David Hughes in the 1980s… This all started, three blogs ago, as a piece about David Hughes, who worked as a doorman/cashier/DJ at the Le Strip club in Toronto from 1982 to 1994.  It then began to divert via undercover work for the CSIS (the Canadian Security Intelligence Service), neo-Nazis, a massive counterfeiting scheme, planned terrorism in the 1980s, a far right Christian Identity religious group, a Ku Klux Klan gathering and a South African apartheid regime connection to, at the end of the last blog, membership of the Rhodesian Army. “Hold on!” I said to David Hughes. “The Rhodes ..read more

This all started three days ago with a blog about a Canadian striptease club called Le Strip. Life seemed so simple then. Yesterday’s follow-up blog was titled: THE NOT-SO SIMPLE TALE OF A CANADIAN STRIP CLUB AND TERRORISM IN THE 1980s. It was about David Hughes, who worked as a doorman/cashier/DJ at Le Strip 1982-1994… and as a trainman on the Canadian Pacific Railway system 1986-2019…  and as a ‘Confidential Informant’ for the Ontario Provincial Police… and for CSIS (the Canadian Security Intelligence Service) around that time. Now take a big breath… BOSS, (the apartheid South African ..read more

Yesterday’s blog involved reaction to a Comment on an October 2014 blog I posted about a Toronto striptease club called Le Strip. Le Strip during its heyday in the 1980s… The person who reacted to the Comment – David Hughes – had worked as doorman/cashier/DJ at Le Strip from 1982 to 1994. In the reaction he posted, he mentioned an exotic dancer with the stage name ‘Black Magic’, a spy story, neo-Nazis and the largest counterfeit money scheme in Canadian history. He finished with “There is a lot more to the backstory that I won’t get into here but I have been giving some thought to writing a ..read more

GenCraft AI’s idea of what this specific blog might be about… One of the fascinating things about this blog, which I started in May 2010, is that people sometimes pick up on posts from the past and comment on them… and on previous Comments on them. For example, today there was a Comment about a blog I posted almost ten years ago – in October 2014.  The headline for that particular blog explained what it was about: WHAT IT WAS LIKE TO WORK IN A CANADIAN STRIP CLUB IN THE 1980s There have currently been 56 Comments on that blog over the years – all in the public domain.   Today’s Com ..read more

Late Night With The Devil poster I don’t normally post reviews on here, but I saw a preview of Late Night With The Devil earlier this week. It opens in UK and US cinemas today and it opens up a whole can of interesting worms.  I guess the elevator pitch was something along the lines of The Exorcist meets The Blair Witch Project on a late-night US chat show – although ads are plugging it as Rosemary’s Baby meets Network. The plotline is: In 1977 a live television broadcast goes horribly wrong, unleashing evil into living rooms across the United States. The title Late Night With The Devi ..read more

I tried inputting “Summer is icumin in” (and “Sumer is icumin in”) on an AI picture generator and got the reply:  “This prompt doesn’t abide by our content standards. Please try again with a different prompt!” AI is obviously trained in American porn but oblivious to Middle English … Although, to an extent, it’s relatively keen on Chaucer. When I suggested: “Whan that Aprill with his showres soote, The droughte of March hath perced to the roote”… …it produced the picture below. It must obviously know the language is ‘period’ of some kind and interesting that it has included water. Just sa ..read more

Last week, I blogged here about the fact that the Reuters news agency was investigating  – for a second time – whether ‘President Obonjo’ (aka comedian Benjamin Bello) really is the president of an African country. In fact, this time, the worrying suspicion was that he is actually the President of the whole of Africa and that he had threatened to invade the US in support of Donald Trump.  Reuters have today – presumably after a week of detailed research and fact-checking – come up with their conclusion… printed in full below… Fact Check: Video of ‘African President’ American inv ..read more

As my blog yesterday mentioned performer/artist The Iceman, I thought I would ask Gencraft AI to create an image of “a man made of ice attempting to melt himself with a flame-thrower”. It seemed like a good idea at the time. This was the result. It’s an interesting idea, but is this an example of Artificial Intelligence taking the piss…? Is Artificial Intelligence taking the piss ..read more

Robert Wringham is what Americans would call a hyphenate. He does all sorts of things. Basically he is a writer of humorous books; plus he has written two histories of alternative comedy; and he is editor of the New Escapologist magazine which “takes the stance that work has too central a position in Western life”. He has appeared in previous blogs here and is currently co-producing Melt It! a documentary film about The Iceman. We were supposed to be having a chat about Robert’s live performance at the Glasgow Comedy Festival this week. But I am not one to keep to the subject… JOHN: The ..read more

Today, Ariane X – aka Ariane Sherine, writer of multiple books, newspaper & magazine columns and music – has released a pop album entitled Better. Why for her daughter? Why Better? Why Ariane X? Here, she explains in her own words… Pop stars don’t really write songs about their kids. I can think of a couple: Little Star by Madonna, Lullaby by Mel B… but, generally, they prefer to write about relatable topics like romantic love, heartbreak and feuds. Pretty much everyone will have experienced these things, but not everyone has a child. For me, it was different though: my daughter Lily inspi ..read more