The northlondonhippy

Archive for January, 2007

It seems I’m not the only one writ­ing about Celebrity Big Brother.

Since my last entry, it appears that the entire world, from here to Mum­bai and back again, is talk­ing about one thing: Celebrity Big Brother!

Who would have thought that a hum­ble lit­tle tele­vi­sion show could cause such inter­na­tional chaos?

Not me, that’s for sure, but in the last day even Tony Blair and Gor­don Brown have weighed in on the sub­ject. Yes, Big Brother is the big story!

All of this con­tro­versy has turned what I would describe as an oth­er­wise fairly sub-standard series into his­tory mak­ing tele­vi­sion. It is now offi­cially the most com­plained about pro­gramme ever!

It’s also improved the view­ing fig­ures with a mil­lion or more peo­ple tun­ing into the high­lights show on Chan­nel 4 over the last cou­ple of nights.

As always, Ende­mol win, but they’re not the only ones.

As hor­ri­bly as Shilpa Shetty is being treated, when she emerges from the house, she will be more pop­u­lar and more well known then ever before. As an entertainment-business com­mod­ity, she will be demand here in the UK as well as in India.

And if she wasn’t a Bol­ly­wood super­star before, she cer­tainly is now! Accord­ing to the media, her fel­low coun­try­men and women are very upset at how she is being treated by her CBB co-stars. There have been protests, gov­ern­ment state­ments; even her mother did the rounds on TV here in the UK to defend Shilpa.

But Shilpa requires no defence; for she has done noth­ing wrong, except to agree to come to the UK and appear on CBB. If she asked me, I would have told her to give it a miss.

Shipa’s sup­port is not just com­ing from India, as there are many peo­ple in the UK from var­ied back­grounds, who are behind her as well. We’re not all racist louts!

The biggest loser of this series has got to be Jade Goody and it will take a lot of work and skil­ful PR for her to regain her sta­tus in the indus­try. She’ll play the race card her­self and remind us that she is one-quarter black, but that’s no excuse. There is no excuse.

I don’t actu­ally believe racism is at the heart of all of this, though it cer­tainly has played a part. At the root of the col­lec­tive hatred of Shipa by the evil three in the house is even more basic. She’s different.

If Shilpa were a posh, rich, white chick from Chelsea, they would all still hate her; they would just choose dif­fer­ent ways of insult­ing her. If any­thing, dif­fer­ences in class and deco­rum are the more obvi­ous rea­sons; the fact that Shilpa is from India, just gives them an aspect of her being to ver­bally attack.

Jade, Jo and Danielle are not very bright; they do not know much about the wider world around them and are woe­fully igno­rant of other cul­tures. If Shilpa were some class­less, rude, skank, they would be friends with her, regard­less of her skin colour.

The rumour is that Shilpa will be up against Jade for evic­tion on Fri­day night. I sin­cerely hope this is true, as I think Jade deserves the most shock­ingly bad recep­tion ever as she comes out of the house and Shilpa deserves to stay. Dialling fin­gers to the ready, my beloved hippyfans!

Actu­ally, Shilpa deserves to win! Let’s make it happen!

I’m find­ing the cur­rent series of Celebrity Big Brother quite painful to watch.

That’s why my eyes ache!

It’s also why there’s been such a long gap between my pre­vi­ous entry and this one; but not for lack of try­ing. I’ve started my follow-up on CBB three times already, which makes this ver­sion the fourth.

I just haven’t felt inspired.

This series has a lot of prob­lems and I am quite sur­prised that I’m say­ing this. Usu­ally, Ende­mol have their act together, but this time around, that is not the case.

From their choice of par­tic­i­pants, to the pace of the pro­gramme„ Ende­mol have mis­cal­cu­lated badly and this is the first time I’ve felt like it’s a com­plete mess.

Remem­ber, I’m a big fan of BB and nor­mally I dig it; you can’t imag­ine my disappointment!

I won’t dis­pute that last year’s CBB series was a hard act to fol­low and one that I didn’t expect them to eas­ily top. They could have at least tried.

Per­haps all the good celebri­ties have worked out just how tough it is being in the BB house and they had trou­ble find­ing will­ing par­tic­i­pants. Maybe, no amount of dosh is enough to secure the ones they really wanted, so instead they had to set­tle for this sad group of B-listers.

I wanted to like them all, I hoped they would be enter­tain­ing, but all of my BB hopes and dreams were very quickly dashed.

First, Donny Douchebag walked. On launch night, his drunken antics showed some promise and I expected more out­ra­geous­ness to fol­low. No such luck, as he stayed sober and quiet right up until he legged it over the wall.

The krazy Ken Rus­sell skedaddled.

There’s a word you don’t see every­day; “skedaddled”.

Ken is one of the coolest film­mak­ers in this coun­try and if you don’t believe, pick up a copy of “Tommy”. Have a spliff, put your feet up and pre­pared to be daz­zled. And the music is from The Who, so you just can’t lose!

He came off as an old eccen­tric and at nearly eighty years old, he was the most elderly con­test ever in Britain. We didn’t get enough of him, before he calmly asked to leave, with only his slip­pers in his place. I wish he stayed longer.

And then there’s “Every­one loves Leo” Sayer. Who knew how screwed up he was? I mean besides his Mrs, who appar­ently shagged Donny Douchebag once, in Leo’s bed. Classy!

But I mean, Jesus wept! I would never have imag­ined that Leo was that bark­ing mad! In Leo-land, he’s as big as the Bea­t­les. In Leo-land, every­one loves him. In Leo-land, I bet his songs are still in the charts!

His depar­ture, I must say, was highly amus­ing and I did laugh out loud at his obvi­ous men­tal short­com­ings. Cruel? Yes, but I’m honest.

Here’s the thing, an amus­ing depar­ture makes good view­ing for a few min­utes, but it doesn’t make a series!

The house could have done with keep­ing all three, but they couldn’t hack it. Leo, because they wouldn’t give him some clean undies and the other two because of the dreaded Goodys!

I’ll say this right now; I like Jade. She is always funny, but the laughs do come from her igno­rance. Just ask her about Eskimos!

Jade also can be quite cruel, as demon­strated by her treat­ment of poor Shipa. Jade is the leader of a cruel cabal­ist coven of bitchy witches that includes Jo and the dim, pretty one. Ok, Danielle if I must. Together, the three of them are meaner than the mean girls in the film, “Mean Girls”.

Shilpa Shetty is a guest in this coun­try, who has not put a sin­gle foot wrong in that house. She has pos­sesses a level of poise and class that should com­mand more respect. She is a sweet, sen­si­tive woman who does not deserve the grief heaped upon her by those three “guttersnipes”.

Danielle, on the other hand, is extremely beau­ti­ful, but hasn’t got some much of a drop of either poise or class. I guess when you’re that hot look­ing, you rely on your beauty much more than your per­son­al­ity and damn it shows! Her per­son­al­ity makes her far less attrac­tive, but it’s not keep­ing her off the front pages of the tabloids almost every day.

Shilpa has more tal­ent in her lit­tle fin­ger than Danielle could ever pos­sess in ten life­times. Shilpa acts, she dances and she deserves the celebrity she has. Danielle is pretty; lots of girls are pretty, it’s just most of them don’t base their entire lives around their looks.

The next time you’re at your local high street or in a pub or night­club, look around you. I promise you’ll see women just as hot as Dani. They’re just not blow­ing foot­ballers in the twi­light years of their careers in exchange for a lit­tle noto­ri­ety. It’s not that they couldn’t eas­ily go to China White’s and pull a foot­baller, they just choose not to!

But back to the Goodys. I don’t think Ende­mol had an inkling of the ruc­tions Jade and her plus-two were going to cause in the house. They could have han­dled it much better

I think Jack­iey can be amus­ing too, but only in small doses. She took over the house the sec­ond she arrived, or rather or mouth did. She start­ing talk­ing when she walked through the front door and just didn’t stop. She’s prob­a­bly still some­where, still talking!

Jack, Jade’s toy-boy, gold-digging dun­der­head of a fiancé by con­trast is prac­ti­cally mute. He hardly every says any­thing and when he does, it only serves to show just how stu­pid he is.

And he spaffed all over Jade’s leg! That was just nasty!

As for the rest of them, Jer­maine is just plain weird, but seems decent enough. And yes, I know com­pared to some of the other mem­bers of his fam­ily, he’s actu­ally quite nor­mal, but that’s not really say­ing much.

The Face-Man, Dirk Bene­dict also seems like a decent enough guy, but there is an air of des­per­a­tion about him that you can almost smell com­ing through your television.

I think Cleo might be a proper, full-on manic-depressive, though to be fair I’m not actu­ally a clin­i­cal psy­chi­a­trist, so my opin­ion doesn’t really count.

Jo from S Club is actu­ally noth­ing like I expected from my first impres­sion of her. I’m quite dis­ap­pointed in her behav­iour and atti­tude. At least I admit when I’m wrong.

And H from Steps, or rather Ian, seems like quite a sen­si­tive guy, though he is try­ing way too hard to be everyone’s best friend. No won­der he was sob­bing in the loo!

Who do I think is going to win?

Who cares! None of them are win­ners in my book!

I’d like to see Shilpa win, just to piss off the bul­lies and to let her know that the UK isn’t chock full of racist louts. Of course we have are share, as does any coun­try, but most of us are noth­ing like that. Thank fuck!

When­ever Shilpa leaves the house, she is deserv­ing of a warm and cour­te­ous recep­tion and any­one boo­ing her should be shot on sight.

I’m issu­ing writ­ten instruc­tions to my per­sonal secu­rity staff right now. They are all ex-SAS, which means they cost a for­tune, but man oh man, they always get the job done!

Hello and wel­come to post num­ber five-hundred! I hope you enjoy your stay because this is a celebration!

I think, there­fore I blog, there­fore I am.

To blog, is to exist; to exist is to be alive.

Check me out with my beat­ing heart; look every­one, I’ve got a pulse.

No, wait. It’s more than that, much more.

Blog­ging is ther­apy on the cheap; it’s a venue to vent your inner­most thoughts and feel­ings, anony­mously, with­out fear of judge­ment or ridicule.

Blog­ging is a way of shar­ing your secret side with the entire world.

Blog­ging keeps me sane.

Well, sane-er.

I’m not going to bore you to tears with a mean­der­ing saunter down mem­ory lane. That’s not what this post is about, though I will touch on a lit­tle hippyhistory.

I started blog­ging at quite a low point in my life; I was between jobs, broke and gen­er­ally just a bit down. Start­ing my blog gave me some­thing to focus on that was sep­a­rate from my more imme­di­ate problems.

I’ve always writ­ten. I’ve writ­ten short sto­ries, screen­plays and even nov­els, but before I started the blog, that all couldn’t be said.

Ok, I did fin­ish some short sto­ries and short screen­plays, but noth­ing of any con­se­quence. The longer form projects I started, like fea­ture length screen­plays and nov­els, would always get dis­carded in dis­gust or left to whither on my hard drive, incomplete.

Blog­ging helped me to focus my writ­ing; it gave me dis­ci­pline and helped me to develop a rou­tine for get­ting things done.

You have to under­stand, when this blog is being neglected, it’s because I’m using my time to work on other, non-hippy-related projects of mine.

It’s not because I don’t love you all, because I do, deeply and with tongues.

With­out you hip­py­fans, this blog would be nothing.

If there’s no one in the for­est to hear that tree fall, then it really doesn’t make a sound.

I love this blog too. I see it as an exten­sion of my very being. I put my heart and soul into this blog, plus my blood, sweat and spunk.

Yuck.

Don’t worry; I washed my hands before typ­ing this.

The main rea­son I’d never tried to pub­lish or punt any­thing I’d writ­ten, up until I became the northlon­don­hippy, is a silly one:

Fear of failure.

If you always dream of doing some­thing, then you do it and you flop badly, then your dream dies. But if you never do it, then your dream can live forever.

Now, I’ve done it and not only does my dream still live, it thrives and it’s that much closer to being reality.

I wrote some­thing and put it some­where, where any­one could read it. And they did. And they didn’t hate it. I don’t want to blow my own hip­py­horn too much, but peo­ple more than “didn’t hate it; after all, you’re read­ing this right now!

The best advice I was ever given by a teacher came from an instruc­tor I had at uni­ver­sity that taught me play­writ­ing for a semester.

She was an award-winning play­wright, but that hadn’t always been the case and she strug­gled for years to get her first break in the busi­ness. As she relayed her tale of toil, she passed on the best advice she was ever given too; and I’ll share it with you now:

If you want to do some­thing you love, then do it and keep doing it and never be dis­cour­aged for if you stick with some­thing long enough, even­tu­ally you will succeed.

I’m going to be 44 years old this month. Go figure.

I’m mak­ing this sound like I haven’t had an inter­est­ing or reward­ing pro­fes­sional career, instead of writ­ing, but that’s not exactly true either.

For the last 20 years, I’ve worked in the media; mainly tele­vi­sion and mainly news. I’ve trav­elled exten­sively, I’m fairly well com­pen­sated, and I keep uncon­ven­tional hours and have done many uncon­ven­tional things. I’m very grate­ful for all the oppor­tu­ni­ties I’ve had and con­tinue to enjoy.

As I’ve said I’ve also con­tin­ued to write, but for myself, not for pub­lic consumption.

But, and yes there is a “but”, I’m bored with it all now and see it as mainly a pay­cheque. And more than that; I’m very jaded and start­ing to think I’m burn­ing out.

The truth is I’ve had enough.

I want to move away from what I do, back towards what I’ve always wanted to do, which is writ­ing. I want to write nov­els and screen­plays. I’d also like to pro­duce films and tv shows, instead of the relent­less real-life death and destruc­tion I have to face, every night.

I want a job where my col­leagues and mates don’t get killed in shitty lit­tle coun­tries that no one’s ever heard of!

What I need is one big fat fucker of a break!

And the silly thing is, I still think even­tu­ally it will come.

I haven’t been dis­cour­aged and I haven’t given up.

I don’t think this blog will bring me that break and if I’m hon­est, I never did. At best, I thought I would gar­ner a small, yet loyal cult fol­low­ing and I have, but that’s prob­a­bly down to my choice of sub­ject matter.

I write about drugs. A lot.

I also take drugs, a lot and have done since I was 18 years old.

I want peo­ple to know that some­one who uses drugs can be a respon­si­ble, tax-paying mem­ber of society.

I want peo­ple to under­stand that intel­li­gent, edu­cated, pro­fes­sional peo­ple enjoy more than alco­hol and tobacco when they want to relax, or escape the pres­sures and stress of daily life.

I’ve smoked weed, every day for nearly 26 years. And I don’t mean a cou­ple of puffs, either. Con­trary to what you might think, it hasn’t made me lazy or stupid.

And the for­get­ful­ness? I put that down to my advanc­ing years, bad diet and poor sleep patterns!

Dope has kept me sane and grounded since I first dis­cov­ered it. It com­pletes me; it makes me feel whole. With­out it, I wouldn’t be who I am.

And who am I?

I’m the one true genius of the 21st century.

I’m a mes­siah for the new millennium.

I’m the hippy you all adore because I am total media whore!

Ah-hem.

Once I found out that every­thing every­one ever said about cannabis was a lie, I tried other drugs, but none of them matched my absolute love of weed…

…except one, my beloved and dearly departed, fresh and legal magic mush­rooms, which the gov­ern­ment took away from us in the sum­mer of 2005. The fuckers!

Shrooms were partly respon­si­ble for me start­ing this blog as my enjoy­ment of them was peak­ing just as I fired up Blog­ger for the first time.

I dis­cov­ered magic mush­rooms were legal the same time I stum­bled onto everyonedoesit.com and pur­chased my first batch from them.

I also became a user of the everonedoesit.com (or EDIT) forums and it was there I first coined used the name “northlon­don­hippy” and if it wasn’t for them, I might not be blog­ging today.

That’s part of the rea­son I have adverts for EDIT on the site. It’s partly their fault that I’m here so they might as well pony up a bit of dosh!

But I also am affil­i­ated with them because I con­tinue to be a cus­tomer and forum reader and have had noth­ing but 100% pos­i­tive expe­ri­ences shop­ping with them.

And more than that, EDIT are a shin­ing exam­ple of what the world could be like if weed were legal! It’s the one thing I really wish they could stock, but prob­a­bly not as much as they would! EDIT are very good at what they do. Whether you use a link from my site or not, I heartily rec­om­mend shop­ping with them, if they stock any­thing that catches your eye.

Look, I know my blog isn’t like other blogs. I know I don’t do 10 short posts a day, link­ing to other people’s sites. I know I post spo­rad­i­cally and that my posts can be long.

But I also know that my blog is very per­sonal and that I always tell the truth. I strive for orig­i­nal­ity; I try to be cre­ative, thought pro­vok­ing, acces­si­ble, and humorous.

I try to make you laugh, make you think and make you wish you were a hippy too!

I try to inform.

I try to entertain.

I try to be myself.

I just try.

I would like to thank all of you, the thou­sands and thou­sands of you around the world, who have vis­ited my blog and found some­thing to keep you com­ing back again and again. I hope you keep com­ing back for the next 500 posts too!

And yes, you read that cor­rectly, it’s not mil­lions, but thou­sands. I don’t have an exact count.

Don’t for­get, I’m not obscure; I’m just under­ground, so well done you for reach­ing my site! You are now part of the van­guard of the inter­net elite!

And now, as promised, I’m going to dis­close the win­ner of the “win a week­end with the hippy contest”!

I have to say, even I was sur­prised by the num­ber of entries I received and choos­ing a win­ner, was, well, it was actu­ally pretty easy because many of the emails I received, ummm, shall I politely say were some­what “eccentric”.

How­ever, one entry stood out ahead of the rest and I will share it with you now, minus any iden­ti­fy­ing details about the winners.

And you read that right too; “win­ners” as in plural; there are two of them. Here’s the win­ning email:
===
“Hello hippy!

When we first read about your con­test, we thought it was a joke. After read­ing your blog we know its seri­ous and we want to win you for a week­end, but would you really come to Hull?

We are two uni stu­dents, both girls and love to party and smoke gear. We’d be into you com­ing up and stay­ing with us in our shared house. We have a spare futon you can sleep on and can promise you a wild week­end of get­ting off your face and hav­ing a right larf with two wild women!

For the night out, we want to go out for a nice meal and prob­a­bly take you to a party where we can get high. Don’t worry on a Sat­ur­day night there is always a party!

Please choose us hippy, please!

Love,
(2 names — both removed)
xxx

PS
We’ve attached a pic of us from a party last week, so you can see how wasted we look!”
===

So this hippy is going to Hull, which is only one let­ter away from Hell and I’m prob­a­bly going there too, just not as soon. I hope.

I’ve been in touch with the win­ners and I’m head­ing up to see them some­time in Feb­ru­ary. I’m just wait­ing for my work sched­ule before we pin down the date.

The win­ners seem really nice and yes, they do look totally toasted in the photo they sent, which I will not post here!

I’m going to jump in my lit­tle black Yaris, grab my sat­nav and load up up my iPod with a really long playlist and head to Hull. I think it could be a lengthy drive!

Oh why couldn’t the hot chicks have been in Amsterdam!

Fear not, I shan’t be tak­ing undue advan­tage of their hos­pi­tal­ity, I’m a great house­guest; neat, tidy and exceed­ingly respect­ful of my host’s home. I’m a plea­sure to be around too!

And don’t worry; I would like to reas­sure my read­ers (and Mrs. Hippy!) that noth­ing unto­ward will hap­pen while I’m there, no mat­ter how much they beg for a glimpse or taste of my cock.

And even though I’m old enough to be their father, I won’t let them call me daddy either!

Just when you thought it was safe to switch your TV set back on, along comes the 5th series of Celebrity Big Brother!

I’m the last per­son to com­plain, I’m a big fan of the for­mat, as count­less pre­vi­ous posts will confirm.

This year’s series looks like it’s going to be a fun one, with pos­si­bly the odd­est mix of par­tic­i­pants in the his­tory of the programme.

OK, we’re lack­ing the shocks pro­vided by the inclu­sion of George Gal­loway and Ger­maine Greer, but come on, Ken Russell’s pres­ence is pure genius!

I realise that is prob­a­bly lost of most view­ers of CBB. I’m not being snob­bish about this; he’s not as well known as Steven Spiel­berg, is he? He’s prob­a­bly not even as well known as Guy Ritchie! And that’s a pity, but I expect peo­ple will be redis­cov­er­ing his films all over the place now!

Ken Rus­sell is the sort of direc­tor that film crit­ics sali­vate over and media watch­ers every­where will be going into melt­down. Big Ken gives a new respectabil­ity to CBB, and adds a level of intel­lec­tual mas­tur­ba­tion never seen before on the show. Well done, Endemol.

The fact that he’s push­ing 80 and the mere act of enter­ing the house seemed to sap him of what lit­tle energy he had, should be some cause of con­cern, as I think if he died in the house, they might choose to pre­ma­turely end the run. That would suck; I want to see it go to its full 25 ago­nis­ing days!

Ken’s already flashed his cock and balls at the dumb pretty girl who was Miss Pretty UK or some­thing and now sleeps with a foot­baller. I’m not over­sim­pli­fy­ing, am I?

She’ll prob­a­bly turn les­bian after that see­ing his “meat and two veg”, but let’s just hope she does so in the house with that other pretty girl, the one from India. I’ve never heard of her, but then I don’t know any­thing about Bol­ly­wood except that there’s a lot of singing and dancing.

Ok, so they are a bunch of nobod­ies. So what? In their minds, they are extremely impor­tant and very well known. Just look at Michael Jackson’s brother, Jer­maine. He thinks every­one knows who he is and judg­ing by the reac­tions of the other celebri­ties upon meet­ing him; that might not be 100% true.

Or Leo Sayer, who had hit records when this old hippy was a teenager twist­ing the night away at a school disco. Have his songs moved up the iTunes charts yet? They will.

The theme this year does appear to be singers, with the 2 for­mer 90s pop stars, Jer­maine, Leo and that young guy with the blonde hair doing the Spinal Tap impres­sion! If that’s his audi­tion, well done and I’m sure they’ll find a slot for him around 1am at the Com­edy Store!

I know he calls him­self Donny Douchebag or some­thing, but come on! He’s a cliché of a par­ody of a CHEAP ANGRY SPINAL TAP IMPRESSION!

Did you see? He pissed in the shower before he dis­cov­ered there was a sep­a­rate toi­let. Doh! You could splice that scene seam­lessly into the “Spinal Tap”. If you like Donny, get the DVD and pre­pare to piss your pants! Or your shower!

The hot middle-aged lady from the Kenny Everett video show seems lik­able enough, if a bit mad. Noth­ing wrong with that! I bet she inspired some furtive wank­ing in her day, and prob­a­bly still does today.

Oh and for the record, I’m the same age as Cleo, so that makes me mid­dle aged too.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and ven­ture that the out­side favourite at this point is the only girl from S-Club that could actu­ally sing. The book­ies like Leo Sayer too, but I’m giv­ing her the edge. Wait till she belts out a few tunes!

And I know her name, it’s Jo O’Meara and she had some spinal prob­lems that got in the way of her pop career. She’s seems fine now and good luck too her.
I read the tabloids, so I know this stuff. I can’t help it. We all have our use­less areas of expertise.

Jo seems down to earth, at least in the lit­tle bit I’ve seen.

And what’s the deal with the A-Team guy?

How des­per­ate and/or broke is he? I think we all know the answer to that one! He comes off sharp and witty and I get the feel­ing it’s going to take a lot to get him to snap.

Is it going to be entertaining?

Isn’t it always!

I pre­dict we’ll like some of them and hate some of them and every one of us will have dif­fer­ent list for both cat­e­gories. That’s just how it goes.

Bring on the next 3 and half weeks! Let them all go men­tal! Arm them with rusty knives and fill their heads with high-quality blot­ter acid. Starve them of food so they have to resort to can­ni­bal­ism and that lit­tle blond guy from Steps gets spit-roasted, but not in the way he’s dreamt of all his life. Send three gen­er­a­tions of Jade’s fam­ily into the house next door…

You know, some things are just too hideous to imag­ine. I’m sure glad there’s no chance that’s going to hap­pen tonight!

PS
This really is your last chance to enter the “win the hippy for a week­end” con­test! Go on, you know you want me!
Click here for the orig­i­nal post with all the details!

The win­ner will be announced soon!

Greet­ings and Happy New Year to all of my beloved hip­py­fans! May this year be bet­ter than the last one!

Yes, 2006 sucked the big one, but now it’s rel­e­gated to his­tory, which is exactly where that shitty year belongs.

You don’t need me to tell you how crappy 2006 was; every other form of media has done the entire ‘year in review’ thing to death. I won’t go there.

For me, 2006 had a cou­ple of minor high­lights, but over­all it wasn’t any­thing spe­cial. Mostly, it was just another year.

It was another year full of death, destruc­tion and despair. The weather turned angry, the death toll in Iraq con­tin­ued to climb and our per­sonal lib­er­ties con­tinue to be method­i­cally stripped away. I’m sure none of that will hap­pen in 2007!

2006 ended with three famous peo­ple kick­ing the bucket. Celebrity deaths tend to come in threes any­way, which is a real night­mare for the PR peo­ple that coor­di­nate these things, but some­how they manage.

Ger­ald R. Ford, for­mer pres­i­dent and VP, not elected to either office, granter of a par­don for Richard M. Nixon (who despite his own protes­ta­tions to the con­trary, was a crook), popped his clogs at the age of 93. The papers keep call­ing him “the acci­dent pres­i­dent”, but let’s face it, he’s a foot­note to a foot­note and he’ll get his big state funeral and that will be that. His wife, Betty is more sig­nif­i­cant, with her Betty Ford Cen­tre and good work high­light­ing the prob­lems of sub­stance abuse. I thought she was dead too, but I saw her on TV the other day. Sorry, Betty.

The next death was the god­fa­ther of soul, Mr. James Brown. Brown was about as influ­en­tial as you can be in music. If you have ever heard a hip-hop or rap record made in the last 20 years, then chances are you, you’ve heard sam­ples from James Brown’s music in the back­ing tracks. Try Googling “Funky Drum­mer”, the most sam­pled drum beat in the his­tory of sam­pling comes from this track.

I was work­ing the night before Brown died and I caught a news wire that said he had been admit­ted to hos­pi­tal with pneu­mo­nia, but was expected to be released in time to per­form the fol­low­ing Sat­ur­day. That was enough for me not to think he was going to die. By the time I got home, it was break­ing news that he was dead. Ooooops, I guess I shouldn’t believe every­thing I read.

Except of course on the northlon­don­hippy website!

James Brown was a one of kind, wild man and damn he liked to party! He was a true orig­i­nal and will be missed very much.

The third celebrity death is the one I find the most trou­bling and I’m not really sure why. Some­thing was decid­edly unset­tling about the exe­cu­tion of for­mer Iraqi pres­i­dent Sad­dam Hus­sein and I’m sure I’m not the only one to feel this way.

I’m not going to debate whether or not he deserved to be exe­cuted. He was an evil dic­ta­tor, respon­si­ble for the deaths of thou­sands of peo­ple on Iraqi soil. He was a crim­i­nal and a thug.

I’m more inter­ested in how it was done, in such a piti­ful and pathetic man­ner. I’m more inter­ested in the speed in which the death sen­tence was car­ried out, as if it needed to be done as soon as possible.

Now that we’ve all seen both videos, the offi­cial exe­cu­tion film shot by the Iraqi gov­ern­ment and the camera-phone video, shot by a wit­ness, we know exactly just how half-assed the entire thing was and how it lacked in dignity.

You can argue that Sad­dam didn’t show any mercy or dig­nity to any of his vic­tims. I’d agree with that. But we’re sup­posed to be bet­ter than that. We’re sup­posed to rise above the behav­iour of our enemies.

We’re sup­posed to do a lot of things.

Sad­dam Hus­sein was an evil man, a dic­ta­tor, and a morally rep­re­hen­si­ble piece of shit that got his just rewards. Sad­dam Hus­sein was also a human being, a father, a son, a for­mer pres­i­dent and leader of a sov­er­eign coun­try, who at a min­i­mum deserved to be treated some minor level of respect and dignity.

A soci­ety can be judged how it treats it ene­mies and in this exe­cu­tion, we weren’t any bet­ter than the man we put to death. He may have deserved to die, but he didn’t deserve to be taunted and ridiculed in the last moments of his life. No one does.

Let’s look at it another way: If you feel that a pres­i­dent deserves to be put to death for being respon­si­ble for the ille­gal, unsanc­tioned killings of thou­sands of peo­ple on Iraqi soil, then Sad­dam shouldn’t be the only one swing­ing by the neck, should he?

I’m not jok­ing. Isn’t it time George W. (for war­mon­ger) Bush should be sent to The Hague and be put on trial for crimes against human­ity? He won’t face the death penalty there, which is far more mercy than he showed his sworn enemy, who tried to kill his daddy.

No, I don’t want to bring Sad­dam back; the world is bet­ter off with­out him. But then, that would be true if he remained in prison until his nat­ural death as well. Killing Sad­dam was blood lust and victor’s priv­i­lege. It righted no wrongs.

Two wrongs only make another wrong.

Will 2007 be any bet­ter? As a con­stantly dis­ap­pointed opti­mist, I can hope.