You have to laugh:

To the many readers of the Sunday Independent, over one million of you, our deep apologies are offered, too.

Oooh, good job you managed to sneak in a little snippet about readership figures in there, Aengus. God forbid you might just apologise without the PR or backslappery.

It reminds me of the time me and Jimmy were sent to have a word with a bloke who was distributing goods in a territory he shouldn't have been. 'Teach him a lesson' we were told as we were handed a piece of paper with an address.

So we drove out to the estate in question and sat a couple of doors down waiting for the target to come out. We smoked a couple of spliffs made from some mental grass that Dirty Dave's brother, Shiny Simon, had posted back from Amsterdam and listened to the radio. That late night talk show cunt on FM104 was on, Chris Barry, what a cock he was, quite literally, and some twats were blathering on about some crap.

I suppose we were there a couple of hours when his front door opened and he walked out. Me and Jimmy got out of the car and interecepted him as he made his way towards him.

"Hey, we need a word", I said.

"What about?" he said.

"As if you don't know", Jimmy said.

"No, really, I don't", he insisted.

"Does this refresh your memory?" I asked as I smashed him across the knees with an aluminium baseball bat.

"Arrrrgggghhhh", he said. I wasn't sure if that meant his memory was refreshed or not.

As he lay on the ground Jimmy kicked him in the ribs and there was a satisfying crack. He huddled up into the fetal position, his hands covering his face. I brought the bat down right on his hands and I could see his fingers start to swell immediately. Jimmy rolled him over onto his back and as he gurgled smashed his fist into his mouth. Once. Twice. Maybe five times. Yer man spat teeth.

Jimmy rolled him over onto his front then and twisted his arm behind his back like a bully used to do to you at school.

"You know why we're here. Stop meddling in other people's business. Understand?"

"Fnarghh, blurgh, urf, glomp" the bloodied mess mumbled as he ate pavement.

"That's what I like to hear. Now, just so we can be sure you know we mean business....." - at that Jimmy wrenched the arm upwards and across, dislocating the collar bone and snapping the elbow.

"Arrrrrrrrrggggghhh", said the repetitive victim as his wife, followed by his two young kids, came running out of his house shouting at us to stop. Which was a bit of a problem because the guy we were supposed to be dealing had no family whatsoever which was what made him such a devil-may-care criminal.

Not our fault though, when you have an estate such as 'Lionville' (not real, merely an example) and within that there's a 34 Lionville Place, 34 Lionville Road, 34 Lionville Grove, 34 Lionville Manor and fucking countless other 34 Lionvilles it's no wonder a couple of guys can get confused. Turns out this bloke was a marketing manager for Kraft. Whooops. At least he'd have plenty of margarines to aid his recovery.

I looked at Jimmy. He looked at me. We both looked at the bloke with the mangled arm, teeth like Shane McGowan and knees as useful as Stephen Hawkings bleeding all over his pretty wife's white blouse as his kids wept plaintively.

"Erm, sorry about that", I said. Our apology meant about as much as the Sunday Indo's.

I had rather a hard weekend last weekend which meant all day Monday I spent clutching my stomach until I got home. If I can avoid pooing in public places, espeically work, I will do so.

Anyway, when I got home I crapped for about 20 minutes non-stop. No joke. My ringpiece was hotter than the sun covered in petrol and thrown into the middle of a volcano. You could have stuck me arse first on the top of a tall building and the glow would have warned planes away. Not a pleasant experience, I have to say, and I've been through a lot in my lifetime.

Tuesday I didn't need to go at all and ever since whenever I poo there is nothing on the toilet paper when I wipe afterwards. Not a single mark. Nothing. I must be pooing perfect poo crystals or something. Monday's mega-plop must have been like some kind of enema/colonic irrigation (without the gay bit of somebody putting a tube up your hoop).

If I could remember what combination of booze and food did it I'd market it and make millions. Naturally the bog roll companies would be after me but fuck those double-ply cunts.

Has anyone else ever experienced a period of non-staining pooing? To me the whole thing is fascinating.

From: Twenty Major
Subject: Question
Date: 12 September 2001 22:41:19
To: Christopher Reeves

Where the fuck were you yesterday, you lazy cunt?

20M

From: Twenty Major
Subject: Information
Date: 9 August 2000 14:31:09
To: Saks department store

Hi,

just thought you'd like to know that I was at a dinner party with Winona Ryder and she got really drunk and started bragging about how she likes shoplifting in your store. You might want to keep a bit of an eye on her next time she's in.

cheers

20M

From: Twenty Major
Subject: Fuck off
Date: 28 February 2003 13:33:06
To: Paul Williams - Sunday World

Paul,

I've been told you're going to run a story about me and Jimmy the Bollix this Sunday. Two words. Veronica Guerin. Two more words. Penis removal. Don't say you weren't warned.

20M

From: Twenty Major
Subject: Mega scoop
Date: 30 August 1997 00:12:19
To: Pierre Paparazzi

Salut Pierre,

Diana will be leaving by the back door of the Ritz Hotel in a few minutes. On yer bike, son!

20M

From: Twenty Major
Subject: Just thought you should know
Date: 16 March 2004 09:31:04
To: JP McManus - John Magnier

Lads,

Alex Ferguson is going round telling anyone who'll listen that he owns Rock of Gilbraltar and that you're a pair of fags. Thought you should know.

Laters.

20M

From: Twenty Major
Subject: Some juicy gossip!
Date: 22 October 2005 23:59:17
To: Sunday Independent Newsdesk

Hi,

I know you've never heard from me before but my reliable sources tell me the girl travelling with Liam Lawlor in Moscow was actually teenage prostitute. Honest!

20M

A Romanian woman was given a three year suspended jail sentence in Dublin yesterday after inflicting a litany of abuse on her four year old daughter.

Hospital staff became suspicious when they noticed bruises of "various ages and shapes" all over the child's face, back, buttocks, legs and arms.

She told the court that she didn't realise it was illegal to beat your child with a big stick. The judge said 'They may do that kind of thing in Romania but you can't do it here!'

Then he let her off, the cunt. Now she's free to beat her kids with iron bars and when they arrest her she'll say "But I thought it was beating them with big sticks that was illegal" and she'll get off then too, free to roam the streets stealing mobile phones and pleading poverty with a mouth full of gold teeth.

Frank the Fairy (as me and Jimmy used to call him when he wasn't anywhere near us) grew up around the same area as me and Jimmy. A bigger chancer and gangster you never met. He'd have stolen from his mother's corpse. He was unassuming looking but he was dangerous too. He once tried to sell me a pair of shoes with the feet still in them.

He was also as bent as a £7 note. If there was a shirt to be lifted he would lift it. If there was fudge to be packed he would pack it. If he had a female friend her name would be Dorothy and if there was a closet he would come out of it. Everybody knew he was gay but nobody ever took the piss out of him for it. Well, apart from John-Paul Ryan who was in another gang and called him a faggot in the pub one evening. Frank just smiled.

"Fancy a pint, Ryaner?" he asked.

"Not from you. Might catch something", said Ryaner a split second before Frank's pint glass shattered all over his face. He never saw out of his right eye again and nobody ever called Frank any 'gay' names to his face again.

As you might imagine someone as quite clearly insane as Frank spend a lot of time inside. He was in and out his whole life for various things. Burglaries, aggravated assaults, robberies, joyriding, drug dealing and he once got sent down for 6 months for pouring a paper cup full of piss over a policeman outside Lansdowne Road one night. He achieved true legendary status during one spell in Mountjoy in the late 80s though. Whilst inside he befriended one of the prison's most dangerous lifers. If you got on the wrong side of him your time, as bad as it was to begin with, would become a living hell.

Ronnie the Skank was sent down for 4 consecutive life terms in the 1979 for a series of murders, one of which was of a gay barman who got battered to death in Fairview Park late one night. The gay barman happened to be the love of Frank's life but obviously Ronnie didn't know that when they became fast friends, and prison being prison, more than that. Ronnie, although ocassionally a taker was much more of a giver, and Frank used this to his advantage.

One day Frank did a deal with one of the catering staff and got a massive helping of baked beans mixed with lentils which he washed down with coca-cola and brown bread. Ronnie used to do Frank in the laundry room and while he was going at it hammer and tongs Frank let rip an enormous fart which sent a bubble of air up Ronnie's chopper, into his blood stream and caused a massive pulmonary embolism which killed Ronnie on the spot.

Of course nobody could prove anything and Frank got away with farting somebody to death. He found it much harder to get his hole though. 'Don't fart on me, Frank!' we'd kid when he made a rare visit to Ron's and he'd stick his arse out at us and go 'Eh? Eh? Anyone feeling suicidal? I just had semolena!'

He spent his latter years semi-retired but would, from time to time, commit some kind of violent crime to give him that bit of spark he needed. Yesterday he died in sleep having managed to embed a hatchet in the back his head before he went to bed.

He was a horrible cunt really but they don't make them like that anymore. RIP Frank.

Taoiseach Bertie Ahern was today seen in a car with man wearing a peaked cap. It is thought the man in question is a member of gay pop group the Village People and he spent yesterday afternoon in the Taoiseach's office giving Bertie reach arounds and pummeling his gaping anus before shooting his sex wee all over his back.

Oh no, wait. That was his driver. Apologies, Bertie.

In other news Irish journalist Rory Carroll was seen at Dublin airport with a mysterious older woman. Sources tell us that Carroll is moonlighting as a gigolo and sells his services to lonely, older housewives via a seedy website and small-ads in the Evening Herald.

Oooops. That was his mum welcoming back home. Sorry about that. No, really we are.

A Nigerian man was arrested earlier today by Gardai in Dublin. We are reliably informed that he was carrying around the foreskins of more than a dozen babies which he had removed with a blunt knife in a witchcraft ceremony in a flat on Dorset Street. He may have had the babies corpses with him too.

Oh dear, we've done it again. It was simple credit card and 419 scams. Can't apologise enough blah blah blah.

Soccer fans may have seen Sunderland striker Stephen Elliot make a strange gesture after scoring against Newcastle on Sunday. The Sunday Independent can reveal it was an elaborate pentagram symbol popular with devil worshippers and members of the DUP. Surely this must spell the end for his Ireland career?

Can you believe it? It was the sign of the cross and he's just a good catholic. You just won't believe how sheepish we feel right now.

Independent Newspapers - making it up as we go along but we're really sorry when people find out.

Why is that wherever there is a jukebox there is 'Sympathy for the Devil' by the Rolling Stones?

And why is that no matter how few people there are in the establishment with the jukebox some cunt will always put it on?

Sympathy for the Devil has to be one of the most annoying songs of all time. It's annoying because some cunt always puts it on the jukebox when you're just trying to have a game of pool, it's annoying because it's got that 'Wooo Wooo' bit, it's annoying because everybody seems to like it and it's especially annoying because the cunt who always puts it on nearly always plays air bongos at the start.

Bongos are bad enough but air bongos are ridiculous. That song has cost me lots of money because now I always have to check if I'm in a place with jukebox and if I see it, which I always do (please refer to the first sentence), I have to put enough money in the machine to play music for as long as I plan to be in there. Sometimes it even comes on all by itself.

"Please allow me to introduce myself...."

Ok, but then please allow me to introduce my boot to your bollocks as hard as I can.

If I could compare this song to a bodily function it would be like pooing out of your winkle. Not liquid poo but massive logs which would stretch your Jap's eye to the point of splitting right down the middle.

It's a shame they all didn't drown in a swimming pool before they had a chance to make that song. If I ever meet Doc Brown in his DeLorean I'm going 88MPH back in time and taking those cunts out good and proper. Oh yes.

Well, last night we were celebrating the night before Friday when you can really have a good few pints. Ron was telling us about the time when he used to be a barman in a rocker's place on Sunset Boulevard and Iggy Pop came in so off his face he thought he was a goat and tried to eat a newspaper. Now that was a funny story let me tell you.

Then all of a sudden Jimmy the Bollix sniffed the air like a Bassett Hound around chocolate.

"He's back", he said.

Not 10 seconds later in came Stinking Pete. I am tempted to rename him Stinking Putrid Noxious Fetid Pete because he was as Stinking as I have ever known him and I was there during his sponsored no-showerathon to raise money for famine victims in Ethiopia but which he just kept for himself.

"Where the fuck have you been you cunt?" I asked.

He burped a wet burp and said "Germany!"

"Germany? What were you doing there?"

"Well, after the match the other night I was really bleedin' depressed about Ireland not going to the World Cup so I said to myself 'Fuck dis, I'm going to Germany anyway!"

"And you wouldn't have actually waited till the World Cup was on?"

"Nah, too many people around then."

So he went on to explain to us how he took a flight to Berlin and went on the absolute tear. Within an hour of landing he'd managed to communicate well enough with a taxi driver ("BIER! IRISCHER! SCHNELL!") to end up in an Irish bar called The Oscar Wilde. How we laughed. He said he used that as his base for the week and got to know some of the regulars.

There was Charlie, a roofer from Shankhill, who had fled Ireland after ripping a friend off of 5,000 ecstasty pills which he sold for €2 each to some bloke who said he ran a nightclub in town. So if you've misplaced 5,000 Es the Oscar Wilde on Friedrichstraße is somewhere you might want to go.

There was Lorcan who was from Dingle but had to leave Ireland when he was caught by the local policeman having sex with a mule. He said he didn't give a shite but the mule was a prize-winner and its owner wanted to give him a proper pasting.

We heard about Gunther O'Leary. Irish father, German mother, who cried everytime he heard Danny Boy and Fisty who always showed a keen interest in Stinking Pete everytime he went to the toilet but Pete was unable to give us the background to his nickname.

On the Sunday night he said he pulled a cracking looking German bird and got laid like he'd never got laid before. He showed us a piece of paper which said "To Stinking Pete, I shagged u, luv Andrea Merkin, Berlin, October 16th 2005."

"Shame she's not famous lads or I could've done a bit of kiss and tell. You should have seen her thighs, they'd have made a GAA player jealous, and she had a clit like tapeworm. Deadly it was."

He continued having great crack, drinking a lot, eating Bratwurst and Burger King, and was mad for watching a bit of football. On Tuesday afternoon he was so drunk he bought two tickets from a bloke in the pub for the Bayern v Juventus game only to turn up at the Olympic Stadium to discover that:

1 - Hertha Berlin's next game wasn't until Thursday in the UEFA cup and
2 - Bayern play in Munich which wasn't reachable within the 30 minutes he had before kick off.

To drown his sorrows he ended up in the Schoenberg area of the city but doesn't remember much of the night, which is probably a good thing. When he woke up with a raging hangover he decided it was time to go home, stopped into 'Oscars' for a farewell pint or six and having stayed a night longer than he intended to arrived back in Dublin around lunchtime yesterday.

"You mad fucker", I said. "Do you remember ringing me?"

"Nah. I lost my mobile though. I think I threw it at a giant giraffe who lives on the side of a building."

"Riiiiight. Well, welcome back anyone, you smelly cunt."

Jimmy looked over then. "Well Stinking Pete, glad to see you back. Fancy a pint?"

"I do that, James."

"Well fuck off home and have a shower then, you're humming man."

So while Stinking Pete took himself off home to get spruced up we went into town and didn't tell anyone where we were going.

I have a headache this morning and I think I might have punched Tony Fenton in the back of the head. Please, let it be true.

A Nigerian woman with a 4 year old autistic son is on the verge of being deported while a Jamaican woman who has been convicted for 10 years for smuggling cocaine is granted refugee status.

A little tiny old lady from Latvia who has written proof that a gang of surly youths is going to rape and beat her if she returns home is told to go while Josef Mengele is cloned in a laboratory in Clondalkin and told he can live amongst Dublin's Jewish community.

An American who owns a house here, pays taxes, works in a real job and votes in elections is refused back into the country and put in Mountjoy prison for a night before being deported back to the US (no, really) while a Lithuanian pimp can come and go as he pleases arranging the transport and sale of teenage girls to work in his brothels.

A mentally retarded blind, deaf and dumb paraplegic victim of child sexual abuse in Poland is sent back to Warsaw with a bottle of Ballygowan while Abdul Achbar Mohammed Fur-Q turns up for his asylum hearing with a t-shirt saying ''Infidels are cunts" carrying a rucksack with a strap that says "Pull here to detonate" and is given €150 a week in benefits, a free car and an all-day travel card for London Underground.

That last one is a joke obviously, there's no way the Pole would be sent home seeing as there's more of them in Dublin than anywhere else.

But what to do? How do we combat the supposed injustices in the system? To my mind there is only one way to do it.

We must put millions and millions of Euros into research so we can find the cunt gene which will enable us to DNA test all applicants for asylum and refugee status and measure their Cunt Level™.

The Cunt Level™ would run from 0 to 100 where 0 = Twenty Major and 100 = Damien Rice, Madonna, the bloke I work with who makes bird whistle noises, Tom Cruise and the cunt from blogger.com who can't stop their fucking system eating my posts before I publish them.

Then we decide what is an unacceptable Cunt Level™. I suggest anything above 5 is a cunt too far and these people should be denied entry into the country, or if they're here already they should be eliminated. The tests should be done in a big DNA scooping machine and if the needle (or LED if we're going really hi-tech) is above 5 then we release some kind of sonic blast which reduces the cunt in question to mere atoms. Of course some do-gooders like the Residents against Racism or the Irish Palestine Solidarity Campaign Cunt's Convention would probably object so instead of blasting them we transport them, a la Star Trek, to a more suitable location. Perhaps Romania or South Africa where they're surrounded by so many other cunts their own cuntosity is relatively less.

The other eco-friendly option is to power the machine on the corpses of the cunts whose Cunt Level™ is too high but they'd probably complain about that too.

However, if we stuck with the transporting plan these lentil eating vegetarians who are so hung up on silly things like "human rights" won't have a leg to stand on. They can moan and bleat about racism but there is no racism. They can call it exclusivity but that's not a crime and until the government passes a bill to outlaw Cuntism then our work will continue unabated.

Non-cunts of every race, creed and colour will be welcome. It's progressive, Ireland would be freer of cunts (apart from all the native cunts and right now I have to admit there's fuck all we can do about them) and the age old problem of how to control your borders in an acceptable fashion is solved.

Naturally I'm going to invent, manufacture and trademark the CuntOmeter©™ machines and even though we won't be allowed reduce the ones we reject to dust particles I'm still going to run 200 volts through the cunts as I send them on their way.

KAZAM!

So there I was in Ron's last night, enjoying a pint or six, when Dirty Dave sidled up beside me.

"So, how's it going, Twenty?"

"Fine, Dave."

"Good. Good. I'm fine too."

"Glad to hear it."

"Well, I'm not really that fine."

"Sorry to hear that, Dave. Anyway, I must be off...."

"No! Wait. Erm...I have a question."

"It's not a stupid question, is it? Like 'Why wouldn't that black woman go out with me after I gave her a lovely golliwog as a present?'"

"No, nothing like that."

"You're sure?"

"Sure."

"Ok then. Spit it out."

"Erm, it's a little bit sensitive and I'm kind of embarrassed."

"Must be off."

"Wait. Fair enough", he lowered his voice to a whisper. "Did your wee ever come out in two different directions, Twenty?"

"Of course it did, Dirty Dave. Sometimes first thing in the morning it does that when a bit of bed fluff gets down your Jap's eye or after sex when the inside of your mickey is still a bit spunky."

"But not all the time, like?"

"No, not all the time."

"Oh. See, this happens on the time to me now. One stream goes into the toilet bowl and the other shoots left or right. Once it even shot straight up in the air and hit me in the eye. Have you ever pissed in your own eye, Twenty?"

"Of all the questions you've asked me over the years, Dirty Dave, that has to be one of the oddest."

"I'm a bit worried. What if there's something growing in my shaft that's making the wee come out in different directions? And I had a bit of a five-knuckle shuffle earlier and I think the man paste came out in different directions too. Does that mean I'm bisexual now?"

"It's possible. Now that you mention all this I do remember reading that if your piss comes out in two different directions (except for fluff and post-sex) it's a symptom of the plague."

"The plague? But I haven't been near any Romanians. Couldn't I just be an abmi-wee-er?"

"I'd get myself off to the doctor if I was you, Dirty Dave. Let him get a camera down there and take a look."

"How would you fit a camera down there?"

"Just go to the doctor."

I'm still waiting to hear back from him, hence the reason this story has no punchlne whatsoever.

Just got a phone call from Stinking Pete. It went exactly like this:

"Jessh Twenty so there lotsh of women ..*hic*... fat bashtard cuntsh but the portions are huuuuuuuuuuuuge... AH YOU FUCK OFF YA SOMETHING! Whaddya want anyway?"

Then he hung up. So, we know he's alive at least. Mostly.

Despite how unrealistic Hollywood films are you can live with a bad guy who wants to rob a bank, or kill a load of people to gain power, or get rid of people so he can get the beautiful women. They're things that normal people do on a smaller scale.

What is harder to believe is the evil genius - the man who normally has some kind of magical power which he could use to make himself rich, kill loads of people and get the girl (probably a load of girls if that's what he was into) - whose aim is to bring about the end of the world.

Surely the end of the world is no good to anyone so what's the point? No riches. No girls. Yes, lots of dead people but the evil guy is one of them so he wouldn't even get to sit atop a hill and look down cackling at the destruction he's caused. Nor can he get the satisfaction of going down in history as a tremendously dastardly individual because he's just ensured there is no future for history to exist in, the twat.

Plus the fact that he's going to bring about the end of the world will surely make the hero try even harder to stop him. Talk about motivating your opponent. If it was just blowing up some crappy city like Shanghai, Los Angeles or Galway then as hard as the good guy tries it's not that important in the great scheme of things if he fails to stop him. Sure we're down a few million Chinese, a few hundred thousand waiters/actors and a load of hippy students but we can live with that. However, failing to stop the end of the world has dire consequences for the good guy who will give it 110% (as they say) in his efforts to thwart the nefarious villain. Why make things harder for yourself?

As well as that evil geniuses are usually immensely wealthy to begin with. They have hi-tech undergroud lairs on their own uninhabited islands or penthouse laboratories. They have the best gadgets known to man. What more do they actually need? They should just channel all their frustrations into playing elaborate practical jokes on their friends such as getting actors to play their wives and film them having sex with monkeys then show it at their son's confirmation party. That kind of thing.

But no, they have to try and bring about the end of the world through some fiendish formula and then they get some superhero or some hero fucking it all up at the last minute and generally they fall to a gruesome death. You'd think one or two of them might actually watch a film so they could see how it goes.

Thick cunts.

Stinking Pete is missing. He hasn't been seen since last Wednesday night when we watched Ireland play Switzerland round in Ron's. Pete loves his football and Germans and was all set for a trip to the World Cup. "Footy and Frauleins!" he said. "Beer gardens, women with mighty thighs and armpits hairier than a gorilla's bollix. Add to that the Boys in Green© and what more could a man ask for?"

However, he sat fairly despondent throughout the match as Ireland were utter shite and looked as likely to score as Dirty Dave in a nightclub full of blind, nypmhomaniac only-have-1-day-to-live sluts. He had a few drinks, that's for sure, and was mostly quiet but would offer the odd exclamation at times.

"What the fuck is that Harte, you Drogheda wanker?"
"Can someone please shoot Clinton Morrisson in the bollocks?"
"Christ, Keane, you have the touch of a rapist."
"Gary Doherty? GARY DOHERTY? Jaysus, Kerr's had some kind of stroke, the cunt."

As we all know Ireland failed to score, Switzerland went through to the play-offs and now the FAI is going to fire Brian Kerr. At the final whistle Pete stood up and said "Fuck that, lads. Going home to drown my sorrows. See yiz tomorrow."

"Cheers, Stinking Pete", I said, thinking that a pub is the best place to drown any sorrows one might have but to each his own. And that's the last anyone has seen of him. Jimmy the Bollix called round on Friday because he needed a driver and Pete, for all his failings, is like the Ayrton Senna ...erm... NIcki Lauda ...er... Alain Prost of Dublin. He's a driving machine. Anyway, when Jimmy called there was nobody home so he rang Pete's mobile and got straight through to his answering machine. He figured he was in bed with a hangover and had his phone off. He didn't give it too much more thought and got Damon Hill (lives in Dalkey you know) to do the driving for him.

Now, without fail, every Sunday we all meet for a lunchtime pint. If someone is not going to be there they call to let one of us know but this Sunday Pete didn't show up. We rang his house. No answer. Rang his mobile. Answering machine. Pager. No response. Called round his house and rang on his doorbell. No answer. Broke into his house. Nobody home.

So he's gone and we don't know where. So if you see him, and I'm sure you'll keep an eye out, do let me know. He's about 5'10", green eyes, skinny as a rake, answers to the name of Stinking Pete and he's stinking like that boy from Charlie Brown with the flies around him.

No doubt he'll turn up at some stage but we'd like to know sooner rather than later so we can divide up his stuff.

A group of 9 blind/partially sighted people were frogmarched off a Ryanair flight to Italy at Stansted Airport just minutes before take off. The pilot came down and told them they had to get off because they were over their quota of 'disabled' people on the flight.

No doubt it has something to do with insurance and if there was a problem proper cappers wouldn't be able to get off the plane quickly enough but what they forget about blind people is that they have compensated for their Ray Charlesness with their other senses so they would be able to smell or hear or touch or possibly taste their way to the emergency exits just as quickly as anyone who could see.

All a bit shocking really but then you realise it's Ryanair, the airline that wouldn't have given a stable to the Virgin Mary, the airline that wouldn't have given Oliver Twist anything in the beginning so he could ask for more, the airline that would run it's planes on solid fuel made from puppies and kittens if it could.

And isn't it ironic they kick the blind people off when all of their captains are one eyed ex-Israeli fighter pilots? Of course, I'm joking. Not all of them can see as well as that.

Update: Sorry, it turns out Ryanair are absolutely fantastic and their customer service, baggage handling and complaints procedures are second to none. I have a friend who has flown with Ryanair to the same location three times. The first time his bag ended up in Edinburgh, the second time his bag ended up in Paris and the third time he brought carry on luggage only and they managed to lose that too. But that's besides the point. If blind people want to fly in groups like normal people they should buy glasses and paint eyes on them so it looks like they can see.

Blind people are fantastic though, aren't they? Jimmy the Bollix had a blind neighbour for years and used the bring the poor fella to Ron's some nights. Interesting company. He lost his sight as a child when he fell out of a tree trying to make his eyes different colours like David Bowie. He landed face first from 40 feet, detached his retinas and went blind instantly. A man for whom coloured contacts could have done so much. Oh well. He was a pervert too. He would grope and grab at every woman he could pretending to be trying to find his way to the bar.

We used to warn him about it but he'd always say "Ah lads, what kind of cunt would hit a blind man?"

He found out one night when he got hold both of Siobhan Madigan's rather ample breasts in a fairly see through attempt to pick up his pint. His jiggling of them didn't make it any more subtle. Sadly for Sightless Stan Siobhan was married to Deaf Dicky, a flamboyant hairdresser who couldn't hear a word anyone said to him after catching TB in his teens.

Seeing Stan groping his missus' whoppers he came straight over, said "Mnnnnhhhhh, mmnnnhhhhhy mnnnwwyffe mnyoooou nycuuuuuunt" and landed a right-hook that Barry McGuigan himself would have been proud of. Stan spun like a top before landing on his arse.

"Ahh" he said "That's what kind of cunt would hit a blind man, you fucking Beethoven wanker!"

Deaf Dicky, naturally, didn't hear a thing. Poor old Stan died a few years later when the corporation were digging outside his house. He had a massive stroke making his cup of tea in the morning. The coroner said it probably took him 3 hours to die.

When I was a young lad back in school I had an English teacher, like most of you I suppose, who taught us, unsurprisingly, English. His nickname was 'Oscar'. Not because he was shiny and golden but because he spoke in a perfect West Brit accent and was as bent as a £7 note. He did love English though and he tried to instill in us a love for English and language and literature and ...erm... poetry.

I have always loved books and writing but I was never a fan of poetry. Shakespeare's sonnets were as tedious as any Kevin Costner fillum, you could shove WB Yeats and Patrick Kavanagh up Austin Clarke's arse for all I cared and Paradise Lost was precious hours of my life lost having to memorise great chunks of it and if you didn't remember and recite it perfectly in class the next day you could find yourself writing out that section of the poem a hundred times or more.

Hence the reason I know Kubla Khan off by heart. Not much of a party-thriller that when everyone would much prefer Chaka Khan.

Anyway, each English class with Oscar was like an amateur dramatics performance and you just knew he would have loved to be an actor rather than a teacher. He'd certainly have enjoyed being the VBF of Spartacus. Like all classes we had a couple of books that we had to read each year and one particular term we were doing The Lord of the Flies, which despite later events, remains one of my favourite books.

Oscar would start each book by reading the first couple of chapters to us then we would be expected to take our turns reading. Now, unable to curtail his acting instincts, each character he would give their own voice in that he would slip into a different accent for each one. Ralph was ever so well spoken with a kind edge to his voice, Jack as well was plummy but had a bit of the prick to him and poor old Piggy was given a ludicrous Cornwall-esque burr which we all found hilarious. After class we'd do impersonations and I was always a pretty decent mimic and eager to amuse I'd do Piggy's voice during breaks and at lunch time.

Then came the day when it was my turn to read in class. Bottler McNicholas went before me (he was called Bottler because legend has it he was wanking in the bath with a shampoo bottle and it got stuck on the end of his mickey and his dad had to cut it off) then Oscar spoke up.

"Twenty, read please."

So I read. We were at a bit when they were having an assembly on the tree which kept making the littluns fall on their arses. Jack was getting into the hunter thing and being a bit of a wanker while poor old Ralph was trying to keep control of everything. There was some dialogue which I don't really remember but we didn't do Oscar's trick of doing the voices because we didn't want anyone thinking we were like him and batted for the other side.

It was all a bit boring really so I decided to liven things up a bit. As they argued back and forth it was Piggy's turn to speak so he took the shell, the conch, which meant they could address the group. I read normally right up until the point where Piggy was interrupted by Jack. Offended by this blatant disregard for the rules of having the shell in the first place Piggy shouts. In an uncannily accurate impersonation of Oscar doing Piggy's voice I bellowed at the top of my lungs:

"OI GORT THE CORNCH!"


There was silence for a few seconds before everyone burst their shite laughing. Their laughter made me laugh and soon the whole classroom was in fits. All except for Oscar who stood at the top of the room with steam coming out of his ears. Being a failed actor he was unable to see the humour in a 14 year old ripping the absolute piss out of him in a room full of young boys who probably wanted desperately to touch up.

"TWENTY MAJOR!" he roared. "YOU'RE A FECKLESS LITTLE CRETIN AND NO MISTAKE."

He made me write out that whole chapter of the book 5 times for my sins. The wanker. Took me fucking ages. Years later I saw him in the supermarket. He was ahead of me in the queue buying tins of soup and frozen dinners because he was a lonely old cunt. I might have been a little bit drunk at the time because it just came out of me again at top volume:

"OI GORT THE CORNCH!"


Except instead of saying "OI GORT THE CORNCH!"


I said: "YOU SEXUALLY ABUSED ME WHEN I WAS A SCHOOLBOY!"


That made everyone stop and look at him, let me tell you. 'Now who's feckless?', I remember thinking.

He's dead now. Or teaching rugby or something.

Damien has been mulleying over the idea of awards for Irish bloggers. Jolly good idea I think. Nothing like a bit of award winning to get those egos good and stroked but there are enough Irish blogs for it to work.

He suggests the following categories:

* Best Blogger
* Best Blog Post
* Best New Blogger
* Best Contribution to the Boggersphere (Tech wise)
* Best Potential Blogger i.e. Someone we'd like to see blogging

Can't argue with those although I think we need a few more. I suggest:

* Best Blogger with a grey beard
* Best Blog Post by a blogger with a grey beard
* Best Smoker
* Best Contribution to smoking in bars since the smoking ban
* Best Pooing around the world
* Best one syllable Podcast

Who decides though? Is there a committee who will meet and discuss it? If so how open are they to bribes? Will it be a vote but if it is what's to stop those techy bloggers from doing all kinds of DNS and IP and HIV business and voting for themselves the whole time?

Will there be a star-studded awards ceremony? Can we make sure that if there is Billy cunting Crystal is not the host? Or Pat Kenny. Or Ryan Tubridy. What about that Des Bishop chap? He has a blog and he's quite funny. I saw him once on TV and I laughed when he said 'gee'. Of course then he could just read out his own name as the winner of each category. I know that's what I'd do.

What about corporate sponsorship? They could spunk up for some very nice prizes or at least some decent booze and not a couple of old crates of Aspi Spumante. Then we could get United Irelander really pissed and get him to talk about gays adopting babies while booing the Welsh national anthem as a homosexual protestant couple from Belfast wearing Gerry Armstrong t-shirts are standing right behind him. Tom and Bernie could have a 'tech-off', Noreen could bring her ever-growing entourage like some kind of rapper crossed with a blogger, a blapper or a rogger, and we could leave the ceremony until the very last day of his self-imposed booze ban and get Markham drunker than George Best at 9am on a weekday.

Think of the larks. I'm 100% behind whoever's going to put in all the hard work to get this thing up and running.

No doubt you'll have heard of Podcasts by now. The new version of iTunes even has a Podcasty thing in it. Yahoo has just launched some Podcast thing or other today as well. Basically it's people their blogs with a microphone and talking and playing some music and some other stuff as well. Sort of like pretending to be DJ with your tape recorder when you were a kid. I've seen people read poems or bits from books.

I've seen people read their posts which seems to me a rather strange thing. It's sort of like when they make a film of a book you love and the characters don't look like you imagined them or the settings aren't the way you pictured them. The same with a blog - you read it and you imagine the voice of the person writing. There's not much left to our imaginations these days but this is one of them. Then you hear them reading their posts and instead of rich and resonant voice full of authority and confidence there's a thin, reedy croak. Disappointing.

Some of the ones just playing music aren't so bad I suppose but people who are good writers don't necessarily make good broadcasters.

However, Twenty Major has never been one to get left behind. Except by fashion. And in races of all kinds. And ocassionally by my parents when the rest of the family were going on outings when I was younger but that's all a long time ago.

I decided to make my own podcast. Something which sums up my feelings towards the genre. Something which is bold. That is not afraid to make a statement. Something people can look back on and say "I remember where I was when I heard his first Podcast."

So without further ado, ladies, gentleman and other assorted creatures that happen to read this blog - I give you Twenty Major's First Podcast.

I for one am tired of the weekends being so short. I don't think it's a fair breakdown of the 7 day week to work for 5 and only have two off. If the working week was being sorted out by trade unions nowadays there's no way they'd agree to that kind of thing.

It's not helped, of course, by every cunt in the world wanting to have Sunday as a normal day where they can go shopping in the Square or Blanchardstown or Liffey Valley or any of the other shopping centres which are filled with screaming children, stinking teenagers, family outings and all the other assorted scumbags that hang around the 12 screen cinemas like flies on fresh shit.

I really hate the commercialisation of Sundays. Not because I think it's a holy day or sacred in any way but simply because we should just have one day of the week away from the rat-race, away from the day to day pressures, a day when we just amuse ourselves with the great outdoors or a book or horror of horrors, spending time with friends or family? What is the obsession with shopping? Why do people need supermarkets on a Sunday? They have all week to buy what they want, especially now as the things are open later and later at night.

Who needs to go to clothes shopping on a Sunday? Emphasis on the word 'need' there. It's like shopping has become the nation's greatest pastime at the expense of almost everything else. No Fidelma, you don't need those too-tight pants from Miss Selfridge, Deco, you can live without that 9 carat gold bling chain until Monday, right, and Jacinta from Ballymun with 4 kids with 4 different fathers from 4 different continents you don't need another mobile phone - the one you bought three months ago still works fine.

Sunday should be a day of a few quiet pints to nurse your Saturday night hangover, the papers, a nice fire now the winter is coming in, roast dinners and so on. It shouldn't be a day of queueing on the M50, trying to find car parking, buying shit you don't really need, little wankers in tracksuits eating chewing gum, bickering and fighting because everyone's tired and fed up. Sundays have been ruined by consumerism, by greedy shops, by greedy people who can't survive 24 hours without shopping for something. ANYTHING!

If I could be arsed I'd start a campaign to close the shops on Sunday but really, while they're pushing trollies and running up their credit card debts they're nowhere fucking near me and that, at the end of the (Sun)day, suits me just fine.

"Tell me where you put them."

"I didn't touch them, honest."

"I'll ask you again, where did you put them?"

"I swear, I don't know who told you it was me but I didn't do anything."

"Right, I'm going to fucking hurt you if you don't tell me what you've done with them. I know it was you. I got the word from the very top."

"Honest, I don't know. I promise."

"Ok, don't say I didn't warn you."

"Oh Jaysus, put the fucking bat dow.....aaaaaaarggh. My feet. Oh fuck they're broken to shite."

"Now, are you going to tell me where they are?"

"Why won't you believe me? Look at me. I promise I don't know."

"Bollocks. You're a tough little bastard, I'll give you that. Tell me."

"I don't have any idea. I swear on my mother's life."

"You bastard. You'd let your mother die rather than tell me? Fucking scum, you are."

"Oh please, I don't know anything about it."

"Christ! If you say that one more time I am going to really hurt you."

"But it's true!!"

"What's true?"

"That I don't know anything about it."

"Ah, what did I say? Now you've done it."

"NO! You tricked me."

"No, I didn't. You said it and I told you not to. That's all there is to it."

"My feet hurt."

"Perhaps these punches in the mouth might take your mind off the pain." *SCRUNCH* "Now, are you going to tell me where they are?"

"If I knew where they were, excuse me, have to spit out a tooth.... hock thuuuu.... I would fucking tell you."

"No need for bad language. Where are they?"

"Don't know."

"Where are they?

"Don't know."

*SCRUNCH* - *BORF* - *KERFUFF*

"Still, don't know?"

"No. I think I'm blind."

"That can happen."

"Last chance, tell me where they are or I'm going to go Reservoir Dogs on you. Off with his ear. We can call you Vincent."

"Like Vincent Hanley the now-dead MTUSA presenter."

"Aye, him. So, where are they?"

"I DON'T KNOW. I DON'T KNOW. I DON'T KNOW."

"Ok, you leave me no option. I'm going to take out the straight razor I carry around with me in my inside pocket and slice off your ear and if you bleed on the carpet then I'm going to - oh, well, look at that. Here they are. Erm... Ahhh. Sorry about all that, like..."

I'm always losing my car keys, so I am.

It's hard to believe it's 2005 reading about the Mater Hospital's decision to stop trials of a new drug which would fight lung cancer because female patients were required to take contraceptives while using it.

The hospital's ethics committee objected to the compulsory use of contraceptives for women who might be 'at risk' of pregnancy during the trials. Jesus fucking Christ. These people are at risk of death, that is the bottom line.

The hospital's ethics committee objects to the use of contraception because it is a catholic run hospital and while the Lord himself may be full of mercy and holy light three fucking cunts on a committee can't see past women taking a little pill to prevent a baby they surely don't want while an insidious disease eats away at their lungs. These people are so filled with Christian goodness they object to people stopping a pregnancy when they should be more concerned with trying to find ways to fight a disease which kills 1 in 3 people in Ireland.

I've known people in my life diagnosed with lung cancer at Easter and by Christmas they're gone despite the best efforts of doctors and hospitals and drugs and chemo and cobalt and every fucking thing under the sun and when they go it hurts. Then you have three fucking absolute wankbags on an ethics committee deciding to prevent a drug which might help those people, might help their family and friends, over something like contraception. It's mindblowing.

Wake up, cunts. It's 2005. Contraception was an issue we all dealt with years ago. Yes, we were backwards in Ireland and contraception wasn't legal here until 1979. Yes, we tried to put some doctor in prison years ago because he prescribed condoms to patients he felt needed them. I still remember the fuss when the Virgin Megastore sold its own brand of jonnies in its record shops. The country was going to go to the dogs then you know. Rubbers and a 12", please. Arf.

But now, as far as I know, no method of contraception is illegal in Ireland so what gives this unholy trio of scuttering shitbags the right to prevent medical care to people who need it - especially when they may not even be catholics? Do they think that if the patients pray really, really hard their cancer will go away? Let's dispense with the fucking mumbo-jumbo, shall we? Fucking cunts.

I should point out that the Mater does good stuff too, their transplantation program is among the best in Europe, but this is quite disgraceful in this day and age. It's not altogether unexpected of course. Despite millions of people dying and contracting AIDS in Africa the church would not condone or encourage the use of condoms which would, when it comes right down to it, save lives and help prevent the spread of a pandemic.

Perhaps if we told the church that moving with the times and 'allowing' the use of contraception might bring people back to mass on Sunday which might mean a nice increase in the collection plates which will let the Nazi Youth pope buy another gold telephone (I wonder do Siemens make a cordless one?). Is it any wonder that people don't go to church when the church is so far out of touch with reality that even Stevie Wonder can see it?

So congratulations - Fr Kevin Doran, Sr Eugene Nolan and John Morgan - you have made a decision which will cost people their lives in the short term and in the long term. The irony of a nun and a priest making a decision about contraception is hardly worth noting but this is the kind of shite we had to put up with for years in Ireland. We had a government but the church ran everything really. I really did think their influence had waned to a point where they were as insignificant as they deserved to be but there's still a bit of life left in the rancid old dragon yet.

I hope the three of them get cancer of every major organ and their genitals and die screaming while I force feed them the pill, shove coils up their arses and make little rubber johnny hats for them, the small-minded, holier-than-thou, puritanical fuckpigs.

I really can't believe that Bono and Bob Warldorf are seriously being considered for the Nobel Peace Prize. Now, I'll happily admit that my interest in world peace is probably up there with my interest in poetry readings, spending any time in the company of Trinity students and seeing how far I can put a broom handle up my arse but there must surely be better candidates than those two.

Has Bono stopped the war in Iraq? Has Geldof persuaded Mugabe to give up his wicked ways? Did the pair of them descend upon China and prevent them from holding public executions in football stadiums? Maybe the Chinese are on to something though. I keep reading how the Premiership bubble has burst and fans are staying away from the grounds this season. Bring back a little family entertainment I say.

Hangings at Highbury, Amputations at Anfield, Guttings at Goodison Park and Whippings at White Hart Lane. That'd bring back the crowds good and proper.

Imagine the fun the youngsters would have.

"Daddy, why have that mans guts fallen out of his arse?"

"Never mind son, there's Thierry Henry. Give him a wave."

"Yaaaaaaaaaaay!"

Anyway, I seem to have strayed from the point a bit. U2 are a famous rock band. Bob Geldof was in a famous band for a couple of years but now he's a famous loudmouth. I know they organised that Live8 thing but that was hardly in aid of world peace and I can't imagine why something that made a lot of people want to kick their TV in would qualify for this prize.

If there was the Nobel Organising Giant Concerts Prize or the Nobel Give Us Some Fockin' Money Prize or the Nobel I Can't Shut The Fuck Up Prize then both of these Dubliners would be more than good candidates. Sadly I just invented those prizes but if the two lads want to drop me an email I'll happily have a tophy made up for the last one which they can share.

We'll see how commited they are to peace when both of them will want it on their mantelpiece forever and ever.

Hopefully he won't be there for long though, the cunt. If they take him out on a slab it won't be too soon.

I know people who have had organ transplants, most of them make the most of their second chance. They don't go back to the same lifestyle that caused them to need a transplant in the first place. George Best is an alcoholic. He got a new liver because he was famous. Someone else who could have got that liver didn't. Then as soon as he got a new liver he started drinking again.

If he does pull through they should do like parents used to do when they caught their children smoking. He should be forced to drink a bottle of Jamesons, 16 wine spritzers (Georgie's favourite drink), 10 pints of strong medieval ale and a flaggin of methalated spirits. If he manages to survive that I'm sure he'd learn a lesson. The fucking lush.

Transplantation is a subject close to my heart, no pun intended. Not too many years ago Stinkin' Pete got the world's very first arse transplant. He was in a motorbike crash and skidded along the Long Mile Road on his hole. The scarring was terrible. It was like somebody had taken an industrial sander to his backside. For a while we thought there was no hope but then a doctor in St James' Hospital told us there was one chance. We could take the plump buttocks of a donor and transplant them onto Pete. What choice did we have and we gave Dr Thón the go ahead.

Luckily the operation was a 100% success and although he had a few tender months as things settled down Pete recovered completely. Unluckily it seemed he got the arse of a South American woman who had been knocked down crossing Talbot Street and now he could body double for J-Lo such is its massive girth. But Pete doesn't mind. He knows he's been given another chance at life, another chance at sitting down, another chance to poo in comfort and you won't find him fucking it all by going ice-skating or trying to use his buttocks as a brake.

George Best could learn a thing or two from my rumptacular friend.

Traffic in Dublin is a massive pain in the hoop. Any Dubliner will tell you that. Dublin is a relatively small city which sprawled and grew without a huge amount of planning. Trying to drive in and out of the city centre, something I never do because I would go like Michael Douglas in that film when he went mental, must take a Saintariffic amount of patience.

So some years ago it was decided that it would be a good idea to build a ring road around the city, which is now the M50 motorway. This allows people travelling from the north to bypass the city as they head south and vice versa. It meant people who had to go to the airport no longer had to go through the centre of the city. All good. Yes.

However, on this road there is a toll bridge. All fine and dandy when the motorway works needed to be paid for but this thing, in the years it has been present, has more than paid for itself. Now it is an obstacle to traffic. At rush hour it is not uncommon for traffic to be backed up for 5 or 6km as people pay to use the road which is little more than a money spinner for the private company that owns the bridge (National Toll Roads) and the government.

And the thing that's holding the traffic up is the toll bridge. The NTR is creaming the profits, the government are getting their share and nobody gives a fuck about the poor cunts who have to use this road to get to and from work every day. It is the single greatest rip off in Ireland today and that is saying something. There is no way to justify a toll on this road. There is no way to justify causing such enormous traffic problems when the M50 was supposed to fucking help the traffic situation in Dublin, not make it worse.

But then I read this (free registration required) where the NTR and KPMG, described as 'top auditors', somehow missed a part of their accounting procedure which would have cost them €2m a year. The office of the Comptroller noticed the 'mistake' for the accounts of 2002 and 2003 and had it not been spotted by this eagle-eyed employee they would have continued to save that €2m ad infinitum.

Now, maybe you want to put it down as a mistake or an error or an oversight. Me, I think it was another fucking scam by a bunch of cunts who are ripping us off every day. They're so greedy they're not happy with the huge profits they're making so they made a little mistake to see if anyone noticed. If that comptroller employee hadn't seen what was going on do you think they would have done anything about it? My hairy brown arse they would. They'd have taken that €2m every year from now until the end of time and spent it on yachts, cocaine, ladybodys, cognac and expensively monogrammed shirts from Saville Row and exclusive Parisian tailors.

The worst thing is is that people are just going to moan about the West Link. They're not going to do anything about it. I think the only way that anything will ever change with the West Link is by action. Not a website with a baldy senator on it. Not writing letters. Petitions, as we all know, are for cunts. The thing needs to be blown up. A group of people needs to get together and gather a dozen or so really old bangers and drive them up to the toll bridge. They then need to get out of their cars and throw the keys away. That's first. That kind of disruption will cause mayhem. It'd take them ages to move those cars and by the time they did the people in the traffic would be spewing. Proper mental. They might be so pissed off as to save the next part of the plan because they'd get out of their cars and kick the bridge to death there and then. Yes, I would feel for them but their short term frustration is for the greater good.

Next time the next batch of cars need to driven up to the toll bridge, blocking access on both sides, then set alight and exploded. That would teach them. The bridge needs to be destroyed. Apparently it would cost the government €300m to buy the NTR out of their contract. It would take a group of us a few thousand euros to blow the shit out the toll booths and solve all the problems in one fell swoop.

Are you listening government? That's €300m for you, a few grand for us. Get in touch if you want some black ops to take place.

Seriously, this is a massive rip-off. Something needs to be done about it. Not tomorrow. Now. This bridge is making some fat cigar smoking cunts much richer than they need to be while the rest of us suffer. Where is the spirit of 1916? Would Padraig Pearse have queued for 40 minutes every day on his way home from work to pay more than he should to cross a bridge? My arse. Would Michael Collins have allowed himself to suffer the torture of talk radio because listening to 98FM or FM104 is a far worse option? Never. Would James Connolly have sat idly by while his fellow citizens endured bumper to bumper traffic every day of the week, not just weekdays? I think not.

The West Link Toll Bridge must die. Blow up your car today, if not sooner. Viva la revolution!

Having been inundated with about 50 comment spams on the blog last night I have to turn that word verification thing on again. The cunts. Is that Haloscan system easy to set up then?