Ringing the changes

It seems that the plan to have Big Ben bong us out of the European Union has lost its a-peal! The crowdfunder has raised more than £100,000 of the half a million needed but Boris, whose idea it was, seems to have gone off it and, anyway, it would take too long or be too difficult to organise, so someone else will take the blame, probably Jeremy Corbyn. Plan B seems to be to plumb in a mega sound system and blast out a recording of the bell, although I’m sure Stormzy won’t be MC-ing the gig.

This really is a risible idea. If they’re going to go synthetic and truly chime for glory then there’s only one way to do it. Blast out the intro to Beethoven’s 5th – the short-short-short-long rhythmic pattern corresponding to the Morse code letter V, for victory – which was pumped out before BBC broadcasts during the Second World War. We could then have a fly-past with a couple of Spitfires and a Lancaster or two, if the country can afford the insurance, and project a hologram on to Big Ben’s tower of Winston Churchill giving the vicky.

This celebration certainly lacks imperial ambition. In 1973, when we went into the then-European Economic Community, Ted Heath’s government spent £350,000 – about £4 million in today’s money – on a gala at the Royal Opera House, and there was a beauty contest, won by Sylvia Kristel, who went on to star in the soft-porn Emmanuelle movies. However, we could have Theresa May reprise her Abba tribute, not Dancing Queen but SOS – “When you’re gone how can I even try to go on”.

I don’t know if they’ll be ringing the bells at St Giles’ Cathedral in Edinburgh, as they did to mark the Act of Union with England in 1707. Then, in what was taken as a sonic thumbs-down, the bells played Why Should I Be Sad On My Wedding Day. I don’t know if they’re up to D-I-V-O-R-C-E.

Bread of Heaven

Just when I had mastered the art of making sourdough bread I discover that this is so last year and that the Ezekiel – a flourless, “sprouted” loaf at £4.36 a go – is perfect for the celebrity jeely piece, championed by the Victoria Beckham. It’s named after the recipe that God gave to the prophet (even now someone is putting together a cookery show based on divine recipes, possibly fronted by Sandi Toksvig) where Ez was commanded to bung barley and beans and lentils and millet and a bit of spelt into a vessel and get on with it.

It seems like a formula for constipation if nothing else, which might just prove a problem in following through because the holy instruction was to bake the bread over human excrement. Perhaps I’ll just stick with my method.

Urban legend

It’s an oldie but it’s golden. A bit like the man himself. I hadn’t seen the video of Stan Urban playing Jerry Lee Lewis songs on a public piano at Dundee’s Taybridge railway station before, but once seen never forgotten. The performance seems to have taken place last August and it was filmed by a passer-by as the man battered the ivories and tortured his tonsils. Stan is from Dundee and has been playing 1950s music since then. Hail, hail rock ’n’ roll, as the man put it. And Stan. To catch him, just go to YouTube and search “Stan Urban Dundee”.

Teed off

The Rangers director and former chairman, Alastair Johnston, is to donate the world’s largest collection of golf books to St Andrews, the home of golf, to create a library which, no doubt, will be named after him. I can’t think of anything more snore-inducing than reading one golf book, never mind tackling this 30,000 job lot, although it is surely apt that the man receiving the shedload was called Martin Slumbers.

Art for art’s sake

I DON’T know who he was named after – perhaps the local football team? – but the artist known as Picasso had an immensely long name and a very short fuse. His given name was Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso. He’s the greatest artist of contemporary times, who constantly changed his painting style, from his blue period to cubism, impressionism and just about every other artistic ism

His constant changes puzzled many who would routinely ask him what a painting meant. He had a dramatic answer. He would whip out a Browning revolver and fire blanks at the questioner. A few decades on and that would be called performance art.

Sheepish

It’s Veganuary which, like me, you most probably ignored. I can understand the wish not to kill animals, but to proselytise a regimen which is alien and intrinsically unhealthy, requiring additional vitamins and nutrients, isn’t just daft, it’s borderline criminal. Although it’s a fad which will pass, I guess, like the Ezekiel loaf and Gwyneth Paltrow’s vagina-scented candles.

However, just as Burns Night looms, out comes the vegan kilt, in not so much a new tartan as what looks like a direct hit on a paint factory. Still, Slanj will sell it at discount to its woollen version this month to keep on trend.

Strict vegans won’t wear wool, of course, possibly because it induces a sense of loss or a head cold in the animal? But a kilt made out of polyester viscose, essentially plastics, is eco-destructive and massively unsustainable. We’ll probably see one feature in a future Attenborough documentary, on a seal, and not in an attractive way.

Fair dos to Slanj trying to make a bob or two, but it needs to be pointed out to vegans that most breeds of domestic sheep need to be sheared or their wool will grow year-round and they’ll end up like a massive ball of knitting, just like Shrek the Merino here, who avoided the clippers for six years.