Rod Liddle
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The wind turbine in Lincolnshire that was mysteriously damaged a couple of nights ago was the subject of a collision with an alien spacecraft from the Planet Thrang, located deep within the Crab Nebula, it has been revealed (by me, just now).
The ship had travelled some 6,572 light years from its home planet to get a better look at Sleaford and Louth, Thrangian spokesmen originally reported. It had traversed wormholes, dodged missiles from interplanetary wars and navigated the difficult Oort Zone on the edge of our solar system before somehow flying smack into the blades of the wind turbine at Conisholme.
Already there are demands for an inquiry back on Thrang and the anger has focused on the new cut-price space travel companies, of which this spaceship was a part. Fly to London* for Only 11 Zorgs (baggage extra, no food for 500 years, no wheelchairs) was the advertisement which tempted the largely working-class Thrangians to climb on board in their tracksuits and souvenir interstellar cowboy hats with their whining toddlers and demands, even before the booster rockets had dragged them beyond Thrang’s methane-rich atmosphere, for duty-free alcohol.
Given tentacle-room of 9½in for most of a millennium and continually harassed by the stewardesses to buy perfume, watches and sickly chocolate in the shape of seashells, the passengers were looking forward to seeing the famous changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace and a matinee performance of Cats. They paid their money, they knew what they were getting into, the boss of the spaceship company said of the poor helium-filled souls who were either incinerated or drowned when the spaceship plunged into the North Sea, seven miles east of Mablethorpe. But this is a crisis for the Thrangian space tourism industry, make no mistake.
Rather wonderfully, my scenario, or one like it, was considered the most likely explanation for the damage occasioned to the turbine last week, according to one spokesman. It often is. Something untoward occurs and immediately the cry goes up: it’s those bloody aliens again. Among the first to point the finger at the Planet Thrang were the eco-monkeys who have wished these hideous wind turbines upon the rest of us. Obviously, a source of energy which snaps in half when the weather gets a bit nippy, as a consequence of metal fatigue or ice, is not much use so – cross your fingers – it must be aliens.
However, everyone else was happy to join in. Lights in the sky were seen in the moments before the turbine broke! Have you ever not seen lights in the sky, by the way? As it happens, the lights in the sky can be put down (in all seriousness) to a journalist from The Guardian newspaper holding a firework party in Lincolnshire, presumably out of solidarity with Hamas. But even when the lights are explained away, we would still prefer a Thrangian spin on the event.
It’s an odd thing; UFO sightings dwindled at the end of the cold war to such an extent that lots of wacko organisations dedicated to proving that they were really out there closed down. Sightings reached their low point in the months before 9/11. However, there has been a conspicuous revival in the last couple of years and that is either because the Planet Thrang has sorted out some economically viable airspace deal with our government – or maybe for some other reason, which resides within us.
Right now, lights in the sky which are not either the moon or Venus are apt to be interpreted as visitors from beyond the known world. The thing is, when we begin to feel insecure, either because we’re about to be made redundant or fear assault by fundamentalist Muslims, our natural incredulity disappears and we turn into David Icke. Pretty much every newspaper last week went for the Aliens Destroy Our Turbines line. But it wasn’t aliens, was it?
*Flixborough Spaceport. See GNER timetables for trains to London. Good luck
+ Encouraging news in a report from the Girls’ Schools Association – apparently lots of its rather well-bred young women do not wish for high-powered careers, but want instead for nothing more than to become the attractive appendages of male celebrities. In other words, they want to be Wags. These creatures are a malign influence, characterised by “low IQs and high heels”, growls the GSA while trying, not altogether successfully, to swallow the vomit rising in its throat.
The girls seem eminently sensible to me. Far better to hang around some moneyed cretin doing absolutely nothing all day – other than lounge on a beach, attend the occasional fashion show and maybe give one’s name to a brand of perfume which smells like the dashboard air freshener in a 1986 Ford Cosworth – than slog one’s guts out as a marketing analyst, insurance loss adjuster or lesbian outreach worker for Brent council. Empowering these jobs may well be, but they are also dull and too much like hard work. And recession or otherwise, society will always need Wags simpering in the background.
A couple of crashing bores
Is there anyone alive with a larger ego and set of delusions than the former England cricket captain, Kevin Pietersen? He demanded the sacking not merely of the coach, Peter Moores, but the batting coach, Andy Flower, too. Meanwhile, his own most recent record as captain is: played eight, won none, drawn one, lost seven; nothing is quite so hilarious as epic cockiness manifested in a patently unjust cause.
Which brings us to another sporting hero who is not necessarily bursting with humility – Cristiano Ronaldo, who recently announced that he was the best three players in Europe. The muppet has just crashed his car – a Ferrari, natch – into the wall of a tunnel. To everyone’s surprise he promptly got out and walked away, rather than rolling around on the ground for five minutes in faux agony.
Hard to get? More like hard to take
Bono was, as ever, wrong: some things do change on New Year’s Day. This new year, for example, Paris Hilton became a virgin once again – a remarkable accomplishment. Well, almost a virgin; she has told astonished journalists that she has slept with only two men in her entire life, a notion greeted by most people as – forgive me – virgin on the ridiculous. She also said that she likes to “play hard to get” with gentlemen friends.
Hmm, it’s a perplexing issue, isn’t it? It’s rather as if Heather Mills suddenly revealed to us that she has two perfectly good legs. It’s what we know Paris Hilton for, after all – not least as a consequence of her daintily titled internet porno film One Night in Paris. Perhaps Paris doesn’t really consider it proper sex unless she has filmed it and put it out on YouTube; that’s one explanation. But I’m still left wondering what on earth she means, precisely, by playing “hard to get”. I think it’s going to be a long, strange year.
+ Here’s a lesson for any men transfixed by love. American doctor Richard Batista loved his wife, Dawnell, so much that he donated his kidney to her when she was ill. After the operation, she reportedly embarked on an affair with someone else and then later filed for divorce.
An understandably upset Dr Batista now wants his kidney back – or, in lieu of that, $1.5m (£1m) in compensation. The case has yet to come to court, but when it does you can bet on Richard losing his home, his kids, most of his income, his other kidney and quite possibly his pancreas too.
Rod Liddle left his post as editor of the BBC's Today programme in 2002, after a row about impartiality in an article he wrote for The Guardian. He was formerly a speechwriter for the Labour Party. As well as writing for The Sunday Times, he contributes to The Spectator and Country Life and presents current affairs documentaries on television
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As always great column Rod. I usually start seeing things after my second bottle of cut price Merlot and after a third I would happy become a WAG if I could fulfill the necessary criteria which even with the rapid advance of trans-gender and cosmetic surgery would seem rather unlikely.
CHARLIE, LONDON, United Kingdom
I wait all week to read your article: you never disappoint. Thank you Ron Liddle
Name withheld, Oxfordshire, UK
The site is next-door to a MoD testing range. We are involved in two wars. I wonder what the explanation is?
Anthony Lester, Brum,