May Contain Notts

There It Is, you fat banjo-twanging CUNT

2008-08-06T11:36:00.004+01:00

May Contain Notts' previously dormant interest has been piqued by goings-on in the charming village of Cotgrave, where a local mouth-breather has been given three years for racially harassing a local takeaway, making them deliver pizzas to his house, and generally gooin' abaaht reckoning he's summat. (There was a picture of him on the Post website, but it's gone. But then again, all these twats look the same - imagine a gibbon that's been licking lead paint off a stick all day, and then had a full-body shave). Christ on a crisp packet, it's one thing to run a shop and get robbed by the local Deliverance extra. It's another thing entirely to actually have to take the shit to the fucker's house. Deepest sympathies to the Shalimar takeaway (you can't miss it - it's in between Five Star Key-Cutters and Kid Creole Krazy Kuts).

The problems started after Mahboob Ulhaq, owner of Shalimar, Cotgrave, gave a police statement about one of Raynor's friends.

Raynor stormed into the takeaway and said: "You are in my village, do as I say."

Yeah, I've seen that sign; "WELCOME TO COTGRAVE. A BIG FAT CUNT WITH BITS OF PEPPERONI IN HIS TEETH OWNS IT. DO WHAT HE SAYS AT ALL TIMES". I bet he even waved a fist dead close to his face like Bully Beef while he was saying it, an'all.

Thankfully, there's a silver lining amongst all this racist mouth-breathery. We've all had our doubts about the standards of hygiene in certain pizza places. After reading this story, I have the comforting image in my head of a kitchen in Cotgrave, with Jeffrey Daniel and Howard Hewett lowering their leather disco trousers and masturbating furiously onto a deep-crust, while Jody Watley empties her nostrils Rugby League-style onto a garlic bread, and all of them growling "Gonna make THIS a night to remember, BITCH".

This is why bus prices go up in Nottingham

2008-04-03T17:31:00.001+01:00

(and hey! Handy access to the hospital, just in case you take too much advantage of those low, low prices)

Thanks to Rob White - no, not for the drugs, for the pic

LL 22 is hard as HELL, battle anybody I don't care who you TELL

2008-03-29T14:24:00.006Z

Apologies for my rubbish maintenance of this blog, but I'm currently editing LeftLion while the proper Ed is poncing off round the world. As you can see by that skill cover above, it might just have been worth it. Alas, Page 6 - featuring a bleddy mint article about Gay Nottingham by the chap who writes this blog - was mangled beyond recognition for some reason, so we've thrown it up on the website. You can - and should - read it here.

Other features include an interview with Chuck D, a long-overdue shine for the Fish Man, Nottingham's only Goth Plumber, an exclusive extract from Nicola Monaghan, Reverend Car Bootleg, and an upskillified listings sections. Hope you like it.

(and yes, consider this blog fully operational again)

MAY CONTAIN NOTTS EARTH TREMOR EMERGENCY SPECIAL

2008-02-27T01:12:00.002Z

Ah, fuck it. I thought it was our earth tremor. Didn't realise that we were sharing it with half the country. Sulk.

LeftLion #21 - Aht NAAH

2008-02-05T13:02:00.000Z

Shoving another handful of strawberries into Nottingham's chatty snout, LeftLion issue 21 is now available in all decent locations in town (but not the outskirts just yet, because our delivery van nearly blew up on Trent Bridge yesterday). A dead arty one, this, with loads of stuff about CCAN, Nottingham regeneration, interviews with Roni Size and Gallows, and all the other stuff you know and love.

Nottingham, City of Romance

2008-02-04T11:42:00.000Z

Sherwood Co-Op, this morning

Strelley Telly Time #4: The Bulwell Landlord

2008-02-03T14:55:00.000Z

Please wash out all crims before recycling

2008-01-28T14:50:00.000Z

Lots of talk about vermin with shotguns in town at the moment, so here's a light-hearted story about petty crime. It appears that Bulwell is piloting a new eco-friendly scheme; recycling bell-ends. Obviously, there'll be the usual moaning (another bin to look after, getting the collection dates mixed up, the stench of two-week-old crackhead attracting flies in summer, etc), but it's worth a try. And well done to the Post for exposing a new and sinister development in criminal methodology;

In mitigation, William Bennett said Baguley had been affected by his past.

He said his mother was an alcoholic and he had become involved in a gang who used him to smash windows during burglaries.

I dunno about you, but this is a bit scary. I don't know how I would react if I heard a noise at 3am, pulled back the curtains, and discovered a gang of youths using one of their own as a battering ram, or loading him into a massive catapult made of discarded shopping trolleys.

One goes into town for the fanny

2008-01-18T13:17:00.000Z

It only seemed like yesterday when Parliament and the military were arguing the toss over whether Harry Bastard should go to Iraq or not, so congratulations to the Royal Family for learning their lesson and keeping Prince William's even more dangerous plans to go out on the mash in VIOLENT, NO-GO DEATH CITY NOTTINGHAM a state secret. According to the Post (who are absolutely pissing their knickers with glee over the story), he spent an evening at the Pitcher and Piano before going on to Oceana (and then presumably going across the road to Food Factreh for battered swan, chips and caviar). Gawd Bless 'im, he's just like one of us, etc (Apart from having six security guards around him. And his Dad owning Cornwall. And being able to masturbate into a handful of £50 notes if he hasn't pulled that night. Even though his Nana's face is on them, so he probably wouldn't. Make that €500 notes, then. Etc).

Despite all the cooing and arse-licking, however, I remain unimpressed. When the Post's website said 'Which Nottingham bar was Prince William drinking in?' I guarantee that everyone in Notts with a brain automatically said 'The Pitcher and Piano. Because it's big, and predictable, and up its own arse, and full of twats, and shit. And I bet they went to Oceana afterwards, because that's where all the divvy out-of-towners with no imagination go" .

And anyway, if I was him, and I had six hand-picked security guards with guns and everything who've probably been instructed to take a bullet for me, I'm not gonna fuck about in Twat Church - I'm going in Yates, or Libertehs, and I'm kicking the fuck off. "OI! Your missus looks a decent bit o' fanneh - what's she knockin' abahht wi' a CUNT LIKE YO' FOR? YEAH! I SAID IT, YOUTH! And yeah, I AM wearing a Derbeh shot under these robes, ACTULEH - yo' wanna MEK SUMMAT ON IT?"

Royalty, alas, is wasted on the Royals. Still, here's hoping it starts a trend, and we see Harry Bastard going in the Thurland soon, in his Nazi uniform.

DMFH DMPH, That's The Sound Of The Police

2008-01-17T15:44:00.000Z

Another chapter in the storied history of the Nottingham music scene was written by the Post today, who were rather excited to discover the bassist of Hepburn working as a Detective Constable in Notts, which makes a refreshing change from dragging your guitar to The Running Horse or whatever ex-band members in Nottingham do, I suppose.

Naturally, it's only a matter of time before someone from ITV commissions a crime series involving her, the little one from B*Witched, Lolly, and all of Vanilla taking down criminals in Mansfield with GIRL POWER (with Cheryl Baker as the firm-but-fair gaffer, and maybe Billie Piper could come in for the pilot show).

(PS: according to an acquaintance in the biz, his appreciation for Hepburn dimmed somewhat when he attended their launch party in a posh London hotel, pulled back a curtain he shouldn't have while they were onstage, and discovered an all-male band playing the instruments)

He's not too old to get some smack off his Dad

2008-01-13T12:50:00.001Z

Man, isn't it horrible when you get shamed up by your Dad? Like when he insists on wearing that manky jumper he got at Christmas 1997 and those trackie bottoms whenever you bring your girlfriend over. Or when you see him Elvis-dancing to Abba Gold at a cousin's wedding. Or when he's on the front of the News Of The World selling crack and heroin to prostitutes in 'No-Go Nottingham crime zone' (fucking hell, is there anywhere in Nottingham that's actually 'Go' anymore?) Radford, after being stung by the Fake Sheik himself (who presumably wasn't posing as a petrodollar millionaire for this particular job).

That, my friends, is the quandary being forced upon 'Millionaire soccer ace' Jermaine Pennant this morning, as he riffles through the country's leading Sunday shit-rag and reads about his old man being an EVIL MUSCLE-BOUND BOSS OF A SEEDY CRACK DEN (as opposed to a nice, well-kept crack den, presumably), as well as getting information on what prostitutes in Radford are charging at the moment. And I bet his first reaction, like all of us, would be to scream; "Ah DAAAAAAAAAAAAAD! PUT SOME FUCKING TROUSERS ON, FOR FUCK'S SAKE! YER ALLUS SHOWING US UP!" before stomping back to the bedroom to listen to Bullet For My Valentine at top volume.

"AY! Are yo' havin' a goz at me FOO-KIN' TITS, youth?"

2008-01-10T22:16:00.000Z

Now I've got me Sexperty head on again, I'm absolutely delighted to find a news item that can fit into both blogs, as it features big tits and Mansfield. Next time I hear a mate in the pub trotting out the standard rammell opinion that if he had a massive set of jubblies, he'd wouldn't stop playing with them, I'll stop him mid-sentence, direct him to this news story, and say; "No, mate, you wouldn't. You'd be sat at home getting your tits out on East Midlands Today."

Yes, despite the small matter of three Notts schools being announced as some of the worst in the entire country, the BBC decided that the top news story of the day was a pair of massive Mansfeldian mams. Which must have been great news for anyone having their tea. Personally, that pic above is giving me some serious Clockwork Orange flashbacks. To use the vernacular, that lad had got some right fucking tit on him.

If you ask me, I think the bloke has every right to be fucked off about not getting a breast reduction off the NHS, his life must be hellish. There was one lad at our school who had the same ailment, and every time we were getting changed for Games, he'd be surrounded by sex-crazed youths trying to cop a feel. "Ah man...let me suck them tits, Guy...give us a soapeh tit-wank..."

Of course, my fear is that it might be some kind of virus, and by the summer Nottingham will be plagued by gangs of brick shithouses from Mansfield in bra tops and rabbit ears pushing men into corners at Jumpin' Jaks and bellowing "YOH WANNA SHOT ON ME FOO-KIN' TITTEHS, YOUTH? GET YOH FOO-KIN MAATH RAAND THESE COONTS, OR AH'LL FOO-KIN' PAN YOH!"

(and yes; I'm wondering what those market boxer shorts are saying too. 'Calvin Clark'? 'Calvin Clap'? 'Calvin Claat?')

Bulwell wobbles, but it don't fall down

2008-01-08T21:45:00.000Z

I've had so many people flagging the following news story up to me and wanting me to comment on it, that I've been feeling like Dennis bleddy McCarthy. I suppose you'll be hassling me into doing Wanted Column On The Air next, or that quiz with the fucking typewriter music in the background. Actually, I've been clamming to write about it ever since I saw it, so here goes; Bulwell has taken the accolade of having the highest percentage of people in Notts who buy sportswear, and the highest percentage of people who do fuck all sporting-related activity, what with them being too busy cramming half of Iceland into their cakey maws.

Personally, I'm a bit shocked by this. How could an area that closes down its swimming pool and opens up a drive-through KFC across the road possibly fall into such a state? How could this happen in a place where the Greggs has the kind of queues that you used to see on the news whenever there was a bread shortage in Communist Poland? How could a part of town where the only sporting facility the locals ever use is the short-cut across the 'Golfeh' to get to Tesco and the nearest bingo hall (pausing to flick V-signs and scream abuse at anybody about to take a shot, naturally) sink so low? (he wrote, as he bit into the crisp sandwich on the side of his laptop and eyed the remains of the Quality Street tin)

Personally, however, I'm not here to talk about the collective lardiness of the people of that gentle town with its babbling brook (who will be hereafter referred as Bulweebles) - do I look like fucking Trisha or summat? The thing that interests me here is the sportswear aspect. I've been to Bulwell far too many times in my precious, precious life, and it's true; they're all absolutely batcheh for manky sportswear in that place. I'm surprised that NCT didn't add a third rail to the bit of tram network that runs through Bulwell, so it would look like there was a huge adidas stripe across the place on Google Earth.

This might be a little hard for our younger readers to take in, but once upon a time, sportswear was an absolute status symbol. I remember growing up in Top Valley in the 1970s, and being in awe of the Abbs brothers, for the simple fact that two of them wore white Admiral Man United away trackie tops. OK, so maybe they wore them all the time, and by 1978 they absolutely funked, but the fact remained; you could not buy this shit in a shop. God knows how they got hold of them. While our Mams were fobbing us off with Littlewoods long-sleeved t-shirts and claiming they were Forest tops, those two lads were undisputed kings of the street, because they were wearing the exact same thing as Joe Jordan and Gordon McQueen.

(and bear in mind that there was precisely one sports shop in town, the almighty Redmayne & Todd, which was the best shop in Nottingham ever ever EVER and had an absolutely gargantuan Subbuteo section).

I even supported Man United in the 1976 FA Cup final and cried when they lost, just because I wanted a trackie top just like that. Me mam should have disowned me.

By late 1977, I finally got hold of a Forest trackie top, with the logo and everything, and it was my turn to dominate. Nobody - and I mean, nobody - had one, and kids at junior school would beg me to let them wear it for a bit. In fact, my first contact with puberty happened because of that top; I lent it to one lad who was in goal, and when he gave it me back, it absolutely reeked of sweat (I got him back later, when he split his trousers reaching down for a ball and I silently pointed out the massive skid mark in his kecks to everyone else).

By the 80s, Casual Culture (or 'Shadies', as they were known in Notts) kicked the door right in. A gang at our school started calling themselves the Hi-Tec Crew (tsk...rubbish trainers), and people were going to obscene lengths to get hold of a £75 Tacchini trackie top or Pringle jumper (with the resultant effect being that half the kids at school either looked like Games teachers or middle-managers on a golfing weekend). From there, it was a very short jump to Bulwell creating enough static electricity to power five hospitals whenever some indoor whale in a chatty Reebok tracksuit brushes against another gutbucket in a Lonsdale top in another sport shop that doesn't sell anything you could actually play a sport with. Sigh.

The Clough Statues

2008-01-07T22:52:00.000Z

...are now whittled down to a shortlist of three, and can be seen at the Council House this week. It has to be said that none of the proposed statues look much like Cloughie at the present time, and are a bit underwhelming. When you're up against something as skill as this, you have to come stronger, I'm afraid. Anyway...

Les Johnson: I like the pose, but it's totally unsuitable for a statue that will be on the streets of Nottingham. As anyone who has ever walked past the statue of Robin Hood by the Castle will know, it is almost obligatory for anyone having their photo taken with it to cup Robbo's bollocks and laugh, as if they're the first person to ever think of doing such a thing. That pose there is leaving the great man's cobbers completely unprotected. And if I ever saw some sucky bint on a hen do handling my idol's junk on King Street, I would not be responsible for my actions.

Keith Maddison: This is the most Clough-like pose, even though it's inevitable that some pisshead in the Square will assume that some metal bloke is 'fronting up' to him and will charge over to have a go. However, I'm not enamoured of the face, the Umbro logo on the sweatshirt, or the rolled-up trackie-bottoms making it look as if Cloughie is wearing the kind of boots sported by Monkey whenever he was giving some demons a kicking or trying to convince Pigsy that the woman he was trying to get his trotter over was actually a Slug-Monster.

John McKenna: Despite the more obvious Forestisms in this one, it's my least favourite. Some Notts meathead is bound to piss up against the logo and start a civil war, and it looks like Cloughie has commemorated his retirement by wrenching the Forest badge off the side of the Trent End and is pegging it for a bus.

In their defence, however, the accompanying busts look a lot more lifelike facially than the statues. Both the statue fund and the Council are soliciting opinions, so get involved.

Village Idiots

2008-01-05T23:52:00.000Z

There's been some unbelievable acts of poncery committed in Nottingham over the past decade, but this takes the biscuit, if not the whole packet: Sneinton - the part of town accurately described by someone in the MCN forum as 'sounding like it's come out of someone's nose, and looks like it too' - now wants to be known as 'Sneinton Village'. Yes, there are some nice bits in Sneinton, but let's consider the facts;

This is a village.
This is Sneinton.
This is a village.
This is Sneinton.
This is a village.
This is Sneinton.
Are we all clear on that? Good.

Apparently, this incredible act of ignorance in the face of truth has come from the local cricket club, for reasons that I can't understand, even after reading the Post article 27 times. "As far as we know there is no legal criteria [for becoming a village] - if we can do some of the things we have got planned, we could re-brand ourselves Sneinton Village." Said the chairperson of said cricket club, as she applied another layer of Brasso to a massive, stinking turd in the road. However, it looks like the idea of a 'village green' is a long way off;

A game was due to be held in October. Teams from a pub, local restaurant and the police were set to take part - but it was called off after health and safety problems with the proposed site, an area of land owned by Castle College.

Trans: 'Someone left a knackered fridge at silly mid-off, and a dead prostitute's needle-pocked arm was found sticking out of the crease'

Of course, there's a precedent to this; the lamentable attempt to rebrand Hockley as 'Hockley Village' (a term which is only used by juff-headed bell-ends who work for estate agents and drive around town in those stupidly-painted Mini Coopers). So why stop there? Let's have Viccy Flats Village an'all. Let's see some signposts for The Magical Fairy Kingdom of Radford, while we're at it. Fuck it, let's start to call Nottingham 'Monaco', or 'St Tropez', and have done with it.

"Er, just rub her tits, Jason. And play with her fanneh a bit"

2008-01-04T15:40:00.000Z

Dunno if you're aware, but when I'm not representing for the NG and putting in work for the set at LeftLion, I make some sort of a living writing about sex and relationships for mags like Scarlet and Cosmo as a sexpert (which means I have sex, then I spert, tee hee).

Therefore, it gives me a not inconsiderable tingle in me loins to announce the launch of Todger Talk, a new sex blog that is put together by myself and a couple of other very eminent people. One of them is Sam Van Rood, who is GMTV's Love Doctor. This means that if Eamonn Holmes, for example, ever got worried about erectile dysfunction, or Lorraine Kelly wanted to have a go at Pony Play but was unsure about what kind of bridle to get, Sam would be the one they'd be having a discreet word with in the pub. Probably. My other compadre Dr Ayan featured in the BBC series Street Doctors, and was once filmed talking to blokes about their prostates in Viccy Centre. Which makes him absolutely ROCK in my eyes.

My first post is here, and is not advisable reading for anyone who is having their tea. Particularly if you're having a dollop of Heinz Tomato Ketchup on their fish fingers.

(PS: Fret not, my local bread-bins: the post level in MCN is not going to suffer because of it. Promise)

Nottingham Education #3: Place Names

2008-01-04T00:17:00.000Z

Thinking of moving to Nottingham? Good. Not sure about where to live? Even better, because I'm about to hip you to one of the great paradoxes of this lovely town.

You see, in most other cities in the UK, you can tell what an area of town is going to be like just by its name. For example, you could have never heard of London in your entire life, look at a map, and go "Hackney? That sounds like a right dump. Peckham? Ugh. Dulwich Village? Ooh, that sounds nice", and you'd be bang on the money.

Try that in Nottingham, on the other hand, and you'd be shagged. For some reason, either by fate or design, there's a strange maxim to the naming of areas, and it goes something this; the nicer an area is, the more horrible its name is, and vice versa. Don't believe me? Let's have a look at the top end of the market;

AREA	SOUNDS LIKE	ACTUALLY IS
The Park	…you’re sleeping on a bench, under some newspaper	The dead, dead, dead, dead, dead nice bit of town

West Bridgford	A service station, with a Wimpy and a bust House Of The Dead cabinet	The posh but quiet bit on the other side of the Trent

Wollaton	Grim Dickensian village, littered with sheep carcasses	Well nice and very green part of town

Mapperley Park	A mental institution (which it was perennially associated with until Rampton came along)	Full of massive houses as big as God’s head

Lady Bay	Something dead rude (“I drove my cock-lorry right into her Lady Bay”)	West Bridgford’s little sister

With me so far? Let's now move down the other end of the scale...

AREA	SOUNDS LIKE	ACTUALLY IS
Rise Park	The kind of safari park people honeymoon at	Top Valley with a nicer tracksuit

Forest Fields	Lush green eco-haven	Where the students live

Arnold	A cuddly jumper-wearing uncle	A big post office, and little else

Top Valley	Luxury ski resort where Fergie goes	Massive Tesco, horrible pubs

Bulwell	Picturesque village in Jane Austen book	Place where Steve Austin would get started on

Hyson Green	Cricketers on the square, old maids cycling to church, etc	Youths in hoodies cycling on the pavement

Bestwood	The magical place of refuge that the rabbits in Watership Down were trying to get to	Known to media as ‘No-Go-Area Bestwood’ (even though there's a bus service, and everything)

The Meadows	Flowery glade where Bambi and his chums skippety-skip all day	Where Doom would have been set if there were PCs in the 70s

St Anns	Girls school in Enid Blyton novel	Definitely not a Girls school in Enid Blyton novel

This is precisely the reason why people around the country get confused about gun crime in Nottingham; when they read about St Anns v The Meadows, they must think it's some kind of varsity hockey match. I tell you one thing; when the council announce the building of a new estate called Knifington or Anal Dog Pustules, I'm putting me name down for a house immediately.

And off we go again

2008-01-03T16:51:00.001Z

I had the full intention of starting the New Year in an optimistic kind of mood. And then I read this story in the Post. And it reminded me of how I spent New Year's Eve bouncing on the door of the Orange Tree for the LeftLion do. And then I remembered that instead of shutting the doors at 1oish and going off and enjoying myself, I had to stay on the doors, because their beer garden has to shut down early so as not to offend the residents (evidently, 50 people on the pavement outside fagging away and gassing on doesn't make any noise at all), which rather fucked up my New Years.

So I will say this once again: If you have decided to live in a Ponce-Box in the Lace Market and are complaining about the noise at night, you are a twat. You're no less of a twat than someone who moves to Rockall and then moans about there not being a Spar nearby, or someone in the BNP who relocates to Soweto and then complains about 'Blackies' bringing down the house prices - and that, as I'm sure is even aware to someone as fuckwitted as you, is extremely twatty indeed.

Listen up, bell-ends; why the fuck should I and the thousands of other sane people in Notts forego our birthright of getting kaylide, shouting at people of the opposite sex in the street, and generally attempting to forget that we've got shit jobs to go to in the morning just because YOU were fuckwitted enough to buy a shoebox in OUR city centre because you saw Sex In The City and all those shitty property programmes on Channel 4?

I don't usually bother to make New Year's resolutions, but here's one I'm going to keep to in 2008: whenever I'm in the Lace Market after hours, I am going to bellow "BIG! 'AIREH! FANNEH!" as loud as I can, no matter what time of the morning. And if these pissy-knickered mitherers get on your wick as much as they do mine, feel free to do the same.

(PS: Here's what my LL oppo Rob Cutforth wrote a while back about the time he lived in the Lace Market. I've since forgiven him. He's Canadian. He didn't know any better)

The May Contain Notts Awards 2007

2007-12-31T15:43:00.000Z

Welcome, everybody, to the upstairs room at the Thurland for the inaugural May Contain Notts Awards of 2007. All of Nottingham’s movers, shakers, and knifers are in attendance, and we’ve just had a splendid three-course meal in a giant cob. Ooh look, there's the Slanty N just coming out of the bogs, and Sherwood Bear is over in the corner trying to suggest a threesome with Twiggy and Jo.

Well, the bingo's just about finished, so we can finally open those envelopes and cast an eye over another eventful year for the glittering jewel of the East Midlands. And the first category is…

***SPORTS PERSONALITY OF THE YEAR***

Yes, it’s been another great year for sport in Notts, just as long as you’re not arsed about football, and you really, really, really like ice hockey. The nominees are;

Carl Froch, for having another unbeaten year

…including a five-round mashing of former WBC champ Robin Reid in November. Anyone who can make people in Nottingham actually pay to see someone punch someone else in the face must be pretty special.

Forest and Notts twats, for running about on the pitch at Meadow Lane in a preseason friendly, like bell-ends

Local teet’-sucking mouth-breathers from the Forest end forego their usual Happy Meal to partake in the Kids For A Quid scheme and run on the pitch at the end of the game, only to be chased off by Fat Dads in the Notts end, shaking their fists like Mr The Menace after Dennis has put a ball through his greenhouse. Tsk.

Nottingham Forest, for pissing away a two-goal lead to Yeovil in the playoffs

I was there. It was like your missus trying to resurrect your beached whale of a relationship by giving you a lap-dance, only for her to leave a 12-inch skid mark on your best trousers.

Notts County, for officially becoming the worst club in the country to support

...confirming what we all knew anyway.

and the winner is…

Neil Harris, for shitting on the floor of Muse after Forest celebrate getting battered 5-0 by Oldham by acting like nob-ends in town.

Well done, Neil. Don’t move, let me just put this newspaper underneath you. Here’s your award, now fuck off back to Millwall you chatty bastard. And our next award is...

***SMALL BUSINESSPERSON OF THE YEAR***

It goes without saying that Nottingham is teeming with enterprising people with their eye on an opening in the market. Particularly Bulwell Market. So what if most of what they do is a bit, well, illegal? The runners-up are;

The bloke who nicked an entire kitchen out of his next-door neighbours house

With a special mention to his missus, who claimed that she was bathing her kid the entire time that he re-fitted it and was surprised to find it there afterwards.

That smackhead in St Anns, for continuing to claim her next-door neighbours pension 18 months after he’d died and was found by the police in an advanced state of decomposition

Shane Meadows’ next film virtually writes itself.

Another St Anns twat, for taking advantage of his mate getting stabbed to death at a pub in town to rob £324 out of the till

You’ve got to admire anyone who can see the fiscal advantages of a bad situation. I can imagine him trapped in the World Trade Centre on September 11^th, thinking “Skill! While everyone’s chucking themselves out the window, I can absolutely rinse the stationary cupboard!”

That bloke from Notts who grew the strongest weed ever discovered in the UK

Mmm, green heroin. Who needs mild euphoria when you could have brain haemorrhage ?

But the winner is…

Those two bent coppers, for losing their jobs and getting jailed for passing on information to crims about murder investigations

…in return for discounts on clothes from that shop in town where chavs get their suits for their next court appearance. Here’s your award, plus a £5 voucher for TK Maxx.

More awards later. But now, put your hands together for the one and only SU POLLARD!

Thanks Su. And talking of the great artistic bounty that Nottingham has bestowed to the world, our next award is…

***CULTURAL EVENT OF THE YEAR***

Nottingham, as we all know, could not be more vibrant and eclectic if it turned itself into a massive Aboriginal dildo, and 2007 saw many huge developments. Broadway getting some new enormous blue windows. The council erecting George Best’s old house on top of some old buildings. And some other things. And our nominees are;

The stripper from Arnold, for her thought-provoking performance art piece at a local school

When I was at school, there was always one girl who would show you her bits in exchange for a copy of Smash Hits. Obviously, now that said mag is defunct, I applaud Arnold Hill School for taking steps to remedy the situation.

The fountains in the Square, for thought-provokingly not working for a bit

Yoko Ono must have been right pissed off for not coming up with this one; spend a fortune on the piping, construction and planning of a new fountain that youths can’t empty a bottle of Squezy into, which then produces…nothing. Apart from a flood of mithering letters to the Post.

Unknown graffiti artist, for the thought-provoking ‘Suck Your Mum’

If you live in the South of England and are travelling to Nottingham by train, what is the first thing you see when you reach our lovely hometown? Nottingham Castle? The Inland Revenue offices that look like a Nazi POW camp? Those horrible signs that say ‘WELCOME TO NOTTINGHAM – HOME OF CAPITAL ONE’? No; you see a huge piece that says, to everyone coming to our city, ‘SUCK YOUR MUM’. Simple. Minimalist. Genius.

The Millz Taliban, for their thought-provoking YouTube video

It’s not there anymore, but you already know what it looked like; shitty Grime music. Misspelled captions. Twats waving guns about. Obligatory shot of someone else’s pit-bull. Etc.

And the winner is…

That bloke who has a massive thought-provoking Gay wizard on his back

Obvious choice. Here’s your prize, Sir – a massive tattoo of the Village People on your face. Next award, please...

***THE LUDICROUSLY VIOLENT INCIDENT OF THE YEAR***

Naturally, this is the most fiercely-contested award tonight – so much so, that all the nominees have been strapped up to those mobile Hannibal Lecter restrainers. And the runners-up are…

The inbred cousins from Eastwood who started hitting each other with pool balls in socks in a pub in town, because they were bored

Back in the day, they would have settled their differences with a banjo duel. Nowadays, it appears that our neighbours in Bandit Country like to play Human Conkers of an evening.

That nob from Broxtowe, for attacking someone on the tram with a meat cleaver

Not just any meat cleaver, though – a meat cleaver secreted inside a baby’s pram, like Shogun fucking Assassin. Still, as anyone with a babby knows, it’s a right mither remembering to take everything you need out with you. Nappies…bottle…sun hat…dummy…favourite teddy…throwing death stars…

The father and son from Broxtowe, for beating the shit out of two blokes who they thought had robbed from their house

Say what you like about Charles Bronson and the Death Wish series, but you must admit that he had a bit more class than walking about a street in Bilborough with a hammer in one hand and a golf club in another. Especially when you’ve got the wrong house.

That dealer in Basford, for stabbing a bloke in the eye because he wouldn’t buy any drugs off him

No, mate. If you want to get on as a dealer, you offer the first one free, or you offer a discount. What you don’t do is say “Ey! Buy mah foo-kin droogs, or I’ll shank yoh!”

But the winner is…

That meathead from Bulwell who has been banned from every pub in Notts bar five

An outstanding achievement, as I’m sure you’ll all agree. We now go over by satellite to one of the five pubs he’s still allowed to drink in…oh…we appear to be having some technical difficulties…he appears to be…beating people to death with the camera. Oh well.

And now, ladies and gentlemen, it’s time for a short break in the proceedings. Here’s….ALVIN STARDUST BEING JABBERED AT BY A DUTCHMAN!

Ta, Alvin. Without further ado, we move on to a very special award indeed…

***THE MAY CONTAIN NOTTS LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD FOR UTTER CUNTISHNESS AND TALKING ABSOLUTE MINGE ABOUT NOTTINGHAM***

So how the FUCK can Nottingham be the fourth worst place in the country to live in when FUCKING MANSFIELD is only ninth, you BELL-ENDS? Have you EVER BEEN TO FUCKING MANSFIELD, you smug, know-nothing, DRIBBLINGS OF WANK DOWN THE FACE OF AN ELDERLY PROSTITUTE? HAVE YOU? HAVE YOU? I’ll tell you the worst place to live in the UK – INSIDE YOUR SHIT-ENCRUSTED, MEDIA-WHORISH, DELICIOUSLY-PUNCHABLE CUNTY HEADS. Take your award, stick it up your fucking arses, and FUCK OFF WHILE YOU’RE DOING IT.

Ahem. And our next award is…

***THE WORST THING TO HAPPEN TO NOTTINGHAM IN 2007***

Always a favourite category, this one. And the nominees are…

The Broadmarsh Centre, for wanting to get bigger

What kind of a lead paint-licking gibbon would want to increase the Broado by three times, when it’s obvious to anyone in Nottingham that the best thing that could happen to the place is to reduce in size, preferably to the size of a matchbox. Ooh yes, let’s have another Top Shop five minutes walk from the other ones, that’s a great idea.

Skegness, for burning down

Weep, Nottingham. Weep.

The Variety, for shutting down

This place was the 70s in aspic. It should have been a National Heritage site for the preservation of dodgy comedians and dodgier strippers. Sigh.

The Evening Post, for allowing local racists and pissy-knickered mitherers to comment on their website

Jesus, have you been on there? It’s like being trapped in a room with your least favourite uncle.

Nottingham City Transport, for axing the weekday Night Bus Service

Eejat bwoy.

And the winner is…

Nottingham Forest, for wanting to leave the City Ground and move to a 50,000-seater Mega-Bog in Clifton

Come on, Mark Arthur, get up here and take this award. Go on, do that bit where you say that Forest are going to be in the Premiership in a few years time…HA HA HA! What’s that? ‘World Cup venue’? HA HA HA HAAAAAAAAAHHHHH! Oh Mark, we’re going to have to book you for next year’s awards, you’re fucking killin’ meh.

And now, the final award of the year is…

***THE BEST THING TO HAPPEN TO NOTTINGHAM IN 2007***

When you think about it, 2007 was very good to Notts. Don’t believe me? Have a look at the nominees…

The Not As New As It Was Old Market Square, for finally not being a building site any more

Yeah, you can moan about the fountains not working, or the expense, or getting Toneh ‘Ahleh Aht O’ Spandaah Balleh to open it, but the fact remains; it’s so good to have it back.

The Hard Rock Café, for shutting down

No offence to it – apart from the fact that it was some rubbish touristy dive of the type beloved by Italian exchange students in pastels – but it used to grieve me sore to see that lovely building that divided King Street and Queen Street defiled with a big and horrible sign. And it’s going to be the location of the new Cloughie statue.

Steve Green, for announcing his retirement in 2008

Sorry Steve, you seem like a pretty nice bloke, but you really shouldn’t have nobbed off the Drug Squad to concentrate on burglary.

Central News East, for shutting down in 2008

Goodbye, skateboarding rabbits. Goodbye, deliberately interviewing the most toothless window-lickers you can find in the Square for vox-pops. Goodbye, pretending to be in a floating News-Pod in the middle of the Trent when you’re actually in a studio in Birmingham. Goodbye, that rubbish news-reader with the funny-shaped head.

And the winner is…

Colin Gunn, for being sent to the Naughty House

Say no more.

And that concludes the May Contain Notts Awards of 2007. Thanks for watching, and may your New Years Eve be as much of a gargantuan piss-up as ours is. See you all next year, and to see us out…BRING ON THE DANCING GIRLS!

Happy New Year, and – as always – STAY NOTTS.

Evening Post Sinks To New Depths

2007-12-28T13:02:00.000Z

I know they're worried about losing their regular revenue stream from taking small ads from local knocking shops. But do they really have to resort to advertising what appears to be a New Years Eve do for violent racists?

Right, that's it

2007-12-22T17:05:00.000Z

Chuck us the Quality Street, top me up with more Malibu, and find summat decent on the telly. I'm done for a bit. Have yoursen a luvleh Xmas, and KEEP IT NOTTS.

This is what Nottingham's like

2007-12-18T13:10:00.000Z

Someone offers train travel to London for £1.50. And some twat on the Post forum moans about not getting a free cup of tea.

This is how Biggie v Tupac got started, you know

2007-12-17T02:27:00.000Z

Graffiti, Top Valley subway;
Graffiti, Top Valley subway, one week later;
I truly hope my Boggaz and Boggarettez in the Gheeto can somehow hold it down and increase the peace. And learn to fucking spell properly.

Oh, by the way, I hate Christmas.

2007-12-13T22:35:00.000Z

I wrote this last year for LeftLion. The full version, featuring illustrations by the ridiculously gifted Rob White, can be found here. A surprising amount of it is out of date (particularly the moaning about the Square being out of bounds, so you couldn't snog a Sharon up against a lion or watch a pisshead attempt to climb the Xmas tree), so here's the abridged version...

1. YOUR SHIT OFFICE PARTY THAT ALREADY HAPPENED IN NOVEMBER
Ah, Christmas dos; the need to pretend that we’re well liked, the chance to ride the office bike. And there’s no finer indication of the status of your company than the office party. If you’re rolling about pissed out of your eyeballs in World Service or Harts the day before you break up, well done; your future is secured, and you’ll probably be doing the same thing next year. If you’ve spent your Xmas piss-up upstairs at the Peacock long before the first horrible lights went up, rest assured that your company is firmly up Arsehole Street, there’ll be no bog roll in the office lavs by January, and you’ll have to wipe your arse on your own king skins.

2. THAT BLOKE ACROSS THE ROAD WHO PUT THE ENORMOUS SANTA LIGHTS ON HIS HOUSE AS SOON AS GOOSE FAIR FINISHED

He’s not the only one on the estate doing through the same old depressing, turd-polishing motions, but Christ on a crisp packet! It’s so gargantuan that Rudolf’s head fills up his bedroom window, and he keeps it on all night. I dunno about you, but if I was his missus and all I could see at night was a massive neon reindeer head staring at me through the curtains, I’m not going to be massively up for a seeing-to.

3. SHOPPING CENTRES PUTTING UP DECORATIONS IN NOVEMBER

Bastards.

4. MEATHEADS AND SLAPPERS IN TOWN WEARING SANTA HATS

It makes that random, unprovoked kicking outside Re-Flex so much more jovial, doesn’t it? A shame the staff at A&E don’t wear the full gear, put you on their knee, and say “Ho ho ho! I know a little boy who wants a splint and some painkillers!”

5. THE ONE TIME OF THE YEAR WHERE YOU HAVE TO GO TO FUCKING ARGOS

It’s like signing on, but coming away with a Darth Vader helmet instead of a Giro.

6. THE COUNCIL HOUSE LOOKING LIKE IT WAS BOUGHT OFF QVC WHEN SOMEONE WAS REALLY PISSED, FOR A LAUGH

Ugh.

7. CLAIRE SWEENEY IN THE LOCAL PANTO EVERY BASTARD YEAR

She is, isn’t she? Has she got Poloroids of the management of the Theatre Royal going dogging or summat?

8. THE LAST FRIDAY IN TOWN BEFORE THE STUDENTS GO HOME

Carnage.

9. THE FRIDAY AFTER THAT WHEN EVERYONE ELSE KNOCKS OFF WORK

Even worse.

10. THOSE LITTLE ROBOTIC FUCKERS IN VICCY CENTRE

Don’t they get on your tits? I swear I’m gonna jump over the barrier and twat one of ‘em on the snot-box this year. Waving at me like he fucking knows meh.

11. THE INFLATABLE SNOWMAN ON THE PUB ROOF THAT HAS ALREADY DEFLATED

…so it looks like some youth has hrown the world’s biggest spent Johnny up there.

12. IN FACT, ANY PUB THAT DOES DECORATIONS APART FROM THE OLD GENERAL IN HYSON GREEN

For 11 months of the year, they have a dummy of an old bloke in military uniform in the upstairs window. In December, they chuck a Santa outfit over it. Simple. Subtle. Timeless.

13. CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS BOUGHT FROM POUND SHOPS

Hey, I’ll have nowt said against pound shops, but a bloke on our estate has got these Santa poster-things that say “HO HO HO” in his window. Problem is that from the outside, it reads “OH OH OH”, which makes it sound like he’s having phone sex.

14. CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS, FULL STOP.

I once had the only Xmas decco worth a toss; a massive cardboard box made to look like a prezzie, full of little polystyrene balls and a vacuum attachment. You put your tree in it, clipped a little pipe to the spine, and turned it on. Result – a never-ending cascade of ‘snow’. All the others aren’t worth the steam off my, yours or anyone else’s piss.

15. HAVING TO BUY CHRISTMAS CARDS WHEN PEOPLE WHO YOU DON’T GIVE A TOSS ABOUT SEND YOU ONE

Look, this is why e-mail was invented. Stop it. Now.

16. THE FACT THAT YOU’RE NOT ALLOWED TO BRING YOUR GAMES IN ON THE LAST DAY OF WORK

Not fair.

17. PEOPLE WHO ARE GOING ON HOLIDAY FOR CHRISTMAS BRAGGING ON ABOUT HOW THEY’RE GOING ON HOLIDAY FOR CHRISTMAS

Stop banging on about it, you sensible, rational, cleverer-than-me bastards.

18. CHATTY YOUTHS GOING CAROL SINGING NOT FIVE MINUTES AFTER HALLOWEEN

…and all they know is ‘We Wish You A Merry Christmas’. Come back when it is Christmas, you nob-ended teet-sucking vermin. Better still, die..

19. SOME TWAT OFF THE X FACTOR INEVITABLY BEING THE CHRISTMAS NO.1

The battle for the Christmas No.1 used to be mint. Now it’s decided by a glorified karaoke competition. Kill Louis Walsh.

20. SHITTY CHRISTMAS MUSIC EVERYWHERE

We’ll have a Rock ‘n Roll Christmas - Christmas Rock n’ Roll…Wish I was at home for KER-RISTMASSS…And so this is Christmas, and what have you done?...Simply. Having. A wonderful Christmas time...And the Christmas bells that ring there are the clanging chimes of doom…how the fuck do people in Morrisons put up with this shit without opening a vein?

21. GOING BACK HOME TO YOUR MAM’S TO DISCOVER YOUR OLD BEDROOM IS NOW THE FREEZER ROOM

Seriously, if you’d have been run over in the street when you were seven, they would have left everything untouched. Because you didn’t, the minute you leave they chuck away the bed you lost your virginity on and replace it with a chest freezer containing half a dead cow. And where’s me back copies of 2000ADs and every single Forest programme during both European Cup runs? In a canvas bag in the shed with the leaky roof? Skill!

22. YOUR MAM HAVING HER ANNUAL NERVOUS BREAKDOWN

Obviously, Mams are skill. But why are they the only ones who give a fuck about Christmas when everyone else can’t be arsed with it? Why do they feel the need to peg it down to Tescos at five in the morning to buy more food that’ll be chucked away?

23. TAXI DRIVERS TAKING THE PISS

Rip-off merchants at the best of times – utterly larcenous at Christmas. They might as well just take your wallet, shove their cocks through the fold, and have sex with it. Their rampant greed inevitably leads to…

24.TOWN BEING ABSOLUTELY DESERTED ON CHRISTMAS EVE

Once upon a time, this was the best night of the year for getting mashed in town. No hassle, everyone in a good mood, no trouble whatsoever. Nowadays, everyone’s been on a works do, a departmental do and a go-out-with-your-mates-who-are-back-in-town do, your drinks cabinet is groaning, and the last bus home is at 10pm. Consequently, you can walk from one end of town to the other on the 24^th and you’ll see 100 people and a mile-long queue of fucked-off cabbies.

25. A GREY CHRISTMAS

I miss proper snow. Even the Meadows looked nice in the snow.

26. SELECTION BOXES

A quid’s worth of chocolate if you go to the right all-night garage, bundled up with some game that no-one ever plays, that become available at the exact moment that you’ve already eaten so much chocolate that you could easily shit a Mars bar. Still, it’d be a shame to let it go to waste…

27. HAVING TO GO TO THE LOCAL PUB TO GET OUT OF YOUR MAM’S WAY

You wouldn’t be seen dead in the place on the other 364 days of the year, because you probably would be, but on this day it’s heaving. Particularly if there was a machete attack in a nearby pub the night before. So you sit there for a couple of hours trying to squeeze a conversation out of your miserable, face-like-a-smacked-arse Dad. The only bit of entertainment on offer? Counting the new and manky market jumpers at the bar. Oh, and…

28. SEEING PEOPLE FROM SCHOOL ONCE A YEAR AND HAVING TO LIE ABOUT HOW ACE YOUR LIFE IS

We’ve all done it, haven’t we?

29. YOUR DAD IN A PAPER HAT, PISSED OUT OF HIS SKULL, BANGING ON ABOUT JESUS WHILST DUMPING HALF A POT OF PEPPER ON HIS TURKEY

An annual ritual at our house during Christmas dinner, usually just after the end of the prawn cocktail and just before the first wine glass gets broken. As he eloquently puts it, “Everyone’s forgotten about the cunt”. The way he goes on, he makes it sound like the Son of God is on his own in a bungalow in Arnold, thinking to himself “Fucking hell, I’m 2,007 years old today…and what have I done with me life?”

30. HOLIDAY ADVERTS KICKING IN THE MINUTE YOU’VE HAD YOUR CHRISTMAS DINNER

Fuck. Off.

31. THE QUEEN’S SPEECH

If you’ve still got your grandparents, it’s a traditional part of the day. If you haven’t, it’s some right old trout banging on about arse all. What’s on next? Oh, for fuck’s sake…

32. THE BOND FILM

Ever since we realised that all British spies really do is lose laptops on trains and make up excuses for America to bomb Muslim kiddies, the magic has gone.

33. ALL CHRISTMAS TELLY, IN FACT

Jesus, I can remember the days when the entire country had a collective orgasm when the Xmas TV and Radio Times came out. Nowadays you either spend Christmas night round your mates (providing they live within walking distance, or you’ve taken out a loan to pay the cab fare), in the spare room with a laptop and a tray of sausage rolls, or on the settee in an alcoholic stupor with a tin of Sensations on your rapidly expanding gut.

34. THE REALISATION, JUST BEFORE YOU GO TO BED, THAT TWO MONTHS OF RELENTLESS MARKETING, HUNDREDS OF POUNDS YOU CAN’T AFFORD TO SPEND, AND MILLIONS OF MAN-HOURS SPENT RUNNING AROUND LIKE A BLUE-ARSED FLY HAVE RESULTED IN A) AN INTERRUPTED LIE-IN, B) A SESSION IN A RUBBISH PUB, C) SOME PANTS THAT DON’T FIT YOU, D) A GLORIFIED SUNDAY DINNER, E) A ROW WITH YOUR DAD OVER RELIGION, AND F) AN UTTERLY, UTTERLY, UTTERLY FUTILE EXPERIENCE

Just like last year. And next year.

35. BOXING DAY

Ooh, let’s go shopping again, seeing as been two whole fucking days since we’ve dragged our arses through Broado.

36. ABSOLUTELY FUCK ALL TO DO FOR A WEEK APART FROM MORE SHOPPING

And eating. And drinking.

37. THE BITTERSWEET MOMENT WHEN YOU ACTUALLY REALISE YOU’RE DESPERATE TO GO BACK TO WORK

Even if you happen to work at a maggot factory, or are a prostitute on Forest Road.

38. THE EXTRA STONE YOU PUT ON OVER CHRISTMAS

Nuff said.

39. NEW YEARS EVE BEING ONLY SIX DAYS AWAY FROM CHRISTMAS

Don’t get me wrong, New Years Eve is skill – in fact, it’s the all-denomination winter solstice piss-up that is everything Christmas should be. But why does it have to be so close to the rubbish one? Let’s move it to the middle of January, or replace Valentines Day with it, when we’ve all got a bit more cash and could do with a doss off work.

40. MAKING YOUR NEW YEARS RESOLUTIONS AND REALISING THAT THEY’RE THE SAME ONES AS LAST YEAR

This year, I vow to; stop going into Yates and beating people up, calm down on the ‘shagging women every night’ thing, be a bit less ostentatious about my expensive house and car, and being a compulsive liar.

41. NEW YEAR’S DAY

The dullest day of the year. Even Bono had a cob-on about it, and although I think he’s a hateful twat, I'm inclined to agree.

42. JANUARY

Five weeks before you get paid. Tax bills. Credit card bills. Everyone’s skint. No-one goes out. Rubbish.

43. MAD BASTARDS WHO LEAVE THEIR CHRISTMAS LIGHTS ON UNTIL FEBRUARY

Sitting on the top deck as the bus goes through Bestwood is like being in a Sinclair Spectrum flight simulator.

44. PEOPLE WHO DO NOTHING BUT MOAN ABOUT CHRISTMAS

Miserable twats, aren’t they? Happy birthday, Jesus!

There's a twat in me kitchen, what am I gonna do

2007-12-12T14:53:00.000Z

I suppose I'd better review the latest episode of Kitchen Nightmares, seeing as it featured the Curry Lounge on Upper Parliament Street, even though I would rather watch my own Dad shit into a glass bucket. The things I do for you.

In case you're unaware, Kitchen Nightmares follows the usual Channel 4 framework of getting some toff to tell the plebs how to sort their lives out, along the lines of shows like Your Dog Needs To Be Neutered Almost As Much As You Do, Your House Stinks Of Unwashed Arse, and Look At Your Shit, You Feckless Indoor Whale, Go On, Look At It. It stars, as you're already aware, the hateful Gordon Ramsey, an Aryan who believes that, if you swear every other word, people won't notice that you're a toff doing a girl's job (ooh, hang on, my ears have started burning...).

Gordon points out that although Nottingham has shitloads of curry houses, people aren't going to the Curry Lounge - and he speculates that it might be because you can order whatever dish you like and they have tellies that play Bollywood films and they hang the nans up like aunties' knickers. No, mate - it's because it's situated on the most horrible street in Nottingham, better known as Shit Pub Alley. You don't go to Upper Parliament St for a curry. You go there to get shitfaced, put a glass into someone's face, and try to knock some slags off in Libertys. The only nan anyone's interested in that part of town is from Strelleh, and is wearing a leather mini-skirt.

After some low-level slagging off, more swearing and loads of shots of Gordon poncing about in the Square (presumably to show how ABSOLUTELY FUCKING ROCK he is to strut about right in the middle of ASSASSINATION CITY), Gordon turns it round, and when he returns the restaurant is full, which is nothing to do with the fact that the restaurant has been in the papers all summer, and he's come back with a camera crew. If Hairdressers' Monthly has taught us nothing else (and it hasn't), it's that you could fill Bulwell Lido with dog shit, and enough people would dive in and squdge about in it if there was a camera there.

Still, it was nice to see Channel 4 doing something about Nottingham without getting its knickers all sodden with bullshit about rat-faced youths shooting each other. I'll still be going to the top end of Friar Lane for a curry and Gordon Ramsey is still a cock, though.

Get Some Notts Round Your Pots

2007-12-10T16:20:00.000Z

Details here.

It's Shit-Thick Petty Criminal Week in May Contain Notts!

2007-12-07T16:17:00.000Z

I don't know about anyone else, but when I've got a girlfriend on and I go to her parents' house, I always make sure I'm looking presentable and minding my P's and Q's. And maybe even bring over some Ferraro Rocher from the garage, if I really fancy her. What I don't do is turn up off my mash on Magic Monkey Juice and Space Drugs, threaten to kill everyone inside if they call the 'Feds', and then fall down the stairs and out the door after a failed attempt to grab her Mam's handbag. Particularly when it turns out that I've got the wrong house entirely.

Thanks to that particular incident and other assorted episodes of random cuntishness, that lad up there now has four years in the Naughty House, by which time he might be able to grow a proper moustache. And if the aforementioned 'Kelly' is reading this, and that contemptible bit of scrag really was the only bloke on offer, I advise her to run to the Foresters as quickly as she could say 'Fair go, Bea, you're Top Dog in Wentworth now'.

Brian Cursed

2007-12-06T19:54:00.000Z

This story is ace. I can't shake the image of a bedroom in Sneinton, containing a woman smoking a fag in a post-coital haze, pausing every now and then to put her arms around two Brian Blessed cut-outs, going "HA HA HA HAAAAAAA!" and shaking them until their attached strap-ons wobble like sunflowers in a breeze.

Another War Demo In Town

2007-12-05T11:48:00.000Z

Members of the Sherwood Foresters (except they aren't anymore - they were merged into another regiment a while back) marched through town yesterday after their stint in Afghanistan. Now, we could all argue the toss about what constitutes heroism in this day and age, but I think we can all agree that running them through town on a Tuesday afternoon while most people are at work or school, being watched by less than half the people who turned out for a local DJ's funeral, says more about the success rate of the last six years military occupations than a million newspaper articles ever could. I'm not exactly the most pro-war person in Nottingham, but I think they probably deserved better, don't you?

When Re-enacting Scenes From 'Scum' For A Bit Of A Laugh Goes Wrong

2007-12-04T11:34:00.000Z

Obviously, when you're trying to write a blog about Nottingham, it would be very easy to just sit down and record every violent incident that was reported in the Evening Post. I don't like doing that - for one, it gives off a totally false impression of a city that has taken an absolute pasting from the media. But mainly because I'd have been chained to this laptop 24 hours a day, sitting on an Kilimanjaro of my own excrement, with my fingers worn to bloody stubs. So I try to stay away from it whenever possible.

And then a story like this comes along, and you don't know what to think. So let's begin at the beginning...

A Man was left bleeding and unconscious after a "play fight" with pool balls in socks.

(random bell-end) had taken the makeshift weapons into the city centre "for protection" on a night out with his cousin, Nottingham Crown Court heard.

OK, three things are automatically springing to mind here;

1. I dunno about you, but when the words 'play fight' spring to mind, I think of me picking up my nephew and chucking him on the sofa like the Undertaker, or me and a mate punching each other on the shoulder when we've got leather jackets on, like John Travolta and Kenickie in Grease. There doesn't seem to be anything fun about swinging about a pool ball in a sock and whacking your mate on the head with it, like you were Ray Winstone and he were Phil Daniels.

2. If you need to take a weapon into town 'for protection', maybe God is telling you that you shouldn't really be going into town that night.

3. This might be just me, but who the fuck apart from cast members of The Beverley Hillbillies goes out on the batter with their cousin? I've got loads of cousins, and I only ever see them at funerals. It's not that I dislike 'em or owt; I just have mates.

But after drinking a large amount of alcohol on August 17, the pair began hitting each other with them in Long Row, in the city centre.

OK, bear with me a minute, because I'm having trouble with this one; how badly kaylide do you have to get before you start thinking that stoving your cousin's head in with a mace constructed by something whipped off a pool table and half of summat you bought from Primark is a really good way to inject a bit of fun into your night out?

"Ah man, this is shit and there's no fanneh abaht - shall weh goo to Social?"

"No mate - full o' foo-kin' students"

"Shall weh gerra kebab?"

"Norrungreh"

"Shall weh goo on the bandits?"

"Foo-kin skint, youth"

"Shall weh, I dunno...clonk each other in the foo-kin 'ead with them pool balls in socks we brung aht?"

"Foo-kinYEAH! I forrgorrabaht them. MINT! You go fost! Tee hee!"

Gareth Gimson, prosecuting, said: "Officers on patrol were told by a member of the public about some sort of disturbance.

"Police saw two men and were concerned that one of them had some sort of head injury.

"One pool ball was handed to an officer at the scene. A sock was on the floor next to a pool of blood. Another sock containing a pool ball was also found near to the pool of blood."

Next time you're in the pub and you're having a moan about 'Babylon', recall this story and remember; this is what the police have to do every fucking day. If your Mam's been burgled again, and it's taken the coppers ages to come round, don't blame New Labour or the council or the New World Order; it's because they've had to wipe the arses of a couple of mongs from the more mediaeval parts of Nottinghamshire who were working out which one of them was the Daddy-Uncle-Brother.

In mitigation, the court was told the cousins were having a "play fight" which went wrong.

No shit.

The defendant had an alcohol problem

Even less shit than the no shit that went before.

...but was working to cut down his drinking, the court was told. He told police he was carrying the ball and sock because he was having trouble with some drug dealers.

Now then, I don't know that much about drug dealers in Nottingham, but I'm guessing that they may just have access to weapons that could easily counteract someone who had to fumble about in his jacket pocket for five minutes, and then check that he was holding the right end of a sock so the pool ball wouldn't fall out, and then whirl it about for a bit. It seems to be about as useful a pissed-off dealer-deterrent as a bit of fire on a stick, or a Spongebob balloon on some string.

Mr Gimson said: "He told police he would have used them if trouble had come his way. He said it had been an accident that (his cousin) had suffered the injury." He said the prosecution accepted it was nothing more sinister.

So there you have it: going into town and pitching yoursen in the lottery of being in the same pub on a Saturday night as a couple of cast members from Deliverance who've decided to take out pool balls in a sock - Officially Not Sinister.

My my, to Waterlooville Notts County did surrender

2007-12-01T19:07:00.001Z

Oh dear.

October and November: The Main Points again

2007-12-01T15:22:00.000Z

1 October

Secret files released by the National Archives on Rudolf Hess include a letter from a Nottingham bloke offering good wishes to Hitler’s right-hand man, along with a photo of his kids holding up a model Zeppelin. ‘It's like getting the autograph of an Australian cricketer - you may not like things to do with his personal life and you have to strike a balance in getting their signature’ he said to the Post, whilst popping a photo of his granddaughters throwing an Airfix plane at a Jenga stack in the post for Osama bin Laden.

2 October

Broadway holds a gala night for Control, to celebrate local actors copping a break and the fact that someone from a production company drove into Lenton, looked through a square made from their thumbs and index fingers, and said ‘Hmmm…yes…this looks exactly like the sort of depressing shithole where a miserable Indie twat with a Nazi fixation would want to top himself’.

3 October

The long-predicted global recession begins to bite. House repossessions in America reach an all-time high. The Dollar hit record lows against the Euro. UK house prices slow down. A pot of mushy peas at Goose Fair’s dedicated pea stall is jacked up to one pound twenty.

4 October

The residents of Wollaton pull back their lace curtains at 2am to be greeted with the sight of something out of The Sweeney, discovering a bleddy big burning Mercedes containing a stabbing victim. Turns out that said victim had previous for using a golf course in Leicester as a front for a massive drugs operation and had buried vast quantities of pills and powders under the fairways and greens. Warning to anyone pulling on diamond jumpers and dragging their irons out the loft; he also guarded said stashes with explosive trip wires.

5 October

Nottingham City Transport announces the axing of their regular Night Bus service, weeing in the face of everyone who works in this so-called 24-hour city who quite liked getting home from their shift without having their wallets raped by a cabbie. Sigh.

12 October

The head chocolate-maker at Thorntons resigns after getting caught squishing the truffles at Hotel Chocolat. Amazingly, it’s the top story on Central News East, outranking the small matter of a shooting in St Anns. Imagine you’re that poor sod who got shot; laid up in the QMC, with your only consolation being the fact you’re going to be the most important person in Notts at 6pm, only to see them banging on about some gimp mashing up some expensive tuffehs. And they wonder why no-one gives a toss about the forthcoming axing of Central News East.

15 October

Those two pissy-knickered house-shitbags on Channel 4 find a new way to raise Nottingham to fourth in the latest edition of The Worst Places To Live If You’re The Kind Of Middle-Class House Price-Obsessed Wankstain Who Watches Shitty Programmes Like This On Channel Four Because You’re Scared To Go Out, by annexing Rushcliffe. Next year they’ll grant independence to The Park and Hockley in an attempt to get us to the top. That bald cock and his hateful pinch-faced bint of an assistant claim that Mansfield is a better place to live by seven whole places, which is all you need to know, really.

16 October

Notts County finally sack the former (and soon to be) building site worker Steve Thompson after sinking to the bottom of Division Four. They install Ian McParland as the new boss and go on a decent run.

19 October

The Variety, the club in Radford, which for over 40 years was the only place in Nottingham where you could play bingo with strippers from Matlock, finally closes down for good. Another part of Nottingham’s soul disappears forever, and if you didn’t go, you’ll never know.

24 October

A Cinderhill factory worker gets shamed, due to spending £500 on having a two-foot tattoo of Dumbledore on his back, only for said imaginary wizard who doesn’t exist to be outed by JK Rowling. ‘It’s been terrible’, he says to The Sun. ‘I’ve always liked Dumbledore, but not in that way’. Jesus in a jumpsuit, it's come to summat when a man can use a national newspaper to point out that he doesn't want to have bum-sex with a wizard in a kid's book.

29 October

Wet Wet Wet (ask yer mam) play a one-off gig at the Hard Rock Café. Two weeks later, the Hard Rock Café goes out of business.

4 November

Forest’s projected move to a big new toilet in Clifton is nixed by the City Council, who want a location nearer the city centre. I know just the place; right next to Trent Bridge. Just behind the Southbank Bar.

5 November

Truants at Arnold Hill School bash their faces against the nearest available wall when it turns out that a stripper puts in a guest appearance at a drama class for some lad’s birthday. The school thought about calling in the police, but were worried that they’d only pull the dinner ladies over the counter, grind their crotches into their faces to Hot Stuff by Donna Summer, and make the headmistress suck whipped cream off their truncheons.

7 November

Twiggy and Jo win an award for Best European Breakfast Show. Christ on a crisp packet, who were they up against? A monkey banging on a saucepan in Oslo, and someone drilling holes into farm animals in Bucharest?

9 November

A local youth is up in court for reacting to his mate getting stabbed to death in a city centre venue by robbing the till of £324 (and yes, you’ll note he even took some pound coins). Obviously, he needed all those notes to staunch the wounds, a clearly-marked first aid kit evidently not being available.

13 November

Whoever is employed by the Post to sit on YouTube all day typing ‘Nottingham’, ‘Guns’ and ‘Oh My God, They’re All Going To Murder Us In Our Beds’ finally hits paydirt when they uncover a video of some lads called the Millz Taliban waving guns about and smoking weed. Note to local gang members: don’t name yourself after a religious group that outlaws everything you like doing.

17 November

The latest local crackdown on beggars in town turns up a man whose was identified as dead and cremated by his own mam in Manchester a month previously. Hopefully, the coppers have also got that bastard who pretends to be a Big Issue seller and tries to flog LeftLion for a quid, claiming that we’ve been bought out by them.

19 November

A 26 year-old scamp from Bulwell is hit with an ASBO that bans him from every pub in Greater Nottingham bar five, for such japes as waving an air pistol in one pub and puncturing someone’s lung with a fork in another. Every pub in Notts minus five equals a shitload of pubs, making it the biggest bar-out in history and worthy of a place in the Guinness Book of Records.

LeftLion #20 - Out NOW! NOW NOW NOW!

2007-11-30T00:05:00.000Z

FREE Notts Xmas decorations
The A-Z of Nottingham Hip-Hop
Cappo
Neville Staple of The Specials
The return of Miles Hunt
Shopping in Notts
Dominic Minghella
Loay Hady

Plus May Contain Notts, A Canadian In New Basford, two months of Nottingham listings and all the usual features. Available in all the pubs and bars in the city centre worth a toss tonight, and all the other shoppy places from Monday.

Nottingham Education #2: The Accent

2007-11-28T13:39:00.000Z

(I wrote this for some student mag last month. Seeing as I didn't get paid for it, and because there are so many twatty youths in the city who are currently spurning their native tongue in favour of trying to talk like somebody from Brixton after a brain haemorrage, I see no reason not to print it here...)

The Nottingham accent is weird. For one, only half the people in the city actually talk like that, as people who live south of the Trent sound like they come from the Home Counties. For two, it’s the most difficult British accent to get right (which is why they never bother with it in any production of Robin Hood, especially the current one. And we won’t even talk about Kevin Costner’s attempt in Prince Of Thieves, which got him laughed out of the UK premiere).

If you want to learn Notts As She Is Spoken (and you should, because it opens a lot of doors, mainly the ones in clubs and late-night bars), you need to learn the following ground rules;

1. WE’RE NOT NORTH. WE’RE NOT SOUTH. WE’RE NOT EVEN MIDLANDS. WE’RE EAST MIDLANDS

Attempting a standard Northern accent is not going to cut it – the Notts dialect is far too subtle for that. And although we’re in the Midlands, our accent bears no relation whatsoever to the Birmingham one. Moral of the story – attempt to wing it, and you’ll come a cropper.

2. DON’T BOTHER LISTENING TO LOCAL MEDIA FOR GUIDANCE

Trying to find a local accent on the radio or telly is as pointless as looking for a pound shop in Knightsbridge.

3. WE MIX BOTH NORTHERN AND SOUTHERN ACCENTS IN THE SAME SENTENCES

In other words, we combine harsh Northern vowel sounds with drawn-out Southern ones, and then snip off a few vowels or add new ones for good measure. It’ll take a lifetime to master it, but here are a few examples;

Northern	Notts	Southern
Up (‘Oop’)	Shirt (‘Shot’)	Down (‘Daahn’)
Bath (‘Baff’)	Work (‘Wok’)	Out (‘Aht’)
Just (‘Joost’)	Home (‘Om)	Sound (‘Saahnd’)
Must (‘Moost’)	Take (‘Tek’)	Town (’Taahn’)

Ergo, a sentence such as “I was about to have a bath before going to town, but realised my shirt was dirty, so I went out to buy a new one” is pronounced “I wor joost abaaht ter tek a baff after wok before gooin’ dahn tahn, but it wor dotteh, so I went aht ter gerra new’un. It’s saahnd as a paahnd!”

4. REPLACE WORDS THAT END IN ‘Y’ AND ‘IE’ WITH ‘EH’

If you learn nothing else, this is the rule to live by. You don’t go to Rock City to take in a gig; you go to Rock Citeh to see . Your best mate is not called Julie; she’s called Juleh. You’re not studying at a place of Higher Learning; you’re at Uneh. Quite possibly doing a Joint Honours in Istreh and Sociologeh. Maybe living in Strelleh. Doing a part-time job in Ockleh to mek some extra munneh so you can afford a season ticket at Notts Caanteh. The Nottingham version of ‘The Rain In Spain Lies Mainly On The Plain’ is ‘Toneh Adleh Aht O’ Spandaah Balleh’. Repeat it, in the mirror, at least five times before going out in the morning.

5. A BRIEF TERMINOLOGEH

A full list of words peculiar to Nottinghamshire would take up pages and pages and pages, so here are the most essential;

‘DUCK’
(‘Dook’) - Term of endearment, regardless of gender or sexuality. In other words, don’t be offended if you’re a strapping Sports student and the bus driver calls you ‘duck’. ‘Duckeh’ can also be used, but only with people you’re particularly close to. Eg: ‘Ayup, me duck’
‘YOUTH’
(‘Yooerth’) – A (mainly male) term of endearment, regardless of age. In other words, if the same bus driver calls you ‘youth’, he’s not casting aspersions on your perceived lack of life experience; he’ll probably call the bloke behind you whose just collected his pension the same thing. Eg: ‘That Yooerth over there wants to flog his iPod’
‘SUCKY’
(‘Sookeh’) – Nothing to do with Bevis or Butthead: it’s a disparaging term that calls someone’s intelligence into question. Known in the South as a ‘Plum’, and the North as a ‘Soft Lad’, said person is a bit thick, but in a fairly benign way (if he was outright insane, he’d be Batcheh’). Eg: ‘That Yooerth ovver there only wants a tenner for his iPod – he must be right Suckeh’
‘COB’
The local equivalent of a bap, roll, baguette, etc.
‘CHELP’
One of the few terms used by DH Lawrence still in existence today. It’s a catch-all term for back-chat, insubordination, etc. Eg: ‘Andeh gen the landlord some right chelp abaaht fixin’ the cooker, so he’s kickin’ us aht’
‘SNAP’
Food of any description, which is best consumed when you’re Clammin’ (i.e., hungry). If you’ve got some cobs in a Tupperware box, congratulations – you’re in possession of a Snap Tin.
‘CHATTY’
(‘Chatteh’) – Not a description of your ability to talk at length: more a critique of your personal hygiene. It also means you’re extremely Crufteh. Eg – ‘I’ve got to clean up me ‘aase before me Mam visits – she’ll goo Batcheh when she sees how Chatteh it is’
‘DEZZIE’
(‘Dezzeh’) – nothing to do with South Indian culture: it’s a description originated in Notts in the 1980s, after Des O’Connor, which casts aspersions on one’s sense of style and fashion. Eg – ‘Ugh! Aah lecturer was in Rock Citeh wearing a tank top over a Spice Girls t-shirt! He looked WELL Dezzeh!”
‘ONE-O’
A phrase of indeterminate origin that describes maximum effort and (in some cases) excess. If you bust a gut running for the last bus, overindulge at the SU bar, partake in a 48-hour revision binge, or pursuing a member of the opposite sex, you’re on it like One-O. Eg – ‘This youth in aah year is a right Keeno – he’s been sucking up to lecturers like One-O’
‘CHIPPING’
To go somewhere. You may be chipping off to Rock Citeh, or chipping back ‘om ter yer Mams for Christmas. Eg – ‘This club is well Dezzeh and I’m clammin’ for some snap. I’m gonna chip, yer get meh?’

Crime-related Stories of the Day

2007-11-27T15:52:00.001Z

Copper puts thief in hospital
Gun-related palaver in Arnold
Bilborough family re-enact six months' worth of EastEnders storylines

Kiss This

2007-11-26T18:19:00.000Z

Congratulations to Duncan Hamilton, who won the William Hill Sports Book of the Year today for Provided You Don't Kiss Me, his account of being Cloughie's inside man at the Post during his time at Forest (And congratulations to LeftLion, for predicting that he'd win said award ages ago). This makes it the second Notts-related book to win the Will Hill in recent years, the other being Gary Imlach's My Father And Other Working Class Football Heroes.

When we interviewed Hamilton a few issues ago for LeftLion, he was still in a state of shock about how much interest he was getting from the book, but I can't imagine why. It's absolutely mint, even though it's not the most comfortable read for any Forest supporter looking for a comfort blanket in these more troubled times for the Tricky Trees. If you haven't read it yet, you must.

Yer GET Meh?

2007-11-26T00:54:00.000Z

Ta very much to the youths at postoftheweek.com for their Biggery-Uppage of May Contain Notts. And welcome to anyone swinging by from that very mint blog, even if they don't live in Hood-Town. Don't worry. We're not going to shoot you.

New columnist in LeftLion

2007-11-26T00:50:00.000Z

We're building up a solid team of shit-hot columnists on the Lion at the moment. Hot on the heels of Left Brian, Left 'Pie-on and A Canadian in New Basford comes our latest column; Bar Bar Black Sheep. It's by someone I know who has worked behind loads of bars across Notts, and has a shitload of stories to tell. I have the feeling it's gonna be a very decent read...

Ten things you won't see in Notts during Euro 2008

2007-11-22T14:54:00.000Z

So, thanks to England stinking like a teenage boy's bedroom last night, there will be no Euro 2008-related tomfoolery for us next year. I was doing the LeftLion pub quiz last night, so I missed it - but I was witness to the longest sentence the Fish Man has ever said (which went along the lines of "They were fucking shit", and then mumbled a bit). When it was all over, I felt the usual feelings of loss and regret that inevitably come when England fuck it up. But then a shower of Stone Island-wearing gibbons came in, and the one with the hairstyle that looked like he'd submerged his head in a chip pan and then dragged a rake down the front of it called me 'scum' for not being there to cheer 'The Boys' on. Then I started laughing.

Just as well we're out, really, as we would have been just as shit then as we are now. But before we all do Cross of St George-like slits on our wrists, let's all calm down, take a deep breath, realise what we won't have to put up with next year, and be grateful.

1. There won't be shops selling England tat months before it happens
Seriously, they ought to call it Man-Christmas or summat. Speaking as someone who texts everyone he knows on New Year every two years with a message that goes “Yessss! It’s World Cup/Euro year! Get IN!”, even I get pissed off with non-sport shops flogging mank from March onwards. I mean, does anyone really need an England air hockey game or an England executive pen set? And I'm not even going to talk about England fish shapes or England garlic bread. Fuck that.

2. You won't see England flags everywhere
In 2002, the AA estimated that the country was wasting millions of gallons of petrol due to the drag factor caused by people strapping plastic England flags to their cars. More importantly, the RAC estimated that hundreds of thousands of cars look absolutely shit. And do they really have to have ‘England’ written on them? Have you ever seen a stars and stripes with ‘America’ on it, or a swastika bearing the legend ‘The Nazis’?

3. You won't see chatty estates looking like a big concrete garden fete
As soon as the Christmas decorations come down (March), up go the fucking England flags. Funny how the people who get the shittiest end of the stick from their own country are the most patriotic, eh? The good news is that flying a cross of St.George at home doesn’t automatically make people think you’re a racist anymore. The bad news is we still haven’t got flagpoles in our back yards, so people invariably trap ‘em in the upstairs window, which is wrong. Does the US national anthem go “Oh say does that Star-Spangled Banner yet hang out of Daz’s back bedroom?” If you’ve got your flag in your bedroom window, you can’t open the bastard during the hottest time of the year. For as long as two months. That’s minging as fuck.

4. You won't feel like you're in the Trent End circa 1982 when you're in the pub
People who moan about all-seater stadiums love international tournaments, because they can go to Walkabout or somesuch and relive the ‘good old days’. You have to get there at least an hour early to get a good spec. Then you get wedged in against a load of pissed-up twats, struggle to listen to what Gary Lineker has to say and are forced to listen to crap music for half an hour. Like the old-school experience, you get a cack view of the action whilst being swept along in a sea of humanity, having the word ‘cunt’ bellowed in your ear by some nob-end who keeps making wanker signs at a television screen. At half-time, you have to piss into an overflowing sink. Someone keeps throwing up a half-full pint pot whenever England score, there’s a hot dog stand at the back that’s in danger of being overturned, and when you leave the place there’s three police vans and an ambulance outside.

5. You won't have to deal with bell-ends standing in the middle of town after England games, showing off
In Italy or Argentina, people bomb about on scooters after games waving flags the size of Viccy Centre about, and it looks dead good. In Nottingham, Tez from Carlton hangs round the Lions with his shirt off and a flag tied round his waist, bellowing and sticking his arms out like he was at a New Model Army gig, having a go at people who are on their way to another pub for ‘not being England’. There’s a reason for that, Tez; it’s because we’re not cunts.

6. You won't have to deal with the same bell-ends singing ‘No surrender to the IRA’ in pubs for no reason whatsoever
Can someone remind me what qualifying group the IRA were in this year, please? And isn’t it funny that the twats who sing this are always the ones staggering round town on St Patricks Day with those fucking stupid Guinness hats on?

7. You won't have to deal with pubs burying themselves in a blizzard of England mank
Down comes the ‘No Football Shirts’ sign in the window. Up go loads of photos of twatty models in face paint and signs that scream ‘Watch England Games Here!’ Oh, okay then, I was just going to shut my eyes and imagine what the game would be like until you said that.

8.You won't have to put up with spacky girls in market T-shirts who don’t know what the fucking fuck is going on
I’m glad to live in a world where football is understood and appreciated by intelligent women. I just can’t stand the ones who clog up the pub in Italy crop-tops (because it’s always Italy, isn’t it? It's never Ukraine or Andorra), or T-shirts with crappily suggestive footy puns like ‘Score with me', 'I have great ball control' or 'Jizz on my tits for England'. They’re just there to cop off, argue with each other over which one’s Wayne Rooney, get bored after ten minutes, and start comparing the tattoos on their arse. Back to Jumpin' Jaks with you, trollops.

9. You won't have to sit in a pub, watching England suck harder than everyone on Forest Road after 7pm
Remember how horrible it was last year. Remember how much wrangling and bartering you did to get out of work early enough. Remember how you would sit outside a pub at noon for half an hour, so you could get a good seat. Remember the pinch-faced, expletive-laden faces of your compatriots in the pub, as the Golden Generation displayed all the finesse and flair of a dribbling post-coital dog's cock. Remember it all, and be grateful you won't have to go through it again.

10. You won't have to cope with the inevitable misery of England getting knocked out
Yes, men do have periods. They usually come once every two years, after England go out against a proper team. All the usual symptoms are there; listlessness, an inability to be rational, general mardyness at being lied to and betrayed and a complete trashing of the living room when your partner says “Why don’t you watch Wimbledon instead?”

(PS: If only the England team had displayed the passion and commitment that this local footballer did)

The Eleventh Crack Commandment

2007-11-21T12:26:00.000Z

Thanks to the only decent song on Biggie Smalls' last album, we're all au fait with the ground-rules of drug-dealing, but now, thanks to a couple of eejat bwoy from Basford, we can now add a new dictum to go with 'never getting high on your own supply' and 'don't let crackheads have tick' comes a new rule; Don't end up with your name in the Post because you stabbed someone in the eye who didn't want to buy any drugs off you, like a twat.

The NME says dead nice things about us again

2007-11-21T12:17:00.000Z

...but they still haven't reviewed my Emo album yet. Bastards.

Somebody dig up the McWhirter Brothers immediately

2007-11-19T17:13:00.001Z

The govermental arse-wiping process better known as ASBOs are usually not worth commenting on, but this takes the biscuit - if not the whole packet. This youth here has been barred from every pub in Notts bar five for the next five years, due to 16 incidents of unadulterated meatheadery in assorted hostelries. Every single pub in Notts minus five, as you may have already divulged, is a fucking enormous bar-out and worthy of a place in the Guinness Book of Records (the other thing that probably crossed your mind, of course, is that you must really have to hate someone if you feel the need to puncture their lung with a fork).

Obviously, in a more enlightened society, they'd display him at Goose Fair in a glass tank and charge people to watch him punch the fuck out of a crocodile or summat, but at least - according to the Post - we can all feel safer in our beds now. Which is nice. The five pubs that he is allowed to drink in must be very pleased with the publicity they're now getting. I know where my next pub crawl and informal business meeting is going to be, don't you?

St Pancras, part II

2007-11-16T16:07:00.000Z

This is how the Belgians are advertising the opportunity to use the new train link.

St Pancras

2007-11-15T16:35:00.001Z

First the good news; for years and years and years and years and years, St Pancras was an absolute shithole. In fact, it's main purpose seemed to be to put off people from the East Midlands from ever visiting London. The first time I ever went there, when I was 14 and on a mission to buy some Jam shoes and a white Lonsdale sweatshirt like what Paul Weller had, I spent the first half an hour cowering in a toilet, reading the most horrific invitations to stand on Platform 3 at 7.30 with a copy of the Standard under me left armpit if I fancied getting me cock sucked, and discovering that the previous occupant had left his shoes, trousers, pants, and tie on the floor.

(I nicked the tie, though. It was nice)

Now, of course, all the papers are rubbing their genitals in undisguised glee over the £800m spunkage over said grot-laden station, making particular reference to the fact that Nottingham is now linked to Continental Europe (because we're always going out on the piss in Brussels and commuting to our call-centre jobs in Paris, aren't we?) However, what they fail to mention is for the 99.9999% of people who use St Pancras to get to That London, it's not all that, really.

Why? Let us count the ways;

The Journey
It's all very well being able to get to Paris in 2 hrs 15 mins, but before you can even do that, you're stuck on a train that - if you're really unlucky - stops at Leicester (our jumper-wearing crisp-devouring inbred cousins) Loughborough (which I won't have a word said against, because Chris Needham comes from there) and Luton (which demolished the only reason for going there - those massive flamingos in their local Arndale Centre - years ago). And if you're coming back, you run the risk of wasting valuable minutes of your life in the stations at Bedford (I went there once. There was a Carpet City) Market Harborough (why?), and then - just when you think you're a few minutes away from planting your feet on the Motherland, the bastards stop at Attenborough and Beeston. All you want from a service to London is to get into the fucking place as soon as possible, and back to a proper city even sooner.

The Facilities
There are only four things you need at a decent station; a pasty, a pub, a decent-sized paper shop , and somewhere to curl one off. The architects of the new St P, on the other hand, think that what we really need is a dead long champagne bar, and loads of poncy shops, which means that you have to walk half a mile outside to get to the tube station. The nearby WH Smiths is tiny, and there isn't a requisite West Cornwall Pasty stall, so you still end up at Kings Cross station. Rubbish.

The Location
Local business-dickheads are twittering that, thanks to the new St P, Nottingham will finally achieve its dream of being part of the commuter belt. No, mate. The only way that was going to happen would be if they somehow managed to move the station five miles into the centre of London. You're still going to have to spend an hour or so with your nose under Mr Commuter-Twat's minging armpit to get wherever you need to go. You're still at the mercy of someone in Stratford bringing the entire Tube network down because he left a box of chicken on the seat. Kings Cross is still going to be a shithole.

The bogs are nice, though. They're just miles away.

Hairy Botter

2007-10-25T01:06:00.000+01:00

Even though there's more important shit going on in Notts, it would be criminally remiss of me not to mention this story in The Sun. It's that old classic - Man Gets Bad Tattoo, With Unfortunate Consequences - with a local slant;

PROUD Paul Croft got a tattoo of Harry Potter wizard Albus Dumbledore on his back – but is now being teased by pals after he was outed as GAY.

(Notice that? He's not 'Gay' - he's 'GAY'. In MASSIVE CAPITAL LETTERS)

Proud Paul, 36, spent a YEAR having the Hogwarts headmaster etched into his skin as a surprise for his five kids.

(Notice the repetition of the word 'Proud', Media Studies students; that's shorthand for 'if you met him in the street and pointed out that he had a mystical homosexual tattooed on his back, he would pull your entire digestive system out of your mouth and strangle you with it' And yes, if my Dad had come home with a tattoo of, say, Larry Grayson when I was a nipper, it would have definitely been a 'surprise')

But the factory worker has been the butt of jokes ever since Harry Potter author JK Rowling revealed last week that Dumbledore was in love with a fellow male sorcerer. Paul, of Nottingham, moaned yesterday: “It’s been terrible. I’ve always liked Dumbledore – just not in that way.

(Jesus in a jumpsuit, it's come to something when a man can use a national newspaper to point out that he doesn't want to have bum-sex with a wizard in a kid's book. I'm going to ask the Daily Mirror to tell the world that I don't really want to have it off with the fox who played Maid Marion in the Disney film, even though I cut out a photo of her and slept with it when I was four)

“I went into work and everyone was sniggering. “When I walked in, one of the lads said, ‘Oi, Paul – heard about Dumbledore?’ “There were wisecracks about ‘Watch your backs, lads.’ Someone asked me if I was planning to get a tattoo of Graham Norton. I thought, ‘Why me?’ ”

(Here's where I have total sympathy for the poor sod. I worked in a factory in Hucknall once, and the bitchiness would have put the entire cast of Queer As Folk to shame. There was one lad there who had a divorce, and every time he cocked up over the slightest thing, the entire factory would shout "NO WONDER 'IS FOO-KIN' MISSUS PISSED OFF!" Another youth was due in court one dinnertime after a fight outside a chippy, and when he came in for the morning shift, the first thing he saw was an enormous blackboard with the odds of his sentence chalked up - from 'Community Service' at 3-1 to 'The Electric Chair' at 1000-1. These people are the kings of bitching. The moment that JK Rowling outed Dumbledore, some of the blokes in that factory would have been clubbing themselves into unconsciousness on Saturday afternoon to get the weekend over as quickly as possible)

The huge £500 tattoo shows Dumbledore holding a scroll bearing the names of his Harry Potter mad children – Charlotte, Deanna, Brandon, Tamzin and Paris. Paul said: “It seemed like a good idea at the time."

(No, mate; spending £500 - FIVE HUNDRED POUNDS - to deface your back with the 21st Century Ali Bongo wouldn't be a good idea even if you sealed every window in your house, filled your fireplace with crack, and stoked it up all weekend. Especially when you decide to embellish it with a permanent reminder of your progressively worsening taste in kids' names. In GangstaFont.)

And shame on whatever Picture Editor chose an image of him with his hands in such an unfortunate position. Tsk.

The End Of An Era

2007-10-19T20:34:00.000+01:00

The Variety in Radford has shut down, quite possibly for good.

Although it wasn't to everyone's taste - it was like walking into the 70s, and the entertainment was decidedly un-right-on - The Variety was proper Notts, and fucking hilarious. I was absolutely gagging for my mates from London to come and visit, so I could take them for a concentrated dollop of purest Nottingham - and whether you liked it or not, it was far more representative of Nottingham culture than a thousand bought-in art galleries. And if you didn't go, you'll never know.

As far as I know, LeftLion was the only publication to do a proper interview with the people who ran the place. And here it is.

Don't ask for a Party Bag

2007-10-12T01:40:00.000+01:00

Sorry this is a bit late in the day, but I've just got round to watching HIV & Me, Steven Fry's documentary about attitudes to AIDS. Here's a transcript of a scene where he's been talking to Gay lads in Manchester about how complacent people are getting about it...

STEVEN FRY (VO): I find that all rather depressing, but little do I know that Gordon has saved the most worrying for last. He’s known Mark for years, and assures me that what I’m about to hear is true…

MARK: I’ve got a friend. Er, he’s been to a party in Nottingham, er, where there was a 19 year-old lad, he was Negative, and he wanted to be given ‘the Gift’.

STEVEN FRY: ‘the Gift’?

MARK: They’re called ‘Gift Givers’. People with HIV.

STEVEN FRY: Good God…

MARK: …and there were five Positive guys who had sex with the Negative lad, to Poz him up, and, um…

STEVEN FRY: ‘Poz him up'?

MARK: Yeah. They all had sex with him unprotected to give him ‘the Gift’. He wasn’t held down, he wasn’t forced, he willingly…

STEVEN FRY: So your friend was one of these five who, who shagged him…

MARK: Yeah.

STEVEN FRY: Can you have any insight into…why he wanted to…he thought it was a badge of honour, or…?

MARK: I have no idea, to be honest. I mean, a lot of lads these days…a lot of lads like unprotected sex…

GORDON: Yeah but of course, you know what happened at the end…

STEVEN FRY: What?

MARK: Yeah. When they finished having sex with him, they inserted a butt plug into him to make sure that none of the semen came out of him. To make sure that he definitely…

STEVEN FRY: My God…that…I’m sorry, that is very odd…

MARK: It is. It’s horrible.
ME: (hands over eyes, trying to slide down the side of the sofa)

10 Reasons Why Nobbing Off The Night Bus Service Is Another Stupid Idea By Whatever Greedy Mingebag Lead Paint-Licking Gibbons Run This Town

2007-10-08T02:41:00.000+01:00

(Story here)

1) If you didn't happen to live within walking distance from town and happened to be around after hours - you know, enjoying the benefits of this 24-hour city we're supposed to be living in - the Night Bus was a life-saver. I used to live in Top Valleh, and would be in the Social at 2.50am, knowing that if I left in 5 minutes, I would be at the top of my street in 20 minutes whilst saving £8 by not having my wallet anally raped by a cabbie.

2) It allowed the hundreds of people who work late in town - either in bars, clubs or call centres - the opportunity to get home reasonably quickly without having to deal with a taxi queue full of pissheads ramming kebabs into their maws and on the verge of fighting with their own reflections.

3) It was an illicit thrill to get on a bus with its own bouncer. Like being on the subway in Times Square and seeing a Guardian Angel, albeit one in an NCT jumper that was getting stuck into his snap tin and talking to the driver about going piking at the weekend.

4) For many people, it was the last opportunity to get your end away before the night was over (because, c'mon - if you've pulled in town, you're never going to take them home on the fucking Night Bus. You might as well tell them that they've got to be quiet when they get there, so as not to wake your Mam up).

5) The fact that the only person who ever pulled on the night bus was the driver, who always seemed to have some bird hanging over the counter, waiting for him to get to the Bulwell turnaround so he could give her, well, a Bulwell turnaround.

6) The one driver on our route that looked a bit like Cockney Wanker, who once stopped midway through a speech to a full bus about how they could use a City Rider to say to some twat who was chelping him; "Look youth, I'm trying to tell yoh summat fookin' useful. So shut yoh fooking pan and stop looking at that gel's tits, yoh cunt" to rapturous applause.

7) The way the staff and passengers refused point-blank to tolerate mouth-breathers playing shit Grime tunes on mobiles and weed-smoking in a way that is sadly lacking on normal bus services.

8) Standing in town at 4am in January, freezing your bollocks off, and almost dropping to your knees in relief at the sight of a warm bus, signifying that in a very short time you will be ripping through the contents of your fridge in your pants and thinking "Fuck working tomorrow".

9) No-one cared if you were partaking in a tray of fishcake, chips and peas. Even when you tipped the tray into your mouth and used your fork to shovel in the batter bits.

10) It was absolute comedy listening to people recount their night out, like an Alan Sillitoe novel come to life. How this bloke got noshed off by someone's Nana in a leather mini-skirt in Jumpin' Jaks. How that slag is gonna get panned next time she looks at Darren. How Tez had to piss the sick off his shoes so he could get into Flares. NCT should have cut a deal with Sky and had the Night Bus Channel.

Yeah, so there's going to be a bigger service - but only at the weekend. Big deal. OK, so only 8.5 people were riding the Night Bus on average (presumably the other half of the last one had lost his torso in a fight outside Bar Ha Ha) - get some of them limos that bell-ends hire out, then. And am I being hopelessly naive, but aren't public services supposed to lose money when they provide a valuable service? Isn't that what we pay taxes for?

This Bloke In A Burned-Out Car In Wollaton Business...

2007-10-08T02:04:00.000+01:00

...gets dodgier and dodgier. Bad enough that people in Wollaton have to deal with a car catching fire while they're trying to have their tea. Even worse when it turns out to have a Dad of eight from Leicester inside. Far worse when it turns out he was stabbed beforehand. And outright bonkers when you read this;

It has now emerged Mr Chenia was jailed for 20 years following a fraud trial at Nottingham Crown Court in November 1998 and a drugs trial at Leicester Crown Court in April 1999.

The trial at Leicester heard he used Kingstand Golf Club in Leicester Forest East, as a cover for a £230,000 Class A drug dealing operation.

The court heard a police surveillance operation led to a 90-kilo seizure of drugs including heroin, cocaine, cannabis, amphetamine and ecstasy concealed in ditches and hedges across the nine-hole course.

Players at the course were unaware of further drug stashes buried under the course fairways and greens.

Christ on a crisp packet. As everyone knows, nothing beats a decent walk around a golf course and swinging a club about while you've got a spliff on. Imagine being on that course, taking a massive divot out on a bad swing - and finding a big fuck-off bag of weed. I propose right bastard well now that if they want to make golf more interesting for a televisual audience, they hide loads of drugs on golf courses and make players take whatever they find if they accidentally uncover them.

[Postscript: funny how Lee Westwood and Tiger Woods chipped in with this almost immediately after]

Gooseh

2007-10-06T11:25:00.000+01:00

The best time of the week to go to Goose Fair is definitely Friday afto. You can actually walk about with your nephew without being whacked in the head by some sucky woman holding up a pushchair, there's very little in the way of teet'-sucking mouth-breathers, and you feel that, being in a fair on a school day, you're pissing in the face of the world. Here's some pics I took...

One of the few things about the new Gooseh that I approve of is the lack of chronic spelling mistakes. Back in the day, you couldn't move without being exhorted to try some 'PIPPING HOT PEES' or a 'TOFFE APPUL'. This was the only typo I spotted. Well done, everybody.

Goose Fair hasn't been the same since that hostile Disney takeover a few years ago.

"Mam! MAM! They're LYNCHING THE MUPPETS!"

This bloke is definitely worth a visit if you're going tonight. He fries up dead thinly sliced potatoes for a quid, and they are skill. He used to call them 'Crips', as they're a cross between chips and crisps, but I'm guessing it was pointed out that he was glorifying American gang culture. Or maybe the Bloods got the arse. Or summat.

OK, I've teased you enough. Time to get my peas on. If you're Proper Notts, you know there's only one place to get the peas in - that place in the top corner who do nothing but peas. My Mam used to work there in the sixties, and said it was the best fiddle in the fair for both the owner and the staff. ONE POUND AND TWENTY FUCKING PENCE, people. But sod it - I defy anyone who calls themselves a Nottinghamian not to look at that photo and not have a multiple orgasm of the taste buds...

If you've already read this, you'll know of my distain for Goose Fair's eschewing of gnomes with lucky bingo beans, Scottish giants who could step over Minis, local folk punching each other in the face for entertainment and MaaseTaan in its quest to be a poor man's Alton Towers. In fact, there's only one concession to old-school freakshowery - that big trailer van near the public bogs. I'd been in before, so I wasn't arsed. But me nephew saw this;

...and demanded we went in, so we could be systematically lied to by an ET doll in a jar...

Some bits picked up off a building site...

and - oh, for fuck's sake...

After picking up the usual paraphenalia (toffee apples, cinder tuffeh, overpriced balloon, etc), May Contain Notts's nephew said "Thank you very much for the greatest day of my life". Awr. Which makes it sound like he's been imprisoned in a cupboard for the past six years. My thoughts;

1) It's definitely not as big as it used to be.
2) If they tried not to rip people off so much, there's be about three times more people there.
3) Seeing as we've got a massive Square again, they should hold a more old-school fair there at the same time for the kids
4) I need to go back tonight for some more peas.

Factory Fodder

2007-10-04T13:35:00.000+01:00

Sorry, but I just can't work up any excitement whatsoever about Control, the Joy Division film that was mainly shot in Nottingham. OK, so local actors getting work is brilliant, but it strikes me as horribly ironic that Broadway has put on a gala night to celebrate the fact that someone in a production company drove to Lenton, formed a square with their thumbs and index fingers, and said "Yeah, this place looks like the kind of depressing shithole where Ian Curtis would hang himself".

Are You Going To Gooo-ooo-ooose Fair? Elvis Mirrors, Nuggit And Peas...

2007-10-04T12:05:00.000+01:00

(Apologies to Simon and Garfunkel)

Obviously, the big event of the week in Nottingham is the return of Goose Fair. I've not been yet, so I'll refrain from making comments about how rubbish it is/not as mint as it used to be/the extortionate price of the peas until I do.

Until then, may I direct your attention to a series of pieces I wrote for LeftLion a few years ago about the things which made Gooseh such a brilliant thing;

Intro

Mousetown
A relic from the days when looking at rodents in a glass tank was the height of culture and sophistication in Notts

Elvis Mirrors
The King lives. On student bedsit walls, in charity shops and in your Auntie's attic

Scream If You Want To Go Faster Man
A tale of dreams denied and hopes a-crushed, set to a soundtrack of Racey and Gary Glitter

Saddam Assassin
KILL THE BASTARD!

The Snake Woman of Bombay
The erotic splendour of a bored secretary from Bulwell earning a bit of Xmas money by pissing about with a snake

The Giant From Scotland
He could step over a Mini, you know

Gordon the Gnome
He could walk under a Mini. Alright, maybe he couldn't

The Boxing Booth
Old-school fist-on-face action, watched by deranged old dear with a brolly

Goldfish
The ultimate prize. Until they died the next morning.

Dads with faces like smacked arses
Goosey-hating Enemies of the People

Outdoor Bingo
The Sport of Mams

Being warned by your Nana not to go on a Saturday night
Mouth-pursing warnings of Apocalypse by the Cakewalk

LeftLion Is Not For Sale

2007-10-02T14:39:00.000+01:00

A note from LeftLion Towers;

It has come to our attention that a certain (alleged) Big Issue seller is going around town with a bag of LeftLions and offering them for sale, claiming that LeftLion has been bought out by the Big Issue. We’d like to draw your attention to the following;

• LeftLion has always been a free newspaper. That’s why it has a big ‘FREE’ logo near the top.

• LeftLion has not been bought out by the Big Issue, or anyone else. It remains a fiercely independent magazine produced for and by Nottingham people.

• If you see anyone attempting to sell LeftLion, please take their Big Issue vendor number and send it to info@leftlion.co.uk

• LeftLion is available for free in over 300 locations in the Nottingham area. Get a copy from there.

• (Oh, and ask the bloke if he’s got any Big Issues for sale, as it’s good karma)

Thank you,
LeftLion
www.leftlion.co.uk

Cheeky fucking bastards.

Spandau Bell-end

2007-10-01T20:42:00.001+01:00

I dunno about you, but this story caused me much in the way of mither over the weekend, as it probably did most Notts lads of a certain age. Not the fact that Richard Nixon managed to find time to stop worrying about being exposed as a cheating bastard to feel a bit sorry for Rudolf Hess - this bit at the end;

"The files include good wishes from civilians, one from a Nottingham man with a photo of his young sons carrying a model Zeppelin."

Fuck. Now, I know I haven't got a brother or owt, but it set me thinking; had me Dad ever took a picture of me and my cousin Kevin holding up a Zeppelin in 1973? I know I had a Colditz glider one Xmas, but he was always too busy getting kaylide at the Old General to help me put it together. There was a photo of me and my sister standing next to a Sooty machine in Chapel St Leonards round about the same time (Sooty, Sweep, and Soo had formed a Power Trio, and if you put 2p in they'd play summat). Had my Dad been sending photos of me to Hitler's deputy? He's mad enough.

Thankfully, the Post got on the case and eased my fears. It was actually a retired Council bod who just wanted his autograph. "It's like getting the autograph of an Australian cricketer," said Brian Howell, just before sending a photo of his granddaughter holding up an Airfix model to Osama bin Laden. "You may not like things to do with his personal life but they are a great cricketer and you have to strike a balance in getting their signature."

I don't know how anyone can equate Shane Warne to Supreme Nazi No.2, but this I do know; thank fuck it wasn't me ode man.

LeftLion #19: Scream If You Want To Go Faster, Girls

2007-09-28T02:33:00.001+01:00

Students in Nottingham - Blessing or Curse?
The Coral
Nottingham RFC
DJ Looch Mentalism
Justin Moorhouse
Vinyl Abort
Nuclear Family
Athlete
Miles Hunt
Team Hughes
Matt Haig
Moot Gallery
Control

Plus Canadian In New Basford, May Contain Notts, Nottingham's meatiest listings section and all the other regular stuff - with FREE 'Proper Notts' tea-towel for every reader!

If you don't find this lying about tonight, you're obviously drinking at a shit pub. Or you've stopped in.

Oh, For Fuck's Sake

2007-09-14T19:21:00.000+01:00

Remember the Robin Hood Marathon? It's now this;

Seriously, are there no traditions left in this fucking town that haven't been rebranded by a stifling monolithic souless corporation? I suppose Goose Fair is going to become the Capital One Festival of Getting Ripped Off And Eating Peas, next.

Soz for the lack of updates - been badly again and backed up with mither. Will try to address what a gwan at some point over the weekend. But now, I'm off to participate in the Boots Festival of Getting Cunted and Going Out For The Fanneh.

Look at this. No, just look at it.

2007-09-03T21:47:00.000+01:00

You may have noticed that May Contain Notts has been willfully Forestcentric of late, and for that I can only apologise. But then I rummage through a box of old shit, turn up a souvenir programme of Forest's 1978 League Cup win, find the following advert, and vow to have it scanned in, blown up and framed in my living room as soon as humanly possible. Seriously, look at the quality of this;

OK, my thoughts;

1) Note how only Kenny Burns and Frank Clark seem to be paying any attention to that massively-out-of -proportion hunk of Co-Op steak in any kind of approving manner, which probably explains why the former now looks like this. John McGovern seems a bit scared by it, while everyone else seems to be attracted to something else - possibly a Black Forest Gateau the size of a shed in the corner.

2) We already know that Cloughie regularly prepared his teams for big matches by locking them in a room and getting them larruped - but did Forest really train on gargantuan slabs of red meat as well, and if so, how come the 1978 Forest squad are all still alive? Hadn't pasta reached Nottingham yet or summat? Thank Christ Channel 4 hadn't been invented yet - I couldn't have taken the sight of my beloved Forest queuing up to be harangued by Gillian McKeith, holding their own shit in Tupperware boxes.

3) I know 1978 was a long time ago, but was a hunk of Co-Op dead cow really 'the best' that was 'good enough' for the Super Reds? I know my Dad used to bring it home from work when he was a lorry driver there, but then again he brought home some mushrooms from his mate in the pub the other week that were absolutely lifting with maggots, so I wouldn't exactly rely on his culinary opinion (when me Mam had stopped screaming at him for being so fucking chatty, he pointed out that he still intended to eat them, because 'there'd be a bit o' meat in 'em'. Then she started screaming again).

4) Since when has anyone described people who shop at Co-Op as 'discerning'? Yeah, I go there every now and then, but only because Lidl don't sell hummus or pitta bread. That's not me being 'discerning' - that's me not being arsed to go up the road to Tesco Express. When I worked as a lift boy at the Co-Op taking fat Mams to the top floor, there were many descriptions that flickered across my mind. 'Disgusting' was one. 'Discerning' certainly wasn't.

5) I know Photoshop wasn't around them, but Christ on a crisp packet - look at the shoddy cutout job on Frank Clark...

6) All in all, it shows just how much things have changed. Once upon a time, 'training on beefsteak' was the sign of a successful, well-off athlete at the peak of condition. Nowadays, it sounds like an insult directed at someone's Mam on the top deck of the bus when the schools turn out.

According to a bloke in the pub who was talking to a mate...

2007-08-29T00:58:00.000+01:00

Bulwell has more chip shops per square mile than any other estate in the whole of Britain.

(Special thanks to Joe Leivers)

They Were Bleddy Well Winning An'all

2007-08-28T23:06:00.000+01:00

Get Well Soon, Clive Clarke.

Strelley Telly Time #4: The Hitman And Her In Ritzeh's

2007-08-24T04:12:00.000+01:00

If you’ve ever cocked a sneer at Oceana, or are labouring under the delusion that the 80s were a golden era where everyone looked like robots in pirate costumes, you need to invest half an hour of your time in the following. This is YouTube gold.

A quick history lesson for the yout’ dem; before acting the twat on the X-Factor, and whilst in the middle of his reign as purveyor of synthetic pop-shite in the late ‘80s, Pete Waterman presented The Hitman and Her, a magnificent hunk of tat broadcast live-ish from Zanadu’s in Chesterfield or somesuch that went out on ITV early on Saturday morning, usually when you came back from a proper club and you needed cheering up when you hadn’t pulled or couldn’t get into Rock City.

The great thing about Hitman was that if afforded you the opportunity to rip the piss out of Gary and Sharon as they went about their mating ritual without running the risk of getting your head stoved in, whilst conveniently forgetting that they were happily swinging their chinos in a club while you were at your mate’s house picking at a kebab with the sound down so not to wake his Dad, who was on the post in the morning. The following clips are from the night they came to Ritzy’s – sorry, Ritzeh’s – in 1989.

While you're checking these clips - and if you're the same age as me, you'll be scouring them with a magnifying glass to see if you recognise anyone - look out for the following;

1) Pete Waterman relentlessly hyping his latest slab of pop- mank

2) The dance troupe led by Wiggy, a lad who usually wore a blonde wig and some kind of skimpy nappy (fact: my mate was actually approached by Wiggy and offered a slot as YTS Wiggy. He turned it down)

3) Lads wearing ties. Yes, even as late as 1989, looking like you worked in IT on Dress-Down Friday was still a mandatory look at meat markets. If you went past Zhivago’s on a Friday night (it’s now Vision Express in Viccy Centre, kids), you would see blokes going through the bins trying to find a scrap of cloth that they would fashion into a tie

4) Ritzy, although looking like the set of a Albanian version of Dr Who, winning the Discotheque Of The Year (North And Midlands) award. Which must have really fucked The Hacienda off.

5) Oh, and bear in mind that just down the road, The Garage is probably playing Voodoo Ray and Me, Myself And I, Rock City is playing Orange Crush, Love Shack (when it was a new release, and not a club night), and Keep On Moving upstairs and She Bangs The Drums downstairs, and loads of Nottinghamians are in a field somewhere, what with Acid Culture already starting a year ago.

Fact: Pete Waterman believes that the best single Motown ever produced was this.

Forest's Mega-Bog

2007-08-24T01:38:00.000+01:00

(I wrote the following for the latest edition of When Saturday Comes. I'm sure they won't mind if I reproduce it here...)

The village of Gotham in Nottinghamshire is famed not only for inspiring an early name for New York (and Batman’s stomping ground), but for being mad. Legend has it that when the locals heard that King John was making a detour through the village (thereby forcing the creation of a Royal Highway that the villagers would have to pay for), they went on an orgy of mentalism – drowning eels in a tub, riding around on horses with sacks of corn on their shoulders to take the burden off their horses, painting green apples red, etc – in order to scare the King away.

900 years later, and the ancestors of the Wise Men of Gotham are in danger of being comprehensively out-madded by Nottingham Forest, who plunged new depths of delusion - and managed to give Notts County fans even more to laugh about this summer – when out of nowhere, they announced that they were to move out of the 30,602-capacity City Ground (their home for 109 years) to a 50,000-seater mega-stadium four and half miles away in Clifton, smack on the doorstep of Gotham.

Bearing in mind that a) Forest are still in League One, b) they’ve only just managed to scrabble their way out of debt, c) although they have the highest average attendance in the division, it’s still 10,000 or so short of capacity, and d) they never managed to pack the ground out even when they were European champions, you may be wondering what the name of God they’re gibbering on about. So am I.

“It would be fantastic for Nottingham. It would say that Nottingham is a forward-looking, dynamic city that has confidence and self-belief,” announced Forest chief executive Mark Arthur, as he waved about artist impressions of something that looked like a massive toilet bowl with a red seat at a press conference in June, pausing every now and then to submerge another eel’s head under the water. “There are many (Arsenal supporters) who didn’t want to leave Highbury, but anyone who has visited the Emirates Stadium will say ‘wow’. What a place to watch football. I would say to any fan that they should visit somewhere like that, see what it looks like, see what it feels like. And perhaps we will go for a slightly scaled-down version of that.” Well, Mark, it’d be nice to visit stadiums like that a couple of times a year, but we can’t. Because we’re in Division Three. Which is a massively scaled-down version of the Premiership.

So what’s wrong with the City Ground? You’d understand reasons for a move if the stadium was a dump, but it’s not. There were plans to expand the stadium to 46,000 in lieu of a return to the Premiership (which have now been swept under the carpet). It’s a short walk from the train station, and a stone’s throw away from the home of the oldest professional club in the world and a world-famous cricket ground, making it one of the most concentrated areas for sport in the country (and it’s conveniently located near to the only Hooters that still exists in the UK, but let’s not talk about that). According to Arthur, that’s not good enough for go-ahead, vibrant, eclectic Nottingham; “If the World Cup were to come to England in 2018 or 2022, then this would be a stadium worthy of staging the tournament’s matches.”

Ah, yes. I totally forgot that the FA – who, as you’ll recall, would be incapable of organising a piss-up in any of the 350 or so pubs in our fair city – were on the verge of claiming the World Cup. And when that absolute 100% cast-iron certainty happens, Nottingham will have a 3-1 chance (with Leicester and, Derby - who announced stadium-expansion plans on the same day) of hosting the East Midlands games. Never mind the fact that Nottingham’s participation in Euro 96 was conducted under a swathe of empty seats. The opportunity of hosting Potatovia v The Peoples Republic of Macaroon and two other less prestigious games is far too glittering a prize for Nottingham to cock its nose up at.

And if the World Cup actually does come to England, and Forest’s new MegaToilet beats out Pride Park and the Crisp Bowl, what then? How are Forest going to double their gate in a decade, when it’s obvious that the football boom is not going to get any bigger and the ladder has been pulled up on all but four clubs in England? More importantly, how can anyone predict with any certainly that Forest are going to be a Premiership club by 2018, when recent form shows that they’re just as capable of local derbies against Hucknall Town in the Conference North next decade?

It’s only when you look past the bluster and the glossy brochures that you realise what’s going on. As mentioned in a previous WSC article, Forest and Nottingham City Council have butted heads over a previous loan (for Euro 96), which the former tried to weasel out of. They appear to be on amazingly good terms now, and the Council are welcoming the move with open arms (the local councillors in Clifton, on the other hand, didn’t even know about the proposed move until it was announced to the press).

The council own the strip of land that backs onto the Trent, and they would love to make use of the City Ground for more of the same. Listen to the words of Ray Valenti of Natrass Giles chartered surveyors without wanting to put this magazine down in order to wipe the drool off your fingers; “750,000 sq ft of floor space with a value exceeding £250m….could attract a medium-sized food store operated by a premium brand such as Waitrose…this could be the location for the five-star hotel Nottingham has so far failed to attract…The demise of soccer (yes, that’s what he said) at the City Ground will be celebrated with a new Trentside landmark that even Ol’ Big ‘Ead would be proud of!” No, mate, he would have smacked you in the teeth.

Nottingham, like every other moderately-sized factory cities in England that doesn’t have factories anymore, is going through an identity crisis and reacting to it by chucking money up the wall on building projects and hoping one or two of them stick. The Forest move displays the depressingly familiar deluded logic that states that, if you build another Top Shop five minutes walk from the old one, you’ve suddenly created a Retail Mecca. And if you’ve spent the last few years building ‘executive apartments’ in the hope that there’ll eventually be industries here that actually have executives, or erecting loads of hotels in the hope that people will come here for more than stag dos, why not build a 50,000-capacity stadium out of the way in the expectation that Forest will eventually become a Big Club and sell it out every other week?

The people of Gotham had a method to their madness. The people who run Nottingham Forest seem to be just mad.

Sexy, Sexy NottsNews

2007-08-21T19:14:00.000+01:00

Jesse Jackson is coming to the Meadows. Unless Isaac Hayes has had a pint in the Poets Corner or The Bar-Kays have mooched around the Bridgeway shopping precinct to get summat for their tea, this will be the first time anyone from WattStax has ever appeared there.

A local businessman vows to raise £1.96 million for Nottingham Rugby Club. God knows how - sponsored shitting-in-pint-glasses, or summat.

The usual Mansfieldness.

Controversial Poster Campaign Hits Nottingham

2007-08-21T00:10:00.000+01:00

Skegness - It's So Burning

2007-08-17T19:24:00.000+01:00

Weep, people of Nottingham - our spiritual homeland is been dealt a heavy blow. I wrote this for LeftLion #5 a couple of years ago. I throw it up here as my little tribute to the jewel of the Lincolnshire coast.

Twelve Things That Were Skill About Skeggy

1. Your Mam buying you clothes months in advance

…that you can’t wear until you go on holiday, in order to convince other people that you’re not fleabags. How twisted was that? I remember when I was six, and I had to spend three whole months staring at an absolutely mint Kung Fu vest and pants set in the drawer that I was not allowed to wear. It was agonising. Naturally, as soon as you get to Skeg, every youth from Notts is wearing the same clothes, making it look like there’s only one shop in the whole of town.

Honestly, you tell people in the South about things like this and they’re convinced you’re taking the piss.

2. The journey there

…which was a yearly novelty in itself. Remember, in those days Dads never drove you to school, and Mams weren’t allowed to drive. Ever. Sadly, there were no Playstations and tellies attached to the seats, your Dad won’t let you open the window, he hasn’t got one of them things that hang off the back bumper to stop car sickness, you’re wedged up between a suitcase and your sister on the back seat, Dad’s put on his Elvis tape and you’re sitting there knowing he’s going to start roaring when Old Shep comes on (because he always does), and you’re starting to get that familiar catch down the back of your throat that means in about three minutes, you’re going to be puking your ring into a Co-Op bag while your Dad mutters “Fucking kids…you can stay at your bastard Nana’s next year”.

On the upside, there is nothing more cosmopolitan than hearing Radio Trent fade out and Radio Lincolnshire fade in. That’s when you know you’re on your holiday.

3. The caravan

This is how fucked up Nottingham Mams and Dads are; they spend the whole year moaning about ‘gyppos’ diddling them at Goose Fair and parking up on nearby wasteground, and how do they spend their time off work? Exactly – by living like them. I bet proper Romanies don’t decorate their caravans with mank won off the prize bingo, though. And I’m pretty convinced they have better sanitary facilities than a piss-bucket shared by three generations in the middle of the night, an’all.

Still, when you’re a kid, caravans are ace, and miles better than B&Bs, which only posh people from West Bridgford ever stayed in. You wonder why houses don’t have fold-up beds too. And it’s always so dignified, how the people who have just moved out have left enough tea bags in the pot for a proper mash.

4. Childrens rooms in pubs

This must be the best thing about Skeggy by far. Normally, going to the pub with your family meant sitting in the car for two hours with the occasional bag of crisps and a Coke with a straw in it, playing Mastermind with your sister, and seeing if there were any wank mags in your Dad’s toolbox. Not in Skeg, though – you had a whole room to yourself, which usually contained a bust Air Hockey table, some kind of animal ride with an ‘Out Of Order’ sign on it, and a Space Invader cabinet with some other game in it. That was broke.

Still, it was an invaluable introduction to pub etiquette, as you sat on your Dad’s knee while he said “Quick, while landlord’s not looking’ and tipped half a pint of Shippos down the front of your best shirt. Obviously, the spirit of the Children’s Room lives on in all inner-city Nottingham pubs, especially the ones in Bulwell.

5. Meeting people from Sheffield

This was a rather special thrill on its own. Skegness wasn’t only occupied by Nottinghamians during the summer (even though you were bound to see at least two kids from your school while you were there); Mansfield, Derby and Leicester also represented, but it seemed like every steel mill in Sheffield had decamped to the coast. You couldn’t understand a word they were saying, they all had basin cuts, they were built like brick shithouses, and they always wanted to give you bone-crushing handshakes. Even the women. Especially the women.

6. The beach

The innocent time when you were proud to say you got crabs while you were on holiday. Finding the spot where you buried 10p last year, only to find there’s a JCB digger there. Sitting on a manky donkey for a bit. Going in the sea. Once. Never doing it again. Your dog going mental and drinking gallons of seawater, only for him to piss it out his arse while you’re trying to chat some girl up.

7. Eating fish and chips twice a day for a week

I’m sorry, but I’ve been to Blackpool and the chips there were rubbish. Skegness has the best chippies in the world, and I’ll fight anyone who dares say otherwise*. That street in Skeg known as Chip Shop Alley – I could just stand there all day and inhale its delightfully pungent aromas. If you don’t put on at least two stone while you’re there, you’ve had a shit holiday.

*unless they come from Whitby

8. Amusement arcades

Once upon a time, before even the Atari 2600 came out and Nottingham didn’t have dens of iniquity where hard lads from The Meadows nicked your 10p that was on the glass – the kind of place where Zammo first got into scag, you’ll remember – Skeggy was the only place to get your low-tech interactive jollies. The absolute highlight of the week for me was legging it into an arcade and seeing what I was going to spunk the contents of my piggy bank on that year. I bet I still have my name on a Sheriff Nintendo cabinet in the storeroom of a chip shop near the prom. Your Mam would always moan about how you should be getting some fresh air, but seeing as she lived in the Prize Bingo next door ramming in 10p after 10p, she was talking out her arse.

9. Going to Butlins for the day

We went to Skeggy Butlins one year. It was bob. The only thing about it I can remember is being able to stick my hand through the hole in the wall under my bad and shake hands with the lad next door. Much better to go in for the day, have a go on everything (which you could do in a day, in any case), and piss off out again.

10. The Cockle Man

The bloke in the white coat who used to go round the pubs and clubs at night with a big basket of things in Mr Kipling trays, who used to get your grandparents all excited while they were watching someone who came in 4th during an episode of New Faces murdering the oeuvre of Neil Diamond. You look at these things now and think, fucking hell – 20 Chinese lads died for something that looks like a tumour and you have to put loads of vinegar on so you can eat ‘em without retching. Obviously, big respect to the Fish Man of Mansfield Road, who keeps the flame alive in a piscine style and fashion.

11. Finding some suitable tat for your Nana

Now it’s getting near the end of the week, you’ve got to make sure your Nana gets some return on the investment she rammed into your cakey little hand, or she’ll have a face like a smacked arse until Christmas. And what bounty there was! Hunks of rock artfully moulded to look like a full English breakfast! Coasters with photos of people in ‘Frankie Say’ T-Shirts playing crazy golf! Something with the Big Gay Fisherman on it! A tea tray of the clock, which was a bit like the one in Blackpool, but not quite! Postcards that gave you an erection even though you didn’t quite know why!

Sadly, the numerous tack shops in Skeg have moved with the times and the grandparent market has been completely marginalised. Last time I went, one could purchase a set of Rasta garden gnomes sucking on enormous spliffs, an indoor skull fountain, a garden ornament of two fists adorned with sovereign rings, giving the finger, and a dildo on sale for a quid. If I had bought any of those items, I would have been cut out of her will.

12. Going home

A bit like getting there, only with more vomiting.

What The Fuck Is This Rammell?

2007-08-13T13:52:00.000+01:00

The new football season (which started approximately two minutes after the last one) saw Forest and Notts scraping draws with Bournemouth and Grimsby respectively, but we're not going to talk about that. Oh no. We're going to talk about Nottingham Forest's decision to nob off Sherwood the Bear as their mascot and replace it with that gimp up there. Over to Mark Arthur, who has already appeared in this blog as the bell-end who wants to move Forest to a big toilet in Clifton;

Reds chief executive Mark Arthur said: "When people think of Nottingham they think of Nottingham Forest, they think of Brian Clough, they think of Trent Bridge - and they think of Robin Hood.

...and they also think about guns, and knifings, and people shoving glasses in each other's faces, Mark. Why not have a big fluffy gun on legs that shot out footballs?

"Sherwood Bear was a popular character, but in all honesty, some children were a little bit scared of him. He was a bear after all."

Eh? Was he going round biting people's faces off and diving on Forest supporters snap tins? Or was he a bear in the NG1 sense of the word? Actually, Sherwood the Terrifying Predatory Homosexual Bear Who Wants To Have Bum-Sex With Your Kids looks like this;

...and the only thing young Forest supporters are scared of is being stuck with following a shit club in Division Three and getting laughed at in the playground by kids with Man United and Chelsea pencil cases.

If you're that arsed about it, there's a campaign to save Sherwood, and you can read about it here. I wouldn't normally get wound up about things like this, but the idea of Robin Hood being sponsored by Capital One makes me want to puke my ring until my entire digestive system hangs round my neck like a chain.

If Only He'd Come From Nottingham

2007-08-10T23:22:00.000+01:00

The death of Tony Wilson has really fucked me off, even though I'm not arsed in the least about Joy Division or the Happy Mondays.

I met him once, at an In The City in Manchester, when I gave a speech about how the smut industry was coining it in on the internet while the music business was scared of it (which shows how long ago it was). I felt absolutely out of my depth, and he could tell - so he went out of his way to thank me for coming and how he'd been waiting for ages for someone to talk about it, and was as proper, charming and intelligent as everyone is saying he was. He was stood at the back right the way through, and I directed the entire speech at him, staggered that someone that influential was actually interested in what I had to say.

Afterwards, and completely out of the blue, he put me on a round table with some scarily influential people. I shat another breeze block, but he calmed me down, talked me up, and sorted me out. Then he absolutely skewered me in an argument onstage, and we had a drink and a laugh about it afterwards. I walked away wishing I had a gaffer as cool as that, and feeling extremely lucky to have met him.

The thing that I admired most about him was that he was fiercely proud of where he came from and didn't give a fuck about what anyone else thought. Back in the day, Manchester was seen as one of the shittiest ratholes in the country. Now it's the true capital city of England, it's the only place in the country that I'd leave Nottingham to work in (fuck Brighton - it's a ponce's Skegness) and they have to come here to shoot a film about how grim it used to be there. Tony Wilson had a lot to do with that.

The problem with Nottingham, you see, is that it's never had someone like Tony Wilson - someone in a position of power who thought "You know what? Fuck everywhere else - this city is great, and we can do great things". Look at the people who run Nottingham at the moment - the professional student-rinsers, carpetbagger politicians, and the shower of bastards who think that having one TK Maxx ten minutes walk from the other one makes your city 'vibrant' and 'eclectic' - and tell me they give a fraction of a toss about our city and its people that he gave about his. Actually, that's a stupid question, seeing as most of them don't even come from round here, but you know what I mean.

Imagine what Nottingham would have been like today if he'd have come from here. And take inspiration.

Nottingham: It's NEWSTASTIC

2007-08-09T15:19:00.000+01:00

The Assets Recovery Agency announce that they're going to get their hands right down the back of Colin Gunn's sofa
People in Daybrook get the arse about a homeless hostel about to be built on Mansfield Road. Could have been worse, chaps - makes a change from more student flats
The Council show off their new A-Team van, which uses battlefield technology to repel local yout's. They'll be getting a tank, next
Another local lad dies in Iraq

LeftLion Pub Quiz - It's Tonight, Duck

2007-08-08T15:21:00.001+01:00

The Golden Fleece, Mansfield Road, 9pm. Click this for more details.

News Flange, August 8

2007-08-08T14:23:00.000+01:00

Eric Irons died at the weekend, and by reading this link, you can see that he was proper. I went to school with one of his lads, but I never met him, which was a shame. One of the great things about Nottingham is that it's not prone to the usual racist rammell that other cities I could mention are bogged down with - and we have people like Eric Irons to thank for that.
Looks like the old Cuba Libre venue will be under new management very soon, and I'm looking forward immensely to another bar opening in town that will be either vibrant, or eclectic, or possibly both. Oh, hang on, it'll be around the Square, so it's bound to be wank.
Don't you hate it when you realise that somewhere decent in town is actually part of a faceless corporate chain? Turns out that there's loads of Loch Fynes around the country, and they've been bought up by Greene King. You'll be telling me the Fish Man who goes up Mansfield Road has franchises across the world, next.

Strelley Telly Time #3: Nottingham Is Vibrant And Eclectic

2007-08-08T12:41:00.001+01:00

Strelley Telly Time #2: He Wouldn't Do What They Told Him

2007-08-07T22:09:00.000+01:00

Drop In The Ocean raised enough money to build an orphanage for tsunami victims in South India and kids who were rescued from sex tourism in Cambodia. Almost as importantly, it gave us this incredible footage.

Coward Of The County

2007-08-07T12:28:00.000+01:00

We've not had a footballer-gets pissed-and-acts-like-a-twat story for a while, have we? Say hello to Mick Vinter - who played for Notts in the first Sirrel era - who copped a suspended sentence for knocking a female friend about after his usual 10 pints a night. According to the victim, she suffered 'nasal problems' after the assault. Judging by the picture, it looks like Mick has been suffering those all his life.

In other news;

It appears that Gordon Ramsay is in town to shoot an episode of his TV show, I'm An Aryan-Looking Cunt Who Treats People Like Shit In Order To Hide The Fact That I Do A Ponces Job

Some poor cow from Highbury Vale gets slapped with a £522 fine for dropping a nub-end in the Not As New As It Was A Month Ago Old Market Square. Fucking hell, how big was it? Was it blocking the tramlines or summat?

Oh, and our genitals are getting more scabbier than this time last year.

In other news...

2007-08-06T13:48:00.000+01:00

Some window-licker from Darwin's waiting room tries to hold up a paper shop by pulling his t-shirt over his face, but gets told to fuck off wi' hissen. Don't they have balaclavas or tights in Mansfield, then? I could never do that. I hate people looking at me beer gut.
It is announced that Nottingham is the UK's most expensive place for students to live. Fucking hell, who would have thought that living in a ponce-box in the Lace Market and having £8 salads in the Orange Tree on your dinner hour would be so costly?
That smackhead from St Anns who left an old bloke to rot in his bed for a year and a half while she cashed in his pension to buy drugs and duddus gets a suspended sentence. Nice of the Post to point out that although they lived together, the relationship was only platonic. I'd have puked me ring otherwise.

Look at this bell-end

2007-08-06T13:24:00.000+01:00

Some nob from Langley Mill thinks he's been caught by a speed camera, so goes home, channels the spirit of Jeremy fucking Clarkson, gets his power saw out, cuts the fucker down and puts it in his back garden. When the coppers do him, it turns out that the camera hadn't even caught him.

Cue loads of whining in the Post from the usual shower of bastards who equate not being allowed to do 80mph past a school with Apartheid. Yawn. Shurrup bleddy moaning and get on the bus, you twats.

Strelley Telly Time #1: Mother Nottingham

2007-08-05T00:26:00.001+01:00

Christ on a crisp packet! It's Su Pollard. On Ideal World. Flogging a steamer that looks like a penguin.

I've just jizzed.

Notts What I Call Music #1: Paper Lace

2007-08-04T23:54:00.000+01:00

(Part One of a depressingly short series about Nottingham bands who made it)

Obviously, you can't begin to talk about the Trent Tempo without mentioning Paper Lace. Formed in the late 60s, they were quite happy to play in pubs in town for the next four years, until they appeared on Opportunity Knocks, smashed it five weeks running (no mean feat, considering that people actually had to vote by post, in those pre-mobile days), and ended up at No.1 in May 1974. The first time I ever heard the word 'Nottingham' uttered on the telly was when they were the lead story on Midlands Today, cruising past the Broadmarsh Centre in a black open-top limo waving a silver disc about.

Billy, Don't Be A Hero should have been No.1 in America an'all, but some teef bwoy called Bo Donaldson nicked it. Ne'er mind, as follow-up The Night Chicago Died made it. One more Top 20 hit (The Black-Eyed Boys) and they were out - only to return three years later to record We've Got The Whole World In Our Hands with the 1977-78 Forest squad (before they'd even won anything - that team was so lairy).

I interviewed Phil Wright (the drummer and lead singer) for LeftLion a while back. He's now a builder, and seemed amused that we were interested in talking to him. He was dead nice.

(and if you're still confused about the meaning of the word 'dezzeh', check the sucky youth behind Tony Blackburn at the beginning of that video)

Paper Lace - The Night Chicago Died (MP3)

Nottingham Education #1: 'Dezzeh'

2007-08-04T21:30:00.000+01:00

Dezzeh adj, North Notts, c.1980s. An unfashionable person or item of clothing, inspired by Des O' Connor.

"He refused to wear that coat to school, for it looked well dezzeh"

"Putting aside internal conflict over Europe, sleaze allegations and a lack of direction, one of the main causes for the Conservative Party's crushing election defeat in the general election of 1997 was the fact that John Major was irreperably dezzeh"

"Please take that photo of me off your Facebook account. I look right dezzeh"

"Urgh, Paris, you've been to TK Maxx again. That's so dezzeh"

I dunno which is more fucked up...

2007-08-04T16:14:00.000+01:00

...the fact that six Bestwood crims applied to join the police force last year, or that the Post have brought out a 32-page Colin Gunn special.

"One of the group shouted offensive language at the waitress when she refused to reveal her chest"

2007-08-03T17:33:00.001+01:00

This story raises a lot of questions;

1) How shit must Warwick be if you have to come to Nottingham for your Xmas works do?

2) How shit must your job be if you have to have your Xmas works do at Jongleurs, listening to some semi-employed gimp who goes round the country saying the same things to a different group of students every other night?

3) Where the fuck is Warwick, anyway?

4) Isn't the Waterfront shit?

Media Finally Catches Up With What Everyone In Nottingham Knew For The Past 10 Years

2007-08-03T14:57:00.001+01:00

Naturally, the papers are full of the Colin Gunn story. The Guardian doesn't say anything that anyone doesn't already know, and neither does The Mail. The Mirror and Times, on the other hand, bother to point out that Nottingham's reputation as Gun-Crazy-We-All-Like-Shooting-Each-Other, Us-Assassination-City has faded somewhat since he was banged up, which is nice (although I'm not too sure about the Times' assertion that Bestwood used to be 'posh').

And this piece on the BBC website points out that things might just be looking up for Bestwood. Hopefully they won't go back to shit like this.

LeftLion Presents - This Saturday

2007-08-03T14:44:00.001+01:00

LeftLion #18 Hits Town, Town Goes 'Ouch'

2007-08-03T03:25:00.001+01:00

INTERVIEWS
Pav and Jesus of the Variety Club, Radford
Duncan Hamilton (author of the new Brian Clough book)
Shaun Ryder
Paul Kaye & Jonathan Glazer
Computerman
Swimming
Notts comedians
Not In Nottingham
Mat Rhodes
Scout Niblett
Zoe Johnson
David Blayze
Tim McDonald
Chris Summerlin

FEATURES
Asylum seekers in Notts
Forest & Notts season previews
Canadian In New Basford: Derby-bashing
8 Notts Football Books
Momentum Festival
Beats v Hippies

And all the usual listings, chelp and mither. And it costs you nuppence, guy.

Hello Everyone, I'm A Shit Blogger

2007-08-03T00:53:00.000+01:00

No excuses. I didn't realise they were putting a link to this in every issue of LeftLion. Shall we do a quick catch-up and forget this ever happened?

February 1^st

Violent pissheaded Australian bit of rough Russell Crowe will play the Sheriff of Nottingham in another film about Robin Hood, it is announced. It’s bound to be cack, so we’ll say no more about it.

February 5^th

Heroin addicts in Nottingham shit themselves even more than usual over the appearance of an extra-strong batch of Zammo-powder in the city that kills two of them.

February 7^th

According to Home Office figures, violent attacks in Nottingham Prison have increased tenfold over the past ten years. They didn’t say anything about bumming, sorry.

February 8^th

Plans for a 100-metre high tower bestraddling Viccy Embankment like a environmentally-friendly Colossus are announced, featuring wind turbines, an energy learning centre and a skate park. Hopefully, someone will work out how to harness the power of middle-class kids falling off skateboards.

February 9^th

In order to save time when writing this, all I have to do is press Alt-Shift-Ctrl-F2 at the same time and the phrase ‘There’s been a shooting in St Anns’ pops up.

February 12^th

The Police announce that drink-related violent offences have dropped by 20% in the city centre. Latest figures from the Market Square beat reveal that – hang on a minute…MOST OF THAT’S BEEN A BLEDDY BUILDING SITE FOR THE LAST TWO YEARS! In other news, office stationary theft at the World Trade Centre has dropped off considerably since 2001.

February 16^th

Two scab-bags in Bulwell rob a local shop after threatening customers and staff with a sword. God knows what’ll happen there when someone discovers gunpowder. The youths were described as wearing ‘sports clothing’, which narrows it down to 50,000 or so people. The static coming off those Lonsdale tracky tops could electrify a Tescos.

February 19^th

Teenagers from Notts get sent to Belfast to learn how to resolve violent conflict. So if you start seeing big murals of 50 Cent on the sides of houses in the Meadows and pipe bands up and down Bestwood, you’ll know why.

March 5^th

More mithering over the two new tram lines that should have been built ages ago to Clifton, Chilwell and Beeston. Sigh.

March 6^th

A Broxtowe woman is found guilty of receiving stolen goods – an entire kitchen nicked from the house across the road, whipped by an ex-boyfriend with a very large holdall and fitted while she was – ahem - bathing her kids. Hey, happens to me all the time – I curled one off this morning only to discover an entire marble bathroom suite that wasn’t there before.

March 7^th

The council announces that Princess Anne will open the Market Square on April 3^rd, but doesn’t actually say what she’ll be doing. Will she have the inaugural slash in the Square? Will she punch the Lord Mayor in the face in the official first fight by the Lions? There’s also going to be loads of concerts by people like dezzie tramp band The Magic Numbers and some other people I can’t be bothered to look up.

March 8^th

Newark MP Patrick Mercer is forced to quit his role as Shadow homeland security spokesman (the chocolate teapot of the political realm) after stating in an interview that he’d met ‘a lot’ of ‘idle and useless’ ethnic minority soldiers who used racism as a ‘cover’, before being defended by the usual shower of racist drippings off a dog’s bell-end.

March 9^th

A 17 year-old lad is stabbed to death in Nottingham, but the national media are too busy wringing their shit-encrusted hands over the stabbings in London to notice.

March 12^th

The big local derby between Notts County and Mansfield – imagine Barcelona v Real Madrid, but made out of Lego – passes without incident. Or goals.

March 13^th

The burglary rate in Nottingham has dropped to its lowest level for seven years. In 40 years time, you’ll be telling your grandchildren about those golden days in 2007 when you could leave your fifth door lock on the snick.

March 14^th

Police step up patrols in a crackdown on Bulwell mouth-breathers who throw stones at the trams and leave branches on the line, as if it was a big metal snake that was going to decimate their crops of industrial-strength hydroponic skunk and devour the local virgin.

March 15^th

A divvy local solicitor admits attempting to smuggle weed into the local magistrate’s court for a crim on – guess what? - a drugs offence. Thank God she wasn’t defending a TWOCer, if you know what I mean I think you do.

March 16^th

After weeks of voting, it is announced that the token Notts band in the opening of the Market Square is Captain Dangerous, because they have more mates than anyone else.

March 17^th

Nottingham city centre reeks of Tory, as David Cameron and the other ones no-one put a name to pretend to be a unified party on the cusp of power. See you next time there’s a General Election, chaps – oh, hang on, we won’t, because you never win owt round here unless your name’s Kenneth Clarke.

April 3rd

Princess Anne officially opens Nottingham’s most popular Emo crèche and place for people to fall off skateboards, The Newer Than It Was Before Old Market Square. Presumably by smashing a bottle of washing-up liquid against the side of the fountain and blessing all who vomit in her. It turns out to be a slightly lighter grey.

April 5th

Some bell-end burns down a mosque in Forest Fields. Seeing as it’s a converted church, that’s two deities someone has managed to piss off in one go. Why didn’t they just graffiti ‘BUDDHA SUCKS HIS MAM’ on the wall and go for the hat-trick?

April 6th

Wollaton Hall completes a £9M facelift, but God knows what they’ve spent the money on. There’s no loft extension, double-glazing, or even a nice fascia. Rubbish.

April 10th

Sneinton Market goes up in flames, damaging seven shops. Police estimate that local businesses have lost up to £7.31, and are anxious to trace two youths who were spotted on CCTV rubbing Lonsdale trackie tops together.

April 14th

165 people dressed up as Robin Hood at Nottingham Not-Really-A-Castle-When You-Think-About-It and set a world record for, well, most people dressed up as Robin Hood. Obviously. The Guinness Book of Records adjudicators move on to Mansfield later that day to judge an attempt on the ‘most people dressed like the peasants in Robin Hood films’ record.

April 19th

Six new talking CCTV cameras are unveiled in town, specially modified to tackle anti-social behaviour. In St Anns, Hyson Green and Sneinton, a robot sucks its teet’ and calls you a ‘Dezzeh Waste Man’ when you drop a fag on the floor, while one in Hockley has been programmed to laugh at anyone holding a TK Maxx bag.

April 25th

Some more greedy city-rapists launch another bid to turn Nottingham into the Happy Shopper Las Vegas, with an attempt to build Europe’s largest poker (which, as we all know, is five-card brag for the sort of gibbon who believes everything they read in FHM) club. “We will be making Nottingham one of the world’s largest poker centres” says somebody in a suit, as if that was summat to brag about.

April 27th

According to the Home Office, crime in Nottingham dropped last year by 9%. Well done, everybody. Meanwhile, a security guard gets stabbed in the leg on Clumber Street, which is trumpeted again as Europe’s busiest shopping thoroughfare (translation: “it’s really badly designed, and has loads of trainer shops and a McDonalds”).

April 28th

There’s a massive fight at a wake in a pub in Clifton. At one point, John Wayne and another American actor with a ludicrous Irish accent are seen punching each other in the face and throwing each other in the Trent, before having a good old laugh about it and having a pint.

May 4th

The citizens of Nottingham stop writing whining letters to the Post that blame ‘Nu Labour’ for everything that has gone wrong in their pointless, pointless lives and wreak revenge on the Council in the local elections by, erm, increasing their majority by four seats. Meanwhile, enough people in Broxtowe scared about someone from Poland taking the benefits owed to them for sitting on their fat arses watching Trisha manage to stand upright long enough to vote in a BNP councillor.

May 5th

Notts County end a better-than-last-year-but-still-desperately-cack-season by helping Macclesfield stay up in Division Four.

May 13th

Nottingham’s spoon crime problem rears its ugly head once more as the Phantom Fork-Flinger himself, Chris Tarrant, chucks some cutlery at a bloke in Memsaab and is arrested by four coppers in flak jackets. “But why didn’t he go to 4550 Miles From Delhi?” says the entire population of Nottingham.

May 18th

Notts County and Mansfield supporters behave like that Palestinian woman with the Deirdre glasses on September 11^th 2001, as fucking rubbish useless bag-o’-shite Forest let in five goals at home to Fred West’s extended family, because they’re shit. Nottinghamshire football sucks a dog’s arse, doesn’t it?

June 1^st

Clumber Street – the Universe’s Busiest Shopping Thoroughfare, remember – is cordoned off for a bit when some bint sprays an unknown substance (probably some perfume she bought off the street for a fiver called ‘Tommy Highflyer’ or summat) in the O2 shop. Two people are treated in the QMC for nausea and vomiting, but then again they could have just caught the stench from McDonalds whilst looking at some rank Nike trainers in the Foot Locker window.

June 5^th

Someone in Hollywood lifts his face from a pile of cocaine long enough to announce that the latest Robin Hood film will be called Nottingham. For some reason, my suggestion – Another Shit Movie With Loads Of Ponce Actors Mincing About In Tights With Cockney Accents – seems to have been lost in the post.

June 9^th

Aldi in Hucknall is raided by a gang of robbers who make off with bags of cash. If they’d have been really shrewd, they could have nicked loads of welding masks for a fiver each, or 500 tins of squid in tomato sauce.

June 17^th

Someone throws a petrol bomb into a kebab shop on Mansfield Road. If they really wanted to shut the business down, they would have been a lot smarter and chucked in one of those scary tramps that always hassle you for fags and bus fare to non-existent homes in Bulwell when you’re on your way to the Fleece.

June 18^th

The New Old Market Square gets knackered up already when the water feature starts leaking like a fat bird in the doorway of Debenhams. Incidentally, it’s crap, isn’t it? Back in the day, all you had to do was empty 300ml of Squezy in the fountain. Now you have to stand there for ages, trying to get a dribble of water into a bottle of Head and Shoulders. Rubbish.

June 20^th

The heads of Notts County fans finally explode with laughter like that scene in Scanners, when Nottingham Forest put a £50m cart before a Third Division horse by announcing plans to move out of the City Ground to a purpose-built soulless identikit stadium in Clifton that looks like a massive bog with a red toilet seat, in order to win the right to host Potatovia v The People’s Republic of Macaroon and two other games in a 2018 World Cup that England have no chance of winning anyway because the FA couldn’t even organise a fight in the Thurland, the stupid, stupid, stupid bell-ends. It’ll make a great venue for that local derby with Hucknall Town in the Conference North next decade.

June 26^th

Bar Humbug finally retains the right to allow skint students to get their tits out to What’s Love Got To Do With It by Tina Turner in front of office boys who are too scared to go to Forest Road. But not before 9pm on weekdays, because that’s when the kids are safely tucked up in a pub round the Square.

July 3^rd

The Nottingham Arts Centre – (which gave the world Mother Nottingham herself, Su Pollard) announces it will be shutting down for the want of £65,000. Never mind – before too long, we’ll be getting a new multi-million Arts Centre that local people won’t use either.

July 5^th

The Council announce plans to slap a £350 per year price tag on parking in town, which will cost more than most people’s cars. By 2014, it’ll be cheaper to buy a car out of the Post, leave it at work and buy another one the next week.

July 11^th

The Warehouse Love Zoo, nee Cuba Libre, gives up its licence after the police come down on it for being the site of a stabbing. And having an incredibly rammell new name that makes it sound like an early 90s Channel 4 Yoof programme hosted by Hufty, or whatever she was called. Meanwhile, Viccy Centre is shut down for a bit when a suspect package is discovered in the car park. Probably something tasteful and not from a chain shop.

July 13^th

A spate of skip and wheelie bin fires sweeps through Arnold, which could be construed as evidence of Satanic ritual-killings, if they could find any virgins knocking about there.

July 16^th

A kid from the Meadows gets a life sentence for shooting another kid from the Meadows, in the Meadows, while they were playing at drug dealers.

July 17^th

A bell-end from Basford who has evidently watched Shogun Assassin far too many times attacks someone on the tram with a meat cleaver secreted in a baby’s pushchair, with the assistance of his minging missus and some other twat. The police are still examining the pushchair for blades hidden in the wheels or samurai swords secreted in the handle.

July 18^th

One third of our student population are given a roll of paper and told to piss off and get a job at Capital One. It’s reassuring to think that the last time you ever see people who have blighted The Social for the last three years with their show-off haircuts and braying opinions about fuck all, they’re invariably sitting in the window of the Cornerhouse Pizza Hut with Mummy and Daddy looking like absolute spanners.

July 19^th

The (other) Colin Gunn trial begins, with allegations of paying off bent detectives a-plenty. Reassuringly, it is revealed that, when not creating a smokescreen over the Stirland murder hunt, said bent copper is using the police database to check up on the activities of his missus. Just one phone call to Trisha, and none of this palaver would have happened. Meanwhile, Meadows Shitbag 1 and Meadows Shitbag 2 have their appeals over the murder of Danielle Beccan rubber-stamped with the words; “NO, MATE”. Oh, and Notts Police is ranked joint-worst performing in the country along with Manchester.

July 20^th

If you’re in town and you want some water, tough shit; a mains pipe bursts in Parliament Street, rendering the City Centre devoid of water. Mind you, you could have left a skip out, because it’s been pissing it down all summer, because even God hates this miserable country nowadays. Sulk.

July 21^st

Ilkeston Council announce plans to spend shitloads of money to reopen the local swimming pool. Plans to spend even more money to improve the gene pool remain unannounced.

Adopt A Druggie?

2007-02-01T22:26:00.000Z

I dunno what to make of the latest plan by the Police force to adopt a drug addict. On one hand, I can't think of a more heartwarming sight than seeing a copper taking half a dozen crack addicts from Sneinton to Tales Of Robin Hood on a Saturday afternoon, but I can also see the impracticalities of chasing down a shoplifter whilst pushing a smackhead in a buggy whose mithering after some crisps.

On Your Knees For King LeftLion the Fifteenth, Peasants

2007-01-31T03:01:00.000Z

Nice, in't it? The latest issue of the only free mag in Notts that's too good to put under your dog's ringpiece while he's curling one off in the living room is OUT NOW, youth - and will you just take a look at that sexy, sexy cover? Roll it up in the pub and mek aht that you've just come back from Skeggeh, or stick it under your armpit and try to convince girls that your Primark jacket is really Paul Smith. Or you could just read the bastard, I suppose, rammed to buggery as it is with interviews of some of the vanguard of the Trent Tempo and some other people. If you can't wait, here's the PDF.

And ohh ahh yeah - the LeftLion Pub Quiz is back tonight at the Golden Fleece on Mansfield Road from 8.30 onwards. It was heaving last week, mainly because the Post were there to write an article on pub quizzes, and various alt-media types were falling over themselves trying to get their pic taken to impress their Mams (tsk). So get in early.

(and I'd like to welcome all new readers of MCN who followed the link from my news section in the latest issue of the Lion. But I can't, because the bell-ends put the wrong fucking link up. Cha.)

'Broadsheet Journo Writes Decent Article About Notts' Shock

2007-01-29T22:09:00.000Z

Dunno if you caught it yesterday, but this article in the Observer is a very rare example of reportage about our lovely home town. Yeah, so maybe he does the usual let's-go-to-St-Anns-and-Radford-to-see-if-anyone-gets-shot routine, but it makes a nice change to see someone bothering to talk to local people who actually give a fuck about where they live. This segment is what we usually get...

Another London magazine has been up in the past, offered them a few hundred quid to get their knives out for some photos, asked them if they can find some guns to pose with. They wonder if the Observer might up the ante.

(That'll be piss-poor ponce mag Vice, then)

May Contain Notts

There It Is, you fat banjo-twanging CUNT

This is why bus prices go up in Nottingham

LL 22 is hard as HELL, battle anybody I don't care who you TELL

MAY CONTAIN NOTTS EARTH TREMOR EMERGENCY SPECIAL

LeftLion #21 - Aht NAAH

Nottingham, City of Romance

Strelley Telly Time #4: The Bulwell Landlord

Please wash out all crims before recycling

One goes into town for the fanny

*DMFH* *DMPH*, That's The Sound Of The Police

He's not too old to get some smack off his Dad

"AY! Are yo' havin' a goz at me FOO-KIN' TITS, youth?"

Bulwell wobbles, but it don't fall down

The Clough Statues

Village Idiots

"Er, just rub her tits, Jason. And play with her fanneh a bit"

Nottingham Education #3: Place Names

And off we go again

The May Contain Notts Awards 2007

Evening Post Sinks To New Depths

Right, that's it

This is what Nottingham's like

This is how Biggie v Tupac got started, you know

Oh, by the way, I hate Christmas.

There's a twat in me kitchen, what am I gonna do

Get Some Notts Round Your Pots

It's Shit-Thick Petty Criminal Week in May Contain Notts!

Brian Cursed

Another War Demo In Town

When Re-enacting Scenes From 'Scum' For A Bit Of A Laugh Goes Wrong

My my, to Waterlooville Notts County did surrender

October and November: The Main Points again

LeftLion #20 - Out NOW! NOW NOW NOW!

Nottingham Education #2: The Accent

Crime-related Stories of the Day

Kiss This

Yer GET Meh?

New columnist in LeftLion

Ten things you won't see in Notts during Euro 2008

The Eleventh Crack Commandment

The NME says dead nice things about us again

Somebody dig up the McWhirter Brothers immediately

St Pancras, part II

St Pancras

Hairy Botter

The End Of An Era

Don't ask for a Party Bag

10 Reasons Why Nobbing Off The Night Bus Service Is Another Stupid Idea By Whatever Greedy Mingebag Lead Paint-Licking Gibbons Run This Town

This Bloke In A Burned-Out Car In Wollaton Business...

Gooseh

Factory Fodder

Are You Going To Gooo-ooo-ooose Fair? Elvis Mirrors, Nuggit And Peas...

LeftLion Is Not For Sale

Spandau Bell-end

LeftLion #19: Scream If You Want To Go Faster, Girls

Oh, For Fuck's Sake

Look at this. No, just look at it.

According to a bloke in the pub who was talking to a mate...

They Were Bleddy Well Winning An'all

Strelley Telly Time #4: The Hitman And Her In Ritzeh's

Forest's Mega-Bog

Sexy, Sexy NottsNews

Controversial Poster Campaign Hits Nottingham

Skegness - It's So Burning

What The Fuck Is This Rammell?

If Only He'd Come From Nottingham

Nottingham: It's NEWSTASTIC

LeftLion Pub Quiz - It's Tonight, Duck

News Flange, August 8

Strelley Telly Time #3: Nottingham Is Vibrant And Eclectic

Strelley Telly Time #2: He Wouldn't Do What They Told Him

Coward Of The County

In other news...

Look at this bell-end

Strelley Telly Time #1: Mother Nottingham

Notts What I Call Music #1: Paper Lace

Nottingham Education #1: 'Dezzeh'

I dunno which is more fucked up...

"One of the group shouted offensive language at the waitress when she refused to reveal her chest"

DMFH DMPH, That's The Sound Of The Police