INTRODUCING JENNIFER LAWRENCE-BUSCEMI

Fake news has taken a sinister turn with the advent of deepfakes, where, using artificial intelligence, machine learning and programming skills, fakers are grafting faces onto other bodies in videos. Not only can you not see the joins, the resulting composite is totally convincing, undetectable, down to head, eye and mouth movement. In the last few days one by someone known as VillainGuy has mashed Steve Buscemi’s body to Jennifer’s Lawrence’s, using a speech she gave to the media at the 2016 Golden Globe awards. And it is perfect. It was made for effect, to show just what could be done, but the advances in technology are so rapid, and the potential ramifications so worrying that intelligence agencies are now trying to work out ways to combat it.

In the States, where paranoia is accelerating into overdrive, there are fears that – forget the alleged internet interference in Trump’s election – 2020 could take meddling into hyperspace, with fake and damaging speeches put into the mouths of candidates. There is also, at a more humble level, the potential for blackmail. Try denying to your partner that the person torridly grappling in another’s bed isn’t you.

VillianGuy used a free tool known as Faceswap, a high-end graphics card and his own expertise to create the video. Given time I guess you could make your own movie with the faces of superstars mashed with your local repertory actors.

Could it be that the words coming out of the mouth of The Donald aren’t from him after all, that it’s all been a deepfake? Nah, Trump is Villain Guy.

R.I.P THE TALL DROLL

It’s a small world, but I wouldn’t want to paint it. Last Tuesday marked the thirty-fourth year since the passing of the surreal and brilliant comedian Chic Murray. The debt of those who succeeded him, like Billy Connolly and Frankie Boyle, is enormous, as they recognise. Chic was from Greenock and was working as an apprentice in the shipyard when he met Maidie Dickson, then a seasoned touring professional, who was appearing at the Greenock Empire (now demolished) and staying in digs at the Murrays. They married, she included him in her act, billed as The Tall Droll with the Small Doll – he was 6’3” she was 4’11” – and gradually he took over. They later split and it’s his solo work which will be remembered, cracking absurd one liners from beneath his omnipresent bunnet.

“I met this chap at the Olympics. I said to him, ‘Excuse me but are you a pole vaulter?’.He replied, ‘No, I'm German, but how did you know my name was Valter’."

Or, “So there I was lying in the gutter. A man stopped and asked ‘What's the matter? Did you fall over?’ So I said ‘No. I've a bar of toffee in my back pocket and I was just trying to break it.’

Chic recalled taking a trip on a boat that was “so old it must have been launched when Long John Silver had two legs and an egg on his shoulder.”

Check out his long nose story online. RIP Chic, never forgotten.

DUMB AND DUMBER

As if the BBC’S News at Six wasn’t dumb enough, it’s gone even dumber. And risible. It greeted Theresa May’s forced return to Brussels for another fruitless negotiation, ending with World War 11 clips of a Spitfire landing followed by another of a fleet of them overhead (although it could have been the Luftwaffe, my aircraft recognition isn’t great). Was this meant as an analogy about dog-fighting with the beastly Bosche once more and defeating the arch-dictator Merkel? Or, perhaps, how this country helped liberate Europe from tyranny? And can we expect, when May’s mission fails, a clip of an A-bomb explosion? No, no, it was all a simple mistake, claims the Beeb.

It’s three weeks today to the launch of the new digital BBC Scotland channel, with its flagship nightly news, which they’re calling The Nine. Sorry, The Nein.

THE EASTER ROAD RISING

So goodbye then Neil Lennon, but only for a short time hopefully, because it’s always fireworks and usually good sense when Lenny is about. Never has a football player and manager split opinion so dramatically.

He left the Hibs job after having square goes with snowflake players and then chief executive Leeann Dempster (and it’s reported his shadow is badly bruised) although it only involved verbal blows and a lot of asterixed words. We’re never going to know from either side what happened, only that no one is to blame and the parting involved a large cheque to ensure quietude.

Let’s not forget, Lenny has suffered more verbal and physical abuse than anyone else in present-day football, from a bomb in the post to an actual, physical attack on the touchline. He never takes it lying down and good on him, although sometimes his enthusiasm for combat can be misplaced.

I recall when he was playing for Celtic against Kilmarnock at Rugby Park one home fan in the Frank Beattie stand barracked him profanely and at high volume throughout. It had clearly got to Lenny because at full time, still in his kit, he vaulted the barrier, and charged up the steps, to face down the miscreant. Unfortunately, he must have miscounted the rows because the man he ended up screaming into the face of was season ticket holder John Corrigan, then head of counter-terrorism in Scotland.

A PUN MY WORDS

Finally on football, if St Mirren’s French signing lives up to his name we’re in for a treat – in the number of puns and bad jokes that will pour forth. His name is Duckens Nazon who is, according to one Buddies fan, a “quacking signing”. Apparently he’s a striker but, says Football Scotland, he can play “on eider wing”. Let’s just hope he fits the bill!

SEND IN THE CLOWNS

Clowns are attending a church service today. What’s new you say? Treesa and Co do it every Sunday, making sure the cameras are there to capture their devotions. No, on this Sunday they turn up with big painted lips and lots of makeup…what’s new you say? It is to commemorate the first clown – from a big pack of contenders – who was someone called Joseph Grimaldi, hugely famous in his day in the 19th Century, so much so that Charles Dickens wrote a best-selling biography about him.

There’s also a park in Islington named after Grimaldi where you can dance on musical tiles over his grave – a bit like Tom Hanks in the movie Big – and if you get it right it plays the tune Hot Codlins, whatever that is. I have a photo of me dancing on the grave of the fraudster Robert Maxwell, who stole my pension, on the Mount of Olives, but there was nary a note or a grumble from down below.

WHAT’S COOKING?

Memo to Jamie Oliver, your recipe for sourdough bread is rubbish. I should know because I'm the world's greatest cook. Honest.

Using rye flour results in a claggy mess which sticks to your hands like tar and you have to summon a passing stranger to douse you in petrol to get rid of it (warning: do not try this at home) and then pass you through a car wash. It is not, therefore, going to be included in my Brexit recipe book.

What does feature is lots of root vegetables, tinned provisions like beans and Spam, dried pasta, with puddings made principally of Bird’s custard, with the occasional dollop of golliwog-less Robertson’s jam. The recipes in the Brexit book will be detailed, although, obviously, there won’t be any instructions on how to make them.