Can you honestly imagine Lenny Bruce or Bill Hicks submitting to the discipline of the Whips?

That was the Right Honourable MP for Ealing North, Stephen Pound, on this evening’s PM programme on Radio 4,  once again justifying his status as one of the only contemporary British politicians I’d happily buy a pint for.  Following the news that US satirist Al Franken had been elected as Minnesota Senator, Pound and comedy writer John O’Farrell were discussing whether its possible for a comedian or satirist to become a politician and remain funny.   Pound felt that it was unlikely, partly because a true satirist like Bruce or Hicks could never slavishly tow the party line.  He thought it was a shame, because “most MPs are so buttoned-down, they’re so tight, they’re so butt-clenchingly anxious not to give offense or do anything but pitch to the middle vote.”

Refreshing stuff.

To his credit, this isn’t the first time Stephen Pound has name-checked the mighty Bill Hicks.  According to his Wikipedia entry:

In February 2004 he initiated an early day motion mourning the 10th anniversary of the death of comedian Bill Hicks, calling him “unflinching and painfully honest” and his words “a bullet in the heart of consumerism, capitalism and the American Dream”.

I first heard of  Stephen Pound during Christmas 2003, when Radio 4’s Today Programme asked listeners to suggest laws that they’d like to see added to the statute books.  A shortlist was reached, listeners were invited to vote for their favourite and the Right Honourable MP for Ealing North agreed to provide political support to the winning law.  With the toe-curling predictability of an episode of Baywatch, the Great British public backed the most bloody-minded, vindictive, just-to-the-right-of-Genghis Khan option available.   Pound’s on-air reaction was priceless:  “Well, the people have spoken – the bastards.”

I’ve owed him a pint ever since.

“I have this feeling that whoever’s elected president, like Clinton was, no matter what promises you make on the campaign trail – blah, blah, blah – when you win, you go into this smoky room with the twelve industrialist, capitalist scumf***s that got you in there, and this little screen comes down… and it’s a shot of the Kennedy assassination from an angle you’ve never seen before, which looks suspiciously off the grassy knoll…. And then the screen comes up, the lights come on, and they say to the new president:

“‘Any questions?’

“‘Er, just what my agenda is…’”

- Bill Hicks, 1961-1994

“People Just Ain’t No Good” is a. a song by Nick Cave & Bad Seeds, b. a catchy mission statement for misanthropes, and, c. the title of a UK small press vet Rol Hirst’s excellent comeback comic.

As you might expect from the title, the three stories that make up PJANG serve up a not altogether sunny-side-up view of the human condition. That’s not to say it’s a depressing read – there’s plenty of wry humour and at least one happy ending to be found amongst its three stories – but the overarching theme is that we’re living in a world full of no-good shits. Of course, you can’t really argue with a theme like that. In your hearts you know it’s true.

That being said, the three stories that make up ‘PJANG’ are very different beasts. The first, Grotesque, features nicely atmospheric art by my erstwhile drinking buddy Mr Tony McGee. A time-lapsed tale of infidelity born from insecurity, it’s harrowing stuff.

Next is Get Creative! a blackly comic tale about an advertising exec who turns (a gun) on his industry and embarks on a Bill Hicks-inspired killing spree. It’s vicious, funny, has a great twist at the end and features some lovely, stylised art by Andrew Cheverton which reminded me a bit of the work of 2000AD legend Mike McMahon.

Finally, there’s Rooms for Writers by Rol and Kelvin Green. Despite it’s subject matter (it’s about what happens to writers after they die), it manages to end on uplifting, optimistic note that suggests (to this reader at least) that Lord Hirst of Slawit is not quite as gumpy a Yorkshireman as he sometimes makes himself out to be.

PJANG is very good, costs £1.75 and is available from here. Don’t be a tight-arse – go buy it now.

From The Grauniad earlier this week:

“Russell Crowe has confirmed speculation that he aims to star as the comic Bill Hicks during an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald. Crowe, 44, is currently without a project for seven months due to a delay in filming Ridley Scott’s alternative Robin Hood tale, Nottingham. He told the Herald: “I have another project based on the life of comedian Bill Hicks, which is going from treatment to draft stage with Kiwi writer Mark Staufer.” The Herald says it understands Crowe would play Hicks, the outspoken US comedian who died at the age of 32 from pancreatic cancer.”

Oh, dear.

If you go to the original Sydney Morning Herald scoop, however, you’ll find the following:

“Crowe confirmed Nottingham would not go ahead until March next year because director Sir Ridley Scott wanted the leaves on the trees in England’s Sherwood Forest to be the right colour.”

Am I the only person in the room who finds that fucking hilarious?

George Carlin was part of a very fine and very respectable American tradition – that of the painfully funny and dangerously smart freethinking foul-mouth. Many of my heroes belonged to this tradition, and it seems like most of them are now dead. Comics like Carlin and Bill Hicks – and writers like Robert Anton Wilson – didn’t just tell jokes or write comedy, they moulded neuro-linguistic smart bombs with a time-delay fuse, designed to perplex you for months or even years as you find yourself thinking hard about why you laughed so hard in the first place.

Carlin wasn’t that well known in the UK, but I couldn’t help but notice how a lot of the mainstream local coverage of his death has been somewhat coy and evasive. The BBC News website announced that:

“Grammy-award winning comedian George Carlin, best known for his Seven Words You Can Never Say On TV routine, has died of heart failure aged 71.”

The story said quite a lot about his most infamous monologue. It mentioned how “his Seven Words routine led to his arrest in 1972 for disturbing the peace after he performed the act at a show in Milwaukee.” It also told the famous story of the New York radio station that played a recording of the Seven Words, which resulted in “a Supreme Court ruling in 1978 upholding the government’s authority to sanction stations for broadcasting offensive language.”

The one thing the BBC didn’t mention is what the Seven Words You Can Never Say On TV actually were.

Would you like to know what they were?

George Carlin’s Seven Forbidden Words were shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker and tits.

I first read about this in the late Robert Anton Wilson’s excellent book, Quantum Psychology. In it, he devotes a chapter to Carlin and the neurolinguistic hallucinations we associate with “bad” language. Like much of Wilson’s work, it’ll make you laugh like an idiot.

It’ll also perplex you for months.