Storm in a pee cup.

I can't see why urinating in a mug and then cleaning it is reason not to stand for public office.

Jerry Bance, a Conservative candidate in Canada’s forthcoming election, has had to stand down for doing just that, and everyone over there is going on and on about it. He, in return, is indulging himself in the Canadian national pastime of apologising all the time.

I wouldn’t stand for public office either, but it’s not because I’ve more than once relieved myself in non-ensuite hotel rooms’ wash basins at three in the morning when I didn’t fancy performing the bishop’s waltz down a darkened corridor with no idea into whom I might bump.

It’s because I flatter myself that I’m a reasonably honest bloke who doesn’t like to lie, dissemble and pretend to believe in things I don’t.

And I rinse out those wash basins too, which brings me to the nub of my argument: SO DID HE. Had he left it there for all to see, I think he would be justifiably disqualified on the grounds of being completely bonkers as well as disturbingly malicious. But he didn't: he did what any sane and socially adjusted person would have done and washed the mug up.

Be honest: how many people ever do THAT in your office's staff kitchen? Be even more honest: DO YOU?

Anyway, given that Bance is a politician, I’d have thought there’s a good chance that his opponents might more honestly (if not more politically profitably) pin one of the above failings on him - lying, dissembling and so on - and thus do him in good and proper.

But no: in North America cheap personal attacks are the way to go, and this is common to both left and right.

Over here we are starting to heave ourselves out of our own, er, bog of irrelevance in these matters, sexual indiscretion. But we’re fast replacing it with a form of character-assassination made worse because it omits those aspects of character that really do need to be examined and neglects common, unspectacular decencies like telling the truth and washing up after yourself.

And be careful, all you up there on the moral high-ground: what goes around comes around.

The Examined Life, 6

“Sir.”

“Yes, Eusebio?”

“Churchill was a dog, wasn’t he?”

“I imagine some of the less reputable among the Germans may once have held that opinion, but I have to say it’s not one many share; in fact ...”

“But he was a dog, Sir, wasn’t he! Tell him, Sir!”

“Tell whom, Eusebio?”

“Him! He’s shtoopid, he is!”

“Why, pray?”

“He thinks he was a MAN!”

On National Stereotypes

National stereotypes are great fun if deployed only in fun, and try as I might I can't shift them. For example, as I was walking around the centre of Troyes early yesterday morning I came across a little scruffy old guy shuffling along in shabby clothes, wearing what looked like old-style NHS specs, with a few teeth missing and a distant, ill-focused but nonetheless intense look on his face.

If I'd been in Britain I'd have assumed he was an alcoholic. As it was France, I assumed he was a philosopher. Thus are histories made, told and digested.

Talk properly, Peston!

A small consolation to the Greeks in their troubles must surely be that, unlike the British, they don't have to listen to the BBC's Economics Editor Robert Peston talking about them all the time.

Just hearing the man on the radio makes me seasick. The yawning pauses; the vocal gurnings; the yelp as another vowel is stretched drumskin tight on the rack of his ambition; the sudden barked expostulation that wakes the cat.

The Ralph-and-Hughie of it all.

Or like a nun on a funfair death ride. That awful realisation, as the momentum of a Pestonian sentence slows to the pace of a haemorrhoidal snail, that it will soon plunge to its - and possibly my - death in a bucket of breathless blether!

Why, the man defies the very gravity of the situations he describes!

Peston really does seem to think that he is another Peter Snow. But Evan Davis already occupies that berth. The others have the advantage that they are genuinely and lovably a bit bonkers. But Peston hasn't even so much as a speech impediment. He is a man who is visibly and above all audibly trying to be eccentric, and in both senses trying too hard.

It's a front. 

If anyone is to spend night and day standing outside their parliament while the fount of western civilisation dries up for good and all, I think that the Greek people need - if perhaps they don't fully deserve - a little better right now, don't you?

And don't look at me like that.
JUST TALK PROPERLY, MAN.

The Examined Life, 5

Me: Right! Just 12 minutes and 33 seconds have elapsed and call me a doctor but we have the register completed and I've even squeezed in one of my turns as a result. Staying in that groove, last lesson we were learning about the revolution of 1917 and how it changed the whole of the 20th century. Who can tell me in which country it took place? Hands up and don't ...

“Pakistan!”

No. Pakistan didn't exist in 1917. And you know the rule: put your hand up and don’t  shout out.

“Berlin!”

NO. Berlin’s a city not a country. And PUT YOUR HAND UP AND DO NOT SHOUT OUT.

“Hitler!”

PUT. YOUR. HAND. UP. AND. DO. NOT. SHOUT. OUT! And no, Hitler isn't a country either, though he seemed to think he was.

"Germany! Islamabad!"

SEE ME AFTER. Yes, Flatulence, you have your hand up!

“Pakistan.”

No, Flatulence: we’ve done that one already.

“OOOH OOOH OOOH AARGH AARGH Sir Sir SIR!”

Ah, well met Cappadoccio! You're clearly in pain but at least you've managed to get your hand up! Now is it just an ambulance you're after OR ARE YOU ABOUT TO ANSWER MY FUCKING* QUESTION?

“Can I go to the toilet?”

NO. Try again, Cappadoccio.

“Islamabad!”

Go to the toilet, Cappadoccio. Now let’s all calm down and F.O.C.U.S.: WHERE WAS THE REVOLUTION OF 1917? LOOK. AT. THE. SCREEN. AND. TELL. ME. WHAT R-U-S-S-I-A SPELLS. It's the 6-letter word concluding the sentence which starts, "The Revolution of 1917 happened in ..." Ah, Vladimir! Here comes a trusty Cossack to rescue this stricken Tsar!

“Poland?”

“FRANCE!”
“ISLAMABAD!”
"KARACHI!"
"HENRY KISSINGER!"
"Sir, what are those things on your arms?"

PUT. YOUR. HAND. UP. AND. DO. NOT. etc. etc.


* I made that last word up.

Dead Man Walking

You know how it is: you're a bit hard up and so you sign up with one of those casting and extras agencies that promises regular well-paid work in exotic locations around the globe and then you sit around for months and don't hear a thing so in the end you decide it's a complete waste of time so you're going to de-register the next morning and you even have a couple of bevvies to celebrate and then you wake up with a bit of a bear on you only to find your first ever email from the bastards and it starts "Based on the information you gave us when creating your profile we've found a job that matches your skill set and for which you may wish to apply" and you think well OK now what the hell and you scroll down and it's for an effing CORPSE and you think well I certainly feel like one and that's at least a good start so you click on the link and they tell you you have to pay a £120 annual fee to even look at it and I don't know why I bother with anything any more I really don't.

The Dinosaurs are Dead

The new Jurassic Park movie will involve a 'genetically manipulated dinosaur that goes wrong'. As if 'real' dinosaurs weren't interesting enough!

This is another example of expectation inflation: the self-fulfilling assumption that people have such short and impatient attention spans that even the marvellous is not enough, and the recognition that if there's money to be made from the fact, then that's quite OK.

And I hadn't even seen an Ankylosaurus yet.