Heath Ledger Will Never Die As Long As Blair Lives

"I classify myself as an atheist. I think it's all a load of nonsense, the whole goddamn lot of it. Codology. I went to a diocesan college and they tried to make a priest out of me but they failed miserably, thanks be to God."
- with beautiful irony, the great Irish actor and even better human being Mick Lally, who died way too early, this week. RIP.

By Charley Brady

It's dark outside at the moment, so it feels strange to be writing this column. I usually do it in the morning and much to the horror of my editor it is usually about an hour before the deadline that it gets to him.

Tonight is different, though. I'm writing this at night because I was hit by an unusual proposal this evening. It's not the first time that this has happened but it's the first time that I actually thought about the nature of such offers.

As usual it concerned going easier on certain political parties - it's always said half-jokingly, which means that you can believe every word - and maybe (I love the "maybe") I would find more doors open to me as regards interviews, input and all the rest of the nonsense that goes along with such offers.

When I first started getting these a couple of years ago I just thought that it was sadly funny that they thought I had any pull at all. I don't. It's that simple. I'm not John Pilger; I'm not Robert Fisk; I have absolutely no say in the way that people think.

Then I got to thinking about the whole concept of being bought, even if that were only in the form of easier access to politicians.

As I said, I am extremely small potatoes in the world of journalism so I was never offered a large wedge of money.

But I've been thinking lately that if they can casually offer me that, what do they do with people who have real pull? It also made me wonder about myself.

In my heart I believe that I could never be bought and that's the truth. Yet I think that maybe it's only fair to say to those who are good enough to email me almost on a weekly basis and say that they admire me for being outspoken, well maybe you should think again.

Times are as tough for me as they are for anyone. I don't believe that I would ever let myself down by being easy on a crook or a politician - same thing - but do you know something? I'm just not sure.

And there you go: I've been thinking out loud on paper and have just answered my own question. No, I couldn't do it. I would go to the grave before I gave up the right to be sarcastic, laugh at them and tell the truth about them. Hell, that's part of the fun. It certainly isn't the enormous pay-check.

Still, there are some people who put power above all and one of them was visiting us this weekend.

Yes, it was that well- known and untried war criminal Tony Blair. If ever you saw a man whose horrendous, pasted-on-to-his-face rictus smile made you want to be violently ill, it's Tony, the self-important creep who is over here peddling copies of his autobiography "A Journey" at the moment.

He was on RTE's "Late Late Show" on Friday night and I flashed back to a film that scared the bejaysus out of me when I was kid. It was "Sardonicus" and by the hokeys this guy was him to the life. Same mad grin that never touched the eyes and to throw even more creepiness into it he had to tell us why he didn't convert to Catholicism until AFTER he had left as Prime Minister.

At this point my stomach was not only heaving but I also thought that I was going to suffer a massive brain embolism if I had to look at that grinning gob for another minute.

Jeez, I tell you, Heath Ledger will never be dead while this guy is stalking the planet. If they ever need another guy to play "The Joker" then they don't need to look too far. That bloody insincere grin! It will haunt me.

Do you remember that old add from the eighties promotion of Alan Moore's "The Killing Joke"?

BEYOND EVIL THERE IS INSANITY. BEYOND INSANITY THERE IS... THE JOKER.

Well, that's our Tony to a tee. Give that man some face paint and he's away on a hack.

Needless to say he got an easy ride on The Late Late Show. As a matter of fact I've come to the conclusion that they just hire trained monkeys to be in the audience. All they seem to do is sit there and read, no doubt with their lips moving, the placards that say APPLAUSE.

Of course it doesn't exactly help that presenter Ryan Tubridy (of whom I had such high hopes) never allows his audience to ask serious questions as was done in days of yore by his predecessors.

As a result such basic questions as "Why did you lie about the advice you gave to Princess Diana"? never emergerged.

For those unfamiliar with this episode from an alternative universe episode of "Star Trek", the hugely modest Blair says in his book that he advised Princess Diana to stay away from Dodi Fayed when she did the egomaniac a great favour to herself by staying at Chequers. He "warned" her not to become involved with the playboy that she died with as he didn't seem to think that was a good thing.

That must have left her more than a little bamboozled as at the date he mentions she had never even met the guy, let alone dated him.

Blair is not just a man; he is a God who can see into the future.

We must always keep this in mind when we read his self-serving autobiography.

If he can tell a blatant lie in print about such a small thing just to make himself look great you can be damned sure that this chancer has no qualms when it comes to the bigger stuff.

Not that I have much time either for the low-lives who turned out to "demonstrate" against his book-signing. Jeez, let the arrogant so-and-so get on with it, why don't you?

Yet they can't, can they? A rag-tag bunch of planks like the Anti-War crowd who see no irony in allying themselves with an extreme bunch of Republican head cases that even the Provos don't want to be seen dead with. Throw them in with the usual professional whiners and you have a witless mob yelling dopey slogans and trying to hit a moving target with a couple of eggs. Obviously beyond them, of course.

You gotta laugh. "Police brutality", they scream; but knowing a few of these clowns from up close I don't think that the cops were brutal enough. As a matter of fact they weren't brutal at all.

Even more laughable were the seven hundred plonkers who had queued from the early hours to have their book signed by the Great Man.

Now when I say signed I do of course mean that they had to hand their freaking books to security who only then gave it to the war criminal who with a grunt put his signature on it before another security clown handed it back to them. For this pleasure some of them had been waiting since three in the bloody morning.

Do you people actually have lives or do you spend the rest of the year in line waiting for "Star Wars 7" to be released?

You are actually a good argument for one thing that Blair said last week, namely that we should bomb Iran (well, what he actually said was that he wouldn't be against it); so let's hope that when they retaliate they hit a certain crowd of people who are waiting in line to suck up to someone because he is famous.

Knowing my luck, when the bombs of retaliation land it'll be innocent me who gets a missile enema while you lot go on standing in your lines with your flasks of tea, dreaming of having sex with Darth Vader and Tony (The Joker) Blair.

Ah, strange days indeed.

By the way, I wrote a highly complimentary article on Blair for his work on the Peace Process here in Ireland some years ago. I stand by that. I still don't like the vain, preening popinjay, never the less. Never did. But, yeah (he said grudgingly), credit where it is due.

No doubt he is going down a storm in America at the moment. After all he did a separate introduction for the American edition of his book where he kisses the ass of... oh, just about everybody.

I even saw him on the cover of "Time" magazine but as I had already been violently ill before just from hearing him being interviewed I didn't have the stomach to buy it. I'm sure you all love him.

On a not totally unrelated topic, what the hell was that with Niall O'Dowd this week?

Was that the biggest U-turn since... well, since the last time a politician did a U-turn? (Last week, if you want to know.)

For those of you (in Ireland) who aren't too familiar with this guy, he is a bit of a legend in Irish-American publishing. He went over to the States as an illegal immigrant thirty years ago.

I don't know the guy from Adam but it seems to me that through having balls of absolute steel he went from being an out-of-work stranger in a strange land into carving something for himself in the States. I haven't read his book "An Irish Voice" but that will be rectified because now I'm intrigued.

As of the time of writing he runs "Irish Voice" and "Irish America" magazine.

Apart from that I know little of the man except that I always enjoy his "Our Voice from New York" column in the "Irish Star."

So why am I pissed off? What is the U-turn?

Well, Mr. O'Dowd was quite clear not that many weeks ago that he was - rightly - totally opposed to the building of the Ground Zero mosque. Big deal. Any thinking human being, be they Christian, Atheist, Scientologist or even decent Muslim would be.

Yet this week he writes that it SHOULD be built. He says:

"I now see the damage that will be done to America's reputation worldwide if we don't allow it to go ahead."

Whooaa! Am I hearing that right? Trust me, from the consensus in Ireland and Britain alone you will do a hell of a lot more damage to your reputation (such as it is) if you DO allow this travesty to go ahead.

You go on to say: "I think we in the US can show them and the watching world that we value free speech even when it clearly hurts so many vulnerable Americans in the wake of 9/11.

"That is the great strength of this country, disagreeing with what someone says but giving them the right to say it."

No, Mr. O'Dowd, you are arguing from a complete quicksand of a premise. Nobody is disagreeing with the right of any religion - not even headbangers like the Church of Satan - to practise their beliefs. That is surely a given in any democracy. What we who are so utterly opposed to with this is the inappropriateness of where they have chosen to build this middle finger salute to the dead and their relatives.

Nowhere else is being denied to them and yet they pick this particular site. Let me tell you: if one of mine had died that terrible day I would make it my business to have a pork barbeque running day and night outside the kip. There would also be gallons of pig's blood being sprayed every time they felt like yodelling out one of their prayers. Anything to upset them.

Does that make me petty? Probably. Does it make me any pettier than those who would build such a travesty and expect to be taken seriously? No.

I've said many times in articles that these so-called moderate Muslims that we're always being told about should be the FIRST ones to object to this.

You say: "I think it is time to show the world what America is made of. What makes us great is we value human rights, free speech and the right to be different."

Fair enough, but that doesn't mean that you have to bend over and accept every damned insult that is thrown at you either.

I know that you're a great mate of Obama's but that doesn't mean you have to swallow every single statement that he comes out with.

Then again, he's done a bit of a U-turn after his misjudged statement on the mosque as well, hasn't he?

Well, it's getting late and I'm a bit peckish. Let's see what the bat-cave's fridge has in it. Oh, yeah.... Cold left over pork. Yummy.

Can you smell that, my moderate Muslim friends; and by the way, it's my right to stuff my face with it. Hope you don't mind. And if you do... take a hike.

Hope to see you all next week.

Same bat-time!

Same bat-channel!

You can reach Charley at chasbrady7@eircom.net