Oyez! Oyez! Oyez! There can be few British traditions more English than that of the town crier. In his scarlet frock, tricorn hat, winklepicker shoes, white silk stockings and ermine posing pouch, the town crier’s bleating horn, clanging dong and horrid rasping voice have brought good news to the filthy peasant and the fragrant lord alike since the days of King Arthur and the sheriff of Nottingham! But for a fearful 48 hours last week, it looked as if six of our finest town criers were about to be stolen away to Covid-ridden continental Europe. And for no better reason than to make untold billions of euros for some bastards. God save the Queen!
Oyez! Oyez! Oyez! The Town Crier Euro-Superleague Initiative™® posited a self-contained competitive circle of a dozen of Europe’s finest town criers, each free individually from the financially destabilising threat of relegation and collectively able to command the highest licensing fees from syndicated Town Crier Competition broadcasters and streaming platforms. The Conservative mantra is to let the market decide. For the Conservatives to obstruct big business’ desire for a Town Crier Euro Elite Division™® would be, as former Conservative culture secretary Sajid Javid said when refusing to stop ticket touts inflating the prices of live events, a socialist intervention in the marketplace. God save the Queen!
Oyez! Oyez! Oyez! But while the proposed Interplanetary Super-Crier Sweepstake™® was true to the free-for-all ethics of the buccaneering, free-market philosophy the Brexit-Covid government is built on, it went against the very spirit of what it means to be an Englishman! Especially an Englishman in a marginal red wall seat, the most English man of all the Brexit Britons!! In 2014, the multi-identity trickster Grant Shapps tweeted in support of a budget that would “cut the bingo tax and beer duty to help hard-working people do more of the things they enjoy”. Evidencing the same patronising attitude to a proletariat he sees merely as barely sentient racist aphids, there to be milked for votes and fear, Boris Johnson thinks the raging red wall rebels can be kept on side as long as they have their town crier. On this occasion better not let the market decide!! God save the Queen!!!
Oyez! Oyez! Oyez! No one is denying that it has been a tough 12 months for town criers. Their spittle-flecked ejaculations have been unwelcome in the land of lockdown Britain. This year, their annual British Town Crier Competition, its three-pronged crown currently held by Nuneaton’s proclamation Manalishi Paul Gough, is an online event, but nothing can replace the spectacle of a shouting man clanging in a place. Draconian Covid rules currently forbid town criers from actually crying in actual towns, the defining element of what it means to be a town crier. Is it any wonder the town criers of the Loyal Company of Town Criers were seduced by the financial security of the proposed Town Crier Elite Cadre Internationale™®? And is it any wonder their loyal local legacy fans felt betrayed? God Save the Queen!
Oyez! Oyez! Oyez! By intervening to stop the breakaway Ultimate Town Criers’ Smackdown™® Boris Johnson has betrayed Brexit. In denying big business its right to buccaneer, Boris Johnson spaffs in the eyes of the buccaneer Brexiter Liam Fox, whose march to Brexit was built on the promise of just such audacious business buccaneering. Have we really replaced the legislative prison of the European Union with the shackles of cheap sentiment; with the belief that town crying still means something it hasn’t meant since it was all sold to the Saudi Arabian princes, American business conglomerates and money-laundering billionaires three decades ago? Indeed, Gloucester town crier Alan Yatmin is personally owned by Abu Dhabi’s Sheikh Mansour, who makes him cry in a Bedouin tent. Is it possible that buccaneering Boris Johnson now believes that some things have an inherent value beyond the merely financial? Does this mean the BBC is safe, despite its subsidised recipe website undermining commercially produced baking magazines? God save the Queen!
Oyez! Oyez! Oyez! Now is not the time to lose our nerve. We left the EU to buccaneer freely. Boris Johnson’s spineless intervention in the Great 48 Hour Town Crier Sell-Off of 2021 is a spaff in the face for the millions of Britons who voted for Brexit because they believed we should be free-market buccaneers; and it is a spaff in the face of the betrayed pole-dancing entrepreneur Jennifer Arcuri, who gave Boris Johnson her love on a family sofa, because she believed in his belief in buccaneering. The town criers must be sold. If not to Europe, then into slavery, sexual if necessary, in the billionaires’ fleshbins. We must show the business community of the world that buccaneering Brexit Britain means business. And if the town criers die, prostrate on the haunches of a Berkley Horse in an oligarch’s Parisienne pleasure lair, so be it! Greater love hath no town crier!! Take back control!!! God save the Queen!!!!
I would, however, lobby for the retention of the rebel town criers if they were deployed around the land to dong the news the Conservatives’ client media seem reluctant to broadcast. “Oyez! Oyez! Oyez! Boris Johnson’s pole-dancing lover got public funds! Oyez! Oyez! Oyez! Boris Johnson pretended not to understand why a Northern Ireland protocol he signed off on can never work! Oyez! Oyez! Oyez! Boris Johnson tried to get his flat decorated through a spurious charity he himself set up! Oyez! Oyez! Oyez! Boris Johnson spent more than £4m on internet campaigning adverts, 88% of which turned out to be false. Oyez! Oyez! Oyez! Boris Johnson lied to Her Majesty and unlawfully suspended parliament! God save the Queen!”
A 12-inch vinyl of the January No 1 hit single Comin’ Over Here by Asian Dub Foundation (ft Stewart Lee) is now available from Xray Productions. The acclaimed anti-rockumentary King Rocker (ft Stewart Lee) is streaming on Now TV
