Awr y Blaidd

Nefyn TV provided Wales with 24-hour sports, and sometimes the best of it - coracle races, slateboarding, the grudge-bearing sprint.

Despite its adherence to the state's offical policy of ruthless egalitarianism, Nefyn TV had spawned a star. Rhowter Hers presented the Sabbath afternoon Sport Ffantâstig programme, filled with top billing Hillman Imp rallies, cliff-face soccer and women's custard slicing.

The lads liked his lively bratiaith splicing of North and South dialects, the ladies keened for his slack shawl. The station managers booked their caravans in Mwnt months in advance on his account alone.

Everyone loved him, except the staff. "I's had enough of them," Hers told his boss Aelwyd Hongian one sweet and windy afternoon. "You can see them on the big screen behind me when I'm ap-dressing the nation. Are they hard at work filing reports on Caersws Giant-Killers? Are they ffyc! They's slobbing in Big Leaves t-shirts, eating half pies, skulling Brains, smoking Embassies and reading the papers. Tell them to shape up or I's off to Al-Jazeera, mun."

So the word went out to the newsroom: "Look tidy, boys. No messing about. He may be a Kinnock, but he's our Kinnock, like Eisenhower used to say."

The crew smartened up and lagered down. They pretended to type on their computers and answer phones while Hers flashed his anthracite crowns at the housewives of Carmarthen. The studio floor was a tent of understanding. Then along came Iago.

Iago Anffawd, fab Sieffre Siomedig, fab Gwil Goll. That's what his staff card said. No one remembers hiring him, he just turned up one afternoon in a wolf mask and mitts.

"Bit of a Bergman boy, are you?" laughed Lol Fach, the literary editor.

"Hrhaïng!" replied Iago, which no one understood but simply took as a Solva accent.

Iago spent a few hours dragging planks around the Management Suite, hammering nails into fire alarms and generally being handy. Then he decided to take a short cut through the newsroom.

The nation held chip to lip in bewilderment then mirth as Rhowter Hers read out the Bethesda League Friendly Fight results while a bloke in a wolf mask and "Bollocks to the Poll Tax" t-shirt stood in the newsroom right behind him, waving hairy mitts at the camera before settling down with a can and The Daily Post.

The newsroom high-fived, the people as one pressed "record" on their dvd players, and Rhowter's career blanched in the flash of two million mobile phone cameras.

He was very upset.

"I wants Scooby-ffycinn-Doo out, and out today!" he yelled at the editor.

"Right, Rowter, I'll give him his cards this evening," soothed the foam-flecked hack.

Iago was tannoyed to come to the editor's office at six, when his shift ended. Aelwyd Hongian stood by his window, watching the sun set over the moors. A shadow blocked the glass door, followed by a soft but heavy knock.

********************************************************************************

Inspector Pumsaint of the Tangnefeddwyr Murder Squad looked around the office in horror. "Pardon my English, but what the cock happened here?"

The forensics officer pointed to the slick of blood that coated the wrecked room. "That's all that's left of the victim. Journalist he was."

"Still, it's not right," muttered Pumsaint. "OK, motive? Theft - anything missing?"

"It's been badly turned over, but there's nothing missing apart from the solid parts of the late Mr Hongian," said the forensics man, pushing his glasses back up his nose. "Oh, and this." He picked up a sodden card index.

"It's where the station kept all the staff details - national insurance, home addresses, that sort of thing. There's one card missing. It belongs to Rhowter Hers."

Cyfres Y Ceirw IV: Diotwyr Y Sul

Who knows who this young Celt is, but from inital cheeky "arright?" to his immaculate disposal of some Rioja he and his followers displays all the qualities that Glyndŵr and his chums invoked when they raised the banner at Sycharth.



Let all us Holy Drinkers raise a vase of Plovdiv Red and hope to follow in his unsteady footprints.

Gebe Gott uns allen, uns Trinkern, einen so leichten und so schönen Tod!

Black pointy hat-tip to Harry Hutton.

Bambule Babe

Valentine's Day is not marked in the House of Boyo, as we Welsh have our own Dydd Santes Dwynwen on which to shower our loved ones with oats and cockles.

Mrs Boyo resists this practice, and rejects International Women's Solidarity Junta Day on 8 March on the grounds that the Soviet mafia grew out of Chechens' cornering the flower market. I suspect that the commercial failure of her "Deny the Floral Compradors!" range of Socialist greetings cards may have played a role, but this suspicion I keep to myself.

Nonetheless, I decided to persuade Mrs Boyo otherwise by spending a spare morning before Arianrhod's monthly declawing session searching the Intern Net for images that combined dialectical rectitude and diaphonous pulchritude - a pursuit also popular with all manner of non-revolutionaries these days, I gather.

My trawl uncovered some rectitude and much diaphony, but little that combined the two in a satisfyingly Hegelian manner.

Now, we in the Cymru Rouge have little time for the narcissistic violence and poor dress sense of the Baader Meinhof Group, and as Maoists we consider their alliance with the nomadic nationalists of the PLO to be a juvenile distraction from the important work of planting slate and indoctrinating infants.

The smudged faces mooning out of those wanted posters may have driven a generation of over-excited students to abandon sit-ins and advanced smoking techniques in favour of blowing up civil servants and stealing white Mercedes, but they did nothing for The Rouge.

Then I found this:



Ulrike Meinhof the Terrorist may have looked like the sort of yoghurt-skinned drab you bumped against while trying to escape from Bauhaus concerts, but Ulrike Meinhof the 60s Journalist was a Hot-to Trot! A cuddly cushion of Klassenkampf with adorable dimples, plump vowels and a nice line in tailored jackets.

O Ulrike, where did it all go wrong?

The Archdruid of Canterbury

Dear readers,

I would like to take this opportunity, as a Welsh, to apologize to the people of England for the presence of Dr Rowan Williams in your public life.

Now you know why we disestablished him and his kind back in 1914.

And no, we won't take him back.

Cymru Rouge Accepts Rugby Laurels

A Press Release from Cymru Rouge Retrospective Achievements Department:

Attention Welshes!

The Politburo (Angka-p) of the Standing Plenum of the Central Committee of the Cymru Rouge clenches its calloused, six-fingered hands into one screaming fist of indefatigability in acknowledging the total and utter victory of the forces of Welshness, Socialism and Narrow Nationalism on the occupied soil of Boyograd (formerly known as Twickenham), where once the English settlers planted their pagan altars and parked their BMWs.

Rugby, invented by Welsh prepubescent chartist Gwilym Gwe Elis (slave name - William Webb Ellis) at HM Children's Prison, Rugby, has been a potent weapon in the armoury of Welsh resistance to English rule and all intellectual pursuits since 1823.

The Thatcher Regime suppressed the Welsh slate (also coal and steel) industry in the hope that an end to compulsory body-building would turn the Welsh into a nation of football-watching frequenters of hairdressing salons like their lager-sipping oppressors.

The regrettable consequences can been seen in the non-dialectical regression of Welsh rugby post-1979, paralleled by the Kinnockite spurning of narrow nationalism in favour of appearing in musical videos with US agent Tracey Ullman.

It comes as no surprise to students of Lenin, Stalin and Stevens that the surge in bourgeois campanilismo that brought Plaid Cymru into dual power with Labour last year will soon yield, Kerensky-like, to the Dictatorship of the Workers, Peasants and Progressive Studentry (as Subcontracted to the Cymru Rouge Politburo).

The Welsh rugby squad, led by the indomitable [insert the name of the relevant no-neck here would you Griff? Ta, NGB], has felt the hand of history on its tackle, and heralded the advent of the Cymru Rouge by storming the Winter Palace of Englishness, causing a tsunami of spilt gin & tonic to engulf Virginia Water and other female dignitaries of the Brown Junta.

For this, we, the Rouge, accept the thanks of a grateful nation, the admiration of radicals worldwide, and the submission of the English ruling class.

The dialectic, nonetheless, demands its price. Just as a knave would whisper uncouth couplets in the laurelled ear of conquering Caesar, so the Politburo must warn the resurgent workers not to succumb to Dizziness With Success. The English enemy knows that rugby can sap, as well as seed, a nation's sorrel.

Our attention has been drawn by a Maltese plutocrat to the treasonable activities of this rugby personage, whose pebbledashing of our draconian tongue with English fool's gold can be heard on this slouched interview with a member of the Cymric Women's Battalion of Death:



This linguistic loucheness may be acceptable to the Tagalog-tattling trickshaw totos of Manila, but to us and therefore you it is a betrayal of all that is Welsh. Our vowel-free native idiom has adequate words for all the English expressions used therein, except for the alien concept of "shame".

Henceforth, in the brief interval before the abolition of television and all other non-slate-based media, the intrusion of English words into Welsh broadcasts will be drowned out by automatic gunfire and the chanted slogans of indoctrinated child-soldiers.

Otherwise, well done!

Brawd Rhif Un - Paul Pot
Brawd Rhif Dau - Ta Moc
Brawd Rhif Tri - Huw Samphan

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

Ex Oriente Lux

The War Office has decided to boost the popularity of the Army with our pasty-chomping fellow-countrymen by having squaddies march around the streets in uniform, rather than in jeans, crew-cut and Lynx like the rest of us.

Smart move. It worked in Chile, after all.

The generals are worried that our burger-flecked youth does not respect the armed forces, based on the fact that no one turns up for coming-home parades in the web-footed Fens and what have you.

I wouldn't worry. Those people still think we're fighting Boney. Fact is, British youth respects no one unless they've been on Big Brother or some botox-sponsored talent show.

So unless they want to hear something along the lines of:

"Hi, we're the The Royal Dragoon Guards Battlegroup and this is 16 Flight Army Air Corps, but tonight, Matthew, we're going to be Steps!"

The brasshats ought to relax.

The real problem the Army has is that it used to be a handy way of travelling the world, scoring some primo weed in Belize, learning why we fought the Germans twice while trying to get served in a bar in Bielefeld, and picking up a trade, with the only downside being having to sit in a bath of penicillin for a week after a night out in Larnaca. Ulster had calmed down, everything was going nicely.

Then along came Tony Blair and his radical conscience, and ever since our soldiers have been stuck in pebbly countries with atonal folk music, poor bar facilities and a female population most often kitted out in hessian sacks, kalashnikovs and a brace of suspicious brothers. A hard gig to sell even in Newport.

If it's any consolation to the Chiefs of Staff, when in doubt I always turn for inspiration to Ukraine. The Ministry of Defence in Kiev has had to deal with similar problems, with the added disincentive of malnutrition, buggery and being blown up by drunks' using your armoury as a fumoir.

Their response was the following recruitment video:



The message here is simple:

"That fat kid from your village learned to read and got a job with computers and stuff in Cherkasy. Now he's got a car. Big deal! You just join the army, son, and the cast of the Fastiv Amateur Dramatics Society production of Flashdance will do the sort of things to your crank that Yanko's gran got up to with the Germans during the war. And you get to keep the tank every third weekend."

I don't know whether being molested by the female population of Wantage is as attractive a proposition, but it might be worth a try. Alternatively, our aspirant warriors could always join the Ukrainian Army. It beats working in Morrisons.

Won't Get Fooled Again

As a truculent teeny I cast around the world of popular music for a bard to express my angst.

If I'd had access to the John Peel Show everything would have been fine and I'd have worshipped at the shrine of Ian Curtis like the rest of the country, but early bedtimes and the local cult of heavy metal formed a Separation Barrier of snores and drum solos between me and the flat-vowelled introspection that I craved.

Cruellest of all was the mocking spectre of Baron Paul von und zu Bloody McCartney. Like most of Britain's bilious youth I considered him a waste of ears, but then came the Winter of 1977.

I'd had my weekly bath and was sitting in the kitchen while my mother administered the sort of haircut that ensured my only friends were the Play-Doh Twins and a kid with a pen-top wedged up his sinuses. Then the Radio 1 Top Forty presenter announced to a bell-bottomed nation that Sir Paul had gone straight in at Number One.

I slumped at the strummed acoustic guitar opening, thereby losing another half-inch off the temples, and thought "He's not putting out 'Yesterday' again, is he?" Then came the fragile opening line:

"Bollocking Time..."

At last! Macca had shown he was still able to tackle the Zeitgeist and drag it half way down the field with this subtly striking adaptation of the Punk sensibility.

I headed for school the next day with a raffish undone collar, confident that under the leadership of Sir Paul of the Bleedin' McCartneys the kids could never be defeated, Dennis Healey would have to stop putting up sweet prices twice a year, Wales would be independent with Geraint Jarman as president, and everything would be alright.

Disillusion came before the mid-morning break in the form of a tart précis of the actual lyrics of Mull of Kintyre by Huw Fat, followed by an appointment with the ear, nose and throat specialist Dr Barraclough.

Still, it stopped me from ever buying a Wings record, something that I ought to have pointed out in my defence during the Genesis trial by ordeal.

Some years later, when I woke up to the news that John Lennon had been shot, I couldn't help but wonder whether he too had misheard the song coming through the short-wave World Service whine in his New York apartment.

"Arh fokh," he said to Yoko as she paused from stencilling the Baader Meinhof logo on his arse, "Paul's gone an nikhed me werkin' class cred again! I'll have to so summut really radikhal, or else the kids'll think I juss write falsetto crap about you all the time, love."

Now I'm not saying anything ghoulish like Lennon arranged his own death to preserve his reputation as the Huey Long of millionaire socialist songwriters or something, as it seems that was the Jews again. But what if it were true?

As they say in Liverpool, think on.

Anti-Danube: Chapter VIII

In which I learn not to rely on geography

"Frda's dense breasts rang out the carillon of the desecrated church of St Hydrofoilj above my burnished helmet. I had another hour before my lone raid on the nest of intentionalist vipers, where I would use only stealth, nakedness and a small armoury to smite the enemies of objective progress. Could the very fibres of Frda's basted body hold out that long, or would I have to return to her two sisters?..."

I set down the pen, my mind harrowed from producing ideologically-attuned erotica for NAKRO agents on night watch. This was my evening of voluntary labour after days spent on the basic induction course "Getting To Know And Kill The Imperialists", run by Agents Tschtjetz and Kafka.

I was warming to Kafka, an altogether more predictable and marginally less malodorous character than his mercurial, mullet-musky colleague.

Kafka's parents had realized from an early age that the security services were a reliable channel of advancement for slovenly yet meaty plebeians in a Socialist society, and did everything they could to ease their son into the ranks of NAKRO - which amounted to naming him "Agent" and writing denunciations of their neighbours in his childish hand.

It worked, and Agent Agent Kafka was recruited into the NAKRO "Young Vultures" (Mladi Gaijyi) division at the age of 15. He excelled at once, his first act being to denounce his parents' act of naming him as "Anticipating the Path of the Party and People" under Section 567/Y(xiv) of Paragraph 678 of the Criminal Code ("On Unsanctioned Enthusiasm").

He was commended by none other than Minister of State Security Jajcabiy himself in a marginal note on his annual report, which praised the lad's concern for his parents' ideological well-being - a note that Kafka thoughtfully passed on to his mother and, posthumously, his father at Corrective Uranium-Packing Plant No.4 in the Name of Fisk.

Kafka's company was edgy but, unlike that of Tschtjetz, did not present any immediate physical danger. An empurpled, hairless head erupted from the chapped collar of his uniform, and was barely restrained from entering a resentment-fuelled low orbit by his mottled peaked cap. Conversation was something Kafka kept to a minimum. In between draughts of slyvovytz he would grunt accounts of retribution against individuals real and imaginary who had slighted him, all concluding with a triumphant snort of "Kafka focked him!".

Sometimes, I gathered, this was literally true.

Agent Kafka's contribution to the induction was a module on "Active Witnessing of Interrogations", which consisted of his playing a gramophone recording of The Internationale while crushing a pair of ripe tomatoes between his thumbs.

As a citizen of Socialist, Democratic and Popular Ruthenia I was more interested in where he had found the tomatoes, but rated his classes as overall more agreeable that Tschtjetz's practical course on sewer surveillance and "The Coat Hangar: Tool of the Trade and Occasional Comfort".

In a quiet moment after he'd sent the rest of the class to the infirmary to practice their techniques, Kafka took me aside and explained the story of the missing mountain.

"Naxajlo is like fox, but fox with mind of dog," he explained. "Source says after much bucket treatment that Naxajlo will announce loss of Mount Dohrudj at cultural event here in Zhakhiv this week via his agents, on whom we spit from afar. Aim - destroy proletarian faith in government ability to control geography. Is lie. Lower than Naxajlo is only crawling slee-worm."

I could tell Agent Kafka took the sensational disappearance of our iconic mountain personally, as his accent and disdain for verbs and articles marked him out as either an Alpine Ruthenian or a simpleton.

I too was pained. How could any patriot not be? I recalled the words of our national poet, Nikolas Blinko, in our national poem "We Are Ruthenians, Please Leave Us Alone":

"Dohrudj! Twin-breasted Amazon,
Rearing twice above our shadowed plains.
Dohrudj! Goddess, huntress and defender
Of our lesser, but also divine, mountains..."

I blinked back tears. "How can a subjective comprador emigrant hijack an entire mountain?"

"Where was our People's Popular Defensive Attack Force? Where were our brave Internal Retentive Border Coordination Guards? Where is our mountain? These are the near-treasonable thoughts passing through your still-attached head, Comrade Zhatko. Please let them, and it, remain there."

Colonel Nadroth had entered the classroom through a panel concealed behind a poster of the So-Called Hungarian Menace. He lit a cheroot from the blowtorch Kafka was still dangling from his belt, and continued:

"Naxajlo may be able to ease favours from the yielding flesh of nomenklatura beldames, but he played no part in the disappearance of Mount Dohrudj. That, I'm almost proud to say, was an unintended by-product of the Soviet-Ruthenian Defensive Manoeuvre Pact of 1978.

"Comrade First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Workers' Democratic and (United) Socialist Party of Ruthenia, Kostyatyn Novak, had decided to grant our eastern Slav brothers a weapons-testing facility on the slopes of Mount Dohrudj. Some infelicities of translation led the Soviet Army to read this as 'weapons-testing facility Mount Dohrudj', which they rapidly reduced to rubble through dry-runs of the planned peaceful saturation bombing of the Ruhr Valley."

"From Dohrudj to No-hrudj," grunted Kafka, who had clearly waited a decade to make that crack.

"Thank you, Agent Kafka, you may continue the narrative," Nadroth gracefully acknowledged Kafka's bon mot.

"No all bad. First, rubble used to build NAKRO children camp, large crater make good ducking pool. Second, uncover much uranium, so open new Corrective Uranium-Packing Plant No.5 in Name of Dejevsky. Clear mountain air benefit Kafka's mother. Third, much improved views across plain to assess Hungarian Menace," Kafka continued, adding "We fock them!" in case I doubted the efficacy of Ruthenian military planning.

"But what about the Questing Marmot youth hikes in the Dohrudj foothills, the Central Committee mountain-top resort where foreign dignitaries are entertained, the mountain itself, looming majestically over the slack rooftops of Yützhrad?" I asked.

"To take your points in order," responded Nadroth, "Our inquisitive Socialist youthlings are transported at night to sororial Romania, where they wander the Carpathians in the company of horincă-dispensing Gypsy girls and are happy to keep their doubts to themselves.

"The mountain-top resort is in southern Poland, where our leaders forewarn themselves of the latest compromises our quadrant-hatted near-neighbours are making with the despised world of commerce. It also ensures foreign dignitaries have a positive impression of our Socialist society, as we have disaggregated hospitality to the Poles under a Comecon agreement. In return we repair their wristwatches."

"Lech potatoheads!" snorted Kafka "We fock them!"

"Thank you, Kafka. And finally, the outcrop glowering over scenic Yützhrad is Mount Dohlav, the identity of which was kept secret for decades by being hidden behind Mount Dohrudj. It was the prewar alpine playground of King Oleg the Invert, and widely shunned by the local peasantry for that reason. The People's Defensive Artillery carried out some basic reshaping of the summit, and a strategic adjustment to spectacle prescriptions by the local Health Board ensured that none of the berry-chewing moujiks is any the wiser," concluded the Colonel with a friendly tap of his cigar in my gaping mouth.

"Any of them go walk and talk about it, we leave them overnight in Szekler village and send pictures to family," added Kafka blandly.

"I am of course impressed and humbled by the ingenuity and compassion of the people's representatives in this, and all other, endeavours to protect the workers, peasants and progressive toilers by brain and hand from the consequences of their actions, but what role am I, a simple philosopher, to play in this?" I asked, sensing that I was not being admitted to the sanctum of state secrecy out of some brandy-based communal candour.

"Comrade Zhatko!" Nadroth rapped out his response with a crisp tattoo with his crop on my crotch. "First, you will infiltrate the event at which Naxajlo's creatures are to make their treacherous announcement, and second you will identify the translator whose error led to the destruction of our only peasant-free mountain.

"Even," he added, "if that translator turns out to be yourself!"

Deny the Venizelote Revanchistes!

A Cymru Rouge press release:

The BBC recently started calling Macedonia Macedonia. It had hitherto dubbed it the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, which sounds like the sort of thing Prince changes his name to. So the United Nations liked it: big deal, they like all sorts of junk. The BBC done right.

The Cymru Rouge keeps a close eye on BBC activities - the eye in question being that of Iago Anffawd (fab Sieffre Siomedig fab Gwil Goll), which has had a protrudent, stalk-like adaptability ever since he test-dived with the Welsh Socialist Navy's first experimental submarine coracle.

He regularly reports back to the Sedd Fawr of the Rouge on metropolitan outrages against Cambritude, such as Glenys Bloody Kinnock appearances and weathergirls standing in front of Aberystwyth on the map and mispronouncing it.

He has recently noted soul-searching among BBC staff over this Macedonian policy. Not the sort of soul-searching carried out by Mrs Boyo's father in his Vinnytsya oubliette, which involved attaching electric cables to deacons at prayer, but a bout of self-criticism about the wisdom of this choice.

This uncertainty was prompted by the quantity of complaints they've received from Greek opponents of the name change - patriots with a burning commitment to their ancestral land, even though circumstances seem to prevent them from actually living in it at the moment.

We web bloggers do not fear complaints about our work - we call them "comments", and post them on our sites. The Cymru Rouge urges the BBC to stand firm, like the Oak of Nannau, in the face of Attic barracking.

For our narrow nationalist readers and admirers of the work of Lily Allen, who may both be unaware of the Macedonian Question, the Cymru Rouge Grudge Assessment Unit has prepared the following background briefing:

The warrior and statesman Sir Winston Churchill always drew a distinction between "Greeks" - the Ancients who brought us philosophy, wine and recreational sport, and saved us from Persian savagery - and "Grecians" - the current inhabitants of that area who have brought us, their neighbours and indeed themselves little but grief, resinous wine and overcooked food in the last 200 years.

One cannot help but think that Aristotle and Demosthenes would have seen fit, as have we and Sir Winston, to draw a similar distinction between whoever might have lived in Macedonia several thousands of years ago, and the people who live there now. Demosthenes, certainly, would have left it up to our contemporaries to decide what they want to call themselves and their country.

Let us take it step by step.

There is a province of Greece called Macedonia, inhabited by Grecians who like to call themselves Greeks, Slavs who like to call themselves Macedonians, and Vlachs who like to call themselves Romanians.

There is also an independent state called Macedonia, inhabited by Slavs who like to call themselves Macedonians and Albanians who, alone in the region, are happy to be called just that. This makes the Albanians the only clear-headed people around. Food for thought.

On the subject of which, there is a fruit salad called Macedonia, made up of a similarly colourful if rather more welcome diversity of elements. Not a coincidence, we imagine.

Now, if the Grecians want to call their province Macedonia, or their country Greece for that matter, it's no one else's business. Our African cousins get by with two separate Congoes, and the same goes for the qat-fuelled decision to enjoy the benefits of two Yemens for a while, and no one really minds.

The same goes for Grecian Macedonia and the Republic of Macedonia. Take our word for it, no one really minds.

A phrase we recall from our hemp-clad, slogan-chanting childhood is "The Greeks have a word for it". In the case of the Epirote revanchistes, we suspect that word might be "hubris".

To employ a good Greek word, Adio.

Fear not, BBC, the Cymru Rouge is behind you!

Brawd Rhif Un - Huw Samphan
Brawd Rhif Dau - Paul Pot
Braws Rhif Tri - Moc Tudor

Cyfres Y Ceirw III: Shakin' Stevens

Shaky is, of course, the greatest living Welsh after Tom Jones, Howards Marks and Charlotte Church. So why does he need extra exposure by here? Surely his body of work speaks for itself?

Indeed, but I come to praise not Shaky the Rock Colossus, for he belongs to the world, but Shaky the socialist politician and Welsh patriot.

As is often the case with great Welsh radicals, today's Shaky grew from unexpected roots.

Born Étienne Tremblant in the fabled Dynevor Tower of Oystermouth Castle in 1948, Shaky was the scion of one of Wales's oldest and most rapacious Norman families. His father, Sir Rollo Tremblant Bt, handed him over to a cabal of reves, makars and soused nursemaids, who instructed him in the ways of robber-barony in the back lanes and bedchambers of Gower.

A lifetime of sybaritic cruelty, ruffled shirts and bastardy awaited young Étienne until a fateful trip to the bordellos of Hamburg in 1967 organised by his private tutor - the unlicensed apothecary, Katangan consul and author of "Achmed, un fils du Rif", Conrad Latto.

As the two rode down the midnight Reeperbahn in a carriage drawn by a pair of Moroccan pony-boys, Étienne leafed through a copy of Adorno's "Minima Moralia" that he'd picked up in an alternative bookshop in the reasonable expectation that it was a Renaissance guide to mauve depravity.

As he told Michael Heatley, "[Adorno's] fragmentary aphorisms seemed to fuse together as I read them, forming a golden bar of philosophical bullion. The way forward was now clear to me. I told Conrad to rein in Mohand and Abdenour, dismounted, shook his hand for the last time, and strode into the dialectic as confidently as my silken hosiery permitted." ("Shaky: The Biography of Shakin' Stevens", Michael O'Mara Books, 2005, p38)

Étienne used his inheritance and shallow reading in the crepuscular classics of European and Near Eastern literatures to surf the spume of the German radical left, which began battering the bollards of bourgeois West Germany the following year.

But he soon grew disillusioned with the Marcusean posturings of the 68er-Bewegung, clearly foreseeing the rise of its violent, anarchic undercurrent to the surface in the form of the Baader-Meinhof Group (see his pamphlet "The One-Dimensional Movement: The Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund and a Superstructure of Gewalt", Spartakusverlag, Hamburg, 1968).

Many were unable to forgive him this incisive criticism, especially after the attempt on the life of SDS leader Rudi Dutschke, and Tremblant decided to return to Wales.

It was while toying with the radio in the family Bentley as he crossed the Heads of the Valleys that Étienne found himself switching rapidly between a recording of Aneurin Bevan and a track by a young rockabilly outfit called The Sunsets from Penarth. A second epiphany followed. "How to bring the tropes of Critical Theory to the working classes in Wales? For 'we are a musical nation' are we not? I had the car turn left - where else? - and we raced down the Rhondda towards the The Sunsets, towards the sea." (Heatley, p97).

It took a little time and a lot of money for Étienne to persuade The Sunsets to let him take lead vocals and songwriting duties, but it soon paid off in a string of consciousness-raising gigs.

The hits - "Sweet Little Rock & Roller" (1972 - dedicated to Leila Khaled), "Honey Honey" (1973 - a critical anthem mocking the statist posturings of the new East German Communist leader Erich Honecker), and "Jungle Rock" (1976 - in memory of Patrice Lumumba) - kept the band going while not compromising its revolutionary integrity.

After an uncertain start, Tremblant heeded the band's advice and agreed to change his name to something both more rock and yet more roll. In an early intimation of his interest in Welsh culture, Étienne opted for the name Steffan Y Crynwr, but the possible translation as "Stephen the Quaker" brought in too many earnestly silent men in cardigans and plain, plain women to make the joints jump. And so he bowed to cultural hegemony, and adopted another English version of his stage name. Thus was born Shakin' Stevens.

Shaky went solo in 1977, but the bond of solidarity he'd already forged with the workers, peasants and progressive studentry of Wales kept him in touch politically during the good times - and supported him in the locust years of the 1980s.

For Shaky's work was subject to a near-total and utter broadcasting boycott throughout the grim decade of Thatcherism following his alleged assault on Richard Madeley during an episode of "Calendar Goes Pop" in 1980. It was simply a Happening that Shaky had staged to illustrate a point he'd been trying to make about Debord's "Society of the Spectacle" to Francis Rossi out of Status Quo, but the coarsened social sensibility of the time was unable to grasp that.

Richard and Judy are the closest thing the English have to royalty, even though it was years before they'd met, and Shaky stood no chance. The only records of his that Radio One would play were either covers or songs with lyrics of such Æsopian subtlety that the BBC censors could not catch their thread of subversion. "I felt like I could look Vysotsky, Victor Jara and Wolf Biermann in the eye at last," Shaky recalled ruefully of those tense times (Heatley p178).

Highlights of the "Decade of Resistance", as Shaky called it, were "Shooting Gallery" (1980 - a chill warning of the advent of President Reagan), "This Ole House" (1981 - which pilloried the impotence of the House of Commons in the face of Thatcherism), "Oh Julie" (1982 - a bold doo-wop treatment of the semiotics of Julia Kristeva), and "A Rockin' Good Way" (1984, with miners' activist Bonnie Tyler, and dedicated to Woody Guthrie), culminating in the coruscating slab of anti-Eurocommunism that was 1990s "Pink Champagne".

Indeed, Shaky had been increasingly unhappy with the reformism taking root in the leadership of the Communist Party of Great Britain, and 1981's "Green Door" was a clear overture to Plaid Cymru's socialist wing under Dafydd Elis Thomas to form a broad Welsh left alliance.

An explicit invitation to Plaid would have cost Shaky his candidate Politburo membership, of course, and it is only to be regretted that Elis Thomas was unable (or unwilling?) to break free of Plaid's Gwynforite ascendancy. Shaky has written wistfully of what might have been in "The Eighteenth Brumaire of Dafydd Wigley", a pamphlet that the Arts Council of Wales repeatedly refuses to print.

The bureaucratic establishment of the Welsh Assembly has long since cast the pall of osmosis over Elis Thomas and other erstwhile radicals, and the irony is that Shaky's political legacy is more widely recognised at home than abroad.

His record sales in Denmark are an indictment of us all, and it has been left to the Northern chronicler of proletarian culture, Peter Kay, to pay Shaky tribute by making him the only star to make two separate appearances in his homage to the Mexican Revolution, "(Is This The Way to) Amarillo":



As Tom Jones gradually reduces his public commitments and Owain Glyndwr persistently declines to heed the call, the stage may yet still be set for Shaky to take his rightful place as First President of the Welsh Republic. The question is, are we Welsh enough to deserve him?

Back in the Jug

The vodka and pickles are beginning to clear, and I see Mrs Boyo's careful and, I must say, slightly over-tight packing has brought me safely home from Ukraine to a Britain apparently zombified by the sort of flu once administered to Comrade Zhatko.

I'm therefore lying low on night shifts until the plague has passed, and shall share my dank thoughts shortly.

Ukraine's chief exports are steel, missiles, radiation and preedy gorls, so it's fitting that its premiership ought once more to be occupied by Madame Yuliya Tymoshenko - a lady who combines all the best qualities of those commodities.

Our own lady politicians have not been faring so well - Harriet Harman's facing questions over her deputy leadership campaign, Lady Thatcher is slowly turning into a giant moth, Glenys Bloody Kinnock still hasn't emigrated to Cuba, and Theresa May's secretary must be useless as she never replies to my illustrated letters.

They all need a lesson in campaigning from Madame Tymoshenko, and this Ukrainian folk group shows them how it's done with their song "Yuliya". Take it away, ladies:

Happy New Year, innit

Mrs Boyo has just fastened name tags to my clothing, as we're off on our annual pilgrimage to Ukraine - the touristic delights of which are carolled here.

Back on 5th January, so have yourselves a lively time over the New Year. I'll be somewhere on Maydan Nezalezhnosti or arm-wrestling Kolya Lektryk for the return of my trousers as usual.

In the meantime, here's some more of the thoughts of Capt Deakin on the rainbow nations of the North-West Frontier:

... could mimic a bassoon at 100 yds by straining slightly for
weeks thereafter. I could not have imagined such horrors those
few months ago as I was summoned into the Govnr's State Rooms
in Peshawar, even though I was not expecting thepleasantest of
conversations.

"I'm innocent, Sir! The native girl was sick; she would have
died anyway," I said by way of greeting, after the G's curt
nod.

"Desist, Capt. Deakin. I have no wish to trawl deeper through
the sump of degeneracy that is your personal contribution to
the White Man's Burden." The G pointed wearily at a large
area of the Punjab, coloured crimson on his campaign map. "The
main chieftains of the area have been appeased by the gift of
many head of elephants, and the urban curfew is now being
observed, despite many days of mutiny by the Seventh Sepoys
and the disembowelment of fifteen Unitarian missionaries by
the indignant populace in Chunki-Pazaar."

"Capital! No real harm done then, eh, Your Excellency... What
about a round of billiards? I'll let yer win, treat you to a
Siamese Sandwich at Madame Wong's Star of Mandalay Rub-and-Tug
Parlour, if yer know what I mean, and we'll forget all about
this ghastly misunderstanding - watcha say?"

My normally successful tactics for dealing with anxious
superior officers failed me in this my one encounter with the
Govnr, who was clearly not a Fifth Lancers' Man.

"Capt. Deakin! Confound you, man! Thanks to your grotesque
behaviour we nearly lost the whole of north-west India to
bloody insurrection, and all you can suggest is table-games
and further molestation of His Majesty's colonial charges!
Have you any idea, you depraved cretin, of how close you have
come to a full court-martial? THAT close!" bellowed the
clearly overwrought G., hacking at the punkah-wallah with
his scimitar by way of illustration of my proximity to
disgrace. "It is only the intercession on your behalf of Col.
Dunn-Chan - Lord alone knows why - that spared you from five
years in the stockade and a transfer to the Gurkha Target-
Practice Platoon, for Heaven's sake!"

Good old Gussie Dunn-Chan, I thought to myself. Not much of a
soldier, but a sound chap who knows when he's been done a
favour. The sale of his appalling spouse to those devil-
worshippers in Chitral for a sack of goat-fat and a set of
Uighur embroidered undergarments, only slightly soiled, was
one of my most successful trades as Commercial Commissioner in
Chini-Bagh two years previously, and Gussie's gratitude has
been as touching as it is useful. I also got him out of some
bother over the Inflatable Sari business in Sindh prior to the
King's Durbar, and he has never let me down since.

"When all is said and done you're still an officer in the
British Army of India, but the Ghorband of Amritsar is
demanding that an example should be made of you, nonetheless,"
continued the G., mollified by my respectful silence. "With
Russian agents crawling all over the place we cannot afford to
be seen to be ignoring his demands, nor can we give in to an
ultimatum from some damn'd native nabob. So I have decided on
a compromise."

With that the Govnr drew a service-revolver from his
desk and handed it to me. "Mortified by the distress and
sanguinary bedlam caused by your incontinent behaviour, you
did what any Lancer would have done," he said, with more
relish than I thought necessary. "Your death will calm the
Ghorband, and impress upon the masses how strict is the
British officers' code of honour. The worst of the damage will
be put right, and we can get on with the job of winning border
tribes to the Empire's side in preparation for the final
reckoning with the Czar and his Cossack marauders. You know it
makes sense, Deakin."

I thought it worth seeking some sort of dignified alternative
that would, nonetheless, not diminish my standing in the
Govnr.-General's eyes. "Can't we shoot one of the men and
dress him up to look like me Sir? My batman, Rose, would
gladly sacrifice himself the greater good, and anyway we
needn't tell. Give me half an hour and I sort it out myself,"
I volunteered.

"A coward, a bully, and a disgrace to our Island Race, as I
always suspected!" exploded the G., which I thought was
rather hard on poor old Rosie. Never the model fighting-man,
it must be said, and prone to excessive perspiration when
being used as a human shield by an officer under heavy
artillery-fire, but an ideal if reluctant beater on tiger-
sticking outings and a ready source of cash in that difficult
last week of the month - after a little physical persuasion
and threats to deport his mulatto family to the molasses-farms
of Guiana.

"Don't worry, Captain, I don't seriously expect you to do the
decent thing and blow your warped brains out, given your
incompetence and the sheer volume of your gin intake, not to
mention the difficulty of finding the target. No, we have a
much more positive use for you mottled neck."

Cahiers ou Cinema?

I like to spend my lunch hour drinking with NCOs, people with further education, religious scholars, that sort of thing. Conversation ranges widely, with owl etiquette and myself as frequent reference points.

Recently the Spirit of Radio 4 descended upon us and led to a discussion of whether the original book is always better than the film adaptation, with particular reference to Trainspotting.

I thought a more interesting question was why call either version Trainspotting unless you wanted to introduce the wrapped-sandwich community to skag, turps, fast music and Scottish culture, but as usual I was wrong.

Our conclusion, after scant consideration of little evidence, was that the book is always better. At which point we thought about it a bit more, and reached the following more comprehensive assessment.

The book is better than the film, with the following exceptions:

1. Films of Stephen King novels are better than the books, unless the films have the words "Stephen King's" in the title;

2. The same goes for Philip K Dick and in fact almost any piece of science fiction (see the Solaris debate I had with myself);

3. Our Man in Havana; and

4. Hardcore porn (that was my idea).

Unlike Radio 4 we are open to informed dissent, so fire away all you Christmas objectors.

Cyfres y Ceirw II: Vincent Price

Now as always, Wales dominates the ham section of the acting profession. Anthony Hopkins, Richard Burton, Ray Milland, Richard Coyle - they all had to come from somewhere, I'm afraid, and that somewhere was Vincent Price.

Price's career as an actor, cook, art-collector and TV gobshite is all too well-known, but his humble background, political activism and sheer Welshness are not.

Born Fychan ap Rhys in Bethesda to Rhys and Falmai ap Rhys, Price spent his childhood training to follow his father into the sin-eating business. This prepared him well for his later role in The Witchfinder General and various adverts.

A defining moment, however, came during his preparations for the Bethesda Cwyniad - the local Welsh-language freestyle toasting and dissing sessions. He used the hwntw expression "chimod" to rhyme with "Ichabod" during a bravura dismissal of Archdruid Cynan, and was booed off the chapel benches by the local Gog separatists.

Although there is no proof of this, Cynan incited the local bigots to drive Price away from the well where his family had dwelt for generations - partly in jealousy over the young man's courtship of Dolgellau harp diva and ankle-model Telynores Dwyryd, or so it's said.

This made Price a doughty champion of Welsh national unity and an opponent of racial intolerance, even when it was entirely justified.

He fled south to the easygoing port city of Tenby, where he eked out a living as a crwth-player with a street jazz combo and developed his interest in cookery by slapping Welsh cakes for the demimondaines at Maison Griff's all-night speakeasy - the only place you could get a drink in Pembrokeshire in those days, even a cup of tea.

Fate grabbed Price by the danglers once again when the US Fleet steamed into harbour, heralding Wales’s entry into the Second World War on the Allied side.

A group of Calvinist street toughs had marked his card over the "hot" version of "Arglwydd Dyma Fi" he'd performed at a Griff jam session one crazy night, so he stowed away on a US frigate heading for Havana to pick up cigars for Mr Churchill.

Price was discovered near the Azores, but his cooking and rhyming skills, plus his ability to see U-boats underwater, soon had him shoot up the ratings. By the time the ship had docked in New York, Price was a Senior Captain - which meant he not only ran the ship itself but had the use of another when his was being mended.

A glorious naval career followed, but Price showed his principles once again by resigning his commission when President Truman refused to carry the war to its logical conclusion and free Wales from English occupation.

Instead, he sold his medals to fund a Broadway musical version of Caradog Pritchard's "Un Nos Ola Leuad" called "Mam!". Literally no one came to see it, which allowed him to recycle much of the material in a concert work for male voice choir and crwth that he toured around clubs in LA.

Michael Jackson loved the piece so much that he turned it into the hit single "Thriller". Price, ever the crusader against racism, praised Jackson for giving so many prominent parts to black people in the video, and agreed to play a cameo part. That, as they, is the measure of the man - composer, warrior, lover, short-order chef and Welsh.

Russia: Man the Humping Guns

Keen readers of the television, newspapers, political web blogs and the radio will know that dwarf bodybuilder Vladimir Putin has decided to let the even shorter Dmitry Medvedev become President of Russia for a while.

Was there any chance of the various opposition parties beating him, even in a bar fight? Not really:

- The democratic parties would fit neatly in the Cwmdonkin Bowls Club jacuzzi, even when it's full of friendly ladies;

- The Communists are all pensioners, and post-Soviet healthcare reforms will ensure that they're unlikely to survive until polling day;

- All the other parties were set up by the Kremlin because Mr Putin needs quadraphonic adulation to go with his mania for the 1970s (oily martinis, tinted glasses, sticking political opponents in mental hospitals, and Disco!)

How wrong we were. Comes the hour, comes the man. Yes, Beat legend Charles Bukowski has announced that he's standing for president - in Russian!

Many have written off Bukowski, saying that he doesn't have the time to build up a convincing campaign, that his work has tailed off recently, and that he died in 1994.

Anyone who's followed Bukowski's career will know that he's a better man dead than Putin is alive, and his unspoken manifesto shows a deeper understanding of Russia than that Petersburg boy scout could dream of. Consider it:

I. Putin is near teetotal, speaks German and arms Iranians.

Russians have shown throughout history that they think these are bad ideas. Candidate Bukowski stands firmly against arms, apart from the odd flick knife for one's own personal use. He was actually born in Germany, and so knows exactly what that lot are up to. His position on drink is well-documented, and broadly enthusiastic.

II. Putin has taken control of the televisions, so that they show little except his holiday films and soft porn (I didn't say he was all bad).

Russians do like propaganda and filth, but they also like boxing and poetry. Bukowski would keep the best of Putin programming, and enhance it with two-fisted action and live dissing contests with Yevgeny Yevtushenko.

III. Bukowski looks like 90 per cent of the male population of Russia, and so is able to connect with them like moonshine on an empty stomach.

Putin looks like the man at the end of the bus queue whom the monster eats first in 1950s horror films.

IV: Putin says things like this: "Russians will never allow for the development of the country along a destructive path, the way it happened in some countries in the post-Soviet space."

Bukowski says things like this:"I don't like jail, they got the wrong kind of bars in there."

V: In Californication, the David Duchovny character is clearly based on Bukowski.

Dobby, Harry Potter's house elf, is the closest Putin will get to a celluloid homage.

C'mon Ivan, if you've only got one vote, get out of bed just after noon and cast it for Hank Chinaski.

I Sing the Body Dai-alectic

A press release by the Grievances and Slights Amelioration Committee of the Cymru Rouge ("Mon coeur est un luth suspendu"):

Our plenipotentiary representative in Occupied Swydd Henffordd (Herefordshire) has passed on a communiqué by coracle about further English exploitation of the Welsh people.

This time, the English have adopted the cunning ways of their comprador overlord Edward Longshanks (who is dead, while we are still alive, let us recall) in using a Welsh to attack a Welsh. That frankly is our job, and we're not having any of it.

The plutocrats who have literally usurped the name of Martyr Commandante Dic Penderyn and appended it to a distillery have done themselves no further favours at all by promoting their "Brecon Five Vodka" through the medium of challenging the Philosophy Department of the Valley College of Further Education.

The charges laid before the Flying Court (Marsupial Division) of the Cymru Rouge are that the Penderyn Distillery did knowingly, and with knowledge aforethought:

1. Waste Wales's scarce water resources on vodka - a drink favoured by prostitutes, "pop" singers and mink-trappers - while the hemp-clad toilers cry out for yet more ale to slake their Cambrian thirsts;

2. Usurp the name of Martyr Commandante Dic Penderyn, which belongs to the People (and is held in trust for them by the Cymru Rouge);

3. Denigrate the name of the Brecon Five, pioneers of Welsh Maoism who vanished while attempting to cultivate rice in the River Honddu;

4. Misspell the name of the Valley College of Further Edjucation.

5. Promote the cult of the rootless intellectual over the native wisdom of the Welsh Wise Woman.

6. Admire Existentialism - a philosophy banned by Cymru Rouge Edict 456/26(XIX/b:iii) "On The Rationing of Thought Allocation";

7. Verbally apply the English "language" without due consultation with the Cymru Rouge Unnecessary Surgical Procedures Subcommittee;

8. All the above, with "Conspiracy to" prefixed.

How have the bourgeois running corgis of Welsh liberalism responded? By complaining to the Advertising Standards Authority - a watchtower of the capitalist Panopticon that imprisons the workers, peasants, revolutionary-minded soldiers and public-sector employees of Wales, and possibly elsewhere too.

The answer these Dic Sion Dafydds received was a contemptuous rap on the pizzle for daring to question the Laws of Mammon.

We, the Rouge, follows the Laws of Mabon and reject the infantile, anti-Cambrian deviation that is Existentialism. With the exception of the clerical reactionary RS Thomas, no Welsh has ever sought a personal encounter with God, or yet believed in creating individual meaning in his, her or anyone else's life.

A. Our dealings with God have always been handled by highly-trained specialists, with disastrous results.

In pagan times all religious matters were the domain of druids, who prepared our troops for battle against the Romans by getting monged on 'shrooms in an oak glade, stripping off and taking orders from an astral badger.

Later, we left it to monks, until they challenged the autocracy of top Welsh lothario Henry VIII Tudor and lumbered us with the imperialist Act of Union.

Since then, it's been the preserve of Calvinists, Methodists and sometimes weird The-Fly-like combinations of both. In consequence we dropped polyphony, sex and novel musical instruments for male voice choirs, tea and piano lessons with the late Miss Roberts.

Given the failings of these theologians, the Welsh people have as one decided that they themselves as deracinated individuals are unlikely to do any better.

B. "Meaning in life" is an inherently un-Welsh concept that seeks to distract the People from their revolutionary tasks by promoting the sort of brooding self-doubt that makes the Scots what they are today.

The case of the People vs Penderyn Distillery will be heard in the coming days. Appeal against the sentence is permitted before it is carried out anyway.

Henffych!

Ta Moc Tudor - Brawd Rhif Un
Huw Samphan - Brawd Rhif Dau
Paul Pot - Brawd Rhif Tri

Desert Island Dicks

Former Genesis-album magnate and human installation Ward Cooper once remarked that footballers always say their favourite television programmes are David Attenborough nature documentaries, because it makes them sound intelligent.

In a similar manner, the various captains of industry, Booker also-rans and faded party leaders who make up the Desert Island Discs guest-list allege that they like to relax to some Dvořák, their granny's old 78s and, in the case of politicians, something randomly modish with an uplifting title that their researchers tacked on at the last minute ("Things Can Only Get Better", that perennial hymn to back-passage auto-erotic stimulation "My Way", and Schoolly D's "Gucci Time").

I've yet to hear any mention of sex aids among the one luxury items these gonks select, either. ("Well, Kirsty, I'd like a Dilmaster VII, a colour photo of Caroline Quentin and a jar of goose fat, please.")

I've had enough of this, and kd lang is frankly a disappointingly bland hostess, so here's a way of livening it up, Welsh stylee.

(Druggy music, with auk accompaniment)

[Presenter Charlotte Church] Hiya, my guest today is No Good Boyo. Nice to 'ave you b'yer, Boyo, and thanks for the basque. Just one size too small, is it?"

[No Good Boyo] Aye.

[CC] Lovely. So, No Good, who is yewr nominee to spend the rest of their lives on Bardsey Island, then?

[NGB] Well, Charlotte, I'd like to nominate Glenys Bloody Kinnock.

[CC] Lady Kinnock of Lle Chwech? Orbital! And what's the first record you'd like to make her listen to endlessly, then?

[NGB] Her first record will be "Don't Rain on My Parade"...

[CC] A classic!

NGB] ... in the cover version by Japan.

[CC] Yew bastard!

(brief yet horrid snatch thereof)

[CC] Oh, Christ came to Crumlin, don't ever let that happen again! Before the next record, NG, would you like to speculate at length on the various physical indignities Baroness Kinnock could expect to endure on this windswept and possibly haunted rock, or perhaps suggest other ways of making her life miserable?

(more nasty stuff)

[CC] With gravel? Exotic! Now, tell us more about yewr next record.

[NGB] "I Mewn i'r Gôl" by the Rhos Male Voice Choir is more than just a lumpy 80s hymn of fealty to Wrexham FC, sung in grinding unison yet out of sync to an oompah backbeat. Coz I've got the 12-inch...

(on it goes)

[CC] So, when the Nigaraguan Contras have got bored with her, Glenys can recuperate with a book and a luxury item. She's already got the collected works of Daniel Owen in extra-small print and a sheaf of Plaid Cymru leaflets, so what else is she 'aving?

[NGB] I think she'd enjoy a transcript of her husband's "All Right!" speech in Sheffield, just before he achieved the near-miracle of losing an election to John Major in 1992.

[CC] And the luxury item?

[NGB] Why, Neilo himself!

(Fade out over insane cackling and the sound of lingerie snapping)

Who would you like to see go steadily mad while listening to Lou Reed album tracks on Rockall? C'mon, share the Schaden!

Mark of The Mole

From the press office of the Cymru Rouge Grievance and Slights Department ("Inventing Dignity"):

It has come to the attention of the Vanguard of the Welsh People's various struggles that an English has begun to perpetuate a stereotypical slander against our brothers, sisters and others in the Tribe of Morgan.

Not content first to denigrate the Prophet Mohammed, the immortal leader of the Muslim people, the buffoon Kes Gray has now slurred our Silurian race with his mole-centric aspersions.

His suggestion that entire the Welsh people, and the Tribe of Morgan in particular, are short, dark, irascible creatures who spend most of their lives underground in no way represents the sunlit European vector of our new Cardiff Bay identity.

It is the will of the Welsh people, as expressed through the inerrant voice of the Cymru Rouge, that this Clarksonite debaser should have his car painted green, assuming that he's man enough to drive (probably a 2CV), and that his car is not already green.

In that event, a darker or lighter hue will be applied, depending on the assessment of the Cymru Rouge Coordination and Accessorising Group ("Peintio'r Byd yn Wyrdd").

Appeals will be heard before sentence is duly carried out anyway.

Henffych!

Huw Samphan (Brawd Rhif Un)
Paul Pot (Brawd Rhif Dau)
Ta Moc Tudor (Brawd Rhif Tri)

The Car That Ate Corris

As Mrs Boyo and, it seems, the first Ottoman Sultan so rightly predicted, I failed my driving test.

I find comfort in the words of the Ruthenian poet and amputee, Sam Dureppa, who once wrote "That which does not kill me needs less cooking", and list the faults noted by the examiner by way of enlightening the young.

1. Misuse of gear. Rolling a fat one while idling at junctions constitutes a serious fault, unless you're doing it with just one hand and not looking either.

2. Misuse of road. All four wheels must touch the road at all times, as we know, but the steering wheel and spare do not count. At least not on a test.

3. Country ways. Saying "we all kicks caravans passing the Cross Foxes near Tabor, and no one ever complained" cuts no ice with these English examiners. They neither know nor care about the Ways of the Welsh.

4. Bribery. Against the law, apparently. Doubling it gets you off, though.

I ought to have done all this when I was 17, and the test consisted of driving around the Co-op car park in Machynlleth without dribbling on the dashboard.