Bookmark and Share

Use this form to email this edition of Warming Up to your friends...
Your Email Address:
Your Friend's Email Address:
Press or to start over.

Thursday 4th May 2006

I spent most of the day regretting getting drunk when I was already ill. What a stupid thing to do. I had got carried away because I was in a room with two of the people from Shipwrecked 2006:Battle of the Islands and some women with breasts the size of footballs. But now I was double ill and had no-one to blame but myself and maybe Grub Smith as my illness was almost certainly some air-borne rat disease that he had passed on to me.
It was local elections day and in my heart I always feel I should vote to thank all the people who died to produce this wonderful system of democracy that works so well. But I usually vote Labour (though I transferred my vote to the Green party at the General Election in protest at the disgusting mess that Tony Blairs is making of the job) and really didn't feel I could do that this time. Not with the way things were going with old John Reid having 85 pence worth of cannabis in his house. But unusually not a single canvasser had been to my house and I had only received one crumpled leaflet (from Labour) and I didn't even know which parties had candidates. Maybe I should pop down and vote green or join the ranks of idiotic twats who were going to protest against the government by voting BNP. As the BNP would be pretty unlikely to get in in Shepherd's Bush there would be some kind of perverse pleasure in voting for them. Like political pornography. Doing something so wrong and against everything that you believe that in some ways it would be liberating and exciting, though like pornography leave you feeling dirty and full of remorse after the experience was over (I imagine - I have never looked at pornography).
But though I managed to get to the post office and a coffee shop, I couldn't quite manage to get to the polling booth during the day, even though it is practically at the end of my road.
Later though I was going out for dinner with a friend and I realised the polls were open til 10 and the part of me that believes that it is more important to cast your vote than anything else won me over and I popped in to vote.
As I looked at the notices outside I was disappointed to see that only Labour, the Lib Dems and the Conservatives had candidates. What was I to do? I could never vote Tory, however much they pretend to care about the environment and the Lib Dems don't do much for me (and in my ward I am pretty sure had no chance of winning), but Labour didn't deserve my vote, not even being prepared to let me have sex with John Prescott to secure my vote (under the threat of telling people what I did otherwise). Should I just draw a giant cock on my ballot paper, hoping that my satire of the whole process would get back to Tony Blairs and force him to resign?
"Oh, hello again," said the man at table 2 where I had to get my ballot paper. This is probably something that a polling officer should never say, implying as it does that you've already been through one time that day. "I know you from somewhere don't I?" he added, then looked unsure. I couldn't say, "Yes you probably saw me reviewing the papers on BBC Breakfast news at about 6.30 am last year" because there was as much of a chance that he'd just seen me walking around in Shepherd's Bush. Such is the life of a Z list celebrity like me.
I went into my booth, unclear as to what I should do, though reluctantly starting to accept that I had to vote Labour in a vain attempt to stop the Tories winning. I had to cast a real vote or I would be pissing on the grave of that woman who'd jumped in front of a horse to ensure that I could still vote if I ever decided to have a sex change.
I posted my paper into the box and walked out. "I feel dirty," I told my friend. It was quite good in a way. I'd got all the pornographic sensations of voting for a fascist party, without actually having to vote for one.
Though some might say that Tony Bliars is as bad as the Nazis.
But they are clearly wrong.
But he is still rubbish.

Bookmark and Share



Subscribe to my Substack here
See RHLSTP on tour Guests and ticket links here
Help us make more podcasts by becoming a badger You get loads of extras if you do.
To join Richard's Substack (and get a lot of emails) visit:

richardherring.substack.com