And the Ted arose

Sam almost dropped his doobie in the jacuzzi the other day when his faithful manservant, Manmountain Dense, erupted into the room with the news that Bono had joined forces with the IRA.
Well, we all know that they haven’t gone away, you know – the ‘Ra, I mean, not U2, though I believe they’re still on the go too – but surely this was pushing the old peace process thing just a little too far.
After all, are not U2 the band who once stood four-square against rebel songs, expressing their unutterable opposition to militant republicanism in such wrap-the-white-flag-‘round-me anthems as ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’ and, er, ‘Trash, Trampoline And The Party Girl’?
What next, I wondered? The Fab Four as the house band at the next Shinner Ard Fheis? Bono walking hand in hand with Gerry and Martin down the Garvaghy Road? Paul McGoo taking over the management of the Wolfe Tones?
I said all this to Dense, who was looking increasingly shifty the more I went on. Finally, he interrupted me: “Sam, when I said the IRA, I might have been a little confused. Actually, on reflection, I think it was the UDA. Yes, I’m pretty sure that’s who it was.”
When Dense gets that look on his face – not so much that of a rabbit caught in the headlamps of a car, but a rabbit caught in the headlamps of a second car after being run over by the first one – the only thing to do is hit him a sharp slap upside his head and, when his eyes eventually stop spinning, start again at the beginning.
Which is how we finally learned that U2 have actually been enlisted by the IDA to help promote Ireland as a business location for US multi-nationals. Rock ‘n’ roll, eh?
In a full page IDA ad in that famous bastion of the counter-culture, The Wall Street Journal, readers were treated to a portrait by my old mucker Louis le Brocquy of my other old mucker Bono, a portrait in which, according to the copy-writer, the Broc of a boy – hold onto your hats, this is good shit – “aimed to make a recognisable image of Bono’s outward appearance while attempting to portray what he conceives to be the wavelengths of his inner dynamism.”
To which, I humbly suggest, the only legitimate response is: “Pass the sick bag, Alice, I think I’m going to barf.”
Complete Shite
But, sadly, there’s more. The ad goes onto describe the Irish as: “Creative. Imaginative. And flexible. Agile minds with a unique capacity to initiate, and innovate, without being directed. Always thinking on their feet. Adapting and innovating. Always talking complete shite.”
Okay, I made up that last bit – and, frankly, if the Irish are indeed “flexible” then that’s all I really need to know. An’ ah thank the ladeez know exactly what ahm a-talkin’ bout.
At times like this Sam Snort despairs for rock, roll and all points in between. But just when he’s about give up all hope along comes salvation in the form of a long-haired man wearing nothing but a loin-cloth and carrying a crossbow. Christ-in-a-Hummer – it’s only The Fuckin’ Nuge!!!!
Yes, the mucker all Sam’s other muckers call ‘The Mucker’ is back. And because the world could not survive an actual face to face meeting of Sam and Ted – a mad atom dance that would generate runaway nuclear fission and create the biggest bang since I first met Astrid, my willowy personal assistant – it was decided that he would address the Irish public through the safe-as-milk medium of the Old Lady of D’Olier Street.
Which is where we find Ted telling my other good mucker Kevin Courtney: “As long as I keep singing , everything’s alright, but as soon as I start pecking at your flesh, you got a problem, baby.”
Lovely hurling.
And whereas wimpy U2 called an album War, only to then give out about it – personally, when I heard the damn thing I figured I’d been kippered under the trades description act – Ted takes no prisoners when he declares: “Let’s put it this way, how mentally ill would a person have to be to claim that war is not the answer? You understand how insipid, how mentally vacuous, how spiritually void a person would be to think that war is not the answer. Fuck you. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. And if they jeopardise decent people – kill the motherfuckers.”
Awright! Raaawk ‘n’ roll!! Still, it was kind of a missed opportunity that Kev must have run out of change for the phone before he had a chance to ask Ted about his own military service – and I don’t mean blasting an owl with a bazooka or whatever the fuck it is he does when he goes wild in the jungle. No matter, this is a man who once put out a live album called Intensities In Ten Cities and, as far as Sam is concerned, that makes him more valuable to humanity than U2, Coldplay and even the great Christy Hennessey put together.
Hairy Head
The Nuge is already assured of his place in the rock ‘n’ roll hall of fame but there is another, even greater accolade which awaits the final act of a remarkable life. Over the fiery hearth in the great hall of Snort Towers is a space on the wall flanked on one side by the head of a great Irish elk and on the other by the skull of a giant silver-backed gorilla from the mountains of Rwanda.
Some day that space will be filled by the wild, hairy head of the guitar-slinger we know and love as The Fuckin’ Nuge – rock ‘n’ roller, hunter, earth freak, warrior, madman and someone of whom it can truly be said that he ought to get stuffed.
And you don’t need to me to tell who’s the only man for the job.