Thursday 2 July 2015

PBC MAKES SHOCKiING ANNOUNCEMENT.


'SEVENTIES CELEBRITY NOT A PAEDO.

The PBC today said it was shocked and saddened to report that Mr Val "Val"  Doonican, who has died, aged very old, is not suspected of having used his long career as the Corporation's Mr Pullover to sexually assault children and young persons. We are deeply saddened, said a spokesman, that, as far as we know, Uncle Val failed completely to  carry out the Corporation's mission, despite being given every opportunity; he had dressing rooms and access to many children  yet he never fingered, fondled or fucked any of them. The Corporation would like to apologise to the paedophile community for its failure in this matter.
Mr Paul Gambuccini, 
a PBC stalwart, said that he had always known that Val Doonican was not a beast but had refrained from saying so because it might have damaged his career - fronting the odd quiz show and gossiping about Freddie Mercury. 
Being a straight, family man simply wasn't the done thing, back then, and if I'd admitted to knowing about Val Doonican it would have meant the end of my career, darling.

Mr Alan Slime, 
the PBC's Head of Arts, simpered that Doonican had been one of the PBC's great artistic failures; he didn't take drugs, eat shit, whip womem or fuck children, hardly an artist at all. We must redouble our efforts never to employ anyone like him ever again.

 Lord Belbin Bagg, 
head of art, culture, history, science, theology, literature,  philosophy and porno novels across Radio Four, said, Id is quite disgustig, Doodigan was do more dan an enderdainah, sigig simble songs for  simble peebul. quide disgraceful, thankfully, he wood never geddaway wid id today.


Gay Pride
 said it would convene a special march, all around the world, to protest the fact that the PBC had for so long employed a heterosexual in a light entertainment role.  Gay people have been forced to endure this sort of thing for far too long.


Lord and Lady Sir Elton John  
joined the Doonican backlash, vowing to rewrite Lady Sir Elton's greatest hit, reshaping it into A Candle Up Paddy McGinty's Goat  or maybe Up Delaney's Donkey - the final artistic decisions haven't been made yet - and donating the royalties to themselves.  
I mean, said Lord and Lady BabyFarmer, 
Val Doonican, 
he didn't even buy his own children.

20 comments:

Bungalow Bill said...

Saturday night with Val on telly, a thousand years ago.

call me ishmael said...

Aye, dreams, now, mr bungalow bill, from before Sodom.

mongoose said...

When I was little, I couldn't tell the difference between Val Doonican and Des O'Connor.

call me ishmael said...

Des is much older. He compered the brief Buddy Holly tour of the UK. He's older than Death, Mr Dick-a-Dum-Dum.

Bungalow Bill said...

I know we've said it all before but it is breathtaking that the Masters of Europe should so presume to fuck over an entire nation by pure economic colonisation. The fucking impertinence of the Krauts, in particular, a paltry seventy years on, is so staggering that most are dazzled by it. Five hundred years of shamed silence and humility on the world stage would not suffice, it really wouldn't.

Of course, it is all floated and funded by the Tyrant Dollar (their own multi-trillion dollar indebtedness, including a heap to China, being a detail of power).

They don't care and will slash and burn if they must. Bad days ahead, despite our prayers.

Bungalow Bill said...

sorry should be on other thread - not sure Val had much to offer on geopolitics.

call me ishmael said...

It remains a measure of my naivety that I simply do not understand why Germany wasn't dismantled in 1945; if ever a bunch of tribes had forfeited the right to nationhood, surely it was these fucking vermin.

I am still jaw-dropped at the sight. last week, of TortureBoy Obama singing Amazing Grace, the GodlessHeathenFuckingDevilWorshippingPsychoBastard.

Alexius said...

Another gem, Mr Ishmael! I watched a BBC 4 documentary on Val a few years back and found myself weeping for our lost innocence. `The happy highways where I went/ and cannot come again.`

Caratacus said...

Dear old Val ... I remember being much amused when younger to hear him singing Simon & Garfunkel's 'The Boxer' "... just a come-on from the girls on Seventh Avenue ..." No mention of whores there for our Val, not at Saturday teatime anyway. But there were indeed times when he was so lonesome that he took some comfort there.

call me ishmael said...

Thanks, mf alexius, I don't know when it happened, that the entertainer turned preacher, proselytiser, Bob Dylan, I guess, and the dreadful, druggy doggerel of Sgt. Pepper's; for Dylan, the protest dimension was just a means to a showbiz end but for far too many angst and grievance and faux outrage proved hugely lucrative, the Smiths, U2, Preacher Geldof, Coldplay, REM, so many; I know very little about them but a glance is enough; philosopher kings, waving their cocks at retarded teenyboppers. I always found Doonican pleasant enough, Matt Munro was a huge talent, in his field; Dusty Springfield was amazing; it was still a commercial transaction, they were paid entertainers, but that was it; now, pop music is just a branch of the porn industry, a confessional and a soapbox for gabshites, like Geldof and his rancid family.

I said, when she died, that her father should have put Amy Winehouse over his knee, the worthless, preening bastard, and she might still be alive, glad to see somebody's now made a film along those lines.

call me ishmael said...

Ithink I remember that, too, your majesty, and not just Val Doonican, nobody sang that line. It took a hundred hours in the studios, The Boxer, longest time ever, then, for a single; worth every second, in my view.

Simon has managed to stay a musician, hasn't he, his only sins plagiarism, here and there.

Caratacus said...

I still have the album, Mr. I., ('Trouble Over Bridgwater' uz calls it down yer in the West Country) which I purchased all those years ago using money made working on the mackeral boats and trawlers during the long summer holidays. I can sing along to every track almost word perfectly - while remembering little of what happened just two weeks ago ...

Paul Simon is and was a musician of outstanding talent, but I have been touchingly unaware of any accusations of plagiarism on his part. Unlike Led Zeppelin, for example, who think that 'trad arr.' will suffice for lifting other peoples' work wholesale. Still have their albums too!

call me ishmael said...

Well, there was the uncredited adaptation of O haupt vul blud und wunden, from Bach's St Matthew's Passion, in American Tune, see ishmael passim; Martin Carthy taught him his own arrangement of the traditional Scarborough Fair, which he then copyrighted as his own and there are endless stories circulating on the net about his defiantly stealing tapes he had commissioned from young NY bands, around the time of Gracelands, and him telling the complainants that he had bigger lawyers than they did. I have read a lot of that stuff and I am inclined to believe it. I do not disagree, howeverm about his musicianship, he was never known to make a foolish move, apart from touring, recently, with the abomination, Sting.

Simon lacks the lyrical punch of Jackson Browne and the virtuosity of Ry Cooder but just for The Boxer and The Only Living Boy In New York, he deserves a place on the American bandstand, alongside Steven Foster and Cole Porter.

Led Zeppelin are filth. If you haven't, look on youtube for the great Steve Marriot on the wretched Robert Plant. Filth, just filth, not even showbusiness liked them.

Caratacus said...

Jesus, Mr. I., every day, as they say, is a school day.

SG said...

The last two pictures bring out the inner Nick Griffen in me - creepy or what? If you could spare a little mind bleach it would be appreciated Mr I - I seem to have run out!

call me ishmael said...

I think that's what the two couples mean to do, mr sg, push Decency over the edge. I do struggle with myself about this, if those two boys want to play like that in private then that's none of my business but I don't and will not see fetishism as a matter of Pride and I don't know how I would explain it to a child in the same public space as them. I suppose, also, that - for heteros as well as homos - a culture in which nothing is behind closed doors, left to the imagination, taboo, is on the Highway to Snuff, the Road to Dolphin Square. When you've done everything that you shouldn't, only murder remains.

As for Reg and his baggage, I think mrs woar summed them up best, baby farmers.

call me ishmael said...

Yeah, Hail, Hail, Rock'n'Roll, king caratacus; Schoolday, Maybelline, Johnny B Goode, Roll Over Beethoven; 'tis pity he's nigger, eh, Chuck Berry, or he'd be King.

Alphons said...

call me ishmael said...

It remains a measure of my naivety that I simply do not understand why Germany wasn't dismantled in 1945; if ever a bunch of tribes had forfeited the right to nationhood, surely it was these fucking vermin.


Interesting that you should say that Mr Ishmael. I was at grammar school for the last two or three years of the war. The "A" stream of the last three years were "classics" oriented and the "B" stream, which I happily managed to get into, was "science" oriented. Strangely enough the one language that the "B" stream had to learn was German. When I enquired "Why" I was told that they were very good scientist and unless I learned German I would not be able to read the works of the worlds greatest scientist.
At the time I thought to myself "What a lot of bullshit! Germany will be destroyed forever at the end of this war."
Just shows how ignorant I really was about reality!!!

Woman on a Raft said...

I recommend a youtube clip of Doonican singing Delaney's Donkey.

Delaney's Donkey

Comic song, yes, but look at the technical mastery of language needed to perform it. There are barely any groany-grunty slides to cover up inaccuracy although Doonican adds a controlled growl under a few words to indicate the rising lunacy of the situation.

The chorus changes on each iteration capturing the hysteria. It demands a perfect memory and beautiful diction because hanging on to the rhythm is not going to be enough. The performer has to deliver each word in every verse. To make it work they have to get the contractions and stresses in the right places or else two lines further on it will sound like a bucket falling downstairs.

Within those stanzas the writer, William Hargreaves, plays word-jenga with every syllable and challenges the performer to keep the structure up - which Doonican does, adding relaxed charm, as if this were passing the time of day and not a virtuoso demonstration of performance poetry.

The music is a hand-hold for the audience rather than the artist. Further to Mr Caratacus, in the linked performance Doonican substitutes 'the whole lot' for 'the darn lot', and he can because he knows what he is doing. He is right - 'whole' works better in the line than 'darn' because of the long 'o' is more expressive there than the short 'da' which clips the line.

You'll have to decide for yourself if Hargreaves was telling more than an animal joke about a conspiracy to get a hopless case declared a winner. But in case you think that is pretentious, consider how he makes Hagan and Fagan, students of psychology, suggest dynamiting it.

call me ishmael said...

I learned it literally, bounced, on my mother's knee, mrs woar, Riley rehearsin' it, everybody cursiin' it and, in the way of these things, felt a bit betrayed when Doonican put it all over the telly. I still mutter it to myself, a lifetime later; the wordplay, as you say, is magical, Delaney's Donkey, who knows, perhaps shaping such absurdist cadences as occasionally leaven these commentaries - I do often remark, to mr tdg and others, that these are but street songs, whistled; busking, down on the corner, passers-by joining-in.

I didn't know about Hargreaves, I'll google his ass.