Oh dear.

Oh very Oh dear.

Now, I always want my doughnuts to look like Fanny’s. And taste like them.

Hello.

Judge Mental here again and boy have I a feast for you tonight.

You know Gene Krupa playing Drum Boogie don’t you?

Listen to me, listen to me. Before I start to beckon you into my twisted world of comedy…

Oh no, not now missus please.

Hey, I’ll tell you something and that’s a fact. Well, I will and if you don’t stop me then I won’t. So I will and you’ll be sorry when you find out.

Actually I just make this stuff up.

Well, you will. I told you.

Ah well. You need to have a mind, you see. Without a mind you will never get there. Some people have it and some people don’t and that’s it.

You see I am, ahem, a very funny person. My brother thinks that blah blah me of him etc.

The way I do it is to rely upon my soaked brain. Did you see what I did there? I used the word ’soaked’ completely out of context but everyone knows what I mean.

To make a joke you have to twist things; that’s obvious enough. The way my brain has been set up makes this very easy for me - like being good at swimming or mathematics.

I mistitled this.

There is no way you can learn to make, as opposed to tell, a joke. In my whole life I have done it, with every step I’ve done it. With every woman I’ve done it (see what I did there?) and I will continue to do so. For me, everything is 75/25% odd.

If you want to be funny then give up; you already lost. What you should do is support your friends who live just outside and be grateful for minds that cook rather than serve up cold.

In the pub of ultimate swearification I heard this interchange. A man was doing the crossword. Another man (name of CUTS) leaned over and said…

“Seven up - that’s lemonade”

See, I can’t teach you - you either have it or you haven’t.

Byeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

I rarely get up before 1 of the clock. But that doesn’t mean that I haven’t been awake. Oh no.

What I do, between bouts of heaving nausea, hypo fits and micturition is listen to the radio and read old copies of Viz and I THINK.

This morning I was looking at my hands. My hands which were once so beautiful but are now so old and ugly; twisted with arthritis and liver-spotted. They are scarred from jobs that I have had and from washing up a broken glass and from burns involving ovens and badly made spliffs.

I am left-handed but not cripplingly so; after half a century of it I’m almost ambidextrous.

Therefore I have an affinity with SINISTER people and always mention it when I see one and make a mental note when I identify the obvious signs in manuscript.

Jimi Hendrix, Paul Macca - left-handed men who played guitars specially made for left-handed people. As for myself, well, I tried to play the guitar right-handed but that didn’t work. Then I went and BOUGHT a left-handed Yamaha acoustic but all that taught me was that I was rubbish on guitar and there didn’t seem to be a handy crossroads upon which I could meet the Devil at midnight.

Here’s the question:

DO THEY MAKE LEFT-HANDED PIANOS?

I bet they don’t.

But why not?

Now then.
Here’s my new and latest brilliant idea and I phoned up the radio but it seems they don’t want my great idea on the wireless.

O.K.
Bear with me on this one.
Everyone would have to stick together and I would probably get made mayor or king or P.M. or something.

Right.
What everyone has to do, on a certain day, is this:

What?
What’s that you say officer? No registration plates?
Well they must have been stolen so thank goodness that you are here. Can you record the details of the theft and give me a reference number?

What’s that you say? EVERYONE has had their number plates stolen today? Goodness me, the boys in blue must be hard pressed to try and stick everyone on. Especially as I can’t be shown to have removed the plates myself.

Come, come, officer. Just because you couldn’t prove that I was in the congestion zone or speeding or anything and neither could anyone else doesn’t mean that any of us were doing anything wrong.

WE HAVE ALL HAD OUR NUMBER PLATES STOLEN

So get your pen out and give me a reference number. Shall I abandon my vehicle here seeing as it has no registration plates? As you can see, my tax disc is current - what a shame your cameras can’t read it.

It’s time to take the government on. It’s time.
Time to stick together and then we won’t get hurt any more than we have been already.

Let me know what you think.

When you look at this clip you can see him.

Van Gogh used to live in Brixton. When I was on that beat I used to almost smell him on the streets of SW9. For me, I have a complete vibration thing going on. Like a dog, I have a very keen sense of smell - I know what’s what.

Why on earth do I always zoom in on the sad stuff?

As Judges go I’m rather disorganised. Yesterday was a bit of a funny day; when I went to the shop I thought that the laydees were looking at me in an odd sort of way but then I decided that I must be so good-looking that they couldn’t help themselves.

My internet researches into Badfinger must have had some kind of weird affect on me. The more I read the odder I felt. I went to Tesco and bought some ham. Could this be because I had been reading so much about Pete Ham? He died somewhere in Weybridge which is only up the road from me. Byfleet and New Haw station used to be called West Weybridge; that’s how close it is.

I may go back to the history centre in Woking to see if I can find out where the miserable event of 23rd April 1975 took place. The more I plundered BoobToob for Badfinger the more depressed I got. It was such a waste. Pete was looking more tired. The man was a bloody genius but he couldn’t pay the mortgage and it all got too much. The ship went down.

While I was researching I found myself on a site that listed musicians that hanged themselves and found myself drawn to the death of one Roy Buchanan. Roy had managed to escape my radar entirely and I knew nothing of him. He hanged himself in a police cell after being pinched on a drinking charge. Or so they say.

Anyway, I decided to have a look in BoobToob and see what was what. My intention had been to post a link that was non-musical and I had in mind a clip of a particular lying bastard lying his lying face off.

As a Judge, I like to think that I know a lie when I hear one and a liar when I see one. The clip that I had in mind featured signs that I look out for; the rapid blinking and the big, dry tongue that won’t seem to fit back into the mouth. Particularly when talking about a certain dead doctor.

But I stumbled upon Roy Buchanan. Here he is, looking like a bloke waiting at a bus stop, tearing the absolute arse out of Green Onions. Enjoy…

It’s a well-known fact that Judge Mental, like a toddler playing in an abandoned freezer, is well locked into the 1970s.

I’ve been sailing the foaming and creamy seas of BoobToob on your behalf and what a treat I have for you.

Badfinger were one of the most shockingly sad stories in the history of the rock and the roll. They wrote some of the most brilliant songs that everyone thinks were written by someone else and half of them hanged themselves.

A ferret around in the Toob throws up some great stuff; Badfinger playing live in Dublin is cracking. Or should that be craicing?

What if Pete Ham had been in the Beatles?

Rummage around for yourself and listen to some of their stuff. Read the entry in Wiki. Remember the name:

Badfinger.

Hello. It’s the Judge here, presiding yet again.

If you are as old as Judge Mental you will realise that there is one name that guarantees a treat. Produced by………

Fred Quimby.

Tuck into this succulent morsel:

Hey, I won’t let you down. Only the choicest cuts are available from Judge Mental.

Now listen up because I am the Judge…

Of late I have been doing even less than usual. I sleep in fits and starts and, now that the boat has gone, have retired more or less from life. There isn’t much that I actively enjoy DOING so I sit away from the crowds and snipe.

Noticing things is my speciality. The things that I notice get ticked off in my mental calculator; a new plant in a garden or a hairdo or my pen has been moved 11 millimetres.

Maybe, I thought to myself, I could do a series of Judge Mental blogs where I choose some more things off BoobToob and share them with a wider audience. I lurk about in BoobToob quite a lot; it’s like reading the dictionary.

My first pick is this…

I picked up on the UK Bubblers at the time and when I was walking the streets of Sarf Lahndon with the badge of courage on my hat.

The genre is worth exploring - I had loads of vinyl from the time. Do you know, I still can’t work out whether I was wrong or right.

Enjoy the video and, hey, what a great name for a street!

I saw this picture.

On the bottle-digging site someone had posted this picture. A postcard. It was sold as Mildenhall but it’s not Mildenhall.

I got on the case.

All the evidence that I had, you have.

In a few minutes I knew all about it. I knew the name of the street and the name of the church. I knew the compass direction and the name of the river.

Have a go. See if you can work it out like I did.