Friday, October 27, 2006

Walesffact No.5: Borat is a Welsh


That's right, spudhands, his dad flogged shmutter down Cardiff market and he's as Welsh as a collier in a coracle using a leek to paddle up the Thames to point at the Tower of London and yell "!Welsh!".

Now then, what with the new Borat fillum, there's been some argie and plenty of bargie about his goodwill mission on behalf of the fine, Rorshach-blobby land of Kazakhstan, and much general curiosity about Central Asia.

No Good Boyo had the great pleasure of living in Uzbekistan for three years on a mission to persuade the melon-headed locals not to convert to Calvinist Methodism. I soon found out there was little danger of this, and settled down to an agreeable life of kebabs, pilau, endless sunshine, discreetly friendly begums and the diverting sideshow of virtuoso police brutality and the Taleban as neighbours.

A rigorous regime of defrauding the taxpayer and morning drinking had banished the memory from the mudflats of my mind, but top Brighton DJ, composer and ressurectionist Andrew Carroll reminded me that I'd written a short academic paper on the region some time ago, and so with a tip of the tall black hat in his geomatrically improbable direction I hereby present my other reader (arright, Gorilla mun?) with:

THE WELSH GUIDE TO HUNDERSTANDING CENTRAL ASIA.

Uzbeks are the Germans of Central Asia. There's lots of them, they spill over borders, they like hard work, lack much of a sense of humour, are very clean, think they should run the region, are plain and hefty to look at, sing the praises of stodgy food in vast quantities, and are cordially despised by their neighbours, whom they regard as a bunch of degenerate nomads and Russian- lickspittles.

The Kazakhs are the Americans of Central Asia. They like wide open spaces, big slabs of meat, crude oil, horses, whoopin' an' a- hollerin'. They are divided into three groups - The Great Horde in the East, which is dominant; the Little Horde in the West, which is innovative and has the natural resources; and the Middle Horde, which sits in the middle of wheat fields and gets jeered at by the rest. They think they should run Central Asia and don't give a monkey's knackers for any of their neighbours except the Russians, whose spit they lickle.

The Tajiks are the Irish of Central Asia. An ancient and cultured people, fond of singing and poetry, proud of their descent from the Persians. They inhabit a small, beautiful country, but are often more divided north against south than they are united. And God gave them a right bunch of bastards as neighbours. They have the strongest trend of religious fanaticism in the region, and are the only country to have had a proper civil war. They know that when they ran Central Asia sure it was grand, and that's good enough for them. There's also millions of them running another country - Afghanistan - and they think they're doing a good enough job of that. They consider their neighbours to be degenerate nomads, but agree with most of them on the urgent need to lick Russian spittle. Their neighbours think they have girly voices and lead the regional pederasty league.

The Kyrgyz are the Welsh of Central Asia. They're jolly, profoundly democratic, and inhabit a beautiful, mountainous country that no one visits and which has no natural resources at all except for some gold and clapped-out mining. They are divided north and south in lifestyle and geographical orientation, and are widely associated with sheep-related activities. They still practice droving, and have the worst cuisine in the world. Their southern valleys are home to heroin connoisseurs. They have never ruled anything, not even Kyrgyzstan, and don't really seem to care. They think their neighbours are soft and that they secretly wish they too were Kyrgyz. Their neighbours rarely think of them at all, except in a comic context, but if pushed will say they distrust them as sly and two-faced. Russian spittle-licking suits them just fine, and hey, Ivan, why don't you buy some of our lovely smack while you're here?

The Turkmen are the Albanians of Central Asia. A good-looking people with a strict code of honour and remarkable social grace. No one has any idea where they came from, and think it unwise to ask. Their language is full of lisping sounds. Their neighbours don't really take them seriously, but wouldn't push the point of actually telling them that to their face. They really like knives, and are to be found wherever there is trouble in the general region, such as Iraq, Lebanon and Turkey. There's no reason why their country couldn't be a going concern given its good location, abundant hydrocarbon resources and small industrious population. Sadly, they are run by a fucking lunatic. Their neighbours feel a little sorry for their having to cope with him, but not as sorry as they themselves feel about having to do the same. The Turkmen are not really aware that they have any neighbours, just potentially new camel parks full of poofs.


(Correction: Mr Carroll is a ressurectionist, not a vivisectionist, as previously reported. Apologies to all concerned, and thanks to Burke, Hare and Thomas Solicitors for pointing that out.)

Monday, October 23, 2006

Walesfact No.3: The Monkey Myth


There are cartoonists who make an entire career out of saying President Bush looks like a chimp - and fair enough, as his policies are clearly uncontroversial.

Blokes hanging around pub doorways in Beaumaris often hop up and down like stoats and say "At least us Welsh proper helected a monkey, innit?" But that's where they're wrong.

No Good Boyo takes its mission to explain seriously, and that's why we the editorial staff do not flinch from reporting the truth no matter how unflattering it always is to Wales and the Welsh.

In this case, the maip are usually talking about Sir Arthur Jermyn Bt, a barbary ape allegedly elected to the House of Commons to represent Hawarden in the Unionist interest in 1895.

Sir Arthur indeed campaigned vigorously up and down most of the dense shrubbery and rocky outcrops of the constituency in a closely-contested poll, scoring a number of telling points against his Liberal opponent with only occasional recourse to dung (see photo of his public meeting at Overton market).

Many commentators, not least the editor of the Flintshire Echo, thought both county and country were ready for change, but it was not to be. The Liberal agent argued that the Acts of Emancipation did not free apekind to stand for the Commons, despite the dispensation for the Irish and Jews, and the Crown Court regrettably in Chester found in his favour.

Hawarden remained Liberal, and Sir Arthur retired to the family estate at Penarlag, where he busied himself with laying out the splendid gardens we still see today and trashing the library. An attempt to coax him into standing as the Plaid candidate for the Welsh Universities seat came to nought, although his stint as principal of St David's College, Carmarthen, has entered the annals of Church, gown and the BBC Natural History Unit.

The London street was named after his grandfather, the first in the family to wear a shirt.

Saturday, October 21, 2006

Bill's Butt Bar (Chapter II)


I pushed open the door, kept my hands in my pockets, and elbowed through to the bar.

The dive was like a ram's nightmare. I winked over the barman and pulled out a fiver.

"Drinks all round!" he yelled "On this twat!"

I grabbed two optics, smashed them and pinned his hands to the bar. Then I sucked the air out of two jars of cockles and slammed them over his eye-sockets. I chugged a quart of Bells down his cropped throat, pierced his adam's apple with my school compass and jammed in an Embassy Regal.

"Sure I gots a light," were the last words he heard. Now he sleeps with the sputniks.

The door marked 'Private' fell inwards and a man in a supermarket trolley rolled through. He looked me up and down from under his baseball cap as the dust and derma settled.

"Fux a monk, boys," he whistled, "Fux a monk on me. Iago Cocwyllt's back".

The Sun Goes Down (Living It Up)




Good news for us Welsh everywhere, as a scientist proves that the short and hung like the winner in the three-thirty at Chepstow shall inherit the Earth, along with the Harlem Globetrotters.

Sounds like a good place to be, like a Level 42 reunion.

Of course, the media studies gonks who staff the television and wireless these days haven't read any books unless they were written by Noam Chomsky or Ben Elton, so they wouldn't know that bug-eyed Bolshie-lover H "G" Wells predicted this all years ago in "The Time Machine" - and that was without the Internet, just the Holy Bible and a briarful of moist latakia.

All those preening Eloi what looks down their haquiline noses at us squat Silurian Morlocks ought to read it again and remember who ate who, innit?

Saturday, October 14, 2006

Holiday-yay


There's all sorts as go on holiday, and the House of Boyo is one of them. Unlike you fuxin peasants, however, we have a house abroad in the hancestral homeland of Mrs Boyo and Dustin Hoffman, what is Ukraine.

I can't recommend Ukraine too highly as a place or idea, so go and find out yourselves. Kyiv is the city Cardiff would have been if The Labour hadn't cacked on Zaha Hadid's plan for an hopera house/arms dump instead of that Mileniwm Stadium no one bothers to use. All we've got left is a Dr Who set, Clwb Ifor Bach and Lord Elis-Thomas's Tlws of Destiny. In Lviv they still worship the King-Emperor Francis Joseph I, and eagerly await the coming of the II though he may tarry.

The food is plentiful and deep-fried, drink is given away by policemen at the gibbet-decked crossroads, porn is compulsory on all 876 TV channels from lunchtime, and the entire female population aged 18-40 think that American kickboxing flicks are a guide to fashion. Gwych.

On top of that, vodka addiction has turned 150 million Russians into a dwarf-saluting bunch of noseless trolls, but for Ukrainians that just isn't enough. Instead, they add paprika and horse radish (that's chrayne to you and me) to give it a bit of a kick. Sinus problems and the ability to perform simple mental addition become things of the past.

To sample all of this, I can recommend Khatynka (see photograph - and hat tip to The Lord Stent) on Velyka Vasilkivska, Kyiv, where the staff will give you a warm welcome and complimentary mouse. I gave mine to an obliging Uzbek lady who'd followed me in.

Walesfact No.2: Axis of Headgear

Forget about twin towns and indeed twins themselves - unless they're Japanese co-eds - coz Wales is the only country to be twinned with another, namely Lesotho. If you don't count those two Koreas and Congoes, who display a typical foreign lack of imagination.

Lesotho's top artisans craft coracles out of clinker for our eisteddfodau, and we share an interest in pointy hats. The Basotho (hey!) have added the hat to their national flag, and we Welsh will soon follow suit. That dragon gets us confused with the Chinese.

There's an entire story behind how the hat got on the flag, but I've forgotten it. Any tips would be welcome.

The previous flag had the image of a spatchcocked missionary with a nicely filed head on it.

Friday, October 13, 2006

Reviews of No Good Boyo


The latest crop, from my media monitors at Taffinfform:

"Reading No Good Boyo makes me feel dirty outside and inside."
Baroness Helena Kennedy, QC

"Horrible. Just horrible. I mean, look at him."
Baroness Rabbi Julia Neuberger, DBE

"No Good Boyo is the biggest $%&*@ to come out of Wales since that ^*&% Sion Simon. He's so full of #$£% a Frenchman might eat him if we're lucky. It's fair to say I hate him more than life itself."
The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Right Revd. Rowan Williams


Money's worth I call that. All I can say is I must be doing something right, and at least I haven't pissed off the Muslims yet.


(Sources: The Law Society Gazette, Manna, Crockford's Clerical Directory)

Friday, October 06, 2006

Tony Ble?


Bob Friog asked me to remember this joke, as the 'shrooms season is upon us and his ganglia are about to fuse for a while.

Rhodri Morgan is taking Tony Blair on the campaign trail in Wales, where Tony's going down like a Llanelli prop forward. They're driving through Breconshire in Rhodri's Datsun when they see a sheep with its head jammed in a gap between a gatepost and the wall.

"Sorry Tony, we got to stop. This is too good an opportunity to pass up," says Rhodri as he hops out of the car, drops his trousers and pleasures the sheep abruptly from the rear.

"Duwmarnuffarni, that was great," he yells, wiping his portfolio on the dashboard. "Your turn now, Tone."

"W-w-well, er, you know, I'd, kinda, rather not, if it's, er, all the same," says Blair.

"Go on, mun, there's no one around, enjoy yourself for once!"

"I-I-I-I'd r-r-really rather not, Roadree," continued the guano-faced PM.

"Go on, you's dissing our traditions!" says Rhodri.

"L-l-l-look, Roadree, I mean no offence and greatly value your unique way of life and that, but I just can't"

"Go. On." Rhodri advances on him like an old collier.

"I'm sorry," bleats Blair, "but there's just no way my head will fit in that gap!"

It works best when sung by a male voice choir to the tune of "Tydi a rhoddaist".

Popeth yn Gymraeg


There has been complaints from Monkeyboy and the Prif Sasiwn of the Cymru Rouge party of which I am the proud member that this isn't much of a Welsh blog if there's no Cymraeg on it. Chware teg, these opinions will be taken into consideration at the next No Good Boyo Assizes, at which the plaintiffs will be fairly judged and slain. So here's poem I'm working on:

Yli ar fy nghala i
Caled iawn o ddifri
Pan ddychmygwn
Chwifo 'nhrons
Yn wyneb rhyw Eleri.

Duw, Cynan the Barbarian himself couldn't have done better, even after a sesh with the famously mucky Telynores Dwyryd.

Thought for the Day: Can He Ride Tandem?



If you put one hundred Harold Pinters in a room with a pack of PG Tips and a full kettle, how long would it take them to organize a tea party?