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Twisted, sick, wrong but oh so funny

The lesbian innuendos. The funeral rehearsals. The frenzied games of Busy Buzzy Bumbles. The grotesquely revolting sex scenes. And, of course, the pens. A warm welcome back to 'The League Of Gentlemen'.

If you are in any shape or form a fan, visiting Papa Lazarou's own personal corner of cyberspace is an absolute must. And don't forget to buy some pegs.

Cheer up Peytar Reid

It's amazing what a 2-0 derby victory over the Mackem bastards can do for a raging hangover. Hopefully the wheels are firmly back on now, and we can put Feyenoord to the sword tomorrow night.

This town ain't big enough for the both of us

I paid my first visit to Nottingham's arty cinema The Broadway last week to see local filmmaker Shane Meadows' new movie 'Once Upon A Time In The Midlands' - a little disappointing with the balance tipped away from harsh realism in favour of slightly schmaltzy convention at times, but a good film all the same. Ricky Tomlinson and Kathy Burke are watchable in anything though. Interesting to note the low-budget nature of the whole project: the one bit filmed on Ilkeston Road at the end of my street was supposed to be where Robert Carlyle's character lived in Glasgow - seems they couldn't even afford to leave Nottingham for filming...

Boom!

Good to see Ms Dynamite scooping the Mercury Prize the other day. At last, a genuinely intelligent and articulate talent emerging from the UK garage scene (see her charming Johnny Vaughan, Elvis Costello and the whole audience on JV's show?), and someone who's not afraid to blow all that bling-blinging shit out of the water. Plus, she makes Oxide and Neutrino look even more like the monkeys they are.

Party time! Excellent!

There really is nothing quite like a good houseparty. Like the one I attended on Saturday night. The gallons of wine swigged straight from the bottle, the half-remembered enthusing about Eels' Daisies Of The Galaxy album, the shouting "You're a fucking cock" at a fucking cock...

Light entertainment stars do the funniest things

And there I was happily reading a Sunday Times news item on Michael Barrymore and the inquest into Stuart Lubbock's death, thinking there was no more frightening epithet in the English language than "serious sexual injuries". How wrong I was. This particular hack preferred the even more unpleasant "extreme anal injuries". OWW.

Also spotted in yesterday's Times: a less-than-admiring review of Will Self's rewriting of Wilde's 'The Picture Of Dorian Gray' and a fine feature on Low by Mark Edwards. Self was criticised for his unwieldy and exhibitionist use of language, and to be fair the bits quoted did seem ridiculously OTT even by his standards - but then that sort of excessive language is his trademark. Incidentally, it sounds like the subject matter of 'Dorian' might make its publication at this moment in time extraordinarily apt, dealing as it does with buggery and serious drug intake... Maybe Self would make the ideal ghost writer for Barrymore's memoirs, if they ever see the light of day.

The tone of the Low piece was somewhat different, but then there are few bands as deserving of such critical awe. 1999's Secret Name redefined the idea of 'heavy' for me - an awesome album.

Rock 'n' roll motherfucker

I see Britney's going to release her no doubt splendid cover of Joan Jett's classic 'I Love Rock 'N' Roll'. I wonder if she loves it as much as she loves those bizarrely anti-feminist songtitles - 'Hit Me One More Time', 'Born To Make You Happy' and 'I'm A Slave 4 U'. As some comedian said recently, "What's she going to follow them up with? 'Yes, I Just Walked Into A Door, Honest'?" Maybe that'll come after she's proclaimed her love for all things rock.

Incidentally, 'I Love Rock 'N' Roll' is not only a fine song in its own right, but also the backbone of the best and most lyrically amusing song Five ever recorded. Next time you hear it, listen out for the lines "I'm the bad boy you invite to dinner / I ain't got no manners cos I eat with my fingers". And laugh.

Headless chickens in Kiev

And so my beloved Newcastle United capitulate again, this time in the Champions' League for which we had to play so well to even get into last season. We might have had a tough run of late, but no-one's ever won anything with a defence as porous as ours is currently. Perhaps more worrying still, for a team with an abundance of attacking flair, pace and talent, we haven't even hit the back of the net in the last three games. Things must improve - starting with giving the Mackems a damn good hiding on Saturday.

"Ah, I see they've got the internet on computers now" - Homer Simpson

They glued my head on upside down

To the much-fabled Rock City I travelled last night, barely a week after my last visit. Then, it was The Icarus Line, one of the most intense live acts I've ever seen (I didn't stick around for The Dillinger Escape Plan, their idea of fun - death metal with jazz time signatures, poo-throwing - couldn't dissuade me from rejoining a drinking crusade elsewhere). Last night, it was The Bellrays.

First up, though, The Beatings. Or I presume it was. I wasn't there. They made a fine racket at Leeds, but then there's that unmistakeable whiff of inauthenticity about them - Camden scenesters aping the sound of midwest trailer trash. They're strangers to originality, even down to their name, it seems. Still, this isn't the place to get into a debate about who's "4 real". Or maybe it is, but not right now. Anyway, I didn't even see them.

Next, New Zealand oiks The D4. I DID make it in time for this motley crew. All the expected AC/DC / garage skills in the end, but a rather tame start - guys, opening with 'Get Loose' is all very well, but it ain't gonna work if you look uptight yourselves. A few songs in, though, and they were greased up and ready to roll. And let's face it - when you've got a frontman called Jimmy Christmas with massive Gaz Coombers taking over his face, it'd be hard to disappoint.

Last, The Bellrays - distinguished from whippersnappers like The D4 and The Von Bondies by their age, their bitterness in interviews and THAT voice. They too suffered a stuttering start - too many damn mid-song breakdowns. But once they hit their stride, the temperature just kept on rising. On record I imagine they will always disappoint - Lisa Kekaula's amazing voice on top of their gruff garage bluster sounds at times like a cherry on a dog turd - but live it makes so much more sense: Kekaula, arm continually raised; bassist Bob Vennum and rubber-lipped guitarist Tony Fate frugging away with youthful enthusiasm. The initially passive crowd was stoked into action by a storming final few songs, including ace single 'They Glued Your Head On Upside Down', and whipped up to a frenzy by an encore which featured 'Blues For Godzilla' and 'Fire On The Moon'. The Bellrays had thawed all that reserve and inhibition, and it was great to watch.

So there you have it: old people can rock. Hurrah! There's hope for us all.

How to corrupt yourself in three easy steps

1. Read the aforementioned poisonous ramblings of Mr Olav Bjortomt at www.olavfearsatan.blogspot.com.

2. Enter the warped mind of Mr Joel Veitch at www.rathergood.com.

3. Tune in to the first episode of 'The League Of Gentlemen' Series 3, Thursday 26th September on BBC.

Guardian angels

Congratulations and felicitations to the Impact massive, and especially Sian, Stuart and Amy, for the magazine's Guardian Student Media Awards nominations. Reeeeeespec' due.

Ah, the sights, the sounds, the smells, the many happy hours frittered away in the sweaty, messy and notoriously pungent environs of the Impact office. The happy distraction from anything of a remotely academic nature. The inevitable recourse to life-threatening levels of pintage and low-grade take-away produce most likely containing similarly high levels of pigeon meat. The induction into the journalistic world - the back-stabbing, the bitterness, the freebies, the shameless self-indulgence of which this blog is no doubt the natural consequence. So, if it wasn't for Impact, yadda yadda...

I'd have a tear in my eye right now, if it wasn't for the fact that I'm now a hard-bitten cynic - thanks to Impact.

Thought for the day

(Spotted on a T-shirt at the Leeds festival): "Some people are only alive because it's illegal to shoot them". Surely an exception could be made for that slobber-tongued cunt Jamie Oliver?

The beginning is the end is the beginning

And so it is that I join the massed ranks of word-spewers the world over, following in the footsteps of my good friend Olav Bjortomt. This blog should ideally be the antidote to the poison he has been spreading over the web for the last month or so, but then bitterness and cynicism make the world go round, don't they?

"I hate reasonable people. The activity of their brains sucks up all the blood out of their hearts" - W B Yeats