tfiaJ-EECH
Sucking the blood of popular entertainment
Golf warrior
I Once the crutch of our economy, foreign workers are now its backbone. They're lifting your crates, supemsing your physiotherapy and filling in at the office tor those six months you malinger on a sota eating Doritos. In hotels they're turning down the sheets. providing massages and resisting Kevin Costner's pleas for a 'happy finish'.
I They're scribbling magaZine columns too. A decade ago. the Leech abandoned sunnier climes to work in a vibrant media industry but. owing to a weakness for pakora and skag. washed up in Scotland instead. Dried up, mopped and prepared potato salad too. That Gordon Ramsay's a slavedriver. Still, those were happy days. lnterspersed with almost suicidal depression.
I No longer one of the migrant anonymous. the Leech has made a pseudonymous name and established a reputation akin to dirt in the Scottish media. so continues to identify with the foreign downtrodden, instructing our Singaporean help to purchase fair trade truffles and fole gras whenever possible. Our plumber. electrician and au pair are all Polish, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, the current president and Miss Poland respectively, and we sponsor an Indonesian boy in a football boot sweatshop, his shoddy workmanship ensuring broken metatarsals aplenty for the English national team.
I On 1 May, World Labour Day. the Leech reacted to the news of impending shortages in the Chinese workforce and immigrant rights protests in the US by going to see the Pet Shop Boys. Neil, the other one and the Nonhern Sinfonia were playing to a crowd of 14,000 in
12 THE LIST 1 1—25 May 2006
Newcastle's shipyards. restoring that masterpiece of Sowet silent Cinema. Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship
Potent/(in. Very moving it was too as
the Czar‘s troops out through the Odessa populace to a pulsating beat of Euro disco, in scenes the Leech nevertheless found derivative of The Untouchables, that movie from Mr Costner's less tactile period. No matter, because the Leech was there to see one of the world's finest wandering artisans. Dennis from Auf Wi’edersehen, Pet. Looking tired and emotional, Tim Healy stood atop the crowd to introduce ‘Sergei Einstein's' revolutionary account of the Russian oppression. Overcome by the sheer suffering. the Leech couldn't help but lead a chorus of ‘Working on the site. from morning ‘tilI night. that's livin‘ alrightl, that's livin' alright!'
I ‘You‘re fired!‘ is a phrase as foreign to the Leech as ‘You‘re hired!’ But this writer genuinely appreciates Donald Trump. especially now Jack McConnelI's appointed him an ambassador for Scotland after the billionaire pledged to build a golf course in this nation woefully lacking in such facilities. Ingratiating himself to the natives. Trump attributed his achievements to his ‘Scottish roots‘. thereby confirming that his ridiculous
thatch is woven from Highland cattle.
3 Battle scarred
Summer is on its way, and with it comes the desire to publicly expose parts of the body usually only revealed behind locked doors. But it doesn‘t have to be this way! Peeling noses. blistered backs and strap mark anxiety could all be things of the past if only people embraced their natural skin tone and kept out of the glare.
HATE! CHANGE
Whoever said ‘a change is as good as a rest‘ clearly hadn‘t spent much time in my local branch of Sainsbury‘s. The clearly delineated route from the soya milk. via butter beans. green olives and Fairtrade chocolate. is apparently no longer sacred to Mr JS. Human beings are creatures of habit and we should be respected as such. Now put the organic honey back where it belongs!
5 POLITICAL CHAMELEONS ‘
Why not fly a dozen journos out to a Norwegian glaCIer for the day to prove you care about climate change? Some peOpIe will say anything to get elected.
Bill Clinton Being able to take the idea of truth and make it feel inadequate is a rare talent indeed. Clinton is the master: dissembling about dodging the draft. dismissing his stoned uni days with a breezy ‘I did not inhale'. and explaining cigar-based ladypleasure and a dress stained with man-muck with the jaw-dropping ‘I did not have sexual relations with that woman.‘
Wlnston Churchill Although it's idle gossip that Winnie was a champagne-guzzling bisexual who dictated letters to his secretary from the bath, it‘s a fact that he flitted from Conservative to Liberal and back again, before. erm. winning the War. He described his prevarication with typical wit: ‘Anyone can rat. but it takes a certain ingenuity to re-rat.’
Pope Pius ll Head honcho of the Catholics from 1458-1464. Italian Enea Silvio Piccolomini tended to do and say whatever the circumstances required. Even so, his reputation is as one of the great Pontiffs. convincing Louis XI to increase his authority in France. and getting the Holy Roman Emperor and the King of Hungary to kiss and make up.
Osama bin Laden Before decreeing the annihilation of Western civilisation, Ozzie's relationship with us was cosy. During the Afghan war he led a mujahadeen unit bankrolled by the US against the Soviet occupation. Legend has it he's an Arsenal fan too, regularly watching the London side in the 1990s The club have since banned him.
Tony Blair Signs are that this political chameleon might be about to drop off his twig. Sensing his authority ebbing, his pronouncements have become more authoritarian of late. He did. of course, take the Labour party from its socialist roots onto ground traditionally occupied by conservatives. No wonder David Cameron fancies him.