Up The Workers #1

We're about to celebrate Mayday here, when everybody used to have to parade through the street chanting “Ceau-şes-cu!!” and “Hurrah, yes, let’s do it in 4 ½!!” (The Great Conducător’s clever twist on the Stalinist 5-year plan). Many now prefer just have a bar-b-que and to play a bit of footie. But I’m a bit “old school” in believing that work should be celebrated. However, some people who claim to be hard workers are in fact the biggest slackers of all. When I worked in the health service there was a woman who spent her time carrying a piece of paper around, and if you asked her to do anything she’d say she was busy; it took 6 months before they realised she did nothing, and even then they couldn’t sack her. Dyhurr. Here are some other lazy arses who get on my tits:

Bruce Springsteen

Springsteen often sings about the hard-working, blue-collar life, but does he really live up to that? Take a look at “Born in the USA”; I have, and I’ve counted more than 20 times where he sings “born in the USA", and always to the same tune – he simply can’t be bothered to think up new lines, he’s more repetitive than that Philp F*****g Glass!! He’s never done a real day’s work in his life - no wonder they call him “The Boss”.

Karl Marx

No Good Boyo has cleverly called Friedrich Engels “The Andrew Ridgeley of Communism”, but was Karl really much more of a grafter? The Communist Manifesto pretty much writes itself, I’d have thought. “Workers of the world unite”: yeah, obviously they will, and then go on strike most likely. And “International finance is doomed to collapse”, well that’s just happened hasn’t it, and that didn't take a lot of effort - so thanks for nothing, Beardy.

James Brown

The “Hardest Working man in Show Business”, they used to call him. As I’ve said before, Soul Brother No. 1 was like a brother to me, but sometimes you even have to criticise family. He used to collapse in exhaustion on stage during every show and get one of his attendants to help him up again. That’s nothing. I collapsed 13 times when trying to do the “Mashed Potato” at aunt Doris’s Christmas party last year, and nobody bothered to help me up. He needs a bloody good haircut too. Even a bloody bad haircut would be an improvement.

Worker Ants

Shirker ants, more like. How hard can it be carrying a bit of leaf around?? So what if it’s 3 times your body weight, it’s still only a bit of leaf. And I know that ants make honey (that’s bees. Ed.) but so does Sainsbury’s. I’m not impressed. The queen ant on the other hand is a member of royalty and has to work hard to look composed and radiant whenever she emerges from the hive (bees again. Ed.) and I reckon she does a marvellous job, Gawd bless yer Ma’am!

G-G-G-G-G-Granville! (#5): The Dark Side

I’ve previously explained why stammerers are the world’s dancers, poets and cool people, but, yes, there’s also a dark side to stammering, a bedlam inhabited by shades, ciphers, liars, amoralists, freaks, ne’er-do-wells and gits, a netherworld where the sun of pleasant conversation doth never rise. But, as without darkness there cannot be light, without stammering there cannot be fluency. You and I live in symbiosis… without me, you are nothing. As I explained the more celebratory aspects of stammering through song, I shall here also.

The Toy Dolls - Keith's a Theif: Surely there's nothing more stammer-worthy than being caught for benefit fraud - I mean, it's illegal but it's not even cool! Stammering on the all appropriate words: tax, dole, court, etc .

David Bowie - Changes: “Ch-ch-ch-changes”: Bowie, bless him, is the world's least likely stammerer; he’s therefore affecting this, as he’s affected much else in his career, but the fact that he gets away with it is sinister enough in itself.

James Brown - Please Please Please: Saying "please" to a woman once should be once too often for any self-respecting stammerer. In fact most of this song from Stammering Brother No. 1 is a cry for help. Pathetic.

Talking Heads - Psycho Killer: “f-f-fa-f-f-f-f-fa-fa…… You start a conversation but you can't even finish it... I'm tense and nervous, can't relax... I hate people when they're not polite”. Yes.

The Dickies - Paranoid: Most of what comes out of The Dickies vocalist's mouth sounds like speech impediment, especially here when trying to out-Ozzie Ozzie Osbourne. “Can you help me, help me with my brain? Oh no!" No.

Darts - Come Back My Love: All doowop sounds like stammering, but Big Den Hegarty's “B-b-b-b-baby” (2:14 minutes in) sticks in the mind, and he famously looks like Frankenstein's monster, amply qualifying this song.

So, 6 stammering songs here; nothing particularly significant about that number, though if you stammer it a bit you could be invoking the number of The Beast. I bid you good evening!