In Memoriam: Mikhail Gorbachev (1931-2022)

A brilliant politician; a prophet without honour in his own land, maybe, but arguably the most important head of state to emerge in Europe in the late 20th century. By way of a tribute, here's a short piece I wrote back in 2017 for my popular spoof memoir series Sketches from Memory. Yeah, it's a little irreverent, but the best lampoons always tend to be the most affectionate.

* * * * *

30th January, 1990

At the opening of the first McDonald's in Russia, dining with a special guest.

"So let me get this straight," Gorbachev says, munching away at his fourth Big Mac. "You can order the same meal at an identical branch anywhere in the world-?"

"Pretty much," I reply, dipping a french-fry in borscht sauce. "That's free market enterprise, Mickey Boy."

"Trembling Trotskyites!" he exclaims. "This Ronald McDonald must be a genius!"

I ask him if the Politburo ever thought about sanctioning a state-owned chain of fast food restaurants.

"Oh, sure!" Gorbachev laughs, a sliver of relish dripping from his chin. "Comrade Stalin proposed a franchise after hearing of the success of Kentucky Fried Chicken. He was obsessed with the parallels between himself and your Comrade Sanders. They were both military men, turned themselves into icons; Stalin yearned to see himself on family fun buckets and variety boxes - but then he died, so Comrade Khrushchev inherited the Kremlin Fried Chicken program. Of course, Nikita wanted to end Stalin's cult of personality, so he decided to put a rotating series of Soviet heroes on the buckets: Eisenstein, Shostakovich, Gagarin... But the project stalled because we couldn't crack the secret recipe. We sent undercover KGB agents to KFCs all over the world, but never found out Comrade Sanders' secret. When Comrade Brezhnev became General Secretary he increased defence spending by cutting back on all non-essential programs, including Kremlin Fried Chicken. For a time we tried to come up with our own ingredients, but boiled vodka and wheat grain just didn't compare. In the end, we admitted failure."

He shakes his head sadly and picks up a Chicken McNugget, staring at it with a mixture of anguish and frustration. "So close, and yet so far..." he mutters wearily. I tell him not to be so downhearted when a scrawny, acne-ridden employee mopping the floor bumps into the table, spilling Gorbachev's Coca-Cola all over his trousers.

"CLUMSY OAF!" Gorbachev yells, patting himself down.

"Apologies, General Secretary, Mr President!" the homunculus says, gripping nervously at the handle of his mop. Gorbachev looks him up and down frostily, then breaks into a cheery smile.

"No harm done, Comrade!" he chuckles, and motions the employee to carry on with his duties. As he leaves the table, Gorbachev leans over and says I know what to do. I reach into my breast pocket and pull out a miniature radio.

"Gayaneh, this is Firebird. I want that little turd Putin off the premises now..."

Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda: Rishi Sunak Remix

This week, Richard briefly reflects on the hot potato issue of lockdown in the Tory leadership race by way of the bleedin' obvious.

Back in July, Conservative MP Nadine Dorries revealed in an interview for GB News that, in the early days of the pandemic, Health and Social Care Select Committee chairman Jeremy Hunt proposed separating children from their parents and placing them in Covid quarantine 'hotels'. Now former Chancellor and leadership hopeful Rishi Sunak has claimed that he was always opposed to lockdown measures but, alas, his objections were expunged from the minutes of official meetings. I'm extremely skeptical of this (more so, in fact, than I am of Dorries' revelation), but the fact that two cabinet members have stuck their heads above the parapet and openly distanced themselves from the government's Covid policy is extremely interesting. Given a recent poll from YouGov tells us that the majority of the British public still support restrictions, on an electoral level it doesn't make a great deal of sense for them to adopt this position. Perhaps they know something we don't.

Despite politicians and mainstream media telling us that the global recession and cost of living crisis were caused by the war in Ukraine, the truth is the current economic spiral was on the cards long before Russian forces began moving west of the Dnipro River - directly attributable to unprecedented levels of government borrowing and spending as Covid coughed and spluttered its way through the population. Not only that, but the rise in mortality rates due to missed diagnoses and poor provision of treatments for cancer and heart disease during lockdown is now leading to a pandemic all of its own that looks set to eclipse Covid fatalities (to say nothing of the alarming rise in Sudden Adult Death Syndrome, which appears to be more prevalent in countries with greater vaccine roll-outs). With all this in mind, the government's proposed inquiry into its Covid response can't come quickly enough; not that I hold out much hope anyone will be held to account if it rules - as it surely must - suicidal mistakes were made, although I would like to see Neil Ferguson and his Imperial College London team get a sound kicking for making such fundamental errors of judgement in their original modelling.

But back to Sunak and co., all things considered, it makes sense to get ahead of the curve in anticipation of the anti-lockdown backlash. After all, who wants to be the stick-in-the-mud clinging to a government policy that's crippled the country for decades to come? Of course, if this is the game currently being played out, and I stress the 'if', then I'm not entirely sure how you can consider yourself Prime Minister material when political survival means more than your principles, but when has that ever stopped these bastards before? Either way, come winter and we're facing a choice between pneumonia and bankruptcy, I doubt Sunak's or arch rival Liz Truss' retroactive views on lockdown will be at the forefront of people's minds.

Speaking of YouTube...

...I've got to share this. I was recently commissioned by an arts magazine to write an article about Eastern European horror and sci-fi cinema. During my research I found a fan-made trailer on YouTube for Otakar Vávra's excellent 1970 film Witchhammer, a chilling study of the Moravia witch trials of the 1670s and, as you can probably guess, a sly indictment of the Czechoslovakian communist party. Scrolling through the comments, I found a bizarre statement left by a Gen Z YouTuber whose bio proudly states that he is an 'anarchist-socialist atheist-satanist' who 'speaks only the truth'. After a brief exchange of views (ie. me giving his statement a bloody good kicking), I took a screenshot just in case he deleted his original comment. Sadly, that proved to be the case, but thankfully this short but sweet meeting of minds can now be preserved on WordJam for all time:

Got to admire a man who sticks to his guns.

YouTube Presents: Ryan George - The First Guy To Ever Do Satire

Two guys in a park, both of them Ryan George.

GEORGE #1: ...So then you do a back-flip, snap the guy's neck, and that's where babies come from.

GEORGE #2: Wow, this 'sexual intercourse' sounds hard.

GEORGE #1: It sure is. Hey, did you hear about that thing?

GEORGE #2: What thing?

GEORGE #1: You know, the really important thing everyone's talking about?

GEORGE #2: Oh yeah, I heard something about that.

GEORGE #1: Don't you think it would be, like, super-funny if everyone involved with the thing was made to look ridiculous?

GEORGE #2: You mean by playing up their culpability to suggest the inherent flaws at the heart of the human condition?

GEORGE #1: Yes, sir, I do.

GEORGE #2: Okay, I'm into that.

GEORGE #1: Well, get this: the Biden administration denying we're in a recession is like the captain of the Titanic saying the ship's not sinking, they're just turning it into a swimming pool.

GEORGE #2: ...Is that satire?

GEORGE #1: Excuse me, 'satire'-?

GEORGE #2: Yeah, I decided that rhetorical humour intended to highlight human vice needed a name that satiated the speaker's objective.

GEORGE #1: Wow. When did you... when did you think of that?

GEORGE #2: About ten seconds ago.

GEORGE #1: Very sharp.

GEORGE #2: Thank you!

GEORGE #1: I dunno, though... 'Satire' sounds too close to 'satyr'.

GEORGE #2: You mean the lascivious, drunken woodland gods of Greco-Roman mythology?

GEORGE #1: That's right, except the Romans depicted them as shy, unassuming creatures compared to their rowdy, calculating Greek forebears.

GEORGE #2: But you are drunk right now, right?

GEORGE #1: Oh yeah.

GEORGE #2: Well, anyway, whimsical digressions aside-

GEORGE #1: And horny.

GEORGE #2: Ewww.

GEORGE #1: Sorry, go on.

GEORGE #2: I was saying I have questions about this satire thing. What if people don't agree with the topical barbs you're making?

GEORGE #1: You mean what if people object to figures and ideologies they support being transformed into absurd parodies of themselves?

GEORGE #2: That's it, yeah.

GEORGE #1: Actually, that's super easy. Barely an inconvenience.

GEORGE #2: Oh really?

GEORGE #1: Yeah, you just tailor your material so it's playful and less likely to cause offence.

GEORGE #2: What, so it adheres to the Horatian model?

GEORGE #1: Horatian-?

GEORGE #2: Yeah, I kinda figured if someone was gently trying to send-up human follies and foibles they'd have a really heroic name like Horace.

GEORGE #1: Okay, that could work.

GEORGE #2: And conversely, if you really wanted to stir things up in an abrasive and contemptuous way you'd be invoking the Juvenalian principle.

GEORGE #1: Oh, because 'Juvenal' sounds like 'juvenile'-?

GEORGE #2: No, Hank Juvenal - that drunk at the bar who's always calling everyone a worthless piece of shit.

GEORGE #1: Hey, I think we're really losing sight of who's meant to be the one explaining this satire thing here.

GEORGE #2: Yeah, it's tough keeping track of a conversation when both people talking are actually you.

GEORGE #1: I hear me, brother.

GEORGE #2: But say you wanted to monetise this hilarious conceit; how would you go about that?

GEORGE #1: Well, you could appear on a late-night live show broadcast on NBC on Saturday nights, but that would require regurgitating thinly-disguised, partisan, CNN-style talking points likely to insult the audience's intelligence.

GEORGE #2: Oh, that's no good.

GEORGE #1: No, but the money you make will compensate for the inevitable loss of self-respect and creative integrity you'll experience.

GEORGE #2: Isn't there any other way?

GEORGE #1: Well, you could start a blog that mocks-up BBC News web pages, message boards, parodies the latest TV shows and takes long-winded jabs at otherwise harmless social media personalities, but there's no money in that apart from those suckers on Patreon whose contributions are barely enough to support a drinking habit. But, plus side, you get to stick it to butthurt liberals.

GEORGE #2: Oh, sticking it to butthurt liberals is tight!

GEORGE #1: Oh, dear God...

GEORGE #2: What about YouTube?

GEORGE #1: That's kinda like the live show option but you've gotta make everything you put out super general.

GEORGE #2: You mean, like, make it so broad that it barely even qualifies as satire?

GEORGE #1: Yeah, you know, like, observational comedy that touches on the more bizarre aspects of human behaviour but doesn't really say anything or offend anybody.

GEORGE #2: And you think that'll get clicks and make money?

GEORGE #1: Only one way to find out...

Cut to:

-fin-