Let’s make it clear : the Olympic Torch is not actually important. It doesn’t matter if it goes out; mankind is sufficiently advanced to find a way to light it again. You don’t need heavy-handed sky-blue thugs (Seb Coe’s own words) to protect it from people venting their anger at the one-party-dictatorship in China and their brutal crackdown on Tibetan ‘separatists’. If you have to put it out and jump on a bus, it’s okay, you can admit it. The whole torch relay was started by the Nazis anyway. You can’t pretend that it was never political.

I’ll tell you what I think of when I see the Olympic torch (apart from the Aryan-supremacist iconography and the former symbol of the Tories) (and yes, apart from a Mr.Whippy). That bloody Chariots of Fire theme by Vangelis. And I’ll tell you what I think of when I think of that. An exchange trip to France I took at college, when I shared a room with a guy who listened to it on his headphones, after dark, when he thought I was asleep (I so wish I had been), and I could hear him busy doing the 15-centimetre sprint, tossing the caber, giving the bronze medal a good polish, slapping duncan goodhew on the head. And yelping, “putain! putain!”, as if I couldn’t hear him or something. I don’t know what he was thinking of, but I bet it wasn’t Nigel Havers.

originally posted at 20six.co.uk/petescully

Oh i do like to be a Brit in America. Since moving out here I have discovered that the natives will deem even the most Burnt Oak of accents the mark of intellect and compliment us by imitating it. Things we take for granted, such as newsagents on every corner, unfriendly bus drivers, and cheap bread are notably absent; even electric kettles are like fresh milk in France. To make us feel at home, however, we have a newspaper, one that I only really discovered this past weekend. It’s one of those free ones you find in pubs, a bit like the ones Aussies and Kiwis get outside tube stations on west London, and it’s patriotically called “Union Jack”. Here (and not on that BBC website or anything) is where Brits get their news, and what news.

“Public Loo Closures Causing Protests Nationwide”, runs one headline. “Monk Killed in Lawnmower Accident” should be the title of a movie. “HRH Prince Andrew visits Orange County” was another; “HRH Prince Andrew”?? I’ve never heard him called that in a tabloid headline before. The paper seems to have a bit of a something for Andy, as he crops up several more times in other articles. But I can’t really poke fun at headlines, you’d get these in any British local paper (“rising bollards claim another victim” was my favourite one from the Ely Standard, or was it the Cambridge Evening News). I will poke fun at the adverts though, each and every one of them promoting some crappy little tea shoppe or something where you can spend your funny-looking dollars buying Kippers, Steak and Kidney Pies, or Mr. Kipling cakes. Except one: the word “Bollocks” leaps out in large letters, above a picture of a dog, with the caption “Real Bollocks to Hang Anywhere in your Home”. I don’t know what it’s actually selling, but who cares?! (It’s one of the things Brits really love, that even the most curse-sensitive of Americans will not understand one of our most beloved swearwords).

Other sections include some badly written columns by some old English expat wallies turning out any old shit that relates to British American relations (hold on a minute, isn’t that what I do..? ), and a load of other useless bits of month-old non-news from various bog-standard towns around the UK, dog loses pen in port vale, that sort of thing. The saving graces of this paper – let’s face it, this ridiculous rag with too many British flags on it not to be slightly suspicious – are a couple of detailed columns letting us know what i currently going on in Eastenders and Coronation Street. Now that’s the sort of thing Brits really want, updates on the soaps; expats who’ve lived abroad so long all the characters have changed and they can’t follow any of it anyway. It was however the appalled-in-woking reaction of the columnist herself that made me guffaw the most: “It was hard to describe how violent and disturbing those Vic smashing scenes were. I personally hope they don’t do anything like that again.” They have a real cutting edge TV critic there in the Union Jack. Victor Lewis-Smith, you’d better keep an eye on your job. The rest of us had better keep an eye on our bollocks.

Originally posted at 20six.co.uk/petescully