out of Fox Fur".

He is the bloke who pulls up too far away from the McDonalds drive-through and has to open his door to lay his entire body through the window to get his food. He lives in the hearts of hardworking Northerners. Anytime a stressed-out factory worker prays for the strength to finish another shift or a immigrant African baby sees snow for the first time, he is there.

In a much more literal sense, he lives outside Newcastle. He is 40 years old and has won several international awards in fields as diverse as music, street boxing, writing and lovemaking. He is a personal friend of Johan Cruyff and Desmond Tutu. He is also a liar.

Some have referred to Mark as a renaissance man, not because he is skilled in many disciplines, but because he has a 15th Century understanding of science and geography, also he has gout and carries around a sword. He thinks Kanye West is an airline, Billie Halliday was a rest day and that The Bay City Rollers are an attraction at Alton Towers theme park.

He is available for children’s parties - not to read or entertain; he just has a lot of free time and enjoys cake. This is his web-log: a 'blog' where Mark breaks all the rules. ,,,, Well, not ALL the rules,,,, the whole arson rule is definitely not broken and nothing like tax fraud, murder or anything serious like that. When I think about it, he still follows an overwhelming majority of the rules.

Here endeth the lesson.

My New Sitcom

Lets face it comedy sitcoms are utter rubbish these days, I swear I’ve seen funnier plots in a children’s cemetery. But don’t worry, since we dissolved our involvement in the old Tourist-Mag blog we've not just been sitting about resting on our arses, no no, we've been using the extra time this has free'd up writing this really top class sit-com to pitch to the Channel 4 or BBC 3 or sutin' and it's chock full of proper fucking hi-larious capers and stuff that I wanted to tell you cats about.

Like there’s this one scene where my brothers and I ask our Mum which one of us she loves the most and she responds, “It’s a tie …for last place!” (cue studio audience goeing PURE stark raving acka.) It’s full of super edgy, radge situations and stuff like that. Like there will be a scene where a poisonous snake bites my upper thigh right and my friend has to suck the poison out but he’s all hesitant to because he doesn’t want to appear to be a massive gaylord! Insert MEGALOLZ here!

You know, cause men would rather have their friends die screaming in front of them then to do something that kind of looks similar to something a homo person would do yeah?. That's just comedy! Here, I’m in stitches just thinking about it man. Also we are going to insert the word “bro” into other words,,,, a lot! Like a girl will ask my character, “Are you pro-life?” and I’ll respond “I’m bro-life!” Then I will high-five the one black guy friend I'm going to write into the show, who I will have a… wait for it…wait for it,,,,, 'bro-mance' with. FUCKING LOLZILLA!

Also a lot of this 'hip irreverent comedy' will focus around me and my pals relationship. The relationship will run the spectrum of 'It’s funny cause they are guys and have almost a ‘couples’ relationship, ya know, almost like they are gay but we know they are not from all the poon they slay.” to “it’s funny because they are uncomfortable in situations that may be misconstrued as gay.' LOL! Put on your laughing hats folks, it’s going to be a fucking LOLOCAUST!

Mark Algar: Let's never come here again because it will never be as much fun,,,, by Thoughts On Love And Smoking. on Mixcloud