French fries and a relieved footballer

DEMONSTRATING MY usual impeccable timing, I whisk Mrs Beelzebub off to Paris for a few days, just as the rioting reaches its peak.

As we circled the city on the way into Charles de Gaulle I had half expected to see the skyline lit up by flaming vehicles, but nothing was amiss. The Eiffel Tower towered and the Seine glinted in the moonlight. Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose. (If you’re Welsh, that’s French for “Oggy oggy oggy”.)

In fact, over the next four days spent in tourist Paris – that bubble of Gallic majesty – I didn’t see a single petrol-bombed Peugot or chargrilled Citroen. No disaffected youths rampaged through the streets, no broken windows scattered shards of glass into the foie gras.

The streets were clean, the architecture was impeccable, the town-planning a lesson to the rest of the world. The only problem was the Japanese tour parties. There you are, quietly wondering whether or not the Mona Lisa is actually quite crap, when suddenly there’s hundreds of the little buggers sneaking up on you while their tour guide barks orders into a walkie-talkie. I now know what it must have been like on Iwo Jima.

Inevitably, there was an Irish pub next to the hotel. Isn’t there always? From Turkestan to Torquay, the one thing you can always count on is paying £5 for a pint of Guinness while some thick-fingered, twinkly-eyed tosser plays Danny Boy on an accordion. Badly.

It’s about time we fought back. I therefore plan to open a chain of English theme pubs across Ireland. We’ll serve Watney’s Red Barrel and Double Diamond, pork scratchings and crisps with little blue bags of salt in them, and have a snug where the women can gather to gossip over a glass of milk stout.

I shall name them “Cromwell’s”.

LAZY LEFTIES often accuse me of homophobia. If they read more carefully (instead of sniffing poppers and playing Shirley Bassey records all the time) they’d see that I couldn’t care less what people get up to in the privacy of their own homes. It’s when they do it in the street and frighten the horses that I object.

Which brings us to last week’s Sunday Mirror front page. “Exclusive: Huntley Goes Gay” it screams, before going on to report that the Soham killer is having homosexual sex in Wakefield prison. Now bear in mind that this is a man who murdered and, in all probability, raped two 10-year-old girls before attempting to dispose of their bodies by setting fire to them.

The Sunday Mirror goes on to quote a prison officer: "It was known that Huntley is a sexual predator but no one had any idea he had become involved in sexual relationships with other male prisoners. While it was known he was an evil paedophile, it was also presumed that he was heterosexual.”

The truth is out. A vile paedophile compounds his sins by also Batting For The Other Side. Now that, folks, is homophobia.

JOHN TERRY is a footballer of some repute, performing with distinction for his club and country. Sadly, he’s also apparently susceptible to a quick spot of … err ... relief from some teenage slag he’s just met in a car park.

There’s no denying the romance of these kind of liaisons. And text messages seem to have replaced the bunch of red roses that usually follows car park congress. According to The Sun, Mr Terry texted his recent acquaintance and her friend in the following manner: “Oh my God I want to **** both of you, I want to watch you ******* each other’s ******* and ******** on my *** ****, then ******* me. I want one of you ****** me and the other ******* ** my ****. I’m gonna give you both the best ******* ever.”

Hmm. I may be missing the point here, but I never understand why errant footballers star out the “naughtier” words. I mean, these are dumb teenagers we’re talking about. How are they going to work out what he's trying to say?

OF COURSE, there’s not much point in teaching teenagers to read and write unless you’re going to allow them the use of writing implements. But according to the British Standards Institute, fountain pens are now too dangerous to be used by children under the age of 14.

This latest imposition of the Nanny State is based on the fear that the drooling nincompoops might swallow the pen caps and then have to spend three days on a trolley in a hospital corridor. (And what about Biros? Don’t they have caps?)

Now I don’t know about you, but when I were a lad we allowed to use the most vicious nibbed sticks that had to be dipped in the ink well on your desk. They were used to settle many a playtime dispute as rival gangs battled for control of the fake dinner ticket racket. Even when we progressed to fountain pens, it was one of those Platignum pens with the inner tube and the little lever on the side that left your desk looking like the Torry Canyon had crashed into it.

But now, along with scissors, pencil sharpeners and anything remotely pointy, they’ve been banned. Am I the only one to think it strange that in NuLabour’s brave new world, a 14-year-old girl can get an abortion without her parents’ knowledge but isn’t allowed to practice legible handwriting?

SHOCK HORROR in the tabloids as newspaper columnists discover the amazing news that gypsies living on official campsites don’t pay their council tax. Of course they don’t, you morons.

Yes, they want to use our schools and hospitals. And yes, they expect us to clear up their appalling mess once they’ve moved on. But pay for it? You must be joking.

Maybe we should all adopt the same attitude, crap in our own back garden, charge the next door neighbour £17,000 for “fixing” a single roof tile that doesn’t need mending anyway, steal the occasional baby and thumb our nose at the council bailiffs who are sure to turn up as soon as we miss a single payment. And see how long we can avoid jail.

Lucky heather, anyone?

O The views of Mr Beelzebub are purely personal and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Editor or staff of this website, of anyone remotely surprised that this “joined up government” is spending millions on adverts warning people not to drink too much in the same week that they introduce 24-hour drinking, of anyone not looking forward to watching Carol Thatcher on I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here, or of anyone suckered by the TV series into going out and buying a copy of the impenetrable Bleak House.