Baled out?

I noticed too - and I don't mean to sound (how can I say this) callous here - but I noticed too, that at this moment of significant threat to the lives of 365 human beings (one for each day of the year) that...

No. It's too churlish.

That...

I can't. Even at this remove, surely it's too soon.

That...

I mustn't. It would seem tasteless.

















I noticed that His Royal fucking Capeness was too busy promoting what was then 'his' new film to bother trying to save Qantas Flight 30.

Bastard.

Diss, Respectful, Bastard

He really does get about a bit though. I see that he's on a March front page of the Norfolk Gazette. "Batman spares sheep farmers blushes".

I don't know why he bothers. Some in-breed is seconds away from being spotted with his dick in a spring lamb by passengers on Easy Jet flight 2565 from Ganja, Azerbaijan, which is flying in low over Diss having been diverted to Great Yarmouth because Ipswich Airport is closed (due to fungus on the runway); so bloody, goody-two-batboots throws his cape around the philandering fool to prevent discovery?

Why?


I'll tell you why. Self-bloody-promotion.

It doesn't spare the poor sod's blushes at all. He is now having his ewe-poking exploits being read about by thousands, instead of maybe being seen out of the 'left hand windows just below the wing' by two dozen.

But it gets his royal Batness on the front page again doesn't it?


Thereby keeping me off. He doesn't seem to be in to take my calls, ever. Hardly respectful.


Black-suited, rubber-flaunting, utility-belt-posing bastard.

I've heard that's why Robin left.

It was 'me, me , me , me , me' all the ruddy time, from the old Cape-flinger, there.

Well, that and being made to do the same tired, old "Holy..." jokes.

Imagine bowling up in front of a big crowd and playing your part in the damsel-rescuing (somewhere like, say, Love Clough) and then having to stick - in front of all the sexy, young things of the Lancashire Pennines town - to a script which has you saying things like, "Holy Inappropriate, Batman!" and punching your fist into your emerald-gloved left hand.

They'd think it was silly, and you'd look daft.

So he left.



Well, that, and the constant imposition, by Batman, of buggery on the poor bloke.

He wasn't allowed to be saying "Holy Inappropriate Batman!" on those occasions now, was he?

King, George, the thirst for fame...

"What kind of a world do we live in, where a man dressed as a bat gets all my good press"?

I often wonder this before I fall asleep. I'm sure I'd be much more of a global, household name if it weren't for Batman and his front-page-stealing, caped-crusading antics. He's on the telly right now being famous and narrowing down the opportunities for others to be similarly famous. Fame isn't like rubella - not everybody can have it at once.

I might ring him and ask him to stop the being famous thing for a few weeks; at least until I have established fully my own international brand.

Yeah. Good idea.

On a slightly different subject; I realise I missed out some celebrities what I have bumped in to and, as I now intend to join them in celeb-ness, it's wise to name them on the way up, so they're nice to me when I reach the top.

I once walked past author Stephen King in a street near New York's Central Park, and I once met George Melly.

In a pub.

Enormous bloke he was, with a very loud suit and a very large hat. A fedora, I guess.

I recognised him instantly, of course. I'd known his name, his face and his dress-sense since I was a small child. He was a huge, national, if not international, jazz-singing sensation. And good for him!

Especially given he was actually not all that good at the jazz-singing bit; and that he looked kind of like a cross between Liberace and Max Bygraves.

He was, however, a recognisable household figure. A unique, superstar brand.

He must have had Batman's number too.

Never give a sucker an even break...

Today I saw the Chief Executive of Dyson, the world's leading manufacturer of vacuum cleaners, deliver a presentation about the company. He was very illuminating.

James Dyson, its founder, began the company sixteen years ago, having invented a brilliant system which allows for the separation of dust from air through the clever use of centrifugal forces in such a way that the traditional vacuum cleaner bag is no longer required. That means the cleaner never loses suction.

Dyson invented this system in a building at the bottom of his garden. He went through 5, 127 prototypes before finally getting it right.

He then tried to persuade the major makers of vacuum cleaners, including both Hoover and Electrolux, to buy the invention and take up the idea for their own. They refused, partly because they were making so much money from selling replacement bags that they thought the system would destroy their profitability. One senior Hoover executive, a Mr Rutter, later expressed his regret at not taking Dyson up on the offer, stating that they should have bought the idea simply so they could shelve it.

Dyson decided to manufacture the cleaner himself. His company now operates in 48 countries world-wide, sells between 5 and 7 million units every year and is the biggest brand in that industry.

In other words he's gone from crazy science bloke in a shed to world domination in under two decades. Mad inventor to global supremacy in 16 years.

I thought Batman was supposed to stop that sort of thing!!! Exactly what are paying that useless fucker for??