- ...continued
from previous page
- "No.
I'll tell you what I'm talking
about. It's a new year started. It's a
chance for people to take stock of what
the whole year was about. I think that
side of it is undersold, but I think the
other side is a terrible combinatination
of
exploitation and commercialisatiation.
It's
about regrouping, about putting your
hands in the air and saying, 'What
year that was!' And it's about
generosity. And a God-given chance,'
to shag somebody else's wife at the
Christmas office party. Or at least get
a couple of fingers up in the car
park."
"Christmas is where you can get
away with being called Bing," notes
Damien to much bacchanalian Iaughter
Then Alex chips in with some studied
and intelligent comments about the
nature of organised religion and its
relationship to late capitalist
consumerism during which evereybody
shouts, "Speak up!" and,
"Be more
aggressive!" Poor lamb.
How do Fat Les feel about
Birmingham council replacing
Christmas with the allegedly politically
correct 'Winterval' and the fact that
Liverpool council have taken down the
traditional tree donated every year by
the Norwegian government in gratitude
for the city's heroic role in World War
Two and replaced it with a construction
of steel and glass which has been
derided by critics as a carbuncle?
Alex responds to this question by
making some valid comments about the
necessity of celebrating a diversoty of
mid-winter religious festivals. Keith
makes a serious point about the need
to keep alive the memory of those who
died fighting Fascism and about the
importance of maintaining some
traditions in the face of a tendency
towards ever-increasing global.
- blandness,
uniformity and "franchise
culture" and Damien, Damien goes red
in the face and yells: "A carbuncle
is a
carbuncle is a carbuncle! I'm Damien
Hirst, right, and I'm at the cutting edge
of modern art! Show me the fucking
sculpture and I'll TELL you whether it's
a carbuncle or not!"
"I'm saying that we should have the
carbuncle as well," says Keith.
"Well, all I'm saying is that
Christmas
trees were all well and good at one
point," argues Damien, "but
cutting
down the rainforest..
"Anyway, getting back to
Birmingham!" sna~s Keith.
"Those c-s
should be arsefucked and put on a boat
and rowed out to the Azores and
fucking sunk! 'Cos if you fucking tell me
that the word 'Christmas' is an insult to
immigrant cultures, you can put that in
your pipe and fucking smoke it! You
don't do that! You ghettoise people and
when you ghettoise people you're on a
fucking slippery slope!"
Giventhat 'Naughty Christmas' is
on a bit of a lewd tip, do you think it
reaches the depths of depravity
previously plumbed by The Goodies'
'Father Christmas Do Not Touch Me!'?
"No," says Keith.
Joe, have you ever been shagged at
a Christmas office party?
"Never!" snarls Joe,
punkrockishly.
"Never, ever, ever! Never even been
to one..."
What, never'?! Didn't you and Sid
and Billy Idol have punk rock Christmas
office parties?
- When I was at
college," butts in
Keith, eagerly, "my dad used to work
for the West Wales Water Board and
every holiday I used to go and cut the
grass on the reservoir - top holiday job!
I met this woman in the office, got to
the party, a few drinky-poos - blahdy
blahdy blah! Get on top of her at the
bus station, right, and it turns out
she's
a police inspector's wife! Fucking
ace!"
Can you remember what you shouted
as you ejaculated?
"I never come, Steven, you know
that."
Alex, you're the prettiest person in
Fat Les, you must have had plenty of
Christmas office party sex?
"FUCK OFF!" roars a jealous
Keith
Allen.
"Let it go, Keith!" says Joe.
"Let it
go!"
"No," says Alex, "I don't
think I've
ever been to one...
"Have you ever shat the bed when
you've been with a girl?" asks
Damien.
"I have, once." says Keith.
"She
Iaaaaaved it!"
- There now
follows a bizarre
conversation between Keith Allen and
The Artist Currently Known As That Mad
Bloke What Sticks Dead Cows And Fish
And Stuff In Giant Tanks Of
Formaldehyde about God and the
inevitability of death (the latter,
being,
as you are surely aware, a theme which
has informed many of Mr Hirst's works).
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- "He got
me into a sense of my
own mortality and I got him into
God,"
says Keith.Is this true, Damien?
"Yeah, and it's worrying the shit
out
of me..." says Damien.
"I'm the only fucker in this band
who
believes in God," says Keith.
"And the
reason I say that is because I AM God.
And Joe, who was there at Glastonbury,
can confirm this, because he saw it.
- The whole
trip is that we are all God!"
I'm an atheist myself...
"I envy people who are
atheists,"
says Damien, sarcastically.
"Because, I
mean, c mon, give me credit! How the
fuck do you work that out, eh?" Once
again, Damien is being rather
aggressive. Oh dear.
All this time Damien is getting
increasingly irritated and restless.
- One of
Damien's mates is opening a
restaurant tonight and everybody's going!
- Great! Top
artbiz nosh!
What's that? Oh. Right. OK.
Apparently everybody's going
except NME. No problem.
Except Damien wants to leave
NOW! Like five minutes ago.
Like five minutes after the
interview started. Like - oh shit!
- Robbie-style walk-out fiasco
part two/Angst letterbag
meltdown horror scenario! Just
what is it these people are so
scared of?
Damien keeps growling,
"Come on. Drink up. Let's go!"
and an edge of panic starts tQ
creep into the interview, which,
fuckknowswhy, now seems
to be about the relative merits
of evolutionary biologist
Richard Dawkins, Dalek-voiced
rocket scientist Stephen
Hawking and Jim Hawkins, the
cabin boy from Robert Louis
Stevenson's Treasure Island.
You work it out.
- Oh hang on,
Alex is saying
something potentially sensible.
"Football records and
Christmas records are the
worst sorts of records. I
mean, obviously, this is a
shit record..."
How can you say that? It's
not shit!
"Well, obviously it's very
catchy. And it's a good chorus.
But this is about marketing, you
know: we're a record label. I
mean this kind of started oft as
a potboiler but, y'know, it kind
of grew, like these things do,
don't they?"
Yeah, but why wouldn't Blur
put out a happy Christmas
record? It'd sell like crazy!
Slade did it! John Lennon did it!
Shakin' Stevens did it! So why
don't Blur? Are they too 'cool'?
"I think it's because there's
this enormous risk of failure,"
says Alex, enigmatically.
"There's a sense of danger to
Fat Les, it's very rock'n'roll..."
Joe, why didn't The Clash
ever do a Christmas single?
"Bernard Rhodes (infamous
Clash manager) once gave this
lovely quote where he said, 'At
Christmas, people don't feel
very anarchic,"' says Joe,
sagely. "That said, though, the
Pistols could have done a
Christmas single - one can
almost imagine it..."
Indeed one can. Back to
'Naughty Christmas' - what
exactly does it tell us about
New Labour's New Britain,
hmmm?
- "For the
first time ever a
Labour government has
become involved in sleaze,"
claims Keith, who once kept the
collected speeches of former
Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev
on his bed-side table. "Years
ago their MPs were grass roots
people who'd come up through
the Labour Party - meetings,
meetings, meetings! Tory MPs
have come from public schools,
a lot of money - they've never
had to do the groundwork. So
when they get to Westminster
they think they're going to be
shining stars in the firmament
and they're not! It's all
meetings, meetings, meetings!
They don't want that! So what
do they do? They wank oft with
bags on their heads and
oranges in their mouths and
fuck each other's wives, 'cos
it's like when they were chief
prefects at public school..."
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- The rest of
us stare at Keith,
transfixed. Five minutes later,
we re still staring. "...and these
New
- LabourMPs are
the same. You've got
this whole new vibe! Middle-
class Blairite office parties will
be like fucking Sodom and
Gomorrah! Are you serious!?
It's like Berlin in 1936! They've
got this PR face to keep up but
they've got this fucking desire -
this madness - to be shagging
someone up the shitter on the
photocopier. I think Blair's
government is a c-'s
government! In 80 years' time,
countries and cultures won't
exist, there'll just be franchises,
and these motherf~rs are the
first people to put it on the map
and I hate the c-s! Fuckers!
Mother fuckers! They're 100 per
cent, gold-plated bastards!"
Are there any politicians that
are Fat Les?
"Ken Livingstone is Fat Les.
Prescott is Fat Les.
Mandelson!? I'm gonna
dismantle that fuckwit in
the tabloid papers! And
they'll print it as well. It's a
fucking massive conspiracy,
they're all dancing to the same
tune and Rupert Murdoch is the
fucker in control."
So do you open your
presents before lunch, or after?
Tick tock BOOM! It's a
question too far. Damien
explodes.
"I'll tell you what, like! What
the fuck are you!? Are you the
fucking little Mr Fuck Up of
Christmas or do you want to
talk about Fat Les and
Turtleneck ~he Fat Les record
company) or what? You little
miserable bastard!!! What's
going on!? What the fuck are
you talking about!?"
"Hey!" laughs Keith.
"Yeah, alright, I know he's a
mate of yours..." says Damien.
"It's not that, I respect
him..." sayskeith.
"Yeah, but I can't
understand why he's
politicising Christmas!"
"Why not?" asks Keith.
"Alright, one thing, right..."
says Damien "...Stanley Baxter
goes into the oftie. He says,
'Can I have three bottles of
cider, ten cans of lager, eight
bottles of wine...' goes through
the whole lot, and the bloke
goes, 'Is that the lot?' and he
goes, '...and a bottle of sherry
and a bottle of port,' and the
bloke goes, '£495,' and Stanley
Baxter gives him the money
and he walks out, and as he
gets to the door the
shopkeeper says, 'Christmas,
aye? If it wasn't for the kids, we
wouldn't do it, would we?"'
"Ho ho ho," says everybody
else.
Having proved that he is
wasted on the world of art,
Damien finally drags Fat Les off
to troff poshly. As they gather
their scarves and mittens, the
rest of Fat Les insist that the
interview be continued at a later
date. Alex is particularly
insistent that we talk some
more about Turtleneck.
Deadlines forgotten in the
cheery haze, NME agrees.
And then, suddenly - POOF!
- they're gone. The hack is left
alone. The world suddenly
seems a much sadder place.
And then, as if by magic, Mud's
tragic seasonal classic 'Lonely
This Christmas' comes on the
jukebox. Ashcroftian tears of
lonely despair drip into the
hack's half-empty beer glass.
And then he's off his feet,
rushing to the door and
screaming into the silent night:
"HEY! HIRST, YOU BASTARD!
YOU KNOW THAT SHIT YOU
DO WITH DEAD SHARKS AND
COWS AND STUFF? WELL,
NEXT TIME, WHY DON'T YOU
DO THE WORLD A FAVOUR
AND DO A SELF-PORTRAIT?
YOU TWAT!."
Merry Winterval office party
season, readers.
- Steven Wells
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