George Armstrong Custer. Montana, United States, 1876. ‘Another five minutes, boys, and we’re going to have ‘em surrounded.’

'Morning Coffee' biscuits are still stamped with an original design by Victorian art-critic and philosopher John Ruskin. The lamb-chop sideboard-wearing Ruskin, author of The Stones of Venice and a keen exponent of baking, etched out the design during a visit to the biscuit factory in 1875.

This sugary baton of artistic heritage was picked up by quirky Spanish artist, Pablo Picasso, famous for his paintings of oddly shaped women, in 1913, when he too created a design for the legendary teatime treat. However, the Picasso biscuit has never gone on general sale and its distribution is limited to directors of the company, making it the world's most highly prized item of confectionary; even surpassing the richly desirable, special edition Matisse 'Wagon Wheels'. The biscuit is only baked in small numbers once per year, each one numbered, for consumption at the firm's Annual General Meeting at their Manchester headquarters. Legend has it that one Picasso 'Morning Coffee' was sneaked out of the boardroom in 1963 and is now in the hands of a private art collector in New York, albeit somewhat crumbly at the edges. It is not thought to be edible.

'Morning Coffee' are still the biscuit of choice for artists, and it's believed that Yorkshire-born avante garde charlatan, Damien Hirst, gets through three packets a day, usually dunked in milky cocoa.

Robert Falcon Scott. Antarctica, 1912. ‘Don’t worry, lads, I think it’s going to blow over.’

People.

 

Misanthropy is the natural conclusion of a rational mind when confronted by other members of the human race in any situation that involves queuing. Cars pulling out on you at junctions from twenty yards away and expecting you to slow down and accommodate them, two people approaching the same door from opposite directions, two vehicles racing to a point where two lanes narrow to one like the final straight in Ben Hur, pedestrians walking across each others’ paths in a shopping arcade, a hoard of people lurching for the only till that’s open at B & Q on a Saturday fucking afternoon; any of these situations will show you that there is no other conclusion to reach than that mankind is a festering boil on the arse of creation.

 

Take Sunday. I was shopping at the Tesco in Hemsworth in the afternoon. I was stood looking for a sandwich when some old fucker ploughed across my path with the biggest trolley available, in which, as far as I could see, he had a trifle and some pan scrubbers. He plainly saw me but pushed forwards anyway. He plainly heard me when I called him a cunt. But neither of us acknowledged one another openly. Because in public situations we are all zombies to each other. We move amongst the animated undead. That family of Mum, Dad and the two feral kids are ghosts to me as they stalk the Fresh Meat aisle. That Renault Clio in the queue of traffic at the lights is driven by an attractive blonde wraith behind the wheel. They aren’t real people in any solid sense. We are all unresponsive automatons. We live in our own virtual reality that’s only shattered by a vicious mugging, a road rage collision or some appalling incident that shakes us awake. We think of nothing but ourselves and our own needs.

 

In that moment as he bent down in front of me with a millimetre to spare, desperate to get hold of a prawn and mayo sandwich, I hated that old fucker with a passion. I could have started punching his exposed bald head until he lay a bloody pulp at my feet. No one would have turned and looked. No one would have queried my actions. A member of staff may have approached with a yellow ‘Danger, slippery surface’ sign once it was all over and done with and blood and cerebral fluid was leaking from his eyes and ears, but that would have been it. Other shoppers wouldn’t have mentioned it to their families when they got home. They may have talked about the offer of Stella Artois, or the deal on McVitie’s biscuits, or the fact that some twat cut them up leaving the car park, but they wouldn’t have thought about the old man beaten to death by the ‘For your convenience’ stand. It wouldn’t have affected them.

 

I left him unharmed. He slavered over his prize and pushed on. Straight into the shins of a pensioner who went skittling painfully out of his way. But I was fuming. I was left hoping that the prawn sandwich that he went through so much to secure was riddled with streptococcus and had him shitting without respite for a week until his ring piece ended up resembling an old, baggy stretched out Manchester United sock (imagine George Best after ninety gruelling minutes of an FA Cup tie against Don Revie’s Dirty Leeds c. 1970). All red and distended. And this encounter was just a start. There were fat people filling their trolleys with huge bottles of lurid-coloured soft drinks, blocking entire aisles unnecessarily. Three bottles of cherry, Pauline? Get four, Wayne, and as many as you want for yourself. And don’t forget the kids. There were slow moving middle-aged women reading the label on the same bottle of ketchup that they’d been buying for twenty years. Just checking it’s still got tomatoes in it. There were the panic buyers who monopolized entire products because they’d read on the internet that there was going to be a world shortage in Oatsosimple. Time and time again I found myself contemplating dreadful acts. I won’t call them crimes because no respectable judge or jury would ever convict me for sending these ignorant morons out of a world they only clutter with their rudeness and their ignorance. I felt like kicking and punching, I felt like swinging my metal basket as if it was a medieval weapon of war; felling all who lay unnecessarily in my path to the tills and a Crunchie. And I know I wasn’t alone. I could feel the pent up aggression all around. That grumbling sense of personal conflict that looms behind the apathetic faces of the spectres that move in front of you. Man’s inhumanity to man extends to even the meekest and mildest when faced with a particularly tempting ‘two-for-one’ offer or the final parking space at Meadowhall. And it’s a truth universally acknowledged that a Grandmother would scythe their way thorough scores of disabled kids in the local newsagents with a sharpened carving knife to grab hold of that last copy of this month’s People’s Friend. Especially if it had some free wool and a decent knitting pattern attached. Put us behind the wheel of a car or in a shopping centre and we are all latent sociopaths who passively subscribe to a form of primitive Thatcherism. We are all animals. It’s part of the over-lauded hunter/gatherer instinct. Because despite technology and the advances in the arts and sciences, despite iPods and toilet rolls and deodorant and central heating, despite any progress that we’ve made as a civilization in flight and tall buildings or the motor car, we are all bald, hairless monkeys beneath the Italian suits and the Berghaus breathable, waterproof fabrics. There is a Neanderthal in us all just waiting to barge another motorist into a ditch or shoulder a blind man out of the way for the last box of Rice Crispies. We have a veneer or civilization which hides manky, rotten chipboard underneath. And altruism is a lie. When anyone offers to do anything with apparent self-sacrifice the first thing I ask myself is – what’s in it for them? And there always is. Without fail. There’s always some little wrinkle that makes the philanthropy worthwhile. Even if it’s just gleaning themselves a bit of spiritual satisfaction from acting the good Samaritan. Even if it’s someone stepping aside to let you get the final packet of Chocolate Digestives. Because they’ll all be broken and they know it, and they’ve just seen the shop assistant go to the back for a fresh packet.

 

People are despicable cunts.

 

On which note the news of Boris Johnson’s new ‘X’ crossing at Oxford Circus fills me with dread. Get ready for fight club. Get ready for carnage. It’ll be like a re-enactment of The Warriors.

I went to York for its final flat race meeting of the season the weekend before last. The weather held, despite some dark clouds and an unfriendly breeze, and we even saw some burnished Autumnal sun. We arrived early in the city and browsed. York was packed. It was a Saturday; there were shoppers, there were tourists, there were race-goers, there was an opera singer in the Coppergate, there was a man and his dog selling roast chestnuts at the bottom of Swinegate. We’d headed into the Old Starre Inn before the race to find it taken over by Scots. Glasses of Stella lining the bar. One up, one down, one in your hand. Nervous fingers desperate for nicotine. Elsewhere Northumbrian accents were arguing over the potential favourites, shouldering each other aside to look at a copy of the form guide. Punters were flooding in from across the North of England. The American, French and German tourists were swamped by race-goers. Shoppers out to get the latest Dan Brown or their groceries in Marks and Spencer were inconvenienced. We’d eaten in the Stonegate Yard Bar & Brasserie. The heated courtyard slowly filled up with men in suits that were obviously having a rare outing, shoes over polished, ties fastened awkwardly, women in fragile hats and bright dresses as if they were dolled up and ready for Yorkshire’s wedding of the year. There was a carnival feeling. High Feast. Everyone felt to be on holiday.

 

Historically gambling has been a male domain. Either because of the male exclusivity of gentlemen’s clubs habituated by men in evening dress with more money than sense, or because Working Class betting shops were run down, utilitarian shacks occupied by chain smoking men, only pausing between bets to cough up nicotine rich flem onto the saw dust floor and encourage their nag grimly. These were the days when a lone woman entering a pub was either frowned on or assumed to be of incredibly easy virtue. But society has changed. Betting shops are homogenized and sit next to Gregg’s and Tesco Express on the sterile High Street. The National Lottery showed us all that gambling can change your life. And the internet has put Bingo into every home with a computer. Betting is fun.

 

Like all hobbies/interests/obsessions gambling creates a community. It generates debate. Give a man a topic in his head, a throb of pleasure in his heart, and he will be glad to share it with the first person that he meets. There is a changing but infinitely repeated season, there are the different meetings to anticipate – the Derby, Royal Ascot, the Oaks, the St Leger. All as traditional and as vital to our national identity as fish and chips and pessimism. They are points of reference to peg your life to in the same way as the football or rugby or cricket seasons. They give shape and apparent purpose to the shapeless and the sadly purposeless. But gambling holds some people more than others. Any happening where the end result is uncertain is capable of being pitched as a bet. In the wagers book at White’s Club, formerly White’s Chocolate House (in the 18^th Century chocolate houses were primarily for gambling while coffee houses were popular for political debate) are some remarkable speculations. Two rain drops running down a window pane. Would the Dowager Duchess of Smelling outlive the Dowager Duchess of Swipe…? The Clermont Club – second home to Lord Lucan – who earned himself the ironic nickname of ‘Lucky’ – and one of the many West End gambling dens that the murdering peer threw away his family fortune, ran a book on which one of its members would be the first man to commit suicide. It’s not known if Lucan put any money on himself (he was quoted as five to one. Debate has rumbled for decades as to whether the circumstances of the bet have been made out or not). Lives have been made or lost on the turn of a card, the outcome of a fight, the speed of a horse, or the number of potatoes in a sack. Regency dandy Beau Brummell, a regular fixture at White’s during the Regency, eventually fled Britain due to debt in 1815. At one time he was £250,000 up at the tables (which would have made him one of the richest men in England) before plunging deeply into the red en route to bankruptcy and exile in France, all in the same night.

 

Heading out of the city centre we moved up to the Knavesmire. When it came to gambling, we were going to be scientific about it. We had the Racing Post, we had the form guides, we’d watched Channel 4’s The Morning Line. We wanted to know what the going was. Good? Good to firm? Soft? Someone thought it had rained overnight in North Yorkshire. Bloody hell, this news was met with some frantic turning of pages and some reassessment. The ground would make all the difference to our selections. We wanted to know which side of the track the stalls would be set. Puzzlemaster likes the stand side, someone said. How did they know that? They’d heard John McCririck say so. John McCririck who looks like Uncle Bulgaria and who when asked the time has to control his hands so that he doesn’t ‘tick tack’ his response. Ten to one. Five to three. A quarter past two. Obviously you can study form or you can select a horse by the often more successful system of guessing. A horse with a particular name will create a favourite regardless of the actual quality of the horse. Take Harrison George, for instance. My Sweet Lord, that afternoon people couldn’t throw their money away quick enough on this nag. And the colours worn by Some Sunny Day – a subtle shade of lilac, with pink highlights on the hat – had the girls dashing up to place their bets and narrowing its odd exponentially.

 

Passing into the course we asked the old man who checked and ripped apart the tickets if he had any tips. ‘Aye, keep your money in your pockets.’ You could tell that he’d said it a thousand times before. He said it with a grim smile. The smile of a man who’s done twenty years in gambler’s anonymous and once staked his wife on a game of gin rummy. You could tell that he meant it.

 

Getting another drink under the belt, we immediately took a chance with the Tote Six. Two selections from the first six races. If anyone one of the two are placed throughout your selections then you win. It’s makes gamble appealing to people who play the lottery. The selections are made on the same kind of card. It makes losing your money easier and less enigmatic. You don’t have to worry about working out odds and all that hassle, you can throw your money away with just a few marks with a stubby pen. I didn’t realize it at the time, but we were prepared for gambling by the Richmond Tests at junior school.

 

The race course has all the trappings of the modern feast. This is Bartholemew Fair with big screens and Robbie bastard Williams piped through the tannoy. Where in ye olden days were the slee gadgers, tempting the gullible with games of chance involving cups and a hidden ball, today we have a white Lamborghini parked up that could be ours just for the cost of a £20 lottery ticket. Where once the mage gerderers had sold cleverly butchered cat dressed as chicken, now we have the burger man selling industrial meat between cheap and impossibly white teacakes at a fiver a go. There is pop corn sugar in the air. There is processed food a plenty. Chips in cones with lashings of salt and vinegar. Hot dogs, kebabs, paninis. There is pomp and there is spectacle. The horses are magnificent. The stands are monuments to enjoyment. There is a sense of being at the centre of a moment. The races are a good day out, providing you don’t take the experience too seriously. Provided you’re prepared to pay for the adrenaline rush. Provided you’re prepared to be at least mildly disappointed. What remains after the beer and the chips and the carnival sensation is that the main interest is in gambling. The sense of life changing possibilities is palpable. You can feel that some people are desperate to win. These are the men who are in the ill-fitting suits with thin faces or big bellies. They were the men to watch. No £2.50 each way for these fellas. They’re betting big to win big, on outsiders at ten or even twenty to one. They’re going to change their lives. They’re going to turn things ‘round. Bills will get paid, the mortgage will be met, outstanding debts to men with cauliflower ears and broken noses will be lifted from their shoulders. Amongst the lasses dolled to the nines in the dresses from Asos and the lads beered up by noon, these blokes are in deadly earnest about the afternoon. Gambling at this level doesn’t make sense any more than do most drugs to people who have never tried them. The mysteries of heroin or crack cocaine are as enigmatic as an each way accumulator on Housewifes Choice in the two-forty-five at Wetherby. Gamblers select their predilection. Cards. The horses. Greyhounds. Cannabis, Crystal-meth, amphetamine. But gambling is legal and so it must be harmless, surely? Yes?  Like those other legalized vices of alcohol and nicotine. Gambling is equally addictive, especially to those predisposed to addictions.

 

We passed into the betting enclosure, passed the security guards with their Americanized uniforms. A hand raised to anyone with a glass. Because you can’t drink in the area provided for on course betting. Instead there’s a hypocritical fence that separates the licensed areas from the betting posts. The ticktack men are gone. The chalk boards have been replaced by LED. But the old names are still there. The Percy Edwards and the Douglas Thompsons. Names that conjure up spivs and flash harrys stuffing white fivers into the linings on their demob suits. We were in with the rabble at the County Stand. Betting shops and a relatively high entrance fee have thinned out some of the more colourful characters that must have been attracted to the course on race day. Before the advent of Ladbrooks and 888.com. The race gang toughs of Graham Greene and Margery Allingham have turned their hand to other more lucrative ways of villainy. Peaky Doyle, Natty Johnson and Pinkie Brown are now peddling heroin and organizing the import of large quantities of cocaine and cannabis resin. But there is still a mix of people who fitted neatly into stereotypical groups. I immediately bumped into men with pale faces that were very very very pissed. One little man puking in the sinks in the Gents until I thought he was going to bring his intestines up. There were girls out for the day from the office, in full tilt, staggering from the enclosure in impossibly high heels, a boozy wobble on, searching for another Bucks Fizz and a gristly Gimster’s. Then there were men wearing clothes that went out of fashion sixty years ago. British warm and West Country check. Cavalry twill and felt waistcoats. Trilby hats bought from exclusive Gents’ outfitters in Harrogate where a record of the family’s hat sizes have been kept since 1710. The men with the tell tale badge looped through the buttonhole, like cattle on their way to market. They are part of the county set who probably own the rights to shoot grouse and peasants on Ilkley Moor and had their social engagements published in The Dalesman and are married to women that not only know about horse flesh but look like it. Dodging between the legs of all these were trainee jockeys who have to be seen to be believed. They are miniscule. I saw two ignoring their calorie restrictions and drinking pints of John Smiths’ Smooth. They looked like cynical, world-weary eight year olds.

 

The first race came. Expectations were high. We clutched our slips. We had our Tote Six tickets poised. A furlong out and I had the winnings in my pocket. I could feel those crisp tenners in my hand. Then things started to waver. They couldn't take the trail… It all began to go wrong. Another horse moved up through the field on the outside. My horse, my nag, my dobbin that would have been better off pulling a rag and bone cart, my horse started to fall back no matter how many times the little jockey bouncing about on his back slapped him on his big arse with the crop. The spectators collected at the rails. The shouts became more desperate. More hopeful. More angry. We saw the horses cross the line and then all eyes went up to the big screen. Well…?

 

Our heads went down. Our shoulders lost shape. Nowhere. Not even placed. We lost hope. The promise that had been with us in the pub in York over the cheeseburgers, the Caesar salads and the pints of Guinness had faltered. At the same time the weather turned, the sun dipped out of sight and a cold wind blew in from the Vale of York.

 

That’s the trouble. The whole spectacle is created by the stake. What you can lose, but more importantly what you can win. The horses start out of sight. You follow them on the screen. You right off your horse, playing down expectations. Mine’s boxed in, already trailing, running backwards. The stakes are relative to what you can afford to lose. It’s the Widow’s mite placed on an outsider at Doncaster in the three-forty-five. And the win lies. The win is deceitful. The win creates an impression on the mind. The win wipes out all the defeats. Losses are seen as minor set back. Mere hurdles to be suffered. Once anyone is started upon that road, it is like a man in a sledge flying down a snow mountain more and more swiftly. In a plus and minus account most gamblers will struggle to break even over time. But runs of luck will hide a multitude of sins. The win will change your attitude. And then the sensation of winning becomes more important than the money. The money becomes a token for success. For the triumph. There is a sense of snatching victory from the very jaws of defeat. Of winning fate and feeling life is on your side.

 

We headed away from the course as dusk was coming on, passed the spent betting slips, grim faces and the broken plastic pint and champagne ‘glasses’. Public executions used to be held to coincide with the race meetings. It says something for the fearless optimism of the gambler that highwayman Dick Turpin, AKA John Palmer placed a five shilling bet on the afternoon that he was brought to the Knavesmire to be hung for horse theft. Swift Nick to win at 25/1. He was still willing the ride on as he jumped from the ladder and into the unknown. Swift Nick was unplaced.

In AD64 as the city of Rome was being decimated by a huge fire that would leave one tenth of the city homeless, the Emperor Nero stood on the Tower of Maecenas on the Esquiline Hill and, skillfully playing his lyre, sang ‘The sack of Illium’ to a small coterie of scheming sycophants. The fingering for the piece was difficult, but Nero persisted, selecting complicated arpeggios to compliment his rich baritone, and his artful interpretation was praised by those privileged enough to be present. The backlight of the city in flames and the distant, terrified screams of the populace was held to give the performance a poignant atmosphere.

 

It’s been announced that Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg are to sit side-by-side as part of a live pre-election debate. This is the first time that such an American-style format has been used in British politics, leading up to the anticipated General Election next summer. Given the appalling state of the economy with unemployment expected to cross the three million threshold, the ongoing war in Afghanistan which looks set to last decades and leave thousands of UK troops dead and disabled, and the shame and scandal of MPs fattening out their already bloated salaries by fiddling their expenses, the leaders have chosen to ponder the hotly debated issue of how to get more women, ethnic minority and disabled people to enter Parliament. Fingers on the pulse.

 

To round off the debate, with Brown on bass, Cameron on guitar and Clegg drums the three will jam to Boyzone’s ‘Love the way you love me’ in honour of Stephen Gately. Each taking a turn on lead vocal. The X-Factor voting lines will then be opened and the frantic, desperately worried public will cast premium rate telephone votes on who they would like to see make a mess of the country for the next five years. Cheryl Cole has pledged to take Gordon Brown under her wing and groom him for political stardom. Speaking of Brown’s troubled premiership, which has seen major banks wobble on the verge of collapse and government borrowing reach horrifying levels to meet benefit claims and Jacqui Smith’s mortgage repayments, a tearful Cole was understood to have said: ‘I duv'ent naa hue ya've coped, mun! Am really prude of ye!’

The Oxford English dictionary defines a paedophile as ‘a person whose sexual desire  is directed towards children.’

 

Last week the film director Roman Polanski was arrested by police in Switzerland acting on a US extradition warrant while he attending a film festival in his honour. Polanski was wanted in relation to the vaginal and anal rape of a thirteen year old girl. He had groomed the girl with the chance of a photo spread in Vogue magazine and then drugged her. The case dates back to 1977. Polanski had pleaded guilty to statutory rape in the hope of escaping a prison sentence but then skipped bail and hasn’t been back to the United States for more than three decades. You might think that the capture of a fugitive paedophile would be universally applauded. Not so. The intelligentsia were in uproar at Polanski’s arrest and pending extradition to America to stand trial. Celebrities were livid. Whoopi Goldberg, Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese, et al couldn’t believe that Polanski had been banged up. He should be released. NOW. And they know better than you, so you’d better listen. Because they’re special people. Celebrated Swiss photographer Otto Weisser, famed for his photographs of women both in and out of bikinis, caught the mood perfectly when he said: ‘He's a brilliant guy and he made a little mistake thirty-two years ago.’ And, I mean, we all mistakes, don’t we? Haven’t you? Last week I left one of my electric hobs on.

 

Film producer Harvey Weinstein threw his weight behind the outrage and commented at length. He remarked: ‘It is a shocking way to treat such a man. Polanski went through the Holocaust and the murder of his wife, Sharon Tate, by the Manson family. How do you go from the Holocaust to the Manson family with any sort of dignity? In those circumstances, most people could not contribute to art and make the kind of beautiful movies he continues to make.’ A petition has been organized by a group of film luminaries, aghast that such a famous and gifted paedophile has been arrested. It states: ‘We demand the immediate release of Roman Polanski. Film-makers in France, in Europe, in the United States and around the world are dismayed by this decision… It seems inadmissible to them that an international cultural event, paying homage to one of the greatest contemporary film-makers, is used by police to apprehend him.’ One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. One man’s paedophile is another man’s… what? Polanski’s cause has been taken up by, amongst others, Stephen Frears, Terry Gilliam, Michael Mann, John Landis, Monica Bellucci, David Lynch, Jeanne Moreau and Tilda Swinton. He may become the Paedophile Mandela. Perhaps the Specials will re-form; dust off the pork pie hats and get the two tone out. I can almost hear Terry Hall now, with his rude boy patois: He was just having fun when he poked her up the bum, so Freeeeeeeeeee, Roman Polaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaanski…

 

So I was wrong and the capture of a fugitive paedophile isn’t universally applauded. It seems it’s down to ying and yang, and so, obviously, as Harvey Weinstein said, Polanski’s got a few trump cards to play when it comes to inserting his penis up the vagina and backside of an unwilling thirteen year old. (1) He survived the holocaust. (2) His pregnant wife was murdered. (3) His molestation of a child is somehow mitigated because of his blinding use of colour and lighting in China Town.  In that case, crack on, mate, fill your boots. Perhaps paedophilia is a question of context. Perhaps it’s a question of who, when, how and why? A Roman Catholic Priest stuffing one up the choirboy after Vespers and we all know that it’s a shameful act and should be condemned. The Church is such an incestuous organization, perpetuating myths and lies. Not at all like the film industry. We've all read The Da Vinci Code. Some random dirty old man flying to Thailand to get smoked by a thirteen year old girl deserves the unflinching contempt of us all. But, obviously, Polanski’s is a special case. And as Whoopi observed: ‘It wasn’t rape, rape.’ No? Whoopi cleared things up by adding: ‘[America is] a different kind of society we see things differently. The world… Europe sees things differently…’ So maybe it’s all down to taste. Maybe it’s a question of a certain kind of European’s sophistication when it comes to matters of sex. Maybe it’s because the general public, drones that we are, don’t understand the exceptional place that such people as Whoopi and Polanski inhabit. Under these circumstances, perhaps Polanski’s sexual molestation of a child can be likened to a gourmand who appreciates outré cuisine reserved for those of a discerning taste, intent on sampling the finest dishes. Those dishes that are out of the ordinary. Those dishes that only the special people with deep pockets and glamorous lifestyles can appreciate. Like fattened foie gras and honey seasoned baby Orang-utan’s colon. Polanski’s sexual palette is refined by his apparent genius, the common rabble wouldn’t understand. Perhaps with his creative force, this wasn’t the run of the mill sodomy of a child by an adult, this was the sexual adventure of a cinematic sage savouring the succulent vagina and anus of a thirteen year old girl with a special, sophisticated relish that is not only excusable, but understandable for a man of his refinement. Perhaps the illustrious people who have signed the petition to free Roman Polanski grasp something that we lesser mortals simply cannot understand? Polanski champion Stephen Frears and his painter wife, Anne Rothenstein, have young children. Would he, I wonder, be happy to have Polanski help his daughter at thirteen to earn her brown wings? Perhaps he could commemorate the event by having her first bowel movement post rape dropped onto one of his wife’s blank canvases. Framed and hung. ‘Brown, red and white. A study in the anal rape of a child’. It might win the Turner Prize.

 

Hmmm.

 

We are, as Jonathan Meades once observed, when comparing the contrasting attitudes to mass murders Adolf Hitler and Uncle Joe Stalin, ‘selectively fastidious, selectively demonizing.’ Polanski’s arrest coincides with the case of nursery school worker Vanessa George in Plymouth. George took indecent images of children in her care and shared them with like-minded perverts Angela Allen from Nottingham and Colin Blanchard from Rochdale. There is nothing glamorous about the life of Vanessa George. There’s nothing sophisticated about the images she took of toddlers. Her use of depth of field had none of Polanski’s touches. Her lighting effects were appalling. She didn’t capture a naked child with anything like Polanski’s flair behind the lens. Vanessa George has been universally vilified. Vanessa George has been branded a monster even by her own children. Detective Superintendent Adrian Pearson, of Nottinghamshire Police, who investigated the case, said: ‘Those three individuals have shared quite willingly and freely images, texts, fantasies of the most serious level you could imagine.’ George, unlike Polanski, isn’t a genius film director and friend to the famous. George has yet to draw on the support of Whoopi Goldberg, Woody Allen or Martin Scorsese. Stephen Frears has not, so far, jumped to George’s defence. Monica Bellucci has said nothing about George. Perhaps if George’s work is repackaged as cutting edge gonzo cinéma vérité she’ll get them behind her. You never know. But, as it stands, George isn’t rich, she isn’t sophisticated, she isn’t a genius, she’s just a pervert who preyed on children. No one has called for her release. No one has vilified the authorities for bringing her to justice. There’s a world of difference between her and Roman Polanski, obviously.

 

Anyway, I’m going to watch Whoopi in Sister Act 2: Back in the habit (the director’s cut). It’s a bit of an auteur’s version. It’s challenging to watch. It has the deleted scenes where Father Maurice and Father Ignatius spit roast an altar boy while Whoopi and the sisters sing ‘I can’t help myself (sugar pie honey bunch)’ in the background. Cinema gold.

I’ve just got back from a fortnight’s holiday in Tunisia. In between the camel rides and visiting the Star Wars sets in the Sahara, and in the lazy sunny spaces between haggling over a few dinars for some knock off sunglasses that will see my retinas burned to buggery and playing golf, I got through six books. On holiday I have a habit of reading books that don’t offer much of a challenge. Not what I’d call trash exactly, but nothing that’s going to trouble the narrow, emotionally bigoted minds of the Booker Prize judges, with their love of pent up tedium and labyrinthine metaphor. But, in fairness, I don’t think that’s what the authors set out to do in the first place. And when you’re all inclusive, heedlessly slamming down the vodka and coke and the Celtia, who wants to make the effort to read clever sods like Martin Amis? I don’t want four hundred pages of emotional evolution, the plot never really going anywhere, just for the sake of it. I don’t want to drag myself through 16^th June 1904 over hundreds of thousands of words with James Joyce and Leopold Bloom; despite Molly Bloom’s unpunctuated sexual revelations. I don’t want to stumble through an anonymous Prague with Josef K, trying to figure out if his experiences are real or some long delusionary nightmare. I don’t want anything that’s got any work in it. I want bangs and whistles. I want a story that grips me by the knackers and doesn’t let go. I want man books. I want books that have testosterone mixed in with the ink. I want explosions, I want violence, I want edge of the sun-lounger thrills and danger, I want gratuitous sex. I want righteous revenge. I want Quentin Tarantino in paperback. I want Hollywood in my hands.

 

I read Stieg Larrson’s The girl with the dragon tattoo and The girl who played with fire with relish. Both well-written (albeit in translation from Swedish), both addictive. I’m eager for the final book in the trilogy to be published next month. I also ripped through Elmore Leonard’s Hunted in a day. Leonard with his muscle prose. Lucid descriptions all told in a street drawl. No word wasted. All good stuff. But neither Larrson or Leonard had any hidden metaphors that dissected the shackles of humanity in a capitalist world, no heart-bleeding social messages that were shoved down my throat, no equivocal essays in spiritual grace and fatalism but decent, solid fiction. The pages went by at a fair old lick.

 

And then there was Clive Cussler. For all his faults I find Clive Cussler ideal holiday reading. Whenever I read one of Cussler’s books I’m immediately transported to the black beach at Kamari. I can see islands shimmering in the haze as I get staked out under a palm parasol from 9AM. I can feel my hand around an ice cold glass of Mythos and I can taste gyros and tzatziki as the day slowly grills me. I’m walking out in to the sunshine at the Rodos Palladium. I’m watching the sun make its way across Faliraki bay and dipping over the cape. Because I only ever read Cussler on holiday. The books are big, satisfying wedges to have in your hand when you have no other commitments for the day. It’s reading with the glass half-ful. You know you’ve got plenty of pages in front of you and it feels good. And you’re guaranteed that there’s going to be no long lumbering narrative, nothing that need interpreting, nothing that is left unsaid.

 

Cussler’s been knocking out thrillers for more than thirty years. They’re not what you’d call hard work to get through. Unless you hold especially strong feminist views, perhaps. Then Cussler has the ability to challenge you on so many levels. But, by and large, Cussler churns out pop corn fiction. He’s writing out of a mould created by Alistair McLean and Ian Fleming. He doesn’t write novels as such, he writes bestsellers. His signature character – heavily protected legally – is underwater salvage expert Dirk Pitt®. Dirk Pitt® is a man’s man. More than that he’s a 1970s man’s man. Think a Smokey and the Bandit period Burt Reynolds in scuba gear, packing a really big hunting knife. Only tougher and more wisecracking. With more birds throwing themselves at him. He might not be everyone’s particular brand of vodka, but he does have a certain charm. Dirk Pitt® with his dangerous green eyes and well-tanned musculature. Cussler sculpts the man he would like to be. He’s a six foot, hot look, All American Man, yeah. I bet he’s given him a really big knob, as well. In the early novels Pitt® is especially unreconstructed. I remember sitting up when I first read this from The Mediterranean Caper on holiday in Santorini a couple of years ago. Some woman Dirk® has just met (and I mean literally, JUST BLOODY MET) on the beach tells the story or how her husband snuffed it racing motor cars. Dirk® is listening intently:

 

Pitt sat silent for a minute, staring at her sad face. ‘How long ago?’ he asked simply.

 

‘It’s been eight and a half year now,’ she replied in a whisper.

 

Pitt felt dazed. Then anger set in. What a waste. What a rotten waste for a beautiful woman like her to grieve over a dead man for nearly nine years… He could see tears welling in her eyes as she lost herself in the remembrance, and the sight sickened him. He reached over and gave her a hard backhand slap across the face.

 

Her eyes jerked wide, and her whole body tensed from the sharp blow. It was as if she was struck by a bullet. ‘Why did you strike me?’ she asked.

 

‘Because you needed it, needed it badly,’ he snapped. ‘That torch you carry around is as worn out as an overcoat… you belong to everyman who turns and admires you as you pass by and who longs to possess you.’ Pitt could see his words were penetrating her weak defences… ‘When was the last time you had a man?’

 

‘Not since…’ Her voice trailed away.

 

Pitt took her as the long shadows of the rocks crept upward over the beach, shielding their bodies from the sun…

 

‘I don’t know whether to ask for your thanks or your forgiveness,’ he said softly.

 

‘Please accept them both along with my blessing,’ she murmured.

 

Hmmm. OK.

 

Cussler is the kind of writer Jack Regan or Gene Hunt would take with them to the beach on Torremolinos back in 1977, a sneaky peak at the bronzing briskets wobbling past from over the top of the pages as they reach for another San Miguel. Then back to the print as Dirk® chins another big, wide nasty, before strolling off for a knee trembler up against a ticking bomb with some big-chested heroine, forever grateful to Dirk for (i) having saved the world and (ii) having given her the best orgasm of her life. Cussler writes about the world as Jack and Gene would see it. It is masculine and Cussler’s women love it. They lap up the sweaty atmosphere and the bulging muscles. Cussler’s females like their men to dominate. To show them who’s boss. And they do. Pitt® prowls into the bedroom, a chilled Cinzano in one hand, ready to deliver a kidney punch with the other.

 

A typical Clive Cussler blockbuster – because that’s what they are, blockbusters, these aren’t novels in any Dickensian, Will Self, E.M. Forster sense of the word; these are Hollywood movies in print – a typical Clive Cussler blockbuster will include the following:

 

(1)               More often than not the story will open with a prologue set in the past. This will establish the ship wreck, lost airplane, hidden treasure that the story will hinge on. This may provide a target for the baddies and/or the means by which Dirk® will save the whole bloody universe.

 

(2)             The story will be peopled by fruity side characters that make Dan Brown’s Leigh Teabing look like something from the mind of Joseph Conrad. These characters will be important in their given field (archaeology, aeronautics, whatever it may be). May also be linked to (9).

 

(3)             Cussler’s books are buddy novels. Pitt® and his best pal Al ‘barrel chested, arms like a gorilla, heart the size of an ox’s’ Giordino are going to save the world, watching each others ‘six’ and sharing their last can of Budweiser as the face a firing squad. You better believe it.

 

(4)             Cussler will ram massive character back stories at you in the space of a paragraph. An entire autobiography, and its psychological affect on the character, will be shoe horned into a few sentences. It saves time. At, the age of ten Hank Bowen was exposed to by a clown in the circus big top, from then on he was always nervous around clowns and tents. Today, fifty years later he  looked at the marquee hosting his daughter’s wedding with fear and trepidation. He stepped inside. Oh my God, they’d hired a clown for the entertainment. Hank started to sweat.

 

(5)             Pitt® will rescue someone early doors, obviously incurring overwhelming odds and risking almost certain death himself. Though altruism will be the key motive, Pitt® will often throw himself into danger just for the helluvit, man. The person rescued will often be female and sex starved (e.g. some library bound cryptologist with big knockers who hasn’t had sight of a bloke for years). A second rescue/escape may also be on the cards later in the book. This time from the enemy’s clutches.

 

(6)             Pitt® will establish a mortal vendetta with someone. Usually a heavily muscled, oppressive foreigner (the Axis powers are still alive and kicking in Cussler’s books), who often has simmering homosexual tendencies that Pitt® seems to arouse. This may be linked to (13).

 

(7)              There will be a secret society. Secret societies are meat and good liquor to the world of Dirk Pitt® and Al Giordino. They will be linked to (6) and possibly still harbouring a grudge about losing World War 2.

 

(8)             Cussler will hurl research and knowledge at you like a monkey throwing its shit at kids through the bars at the zoo. This is guaranteed. He knows this stuff and you’re going to know it too, OK? Some paragraphs read like a Haynes manual.

 

(9)             There will be a double-cross. Some seemingly innocuous, benevolent figure will turn out to be a proper bastard. Again, this could be linked to (2).

 

(10)       Pitt®, though a big emotional slab of bachelorhood, will fall in love. But they’ll be no trips to Wal Mart with the wife and kids for Dirk (though apparently he does marry later in the series). Dirk falling in love isn’t good news for the woman in question. It’s akin to being a friend of Jessica Fletcher’s in Murder, she wrote. The woman’s days are numbered. She’ll undoubtedly kipper it before the end of the book.

 

(11)          Pitt® will lead himself and Giordino in a task that involves certain death for the pair of them. Something typical would be riding a tandem bicycle across Antarctica or taking an adapted Jet Ski across the Sahara desert. Giordino will make a wisecrack and follow without hesitation. This is Achilles and Patroclus. This is lifelong brothers.

 

(12)        Pitt® will make periodic prognostications on how the bad guys are going to get their assess whupped. These have been studied by Horatio Caine of CSI:Miami. They appear at the end of chapters and get the reader psyched up and thirsty for blood in the next round.

 

(13)        There may be some kind of genetically developed superman or superwoman. Guaranteed baddy material. These creatures will have a perfect physique but a totally blank emotional landscape. Dirk will ultimately kill this genetic abomination in some vaguely erotic way (e.g. strangle, skewer etc). These super villains may be the creation of (6).

 

(14)        Cussler will explain people and their relationships to each other in ITALICS, UNDERLINED AND SET OUT IN BLOCK CAPITALS. You’ll be left in no doubt. She hates him, he loves her. He respects him, he thinks he’s a great guy. Why waste time with interaction, take it as read.

 

(15)        There will be a big pow-wow, usually in Washington, usually at the White House or some secret war room at the Pentagon, usually involving the President gathered with experts in the relevant field (who generally went to school/college with Pitt® or his boss Admiral Sandecker – dapper little fellow with a ginger Vandyke beard; there I’ve just drawn him for you in the same detail as Cussler’s used for the past three decades. Oh, and he smokes big ceegars) where imminent global catastrophe is discussed over a chocomocca and a few fat Cubans. Sandecker will often invoke rule (11) and give the reader something to chew on. This may also be the moment that point (19) occurs.

 

(16)        Cussler will doubtless make an appearance. But these aren’t Hitchcockian, self-deprecating cameos. Oh no. Cussler saves the day. Cussler steps in at a crucial moment. Cussler flexes the financial muscles and expertise and comes through to give Dirk® a helping hand to bitch slap the bad guys just when all looks as if it might be lost and the world is wobbling on the edge of chaos. This is all part of Cussler’s romantic American imperialism. Americans do everything bigger and better. Fact.

 

(17)         Pitt® and Giordino will inevitably succeed where teams of Special Forces fail. In the course they will save everybody’s bacon and earn the respect and gratitude of the specialist grunts the world over.

 

(18)        There will be a car chase. Generally it will be unevenly matched. Say Pitt® in a vintage Ford Model-T up against a Uzi blazing Yakuza hit team tearing up the tarmac in a pack of re-mapped Nissan Skylines, bent on world domination through poisoned noodles and sabotaged fortune cookies. (Cf. the unpublished Yakuza Death Noodles).

 

(19)        There will come a point when it looks like Pitt® has bitten the dust. The odds will be too great. The action will cut from Dirk just as he’s run out of the last lungful of oxygen ten thousand feet below the Atlantic or has thrown himself out of a plane at 30,000 feet to save the universe. Everyone bar Al Giordino and Admiral Sandecker will give up on him. They know better.

 

(20)      Against the seemingly impossible odds, despite the injuries they pick up along the way, heedless of sniper attacks from gangs of feminists, Pitt® and Giordino will come through triumphant and victorious. Sanity and normality will be restored. The world will keep on spinning.

 

So, next time you’re heading through the airport, grabbing the SPF 15 that you’ve forgotten and all those duty free designer labels are tempting your compulsive, avaricious streak, and you’re looking for something unchallenging to read in the sun then grab yourself a slice of Cussler from the bookshop. He won’t let you down. And neither will Dirk®. Biff, bang, pow.