Black Sunday

THE event of the year, as far as exploitation films go, is the annual festival of depravity, “Shock Around The Clock”, held at the Scala towards the end of July. However, being annual, twelve months go by between one and the next, which is a long time to survive without seeing films such as “Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers”, “Nekromantik”, etc so it was good to find out about ‘Black Sunday’, the Northern equivalent, which took place in the Mayfair Cinema, Manchester on the last Sunday in January. I made the long trek up there – this is the report

While the South has one very interesting place (London) and lots of dull ones (i.e. Farnborough), the North has a few fairly exciting towns, and nowhere that stands out and says ‘Visit me!’. Never been to Manchester before. Looks like Leeds. Or Sheffield. Grey. Industrial. Tho’ at 7 pm on an overcast evening, anywhere would look grey and industrial. I arrived early. Didn’t know where the Mayfair Cinema was – the tickets did have directions on them, but they were brief. I needn’t have worried – after an endless bus-ride through housing estate after housing estate, the bus stopped about fifty yards from it. So there I was, four hours to kill in a suburb of Manchester. I did what anyone else would have done and headed for the nearest pub.

Photo by DavidSimpson, from CinemaTreasures.org

The ‘locals’ must have wondered what had hit them, as a bunch of low-lifes and assorted reprobates wearing unpleasant t-shirts and reading equally unpleasant publications descended on them. It was generally quite easy to spot the gore-hounds – they didn’t have whippets or flat caps… The rest of the evening passed smoothly, discussing great (and not-so-great) films, aided by the consumption of Tetley’s Bitter (complete with unidentifiable lumps). Addresses were swapped, fanzines bought/sold and the evening’s delights eagerly anticipated. However, a rumour began to spread that the most discussed film, ‘Bad Taste’, had been seized by the customs at Manchester Airport…

Eventually, we drifted down to the Mayfair, stood outside for a while wondering when we were going to get in unti we finally were. Bought our programs and found out ‘Bad Taste’ was indeed on the list of films to be seized – having seen stills from it, I can tell you it is RIDICULOUSLY splattery, but is entirely tongue-in-cheek and ‘ridiculous’ is a pretty good word for the film as a whole [see later].

Finally, after a brief word or two from the organisers, we were off…

OUT OF THE DARK – Michael Schroeder. A sleazy slasher movie about a phone sex agency whose employees are being murdered by a clown masked maniac. The police suspect a photographer who does work for the agency, so he sets out to prove them wrong by finding the real killer.

“Yawn! It’s all been done before. Nothing new or original in this dull psycho film. Of course, all the girls who work for the agency are young and pretty. Sex and violence with no imagination. (3/10)”

PAPERHOUSE – Bernard Rose. Anna is ten and suffering from glandular fever, which is causing her to have hallucinations. She finds she can control these through a sketch she is drawing – then she finds the picture taking on a life of it’s own.

“See Trash City 0. Though this wasn’t a new film, I still enjoyed it a lot – if anything it’s improved on a second viewing. (7)”

LAIR OF THE WHITE WORM – Ken Russell. A prehistoric skull is unearthed in the Derbyshire countryside and sets in motion a horrific chain of events as it is stolen by the local lady of the manor who is also the head of a pagan snake cult. “Brilliant. Superbly silly, especially Catherine [Dynasty] Oxenburg dubbed with a Derbyshire accent. Like a Hammer horror film on acid, with Boy Scouts, helpings of nudity and just the right amount of blood. (9)”.

ELVIRA – MISTRESS OF THE DARK – James Signorelle. Elvira is fired from her TV show and goes to collect her inheritance from a timely-deceased aunt. Unfortunately, this is in the New England village of Falwell, whose inhabitants are not happy with her dresses (low-cut), morals, or her approach to life in general, and try to get rid of her…

“Somewhere between “‘Allo, ‘Allo” and “Carry on Cleavage” lies Elvira, the ultimate bimbo, whose car has a registration of ‘KICKASS’. Comedy without any pretensions, just good, simple fun and fine mindless entertainment. (8)”

TO DIE FOR – Deran Serafian. Vlad Tepes, better known as Count Dracula, is undead and well and living in America. Another update of the vampire story, with the usual problems of convincing the police you’re not a lunatic, staking victims, etc. “ANOTHER modern myth. It’s tough to update the vampire – “Near Dark” was about the best – and this one doesn’t work. Nothing new/worthy here, save an impressive decapitation and Brendan Hughes makes a good Vlad. (4)”

THE LADY IN WHITE – Frank La Loggia. Frankie Scarlatti is locked in the school cloakroom as a Halloween prank, and sees the ghost of a young girl, who turns out to be the victim of a murder. He is then attacked by the murderer, but recovers, and decides to try and solve the mystery.

“See Trash City 0. Stayed awake all through this one, which is more than I did for the films on either side – given I’d seen it before, this shows how engrossing it is. STILL think the ending sucks! (8)”.

FRIGHT NIGHT 2 – Tommy Lee Wallace. Charley Brewster has recovered from the ordeal of the first film, and now believes he made it all up, at least until some strange people move into vampire hunter Peter Vincent’s apartment block. Once again, battle commences.

“A real sequel, building on the events of “Fright Night”, with just enough original touches to make it worthwhile. About as entertaining as the first one; Roddy McDowall steals the (over)acting honours again. (6)” DEAD HEAT – Mark Goldblatt Seemingly unkillable robbers are terrorising a city. Turns out they’re zombies. One of the cops on the trail is killed, and is revived to try to solve the case before the resurrection wears off.

“Another neat twist on the buddy cop theme. Lots of shoot-outs, the obvious jokes about being dead tired, and a brilliant scene in a Chinese restaurant where the meals come to life. Highly enjoyable (8)”.

Just so you know what we missed, and to give you some idea why it was seized at the airport:

BAD TASTE. “In a small, quiet seaside town, all the inhabitants have disappeared. Could someone have chopped them all into pieces? Their fate, it seems, has been caused by a small contingent of violent aliens. They have arrived on Earth in search of human flesh to use as hamburger meat in their chain of inter-galactic fast-food stores.

Before the last inhabitant of the small town breathes no more, a panic stricken call is made to the outside world pleading for help. It is time for the newly formed Alien Investigation and Defence Service, or AIDS as it is known, to come into the scene. Systematically, they begin to deal with the aliens when they can find them.

Their problem escalates when a charity worker arrives in the town. He wants to collect for a good cause. Instead, he finds himself being marinated in preparation for the aliens’ farewell feast. The AIDS team set out to rescue the marinating charity worker. One of the team begins wreaking his personal vengeance on the aliens. The aliens are finally defeated by the leader of the AIDS team in a macabre, gory ritual that takes place in outer space.

Watchout aliens… here comes A.I.D.S!! The ultimate in bad taste.”

The latest info we have on this film is that is has finally got into the country, and is going to be Colourbox Video’s first stab at a cinema release – from what I’ve seen it may well be a short film after the BBFC have gone through it!


Ah, some space to discuss a couple of things that have cropped up since writing the editorial. Firstly, thanks and apologies to everyone whose sent reviews or other pieces in – the former for taking the trouble, the latter because I failed to include ANY of them, which after my plea for contributions is a bit off! I took two weeks holiday over Easter, and went home (as in the North of Scotland); much of my time was spent working on this issue, writing, getting formats straight, looking out pictures, etc. I came back to Farnborough, with it almost all ready, to find a vast pile of articles – rather than trying to put them in this one (and probably making us the first ‘zine to have a late Issue 1!), I’ve held them all over – they should appear in Issue 2. Please keep sending them in; a rough latest date for next time is the start of July.

The other point came up in a letter from Cathy Barwick, who noticed the ‘masculine bias’ [Ouch! She’ll love the back cover!], and wondered whether I couldn’t write what women would think of, for example, a film. An important point. However, when it comes down to it, all I can do is give MY opinions – if the results show masculine bias, it is simply because THEY do, and I refuse to apologise for them. Also, I would never dream of attempting to generalise and say ‘Men/Women would like this’; I feel it would be condescending to tell anyone what to like, given the wide range of tastes the people I know of BOTH sexes have. All I can do is say what I like and why – if I say a film has good acting, I hope this is useful to both men and women; similarly, if I say the leading actress takes her clothes off a lot!

However, there are definitely articles, such as the NK piece, which could well be described as sexist. I write about the things I most enjoy; female beauty is one of them, male beauty is not – again, no apologies. I try and write in a spirit of self- parody and hope no offence is taken by ANYONE to ANYTHING. Finally, I am JUST as happy to print female chauvinist drivel as male chauvinist drivel – I appreciate there is something of an imbalance in these pages…!

Soundtracks

The best soundtracks work on two levels. First, and probably more importantly, they complement the film. They generally reflect the emotion that the director is trying to get across to the viewer, be this tension, sadness, fear or humour. Secondly, it helps if they are good to listen to in their own right, outside the cinema. Given these two aims, here’s a list of some of my favourite soundtracks, both specially composed and ‘found’ – no particular order:

  • Excalibur
  • Hellraiser
  • Return of the Living Dead
  • Cat People
  • Repo Man
  • Paris, Texas
  • Salvation!

Another interesting idea is working out your own ‘soundtrack’, either for an already existing movie, or a theoretical one. As an example, here’s a possible track listing for a modern vampire film (might please those who think my music tastes are dull!)

  • Propaganda – P-Machinery
  • Laibach- Drzava
  • Bauhaus- Stigmata Martyr
  • Cabaret Voltaire – Sleepwalking
  • Fashion- Citinite
  • Talking Heads – Psycho Killer
  • Yello – I Love You
  • Sisters of Mercy – This Corrosion
  • Ultravox – I want to be a Machine
  • The Human League – Introducing

Any more suggestions?

Borderline Cinema

Salo – 120 Days of Sodom, Pasolini 1975.

Set in the last days of Mussolini’s reign, this film has got into a lot of trouble for it’s sadistic imagery – it’s full version is still banned in Britain – even in truncated form it still remains a very nasty film. The story is negligible. Four Fascists, including a Duke and a priest, kidnap a number of teenage boys and girls – the next ninety minutes is a graphic depiction of the humiliation of these victims. This includes their sodomy, mutilation and also their being forced, literally, to eat shit. This is not a Disney film.

So what possible justification could there be for this exhibition of atrocities?

“Fascism symbolised here by the total subjugation of the sexual victims is merely the ultimate expression of a tendency latent (and to Pasolini inherent) in every power system which depends, as all power systems do, on the submission of the many to the few” — David Wilson

Er, what was that again? Oh, I get it – the Fascists in the film are doing to their victims literally, what Pasolini thinks they did to Italy. This film is taking the Italian equivalent of ‘The Conservatives are screwing the country’ to it’s logical extreme.

Ok, it may be a metaphor, now is it an effective one? I don’t think so. The film makes it’s point in the first half an hour; what follows is pure sledge-hammer cinema, slamming the subject’s head off a wall for an hour and a half. This tactic should only be used when absolutely necessary and the idea you are trying to put across is one so alien to the audience that no other way is possible.

For example, in “Nekromantik”, the director’s ideas on sex & death are so weird that anything less than the torrent of body fluids and corpses would just bounce off the average viewer’s moral barricades – these NEED to be broken down to get the message across. The message in “Salo” is no more controversial than ‘The Italian Fascists did some bad things’, which most people would agree with, and is surely not sufficient reason to produce a film where one of the ‘highlights’ is a meal of steaming turds.

What makes the film especially unpleasant is the absence of any sort of justice. At the end, the torture continues unabated and there is no reason to believe the torturers will eventually be punished for their crimes, even in a ‘Dirty Harry’ way, or that there will ever be any escape for the victims, except through death. The viewer doesn’t get the relief of knowing that crime i.e. torture doesn’t pay.

But overall, I can’t help thinking there are far better ways of putting the point across. If the Fascists were as evil as the voice-over at the start claims, then a straight portrayal of their behaviour would have had a greater impact on me than a story written by an 18th century pervert. As it is, the images remain disgustingly striking, but the message of the film is diluted severely by the irrelevance of the story and the generally gratuitous nature of most of the scenes.

Letters

Let’s start off with the letter I was most pleased to receive in the past three months.

Hampshire County Council, Winchester – “I note your intention to issue proceedings in the Small Claims Court… I am prepared on this occasion, without any admission of liability, to meet your claim.”

Finally. Last September, I hit a pothole on my way home from work and since then have been trying to get the Council to pay for the wrecked back wheel my bike sustained. Five months, half a dozen letters and some advice from a solicitor (Scottish, and therefore possibly wrong) later, I tell them I’m going to sue. They cave in. Sigh. Put away the “Jagged Edge” video, Jim, and get on with the real letters. Still not got the money, though that was six weeks back!

The general tone of them was complimentary:

  • Alun Fairburn, Ammanford – “A very good read indeed.”
  • Simon Wood, Blewbury – “Excellent stuff!! A vast improvement upon most fanzines”

This comes as no surprise. If I get a fanzine I dislike, I don’t write and explain why, I just don’t bother getting it again. Thus we can assume that, for example, Gengiz Mehmet and Michael Corney didn’t like it – poor Gengiz thought it was a football fanzine, for reasons too complex to go into here, but entirely unconnected with the Forres v Alloa back cover!

Getting down to specific bits, very few pieces got nothing but a bad response; most bits were liked by SOMEBODY. There were a few ‘differences of opinion :

  • AF – “I particularly enjoyed the ‘Nightmares in a Damaged Brain’ piece.”
  • Tommy Campbell, Glasgow – “…boring & confused.”

Generally received with favour was ‘The Incredibly Bad Film Show’…

  • TC – “Excellent, and should be expanded on.”
  • AF – “Looks like being a very interesting series.”

…and ‘It Must Be True’, alias ‘Beats Reality, Doesn’t It?’

  • TC – “…should be kept…”
  • David Oliver, Whitley Bay – “…very funny…

Not so popular was ‘Classic Splatter’ :

  • AF – “…has already been done to death.”
  • TC – “‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ is a bit too obvious.”

Your wish is my command. It’s gone, replaced by ‘Borderline Cinema’, which will cover splatter, sex and other taboo subjects.

Mixing the text with pictures was NOT a success :

  • Glyn Williams, Derby – “Overprinting the ‘Hellbound’ and ‘Trash Pop’ articles was dumb.”
  • TC – “…parts of ‘Hellbound and ‘Trash Pop’ were made almost illegible.”

Controversy corner stirred up, as hoped, some response :

  • GW – “Your argument about leaving things to the experts plays straight into the hands of those who argue that experts should decide what the rest of us should watch.”
  • Rob Ingram, Farnborough – “When you elect a government, you’re choosing more than an economic policy – there are also moral questions such as who gets social security and how much they get.”

The major chunk on Nastassja was received with a mixture of interest and pleas for bits on other actresses :

  • GW – “I look forward to the next part.”
  • TC – “The NK feature was quite good, although I would think that actresses like Dyanne Thorne [The Ilsa movies] or Linnea Quigley would be more suitable.”
  • DO – “…Linnea Quigley, Barbara Crampton or even Sybil Danning.”

I suppose to be fair, we ought to do an article on Richard Gere or some such actor (As Glyn Williams put it, “What IS the male equvalent of a bimbo?”). However, I couldn’t hack sitting through all his films and Sybil Danning has done far too many (at least 49!), therefore in preparation, a piece on Linnea. The films we can think of that she’s been in are: The Black Room, Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers, Return of the Living Dead, Savage Streets, Night of the Demon, Creepozoids, The Imp, Deadly Friend, Dr Alien and Silent Night, Deadly Night. Anyone out there know of any more?

Finally, Some people liked and some people didn’t like my tastes in music :

  • SW – “I liked your top 10 records list, as I’ve got 5 of them!”
  • TC – “Was disappointed at what a conservative taste you have in music”
  • Paul Smith, Alva – “..listening to rubbish like Tiffany, or even wearing jumpers with sheep on and singing as if something was being shoved up your arse.”

My problem is that I like light, fluffy pop a bit more than groups whose sleeves feature a Jesus lookalike shooting up with a syringe of fetid blood {Hi Steve!! Hi Per!!} – I’m pessimistic enough as it is…

Tiffany impaled on a spike, that seems like a good place to stop. Keep the letters coming. We reserve the right to edit, quote selectively, distort and otherwise act just like a real newspaper…

Half-way to heaven on the Glacier Express

One of the best things about travel is the contrasts you encounter. One night you’re gambling at Monte Carlo Casino, the next you’re sleeping rough on the sea-front at Nice, with no money, no passport and no way to get home. This, however, is getting ahead of myself. What follows is an account of a journey through Europe made in the second half of August 1988 – it may be of interest, or provide a warning, to anyone planning a similar trip!

The journey didn’t get off to a brilliant start. My Walkman had been playing up for a while, and one earpiece had now died completely, and the other was sounding decidedly dodgy, so I thought it would be a good chance while I was away to get it fixed as the guarantee would have run out by the time I came back. The only chance I had to go to the shop I bought it was on the Saturday morning I left, so on the way to the railway station I popped into Dixons. Unfortunately, they told me (very nicely) that the guarantee didn’t cover the headphones, and that all I could do was buy a new pair. Since my money was all in the form of traveller’s cheques and bureau de change aren’t exactly numerous in Farnborough, this was not much help – in any case, I had ONE cassette with me; though I like Simple Minds, two weeks of them would be too much even for me. Finally, the Walkman was jammed in the bottom of the rucksack for the two weeks, minus the headphones, which I junked in a waste-paper bin at Victoria station.

Reached the hover-port at Dover without anything exciting or interesting happening. There, as well as the duty-free shop, they had a variety of machines designed to take the last 10p coins out of your pocket; fruit machines, video games, etc. I tried to invest my loose change in one; unfortunately I kept winning – by the time I finally gave up trying to get rid of them, I’d won about eight pounds. Something was clearly wrong with the machine; I watched four or five people playing it, and they all came away better off.

The hovercraft trip was dull – you can’t see out, as there’s too much spray being blown around, and you can’t walk about either, so I got on with reading my book. I decided just to take the one with me, a nice 600 page long epic, and try and ration it out to last me the whole fortnight. In the end, I read it in about three days on Nice beach and from then on, it joined the Walkman at the bottom of the bag.

Murgatroyd49 / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)

Didn’t get to see much of Paris, just the Metro from one railway station to the next. The train from there to Nice was almost dead, I had a whole carriage to myself and managed a fairly pleasant night,waking up just in time to see the sun rise over the Mediterranean. It was warm – I was still wearing my British Summer clothes (long trousers, training shoes, jumper, etc), and I’d forgotten to pack any shorts so I just had to sit and suffer…

Arrived in Nice, and went to the Tourist Information place to see if they could find me a room. This they did, for the princely sum of F.55 per night, little more than a fiver. I was a little worried about just what I was going to get for that – I needn’t have been. The room was small, but perfectly adequate and it even had a fridge in it, which I made a lot of use of during the time I was there. It also had the shower room to one side, the toilet to the other, and the hot water tank for the whole hotel occupied most of one wall. Still, it had a bed and a roof, which was all I really wanted.

First stop was to buy some shorts! I found a hideously repulsive pair in a bin marked ‘End of Line’ – they were fluorescent yellow and not the sort of thing anyone self-respecting would have bought. I thought they were brilliant. Finally, I could now go down to the beach, or what’s supposed to be the beach. In Nice,what they have instead of sand are large pebbles, just big enough to be extremely uncomfortable if you didn’t have a beach mat to lie on. Guess who didn’t? Decided to pass on the swimming, because last time I swam in the Med was just after some thoughtful tanker owner had decided to wash out his tanks, and the resulting black gunge coated everything it touched, including me. I just lay on the beach and enjoyed the view.

The rest of the week followed pretty much the same pattern. This makes quite dull reading; if you’re after excitement,adventure and really wild things, skip the next paragraph.

W. M. Connolley / CC BY-SA (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)

I’d climb out of bed at about 10 a.m and head for the beach, stopping in at the local supermarket on the way to buy the supplies for the day. These usually consisted of some bread, cold meat, chocolate biscuits (to be eaten on the way to the beach to stop them from melting!) and a large bottle of Orangina, a very popular drink on the continent, only occasionally seen here – it’s like Fanta made with real oranges. The day was then spent relaxing in the sun, thoroughly enjoying having absolutely NOTHING to do. About five o’clock, when the sun began to sink behind the hotels, I’d head back to my room and have a sleep (well, it’s been a tough day) for a couple of hours before heading out and grabbing something to eat (Nice has two McDonald’s).

For the single traveller, Nice in the evenings doesn’t have a lot to offer. It’s a very ‘social’ city, and almost all the entertainment is aimed at two or more people; it was still fun for me to people-watch in the pedestrian zone. However, there was a four-day spell when my longest conversation was ‘Un grand pommes frites, un cheeseburger et un shake au chocolat, s’il vous plait’, so my tongue got a holiday too.

Didn’t spend ALL my time on Nice beach. Spent two days on Monte Carlo beach, and two on Cannes beach – the former had smaller rocks than Nice, and Cannes had REAL sand, though the second day I was there there was a strong wind blowing, which meant I got sandblasted; I was picking grains out of my ears for days. Of course, I overdid the sun. Even with the Protection Factor 10 sun-lotion I splattered about, enough still got through to make it very uncomfortable, with my shoulders, the back of my knees and for some reason my right ear-lobe suffering worst. The last couple of days there, I began to “peel” and itch like mad – sad to see my hard-earned sun-tan coming off in handfuls.

Highlight of the week for me was the evening at the Casino. I’d scouted it out already during one of my visits to the beach, so I knew that the luminous shorts and sandals were OUT. I had brought a half-decent pair of trousers with me (you couldn’t see the paint spots unless you looked closely) and a nice shirt with buttons, so they let me in, even though I was wearing training shoes…

Toni Lozano / CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)

There were two rooms you could go to; the European or the American, the main difference from my point of view being that the European room cost F.50 to get into – I couldn’t see why I should have to pay for the privilege of losing money, therefore I went to the American room to find myself a nice place at a Roulette table. The other players were a mix of foreign tourists and ‘locals’ (well, they spoke French, anyway) and I sat and watched for a while to suss things out. Most of the chips were different colours of plastic – I’d always thought that was to show the values, but I was told that each player had a different colour, and the chips were all F.10. Bigger chips were available if you wanted – these were multi-coloured with a metal disk in the middle, and ranged from F.100 up (and up – outside the European room they had a case with the possible values in. They stopped at 100,000 francs). I handed over my life savings, or at least F.200 of them and received a pile of chips that looked rather smaller than everyone else’s!

They needed them. While I spent the whole evening putting ONE chip on a number or a group or numbers, they sprayed them about like confetti. I saw one person get F.1000 worth of chips and use them all up in about three shots. Meanwhile, I kept on playing ONE chip! Fortunately,on just the second shot, I got lucky. My chip was on No.14, and to my astonishment, that was where the ball landed. I’m no poker-face; in fact, I had to restrain myself from doing a lap of honour round the table as the croupier counted out my F.350. I toyed with the idea of quitting while I was ahead and decided against it – what the hell, you don’t get the chance to visit Monte Carlo THAT often. The rest of the evening wasn’t quite as successful – I think I won once, F.60 – though since I was playing with their money, I wasn’t too bothered. I found it surprisingly exciting, waiting for the ball to stop bouncing and WILLING it towards your number – I can see how people get hooked on it, and it would be VERY easy to lose a large amount of money at it. I left while just about even, having thoroughly enjoyed it.

On the Saturday night I had to leave for Switzerland. on the night train to Geneva. It had only gone a few miles when I suddenly found that my passport, travellers cheques, Inter-rail card, etc had gone. I don’t know whether they were stolen (nothing else in the bag with them was taken) or lost (they were in a zipped up pocket); the hard fact was that I didn’t have them. I got off the train at the first stop, and headed back to Nice to see if anyone had handed them in. No-one had. By this time, it was about 9.30 at night, and I had no money at all. I phoned American Express to see if they could replace my travellers cheques, but there was nothing they could do till Sunday – even if they had, all the places to cash them would have been shut. I had one option. Sleep on the beach.

[TO BE CONTINUED]

Junielib / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)

10 Places in Europe Well Worth a Visit.

  1. The Swiss Alps. Beauty beyond belief.
  2. Palace of Versailles. Probably cheaper to buy than most houses in London.
  3. Alhambra, Seville. Style and cool, where 2) is O.T.T. and trashy.
  4. Amsterdan Red-Light District. No comment.
  5. Monte Carlo. On with the mirror shades, down to the harbour and POSE!
  6. Tivoli Gardens, Copenhagen. Disneyland for grown-ups (above).
  7. Vienna. More architecture per acre.
  8. Florence. History condensed into tins.
  9. Berlin. East meets West.
  10. Any railway carriage with nobody in it…

Trash News

In the last issue, I recall bemoaning the lack of trash politics in Britain – Italy has La Cicciolina, France has Le Pen, but we seemed to have no-one at all capable of dragging the politicians off their high horses down to the level of the rest of us. That was until the arrival of Pamella Bordes.

I just want to take this opportunity to thank the lady for providing us, however unwittingly, with the opportunity to see our respected Members of Parliament rushing to disassociate themselves from this ‘research assistant’ at top speed. The best quote yet comes from an un-named ‘friend’ of hers who said, roughly “She has a fantastic oral sex technique – it costs 500 pounds for a blow job, but it’s worth every penny”. More power to your tongue, Pamella, and hope your face heals up soon!!