Bruce Forsyth enters the room. Heads turn, conversations pause, never to be restarted. A woman, hair thick with Product, eyes dead, hangs on his arm.

He glides in on a three-inch phosphorous cloud, a low hum resonating through the floor. An Albanian waiter mouths a curse in his mother tongue. The perspective seems all wrong. He looks both larger and smaller than he should. He shrinks out of time with his movement, making a group of office managers nauseous.

Minds sync up. The room thinks as one consciousness. But. Why. Is. He. Naked?

Not only naked. Gloriously naked. Sallow skin, discoloured nipples, tufts of wiry grey hairs sprouting like popped bedsprings. And a hypnotic, pulsing, veined erection. Pointing to 11 o'clock, pre-cum glistening on the helmet. Massive. Smooth, thick and long. Any attempt to look away proves futile as - quietly at first - the Forsyth cock begins to sing.

"It's... only..."

A glass shatters and nobody hears it. The musical tool grows more confident.

"...a... game... so..."

Forsyth is still gliding. Circling the room, shepherding the crowd like a collie, a rictus grin convincing no-one. The glossy woman barely emotes but points blankly at the cock with an acrylic nail. The singing grows louder.

"...put up a real good fight!"

Exactly on the beat, 800 identical naked, hovering, out-of-scale Bruce Forsyths are in the room, their erect cocks singing along in a sickeningly complex harmony.

"I'M GONNA BE SNOOKERING YOU TONIGHT!"

An estate agent bellows above the noise to his colleagues, "IT'S THE MUSIC FROM BIG BREAK!", but they know that all too well already.

The discordance proves too much and people begin to black out. A middle-aged man vomits onto his own lap. A nineteen year-old in high heels and wedding hair tries to articulate the phrase "but that was Jim Davidson" but is crying too hard. A cock identifies the thought and drags its Bruce Forsyth over to her so it can sing in her ear. The pressure proves to much and her eardrums burst. She screams.

The air pressure in the room seems to rise. More eardrums burst and black blood begins flowing out of noses and eyes. The singing gets louder still, shrill and harsh. The 801 Brucies glide faster in their circle, a look of alien hatred developing on each of their faces.

The lights go out.

Early morning, New Year's Day. A takeaway food emporium just outside Leicester's beating heart. They do proper chips and they are loved for it.

A weary queue shuffles along the warm glass. Light-hearted boozy words float about in the air. People are happy.

A trio of slight, middle-class young twenty-somethings join the endeavour. Two are smiling faintly while one bellows with drunken arrogance. They've put up with him doing this before - you can tell by the look in their eyes.

I look at his annoying shouting face with undisguised disapproval (apparently).

"What the fuck are you looking at?" The time-worn phrase, nearly stripped of its meaning through overuse flops angrily out of his mouth.

"A shouty man," I reply. A measured response. Intentionally playful. Option b, as ever, was "A cunt," but experience of early morning chip-shop queue arguments has warned me off that one.

"Yeah you fucking want some?"

"Not really. I just want to get some chips and go home."

I was entirely unconvinced of his ability to deliver "some" or indeed "any", but I didn't really want to push it towards that possibility.

He carried on projecting his voice at the world, saying various unfriendly things about me and the other people who were looking at him with the contempt he deserved. His friends' expressions suggested their friendship would shortly be withdrawn pending an enquiry.

I shook my head and performed various other physical gestures that meant "honestly, eh?" to the other people in the queue.

The woman behind me clearly caused offense next because he enquired of her, "What the fuck are you looking at you fat bitch?"

She wasn't fat. If she was a bitch, she showed no sign of it.

"Do you honestly think she's fat?" I asked.

"Oh here we go. He thinks he's Rambo."

I don't think I think I'm Rambo. It came out of left field. I laughed.

"Are you from the eighties?"

He came back hard and fast.

"Are you from the gay-ties?"

Really. He really asked me if I was from the gay-ties. (I don't really know how to spell 'the gay-ties'.)

"Haha! The gay-ties. That's rubbish!"

"Yeah, look at you with your... long hair."

"Again, you've got nothing. You're a twat."

And then I bought my chips and left. I didn't fight him. It would have been a rubbish fight. Although I reckon I could have had him.



THIS HAS BEEN A PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT FROM THE NORTH LONDON TEMPERANCE SOCIETY.

Suddenly I feel a lot less proud to like Led Zeppelin. The news has been full of gushing, gurning Americans vomiting platitudes about 'the best band in the world'. I don't want to be associated with them. I want to be associated with bands from the southern States who make abscure references to Zeppelin songs in their album titles. I want to be associated with extremely un-photogenic record collectors with no social skills. I don't want to be associated with a band whose gigs attract the likes of Kate fucking Moss. People who read Heat magazine are going to buy their greatest hits now. People who know who all the people in Big Brother are called are going to wear their t-shirts.

I know it's childish. But I don't care. They were OUR thing, now THEY have them again.

............................................................................

Language barriers.

When I was at university I hung around with loads of foreign people. Mainly Greeks. They were almost all cool. Switched-on, funny, intelligent, interesting. They were politically motivated and had amazing takes on nearly everything because of their different perspective. It really informed my notion of what 'foreign' people were like, in the broadest sense. My trips abroad have been similar. The people I've met in France, Greece, Nepal and Sweden have often been extremely cool in similar ways.

I had a kind of inverse racism, I suppose. A romanticised idea that somehow people in other countries are more switched on to world affairs and more able to see through the consumerist bullshit and shallow celebrity culture in which our country is mired. I'm now seeing the other side.

I have a line in my stand-up which 'disproves racism'. In line with my misanthropy I say that 'nearly all people are cunts. Foreign people are just cunts in unfamiliar ways.' The problem is, the people I'm now living with are cunts in all-too familiar ways.

Take Trish. Aside from the fact that she's a psychotic control-freak, she has an ignorance that I find completely staggering. She's Portugese, about 35 years old. Until I proved her wrong using several internet sources, she was convinced that Portugal used to be a Communist country. Now, you may or may not know, but it was a fascist dictatorship from 1933 to 1974. That's like not knowing what side we fought on in WW2. She once said "I don't give a shit about recycling" which to my ears is essentially "I am a bad person".

Trish's brother, Ricardo made our jaws drop with the statement "I don't like books. I've only read three books. I got one about nature, which I liked, and then I started another one but I didn't like it."

There are two Polish women living here too. They're alright, but they do fuck all except watch TV and smoke. I find the language barrier really difficult to overcome. They do speak English, but not very well. In the spirit of Internationalism I have tried making conversation but it's incredibly frustrating because we're mismatched culturally anyway. And I'm not for a minute suggesting that's because they're Polish. They're exactly like 75% of English people: dull! As soon as the conversation gets interesting, they lose interest.

I thought I was doing pretty well today. Chatting to one of them about children's TV. See if you can spot the point at which I lost heart:

Me: "It's quite odd, there always used to be kids' programmes on at this time, now there's always programmes about murder. The exact opposite of kids' programmes!" (Alright, not scintillating, but I'm trying to find a level.)

Her: "Yes?"

Me: "Yeah. There's a cultural divide in the country among my generation - whether you watched Children's BBC or Children's ITV. Me and Stephanie were both staunchly BBC."

Her: "How old you?"

Me: "I'm 28, Stephanie's 24."

Her: "Me 33."

Ah. She's not got a word of what I've been saying. I think I'll go and write a blog.

I started to worry what I was was doing wrong. I'm fucking good at talking to people. You have to be if you hitch-hike. Give me long enough and I'll get the most laconic electrical fitter jabbering away about something that he's passionate about. But I just could't find a level with the people I'm living with. Then I overheard something that totally explained it all.

Trish's meathead boyfriend, who's British, holding court in the kitchen one day:

"There's a video on the internet of this dog riding on a skateboard. Oh man it's well funny.

(And then my favourite bit)

He's riding the skateboard."

They all laugh and agree, and a part of me dies.

We're gonna move soon.