Category: Playing up

As the new football season begins, we recognise the familiar signs, especially the public complaining about the inflated salaries the top players get, disproportionate to any actual talent they might have and serving only to bolster their egos.

We all know how it goes, we’ve heard it before. Well, this year, it’s going to be different. According to the latest press releases, the Premier League are taking action to put the top names in their proper place. An announcement was made by the Premiership Pay Inspector (PPI) Hugh Payham-Wright:

“Everybody moans about the massive salaries that these stars get when they do little to earn it. So we’re taking action. As of this season, all players in the Premier League will receive performance-related pay on a weekly basis.”

When asked how that would work, the PPI replied simply:

“If they win their game that week, they get a full week’s pay. If they draw, they get half pay. If they lose, they get nothing. Same as the league points system really. It will cut the wages budget in half overnight.”

So this means we will be able to track how much a team’s players are getting paid by viewing their position on the league table?

“Exactly. It’ll give them an incentive to really do their best every week rather than just jog around a pitch trying to look glamorous for ninety minutes.”

But what about players who don’t play that week?

“Players who aren’t picked to go on the pitch at all that week get a quarter of their full wage. It’s not fair to penalise them if they didn’t get the chance to do anything, but we can’t reward them either. Equally, players on the substitutes bench will get a third for the same reasons.”

The move has proven popular with the public, less so with the players. Striker Ivan Mimunninow told the assembled press:

“It’s not fair. How do they expect footballers to live a life of luxury if they’re going to dock our pay for the slightest little thing? We’re footballers, we deserve our mansions and flashy cars, we shouldn’t have to do anything to earn them. Not even our jobs.”

This from a striker who has yet to score a goal in a premiership game.

Some members of the Combined Roster of Associated Players are taking action by setting up Gofundme pages, asking the public to contribute tens of thousands to fund their lavish lifestyles, while other C.R.A.P. players are talking about instigating legal action against the Premiership Pay Inspector, believing they were mis-sold on his intentions when the PPI took up his position.

We await the results – and indeed the results of the results – with baited breath.

Theresa May is said to be intent on torching the shit out of the next field of cannabis discovered in southern England after she finally scored some head, while out on a meet and greet in south London, and then accidentally got off her box.

“No one knew she even smoked,” an aide to the prime minister told LCD Views, on the condition of anonymity, “she does spray an awesome amount of air freshener about after she goes to the loo. We always figured it was her IBS, which is a result of spending too much time with IDS. But it seems she was rolling up tobacco. She’s a roll your own type.”

No one is quite sure what motivated the prime minister to mix some of that sticky head into her old shag, but the result is a transformation that the entire country will presumably benefit from.

“She convened a meeting of COBRA,” the aide revealed, “and then immediately sent David Davis out to KFC to get her a bucket of hot wings, claiming she was famished mate. He came back. I think he’d nicked a couple. His lips looked greasy. Then she sent him back for a big tub of gravy. She was giggling like an idiot. He wasn’t very pleased. He said he had a Brexit white paper to roll up and torch.”

Keen observers are hoping the sudden relaxation of one of the most uptight people in the entire country will have positive benefits and lead to her chilling the hell out finally.

“I’m hoping it’s a gateway drug to MDMA,” the aide said, “man, can you imagine it? If she actually took some she might finally discover the door inside her mind that is barricaded and has never been opened, but so badly needs to be.”

What’s behind it?

“Empathy. At least we hope there’s some in there somewhere. In the mean time at least she’s demanding we play music now as she works.”

Forget Paul the Octopus. The Nostradamus of the 2018 World Cup is Nigel the Lizard.

Before each match, Nigel is offered a choice of two unmarked, sealed brown envelopes. Inside is a bung in the currency of the winning team.

So far, Nigel has acquired a large amount of Russian roubles – no surprise there. But he also gained plenty of Euros after France controversially beat Australia, which will be an asset when Nigel sets up home on the continent after Brexit.

Nigel wore a hat while dithering over Portugal v Spain, in which Cristiano Ronaldo scored three times. Each drawn game has seen Nigel simply take both envelopes.

Intrigued by Nigel’s success, LCD Views secured a brief interview with the soothsaying reptile himself.

What is your methodology, we asked.

“It’s very simple,” Nigel replied from his vivarium in Middle England. “I pick up both packages, and choose whichever seems heavier.”

How do you view England’s chances?

“Easy,” he replied. “We will be out as soon as possible!”

Run the rule over your predecessor, Paul the Octopus.

“Paul had his fingers in a lot of pies,” explained Nigel. “Having eight arms, as an octopus does, makes it quite easy to do that. He started off predicting Germany’s matches, then graduated to the World Cup. He picked the eventual winners, Spain, correctly. Unfortunately he was far too biased towards European teams for my liking.”

And your prediction for this year’s winners?

“Russia. No doubt about it!” he claimed. “They have paid for the tournament, and already fixed most of the matches. My friend Arron Banks has been instrumental in funding campaigns that concentrate on emotional responses, not facts, so that even Russia’s opponents support them. It would be so right that Russia wins on their own turf. In fact, the matches are no more than a charade, and an opportunity for me to make a bit of cash on the side.”

Russia will win the World Cup. You heard it here first. Just as they won the American presidency and the EU referendum.

The latest comeback for the Generation Game broke records last night. Unfortunately, the records broken were very rare vinyl ones, and they were broken by being smashed over the contestants’ heads . . . by other contestants. And that was before the games even began.

Presenter Joachim Pfeiffer, the Border Relations Unification Chief Executive (BRUCE) introduced this Irish Border Special edition, and promptly announced the contestants: Theresa May, Arlene Foster, and Leo Varadkar, representing Great Britain, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland respectively.

There were various challenges against the clock, most of which were never even started let alone finished. The contestants spent most of the two year time limit bickering among themselves.

In the round where they had to assemble a machine gun from scratch, Ms Foster proved surprisingly skilful. Fortunately, the “bullets” provided for insertion were lightweight dummies, incapable of hurting anybody.

Then there was a Play Your Cards Right round. May proved particularly poor at this, especially when the ace up her sleeve turned out to be a pair of twos. Nothing for a pair. Not in this game.

The most interesting round was the Nice To See You Border Construction Challenge. Foster attempted to erect a concrete partition, which Varadkar promptly threw down. Meanwhile, May created an invisible, frictionless model out of theoretical bricks. Nul points all round.

Then for the grand finale, the various negotiating points were arranged on a conveyor belt and displayed to the contestants. They had to agree on everything they saw. Unfortunately nobody had precisely the same recollection of what even one of the items was – even the cuddly toy – so they had to go away empty handed.

Mr Pfeiffer said afterwards, “This is a first I believe. Nobody has ever gone away empty-handed from this game before. They have made history, but not in a way they would have liked.”

Didn’t they do well? Well . . . no, not really. Oh well, better luck next time.

The average lifespan of a human alarm clock, or knocker-upper, in Victorian London has been calculated at fifteen minutes.

While some noteworthy human alarms did last many years, most were killed as a result blunt trauma from a missile striking them on the head during their first early morning shift.

Missiles most commonly thrown at ‘alarms’ were full chamber pots, but bibles were also commonly a cause of death.

Old News spoke to Mary Smith of East London, a survivor of the trade, about life on the predawn cobbles of old London and just how easy it was to die on the job.

Mary is an authority, having been given the handle of ‘Ace’ by other alarms during her very first shift, after successfully waking five customers without being killed.

Mary’s lodgings, high over the street close to The Old Bailey, were striking for the sheer number of scuffed bibles stacked about the room and dozens of crates of broken chamber pots that look vintage.

“It was murder on them streets,” Mary told us, puffing on a pipe, her wrinkled hands crissed and crossed with the scars of battles fought long ago, “Jack the Ripper was at his foul work when I first started working as an alarm. I was only nine at the time. It wasn’t my first job. Prior to working as a knocker-upper I’d managed a team of fifty children in a match factory. I had to leave that when my jaw rotted away from the sulphur. This jaw is wood.”

Mary knocks her pipe against her jaw with a regular beat that evokes the window panes she must have knocked on all those years ago.

“But it were your customers who were the most dangerous. And other knocker-uppers’ customers too. Oh, and the packs of feral, abandoned infants you had to be on your guard against.”

Mary pauses, lost in thought a moment, until a shiver running up her spine brings her back to Old News.

“I saw one knocker-upper, bright eyed chap, called himself Life, he were just back from killing people legal like for Empress Victoria on the subcontinent and fancied his arm at waking people early.

Well he thought he was going to be an ace and his red army coat would be his schtick. His first customer was his last. Bill Tricks the manager of the knackers yard end of Shit ‘n Blood lane. This fool Life walks right into the yard and shouts ‘wakey wakey hands off Bill’s snakey!’.

Life were killed by an old bull set for boiling down to glue that morning. Gored Life through the kidneys, right through the stones and all. Rumour had it he got thrown in the pot with the bull and ended up as glue too.”

Mary went on to explain that the way to survive on the job was to use a very long stick or a blow pipe, through which you could dart frozen peas at windows and run before the pot was flung.

“For a while I had a stick so long I could tap on windows just by leaning out of my own reasonably priced, top floor studio apartment on Sensible Road, just down end of Youmustbekiddingme Market. Before I moved here that was.

Lean right out my window and tap on all the windows on my street. No bugger could kill me with a flying King James Bible that way. No one could come charging down stairs with a knife and use my guts for garters. I could duck as soon as I saw the glint on a rifle barrel.

Old Harry Fists was a terrible one for shooting human alarm clocks. He killed six of them before I took him on. I was an ace many times over by that stage.”

Inquiries as to the reason she carried such a wish onto the cobbles were met with an icy glare.

“Did you spend your childhood on the streets of Victorian London? No. Well, you wouldn’t understand, so keep your beak out of it.”

We apologise and she continues.

“Not one of us could read letters or numbers and so you were forever waking up the wrong house. Although that were pretty funny if you got up some high and mighty type like a lawyer or a merchant of louse powders or what not.”

So how is Mary spending her days post the invention of the electric alarm clock?

“Having a lie in! How else? And hurling bibles at all these bloody delivery people that buzz my buzzer a dozen times a day because they’ve worked out I’m always in. Vermin. Here’s one now. Pass me a crate of broken pots and grab yourself King James! Let’s have at them. You’ll be an ace at knocking out Amazon Prime men by lunch time!”

Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson’s application to join the official village idiots’ club has been rejected. This shocking news comes after he was recently turned down as a candidate for Clown Club membership.

To discover the reasons behind the rejection, LCD’s Rural Curiosities correspondent donned a smock, and headed to Guild headquarters in a village in Somerset. We discovered a man sitting on a wall outside a pub, with a vacant expression on his face. He revealed himself to be the Numpty Dumpty of the Guild of British Village Idiots.

“Ooh, arr, thart be me,” he admitted, trying to get his cigarette to light by dunking it in his scrumpy. “What yer want me fer? Not ruddy Boris again, is it?”

Yes, we replied, he’s been accusing Jeremy Corbyn of saying all the stupid things that Boris himself actually said.

“Oh, fer Pete’s sake!” exclaimed the Numpty. “Boris is more of a court jester than a village idiot. I told ‘im thart meself. ‘E still ain’t joining, and thart’s final.”

But he’s a complete idiot! Why can’t he join? Surely it’s a no-brainer.

“We do ‘ave a good larff,” said the Numpty. “Get ratted and fall over, for people’s amusement. Anyone in their right minds would love to join us. But village idiots can’t be in their right minds, can they? So anyone applying is sane, and therefore disqualifies themselves.”

That’s quite a catch.

Just tell me one more thing. Why do you behave like an archetypal comedy yokel?

“Coz we merged with the Worshipful Company of West-Country Stereotypes,” he explained. “It wuz an April Fool joke wot went wrong. Coz we done it in August.”

He fell off his perch, landing clumsily in a flowerbed and launching his pint into the air. He somersaulted, stood on his head, and caught his flying glass between his feet – to massive applause.

Numpty Dumpty had a great fall.

The Easter holiday over bakers across the United Kingdom have gone back to making cold, passive aggressive buns.

“It’s a lot easier,” G Reggs told LCD Views food specialist, “do you realise how fiddly it is to get the crosses on buns while they’re still hot? It’s always near impossible to get the last nail in. Especially if you really put yourself into your baking like I do. I try and get my partner to help, but they just bang on what’s wrong with a pair of baps? It normally descends into an argument then.”

But while bakers across the land may have happily stopped producing the Easter speciality, for at least a week or two, many have other reasons to be relieved.

“I’m fed up trying to find hot cross buns with easta baked into them,” B Iffa told LCD Views, “so I can make proper easter treats by shoving them inside an EASTA EGG. If you can’t mash your personal idea of religion based on a delusion of hate and ethnicity into jingoistic bullshit, it makes it harder to spread the butter. I never get the butter to spread right when I’m not heating up the butter knife with my internal confusions and rage.”

Asked if they expect sales to drop for a few days in the wake of Easter, G Reggs was upbeat.

“I’m going to start selling Christmas mince pies sometime next week, I’m getting a jump on Sainsburys this year, they’re not churning out the Christmas lines till June this year. Slow coaches. And I’m making the Halloween themed breads this morning.”

So while some may have to wait a few weeks for the hot cross buns to return, it should at least make early morning marital disputes over breakfast easier to negotiate.

Here, have a pack of cold, passive aggressive buns. They’re good all year.

Pope Francis’s claims that Hell doesn’t exist has raised a lot of eyebrows and caused quite a stir already, but the latest reaction beats them all, coming as it does from the Devil himself.

Speaking at a press conference, he made the following statement:

“This time, this Pope has gone too far,” he said. “You know, I actually thought for once the Catholic Church had picked an OK bloke for their top job on Earth, maybe this one might actually make it to Heaven, but he’s just crossed a line, and if he thinks he can put me and my demons out of work, he’s in for a shock. At least he will be when he joins his predecessors down here!”

Wait a minute, is he saying there are Popes in Hell?

“Oh yes! We’ve got a lot of clergy of all faiths of course, priests, imams, rabbis, preying on people’s superstitions over the ages, selling indulgences, telling people they could buy their way into Heaven. God went through the roof when that one happened. And whose job is it to deal with these turbulent priests? Me and my staff.”

This begged the question of how they are being tormented.

“Well, the scale varies depending on the seniority of the clergyman in question. Obviously the Popes being the most senior you can get, they get the worst punishment. They’re all eternally eight months pregnant. Apart from a couple of the really nasty ones who are eternally in labour, and the babies are all coming out feet first.”

That sounds painful.

“Absolutely. You should hear them whinge about fluid retention and varicose veins, it’s a hoot! Now, as it stands, that’s what he’s in line for when he snuffs it.”

Here at LCD Views we wish the Pope and the Devil a speedy resolution to their differences.

The UK is already negotiating a trade deal to supply Old Nick with vast quantities of British sulphur.

The England cricket team has been outsourced to France, on grounds of cost. The French are believed to be able to lose Test matches more cheaply than the UK.

The current team is rumoured to be the first French prototype. The players all bear anglicised versions of their names. For example, captain Joe Root is really called Jean Racine.

It is no secret that the newly named BCF (Board de Cricket Français) is keen to lower its overheads. Lengthy tours of Australia and New Zealand are expensive, and there are lots of extras (‘sundries’ down under) that have to be paid for.

In this context, employing a seventeenth century playwright as team captain makes perfect sense.

The Honourable Freddie Tennyson-Jardine has started his own rival, the Real England Cricket Team Union of Marylebone (RECTUM). With players drawn from the cream of the aristocracy, his team has an unbeaten record against all-comers. He has also revised the rules, so that a player may not be dismissed by his social inferior.

This unbeatable combination of privilege and match-fixing, Freddie believes, will lead to a renaissance of Proper British Cricket. RECTUM will lead the race to the bottom.

Back in New Zealand, where the French-produced England team mustered a magnificent 58 all out, BCF apologist B. S. Flannel was in bullish mood.

“For a team comprised mainly of dead Frenchmen, 58 is a cracking total,” flannelled B. S.. “Obviously there will be a few teething troubles, as the French players are used to a pitch 22 metres, not yards, long. There’s many a slip twixt wicketkeeper and gully.”

The charming French have bowled over the Kiwis. The only catch is that they have been on the back foot, and then bailed out.

The BCF has already taken over boules and pétanque. It is considering whether to push French cricket as an Olympic sport.

It’s just not cricket.

Early reports from the afterlife are stating that Bullseye presenter Jim Bowen’s fate has already been decided, and it looks like he’s not going to have to worry about catching cold again.

This news comes straight from the horse’s mouth – or rather the Devil’s. Satan himself was on hand to give an interview.

“Oh yes,” he said. “We’ve just taken on delivery of Jim Bowen. He went through the usual routine of challenging Death for his freedom, but after he lost at Cluedo, Battleships and Twister – not to mention Darts – he’s given up and accepted his fate.”

Evidently Death has been practising since losing at those games back in the 1990s. So what can Bowen expect?

“Well, my demons and I generally do quite a lot of scourging with red hot pokers,” Satan admitted, “but in this case I think we’ll probably throw red hot darts at him instead, on a speedboat of course, on the lake of fire. But for the main torment, I’ve got something very special lined up for him.”

I had to ask what. Satan grinned as he replied.

“Well, you saw the shows,” he explained. “Every week, if the contestants failed to win the star prize, he’d have it wheeled out on stage anyway and say ‘look at what you could have won!’ – kick ‘em when they’re down why don’t you!

So after each regular scourging, I’ll whisk him up to the gates of heaven, and show him the Pearly Gates, and say ‘look at where you could have gone!’ – what more poetic justice could you ask for?”

What more indeed. My eyes are watering at the very idea. All I can say is, good luck Jim.