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The World's an ugly place, and we wanna' hear about it...
The Pariah, being England's foremost anti-gossip magazine, has always been diabolically smut-hungry, and, as such, we'd love to hear all your outlandish comments about this country's shabby genteel.
Please e-mail any such witticisms, and/or observational comedy basics, to The Pariah, at the address on the following page.
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Sir,
'Maurice', 'Lair of the White Worm', 'Bitter Moon', 'An Awfully Big Adventure', 'Four Weddings and a Funeral', that one where there's a doctor and there's something sinister going on (It didn't do very well) and 'Notting Hill'.
What do these often inaccessible and challenging films have in common apart from their uniform excellence? Had enough? Well there is a single, golden thread running through each of these disparate titles: the inimitable Hugh Grant.
Hugh has been gracing (and I don't think that's an overstatement!) our screens for 20 years now, a protean ball of energy, always challenging, always changing, mutable as the seasons and as varied. In fact more varied as there are only four seasons and Hugh has done more than 4 films!
Who can forget his jittery, foul mouthed fop in 'Weddings'?Or his occasionally rattled toff in 'Notting'? What about his fish-out-of-water upper crust Brit in that one where Julianne Moore is pregnant (- it had a Robin Williams cameo. He was hilarious)? If there was ever any doubt about Hugh's 'chops' (by which I mean his acting credentials), I would point the cynics in the direction of one movie: 'Mickey Blue Eyes'. Hugh's toe-curling turn as a pompous, stuffed-shirt Englishman abroad marrying into the mob, by mistake yet, is a comedy powderkeg. He literally blows James Caan off the screen! And he's a really good actor. He was in 'The Godfather'.
So in the words of Hugh's character in this movie, when it comes to magical movie careers you may find it difficult to "fergeddaboudit"! - Hugh's that is!
Yours,
Beverley Keen 
Sir,
Have you ever noticed that, when urinating, men sometimes tend to leave the loo seat up? Or that sometimes, when you're doing laundry, it often appears that you are missing half of a previously matched pair of socks, almost as if the washing machine or dryer IS TAKING THEM! I mean thinking rationally it must be my imagination but...it IS kind of odd. Does anyone remember Spangles or Space Dust or Pacer Mints? Texans 'sure were a mighty long chew', weren't they?
While I'm thinking about this flotsam from our shared childhoods, Spacehoppers were weird, weren't they? Like an orange lion, WITH HORNS? And what about Buckaroo, Operation or Frustration ( with its popomatic dice )? I mean what were we thinking?
I once offered an American bloke a " fag "! You should have seen the look on his face! It was like I'd questioned his sexuality! You see the thing about men is that while we may occasionally be crass or childish or unhygienic or unromantic at the end of the day were basically all right. At least I am.
Am I the only one who notices these things? Because whenever I mention these things people just laugh at me. I've been asking these same questions for the last 10 years, in every comedy venue up and down the country, and people are STILL laughing. Why?
Yours confusedly,
Lee Mack, comedian.
PS: Have you ever noticed that black people and white people drive differently...?
Lee Mack is currently appearing in 'When did you last see your trousers?' at the Apollo, Hammersmith. |
