Cluedo Championships

You join us at a very crucial point in the Cluedo championship final.  Our four competitors have gone through three intense rounds so far and yet, no one seems to be any closer to discovering whodunit.  Surely the game will be decided in this next vital round.

The players all take a sip of water, and the game is underway again.  First up is Julian, a Cluedo verteran from back when the 2^nd editions were still being published.  Let’s take a look at his stats:

Name:  Julian Kenworthy

Age:  53

Games Won: 209

Games Lost:  14

Shoe Size:  10

Prostate:  Active

On paper, he is definitely the favourite in this competition.  That’s right.  The crowd are waiting with baited breath for Julian’s next move.  We’re all expecting great things from him.

Julian:  “It was Professor Plum with the knife in the kitchen.”

If he's a professor, where's his lab coat?

Oh and that’s a terrible mistake.  Julian has obviously forgotten that Professor Plum was already played in the first round, and as we can see, Kyle has raised his hand to claim the purple Prof as being in his hand.  The pressure must have gotten to Julian.  He doesn't look happy with that.  He’s thrown the towel from around his neck at the referee.  That’s unsporting.  He’s demanding another go; apparently he meant to say Reverend Green but got him confused with the famous rapper, Professor Green.

While we wait on the judge’s decision, let’s look over some the highlights so far.  Yes, here we see Julian kicking over his chair when a member of the audience coughed.  That spectator was promptly thrown out for distracting the players.  Let’s hope we don’t run into any more trouble causers like that.

Back to the action, and it appears that Julian’s appeal his been denied.  Rightly so in this commentator’s opinion.  These athletes get paid far too much to make such elementary mistakes.

Next up is this competition’s wild card, Brian Furniss.  Brian is relatively unknown in the Cluedo world, this being his first ever competitive Cluedo tournament.  He stormed the semi-finals without even breaking a sweat, and he looks quite the cool customer so far.  Let’s see what kind of move he’s going to play here.

Brian:  “I choose Mrs Bun the Baker’s Wife, on B9, with this double-six domino.”

...Well...that’s left everyone utterly speechless!  Someone get me a rulebook!  Such a move has never been played in the entire history of the sport.  This could bring the game into disrepute.  Everyone is looking towards the referee for an answer, but he’s just shrugging his shoulders.  The crowd are getting restless.  Several audience members appear to have passed out in shock.  Oh the humanity!

The referee seems to be getting some kind of communication through his earpiece.  This will be the official decision.  It stands!  The move stands!  And the crowd go wild!  Since there's nothing against it in the rulebook, the officials have had to validate the move.  Brian wins!

A vortex appears to be opening up beneath the player’s feet.  I can’t...I can’t describe what I’m seeing.  It’s almost as if this audacious move has broken the very fabric of reality.  My face has been sucked clean off!  Is this the end of days?  Let it be known that I regret nothing!

- And this, my friends, is why Cluedo is considered to be the most extreme sport there has ever been.

Suicide And Cheese: Part 4

Shuffling through the swarms of foodies seemed a lot more unpleasant from the visitor’s side of the fence.  It was like trying to part the Red Sea, if the Red Sea was filled with fat people.

The Annual Cheese Fair used to be one of the highlights of my calendar, alongside the day in which I allow myself to indulge in acts of self flagellation (14th of September if you’re interested, the day before my birthday.  Sometimes you’ve just got to treat yourself).  However, this year’s Cheese Fair seemed sinister and nauseating.  Not only did I have to slum it with no VIP pass and rub shoulders with the sweaty masses, but some of the stalls this year were just downright offensive.  I spied from afar a couple of the Elites manning a stall for spray-on cheese.  This kind of depravity would never have been allowed under my jurisdiction.  I started to wonder if this entire set of circumstance had been a conspiracy to oust me so that the society could debase itself with these disgusting cheesy products.  However, the poor taste selection wasn’t even the most repugnant part of my attendance today.

The worst aspect of this festival was the knowledge that I was soon to become a murderer.  I wore the largest overcoat I had in my possession to conceal the serrated cheese knife underneath.

Bobbing above the human canopy, I tried to spot Herman amongst the crowds.  He’d have to be here somewhere.  I knew he wouldn’t be able to stay away today.  I telephoned his office and posed as a journalist wanting an interview, asking him to meet me at the Cheese Fair.  I did my best impression of Keith Chegwin in an attempt to disguise my voice, and he seemed delighted at the chance to appear in the local paper.  How could he stay away after that?  This was the most cunning plan since the police tried to lure Julian Assange out of the Ecuadorian embassy by promising to tell him secrets.

It was at this point I felt a small tug at my sleeve.  I looked behind me to see Johnny Bramble, the young Elite who pretty much ordered my expulsion from the society.

“What are you doing here?” He queried, peering up into my eyes as though studying them for an answer.

“Just taking in the country air” I lied, motioning to my surroundings with my hands.  At this point he ushered me between two tents, away from public eyes.

“I know what you’re up to.  You’re here to pursue some sort of personal vendetta!  Well I’m going to – ERK!  Did you just stab me?”

I didn’t even mean to do it.  My hand reacted involuntarily in a stabbing motion.  As his robes started to turn from cheese yellow to crimson, I pulled the knife out of my victim and stuffed it back into my pocket.

“You fucking stabbed me!”

Before I could chastise him on his language (children shouldn’t swear, it’s so uncouth), he collapsed down dead in a heap.

I couldn’t leave the body here.  Although it was out of the way slightly, someone would stumble across it eventually.  I lifted the tarpaulin next to me and stuffed his body underneath.  Little did I know I’d just shoved him into a very public tent (where Alex James from Blur was doing a book signing).  I immediately heard a mass of screaming and hysteria and decided I needed to move away from the scene of the crime.

Hurrying along, I felt somewhat numb.  Murder wasn’t the great stimulant I expected it to be.  In fact, I didn’t feel vindicated at all.  In fact, I felt rather let down by the whole experience, as though stabbing a child wasn’t such a great thing to do.  Perhaps all my hatred was reserved for Herman.

As I contemplated these matters of life and death, I rounded a corner and bumped straight into two policemen.  The first one turned to his colleague.

“Is that him?”

“Seems like it.  Take him in”

Was this it?  Had my run as a mass murderer come to an end in a few mere seconds?  I don’t think my feeble attempts would worry Raul Moat.

Luckily for me I wasn’t a suspect in the murder.  The police just wanted to question me.  Apparently they thought I wanted to assassinate the President of the United States due to something I typed into Google.  Preposterous!  Anyway, after the CIA visited and questioned me, and a little waterboarding, I was set free.

For the past few years I have lived in isolation, trying to come to terms with my actions.  I feel ashamed that I never managed to kill Herman, but after my abject failure, I don’t really have the will power to try again.  However, I heard the other day that he had contracted a deadly disease, so perhaps every cloud does have a silver lining.  Now, as I once again construct my tower of old newspapers and looking for my old faithful lynching rope, I write this note and hope that this will clear up the mystery surrounding what happened to Little Johnny Bramble, and why Alex James never made another block of cheese again.

Dial 111 For Murder

Now that Christmas is over for another year and we start to get back into the daily grind, it is easy to become nostalgic for the festivities we enjoyed less than two weeks ago. Everyone misses that wonderful time of year where you can wear novelty jumpers without ridicule, play board games with your family, and go out and murder random strangers with illegal firearms.

Oddly enough, Christmas 2011 has seen an inordinate amount of murderings. First, someone was stabbed on London’s busiest high street in broad daylight on Boxing Day, then a guy calling himself “Psycho Stapleton” killed a kid in Salford, then another loon shot up his girlfriend’s whole family, killing three of them. Then, just when you felt bloated from the massive murder buffet, a dead woman turns up on the Queen’s Sandringham estate on New Year’s Day. It’s a psychopath jamboree!

Murders aren’t exactly rare events, even in a country such as England where people would to queue just to get away from an armed gunman. However, it seems that the excesses of Christmas have cracked our usually polite demeanour, sending us out into the streets for a killing or two. What’s gotten into everyone lately? Have we become jealous that the worst atrocity last year was committed in fucking Norway of all places? Maybe our nutters have become disillusioned that no one has managed to top the heady heights of Raoul Moat’s 10 strong pile of cadavers recently. Maybe they are setting out an agenda for 2012.

The UK's latest craze, after murdering

Mind you, considering that amount of grown men I’ve seen riding around on scooters since Christmas, it’s not all that surprising that some people have taken to mass murder. Seriously, I saw a guy riding a double scooter the other day. It was basically two scooters joined together at one end in a V shape. A double scooter makes you a double twat, it’s a scientific fact. Violence is the only answer in a situation like this.

Still, if you find yourself being tackled to your kitchen floor by an armed assailant in a knitted reindeer jumper, you’ll need to think about which emergency number you need to ring. While blood trickles from your atrophied organs, slowly drowning you in your own vital fluids, take a moment and think to yourself “does this really warrant a 999 call?” If not, you might like to try 111, the new number for emergencies that aren’t quite that urgent.

That’s right, now you have to prioritise your own injuries. 999 is only for the most serious eventualities such as nuclear holocaust, outbreak of intergalactic war, or if someone throws a soft fruit at Prince Phillip. 111 is better if you have a nosebleed that won’t stop, or a bruise on your knee in the shape of Italy. Considering that we already have a general helpline for health issues called NHS Direct, it is becoming a bit too confusing as to which number is the best to use in a given situation. You’ll find yourself flailing at your phone with whatever limbs you have left, hoping to get through to the right place.




But more important than NHS Direct


Never mind. With the rate at which this murderous trend is growing, we’ll all be swept up in this craze by the end of the year. Going out killing is the new staying in! Forget your Pogs, football cards and foldable scooters, grab your nearest automatic weapon and meet me in the park. Last one standing gets to eat my liver!