NO DOUBT word has reached you of the zealous young man who hot-footed it into the lions’ enclosure at London Zoo brandishing a bible and promptly got severely mauled for his efforts.

This raises several important questions. Such as: is it a virus? Can we take a sample from him and cultivate it in a laboratory? Can a religious-maniac-exclusive bug be developed, causing them to subject themselves to ridiculous and highly dangerous tests of faith? As opposed to other people?

“I’m gonna jump under a car for Jesus!” has to be an improvement on “Have dozens of kids you can’t feed and watch them starve to death for Jesus!”

MADNESS, MADNESS AND MORE MADNESS

Seriously, though, folks, it makes you wonder just who is profoundly mentally disturbed; potentially violent psychiatric patients like Tony Serumi, left to their own devices in the outside world (or care in the community as we prefer to call it) or the ‘efficiency’ crazed maniacs who reckon it’s a really cool idea?

I tell you, I live near the town of Kingston in Surrey. There are three psychiatric hospitals around the area. In the past few years, they’ve dumped all the supposedly non-dangerous patients back into the World Outside. They still cluster round Kingston, sitting on benches, begging for fags, not too far away from their respective hospitals: whether because they return for weekly shots or because they still view these institutions as home, we shall never know, because nobody really wants to ask.

I wouldn’t mind, but it just takes the edge off a raucously self-indulgent night on the town when some down and out, with a strange remote look in his eye – the kind of look that tells you what he is seeing bears absolutely no resemblance whatsoever to you are seeing – comes up to you and asks you for a cigarette.

And you’ve got three left. One for tonight, two for the morning. And it’s too late to buy more. You just feel like such a bastard having to go “fuck off, un-cared for nutter”. Personally, I think it’s jolly inconsiderate of them, going round making people feel uncomfortable like that. They should all be locked up.

BAD TASTE SPECIAL

Advertisement seen in The Big Issues magazine – you know, the one sold by impoverished homeless people: “Healthy people needed as subjects for clinical research trials. For details (including payment) contact the recruitment officer on . . .”

Hey, neat targeting or what!

LIBDEMS GO POTTY SHOCK

What about the old LibDems, eh? Voting to decriminalise cannabis? Whatever next? Despite prompt reassurances to the voting public that such a matter would have to be referred to a commission, I think the message has got through to the shitloads of people from students to solicitors who smoke the stuff.

Unfortunately, the chances of the elderly majority being won over by the prospect of a blissfully stoned old age are not likely to reach decent odds for 20 years minimum.

You know when you see old teddy boys, still wearing the drape suit and the Brylcreemed DA? What about future generations? Even allowing for the enormous fall-off into conventionality which seems to hit so many brave warriors of hedonism circa age 30, there would still have to be enough survivors to turn pension day into a surreal shambling catwalk display.

Glam grannies in platforms, punk grandpas with ‘DESTROY’ knitted into the backs of their cardigans, gothic pensioners – who at last actually do look otherworldly and scary, nutty boys with loads of flags and mirrors on their walking frames, senile Madonna clones. And the card in the post office window says: “Ballroom dancing night at the Over Sixties’ club has been replaced by breakdancing night, by popular demand.”

This is my big hope: the teenagers of the seventies and eighties, being the second wave of teenagers and the first to have parents who themselves have been teenagers too, will rise once more in a tide of rebellion after the kids have grown up and flown the nest and the retirement years are stretching out ahead.

NO BEIGE LACE-UPS

No more of this horrible old people’s clothing. No beige lace-ups, no crimplene frocks in revolting patterns, no pac-a-macs, no brown Farah stay-pressed trousers. I want to see garishly and individually dressed pensioners, going to trance raves, sporting blue mohicans, roaring around on fuck-off big motorbikes, scaring teenagers with piercings in folds of skin that don’t even exist on young bodies – making the most of their second childhoods.

Quote me on this some day, if I ever forget.

Right. That’s it. Gotta pick up my peach twinset from the cleaners and have my weekly wash and set. Yeah.