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Daily Mail and John Deacon


Steve Browning

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The missus buys the Sunday version for the crosswords, as they have cash prizes. Honestly. I flicked through the pages a couple of times but felt ill. If you want a particular bias in your chosen paper, ie, pro Brexit and anti Corbyn/Labor Party, then this is the paper to buy. If they can slant a story to show bias they do, to a massive extent.

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5 minutes ago, cetera said:


I have seen him in a Beefeater by the A3 near Richmond Park. Seriously..... no word of a lie....

I may have been in the company of several famous people in my life and I probably wouldn't realize. Honestly, I doubt I'd even recognise Brian May if his hair was in my soup. Famous People belong on telly or on stage. They have no business existing in the real world. 😋

Edited by Newfoundfreedom
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1 hour ago, Steve Browning said:

As it happens I think it would be great to talk to him about the gear he has used. On the early tours he had a monstrous Acoustic/Hiwatt rig and I'd love to know about that. The rack distribution unit he used and why the various Pbass variations over the years. Not everyone's cup of tea I grant you, but I would love to talk to him about the gear he has used.

Think it is fair to say ,if he wanted a natter about it he would have by now .He was probably quite private even in the Queen heyday so he hasn't really changed .Just stopped his day job.I could be wrong but the guys who have something to say about gear tend to surface and tell the stories .

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1 hour ago, mikel said:

The missus buys the Sunday version for the crosswords, as they have cash prizes. Honestly. I flicked through the pages a couple of times but felt ill. If you want a particular bias in your chosen paper, ie, pro Brexit and anti Corbyn/Labor Party, then this is the paper to buy. If they can slant a story to show bias they do, to a massive extent.

And other red tops are anti-Brexit and pro Corbyn. In a Democracy you need to have both unless you want to live in a Fascist state.

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1 hour ago, Rich said:

Perhaps I've been unlucky then, and have only been to the 3 or 4 out of 900 that seemed to be inhabited entirely by football-shirt-clad nerks who think that drinking Stella rather than Carling makes them sophisticated, habitually shout "Oi oi!" at people 6 feet away from them, and are seemingly engaged in a contest to see who can laugh the loudest at nothing and spill the most beer. Perhaps if I went to a 5th one, I would find the haven of peace and tranquility that many some seem to find them. I'm not going to find out.

Look at it this way Rich, at least you know where all the nob-heads are, and can plan a night out knowing you can successfully avoid them. If it weren`t for Wetherspoons you may well end up in their midst.........

Edited by Lozz196
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1 hour ago, RedVee said:

And other red tops are anti-Brexit and pro Corbyn. In a Democracy you need to have both unless you want to live in a Fascist state.

No. I want a newspaper to report the news. I dont need something to reinforce my own personal prejudice. I can make my own mind up about issues, I don't need a rag to tell me how to think. Give me the news, the bald facts and figures, not a heavily biased far left or far right view of an issue. Read the facts and make your own mind up, or, read a red top and simply hear what you want to hear.

 

As for JD. Top bloke, good bassist and good musician/songwriter. His band of choice ended, for him, with the death of Freddie. Job done. His time in the spotlight also ended and he is happy with that situation. Why cant the press understand that some people are not fixated on staying famous.

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4 minutes ago, PaulWarning said:

there's only 3 and does the Star bother with politics at all?

I'm not sure that the whole red top/ black top distinction works anymore.

The Mirror went 'up market' a few years ago, moving away from the focus on scantily clad celebrities and sensational headlines .It now aims to be a left wing version of the Mail rather than the Sun.

The Express on the other hand is like a down market Sun these days with it's focus on dog whistle politics, showbiz gossip and inaccurate extreeme weather predictions.

And as pointed out above, the Star technically almost isn't a newspaper at all anymore in the traditional sense, it's closer to US gossip mags like the National Enquirer.

Although there could be interesting days ahead for the Express and Star as they were recently acquired by the Mirror group, and despite reassurances from that group that those papers would retain their current political orientation, the reality is that the new owners seem to be planning to reduce the staff at both papers and plug the gaps with articles from journalists currently employed by the Mirror.

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3 minutes ago, Cato said:

I'm not sure that the whole red top/ black top distinction works anymore.

The Mirror went 'up market' a few years ago, moving away from the focus on scantily clad celebrities and sensational headlines .It now aims to be a left wing version of the Mail rather than the Sun.

The Express on the other hand is like a down market Sun these days with it's focus on dog whistle politics, showbiz gossip and inaccurate extreeme weather predictions.

And as pointed out above, the Star technically almost isn't a newspaper at all anymore in the traditional sense, it's closer to US gossip mags like the National Enquirer.

Although there could be interesting days ahead for the Express and Star as they were recently acquired by the Mirror group, and despite reassurances from that group that those papers would retain their current political orientation, the reality is that the new owners seem to be planning to reduce the staff at both papers and plug the gaps with articles from journalists currently employed by the Mirror.

this is about right I think, then to complicate things the Mail is probrexit and the Mail on Sunday is pro remain, or is it the other way round now the MoS's editor now runs the Mail?

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2 hours ago, Newfoundfreedom said:

I may have been in the company of several famous people in my life and I probably wouldn't realize. Honestly, I doubt I'd even recognise Brian May if his hair was in my soup. Famous People belong on telly or on stage. They have no business existing in the real world. 😋

How lucky that so few of them to know how to exist in the real world ... Katie Price for one. Certain peers of the realm for another,. 

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My Daily Mail story...

When a freelance writer, I was commissioned to write a piece on the 50th anniversary of the Beatles playing the Cavern for the first time in 1961. Great! A piece in a national newspaper. Little did I know!

I submitted the piece, and found it would go through several hands before publication. Each would tinker with it, often asking me to rewrite bits or add things.

Just when I thought it was all sorted, I got a call from (I presume) the features editor herself. Could I mention Heather Mills?

Sorry, is that Heather Mills, born 1968? Seven years after this event? Yes!

I gritted my teeth, rewrote a paragraph and sat back. Job done. Monday through Friday that week I bought the paper...nothing. Clearly it had missed the anniversary. I called the following week to enquire of its fate. Apparently the piece had appeared in the mock-up put before the editor on the Wednesday, only to be dismissed with a comment like: 'We had the Rolling Stones in yesterday, we don't need the Beatles today...'

I did get paid!!!!!

 

 

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3 hours ago, NickD said:

Back on topic.... What a weirdo JD is.

What kind of idiot would want to bang out a terrific body of work, make a few bob out of it, and then choose living comfortably and quietly with his loved ones over hanging out with industry types, hobnobbing with the terminally shallow and sucking up to the press.

Yes. If only we could all be so stupid :lol: 

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3 hours ago, cetera said:


I have seen him in a Beefeater by the A3 near Richmond Park. Seriously..... no word of a lie....

Some would say “Liar”, but I believe you.

I think it was the time Mr Deacon was attempting to enjoy a quiet Sunday roast but was being continually heckled by a member of The Goodies, sat nearby at another table.

As luck would have it Giant Haystacks (who had just been working out and not had chance to shower and freshen up, so slightly stinky) popped in for a Spritzer and stepped in on Mr Deacon’s behalf, telling the Goodie, in no uncertain terms, to leave the reclusive bassman alone.

’B.O. he-man raps Oddie’, as the tabloid headline said... 

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Let's get back on topic...

I don't like Wetherspoons because they don't let you sit at the bar. I like to entertain everyone by getting very drunk at the bar and making amusing, witty comments about the appearance of the other customers and staff. If they have a hilarious tic, rubbish hair or particularly bad dress-sense, so much the better. But oh no, you have to take your drink to a bloody table and sit there like some kind of sad, friendless loner. Also, the beer is shít.

Edited by discreet
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5 minutes ago, discreet said:

Let's get back on topic...

I don't like Wetherspoons because they don't let you sit at the bar. I like to entertain everyone by getting very drunk at the bar and making amusing, witty comments about the appearance of the other customers and staff. If they have a hilarious tic, rubbish hair or particularly bad dress-sense, so much the better. But oh no, you have to take your drink to a bloody table and sit there like some kind of sad, friendless loner. Also, the beer is sh|t.

Exactly! If you can’t sit at the bar and talk inane rubbish with the landlord...THEN IT’S NOT A PUB!!

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After Mr George Orwell and his essay The Moon Under Water:

My favourite public-house, the Frog and Fakkit is only two minutes from the central car park, but it is on a side-street, and polite little families and well-dressed couples never seem to find their way there, even on Saturday lunchtimes.

Its clientele, though fairly large, consists mostly of ‘regulars’ who spend much of their day in a recumbent position in the nearby park and go to the Frog and Fakkit for the drugs available from a weasel-featured man named Danny as much as for the beer.

If you are asked why you favour a particular public-house, it would seem natural to put the drugs first, but the thing that most appeals to me about the Frog and Fakkit is what people call its ‘ambience’.

To begin with, its whole architecture and fittings are uncompromisingly 1970’s. It has a mixed bag of formica-topped tables and cast-iron tractor-seat chairs, plastic panels masquerading as oak and peeling, Paisley wallpaper. The sticky carpet, the gouged bar top, the fake horse brasses adorning the walls and the ceiling stained dark brown by tobacco-smoke, the nudie-picture calendar behind the bar — everything has the solid, comfortable ugliness of the mid-twentieth century.

In winter there is generally a good fire burning in the skip outside the front door, and the ‘last century’  lay-out of the place encourages those fleeting collisions which lead so gratifyingly to flare-ups of savage violence. There are a public bar, a saloon bar, a dealers’ bar, an off-sales counter for underage drinkers and – upstairs – a large, empty room in which on Tuesdays Fridays and Saturdays live bands perform to the utter indifference of the patrons below.

In the Frog and Fakkit  it is never quiet enough to talk. There is a radio behind the bar tuned to Heart FM, a ‘digital’ juke box, two fruit machines, Sky Television and piped-in music. All are playing simultaneously and the only time they cannot be heard is when a band of hopelessly incompetent hobbyist ‘musicians’ is upstairs performing Sex On Fire.

The barmaids know their customers by name, having at some time taken most of them upstairs there to conjoin on a soiled mattress under the ‘stage’ . They are all middle-aged women—two of them have no teeth—and they call everyone ‘yew fakkin kant’ irrespective of age or sex.

You cannot get lunch at the Frog and Fakkit but there is - beside the plywood lavatory door - a snack counter where you can purchase expired pickled eggs or pork luncheon meat fried in batter (cold).

They are particular about their drinking vessels at the Frog and Fakkit, and never, for example, make the mistake of serving a pint of beer in a glass. Apart a selection of ‘pewter’ mugs screwed to the canopy which overhangs the bar every receptacle is made of plastic, a wide and vivid scar on the landlord’s jaw perhaps testifying to the matter.

The great surprise of the Frog and Fakkit is its lavatory. You go through a narrow passage leading out of the saloon, and find yourself in a fairly large garden with plane trees, under which there are old car tyres, broken bottles and the remains of a tramp who expired there a few years ago. Up at one end of the garden there is a roofless garden shed wherein the customer in search of relief will discover a spreading pool of urine, a stained plastic bucket containing a noisome admixture, and a pile of newspapers, mostly editions of the Daily Mail from the period when said organ was edited by Mr Paul Dacre.

On summer evenings there are ritual human sacrifices, and you sit under the plane trees injecting skag to the tune of delighted squeals from feral children prodding the burnt offering with sticks.

The Frog and Fakkit is my ideal of what a pub should be—at any rate, in a metropolitan area. (The qualities one expects of a country pub are slightly different.)

But now is the time to reveal something which the discerning and disillusioned reader will probably have guessed already. There is no such place as the Frog and Fakkit.

That is to say, there may well be a pub of that name, but I don’t know of it, nor do I know any pub with just that combination of qualities.

So if anyone knows of a pub that has junkies of every persuasion, food poisoning, brutal violence, insanitary facilities, deafening noise, regular visits by Plod, a reeking midden in the garden and prostitute barmaids I should be glad to hear of it, even though its name were something as prosaic as the Red Lion or Wetherspoons.

 

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