60 Years Of The PMC: A New Contributor

2010 marks the 60th anniversary of the launch of the PMC. Yes, it's impossible to believe, but that's because it is impossible. To mark this auspicious occasion the PMC will be taking a retrospective of some of the outstanding posts of the past six decades. From Cold War to Coldplay and from Ban the Bomb to Ban the Burka, every decade will be represented, and includes highlights from some of the most talked about of contributors...Bertrand Russell, Hunter S. Thompson, Roman Polanski, Roald Dahl and Limahl from Kajagoogoo, to name but a few - none of them contributed to the PMC's pages (oh, hold on a second, Limahl had a regular section in the early 80s). 

January 1982 saw the arrival of a new contributor to the PMC. Benedict Francis-Kentigern, or BFK as he immediately became known, was a budding motoring journalist who had risen from the humble beginnings of Stowe public school and an old Austin Healey Sprite that his stockbroker father had bought him for his twelfth birthday, to become motoring correspondent here. He also worked for Motorsport magazine, and in fact was known for  merely scaling down his offerings there somewhat and simply posting them here.. as if any serious journalist would do such a thing. 
An early excerpt from his work, the then-never-popular 'BFK's week', shows us that the young BFK was no slouch when  it came to painting a vivid picture of his glamorous lifestyle without ever resorting to cliche..

First published on 1 July 1982..

Hi all - BFK here. I've just  been driving the new version of the XJS from Jaguar. It's got a lot more kick to it now, with a 5.3 V12 high efficiency engine which has squeezed out nearly a hundred more bhp than the old version, and you certainly feel it, as I did winding my way through the leafy lanes surrounding Great Missenden in my native Bucks. It was a cabriolet I was driving, and the moody looking clouds that were gathering over High Wycombe direction initially provoked a little bit of concern, before pulling over to close the automatic cloth top, which worked like a dream. Forunately I'd donned my best black roll neck Simon Templar jersey and was closing the window just as a hot looking brunette drew parallel with me, in a gold cabriolet Golf Gti. She fluttered her eyelids at me whilst I managed to half raise my eyebrow (using my finger to help). I was about to suggest coffee at a little hostelry I know nearby, before she let out a terrible estuary 'see ya, graaandad'..my goodness, it was none other than Lorraine Chase! I was tempted to give chase myself but decided to play it cool, easy enough to do when you're driving by far the smoothest thing to come out of Coventry, not that that is saying much. 
I was getting a bit peckish so pulled over in the next village to buy a Cadbury's finger of fudge and the latest issue of the 'classical composers partwork'. It was Shostakovich this time. Must remember to leave the LP and accompanying booklet on my glass coffee table, just in case Lorraine should pop round to borrow a cup of sugar. It'll make me look as sophisticated as Christopher Cazenove, almost.
I soon got stuck behind some old biddies in a Morris Minor, and it wasn't going to be easy to get round them on a single track lane in the Chilterns. I just chilled out, slapped on the latest Police album on the cassette player (which has an auto-reverse function and Dolby reduced hiss!) and let it all wash over me.
Back at the ranch, I ran a sponge-mop and some Flash over the black and white tiled hallway floor, which was designed for me by Terence Conran no less, before settling down to catch what little of Wimbledon the rain hadn't spoiled.
Plugging into my Acorn Electron and losing off a fax to New York, in which I propsed to run a few ideas up the flagpole with our American co-publishers, I felt a wave of satisfaction come over me. This is 1982 and anything is possible, especially with your truly involved, and I pushed my red rimmed specs up my nose with an air of smugness I'd seen on a recent episode of 'Triangle'.

60 Years Of The PMC - Ooh I've Done It Again

2010 marks the 60th anniversary of the launch of the PMC. Yes, it's impossible to believe, but that's because it is impossible. To mark this auspicious occasion the PMC will be taking a retrospective of some of the outstanding posts of the past six decades. From Cold War to Coldplay and from Ban the Bomb to Ban the Burka, every decade will be represented, and includes highlights from some of the most talked about of contributors...Bertrand Russell, Hunter S. Thompson, Roman Polanski, Roald Dahl and Limahl from Kajagoogoo, to name but a few - none of them contributed to the PMC's pages (oh, hold on a second, Limahl had a regular section in the early 80s).

1977 saw the introduction of the short lived but much loved series of 'blooper' posts, entitled 'Ooh I've Done It Again..!'

Posted by the never-popular Arthur Goldsberry (who never, apparently, did anything else noteworthy), they were a collection of ill fated posts which started off well, only to fall flat on their metaphorical face because, tee hee hee, people sometimes make mistakes! There were times when somebody burst out laughing, forgot what they were supposed to type, or uttered some kind of double entendre. Here are some of the selected highlights.

Ian Botham has had an extraordinary game today. The young all rounder stepped out at Trent Bridge today to claim his....what, er, what did you say? Oh no - it wasn't Trent Bridge it was at Old Trafford, ha ha ha ha ha  - ooh, I've done it again!

To make a Spanish omelette, take four eggs, crack them open into a large mizing bowl and - oh no, I've dropped the eggs on the floor and they've gone everywhere! - ooh, I've done it again!

Ok here's the start of my post...erm...tssss, ha ha ha! I can't remember what I was supposed to write - don't look at me..no, well you started it, tee hee hee. - ooh, I've done it again!

The Prime Minister today was in Reading for the opening of the dsaki  rj103093 akrkeak 334919e r efehr a reareakk939293929  ,fea..üreüarä - .....///// ..   will someone get that bloody cat off the keyboard?! - ooh, I've done it again!

A woman contacted the PMC today to ask about a big storm she'd heard that was on the way, due to hit the South of England some time tomorrow. We can assure you that no such thing is going to happen. The very next day a force 12 gale hit the country killing thousands, and the PMC was made to look very foolish indeed - ooh, I've done it again!

Not where he eats, but where he is eaten: a certain convocation of politic worms are e'en at him. Your worm is your only emperor for diet: we fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots: your fat king..fucking you FUCK FUCK FUCKITY FUCK, OH FUCK IT TO HELL AND BACK; WHAT'S MY MOTIVATION DARLINGS?!? - ooh, I've done it again!

Postscript: Goldsberry tragically died in on the toilet in 1983 after eating a phal curry accompanied by 11 pints of lager - out of respect for him, his regular blogspot was retired (and also because it had quite frankly been done to death).

60 Years Of The PMC - A New Contributor

2010 marks the 60th anniversary of the launch of the PMC. Yes, it's impossible to believe, but that's because it is impossible. To mark this auspicious occasion the PMC will be taking a retrospective of some of the outstanding posts of the past six decades. From Cold War to Coldplay and from Ban the Bomb to Ban the Burka, every decade will be represented, and includes highlights from some of the most talked about of contributors...Bertrand Russell, Hunter S. Thompson, Roman Polanski, Roald Dahl and Limahl from Kajagoogoo, to name but a few - none of them contributed to the PMC's pages (oh, hold on a second, Limahl had a regular section in the early 80s). 1973 saw the addition of a new member to the PMC bureau. Andrew Whyte was a youth just out of hospital, who was initially set to the tasks that noone else had thought of doing, and, in the face of overwhelming criticism from the old school (Benedict Francis Kentigern in particular) stuck it out through thick and thin (mosly thick) and still tenuously holds his post today.. First posted on 11 December 1973.
 

Right. What am I going to write about, can't find anything in my book of quotations for the day to purloin. Hmm, did anyone insult me today. No. Is there a TV show I've just remembered which I can nostalgically place a youtube clip about? No, not that either. Hmm, and I'm not going to resort to sarcasm, that's just something I wouldn't ever do. Well, let's just resort to the default approach of ridiculing people in the public eye...ok, anyone notice how that Martin McGuiness from the IRA looks like a kind of bucolic Art Garfunkel? Ha ha, maybe they should cover one of their songs, not Bridge Over Troubled Water, that's for sure, Homeward Bound, for the day they get out of prison..or maybe 'semtex, mace armalite and lime' to the tune of Parsley, Sage etc. Ha ha..

Whyte went into hiding for 21 years following this post, following a threat of a 'panel beating', not from the IRA but from the rest of the PMC staff.

60 Years Of The PMC - Finger On The Pulse Of Culture

2010 marks the 60th anniversary of the launch of the PMC. Yes, it's impossible to believe, but that's because it is impossible.

To mark this auspicious occasion the PMC will be taking a retrospective of some of the outstanding posts of the past six decades. From Cold War to Coldplay and from Ban the Bomb to Ban the Burka, every decade will be represented, and includes highlights from some of the most talked about of contributors...Bertrand Russell, Hunter S. Thompson, Roman Polanski, Roald Dahl and Limahl from Kajagoogoo,  to name but a few - none of them contributed to the PMC's pages (oh, hold on a second, Limahl had a regular section in the early 80s).

It's 1972 and a new, young film reviewer joined the PMC. Not long out of journalist school, and having been a contributor to the infamous 'Piss Off' comic, he was raring to go with some serious journalism and getting to see various films for free. Oh, his name was Wayne Shooter, for goodness sake.

First posted  30th January 1972

Went to see a great movie last night at Theatre One. It's called 'Cannibalised Day of Blood Reckoning' -  you HAVE to go and see it.

Filmed on 8mm cinemascope gives it a graniness which I can only forsee will, on its own, give it the very meaningful title of 'cult' in about 20 or 30 years time.


The maker, still in film school, assembled an excellent cast of his girlfriend, her friend, and some other friends plus one of their dad's to play the policeman, who gets massacred.

One by one, the cast members get massacred, having run out of gas in the middle of the Louisian Bayous. The bit where the guy gets his head completely smashed in is excellent - you can see his brains! Then a cannibal eats it!!

It's not at all depressing and shows just how far we've come in the field of filmmaking since such soft soapy rubbish of 'Wonderful Life', or such unrealistic, bloodless tripe such as Hitchcock's 'Rope' or bourgeoisie-pleasing offerings like 'the Godfather'  (the Studen's Union Class War rep told me to say that, just before he popped up to his parents' house near Henley on Thames).

Indeed, I feel that this new found ability accurately to present blood on-screen will lead to some vastly superior movies than what has been churned out recently, changing the face of the film industry forever.

60 Years Of The Puumaja Crew- No. 10

It's not often here at the PMC that we review a book, still less that we review some reviews of a book and then have an excerpt afterwards. So, jumping forward somewhat in our chronological trawling of past posts, here is a review from 1996 of a novel which was all over the place at the time, and which now noone in their right or wrong mind would look at twice...

First published March 27th 1996

One, two, three, you can’t catch me!

The new novel from Francis M’gannanagan

Critical acclaim for M’gannanagan’s last novel, Cassie’s lips:

‘Brilliant…gripping…dynamite…”

TV Extra magazine

‘A tragic and often so very moving canter through the very soul of what it is and what it is not to be brought up in the most desperate of environments. M’gannanagan knows humanity, he knows suffeing, he knows what it is to feel fear. Death is his closest confidant, his most trusted servant. The reader is transfixed in a house of paranoia, loathing and confusion as M’gannanagan jolts them through life, laughing at the unlaughable-at, thinking the unthinkable, doing the undo-able. Here is a man who has dipped his ladle deep into the barrel of his soul and come up with a load of bits from the bottom, becoming dizzy with the sheer force of the horrors of his upbringing, a man who hangs on by the slightest sinew of hope, a man who walks a tightrope literally made of barbed wire. This book is nothing short of a work of art, a thing of beauty which will bring tears, laughter, reflection and silliness in equal measure. Mr M’gannanagan, I salute you’.

Diarmuid O’ S.

Irish Histrionic Review

‘Bleak, gritty, unputdownable and f*cking good. A vivid portrait of life on the edge’

Martin Chines, author of ‘You, You Prick, I’ll Smash Your Eye Off’ and ‘You C*nt’.

“Second only to Roddy Doyle in encapsulating the sheer tragedy of what it is to be alive. A triumph’.

Silly Blenkinsop, the Daily Times review of literature.

Part One

―‘Gie’ it us’ she said.

My dad was out and I was wearing my brand new t-shirt. It was brown.

― ‘Ah sah’d gie’ it uz’.

Sandy was three years older than me, but seemed somehow smaller, as though her head had been compressed inside a Swan Vestas matchbox.

― ‘ye basa – ya’ nae ge i’ us ah’ll telt mez’ granna, man..’

Shite. I’d been hiding the jazz mag under my new t-shirt for the last two hours. But my fingers were giving out. The agony was shooting through them like a forest fire being fanned by the downdraughts of hell.

― ‘Ye friggin’ jack basa – lik’ a’ wha’ ye ben deein’ man’

An awful tearing sound rent the air, like an invisible head being torn from unknowing shoulders. Sandy had the mag now in her sticky hands, and was waving it around now, above her head and beyond my reach, her lank, greasy red curls tumbling over her eyes, copper-sulphate blue eyes, as blue as neptune’s arse.

― ‘aieeeeee! Ye basa’ – ah’ll telt mez’ granna av ye.a’ swore ah’ll telt mez’ granna. Uh’ll geddat yuz fa’ this an’ ye’ll lorn’, man’

I’d delivered a stinging kick to her shins, either the right or the left, it doesn’t seem relevant any more, with my steel toecapped winkle pickers. They were the smartest winkle pickers on the estate, I used to parade up and down in them, a ghetto peacock, making all the other kids jealous. Billy Childers who lived on our estate said he was going to take them off me. Billy Childers’ dad was in prison, for murder they said, though noone said it to his face. He had a hair lip. My mam said he was a meanie kid, but I didn’t know what that meant.

― ‘ma shinnies…tha’ ficked – ah’ll fickin’ blat ye, ye basa, man!’

Sandy was bent double in agony on the playground floor. I stood over her, proud, triumphant, and now could hold the jazz mag in front of me, unmolested.

The school was old and grey. Part of it was closed now. There were two separate entrances, one saying ‘girls’ and another saying ‘boys’, but noone bothered with that any more. Sandy said that when her granna was at the school they used those different entrances, but that was in olden times. And they had the lash. Her granna was lashed 200 times once, she said, but I didn’t believe her. She was always lying. They still had the cane, but they didn’t use it as much as they used to, and you needed a special form. Once Dereck Bockerty was given one of those forms but they let him off because his dad was destroyed that day down at the shipyard, by a big falling thing. Noone like Dereck Bockerty. He smelt of cabbages.

A thick, black smog, such as you only got in our part of Garyford, hung in the air the night our Carlton ran away. Not the modern kind of smog, which is gone by lunchtime, but the old kind, which was much much thicker and blacker. We didn’t know about emphysema then, even though half the babies born in the infirmary had it. By the time people got to working in the yards they had the full blown version. There was a particular type of cough you used to associate with someone who was a long termer at the yards, like a combination of a borborygmatic lawnmower and a broken turkey on formaldehyde. My dad had that cough but he used to pretend that he didn’t. The night our Carlton ran away he forgot to pretend not to have it and started having it again. All night he went on, and by morning he could only just breathe, and then the breathing sounded like a mouse trying to attract somebody’s attention.

― ‘wha’s uz Cazza, man?’

I asked my mother the next day. She didn’t reply. She was picking oakum in the kitchen, the frail strands of unpicked flecks softly falling to the ground, describing a circular pattern as they did so, miniature parachutists in the ether of domesticity.

― ‘ah sa’, ah’d, wha’sz uz Cazza, man?’

― ‘Layz’ isz’ ooz’, man, Frankiesz, man, boy, man’

It was my other brother, Paul, two years older than me. He had been playing with the broken peg he had been given two Christmases ago.

― ‘Bosz whecz’s eesz, man?’

Paul looked furtively over to where my mother was working. She’d stopped now, her fingers lying dormant like an abandoned crematorium. I watched as a single tear accumulated in the small depression that was formed where the corner of her eye met the huge mole that dominated her face. It hung there for a moment, it seemed like an indefinite period which could have been anything from three seconds to thirty two seconds, before falling to the oakum-littered floor, exploding in a fragile crystalline coronet of sheer miniature daintiness. I was afraid.

. . . . . .

― ‘uz Cazz’sz niezs’ cuzmnz’ bacz’ man’.

Paul explained to me much later.

‘ee’s duz gannsz runszwascz taez t’navyz, man. ’llz nzz’ co’ basz. Sae jisz’ fogezzabooscsz’ ‘eezz man’.

I didn’t know where the Navy was or even what it was.

‘czklzz czsz wieczsz sczcz. Szczsc tzszcs, man’.

It was at this point, the point at which my family had started speaking to me in Polish, that I realized that a part of my childhood had been irrevocably taken from me, like a traumatized, half-dead bird being snatched from the fangs of a very ugly cat. Nothing would be the same again. I watched as an undulating froth of thick, basalt smoke relentlessly fanned out of chimneys that loomed, defiant, and satanic, over our street. In the distance the ululating screech of the factory siren pierced to my very essence, a disgraced Japanese soldier committing seppuku after a particularly bad day.

More edge-of –the-seat stuff next week (or not as the case may be) when Francis tells us more about life staring down the end of a belt buckle, more tragedies, and his special birthday present of a bucket of sand and a bucket of vinegar.

60 Years Of The PMC - Launch Of 'Consider This, This Morning'

First posted 26th March 1969, on a trial basis (the editor thought it wouldn't last and just got a part-time Rabbi in to compile the thoughts)...

"Those who criticize me behind my back are afraid of me; those who praise me to my face hate me"

Chinese proverb

60 Years Of The PMC - Definitely The End Of This Blog

First published 22 August 1968

Out of solidarity to all our brothers and sisters in Czechoslovakia, Poland, Mexico, Brazil, France, the USA and the Isle of Sheppey, we are ceremonially going to commit self-immolation in front of the PMC offices at 18.00 hours today! Vive Le (or is it 'La'?) Revolution!....


Postscript: due to the Thursday afternoon being particularly wet, and a general lack of intention to follow through the somewhat rash assertions that PMC staff had (drunkenly) made, in fact the only form of immolation happened when various staff members nicked out for one of their 20 minute-ly cigarette breaks..

60 Years Of The PMC - The PMC Unilaterally Declares Independence

2010 marks the 60th anniversary of the launch of the PMC. Yes, it's impossible to believe, but that's because it is impossible.

To mark this auspicious occasion the PMC will be taking a retrospective of some of the outstanding posts of the past six decades. From Cold War to Coldplay and from Ban the Bomb to Ban the Burka, every decade will be represented, and includes highlights from some of the most talked about of contributors...Bertrand Russell, Hunter S. Thompson, Roman Polanski, Roald Dahl and Limahl from Kajagoogoo,  to name but a few - none of them contributed to the PMC's pages (oh, hold on a second, Limahl had a regular section in the early 80s) 

First published on 11 November 1965

"The Puumaja Crew would like to announce that it has unilaterally declared independence from the blogspot organisation, as they do things that we don't like. We are reverting to our original name, Wooden Houseshire,  and, since we feel beset by enemy blogs on all sides, expect blogspot to come in and save us when the going gets tough anyway.

We simply can't bear the idea of our civilized and productive blog being brought down by the primitive peoples in our midst until such time as they have learnt to blog properly. We are particularly disappointed that, despite all the aid to our kith and kin at blogspot, they don't seem to understand this and whilst we have some kind of rose-tinted view of what their organisation stands for and, in the final analysis are always likely ultimately to fall in line, this is not going to happen before we've enjoyed our fair share of mischief-making".


Ian 'The Leopard' Smith

60 Years Of The PMC - We Don't Like Satire

Originally posted on 24 August 1961...

Since this blog began over ten years ago, we've had a never-ending stream of questionable publications claiming to be 'satirical' cross our desks. Often these pernicious rags are little more than schoolboy comics or student rant sheets, but few so insiduous, so inadvisedly crass and offensive as the sorry offering we received the other day, which calls itself the 'Private Eye'

Founded by Oxbridge just-about-graduates with evidently nothing better to do, the magazine if you can call it such, claims to take an askance view at the week's news, to uncover wrong-doing and to poke fun at pomposity. So far so good, but just how do these people think that they are imbued with some kind of divine right to send up their elders and betters is anyone's guess. What do their parents think about it?

We at the PMC have every faith that our politicians and our élites behave honourably at all times, and have no need to have their every move pried into by these delinquent would-be journalists.

We fully expect that the pubication will bomb; magazine publishing is an expensive busines and we can't see it surviving in the cut and thrust of the modern marketplace. This is nearly 1962 for heaven's sake, the world is on the edge of nuclear annihilation, morals seem to have broken down everywhere, and pouring out more of this dirge just serves to provoke people. It simply can't stand up for more than a few issues, not in a field saturated with  publications such as 'The Penny Review', 'Beg your Pardon?',  'Stiffer's Weekly',  'Just For A Rag',  'The New Statemen', the list goes on...We certainly can't see it ever holding a candle to the inherently superior 'Punch', not ever.


No, our prediction, and we are seldom wrong (witness our 'colour TV by 1963' piece), is that it will fall foul of the burgeoning libel laws in this country, thus bankrupting itself and returning to the antediluvian ooze from whence it emanated.

The Leopard

60 Years Of The PMC - Red Purge

First posted 28 May 1959..

The Ninja has been removed forthwith from the roster of the Puumajacrew's staff for overtly pro-Soviet sentiments.

60 Years Of The PMC - Sputnik 1

Originally posted on 5 October 1957

We congratulate the Soviet Union on launching the first ever 'satellite', which is a type of metal body which goes round and round the earth.

The satellite, called the 'sputnik' (which literally translated means a travel companion, although it is travelling alone) was launched from the Baikonur launch site, which is somewhere in the Soviet Union.

It is a great day for humanity. We predict that not only does it presage human spaceflight within the next few years, but developments of such a pace that, by the year 1980 we will all be wearing silver suits, instead of cars we will be using jet packs to propel ourselves around, we will have our holidays on Saturn or Uranus, and we won't need to eat - all our dietary requirements will be provided by cosuming a single pill once per year.

The Ninja

60 Years of the PMC - The Suez 'Invaded'

First posted on 29th October 1956

It's going to be bad news for Mr. Nasser I'm afraid. Exactly like Mr. Hitler 20 years ago, he seems to think he can occupy parts of his own country without asking for British permission first. Not on your nelly, Sir.

I predict he'll come to a mess yend as our glorious forces aided by our spunky Israeli allies send him truly on his merry way, thus securing peace in the region for many generations to come. 

Sitting on the afterdeck of the surprisingly comfortable troop ship, HMS Bollockbrain, the warm mediterranean sun beating down on me, and watching the Fleet Air Arm's Sea Venoms roaring over head, I can't help but feel that Mr Churchill was right back in the dark days of 1940 when he referred to the British Empire lasting for 1000 years. Oh, wait a minute, that's a french plane, urghh are they on our side yet again? Suddenly got a bad feeling about this.

The Leopard

60 Years of the PMC - Executions Digest

First posted on Friday 25th January 1952

The next execution is due to take place next Wednesday at Pentonville at 2. a.m., of the reprobate Lonnie Keith of Stratford, East London.

Mr Keith, 12, who may well have fired a gun we've since been unable to locate killing a body which isn't dead yet, will be hung by the neck until he is dead by Mr. Pierrepoint, who hopes to be back pulling pints by lunchtime the next day and as usual is offering one of his 'deep drop' specials to celebrate the occasion.

Mr. Pierrepoint uses 'Whiteknights' Tootpaste, double the dazzle in half the schemazzle, as does Mr. Keith at leat for a few more days.

Where It All Started...

The first ever post on the Puumaja Crew blogspot, 14th May 1950!...

What the deuces was that chap talking about on the light programme last night? Resume the Gold Standard? Never! What a cad. If we go back on the Gold Standard we risk losing the kind of currency control which, when placed in the hands of an expert such as the Chancellor of the Exchequer, ensures a fair deal for all Britons and the perpetuation of what remains of the empire

I predict great things for the British economy, indeed I feel that by the year 1975 industrial output will be world class, unemployment next to zero and the trade balance to turn continentals green with envy,  but this can only happen if we stay off encumbering mechanisms such as guaranteeing pieces of green paper with lumps of rarely-found precious metals.

The Leopard