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| Mike Read’s calypso car crash for Ukip campaign threatens to enter charts | |
| (about 14 hours later) | |
| Something truly, excruciating, sickeningly, sordidly, cringingly, toe-curlingly awful is threatening to invade the music charts. Mike Read, once known as a DJ, has written a ‘Calypso’, and has recorded it, singing in a faux-Jamaican accent, to raise money for Ukip. | Something truly, excruciating, sickeningly, sordidly, cringingly, toe-curlingly awful is threatening to invade the music charts. Mike Read, once known as a DJ, has written a ‘Calypso’, and has recorded it, singing in a faux-Jamaican accent, to raise money for Ukip. |
| He denies that it is in any way racist. It is not Read’s first attempt at composition. Over the weekend, he will have had occasion to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the opening night of the record-breaking musical Oscar Wilde, which he wrote and directed. The critics who were in the Shaw Theatre, on October 19, 2004, were almost unanimous: it was “a musical of exquisite awfulness” or “two hours of leaden dross” – featuring, as it did, rhyming couplets such as “Your barbaric ways/Leave me quite amazed.” | He denies that it is in any way racist. It is not Read’s first attempt at composition. Over the weekend, he will have had occasion to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the opening night of the record-breaking musical Oscar Wilde, which he wrote and directed. The critics who were in the Shaw Theatre, on October 19, 2004, were almost unanimous: it was “a musical of exquisite awfulness” or “two hours of leaden dross” – featuring, as it did, rhyming couplets such as “Your barbaric ways/Leave me quite amazed.” |
| Five people bought tickets for the second night, in an auditorium that held 466, but they never saw the show, because it was cancelled, thereby securing it a place in the record books as the shortest running musical in the history of London’s theatre land. Read was later declared bankrupt, partly because of the thousands he lost on the venture. | Five people bought tickets for the second night, in an auditorium that held 466, but they never saw the show, because it was cancelled, thereby securing it a place in the record books as the shortest running musical in the history of London’s theatre land. Read was later declared bankrupt, partly because of the thousands he lost on the venture. |
| He may fare better this time because Nigel Farage has urged supporters to buy the Ukip Calypso and push it up to the No 1 spot. Then the whole nation can gyrate their hips to lyrics such as “The other parties will count the costings/In Eastleigh, Thurrock and Bow they’re lost in/Labour and Tories shaking in their boots/When UKIP kick them up the grassroots.” | He may fare better this time because Nigel Farage has urged supporters to buy the Ukip Calypso and push it up to the No 1 spot. Then the whole nation can gyrate their hips to lyrics such as “The other parties will count the costings/In Eastleigh, Thurrock and Bow they’re lost in/Labour and Tories shaking in their boots/When UKIP kick them up the grassroots.” |
| "I've been in politics a long time and I probably would have had a much more successful political career if I had stuck to the clichés," Neil Hamilton, the former Tory MP who is now Deputy Chairman of Ukip, told Five Live yesterday. | "I've been in politics a long time and I probably would have had a much more successful political career if I had stuck to the clichés," Neil Hamilton, the former Tory MP who is now Deputy Chairman of Ukip, told Five Live yesterday. |
| Or you could say that he would have had a much more successful political career had it not been a libel trial during which a witness gave evidence that she had repeatedly witnessed Hamilton accepting envelopes stuffed with cash from the Harrods boss Mohamed Al Fayed. It was known at the time as the “cash for questions” scandal. | Or you could say that he would have had a much more successful political career had it not been a libel trial during which a witness gave evidence that she had repeatedly witnessed Hamilton accepting envelopes stuffed with cash from the Harrods boss Mohamed Al Fayed. It was known at the time as the “cash for questions” scandal. |
| Councillor’s off his game | Councillor’s off his game |
| Councillor Douglas Campbell, leader of the SNP group on South Ayrshire council, may have to resign when he comes back off sick leave later this month, because some of his fellow councillors take a dim view of his leaving a council meeting to nip to a nearby Games Workshop and play on the tables. He was seen engrossed in a fantasy war game | Councillor Douglas Campbell, leader of the SNP group on South Ayrshire council, may have to resign when he comes back off sick leave later this month, because some of his fellow councillors take a dim view of his leaving a council meeting to nip to a nearby Games Workshop and play on the tables. He was seen engrossed in a fantasy war game |
| One of the joys of Twitter is receiving the daily thoughts of Karen Danczuk, a Labour councillor whose husband, Simon, is MP for Rochdale. But it was a bit alarming to read her account of what seeing an amusing photograph made her do. “I literally laughed my head off to myself in bed,” she tweeted. Literally? The miracle is that she is still alive. | One of the joys of Twitter is receiving the daily thoughts of Karen Danczuk, a Labour councillor whose husband, Simon, is MP for Rochdale. But it was a bit alarming to read her account of what seeing an amusing photograph made her do. “I literally laughed my head off to myself in bed,” she tweeted. Literally? The miracle is that she is still alive. |
| Good luck to Mike McManus, short listed for the safe Tory seat of Havant, in Hampshire. He has tried many times to find a way into Parliament, but suffered from a singular drawback: he worked for years as Sir Edward Heath’s loyal assistant. He even wrote most of the book that purports to be Heath’s memoirs. | Good luck to Mike McManus, short listed for the safe Tory seat of Havant, in Hampshire. He has tried many times to find a way into Parliament, but suffered from a singular drawback: he worked for years as Sir Edward Heath’s loyal assistant. He even wrote most of the book that purports to be Heath’s memoirs. |
| To go before a Tory selection meeting with that your c.v. was like applying for holy orders after consorting with Beelzebub. But Heath is long dead, and in Havant the Tories are holding an open primary, which means that ordinary members of the public can vote. Members of the public do not generally start hissing with rage at the mention of the name of the Conservative Prime Minister who took Britain into the EU in the way that paid up party members do. Maybe, this time, McManus is in with a chance. | To go before a Tory selection meeting with that your c.v. was like applying for holy orders after consorting with Beelzebub. But Heath is long dead, and in Havant the Tories are holding an open primary, which means that ordinary members of the public can vote. Members of the public do not generally start hissing with rage at the mention of the name of the Conservative Prime Minister who took Britain into the EU in the way that paid up party members do. Maybe, this time, McManus is in with a chance. |