A Viscount Speaks

Not a penny, Seamus

What ho, oiks!

I am generally an amiable soul, but not this morning.  Have you read this?  Can you believe it?  The Englishman’s hard-earned wonga going to bail out those feckless Paddies across the Irish Sea?  And to the tune of seven billions of Her Majesty’s Pounds, no less?  It’s a complete bloody outrage!  Surely Cameron won’t sign off on this?  I simply cannot believe that any Tory government could be so damned foolhardy as to write that drunken oaf Cowan a cheque for seven billions of pounds. 

I shouldn’t mind so much if I thought Seamus would put the shillings to good use, perhaps by mending his tin roof or buying in some peat for the winter.  But having some considerable experience of our Irish friends, I can assure you that the first thing Seamus will do with his Saxon shilling will be to head straight down to his local shebeen to get tanked up on poteen, after which he'll go for a fight, and thence to his hovel to sleep it off and give the wife a slap or three, and then the feckless bugger will do it all again the next night.  As sure as night follows day, he won’t stop guzzling until every one of Her Majesty’s pounds has been pissed away in whiskey!

And if by some miracle there are a few quid left over after Seamus’s binge, then you can be damned sure that the money will not go on protecting his spuds from blight, or mending the shoes of his thirteen children, or any of those boring but prudent things that a Saxon might do with his money.  No, he’ll be off on a nice jolly to Prague “wit de lads for de craic” to get stocked up on semtex and Armalite rifles, the sly Fenian bugger!

I mean really, chaps, this is just too much!  It’s bad enough paying one’s taxes to keep the proles of Liverpool and Glasgow in benefits, but paying off the debts of the Micks as well?  It’s enough to make a Saxon yeoman pick up his pike and march on Westminster, I tell you!  In earnest, if we are to give these buggers money, then I want some stringent terms and conditions attached, namely:

• Every freeborn Englishman to be granted the right to take 1 flame-haired Irish filly as a concubine;
• The Rugby Football Union to be granted first dibs on Irish beefcakes of Saxon descent such as Stephen Ferris;
• Sir Terry Wogan to be installed as Viceroy at Dublin Castle (I'm afraid I just don't have the time, chaps - and I think Sir Terry might be more of a psychopath than he lets on!)
• Roy Keane to be caged in London Zoo and forced to mate with Maori tribeswomen, the resulting progeny to be used as shock troops of the British Empire;
• Every Irishman to be forced to wear black-and-tan uniforms to work on Fridays, just for a laugh

There's no point quibbling or sulking or brandishing your fist, Seamus.  You're in no position to argue.  We jolly well gave you your independence and look what you've done with it!  Pissed it up the wall!  I want Sir Terry in Dublin Castle by Friday or you can forget about receiving any of this Saxon's shillings!

God Save The Queen!

Yours, etc

Viscount Crouchback

Johnson's New Model Army

What ho, rugger buggers!

I say, chaps, did any of you see that coming?  It was like watching the Harlem bally Globetrotters!  I dashed well nearly had an orgasm when the young rugby league fellow sprinted the length of the pitch to score!  What the dickens has happened to Sergeant Major Johnson?  Not only has he got the England rugger team playing like the love children of Serge Blanco and Barry John, but, according to my morning copy of the Daily Telegraph, he even psycho-analyses them by employing Jungian techniques!  It's always the quiet ones eh, chaps!

It was a delicious experience.  But hats off to the Australians.  We all love dishing colonials, but I do find Australian rugger men to be exceptionally good sports in defeat.  This was true of Sydney in 2003 and Marseille in 2007 and equally true on Saturday.  (Noticing a theme there, Bruce?  Only joshing!)  Indeed, it seems to me that English and Australian rugger men have far more in common with each other than either does with the ghastly Shanes and Waynes who play the various prole sports in our respective nations.

Of course, if there's one thing better than dishing a colonial, it's giving an uppity Celt a good spanking.  And the thought occurred to me on Saturday that the forthcoming Six Nations is shaping up to be an utter orgy of Celt-bashing.  Do you remember those halcyon days of the early Noughties when the poor Welsh, Scotch and Irish would creep into Twickers for their ritual beasting from Messrs Johnson and Dallaglio and then crawl back to their dark, soggy lands with red bottoms and even redder faces?  Well I think we can pencil in a few more such occasions for the spring!

Indeed, I note that England play Ireland last in Dublin.  What an occasion that promises to be!  Of course, it's highly likely that Ireland will have sunk into the sea beneath the weight of its own debt by then, so we shall have to hope that the IMF (or whichever foreign potentate is running the place) permits our little annual rugger match to go ahead.  The last thing we want is for the sly Fenians to disrupt our inevitable Grand Slam as they did so disgracefully in 2001 on spurious health grounds after the foot-and-mouth affair.

"President" McAleese will no doubt be banished to a debtors' gaol in van Diemen's Land by then, so Johnno will have to behave himself on the red carpet for once.  Either way, it promises to be the finest rodgering of the Mick since Cromwell's original New Model Army got a little frisky in Drogheda and Wexford back in the day!

Yours, etc

Viscount Crouchback

Savlon for Bruce!

What ho, colonials!

By jove, chaps, that was an entertaining game, what!  We pukka English gents have a most apposite word to describe what occurred today.  I probably don't need to write it down do I, chaps?  Eh?  What's that?  I do?  Oh go on then!  Australians, your boys were:

Beasted!

 

Say again?  You don't hear me?  I said:

 

Beasted!

 

What's that you say, Bruce?  Hard of hearing down there in the colonies?  One more time then:

Beasted!

 

Oh, how joyous it is to be an Englishman!

Yours, etc

Viscount Crouchback

 

 

It's time to trample on the daffodils

What ho, Englishmen!

 

“Australians come of bad stock” – Winston Churchill

"We called them daffodils: they were beautiful to look at but yellow right through" - British officer after the fall of Singapore

 

So the Autumn rugger bandwagon rolls on.  Next up: Australia.  England need to be awfully careful about this one, chaps.  A nation’s values are revealed in its rugger team and, in the case of Australia, those values are manifestly repugnant to any right-thinking Englishman.  The yellow-bellied Wallabies don’t like to win matches by getting down and dirty in the trenches and sticking their heads up other blokes’ arses for eighty minutes – the honest, manly, British way of playing rugger.  No, the Aussies prefer to win by skipping around the field like girls, doing their damndest to elude the opposition’s clutches by employing jazzy side-steps and whizzy backs moves.  This frivolous style of rugger is decidedly rum and borders on the dishonest, but the IRB, perhaps for paternalistic reasons of Empire solidarity, refuses to sanction the blighters.

Australia's sneaky rugger is, naturally enough, a product of its decidedly inferior breeding.  As Blondy2 observed on a recent post, today’s colonials are the descendents of light-fingered East End pickpockets and cunning Irish peasants.  Consequently, and notwithstanding some honourable exceptions, our colonial friends tend to lack moral fibre.  Bruce Shackledragger will run a mile from the prospect of an honest, manly confrontation but give him the sniff of a sneaky ambush or a sledge-at-twenty-paces and the scoundrel will have you hoodwinked before you can shout “convict!”

Of course, just occasionally, John Bull manages to collar our pesky colonial before he can scarper, and then something quite delicious tends to ensue: the yellow-bellied Australian is given a beasting the likes of which Max Mosley can only fantasise about.  In 2005 and 2007, this took the form of Andrew Sheridan pushing Fat Boy Dunning’s spine so far up his own backside that, to this day, poor Dunning is still forced to apply Savlon to his nether regions both morning and night.  Something similar occurred in the summer when Steve Thompson monstered Mr Faingaa so brutally that Australian broadcasters were forced to apologise to viewers for transmitting such extreme sado-masochistic violence before the watershed.  There are plenty of other comical Aussie no-hopers who have received similar treatment in recent years; one thinks of Guy Shepherdson, Salesi “Being Fat Doesn’t Mean I Can Scrummage” Maafu and a certain Al “Eyes of Fury, Spine of Jelly” Baxter.

Those jokers won’t be playing on Saturday.  Instead, the Australian front row is likely to comprise Robinson, Moore and Alexander.  This trio is a rather sterner prospect than usual, to be sure, but the unadulterated bully boy prowess of our sturdy Saxon yeomen, Sheridan, Hartley and Cole, should ensure another orgy of beastliness at Twickers come kick-off.  In earnest, chaps, no one metes out a monstering quite like an Englishman!

The key, as ever, will be to nab the flighty colonials before they skip in several tries past us.  Last week’s shoddy first half defence doesn’t inspire confidence in this regard.  Nor does the lumbering form of our twin behemoth centres, Tindall and Hape, who look for all the world like a couple of East End pub bouncers who have stumbled onto the old cabbage patch by mistake.

But the Australia back-line, whilst sublimely talented, has no more pluck than its pack.  Beale is a splendid runner but tends to balls things up under pressure.  Giteau is a convicted choke merchant in front of the posts.  Cooper is captivating on the eye but quickly goes missing when given a clatter, as was illustrated perfectly by Captain Moody MBE in the summer; and Cooper’s feather-duster tackling would embarrass even Ronan O’Gara.  All things considered, there is nothing to frighten England, provided that constant pressure is applied.

Ultimately, we can expect breeding to win the day.  For all the plebs who litter the England squad nowadays, the Red Rose can still call on men of formidable lineage – chaps like Easter and Moody who have been bred in some of our finest sporting public schools and raised on traditional British values.  Remember, too, that in Mr Tindall MBE, we field a gentleman fit to squire the Queen’s grand-daughter about town.  Set against this pukka mob of bloody good blokes, what can the Australians offer?  Churchill would hardly be surprised to learn that the answer is: not a lot, merely a few frit Islanders and a few yellow sons-of-proles.  Given such deplorable breeding, is it any wonder that the chaps in gold tend to cower at the first sight of an English fist?

So give the walking cane a twirl as you saunter along to Twickenham this Saturday afternoon, chaps.  Pack the hamper with some champers for a good old knees-up in the West Car Park afterwards.  But it might be wise to leave the nippers back in the shires, for the bully boy antics of England’s pack will be in no way fit for family viewing.  It is said that when John Bull is in the mood for a feast, and when Wallaby is on the menu, God Himself shudders up in heaven!

God Save The Queen!

Yours, etc

Viscount Crouchback

The plebs are revolting!

What ho, law abiders!

Good God.  Turn on your televisions, chaps.  Have you ever seen such a dirty mob of proletarian scum? What the bally hell is going on in central London?  Why the dickens aren’t the police clearing these vermin off the streets with whips and cudgels?  I’m half-tempted to round up some of the local shire hard nuts and head up there myself to dispense a bit of rough justice!

I say, though, do you think this might be the Bolshevik revolution at last?  Should I be worried?  My father warned me about this day.  The dirty scum might march on Crouchback Castle next!  They'll have me strung up in the courtyard before the night is out!  Dash it, I'm going to take the Purdey out of the cabinet.  If I have to die tonight, then one of these soap-dodging fuckers will go with me!

Yours, etc

Viscount Crouchback

P.S. Some of the young student gypsy fillies in the mob look rather tasty!

O tempora! O mores!

What ho, chums!

Chaps, I survived my time in clink by clinging to the thought of being re-united with my dear, darling lady wife and children.  When my randy Bahamian cell-mate, De-Angelo, was stealing my food and demanding unmentionable favours, it was only the thought of my charming family back in Sussex that kept me going. 

It makes it all the more depressing to report, therefore, that on returning to Crouchback Castle, I  discovered the following:

• Adebayo, our Nigerian stable hand, had taken over my quarters in my absence and was styling himself “Viscount Adebayo Crouchback” and was even boffing my wife and daughter on a nightly basis;

• Coutts were demanding immediate re-payment of £625,000 in loans taken out by Adebayo to pay for a "Lagos-style gangsta bling-bling extension to the East Wing";

• My eldest son, Frederick Pelham Crouchback, had impregnated a fourteen year old Romanian gypsy;

• My youngest son, Henry Horatio Halthorp Crouchback, had converted to Islam and was swearing jihad on the Percys of Northumberland whom, he says, insulted him at a shooting party;

• And, probably worst of all, I found that my dear, darling doggie woggie, Byng, had been throttled and eaten by a party of Korean tourists who cornered him in the East Garden in July.

In earnest, chaps, I think I preferred the attentions of De-Angelo.

Yours, etc

Viscount Crouchback

 

An Open Letter to Mr Philip Hammond

My dear Hammond,

As you know, I am a close chum of several of your Cabinet colleagues.  As you also know, I am an exceedingly generous benefactor of the Conservative Party.  I do hope, therefore, that what I am about to say will not fall on deaf ears. 

On 6th November, at eleven o'clock in the morning, I boarded the Number 23 bus at Victoria Station, paid the requested fare, and, with due politeness, instructed the driver to take me to Twickenham.  I was, I should add, carrying a very heavy Huntsman's hamper from Fortnum & Mason.

The driver, who was of the black or 'coloured' persuasion, steadfastly refused to accede to my bidding, stating that he was bound for Bow, somewhere in the East End of London.  The 'rules' would not permit a diversion to Twickenham, where most of his passengers would surely wish to go, had they a choice.  No amount of reasoned logic could persuade him to change course and I was duly forced to disembark and take a so-called 'black cab', whose driver (a most charming Cockney) was thankfully far more amenable to my wishes.

I know you are relatively new to this game, my dear Hammond, but I do hope that this type of incident will not pass without sanction.  As Secretary of State for Transport, it is your job, ultimately, to uphold the high standards of service that any Englishman has a right to expect on the buses of his capital city.  I should be most obliged if you would take the matter in hand.  It may well be that the driver in question would benefit from closer acquaintance with a horse whip.

Yours, etc

Viscount Crouchback

Rugger Reflections

What ho, chaps!

Right, a few brandy-sozzled thoughts on this afternoon's rugger match.  I did manage to make it to Twickers in the end, though not without mishap (more of that anon).  For now, my reflections are:

• England were quite good, adventurous and ballsy, but the defence needs to improve;

• I was quite right about New Zealand's exotic specimens cracking under pressure.  They looked positively frit at the end and Mr Roko-Coconut performed a quite masterful impression of a headless chicken;

• The colonial scrum was given a damned good beasting.  Young Cole is the type of smelly-looking oik one hoped desperately never to have to share a dorm with at school, but my goodness: what a beastie boy!;

• What's the point in bringing Danny "Oik" Care on with 15 to go?  Sergeant Major Johnson massively over-does the whole sub lark;

• Mealamu's barbarous assault on Moody was quite disgraceful.  These Pacific savages ought to be banished from international rugger until they prove they can meet British standards of behaviour;

• I was distinctly unimpressed by Mr Hape but quite taken with Mr Fourie - how appropriate that the South African beefcake hails from Burgersdorp!  I think I might have a new favourite!

• It was quite magnificent to see the chaps belting out God Save The Queen before the game, but why the dickens don't the New Zealanders join in like they used to?  Her Majesty is their Queen too. 

• The RFU permits far too many oiks to attend matches at Twickers nowadays.  I haven't encountered so many gap-toothed bumpkins since I last vacationed in Munster.  And the booing of the kicker was a disgrace.

• All in all, I am by no means down-hearted.  I am told that the Welsh pack beasted the Australians the length and breadth of Cardiff, so next week ought to be interesting.

Yours, etc

Viscount Crouchback

 

It's time to solve the Irish question once and for all

What ho, Britons!

I say, chaps, have you heard the news out of Ireland lately?  Apparently the poor old Micks are so depressed that the latest joke on the streets of Dublin is that the Irish Prime Minister ought jolly well to return the keys to Dublin Castle to Her Majesty on bended knee and proffer a fulsome and abject apology!  Indeed, I daresay it's only a matter of time before the rebellious rotters knock on our doors and beg to be returned to the warm bosom of the United Kingdom.  I note with interest that Freddie Forsyth (magnificent old chap!) has lately popped up in their media to gee the blighters up for a good old crack at the ghastly EU.

Funnily enough, whilst voyaging around the Caribbean I encountered a splendid fellow named Jeune, whose grandfather served in Ireland during 1920-1.  He kindly showed me the old fellow's papers and I was struck by one particular paragraph:

"A very considerable degree of optimism would be required by anyone seeking to analyse and appreciate the complexities of the Irish question.  Add to the political aspect, the religious, plus the historical, the climatic laziness, and to these the rebellious Irish temperament, and the result is a mixture capable of defying the probing of the most determined psycho-analyst.  Some possible clarification may possibly be derived, however, by referring to the failure of the Romans to exercise their civilising influence in Ireland".

Quite right.  But it rather poses the question that if the Romans could not civilise the Irish, and if the British could not civilise them, and if the full weight of the European Union cannot civilise them, then what possible hope is there for the barbarous spud-munchers?  By all accounts a rum cove named Soden recently suggested that Ireland become the 51st state of America: but I hardly think that a bunch of gun-toting Texans will help the Micks along the path to civility!

No, I fear that nothing can save the Irish now.  Nothing, that is, except shock therapy.  I suggest it is time for the British and Germans (who together own nearly all the Irish debt) to dispense with the niceties and install a stern, unbending, uncompromising Viceroy in Dublin Castle.  This Viceroy must rule the Micks with a rod of iron.  He must whip them into shape.  He must purge their Celtic fecklessness and instil the rigorous Anglo-Saxon virtues that the Irish are crying out for. 

Further, if our heroic Viceroy needs to raise an auxiliary force of ferociously aggressive young delinquents from the slums of Glasgow and Liverpool and dress them up in black-and-tan uniforms and send them onto the streets of Dublin to crack a few heads together, then that is what he must do!

What the Irish need, in other words, is a damned good beasting.  And if Mr Cameron and Frau Merkel find themselves searching around for a suitably imposing figure to take on the role of Viceroy, then I can assure them that I would most certainly find time in my diary for a spot of Mick-bashing!

Rule Britannia!

Yours, etc

Viscount Crouchback

England - New Zealand

What ho, gents!

All Blacks this weekend then, chaps.  What do you reckon?  It seems that England might actually have a damned good crack at them this time.  Knock a few colonial heads together and all that.  I'm somewhat nonplussed by the distinctly rum breeding of some of these new fellows in the team.  I haven't the foggiest notion where young Lawes and Ashton went to school, but I suspect I'd have a coronary if I found out.

Nonetheless, one must admit that, pukka or not, the new lads are really rather good.  Foden too.  And that little diamond at scrum-half, Youngs, is an absolute belter.  Never again will the poor Twickenham punter find himself turning puce with rage as Danny "Oik" Care does those funny little hamstring exercises at the back of a ruck where he bends his left leg and straightens his right leg and points at his fly half and shouts a bit and then points a bit more and shouts a bit more and then feints for the ball but decides, no, a bit more pointing and shouting is in order and then, why not, let's ignore the fly half and just pop it off a yard to Steve "Zimmer Frame" Borthwick to get rodgered in contact and concede five yards.

No more of that, thank Gad!

(Which reminds me: I am banned from HQ until the Six Nations because one of those bumptious plebs in luminous yellow bibs spotted me pouring brandy dregs from my hip flask over young Master Care's head as he scurried down the tunnel after the Ireland game.  What is the world coming to when a freeborn Englishman cannot express his displeasure after a rugger match, eh?)

I ask only two things of this brave new world of dynamic, attacking rugger:

1. That room be found for Simon Shaw to to perform a little cameo of manly close-quarter grappling to warm the cockles of this old fellow's heart; and
2. That the young shire beefcake, Haskell, be given at least one start this Autumn.  I know he's not the cleverest of fellows, but damn it! he's the nearest thing we have to Achilles and pectoral muscles like that deserve an outing!

Overall, I'm jolly optimistic.  I know these All Black chappies are marvellously skilled but they don't quite have that British pluck do they, chaps?  I also suspect that some of their more exotic specimens might crack a little under the pressure if England can keep it tight for sixty minutes.  These colonial types are only ever one bad half away from a monumental choke, so let's hope it comes on Saturday.

XV: Foden, Ashton (both PS* & Northampton), Tindall (MPSIA* & Gloucester), Hape (Colonies & Bath), Flood, Youngs (both MPSIA & Leicester), Sheridan (Dulwich College & Sale), Thompson (PS & Leeds), Cole (PS & Leicester), Lawes (PS & Northampton), Palmer (PS & Stade Francais), Croft (Oakham & Leicester), Moody (Oakham & Bath), Easter (Dulwich College & Quins)

Yours, etc

Viscount Crouchback

* For the uninitiated, PS = Prole School and MPSIA = Minor Public School, I'm afraid