News International (I do not need to tell you) is one of the most repellent organisations in the world, but this whole business might just end up working out to their advantage, in a twist of supremely Machiavellian achievement.

NI decided to close the News of the World a long time ago, as you can see from this Guardian article detailing the plans being set in place to deal with its disappearance, dating from weeks ago. The sunonsunday.com URL was registered before any of this even kicked off.

As much of a right wing, darkie-hating, shit stain of a wank rag that the NotW has always been, this might turn out to be a masterstroke by the Murdoch empire. They have been caught out in some of the most disgraceful acts of both illegality and moral offence in the history of the press, and they have managed to actually turn it to their advantage.

They close the NotW to show how serious they are about this sort of legal transgression, they reduce their market share of the UK press, and as a result they might just manage to persuade people that they are neither a monopoly concern, nor a dangerous blight on political discourse, and in doing so secure the kind of domination over the UK press and hence UK political debate which could turn us into the next United States – forever having to pander to the latest reactionary retard wheeled out on Fox News to agitate the bigots and the racists.

Because let’s face it, NI are not weakened by this event, they are consolidated. The Sun and the NotW basically catered to the same market: ignorant, unpleasant, narrow-minded racists. Closing one just strengthens the other, but if this PR stunt enables the BSkyB takeover to take place we will still be faced with one of the most conservative, racist, morally repellent organisations in the modern world owning a scarily large chunk of UK media.

Day-to-day journalists have all been fired (although given they work for the NotW in the first place I have no fucking sympathy), but the people who actually engineered and implemented all the craven, corrupt and utterly illegal actions we’ve learned about recently will all continue to work within Murdoch’s empire of sleaze.

In other words, what was potentially one of the greatest PR disasters in corporate history might just end up being turned into the kind of publicity stunt which turns the British media into a shameful mirror of the hatred, bigotry, and outright lies which is Fox News, by consolidating the power of a group of people who treat the world like their own fucking puppet show and care for nothing but insulating their own twisted version of reality to the point where a writer of dystopian science fiction simply couldn’t make this shit up.

Anyway, and breathe…

Here are your five questions for this week.

1. Your number one news media hate figure.
2. Compare someone in the news to a movie or cartoon villain.
3. Whose phone would you hack if you could?
4. Cameron and Murdoch is a predictable terrible twosome.  Pick a less predictable one.
5. What will your lunch be today?

This week’s five songs are from a tape called ‘Cheerful Choons, Innit’ which I found in the van recently.  I was living in Cambridge at the time, which was home to a surprising number of mockneys, hence the title.

Clem Snide – Ice Cube

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Lambchop – Up With People

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Eels – Jungle Telegraph

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The Pernice Brothers – Shaken

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Barry Adamson – Set the Controls for the Heart of the Pelvis (with Jarvis Cocker)

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Song, by Toad is today the embarrassing whisper-merchant passing on any old nonsense just to enhance its own aura of knowledge, privilege and superiority. Shame on you if you believe a word I say.

I don’t know if you recall my posting a few days back about Terry over at Fits & Starts but.. actually, scratch that. Fucking pay attention. I bloody well expect that each and every one of you can bloody well recite my posting a few days back about Terry from Fits & Starts word for fucking word, quite frankly. Bloody hell, you’d all better be tuned in here. I’m not just writing this to satisfy my own wanton need for constant attention and validation of an otherwise utterly pitiful existe… no, sorry, I don’t like where this is going. I’m going to move on.

Terry posted one of my favourite songs in the whole world – Adios Lounge – whilst writing about Bob Forrest of Thelonius Monster. Adios Lounge is a collaboration between Thelonious Monster, about whom I know very little, and Tom Waits, of whom I am an obsessive stalker. Anyhow, I described Adios Lounge as a Bob Forrest number; unthinkingly really, I just assumed, but apparently this is not quite accurate.

A day later I received an email from (check this out) an anonymous source (yes, yes, YES! I said it! Anonymous source! What a vainglorious, pompous prick of a ‘proper’ journalist that makes me sound!) saying pretty much this: that Adios Lounge was written not by Bob Forrest, but by “my old friend Bob Kuhn. He was (maybe still is) an LA eccentric bar hound, friend of Tom Waits, Chucky Weiss and others. Last time anyone I know saw him, a transvestite hooker was administering illicit prescription drugs to him.”

Entranced by the rock ‘n’ roll nature of the story and the splendidly cool world our mystery emailer seemed to inhabit, Song, by Toad was hugely impressed and asked for more. Let’s face it, being emailed by someone cool enough to know this sort of thing is far, far closer to actually being cool enough to know this sort of thing than Mr. Toad is ever likely to be, so bear with me.

The response came fairly quickly. Apparently ‘administering illicit prescription drugs’ appears to be cool L.A. barfly code for ‘shoving quaaludes up his arse’ but it appears that “Actually, the best part about the story, is my friend witnessed this when he tracked down the truck Bob had stolen from him, stormed into his house, saw the act, grabbed the keys and left.”

Well, what else would you do? ‘Erm, s’cuse me, Vicar. Pass the biscuits. Whenever you’re, er, ready that is.’

This may all be verminous lies and slander, I’ve no idea. The amount of in-depth research I’ve done has been limited to re-reading the email several times and deciding that the author seems pretty genuine. Checking facts, let’s face it, is for pussies.

So to honour my descent into the world of the scandalous gossip rag, I hereby repost the song in question and a few songs by The Gossip. Frankly, I think they’re fucking dreadful, but one of my best mates loves them and so does his girlfriend, and as his girlfriend is far cooler and more finger-on-the-pulse (amongst other things) than either of us, I defer to her judgement, so here they are.

Tom Waits, Thelonious Monster & one very, very happy drunk – Adios Lounge

The Gossip – Listen Up Surprisingly, I actually like this one.
The Gossip – Standing in the Way of Control The inevitable famous one.

Here are a couple of other oddities I came across on a brief Hype Machine search for songs by The Gossip, so I thought I’d bung ‘em in, just to be nice:

Beth Ditto (the fat bird from The Gossip) & Jarvis Cocker – Temptation
A+D – Standing in the Way of Connection Gossip & Elastica mashup. ‘Mashup‘, for fuck’s sake – what am I, sixteen? Anyway, please visit Mashup Town where I pinched the, er well, let’s guess… the mashup from. And I got the Jarvis duet from this post at Big Stereo. I don’t know anything else about the two sites, but please go and have a look, as it’s the only way I can validate my shameless pilfering.