One of the best pages to write in PC Zone - the magazine I write for, and in case you didn’t know, the magazine that pipes a square one into the face of PC Gamer, which licks its lips and looks thankful - is the Meet The Team page. I get to write 35 words about everyone I work with, and because no-one really minds what I say about them, I get to write stuff like this.

Jamie dressed up like a heron and staged a rooftop protest in which he flung eggs down the chimney. When bystanders asked what point he could possible by making, his only reply was to drop his trousers and look sad.

Suzy cannot maintain eye contact with foreigners, because she thinks they want to eat her. And she’s absolutely right - she’s full of delicious jelly beans that abroad-sorts love!

Will is so secure in his heterosexuality that he can maintain an unembarrassed embrace with a bricklayer for over three days, until the bricklayer has died of thirst.

This month, no-one really batted an eyelid when I implied that Will abuses animals. But heaven knows, I don’t want to fall into a rut, so I was trying to approach Steve’s Irishness without resorting to the office clichés, which are;

1. Sorry Steve, I can’t hear you. You appear to be made entirely out of potatoes.
2. Steve, could you put The Yellow Book of Lecan into the toilet please?
3. Hey Steve, in terms of endlessly repeated racial slurs, have we worn Leprechauns out yet?

My thoughts turned, as they so often do, to Daniel O’Donnell, and I decided to go to his website, to see if there were any clues as to a sophisticated Irish joke that had never been made before. And stop right there, thank you very much… this is what greets visitors to Daniel’s site. Is it a joke? Well is it? A joke?

Welcome to the Original Daniel O’Donnell Website

I’m delighted to welcome you to the original Daniel O’Donnell website. I felt that when Buckingham Palace got their own internet presence that I needed to have one as well. I hope that you will take some time to look through what we have included and that you will find it informative.

Daniel! You’ve sold over thirty-nine cubic terametres of music in your lifetime. You hold tea parties in which everyone in the fucking WORLD is connected directly to a gigantic tea-filled dirigible with your face on it. This tea party was talked about the world over! OUR QUEEN IS BUT A HAIR ON YOUR GORGEOUS SCALP.

This is an actual conversation between Daniel and his mother. I know it happened because I can’t see any way that it hasn’t.

SCENE 1 : DANIEL’S HOUSE
Daniel sits with his mother in the lounge. She has put the kettle on. The kettle is five hundred feet high and boils all the water in Ireland. Daniel reclines.

DANIEL
They’ve got a swan on the Royal Family’s website, mother. A feckin’ swan. She’s actually got men in boats, rowing around and counting her swans. The power that woman has, it’s unimaginable.

DANIEL’S MOTHER
Well, I’m sure I don’t know why she’d do that, Daniel. Swans indeed.

Daniel’s Mother gathers six dozen hoses from a cupboard under the stairs.

DANIEL
She gives people medals, you know.

DANIEL’S MOTHER
You gave that wee girl a badge with your face on it. It was as big as she was, that badge. She rolled off down the hill. You’re a generous man, Daniel. What kind of woman gives away medals for poetry? A woman with something to prove, is who.

Daniel’s Mother connects the hoses up to delivery spouts on the bottom of the kettle, and hurls the other ends out of the window.

DANIEL
Mother, is it scientifically possible to turn the sun into a medal? If I turned the sun into a big golden medal, with my face on it, then I’d be a kind of God. Then I could get that bitch’s dragonball once and for all.

Daniel’s Mother turns a series of enormous valves, and a light rain of tea drops from their hovering castle forms a rainbow with Daniel O’Donnell’s face.

DANIEL’S MOTHER
I don’t see why we couldn’t do that, Daniel.

DANIEL
Excellent! I’ll get my ceremonial robes. Tell the engine room to put all the livestock into the furnace - we’re taking this castle to Buckingham Palace!

WILL DANIEL DEFEAT THE QUEEN OF ENGLAND, AND HARNESS THE POWERS OF THE FIFTH DRAGONBALL? WHAT IS THE SECRET BEHIND HIS TEA-MAKING FACILITIES?

Don’t miss the dramatic conclusion, which will feature the entire cast of every television show ever made in a series of cameos lasting two years.

In case you missed it, here’s the link again to Romancing The Tea’s page on Daniel O’Donnell. It really is the best thing I’ve ever seen on the internet.

Now I’ve established Francis Gilbert as the nation’s most despicable curmudgeonly bore, I’d like to show you the first two entries on his blog. This is the man who is attempting to found a doomsaying empire around the fact that he got hit on the head by some children once, when he was on the bus.

1. “Fucking hell.”
2. “Did you feel that, darling? It felt like the chill of death.”
3. “Well, that’s got that out of the way.”
4. “Jesus, that could have been Francis Gilbert.”
5. “They bombed a bus? Bit of an anti-climax. They’ll be bombing pedalos next.”
6. “I hope Francis Gilbert gets through his period of therapeutic meditation soon, and starts a blog.”

From these blog entries, you can imagine him consoling the relatives of the bereaved.

“Yes, that must be terrible, your husband getting blown up on a bus. I got hit on the head by some atrocious yobs, once, and my faith in humanity died an equally messy death as your husband. I’m still grieving today, and my loss only ever gets more profound and agonising. Sometimes I think only my own brilliance gets me through the seemingly endless catalogue of days.”

I’ll leave you with one of his poems, taken from his wonderful website.

Pylons

They stand haunch-shouldered, hands on hips
Skirted by rushing grass and foxglove
Like nannies, with angry pursed lips
Staring at us. Have they no love?
Is it a job and nothing more?
Beneath their metallic glare in June
We, the meadows, the deep forest, the blue air
Hide from them all afternoon.

WHY DON’T YOU LOVE FRANCIS, YOU STUPID PYLONS?

A year ago, they said they were going to show the Law of the Playground on the television. I had my mum propped up on a broomhandle in front of the telly, with utterly clear instructions that she wasn’t to move a muscle. My cousin’s daughters had told people in school, basking in the tertiary cool that comes from having a relative you don’t talk to that much being theoretically linked to a TV show. The publisher of the book became so excited that the static charge on his jumper defibrillated everyone in the room.

And then they didn’t show it. My mother slumped to one side in a crestfallen fashion, my cousin’s daughters were nailed to a creaky door for telling lies about the telly, and the publisher came out of his megavolt rage to see that he was surrounded by death, and his painting of an inspirational dolphin had been turned into a portal leading directly to hell. Perhaps I should say “transmuted”. Turned seems a bit lame, considering it was a portal to hell.

But now, it’s totally happening. And you do know why I know it’s totally happening? Because Vic Reeves was just on an advert for it, because it’s on the Radio Times website, and most of all, because a teacher has written an article in the newspaper saying it’s a miserable and moronic show, of which everyone in the world should be ashamed. And his name’s Francis Gilbert, which sounds pretty fucking clever if you ask me. So I feel I should engage him in ULTRA-SERIOUS DEBATE. What do you say about the TV show, Mr Gilbert?

It is based on Jonathan Blyth’s The Law of the Playground website (www.playgroundlaw.com) and book which has gathered a cult following on the internet because it is choc-a-bloc with supposedly amusing schoolyard anecdotes.

Cough! Splutter! Supposedly amusing? I could talk about his three books, which detail his experiences as a teacher in a world that’s quite literally falling apart around his awful head, and I could say that they are supposedly thought-provoking, or that “according to so-called conventional wisdom, they’re not written by a booby-hat“.

Instead, I just stole the photo of him from his agent’s page. Now I don’t have a particular attachment to the Law of the Playground TV series, but this guy’s ragging on my book. And that’s like men in bio-suits from some shadowy government agency storming into my house and screaming “WHERE IS THE GODDAMN EXTRATERRESTRIAL WE’VE GOT PERMISSION FROM TONY BLAIR TO ROUGH UP YOUR DOG”. So allow me to put words into your mouth, Mr Glandpiss Bumsquirt.

“DOOOO! By dabe’s Fwancis Glibret. Look! I’m outraged! It just drives me so mad! I’m hopping mad, and I don’t care who knows it! You know what I’m going to do? if you don’t stop having children at me, I’m going to write book after book about how how my life has been ruined because a nation packed full of rapists and whores that won’t stop having children at me.”

What does he go on to say?

The website is much more successful because it can be dipped in and out of and it doesn’t demand that you laugh: you’ve got a moment to pause and reflect on each story.

Oh. Fair enough, I like you again now. In fact, I can quite imagine us being introduced at one of Madame Engadine’s wonderful parties.

SCENE SEVEN: MADAME ENGADINE’S DINNER PARTY
ENGADINE: Oh Mr Blyth, you absolutely must meet Francis. He simply abhors children, so I imagine he is gay. Perhaps you will fall in love.
BLYTH: Exquisite idea, Madam Engadine. It has been months since I fell in love properly. My last few encounters have been rather like getting soap out of a wall-mounted dispenser.
ENGADINE: Mr Gilbert sir, would you come over here? Is everything alright, my dear?
GILBERT: No. I’m utterly outraged. It’s the children, they’re just so hideous. Don’t you think?
BLYTH: Vile, quite vile. I hear that they trump, and then laugh at the trump.
GILBERT: That is not all. Sometimes they draw penises, for no reason at all. Then they laugh at the penises. Trumping and penises are not funny.
ENGADINE: I trumped on my dear husband’s penis last night, and I can assure you neither of us laughed. He said a bit of brown air went down his urethra.
GILBERT: I have vomited a million times.
[JONATHAN BLYTH (me) AND FRANCIS GILBERT MOVE INTO A BUNGALOW]

Of Francis Gilbert’s review of the LotP TV show, this is the paragraph I love most of all. I do, I love it, and it is what I’m going to make him say at our wedding.

I can testify from bitter personal experience that farting games are still very popular. In one of my classes, a troublesome boy emitted a loud fart while shouting at the top of his voice, “Safety!” – the code word for this particular game. Immediately, there was a massed rush for the door as everyone tried to touch the door handle. A flurry of cussing ensued as the pupils screamed, “I touched the knob first! I touched it first! That means you get beats! Beats!” The boy who had done this, then turned to the rest of the gang and pummelled the arms of his peers. I learnt later the first one to touch the door knob was entitled to beat everyone else. I looked on in astonishment and dismay. My lesson on Shakespeare’s language was ruined: another language had supplanted it, the school boy language of ‘farts’ and ‘knobs’ and mayhem.

Farts and knobs! What IS this behaviour? It’s just so inexplicably childish! Gilbert goes on to say that this is distressing for everyone in the classroom, not just him. Distressing for the everyone running towards the door handle, Mr Gilbert? I put it to you - using the very evidence you have supplied me with, like the lawyer skillz I have gained playing Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - that your children were having a great time, and you felt stupid because all you had was blank prose and diamic pentameter to tempt them away with. Like some anaemic Milky bar kid, trying to coax lions away from a deer corpse with lightly whipped nougat. You flimsy gondola of piss.

This very thing happened in my classroom about 18 years ago. I didn’t get involved, I was far too respectful of authority as a child for that. But it was fucking brilliant. Safety? Doorknob? Beats? Do you not find it funny at all, that one act could have such illogical but undisputed consequences? Do you not find it positively… Kafka-esque?

SCENE EIGHT: FRANCIS GILBERT’S BOOK PUBLISHER MEETING
PUBLISHER: So, Yob Nation. This is the third book you’ve written for us, Francis.
FRANCIS: Yes, it is. It’s essentially the same thing, but with a title that’s more likely to make newspapers want to talk to me.
PUBLISHER: Good luck with that, Francis. Your joyless brand of adult-orientated outrage and the odd statistic will go down a storm in the Mail, I’m sure. But that’s not why we’re here.
FRANCIS: Oh? I was just going to recline in this chair and read Porphyria’s Lover. It’s my favourite poem in the world, it really is. It paved the way for Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love To Town, in a very real sense.
PUBLISHER: Coughbendercough. Please, put the poetry down. As I say, this is your third book, and that means you have to kiss the next person who comes through that door. Unless you can say the alphabet backwards.
[FRANCIS LOOKS UTTERLY DESPONDANT AT THE LACK OF LOGICAL CAUSALITY, PULLS ALL HAIR OUT]

I’m quite certain I have no idea of the complexities of the classroom mechanic, but from the simplicities of that paragraph, you come across like a whimpering mound of tit-jelly. If we’re going to be married, Francis, you’re going to have to pull your socks up.

SCENE NINE: AT THE BUNGALOW OF LOVE
GILBERT: Oh, darling, it was terrible!
BLYTH: Tell me! I long to feel the sting of outrage!
GILBERT: One of the boys said “knob” today. He said it very loud.
BLYTH: In a reference to the male genitals, Francis?
GILBERT: No, it was about a doorknob.
[BLYTH SWOONS. GILBERT CRAWLS ONTO THE BALCONY AND PLAYS THE LUTE, WEEPING]

And Mr Gilbert - if someone says to you “this guy on the internet says you’re probably gay because you’ve made a living out of saying how awful it is to be a teacher”, don’t run off and write a piece in The Times, about how you’re absolutely certain that the internet is now the cause of children being right little cunts. Just turn around and say “what, that bloke on disappointment? He’s 100% gay, and he doesn’t even hide it. What the hell were you doing reading an openly homosexual man’s gay blog, you actual bummer?”. And if they protest, saying “I’m not gay,” tell them that they’re just repressed, and anyway it’s reverse-day, so they just came out to the class.

CASE CLOSED

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got three books on Amazon to review.