Mark McGowan: 'Beware people with short arms!'

I had vowed not to give further promotion to performance artist Mark McGowan's videos after his ghastly support for the Tories* at the last election. Fancy being a nihilist notice-moi-ist (moist?) who thinks Old Etonians can run a modern multi-cultural democracy (as if!): even our benign anarchists nowadays are no better than Julian - Downton Abbey - Fellowes or Louis - 'Wag-ner' - Walsh.

But Mark's latest movie, 'We are being controlled by the internet' (click here) has at least wit.  We see the silly poppet prone on his bed mucking about on the internet and offering us a series of Alf Garnett-y reaction shots to the online bedlam. Obama's a jackass, lizard-hating David Icke's admirable (such is the level of satire)... and we are warned: beware people with short arms. I am most disappointed that he does not mention Madame Arcati, though I do not have short arms. He should at least have mentioned Daniel Radcliffe's cock or Sheila Vogel-Coupe's 81-year-old snatch as part of the Arcati online mental stew. I mean, who cares if Britney Spears is short?

How very remiss. How very Old Etonian of him.

*Mark now claims in comments that he did not support the Tories. Likewise, may be this posting is satire in kind.

Mark McGowan's 10,000 prostrations to David Cameron

Mark McGowan plans to prostrate himself 10,000 times in front of a "large photographic image of Conservative leader David Cameron on (election day) May 6th, 2010, opposite number 10 Downing Street."

He explains: "The prostrations can be seen as a sign of reverence to a noble man, David Cameron, the man who can lead this country out of the problems we are in. It should take me about two-and-a-half days to complete, I will start at 10am on Thursday 6th May and finish on Saturday 8th May, by which time this country will see a new leader. Gordon Brown, the Labour party and champagne socialism is over."

So, over to champagne Toryism instead. Except of course you can't get into Downing St these days without an invitation and the police won't allow him to loiter about outside for long. I just hope Mark doesn't end up with sciatica.

Joanna Lumley: Labour's last card against this goddess of AOL torture

The government is of course very foolish to upset Joanna - "Ayo Gurkhali!" - Lumley (again) over the Gurkhas. On Monday (or today if you're reading this on Monday; or yesterday if Tuesday, etc) she will single-handedly hammer the last nail into the Labour coffin. I had hoped Labour would scrape home but I see now all is lost, thanks to Joanna.

As I write she is, as Lady Penelope once was, an untouchable national treasure, the embodiment of the upper class geist that is about to repossess the Brits for the umpteenth time through the 19th Etonian PM (to-be) aka the half-wit former PR David Cameron.

Foreigners should understand that the Brits like the taste of upper class asshole: it's part of the ingrained cuisine (pause to spit out hair strands, inter alia, unsweetened by absence of bidet). They adore modulated vowels for it plays to the national Capricornian desire for hereditary privilege and power as expressed in sound and deportment and approved antecedents (cue: spires).

There is however one card left for Labour to play against the Nepalese goddess Joanna. It's called the AOL card. For years, Joanna's voice has been used to annoy AOL subscribers with an unwelcome welcoming message and the lie "You've got email". It's a lie because AOL users are blighted with this message whether they have email or not. Worse, she is the voice of "You've got company (bang)". It is another lie. The subscriber does not have any online company. It is just a noise-message intended to piss one off as the odd unfortunate ejaculates over the keyboard.

Somebody at AOL actually sat down one day and said, 'Oh, let's see how we can really piss off our customers. Great! Get Joanna Lumley to tell them over and over again that they have company (bang)'. It was marketing by irritation, as practised by those confuse.com TV ads, and others. The intention is to batter you into brand-recognition compliance through torture, a sort of extraordinary rendition for the sofa- (or swivel chaired-) bound.

Of course the goddess hadn't a clue she was just a tongue puppet for these wicked corporate shenanigans. She read the messages off a sheet and collected her substantial cheque. She gave no thought to the possibility that her voice would become one of the most detested sounds on the internet. Like the late Leni Riefenstahl, she is the creative incidental to the cultural foulness. For a goddess, Joanna is peculiarly stupid.

Joanna should be publicly reviled by Labour as a modern-day Lord Haw-Haw, as the expression of something noxious, whether witting or not. She should have foreseen this horror. There is not a day that passes by that I do not wish this ghastly woman some dreadful end for the earache and the headache and the ultimate heartache.

How to turn her off

English Mentors: Flogging Brideshead dreams to the foreign rich

Channel 4 TV show The Russians Are Coming introduces me to a charming outfit called English Mentors. Imagine you're a mega-rich Russian breeder with a brat to civilise - how could you fast-track it into an English public school such as Eton or Stowe for all the global advantages that money can buy? Simples. You hand it over to English Mentors.

For a fee so substantial it warrants no mention, EM will billet your kid on an English country house and put it through short "modules" in etiquette, clay shooting, polo, English language, deportment, visits to the Palace of Westminster and BBC studios and other delights that spell Brideshead Culture. EM is purposed to create smart little foreign Englishers who can fit into public school castes.

ON EM's website chairman Field Marshall, Lord Bramall describes these modules as "discreet" and likens them to Sandhurst's officer training course. Key kiddie markets would appear to be Russian, Chinese, Middle Eastern and US. Even the Duchess Fergiana is on hand to sell EM - "I want to give my children a chance, the best possible chance," she says in the backseat of what could be a chauffeur-driven Daimler. "The demand for well paid jobs that are spiritually enriching is far outstripping supply."

Do watch the promo video. It artfully draws in royalty, the military, the English bar, the City... and the better newspapers... as privilege is put up for purchase. And it's all so wonderfully shameless.

Eton College: No more strangulation games at £29k a year Tory school, I trust

Prince William models the Eton look*

All this talk of a political "class war" in the build-up to the next general election (because the next Tory government will be largely Old Etonian in character) draws me to Eton College, celebrating its 570th birthday in 2010. Its lucid website describes a most excellent nursery for those fated by God - or at least by parental wealth - to lead us.

The fee per boy boarder per year is £28,851, plus extras for music tuition, "tradesmen's bills", etc. Assuming a boarder stays at Eton for five years (from ages 13-18), that will set back his parents by at least £144,255 at current charges, probably more in practice. Anyone who harbours fears that Eton is a haven of classlessness - David Cameron is after all known as "Dave" - is reassured that "the house system provides excellent opportunities for boys to discover their leadership skills in their final two years in the school."

Eton's most recent Ofsted report, of October 9, 2009, judged the school to be "outstanding". However a close reading of this document reveals at least two areas of concern. The first: "There is a lack of suitable safeguards on some windows." What could this mean? If I were shelling out £144,255 on my brat's education, I'd want to know about the windows. One trusts they are double-glazed at the very least. Iron bars optional.

Even more troubling is the section on severe allergies. Somewhat illiterately, the inspector writes: "In one house, whilst staff were aware of the risk to health, did not sufficiently monitor foods brought into the house that is a serious threat to a boarders well being." Perhaps this would read a little better as:  "In one house, foods which were brought in and which posed a serious threat to a boarder's well-being, were not sufficiently monitored, despite staff awareness of risk to health." One expects better of an Ofsted inspector.

The report rhapsodises on Eton's procedures against misconduct and misrule. Just as well. As recently as 1999 a Berkshire inquest heard how up to 10 Eton boys indulged in "fainting games" - thrill-seeking near-strangulations - after a pupil was found tragically hanged at the college. No satsumas were involved. A 14-year-old boy told the inquest: "You sit on a bed and someone produces a dressing gown cord and it is wrapped around your neck. One or two friends will pull it until you feel dizzy and faint for a few minutes. The attraction was that it was something different - it made you feel abnormal."

One can only hope Eton has eliminated entirely exotic subterranean activities of this sort - though I am sure future Old Etonian memoirs will paint a very different picture from that prettily framed by Ofsted in 2009.

*At 13, William was sent to Eton College, close to Windsor, a choice well-suited to a boy with a public future, not least because his new classmates would be as well-connected and as well-heeled as he: the Prince would not even be the only boy with a private detective." The Royal Report.