The Dark Side of Open Mics...The Shitehawks! Confessions of a Compere...

I've been running open mics at a couple of venues in Leeds now for about 7 years.

Most of the performers are passable, some of them are bloody brilliant. Some have become proper mates, Some of them are lookalikes of early 1980's Bullseye contestants.

Early 1980's Bullseye contestant?

Leeds based musician Sebastian John?

( Here's his music)  http://www.sebastopher.com/


This however isn't about them. This is about those performers that are bad. And I'm talking pretty damn awful

 Performers that totally encapsulate the genre of 'Shitcore' and run with it.

Now, I'm not here to insult anyone and be nasty. These performers are the elite of shit-dom, they deserve this for their actions. Some by just being absolutely pants at what they do. Some by being so inebriated that all social skills are flung out of the window and their performance descends into a farcical surreal fiasco, and some that manage to insult people that beat other people to a pulp for a living.

Such performers were coined by my friend and former Assistant Manager at The Ship, Leeds, (where I ran Tuesday nights), Tom Carrick, as SHITEHAWKS!!


* 'The 'Arty' woman'. 

You know sometimes there's someone that no matter how hard you try you can't get rid of? Well Arty woman was that person.

She vaguely knew my guitarist at the time Will, who for some reason, probably politeness kept inviting her to perform.

I think she was Canadian. I'd remember but she was so fucking annoying that I spent most of the time hiding in a corner and avoiding her.

 I've never seen anything like it. It's like her only influences were Yoko Ono and raving lunatics. One time her 'performance' involved screaming for a minute, then smashing a lamp up with a stick. I think some chav insulted her and she never came back. Cheers Will.


* Dhillon hammered.

Mildy famous for always being in every pub ever, 'Power Drinker' Dhillon is kind of a local celebrity. For about the first 50 times I met him he introduced himself to me as if it was the first time. It's only recently that he knows who I am. It's taken 7 years.

 So anyway, Dhillon came in one night with a heavy cold. He'd already fallen into the mic stand about 5 times earlier in the night but I put him on anyway because I'd heard his harmonica before and it was pretty good.

Not that night... He mumbled something incoherent down the mic played about 10 seconds of harmonica then kept blowing his nose on the mic. I took him off stage at which point he picked up a dirty pint that had been sitting there all afternoon with ash floating in the top and necked it. We kicked him out. I actually now consider him a bit of a mate...Hi Dhillon.

* The 'you're doing it all wrong you fucking dick' duo

This pair of twonks came in a couple of times. Musically they were quite good, but the singer, this blond guy seemed to treat his mate like he was his slave. He was just completely nasty to him when he made even the smallest mistake. Like proper going for it. It was cringeworthy.

 He stopped in a song and went 'What the fuck are you doing, you fucking dick! That's wrong, if you can't get it right don't play'...The other guy just took it (and apologised). Unbelievable. I've never seen anyone treat anyone so badly. He was like the Ike Turner of open mics.

* The Diva

This bloke came to New Con to play. The first thing he says is 'how much does this gig pay?'...Now I'm not adverse to suggesting to a manager that someone is good enough to do a paid slot but I'd never met the guy. When I said it's an open mic he was weirdly off with me for the rest of the night and left straight after his set (which was quite average). He never came back. Good riddance. I see him busking sometimes. He thinks he's fucking amazing. I don't know, but then some people think Frank Turner is amazing so it's a funny world.

* Nick Card

Nick introduced himself to me in about 2007 and started coming to my nights doing this 'performance poetry' thing.

Fair play like but his subject matter to be honest seemed a bit Tory'esque. Most of his poems appeared to revolve around picking fun out of people on council estates, Russell Brand'y style impersonations of thuggish lager lout lads and single mothers. Kind of like Paul and Pauline Calf but shitter.

 This seemed to go down quite well with very middle classed drinkers but he had absolutely no idea how to gauge his audience.

I know this for one reason, and one reason alone...

..He did that exact set. Including this one piece about a filthy bloke that lives on a council estate and loads of quips about hooligans...In front of five members of the Leeds Utd Service Crew who were drinking Stella at the bar....To their face!

I can't actually believe that it happened. It's just not done.

I thought they were just going to pull out a butterfly knife and slit his throat in the middle of the pub. They went up to him and had a right go. Nick was actually nearly crying. I never saw him again. Hopefully he survived.



* The Gruesome Twosome 

Two guys got up one night. I've rarely seen drunker.

They get up on stage, fuck up every song like 5 times, then they have a massive row in the middle of their set.

Shortly after this the singer falls on my loop station setting off the recording.  Then he falls on it again setting off a loop really loud (quite impressive to fall on the same pedal twice I thought).. Including the beat which is in complete dissonance to the song that they are playing (that they've already stopped twice)..

...at which point the bass guy throws his bass on the floor which booms out the speakers with feedback,and storms out but not before spinning around, wrapping himself in the lead (which I had to untangle from his legs heavily delaying his statement of departure making him look a total idiot) and there's about 5 seconds of shock and surprise, then some laughing from punters.

The singer came back in sheepishly the next week and bought me a pint. Brilliant. I personally loved it.

* The Hardcore Prog Art, Sweet Throwing Lunatics.

These two seemingly normal blokes come in with about 30 pedals and loads of leads and adaptors and say they want to do something.

I put them on. They take about 25 minutes to set up and there's people leaving the bar so I hurry them up and they get a bit weird about it.

When they finally switch on it's quite possibly the worst thing I could ever imagine. Like death metal, but with crazy synth stuff, and the 'singer' just screaming out about everyone being 'fucking c**ts!'..Awful. Then suddenly, both members of the act in some surreal weird move pull out a couple of plastic morrisons bags and start flinging miniature heroes around the room. There's chocolate everywhere. At which point Al Leeming out of my band who gets hit by a flying miniature fudge bar picks a load of them up and chucks them back at the act who are rounding off their set by chucking more chocolate over their heads....Bonkers.

Readers of Benny's Eye on the Street - Pedantic Corner..The concerned Parent and the irresponsibility of traditional rhyme.

Here's a letter from a concerned reader. I apologise for my lack of posting of late. Due to professional commitments (I'd do this for a living but no one has offered, and I think I have a fanbase of about 10. A shocking travesty) I don't get too much time to post.

However fortunately there are still some people out there that are living in the real world.

So....




Dear Benny, 

I have been a fan of your blog for a while now and have been disappointed with the lack of action in recent months. It is an important social forum for the pedantic, the concerned and the, frankly, disappointed.

There has been an issue that has been concerning me for some time now, so I felt that you needed to be made aware and hopefully, through the power of social media we can stop yet another social menace. 

The issue at hand is the traditional children's rhyme and the messages that they contain. There are a number of children's rhymes, with which we are all familiar, that are giving dangerous messages to our children and, frankly, encouraging a social message that our faltering society could do without. 

Many of these rhymes have concerned me since I became a parent; 'Mary Had a Little Lamb' for example- The story of a little girl, so inseparable from her pet (a sheep which is odd in itself) that she breaks fundamental rules by taking it into school.

 The rhyme suggests that 'it made the children laugh and play to see a lamb at school'. Really,if we are to develop a moral society who abide by the rules and regulations that we put in place it should have said "Mary was suspended pending an investigation into why and how she was able to bring the lamb into school. The school governors found that she was in breach of school rules and the best interests of the establishment and have decided to expel her. (The lamb has been freed from its captivity and relocated to a nearby farm)".

(clearly a sheep that...But still)

Not only does this reflect a more true sense of what may happen, giving our children realistic expectations in life, but it also prepares them to become obedient citizens who have the modicum of deference that is required to prosper. I am, frankly, surprised that in the years this rhyme has been around that we haven't had a spate of animal-in-school incidents. (Admittedly, it was amusing when a dog ran into school as a kid. Do you remember the sheer excitement, like you'd never seen a dog before). 

The rhyme that concerns me the most, however, is

 'The Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe'. 

Let me refresh your memories of how it goes:

"There was an old woman who lived in a shoe.
She had so many children, she didn't know what to do;
She gave them some broth without any bread;
Then whipped them all soundly and put them to bed."

There are so many problems here that it frightens me constantly. I am fairly sure that this rhyme is responsible for many of the ills in modern Britain. 

(Benny: Like this poor lad, who instead of growing up as normal 70's kids did with toy cars, due solely to that poem he didn't have any mates because he grew up playing with this ridiculous plastic shoe.

Ironically it's also made by the same company as the toy cars.

Matchbox, what are you doing? you don't see Corgi pulling this kind of shit!

Also I use 'Live and Learn' as an expression in order to better myself and others. Playing with a plastic shoe would never do that. There's no benefit to this for a lad. Playing 'shoe house'???!!

... Final gripe that PLAY BOOT font is far too much like DAS BOOT, thus de-coolifying DAS BOOT slightly which shouldn't be possible as it's cool as fuck... Awful )

Anyway, back to the letter..

Let's start with the opening line. We know that she is old- I would suggest over 50 as a pessimistic guess. What kind of society do we live in that we let the elderly in our community live 'in a shoe'?

(B: Little did the young woman who lived in a shoe know how it would end up..

Perhaps like High rise flats it was initially thought of as quite a good idea?)

Firstly you think that this makes her a mistreated person, but actually it is probably all she deserves as she clearly is the kid of despicable mother and degenerate member of society who we should not be allowing to take advantage of the welfare state on which our British community is built. The rest of the rhyme informs of us her diabolical parenting skills.

The second line- 'She had so many children, she didn't know what to do'. For a start, you make a decision as a woman to firstly go to bed with a man, and in the majority of cases plan to get pregnant. I admit that it is perfectly feasible that the first of these pregnancies may have been an accident, but I have seen numerous pictures of this woman's family and she is widely depicted as having in excess of 8 children.

If she wasn't willing to educate herself about being a mother and the best interests of the children, then she shouldn't have had so many children. After the first unwanted pregnancy she had numerous options- place the child up for adoption, ship them off to live with a more competent relative, perhaps look to move to a women's shelter or something where wider care and provisions may be provided. But not for this old, irresponsible harlet...She had at least 7 more children.

( A concerned neighbour popping round there to the shoe, back in the day)

Firstly, YOU LIVE IN A FUCKING SHOE!!!! It is not really suitable living accommodation for herself, but to put this many children in this kind of dire poverty is downright unfair and setting them up for a life of misery (assuming that they all survive to adulthood- which is unlikely in these living conditions- from the pictures it seems that the shoe doesn't have running water and I would be very surprised if the old woman provides them with reasonable medical care). 

Secondly, where is the father? Now I assume (perhaps naively) that they all have the same father. He has a responsibility to these kids too. Perhaps she is not such a faithful lover after all though and there are numerous different fathers. In this case (shame on her) she should be getting some better legal advice because these men should all be making paternal contributions. Certainly these would be of a level that she could move out of the shoe and into a house, or even flat (somewhere with windows would be a start!). 

Thirdly, where are social services? These children are numerous, living in dire poverty, malnourished (as the third line shows), being mistreated (as the fourth line shows), living without a father figure or indeed extended family network. Surely in our modern, democratic and liberal society we should be providing assistance for this family. She is not a responsible mother so take the kids away. If the kids must stay with their mother then provision, financing and home help should be provided by the state so that these kids stand a chance in life. I would be surprised if they are accessing an education, and if they are not afforded these chances to progress then they may too enter the cycle that their mother has fallen into. Who knows, in a generation we could have  all 8 of these poor little tykes living in their own shoes with multiple undernourished urchins. Who knows where this could end...

The third and fourth line are just downright shameful. They represent all that is wrong with society. These children have been through enough- They are in a single-parent, poorly-provisioned household (shoehold) and are having no assistance from outside sources at all. To give them a broth without bread and then a beating on a nightly basis?! Who is this sadist bitch! You made a decision to bring these kids into the world! If you have such an issue with them, let them go. There are millions of loving foster and adoptive families out there who will give these kids the love and care that they deserve. The time to act is now- Many of these children will already be too psychologically damaged, but we must try to offer them a better future. 

So what messages is this rhyme giving our children? 

1- It is ok to sleep around and have multiple children with no thought for their well being.

2- Motherhood should be entered without the education needed to provide said well-being for your offspring.

3- Providing the elderly with substandard living accommodation is acceptable.

4- Malnourishment and a lack of balance in a child's diet is acceptable

5- Beating children on a regular basis is an acceptable parenting technique

It is not difficult to see, when we expose our children to this kind of lesson so early in life why we have some of the wider social issues that we have in this country. We should be giving our children, simply, better advice and guidance to build a responsible and moral future. Can I suggest the following as an alternative to all parents reading this:

"There was an old woman who lived in a shoe,

She had so many children she didn't know what to do,

Social services were called by a concerned neighbour and the mother and her children have been rehoused in much more suitable accomodation. 

She is now attending parenting classes and has met a nice hardworking man called Trevor who provides for the children and has fallen easy into the role of a loving father.

 The family have managed to stay together and both parents are now working so making viable contributions to both wider society and the tax system. The children are flourishing at the prospect of a brighter future and a genuine route out of poverty. "

Thanks for listening. Hopefully this will stop this menace before it is too late. In other matters,

Why on earth of Old King Cole so merry?

Why did Jack and Jill climb that hill when they are clearly so clumsy?

 And.... why is Humpty Dumpty always shown as an egg when there is nothing said to suggest this anywhere in the poem?...

Yours Faithfully, 

A concerned parent. 

The Nutter...Not Just on the bus

When you get on the bus....Does the nutter sit next to you? He sat next to Jasper Carrot, but I think Jasper had it easy. You see on my bus most of the people on there are nutters. I can't escape them.

Nutters are attracted to me like virgin nerds to Games Workshop, I can't get rid of the smeggers. My life consists of moments of normality interspersed with the intrusion of nutters. Jasper had one nutter on his bus. I have about ten nutters on my street! Proper nutters as well, I'm not talking 'woo he's a tad eccentric' I'm talking crazy shit. A couple of the people are like characters off One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, in fact, I think that bearded guy actually does live on my street, if not they are definitely brothers:

Proper nutters, I'm talking ridiculous. The bloke that lives next door to me thinks he's an alien. He's got little posters and signs up on the windows and doors saying that he's a 'Nebulon', It says 'Greetings and Salutations from the Nebulons' on the window next to his door, and he's got little stars and glittery stuff everywhere. It's fully weird. He's actually quite a clued up bloke but he does think he's an alien, and he has these obscure episodes. We used to have these students living above us. They had loud sex all the time so we called them 'The Shaggers'. Anyway, they made a complaint one morning that the Nebulon guy was playing his music too loud and he hit the roof. I've never seen anything like it. He shouted something about them shagging too loud then he ran out in the street, roared like a lion, then ran off down the road not to be seen for a couple of hours. It was surreal. I literally couldn't stop laughing for about ten minutes. It's just odd behaviour. My street is not normal.

 




this one guy, 'Mad Mark', he's got a caution from the police because he's constantly getting his knob out. All the time. Apparently he was having a roast dinner at some mates house at the end of the street (also nutters, I'll get to them later) and when the bloke of the couple went to the kitchen leaving his girlfriend with Mad Mark he just flopped it out and carried on eating like nothing was wrong. They kicked him out and Mad Mark got arrested about an hour later. Madness. I hear tales of it all the time. I literally can't escape this guy. He's everywhere I go. I can walk into any pub in town and he's there. This causes a bit of an issue because bar staff have started to refer to him as 'your mate'. I can't be done with this, it's the dark side of attracting nutters, people think that they are your best mate, and of course the nutter is always going to back this up. I can't have Mad Mark as a verified mate. He's a Beardy-Weirdy flasher. It's just not on. He's alright I don't mind having a grog with him sometimes but I can't have that 'your mate' tag. What if he gets his knob out in the pub. I could get barred by association.

The only reason that I know the roast dinner tale is because Halun (he's called Alan but that's how he talks) the nutter from the couple at the end of the street came round my flat and told us. He was worried at the time that the council were going to randomly knock down houses in our street which would leave weird gaps and wouldn't look very nice. I can't figure out why he had that fear but then, he is a nutter so whatever.

His girlfriend used to be a prostitute, she's quite odd as well. I remember when she was a beggar in town. She used to have quite long hair, then this one time came out of her flat and she'd bicced her head. I can't figure that one out either. It looked really odd. Like a fat rough Britney. Both her and Halun have this weird habit of knocking about everywhere just in their pants. I came back from my band rehearsal one night and she was just standing in the street in a small t shirt and her knickers. It was raining and cold. Very bizarre. One of the students at the other end of the street as well the other week had to break into his flat above hers and Halun came to the door wearing nothing but some very small black briefs. It was a horrific sight. I know what they'd been up to and it just doesn't bare thinking about. It's just like the worst free DVD you could ever imagine that comes with an amateur porn mag. Like, the Readers Wives triple shit edition. I can't think of anywhere shit enough, er..Darlaston edition perhaps, or parts of the outskirts of Manchester.


There's definitely some weird dis-robing thing going on in the street which brings me to my next house of nutters. The 'Kings of Fun' 

It's a house where every single member of the household is weird. For years before I knew them I used to see them, three of them just sitting on the sofa lights on, blinds open. Just sitting. Like a shit Simpsons. Just sitting there all night not moving. Really odd. Anyway, as usual they are nutters so I started bumping into them and now I can't get rid of them. They come up to me all the time in the street. One of them came round the other night for me to unlock his phone. I wouldn't mind too much but you pressed the screen and it said press # to unlock. He just kept slapping the screen and making weird noises. I suppose they can be sweet though, he once showed me a photo of when he was in the school play..Like 40 years ago. He was proud of it. fair play, I wish I could be proud of something like that, I asked him what he was playing, 'a wizard'...He had the hat on and everything on the photo. He said he kept it but it got lost.....Probably for the best.

Another time he was sitting out on the wall. It was really hot that day. He came over to me and my girlfriend who were sitting outside our house and said 'I don't really like these shorts shall I go and change them?' I was like 'Whatever, yeah' They were alright just normal knee length camouflage shorts. 

Anyway he goes in, comes back out with some much shorter shorts. Bit weird I thought but he kind of pulled them off in a 'dad doing the garden when you're a kid' way. Ten minutes pass. 'I don't like these shorts, I'm going to change them'. He goes inside..About 5 mins pass, the door opens...

....I didn't know what to say......

 .... Honestly, I've never seen anything like it... Well I have but not for a long time. Tiny, red, Liverpool FC style shiny 80's shorts. Honestly, they were shorter than Kylie's hot-pants in that video that people like. Proper ball- skimmers. I'm sure he did a bit of a twirl at one point. It was just the wrongest thing ever. I think I saw anus. 

Oddly enough though it's the second time I've seen those shorts. Another bloke had some that were pretty much exactly the same...The following WINTER (yes it was January I think)..coupled with a leather jacket, and non- leather upper shoes, you know, them types you see like in the window of Shoe Fayre or at markets where people have no teeth...(Or in Bilston.)

The look was unbelievably weird. So weird that I thought for a split second maybe short guy on my street was a fashion setter and it was all over the catwalks that Autumn.

..I can't even find any near short enough on a male. Got a few funny looks trying though ;-)


Shorts guy aside, he's actually normal compared to his flatmate.

 This guy is something else. I woke up once at 3am on a work night, and George Michael Greatest hits was blaring out at about 120 dB, I looked out the window he's naked in his room like wandering about. Fortunately he's facing the door not the windows (which were totally open) but still. Then he disappears and I hear shouting, 'Fuck off, Fuck off you bastards!'. Ten minutes later the whole street's out looking puzzled, and then an ambulance and a copper turn up to take him away. 

Apparently he'd got naked and ran around the house, and then locked himself in his room and put George on at full blast. These things just don't happen on other people's streets. I was knackered at work but it was so so worth it. 

They're everywhere. There's a tramp in town with Tourette's. He's really annoying. I walk past him and he still recognises me from playing in town. He's like 'alright mate....CUUUUNNNTT!!!!, BUSKER FUCKING CUNNNT!!!..AAAARRGGHHH! Hows the music going?' 

It's a bit much. I bought him a burger once. He called me a twat then said thanks. It's really strange.

There's so many nutters in Leeds that they kind of blend into normal. They're accepted more than anywhere I've ever known.

I used to go to an open mic.. Well I say mic it was totally unplugged. They had this bloke come in. Johnny. Total loon. Total. He used to carry a knife in his boot, not a butter knife, a fucking big Rambo knife. I asked this regular about it, he replied ' Well that's Johnny'..'That's Johnny!!??? What Johnny? The bloke off The Shining?...It's just acceptable in Leeds. Nuttery. That Johnny guy had an electric tennis racket. Acceptable, mind you we're in Leeds, they like all that weird shit.. 'Shoegaze'. Big news in Leeds. Weird shit, for nutters that wear cords and vote for independant's that have policie's like 'we shall only wear wicker' or 'Let's ban eating fruit from the tree. It's cruelty to fruit!'

I could go on forever on this topic because as I say I attract them. 

When I used to be a busker I had the ultimate nutter, Rob.

This bloke was about 4 ft 1 and he's like a busker stalker. When you're playing he stands next to you and gets closer and closer until he's under your chin. It's just too much. He sings along with the words (which he makes up) out of tune and sometimes does a bit of a dance. It was another one of those times where everyone thought he was my mate. This one woman gave him a quid because she thought we were a double act.

Anyway busking aside, he's a pathological liar. He's mentally incapable of telling the truth.  Here's a couple of Rob classics. I know loads because he'd literally stand by me for 6 hours every day:

1. He went on a trip to Blackpool on a coach. There was a terrible crash and Rob single handedly saved all the passengers from certain death as the coach was on fire.

I asked him why it didn't make the news. He just tapped his nose in that way only bookies and nutters do, winked and walked off.

2. He told me that he went out in new aftershave slept with 7 women, and they all asked him to marry them. Then there was a fight between said women, and he ended up going home on his own.

3. In a tent market thing in the middle of Briggate in Leeds a man pulled a knife, Rob used his martial arts skills that he'd learned in the Special Forces in order to disarm the man, knock him out, and even had time to stay for a pint.

4. He told me that the Royal Mint was bringing out a £25 note, and some people had them, but you had to apply to have one. Apparently Tristan McKay, another busker in town had one that day in his busking case.

They're everywhere...But you know what. They make the world interesting. Long live nutters, just in small doses

So when you get on the bus, does the nutter sit next to you? For me it's about the only time they don't!

Readers of Benny's eye on the streets pedantic corner

Good morrow eye on the streeters. I was having a think recently and I thought you're always reading me talk a load of twoddle about my gripes at the world, and I wanted to know what other people find annoying. I thought it can't just be me, Charlie Brooker, Karl Pilkington and Jack Dee that moan this much so I mailshotted my email address to see what other people thought.

Got my first reply today so I thought I'd use this section of my blog for people to get whatever it is off their chest

Here's the first then. It's anonymous but I thought just generally due to it's highly Benny style and character that it was worthy of publication.

The Capri Sun dilemma. 

Dear Benny,

I have been following your blog with a keen interest for some time now and have found your posts highly educational, amusing and liberating. However, I have felt for a while that there has been one key area that has grated at me, yet you have felt no haste to blog it to the nation. This key issue is the simple, yet intensely annoying, Capri Sun packaging. 

I am going out on a limb here, Benny, in hoping that your vast readership agrees with me, but Capri Sun packaging is possibly the worst designed and most exasperating packaging ever born to man. There are two key problems; firstly, and most obviously, the ridiculous angle of the straw hole, and secondly the bizarrely small amount that you actually get when you finally penetrate the hole (not a euphemism). For means of this correspondence, we shall deal with each of these core problems separately. 

The main, and lasting, problem is the harrowing ordeal that you are faced with when having to pierce the inaccessibly- designed straw hole. I am an able-bodied young man with perfectly good dexterity and motor control, so much so that I can seamlessly take the annoyingly spikey, individually-packed straw easily from its packet (which I have seen some struggle even at this early stage of the Capri Sun experience/ordeal). The process of piercing this absurd hole can take minutes of my precious time and the end result can vary from simply accessing the drink inside the foil container to varying degrees of spillage on myself and the surrounding area. I have wondered whether it is my approach to the process of straw hole puncture that is at fault, so have tried many angles and differing methods. For example squeezing the top of the container to create a ridge where the straw hole is exposed seems sensible, but this can guarantee spillage and I have known as much as a third of the Capri Sun be displaced by this method. An alternative is to try and angle the straw but just insert it point down. This can pierce straight through both sides of the container and a similar loss can be experienced. At a loss, I even tried holding the container upside down and piercing it upwards…It goes without saying that this was an abject failure. I am at a loss.

 This is not something that I have experience with other soft drinks in cartons, so I just can’t understand why the people at Capri Sun insist on this outrageous packaging. I despise it, and it is made so much worse by the fact that the juice is so good.

 Most other juice brands (Ribena and Um Bongo) aside don’t even have a scratch on Capri Sun. This is further annoying as in my workplace the choice is Capri Sun or Happy Shopper (I kid you not, they still make it) cartons which taste like bad Spar squash that has been under diluted and left on the side for at least a month for the water to go stale. The Capri Sun is the only decent and thirst quenching option. Why do they not just use a normal carton, or serve it in a can (it works for Rubicon!). 

This brings me to the second point. Perhaps it is again a design issue, but there seems to be, when the hideous and traumatic events of the straw hole piercing are over, there seems to

be so little to actually drink

 This is also truly odd because in the average Capri Sun there are 200ml whereas the average normal carton (Ribena aside) is 125ml. It always seems however, that you are done within three slurps of the delectable stuff. Why is this? Is it down to straw design, I mean admittedly they are outrageously spikey, but they seem pretty conventional. Or is it once again down to the absurd and thoughtlessly designed packaging which encourages you to squeeze, and gives you a shorter drinking experience? 

I am not sure what I aimed to achieve by this letter Benny, but I just needed a way by which to voice my concerns. I hope there are others out there that are suffering like me. I am a simple man, and just want Capri Sun to realise how much of the national time they are wasting and equally how much better the national mood might be if they changed to conventional packaging. Perhaps it is time for us to lobby for a Capri Sun Bill or even boycott the infernally packaged beverage altogether?

Have you any advice Benny? 

Yours Sincerely, 

Disgruntled of the web 

P.S. I recently asked a Congolese friend whether he liked Um Bongo. He said “What is that?”. It turns out we’ve all been lied to for years and it was actually just an advertising ploy. THEY DON’T DRINK UM BONGO IN THE CONGO. I am appalled and haven’t bought any since. 

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I agree entirely. That straw through the back shit. Can't be arsed with that. I remember it well from my childhood, if you go through the back you just have to suffer all the way down the drink. Cartons at the best of times are annoying though. It's like they have a thing now with this foil shit so they won't lower themselves to cans or proper cartons like normal people do. There should be the option. I had one burst in my bag once as well when I sat on it. Not good. You are right though the juice itself is sublime!!

Thanks for the email! Hope you like my pictoral additions. Fair play like the first one doesn't really fit but you know it had to be done.

Cheers, 

Benny.

(Anyone wishing to add their letters/emails to this feel free to forward me your gripes to bongobenny@hotmail.com, any I think worthy will get posted here and I'll get back to you with a little bit o' writing, thanks)

Walkers Crisps

Just a quickie today while I'm in the mood.

I've always loved Walkers crisps, I think they are a fantastically British institution and I often indulge, even though in recent years they have jumped on the 'trying to be healthy' bandwagon and have started reducing sat. fat and making their crisps so thin that they are about as filling as a lettuce leaf these days. And also despite the fact that their multipack bags are so small to reduce the amount of crisps they give away that it's always an insult when you open the packaging,  because the cheese flavour they bring out on occasion as a limited edition is the principle of evil made crisp and the smoky bacon ones are always slightly soggy. Otherwise I'm a fan.

However....I'm finding it hard to keep up my love for Walkers because of their bloody adverts. How much can one company over milk the cow? Argh. I used to like Gary Lineker!!!....Anyway, I sent them this. Hopefully I'll get a response better than the one I got for saying their crisps are too thin and how much I despise it when bad food companies make lame attempts to become more healthy. I want some bad food. Bad food is good sometimes. Anyway, hopefully they'll reply.


Dear Walkers,

I am in no way trying to be harsh but don't you think that the Gary Lineker crisp adverts have run their course? They've been running since 1995 and I don't think I'm alone in saying I think they are becoming more than a little tired.

I must admit that the original adverts were a genius concept, the first few were excellent, but it's just too much now. I think they are actually putting me off buying walkers.

I'm in no way a marketing expert, more of a portentous pedant, but I'm just getting fed up of the same old adverts from you. I thought maybe it was just me, but I've asked quite a lot of people and I've not met one yet that doesn't agree that it's time you moved on. I really wish I was a marketing/advertising expert because I'd have far more swing with this but I don't really understand what the team that comes up with the ideas for these adverts actually does. It's starting to look lazy. 'let's get Gary to sit behind some celebrity and steal his crisps' or 'lets throw a song into the ad and change one of the words to sound like a particular style of our range' being pretty much the only two themes that seem to run. You are becoming the 'Go Compare' of snack foods!

I assume you pay Gary a vast amount of money for these ad's and you will reply saying that you have conducted a 'tremendous amount of research' ,that sales are increasing, and that you are the leading crisp manufacturer in the U.K, but I think you owe it to your ever loyal customer base to come up with something new. I'm sure that a new angle would be equally as effective as the Lineker adverts were originally. In fact I think the brand is so established that I doubt Gary Lineker personally makes that much of an impact, especially if you consider how much he gets paid for it! I may be wrong, and as I say I'm no expert but surely for the amount of money thrown at Gary you could probably send huge teams of walkers uniform wearing reps promoting new flavours or doing little 'guess the flavour' (something you recently seem to have put a lot of Gary time into) campaigns in every major city in the U.K? Maybe you have done this as well but I've not noticed it so perhaps Gary is getting all the spoils?

I do some work for a small media company, and run a small blog, (Benny's eye on the street) so I'm tempted to go out and see what the people on the streets of the U.K think about the 'over milking' of the Lineker theme. Could be quite interesting to see what real people think face to face. I'll try to work it in.

Anyway, apologies for the rant. I hope you've read it. I think it's important, and despite my  pedantic demeanour I do really honestly think that it's time to ditch Gary.

Kind Regards,

Ben Greaves

People: Collectively less intelligence than a house brick

I've met loads of intelligent people in my life. Some of them too intelligent! Unless you are Stephen Fry you're always risking coming a cropper with someone that knows more than you about the things you thought you were pretty damn clued up about. You see most people are pretty knowledgeable about at least one thing.


Even the thickest person at the world has an interest that makes them good at something. That something is probably utterly useless and embarrassing like the rough ex prostitute/beggar at the end of my street that is definitely an expert on where to get the most hideous velour tracksuits, but at the end of the day she's still damn good at tracking them down. Almost as good as her boyfriend is at going out with his clothes inside out.


 If someone is too clever though it can be a bit frustrating. I went for a drink with a girl once that knew far more about every subject I'm good at it just made it impossible to have a conversation. It was ridiculous. She picked me up on absolutely everything. Fair play I do tend to lean more toward the school of 'know a lot about something but if you get stuck loosely base the rest on fact' but this girl was amazing. She knew everything about everything. She was like a walking Google. Every time I see that Eggheads program I always think they proper need her on there to re-address the goon to attractive balance. What an ugly set of bastards. Have you seen that Chris?

 What a goon. You know when people have one of those faces you just want to smack. That Chris is one of them. It's annoying me just typing about him. He looks like one of them things out of Fraggle Rock that nick the radishes, Gorgs, but he's actually more goonish. Look at Chris, then look at this Gorg fella. He could go double dating with Chris and Gorg would be the looker.

And that Judith Keppel.Well I've always been suspicious. Remember when she conveniently won that million quid on Who Wants to be a Millionaire when noone had won it in about two years, and she just strolled in there and walked the million? Turned out she was a millionairess anyway and related to Camilla Parker-Bowles and had Royal connections..Hmm, we'll leave that for another rant.


Anyway, this girl was smart. When I end up being pulled up on facts I thought I was accurate on regarding the 16th Century Tudor Court I knew I was more than meeting my match so I kind of gave up on trying to talk about anything and that was that. 


Ok, so we've ascertained that some people are intelligent. How come then, if there are so many people that are intelligent is the 'Human Race' as a whole is such a set of dribbling idiots?


Collectively we are absolutely useless. If an alien came down and looked at us they'd probably just wipe us out and start again. Hold on, this brings another angle to the 'Great Flood' again. (I always end up on religion at some point)


"And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually." (Genesis 6:5)




could well have been...


" And the Aliens saw that the thickedness of man was rife in the Earth (capital letter surely, come on Bible, you stick one in 'He' so surely a fucking planet gets one), and that every imagination of the thoughts of his and her (see mine's more PC) hearts was fille'd (they put stupid pointless spellings in like that for no reason I've noticed in most Holy scriptures, never understood why) with emptiness 'xcept the patronising meddlings of Jeremy of Kyle, and banality Danceth on Ice." (Benesis 6:5)




People are absolutely pathetically dense as a whole. So many people believe exactly what they hear it's just embarrassing to listen to.


 I think the only reason we don't hunt witches, burn heretics and believe in things that should only exist on Iron Maiden album covers is because these people in the modern world are distracted by time wasting technology (like er..blogging, Facebook, mind-rot TV) so don't have as much time to worry that someone may be 'The Harbinger of Evil'.


 I don't think we've actually progressed from as the telly calls it (on channels I watch) 'The Medieval Mind'. 


You can pretty much prove this by looking what people collectively want to read about when they run out of stories about Cheryl Cole going back to a complete knob that cheated on her or what presenter has snogged some little boy that can't even shave from some reality TV show boy band. Between episodes of Dancing on Ice and X Factor middle England reverts back to the Medieval Mind before you can blink.


 It's slightly more hidden in social culture these days as the tabloids seem to have cunningly disguised their 'Dark Ages' ways in this 'pretending to be a friend of the everyday man/woman' way they do but it's still there. Only the focus has switched from witches, demons, and general heresy to paedophilia, governmental tax dodging, and immigration. I'd add religious hatred to that one as well, but the whole thing is so old hat I'm surprised there's not a couple of WMC's clubbing together, nicking the flag off their bar wall,chucking some chainmail on and booking a couple of 40 seaters over to Jerusalem for a ruck.


The collective mind is thick as two short planks. Why else would anyone within their right mind in the lower middle classes vote Conservative? It's obvious to an individual that the logic behind their general 'idea' is to let the rich get richer whilst the poor suffer. Why else would they put a tax on pasties? You can see how collectively thick people are just by the way that the government went about showing people they were down with the kids when it came to pasties. People are so thick collectively that politicians from both sides of the commons actually know they can convince some of their voters that they eat pasties like normal people do and can do this in a no way 'staged or false manner' Hmm..Did you see that footage of MP bigwigs going into Greggs surrounded by cameras? It was actually embarrassing but I bet it made a few collective pockets of middle England believe it was actually real and not staged. Because we are collectively stupid of course!


 We saw David Cameron make a right plum of himself when he exclaimed that he was a 'pasty lover' then went on to say he'd had one at Leeds train station at a pasty shop that's been closed a couple of years. There's been a lot of talk about this on telly but there's one fact about this that's sorely been missed out. Everyone focused on the fact that the shop has been shut for a couple of years which invalidates the story, however I have a different seperate qualm with our Dave. That pasty shop is a terrible example of him having a pasty to be 'down with the working classes', one of us, a normal every day guy. This is because the chain in question is a fucking rip off. 


Normal people can't afford pasty time at the West Cornwall pasty Company. According to 'What's for Lunch' on the Londoner website (it doesn't say on the WCPC site as far as I can find) the prices of their pasties range between £2.50 and £3.20 on the standard menu for the pasty alone. I think the large cornish traditional variety is £4 just for the pasty!! if you start adding in little extras like drinks and snacks it's getting ludicrous. If you then think that for a Wetherspoons beer and a burger it ranges between £3.99 ( the cheapest I've seen it at 'The Stick and Twist' in Leeds to around £7.00 (for the gourmet burgers with all the trimmings), for this you get a sizeable burger, chips and best of all a beer!!!!A big one too. Not a girly half or a bottle of pop. 


back on pasties for a moment, this is why I think most comedians and media surrounding the Cameron pasty gaffe missed a trick. I think not only did Cameron put his foot in it by saying that he had a pasty at all, but his choice of pasty shop makes him look more like a fucking Tory boy than he already did!! Also, as someone who lives in Leeds I know it's a shame Dave didn't venture one minute up the road to Albion place because he would have been struck with this horrific choice!! Does he choose Tory boy £4 a slice, or does he slum it with Mr Five knuckle shuffle there outside Greggs?

People, have a fucking word and remember,


One man invented the telephone

A group of people invented the telephone dumbell!

Information on prices taken from following sites:

http://londonist.com/2007/06/whats_for_lunch_4.php 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/poll/2012/mar/29/store-wars-pasty-shop-west-cornwall-pasty-company