The Ring of Hwyl

A communication from the Cymru Rouge Department of Inter-Faith Dai-alogue and Forced Labour Camp Quotas:

The electricity-based mediums of the radio and television have announced the death of the al-Qaeda leader, prodigal plutocrat and Greenmantle Pimpernel, Osama Bin Laden.

We, the Cymru Rouge, rejoice in the death of pretty much anyone, but are also aware of allegations that this comprador clerical reactionary and occasional Guardian columnist was a Welsh.

As the auto-selected vanguard of the Welsh Senate and People, we have established a committee of eisteddfod adjudicators, Paris-edjucated intellectuals and shrieking, hemp-clad child soldiers to investigate the matter.

Here are our interim findings. In common with the Welsh people, Bin Laden:

1. Liked caves, and the things you find in caves.

2. Spoke poor English and less Welsh.

3. Passed for Pakistani in the eyes of the Pakistani and US military and the Cambridge Footlights casualties who lurk in the 6:30 pm weekday trainee-comedian slot on Radio 4.

4. Thought C60 cassettes were new-fangled, and never quite got the hang of video (pronounced "vie-joe").

5. Liked dressing up in white robes and prancing around hillsides.

6. Supported an English Premier League (Association) football team

This is more convincing evidence than most of the guilty face before their fair tribunal and execution at the Cymru Rouge people's sheepdog trials, but there is more.

We are ecumenical in accepting damning proof from all sources, and so gratefully acknowledge the help of the Bernsteinian ameliorationists of Welsh Labour in uncovering the following links between Osama Bin Laden and the poujadiste bourgeois nationalists of Plaid Cymru.

In common with Plaid Cymru, Bin Laden:

1. Did not like low-flying US aircraft.

2. Was suspicious of Nato, the European Union and Capitalism.

3. Curried the support of the powerful hill-farming lobby.

5. Wasn't keen on Israel.

6. Had links to organised crime families.

The Cymru Rouge Department for the Identification and Eradication of Religion has further noted that Bin Laden, like Welsh Baptists, seemed to enjoy public piety without heeding the basic message of their respective creeds' founders.

Furthermore, the Welsh appreciated the teetotal tedium of Methodism but found it lacking a certain edge, and so tempered it in the fires of Calvinism.

Likewise Bin Laden thought regular Saudi Islam deficient in finger-wagging threats of sky-sanctioned violence, concentrating its venom as it did on non-Muslims. His embrace of the Takfiri Option, which considers most other Muslims to be little better than Rabbi Julia Neuberger, has the authentic Revivalist ring of hwyl about it.

The Department for the Abolition of Elections therefore urges Cymru Rouge cadres to carry out searching altruistic criticism sessions of all political opponents until the usual suspicions are confirmed.

Please note that a professed love of folk music is almost certainly a cover for fanatical hatred of melody, harmony and correct tuning, especially if accompanied by beards.

Henffych!

Brawd Rhif Un - Paul Pot

Brawd Rhif Dau - Huw Samphan

Brawd Rhif Tri - Ta Mock Tudor

Brawd Rhif Ankh - Hwsni Mwbarac

The Severn Pillows of Wisdom

Back from a bracing week of clouds and tooth decay in Wales, I have the latest news and developments so you don't have to.

1. The government in Cardiff has decided that the English name of the country will henceforth be spelled !Wales!. The idea is to make people think we are not only musical, but a musical. This ought to bring the pink pounds pouring in, and give our homophobe community something to do since the last gays in the villages left to be something in the London media.

2. In order to overcome the North-South divide, the regions of Wales are to be renamed as follows:

• North Wales coast - The Rhylviera


• Rest of North Wales - Mid Wales


• Mid Wales - Middlewales, in order to make the Tolkien-cultists infesting Machynlleth feel at home.


• South-West Wales - Ireland (Tenby will be called Galway and Pembrokeshire West Cork. Having your head slammed in a pub door by the Young Farmers will be known henceforth as "the craic")


• The Valleys - Little Switzerland. Tonypandy will be twinned with Zürich's Needle Park.


• Glamorgan - Westworld.


• Cardiff - The Torchwood.

3. In a similar move, the Welsh language will be rebranded as Gaelic, so no one will be scared of it anymore.

4. The Academi Gymreig, which attempts to regulate the Welsh language, has issued its latest list of words we ought to use instead of just saying English ones with a comic accent. They are:

• Spambot: plastic luncheon-meat holder.


• Charlota: singing bustily.


• Chwerthfawr: laughable.


• Cotseinio: to mark oneself out as a bit of a tool.

The model sentence provided was "Chwydais 'nghinio yn syth yn y spambot wrth glywed Glenys Blydi Kinnock yn ceisio charlota. Chwerthfawr oedd i'w gweld hi yn cotseinio ei hun gymaint."

5. Under family pressure, my brother Annwn has agreed to call his dog Bruno, instead of Duw ffyc aye - his all-purpose greeting.

6. The Senedd has announced the summer list of who is and who isn't currently Welsh. Terry Jones is out, and anyone who 'd like to play for the national football squad is in.

7. Plaid Cymru capo Dafydd Iwan returned No Good Boyo's jaunty greeting on the gristly streets of Dolgellau, and so is assured of both of my votes once again.

Wales - We're In It Together

What with the recession, the Millennium and that, I've been thinking of branching out into other careers, preferably those of other people.

Two fields that attract me are politics and Evil, so it makes sense that I should consider spin-doctoring.

Being a Welsh, the sole choice for me is to offer my services to Plaid Cymru, which nowadays helpfully subtitles itself The Party of Wales.

There's a Westminster election only a matter of months away, and Plaid needs to raise its media game if it's to consign Labour to the working men's club of history.

And so here's my shooting script for a short party political broadcast on behalf of Plaid. If anyone from Tŷ Gwynfor is reading, feel free to use it. In return I ask only to be made head of ADEC (Adran Diogelwch Cenedlaethol - Department of National Security) come the glorious day.

SCENE: A drizzly valley town, dragons foraging on the slag heaps and facing down feral sheep over moody, male-voice hymnal music. Camera pans along a black and white terraced street to a doorway where a TANGNEFEDDWR ["peacemaker" - cruel but fair Welsh policeman of the Nationalist Future] is clubbing a Labour canvasser who looks vaguely Kinnockian.

KINNOCKITE: [under truncheon crunches] Urgh, arghl, bloody kebabbed mun, totally and utterly...

TANGNEFEDDWR: 'ckin' Sachsengruss, innit!

SCENE: Camera fades into sepia and pans in through window of house opposite as hymn music lightens a little. A pious Welsh family of Father, Mam, teenage son and eight-year-old daughter are settling down to an evening meal of oven-ready chips at an oilcloth dinner table.

Portraits of Saunders Lewis, Cayo Evans and Shaky adorn the dingy walls.

FATHER: Before we eats, let us never forget or forgive the Battle of Morfa Rhuddlan, the Treason of the Blue Books, Hedd Wyn, Wales not qualifying for the World Cup in 1974, and Windsor Davies.

MAM: Ap-men!

Family tucks into chips, content in their Cambritude.

Then the little girl looks through the window to the scene of the Tangnefeddwr wearily clubbing the yappy Labour lackey.

Slowly, she gets up from the table and heads for the front door.

Family stops eating aghast, and music halts abruptly. Father moves to intercept the girl, but Mam holds him back. They watch petrified as their daughter steps out onto the slick pavement, and crosses the street towards the scene of the walloping.

She extends the slate of chips towards the two men.

The Tangnefeddwr turns, his truncheon raised ready to rain down bludgeoning blows, his face a scree of stubble under a Pinochet ski-slope peaked cap.

The little girl looks him in the eye, and offers him a chip.

The Tangnefeddwr, tears mingling with the sleet in his slate-grey eyes, takes the tiny chip in his great, gauntleted hand, and nibbles it with the delicacy of a Hawarden vicar's wife.

He strokes the little girl's damp hair in thanks, then notices the muttering colonial heap bolshily bleeding on his boots below.

A gradual grin cracks the craggy terrain of his endlessly Welsh face, and he hands the little girl his truncheon.

With a coy smile, she sets about the Kinnockite's sweetbreads under the sheltering gaze of the chip-munching Tangnefeddwr.

VOICEOVER: [Philip Madoc, ideally] Gymry, dewch i rhannu (Welshies, come and share)!

Calon by Injaroc (or Diffiniad, if you must), plays out over fade to Plaid Cymru logo.

END