Those Who Knew Them: Karlheinz Stockhausen 1928 - 2007

A tribute to the pioneering German composer, by his close personal friend, popular band leader^* James Last.

I first met Karlheinz at summer school in Darmstadt in the early 50s. I was working in the canteen serving up the schnitzels to the serious and spotty-faced youths hell-bent on bending the musical world to their serialist will, but there was something I liked about young Karly. When he dropped his metal tray on the floor spilling cutlery, crockery and sauerkraut everywhere he didn't do what every other student would do - ignore it and leave me to clean up the mess - he immediately took out his notebook and transcribed the sound. It later formed the basis of his ground-breaking work, TrayStucke.

Musically we were poles apart. He liked cutting up recording tape and reassembling it in a fashion that wowed critics and confused audiences across the Western world, while I dreamed of the day I could give up jazz to lead my own orchestra playing covers of light popular music that sounded as though they were recorded very far away at the bottom of a mine. But we had a lot in common: we were both German and we played the piano - I played it with my hands and my heart; Karlheinz played it with a tape recorder and a bratwurst. What a wunderkind!
While I was touring the bierkellers and airforce bases of West Germany, Karlheinz was spending days on end in the new electronic music studio at Westdeutscher Rundfunk in Köln. I would turn up from time to time to see how my great pal was getting on, but, of course, I understood he was too busy forging new musical directions to see me.

I'd met Paul McCartney in a nightclub in Hamburg and we'd hit it off immediately - especially when he confessed to me in the small hours of the morning his love for "a German composer, you've probably never heard of him, like... Karlheinz Stockhausen..." Well, imagine his reaction when I was able to introduce the two of them. They loved him so much they put him on the cover of Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, and he returned the compliment by writing Drumwerks - a 24-hour cycle of percussion and tape loops for Ringo in 3/4, 4/4, 5/4, 9/8 and any other time signature Ringo felt like playing.

Though he was critically acclaimed, a big hit still eluded Karlheinz. I begged him to just once compose something a little lighter, something a little more accessible like Burt Kaempfert's A Walk Through The Black Forest. He nodded, and then retired to his study to fast for seven days. I paved the hallway like an expectant father - back and forth, back and forth, my footsteps growing heavier and heavier. Sure enough, seven days later, Karlheinz emerges, leaner, paler, with that mystical look in his eye which always said he had composed something extraordinary, something exciting... He beckoned me into his inner sanctum and played me his latest work, Man Pacing Expectantly. I listened mesmerised for the whole of the seven days it took him to play it!

In the 70s, while film producers and directors were starting to exploit the potential of contemporary compositions for scoring horror films, Karlheinz would have no truck with it. My good friend, Stanley Kubrick wanted him to score The Shining, but Karlheinz was not worldly enough to see the potential for promoting his work and making enough money to keep him in quarter-inch tape for the rest of his life. Instead, I had to step into the breach and knock out the score in under a week. Still, I cannot tell you how proud I was that Karlheinz said it was the scariest film he'd ever heard!

He continued to tread his own path. he was a spiritual man but he understood worldly matters - as anyone who heard Helikopter-Streichquartett would know. Four string quartets in four helicopters hovering over the audience. It requires no explanation from me, naturlich, and was enjoyed all over the world - particularly by General Noriega - who listened to it broadcast by the American military for three weeks - transfixed, he never left his home.

Like every true musical genius - like myself, Burt, Ringo - Karlheinz was often misunderstood. So when he commented after 9/11 that it was a work of art, naturally, the reactionary media pounced on him and the premiere of his new opera Twin Towers Falling (based on Noh theatre and sung in Welsh over the course of two months... without a break...!) was cancelled. But they did not know the Karlheinz I knew. He was a fun guy, a party guy. He would stay up for days on end - just listening to the opening movement of Licht. He was echt, I was ersatz. But he was my friend. And I know he would have wanted me to play at his funeral. Which is why my orchestra will be performing Gesang der Junglinge on Stylophones in a jaunty upbeat tempo. It's what he would have wanted I am sure. Auf wiedersehen, mein freund, und ein, swei, drei, vier...!

^* Not the James Last, you understand.^**
** And not that popular either.^***
*** In fact, he was bloody awful.

Dinner Party Conversation 19th Century - 2007

Playwrights, sketch-writers and garrulous foodies from Stoke Newington in the north to Brighton in the south are today fumbling mutely with the remains of Julia's lovely spinach roulade ("it's a Nigel Slater recipe") and knocking back the remains of that rather good organic Vin de Pays d'Oc, in memory of Dinner Party Conversation which has been silenced by the arrival of a guest carrying an iPhone.

Ever since the arrival of servants and gas lighting in bourgeois homes in the 19th century allowed the middle classes to pop round for an evening meal at each other's homes, Dinner Party Conversation has been heard in dining rooms across Britain. Down the decades it has covered a vast number of topics - from the relative merits of the latest instalment of Mr Dickens's new tale in Master Humphrey's Clock and the way Mr Peel's awful Health and Safety inspectors prevent hard working parents sending their children up perfectly good chimneys, to the relative merits of the latest Will Self short story in The Independent and the way Mr Brown's Health and Safety Nazi's won't let you read a book while driving at a perfectly reasonable 65 mph in your own car, including more than nine trillion references to the current state of house prices and the difficulty of getting Tom and Jocasta into a decent school along the way.

Perhaps Dinner Party Conversation could have carried on in this manner forever. That it did not was the result of the sudden invasion of its natural territory by an unexpected rival. On Friday 11 November 2007 and during the evenings that followed, vast numbers of Dinner Party Conversations were suddenly and ruthlessly silenced by the arrival of guests smugly clasping in their hands the latest product of Apple Inc, the new iPhone. Bearing the shiny new piece of technology before them as if it were the host at a mass, each of these guests was at once awarded the place of honour at the repast, while their fellow diners silently queued up before them to touch the beautiful new mobile communications device.

Unwilling to go meekly to its death, Dinner Party Conversation tried to put up resistance - launching conversational gambit after gambit as it sought to speak of "the nine solid months of church attendance necessary to get little Toby into that CofE school", the "inexplicable reverence shown towards Stephen Poliakoff's bloody awful dramas" and even to "Stephen Fry's paean to Steve Jobs's new marvel in The Guardian". Yet all its efforts merely resulted in it being shushed into silence as otherwise sensible people partook in the sacrament of delicately stroking the new phone into life ... and choosing to ignore the sticky fingerprints on the screen, easily scratchable body, inadequate camera, lack of 3G connectivity, ridiculous contract lock-in, fixed battery, dodgy text entry and high price, as they wondered how quickly they could buy themselves one.

Dinner Party Conversation will be buried after the coffee and mints at St Nigella's Church of the How Did You Whip Up That Marvellous Starter? The congregation will be too busy marvelling at "the way the phone can tell which way up you're holding it" to notice.

Rock 'n' Roll Lifestyle c.1955-2007

Rock 'n' Roll Lifestyle has thrown its last TV through a closed hotel room window and retired to the big mansion in the sky with the news that these days the addictive lines of choice of legendary hellraiser and gravel-voiced blonde chaser, Rod Stewart, are 00 gauge and have model trains running across them, as revealed on the front cover of this month's Railway Modeller.

Rock 'n' Roll Lifestyle was born under a bad sign in the mid-50s - the noisy, attention-seeking child of Rhythm and Blues and Elvis's unruly pelvis. Within weeks of its birth it was scandalising parents and politicians on both sides of the Atlantic through the onstage and off antics of Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis and Buddy Holly in the USA and Cliff Richard in the UK⁽¹⁾.

Though Beethoven may have pounded in frustration at his piano and Mozart died young, it wasn't until the birth of Rock 'n' Roll itself that Rock 'n' Roll Lifestyle first reared its ugly head and vomited copiously out of a 17th-storey window onto a family of Pittsburgh Episcopalians breakfasting by the pool below.

Not content with pushing the envelope of popular music, by the mid-60s, rock stars were also pushing the envelope of pills, powders and halllucinogenic tinctures across the table towards each other. Indeed, the Beatles sampled so much LSD that Ringo Starr actually believed he was the drummer in the Beatles, while the Grateful Dead went so far out they still think Jerry Garcia is soloing 12 years after his death.

This grand social experiment in getting high, getting laid, driving a paisley Bentley into a swimming pool⁽²⁾ and then trying to remember how to play G-C-D was not without its costs: Brian Jones, Keith Moon, Jimi Hendrix, John Bonham, Janis Joplin, Mama Cass and Jim Morrison - to name but a few - all succumbed to the Rock 'n' Roll Lifestyle.

In the 70s and 80s musicians continued to test the boundaries of moral acceptability in bacchanalian orgies of drugs and destruction or, in the case of Bananarama, to test the boundaries of musical taste⁽³⁾.

But as the years passed ageing rockers, suddenly ambitious to get old before they die rather than the other way round, began to swap groupies for trophy wives and a life of raising hell to a life of raising trout. When that great rock survivor Keith Richards seriously injured himself - not by accidentally injecting Cillit Bang diesel into his veins or erroneously snorting a line of Sanatogen - but by falling off the ladder in his library, the writing was on the wall ... if he could still remember how to write and still remember where he'd left that wall⁽⁴⁾. If Keef could mash himself up badly while peering over his half-moon specs and reaching for the latest Barbara Cartland, then what future for Rock 'n' Roll Lifestyle?

With the revelation that Rod Stewart was giving away his latest album exclusively in Railway Modeller, the last eardrums have been perforated, the last amplifiers blown and the house lights brought cruelly up as Rock 'n' Roll Lifestyle choked to death on it's own 1:87 scale replica of a young girl waving excitedly at a passing locomotive.

Rock 'n' Roll Lifestyle will be buried at the St Animal Church of the Submerged Muppet. The service will be conducted by the surviving members of Led Zeppelin and the congregation will sing Shine On You Crazy Diamond - if they can remember what comes after "three" as they count in the band...

Rock 'n' Roll Lifestyle is survived by Coldplay, James Blunt and Katie Melua.

⁽¹⁾ Not to mention skiffle legend Lonnie Donnegan, who in one notorious incident slightly grated a backstage manager with his washboard for serving the wrong kind of dandelion and burdock.
⁽²⁾ Such was Keith Moon's passion for this aspect of The Lifestyle that his local public baths were forced to ban the submerging of any motor vehicles during the Mothers and Toddlers Swimming Class.
⁽³⁾ and, in the case of Duran Duran, testing both of the aforementioned categories simultaneously.
⁽⁴⁾ probably at the bottom of his swimming pool...

Those Who Knew Them: Mr Badger

In a double blow this week, following the sudden death of Children's Literature, As A Dodo has received tragic news from the Wild Wood. The following tribute to the late Mr Brock Badger was penned by his old friend (and The Wind in the Willows co-star) Ratty.

Ah Badger! You've never met a finer felllow! Hated company of course. Hated Society, and invitations, and dinners and all that sort of thing. Couldn't bear people fluttering and fussing around him. But still, one of the best of all the good creatures I've known - a better beast than Otter, Toad or even Moley. Always willing to help a friend in need. Always ready with wise words and good counsel. Stout of body and of heart, that was old Badger. Or at least, that's what we all thought.

I remember how I found out what had happened. I'd set out for the Wild Wood with dear old Mole. Oh come on, old chap, you know Moley: a bit beneath the salt perhaps but as kind and honest a fellow as one could want to meet. Besides which, one has to face it, we're all in trade these days, are'n't we? So it's best we muddle along together. Anyway, Moley had scrabbled and scratched his way up from that charming, little hole of his and popped in to ask me if I cared for a jaunt to see old Badger. Of course I said, "Yes."

To tell the truth, it had been quite a while since any of us had seen Badger. But there was nothing in the least odd about that. The best one could usually hope for was to catch the sound of a rustling in the hedgerow as he went past or maybe a brief sight of his stripey head and wide, high shoulders before he disappeared back into the woods. If you were especially lucky Badger might give you an "Oh ... company!" before he set off. Still, beneath it all he was the most decent of sorts. And he had a soft spot for Moley, what with them both living sub terra and all that.

As I say, Moley and I set off to see Badger. I'd packed a few little things for a picnic on the way - cold chicken, cold tongue, cold ham, cold beef, pickled gherkins, salad, french roll, cress sandwich, ginger beer, lemonade, just a snack as I say - and we made a very pleasant journey of it until we came to the Wild Wood. You know, I never understood why Badger would want to live in such a place. The squirrels are alright, and some of the rabbits, but as for the rest ... A fellow can't take two steps in there without seeing the pinched faces and beady eyes of all those stoats and weasels staring out at one. Wild things they are, and they let their children run wild too. Why only a few weeks ago, Toad dropped in to see Badger and left his new motor car outside and by the time he came out the car had gone and all that was left was the horn. A couple of days later and Otter was telling me he'd seen the very vehicle being advertised on eBay (whatever that may be). Still, it never worried Badger ... though he did always make sure to carry a big stick (for myself I always prefer a brace of pistols ... or at the very least a taser).

In any event, we made our way through relatively unmolested. The shock was to come when we got to the fine old hummock where Badger lived. At first we didn't suspect anything unusual at all - there was the door scraper, there the mat, there the engraved brass plate reading "Mr Badger". All seemed perfectly normal. But then we got to the door itself and saw the sign. I can still see Moley peering at it, rubbing those thick glasses of his to make sure he'd read it right. "Condemned by order of Sir David King, UK Government chief scientist," he said, "TB Hazard ... Keep out ... Gas."

"What does it mean, Ratty?" Mole asked me, "TB hazard - is that something to do with Mr Blair?"

"No, Moley, old chap," I replied, "I'm afraid it's tuberculosis. All the while we thought old Badger was a fine old fellow, it looks like he's been poisoning the cattle with TB."

"But I thought the Independent Scientific Group let Badger off," said Mole and I could see tears of concern welling in his eyes.

"Dear, kind-hearted Mole," I said. "Sir David is a knight of the realm, I'm sure he knows what he's talking about. And besides, Badger did always have that terrible cough didn't he?"

Mole paused a moment. "Yes," he said, "I wonder where he got it from."

Dear fellow that Mole is, I never had the heart to tell him. But there had always been rumours of course: there was always something a little furtive about the fellow, after all. And why would an old man like Badger would be wanting to hang round with all those young Wild Wood types? And, we must face it, we all know they've brought all these dreadful diseases with 'em, don't we?

Yes, it seems Badger wasn't quite the creature we all thought he was. Well, at least he had the good taste to keep his vices to himself.

Now then, who's for a nice slice of ham?

The As A Dodo editors add: Mr Badger will be gassed and cremated, in accordance with Sir David King's report. The stoats and weasels face instant deportation.

Children's Literature c. 17th century-2007

Children's Literature, that young sapling of creative writing that has enthralled children at bedtime and adults who ought to know better on the long commute to and fro their boring, stupid grown-up jobs in the city, has died of shock following the outing of Professor Albus Dumbledore by that gossipy chronicler of Hogwarts, JK Rowling, during her US book tour - a revelation almost as shocking as Enid Blyton's deathbed admission that the Famous Five were all members of the Hitler Youth, and that Timmy had died shortly after the end of the first book and had - unknown to Julian, Dick, Ann, George and Adolf - been replaced by an almost identical dog shortly before the start of the gang's second adventure.

Children's Literature got off to a slow start in the 17th century with the publication of picture books which contained stories of a mind-numbing simplicity that have only recently been rivalled by the films of Adam Sandler. And when the Brothers Grimm first published their collection of fairytales at the beginning of the 19th century there were sleepless nights all round as children begged to be read just one more chapter of the cruel and magical stories and adults went to bed unable to drop off for fear of the harm they were doing their children, and the angry dwarf they swore they saw lurking in the shadows at the foot of the bed.

Yet children had begun to delight in the magical wonderlands seen through the looking glass, found lurking beyond the wardrobe or inside the gates of the greatest chocolate factory known to man, woman and - most importantly, small child. While some authors enthralled young readers with fabulous tales spun from the wildest shores of their imagination, others set their stories in the more humdrum world of home and school. Yet Children's Literature prospered - quite happily refusing to grow up for nearly two hundred years. Indeed, the feared collapse of Children's Literature brought on by its neglect in favour of video games and crack cocaine on the school curriculum, had been averted, chiefly by the creative genius of JK Rowling in joining the magical world of CS Lewis with countless middlebrow boarding school novels of the mid-20th century in her well-written, exciting, never over-long and - most importantly - highly original series of Harry Potter books⁽¹⁾.

So it was with great surprise and horror that the unexpected death of Children's Literature was precipitated by an innocent question about Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore's lovelife. Save for a chance remark in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by Griselda Marchbanks, Head of the Wizarding Examinations Authority, that the young Dumbledore had "done things with a wand⁽²⁾ I'd never seen before" there were few clues to Dumbledore's sexual orientation. Indeed the issue had never occurred to most people, especially those in the media who were - rather disturbingly - far more interested in JK Rowling's wealth, Daniel Radcliffe's getting naked on stage and the precise date at which Hermione Granger would "be legal". When Ms Rowling - with an announcement in no way designed to further fill her golden coffers with what little is left of her readers' parents' money⁽³⁾ - told a packed Carnegie Hall in New York that the Hogwarts headmaster would never get it on with Professor McGonagall, the shockwaves crashed through Children's Literature.

Revelation followed revelation as tearful children and shocked adults still clinging on to the nostalgic sanctity of their favourite bedtime reading from decades past learnt in quick succession that the Mad Hatter had married the Dormouse in a civil ceremony, the Cat in the Hat loathed children and Winnie the Pooh was not just addicted to honey but also "prescription painkillers".

Unable to show its face in public, Children's Literature went into a steep decline and within days of Ms Rowling's outing the last chapter had been read for ever, the bedside lamp extinguished and Once Upon a Time was no more.

Children's Literature will be buried in the St Bookhouse Cathedral of Remaindered Fiction. The service will be conducted by Archbishop Rowling herself. (Service begins at midnight, admission fee £14.99⁽⁴⁾, all welcome). The congregation will read from the book of... No, we had that one last night... No, it's my turn to choose...

Children's Literature is survived by the works of JRR Tolkien, Dan Brown and JK Rowling's billions.

⁽¹⁾ Not that we would dare suggest that the billionaire author would ever have the need, let alone desire, to employ a team of the finest and most highly-overpaid lawyers...
⁽²⁾ No, the wand wasn't Prada.
⁽³⁾ for the love of God, see ⁽¹⁾, Ed.
⁽⁴⁾ at time of going to press that is approx $350.

The Music Business c.130,000 BC - AD 2007

The Music Business, that offshoot of capitalism that took one of the finest art forms ever created and turned it into a means of producing untold profit for a handful of tone-deaf accountants and Bono, has stuffed its last royalty cheque up its nose with the news that the members of Radiohead are allowing fans to download their new album, In Rainbows, for as little⁽¹⁾ as they like.

From the dawn of man, Ug the Yodeller was using his crude larynx and small brain to hum simple melodies to himself even before he could string a sentence together (a tradition honoured by many stars of the popular music scene even to this day). When he started banging rocks together he found a new way to keep warm - dancing to the new beat around the collection of kindling and logs still forlornly awaiting the emission of a single spark, while a Neanderthal with well-tailored animal-skins, a bigger cave and a much younger girlfriend went round with a hat collecting "contributions".

For millennia, mankind thrilled to the sound of a skilful melody or well-modulated chorus, or sobbed its heart out to a minor-keyed dirge - especially when they discovered that the rights to their minor-keyed dirge had been bought by a large corporation and used to promote a mobile phone company.

As classical composers relied heavily on wealthy patrons to finance their musical exploration, so modern musicians strove to make it to the toppermost of the poppermost, all the while investing their hearts and souls... in the financial security of their managers, music companies and drug-dealers. While many still made music for their own amusement⁽⁵⁾ there were always those willing to capitalise on the fruits of introspective creative types ability to play G-C-D on the mastodon marimba / lute / Stylophone... namely managers, music companies and drug-dealers.

Record companies became increasingly adept at maximising their return from musicians. If legendary bluesman Robert Johnson had walked on past that famous crossroads to the big house on the hill with the jacuzzi full of models he may have come away with less talent than the Devil offered him, but he would at least have been offered a small advance which he would never be able to repay to record an album of duets with Elaine Paige.

By the 1970s and 80s music lovers were ignoring The Music Business's warning that home-taping was killing music, preferring to believe that Peters and Lee, The Goombay Dance Band and Milli Vanilli were murdering music without any need for assistance. By the noughties, as more and more artists dared to seize control of their own work, fans were able to cut out the corporate middlemen and keep the music fresh and real, buying or downloading their favourite tracks direct from bands' websites⁽⁶⁾ - or even cut out the bands as well by downloading from their peers' hard disks with Napster, Kazaa, Limewire et al. As The Music Business began to whine about being ripped off, bands even began to offer their music for free on MySpace thanks to the generosity of notoriously hippyish, not-for-profit flowerchild Rupert Murdoch.

Despite a last-gasp attempt to milk the final few millions from the musical cash-cow with televised karaoke contests in which the bullying to the point of tears of the mentally-ill, tone-deaf and celebrity-obsessed was confused (for money) with the abstraction and analysis of the human condition through organised sound, the Last Post had been illegally ripped for free and sounded.

With everyone now able to knock out a new choon on GarageBand and post it on t'internet where it could be lovingly ignored by millions, The Music Business began to resemble an over-developed dinosaur, with poor eyesight and under-developed teeth, sadly munching on a few leaves in the moments before the giant asteroid struck Earth. So when Radiohead decided to give their album away for free - aided only slightly by the squillions the band had already earned from conventional releases - The Music Business held its last A & R convention in the Bahamas and choked to death on its own vomit in the wee small hours of the morning whilst listening to a loop of the opening instrumental bars of Pink Floyd's Money mixed with the opening bars of the late, great Ronnie Hazelhurst's theme from Are You Being Served?

The Music Business will be buried at the Church of St Matthew the Accountant. The service will be conducted by the Reverend Simon Cowell and the congregation will sing The Sound of Silence by Gareth Gates, just as soon as the lawyers can work out who owns the rights. The Music Business is survived by Music. And Simon Cowell.

⁽¹⁾ or as much...^(2)
(2) or they can buy the box set for £40 / $80...^(3)
(3) if they're sad obsessives with no lives...^(4)
(4) what's that you say? "They're Radiohead fans"? I take your point.
⁽⁵⁾ in James Blunt's case the "laughing at the tone-deaf and cretinous nature of his fan base all the way to the bank" kind of amusement.
⁽⁶⁾ the most popular download of all time being the 23'19" version of Mike's Fallen off the Stage Again Jam by Phish, recorded in the third set of the second night at the Timothy Leary Amphitheater, Berkley, CA - rendered totally different from the previous night's version by an angry shout during Trey's fifth solo of "Hey, you played that last night, man!" followed by the sound of a man in his late 30s in a tie-dye T-shirt being beaten to death with his own glowstick for "Like, ruining the mellow vibe, dude".

Master Chief 2511AD-2552AD

The world - or at least that, almost exclusively male, part of it that prefers to spend its time jiggling its joystick in front of vast LCD TVs - is today mourning Master Chief Petty Officer SPARTAN 117, who is believed to have passed away⁽¹⁾ several million times in the last few hours, as a result of an assortment of inept, thumb-mashing fumbles on the part of players across the globe, following the worldwide release of Microsoft's Xbox 360 videogame "Halo 3".

Official records indicate that the man who would one day be known, somewhat tautologically, as "Master Chief" was born in 2511AD and spent his childhood years on Eridanus 2. The same records indicate that it was from here in 2517 that he was abducted and replaced by a "Flash clone"⁽²⁾ by the United Nations Space Command - in a move so devious it can only have been planned by a descendant of Dick Cheney - and that from then on he was trained as a SPARTAN-II supersoldier, ready to fight and defeat any alien force that might threaten the Earth.

Unofficial records, on the other hand, suggest that Master Chief was born on Earth in the offices of Bungie software in the early noughties, from where he (along with the whole of Bungie) was abducted by Microsoft and trained to help Bill Gates's mega-corporation flog Xboxes and Xbox 360s to every 16-34-year-old male on the planet and defeat the forces of Sony and Nintendo that might threaten Microsoft's bank balance.

Whichever version of events is true, what cannot be doubted is that Master Chief proved himself again and again to be one of the most heroic warriors this planet has ever seen, happy to go up against the forces of the Covenant and the Flood despite their superior weaponry, greater numbers and the fact that many of the players operating him couldn't take out a barn door with an A-bomb, let alone blow a Covenant Brute away while dual-wielding an M6G Personal Defence Weapon System and Type-25 "Plasma Pistol" Directed Energy Weapon.

Time after time Master Chief ventured out to do battle with the Covenant and with online pretenders to his crown, aided only by a few - frequently rather dim - allies and the artificial intelligence Cortana⁽³⁾, and time after time he was blown to bits by laser cannons, sniper-rifle head shots, the clunking fist of a Brute⁽⁴⁾ or by comically attaching a plasma grenade to himself - all thanks to the inadequacy of the pale-skinned, junk-food-eating types controlling his actions. Like many a soldier before him, super or otherwise, he was a lion whose actions were directed by donkeys.

It is understood that, at last tired of being blasted into a virtual pulp while some dumbass failed to press the pause button while going to greet the pizza delivery guy, Master Chief was driven to despair and was last seen praying for the so-called "red ring of death" to appear on his Xbox 360, consigning both it and him to oblivion⁽⁵⁾.

Master Chief will be buried at St Mario's Church of the Video Game Icon. Sonic the Hedgehog will preside over what is expected to be a brief, if lively ceremony - interrupted by a Boss Stage involving Dr Robotnik. The congregation will include Lara Croft, Crash Bandicoot, Luigi, Donkey Kong, Ulala, Link, Samus Aran, Gordon Freeman, Commander Jameson, Tommy Vercetti, Pacman, Solid Snake, some Space Invaders and Parappa the Rapper who will sing Master Chief's favourite Beatles song "Halo, Goodbye".

⁽¹⁾ doubtless alongside at least one, as yet undiscovered, videogame obsessive whose idea of fun was to play the game for three solid weeks with only the aid of several boxes of ProPlus, a lifetime's supply of RedBull and a series of bottles to pee into.
⁽²⁾ which the UNSC claimed to be more effective than an Ajax clone but not quite as good as a Jeyes Fluid clone.
⁽³⁾ which, for some reason, took the form of a holographic female with a come-hither voice and oversized virtual breasts. NB Cortana is not to be confused with the model Jordan who, while she certainly has oversized virtual breasts, has a %$*!-off voice and is rarely described as an intelligence, artificial or otherwise.
⁽⁴⁾ not thought to be Gordon Brown.
⁽⁵⁾ or perhaps even World of Warcraft.

Those Who Knew Them: Marcel Marceau 1923-2007

It is our sad duty to present the following (tragically not silent) tribute to world-renowned mime, Marcel Marceau, by his close friend, Jacques Derigueur - author of The Disreality of 1968 (1967-69), Is This Really a Book? And if so Why? and Jerry Lewis - Clown, Meta-Clown or Semiotic Signifier?

The world has fallen into a silence from which it cannot escape. My friend, my intellectual sparring partner, Marcel Marceau, is dead - dying, as he lived his life, silently. Now he is trapped for all eternity in a box which only he can see. In this, as in all that he did, he provides a perfect metaphor for all our lives.

It was in 1946 - that time after and yet somehow before war - that I first encountered Marceau. It was then that he single-handedly (that single hand in a white glove, matching his other single hand in an equally white glove, united and separate at the same time, implicit, yet explicit) dared to save that very ancient (and paradoxically, en même temps, very modern) art of mime from the near-extinction to which the philistine attitudes of the bourgeoisie had condemned it.

And how was he to save this art? He became it! In donning the guise of "Bip" the clown, Marceau became mime and mime became Marceau. Of course there were some - there are always some - who mistook this act. Some said Bip was derived from the "masters" of silent cinema - Chaplin, Keaton, Seagal - but Marcel was ahead of his time, and of his time, and thus, in a hyperreal way, Bip was the progenitor of these pale parvenus who dared to call themselves clowns (and not merely this, with his white pancake make-up, painted eyebrows and rejection of written communication as an art form he also anticipated, perhaps created, perhaps even destroyed, the late doyenne of the British literary scene, Dame Barbara Cartland).

Like the silence before le Big Bang, Marceau's mime existed in its very own vacuum ... normally created inside an invisible glass box, a phantom prison that Bip filled with angst and a desperate need for escape, twin sensations his audience understood immediately.

Bip undertook a myriad of exciting adventures - trapped in a glass box, trapped in a glass trunk, trapped in a glass wardrobe. His oeuvre was endlessly reinvented and infinitely repeated - most successfully in his three-hour epic movie, Le Rêve du Bip dans La Vitrerie, which had audiences leaving the cinemas in floods of sympathetic tears as they closely identified with the ennui of late capitalism and found themselves filled with an immediate need for death, or at the very least a stiff drink.

Of course, comme toujours, there were pretenders to the crown: some - Benny Hill, Mr Bean - were great men, others - Jacques Tati - were mere speechless flaneurs. Where Tati posited his comic mishaps in the bourgeois world of postmen and holidays, Marcel's lack of verbiage transcended the quotidian. Bip's silence spoke volumes. Nothing more needs to be said - as I have already explained in my seminal text, Inside the Outside of the Glass Box (Vols. I-XII).

Now after 60 years of saying everything by saying nothing, Bip will say nothing - and everything - no more. Bip is dead. Marceau is dead. Vive le silence!

The As A Dodo editors add: Marcel Marceau will be buried beneath the Eiffel Tower just as soon as the stripy-jumpered pall-bearers have located the invisible handles of his invisible casket. The congregation will walk on the spot into a non-existent gale before mouthing the words of Simon and Garfunkel's "The Sound of Silence" and dabbing at imagined tears.

Punk 1976-2007

Punk – the once genuinely exciting musical revolution⁽¹⁾ that transformed a generation of loon-panted, pot-smoking, tree-hugging Genesis fans into bondage-trousered, speed-freaking menaces to society whose idea of fun was sticking a safety pin through a granny whilst listening to he Sex Pistols' God Save the Queen – has finally admitted that it has been clinically dead for some years by announcing that those very same Sex Pistols are reforming to "celebrate" (and shamelessly market) the 30^th anniversary re-release of Never Mind the Bollocks.

Despite being inspired by American garage bands of the 60s and the New York Dolls and the Ramones in the early 70s, Punk’s parentage was claimed as an immaculate conception by boutique owner Malcolm McClaren – a man whose self-belief and marketing nous were matched only by his ability to claim credit for the invention of everything from sliced bread to the safety pin. Although the Sex Pistols were formed in 1975, Punk first gobbed on the public’s consciousness in 1976 when the Sex Pistols toured Britain – causing more chaos and destruction than the Three-Day Week and giving the tabloids a near-fatal attack of shocked headlines.

For the next three years bands such as The Damned, Buzzcocks, The Clash, X-Ray Spex and Arthur Mullard and Hilda Baker provided great music for disaffected teens across the nation and front-page news for the red tops.

By 1979, though, it was all over. Punk gave way to New Wave, No Wave, Wave Punk, Post-Punk Post-Wave and, finally, No Punk At All – as, in 1982, The Damned's Captain Sensible reached the top of the charts singing Happy Talk from Rodgers and Hammersteins' celebrated anarchist musical South Pacific.

Although Punk was, by this time, stiffer than Stiff Little Fingers it refused to acknowledge reports of its timely demise, claiming to live on in the spirit of mildly rebellious teenagers from France visiting London and hoping (mistakenly) to catch a glimpse of Johnny Rotten in “le Carnaby Street” and, most importantly, Spit the Dog, who (quite literally) single-handedly gobbed his way from Tiswas to summer seasons at Bridlington – keeping the punk flame flickering dimly for many years past it’s sell-out date.

Even the Sex Pistols Filthy Lucre tour of 1996 (with Sid as competent as ever on bass and vocals, despite his demise) failed to alert a gullible public to the decaying corpse of Punk, held together with safety pins, phlegm and John Lydon's willingness to do that starey-eyed thing that so frightened the powers-that-be in '76 ... despite the fact it now bore all the threat of a sloppy kiss from an ageing aunt.

The ailing spirit of Punk dragged on into the 21^st century as tearful middle-aged men and women gathered in small groups to recite the Punk liturgy – the sacred text of Bill Grundy’s infamous interview with The Sex Pistols – that they’d just learnt by heart after watching it on YouTube at work while they should have been preparing that Powerpoint presentation for a three-day marketing conference in Birmingham.

So it was with the news that the Sex Pistols were hoiking up one last greenie with a concert at the Brixton Academy that Punk went to join that great three-chord, two-minute, one-note vocal, no-guitar solo in the sky.

Punk will be buried at St Sid Vicious's Church of The Great Rock 'N' Roll Swindle. The service will be conducted by the Reverend John Lydon and the congregation will sing Ever Get The Feeling You’ve Been Cheated? from the forthcoming musical God Save The Queen… No Really…! (Music by Andrew Lloyd-Webber, Lyrics by Ben Elton). Mourners are asked not to send flowers but to gob on the casket as it is lowered into the ground.

Punk is survived by Malcolm McClaren.

⁽¹⁾ in fact 45 revolutions ... per minute on 7” vinyl

Those Who Knew Them: Luciano Pavarotti 1935-2007

A tribute to the late, great, tenor by one of those who knew and loved him best, restaurateur Luigi Stereotipo- Nazionalo.

Che posso dire? The maestro is no more. I cry, I tear my clothes. Caro amico mio, I miss you. Luciano, I know you since you are little boy here in Modena. Always you love three things: the music, the football, the food ... but not necessarily in that order. I remember when you are nine or ten you want to be great footballer. I see you play as keeper. You are so good - the quick hands, the great football brain and - of course - the fact you take up quite a lot of the goal.

But is the singing that take you. Always you listen to you papa's records - Gigli, Schipa, Caruso - all the greats. I see you covered in flour from papa's work in the bakery, listening to Giovanni Martinelli record with a faraway look in you eye ... and the remains of a basket of focaccia in you hand. Then there is time you get up in my little ristorante and climb on the table and sing you heart out. Is bring tears to my eyes even now ... and not because you break my table. It is because you have the great voice.

You study, you work hard and that voice he take you everywhere. You sing at La Scala, you sing in London, you sing in Australia, you sing in New York. They say you reach nine high C's when you sing at The Met. They make you take 17 curtain calls -it even make you give up you after-performance, pre-meal-snack nibble. Such dedication.

Ah, you voice. I can hear it now. So flowing, so beautiful. Always I remember the words you say to me when you come into the restaurant, "Luigi - I have the calamari , the caponata, the fritatta, the prosciutto, the alici, the bruschetta, the gamberi, the bresaola, the pepperoni, the carciofi, the melanzane, the funghi, the lampascioni ... and once I've finished the starters come back to me and talk about the mains".

You were the greatest star. You bring music to millions. When you sing Nessun Dorma at the World Cup you make everyone cry (especially Domingo and Carreras when they realise how much better you sing it than them). The whole stadium it fill with tears and for once is not because Gazza is there.

Ah Luciano, I know you have you problems. I know you have little difficulty with you tax. I know they say you no act. I know they say is wrong to sing with popstars. But I know you have great appetite for life, for music (and, si, for food) and I know you have voice of gold. Arrivederci Luciano.

Those Who Knew Them: Ingmar Bergman 1918-2007

Following the passing of Ingmar Bergman, one of the greatest figures in European cinema, we at As A Dodo are extraordinarily proud to be able to present an exclusive interview with someone who not only inspired many of Mr Bergman's works but is also, we are happy to say, one of our closest collaborators - Death. (Readers should be aware that Death is a very busy personification of the termination of life and appears to have been somewhat distracted during our conversation with him, which we here transcribe in full.)*

AAD: Who's that?

Death: I am Death.

AAD: Cor, you didn't half give me a fright. You shouldn't go round sneaking up on people like that.

Death: I have been walking by your side for a long time.

AAD: Well, I never noticed you. You'd've thought I'd've heard something ... what with all the pebbles on this beach. You must be wearing crepe souls ... geddit? Ah well, suit yourself ... Anyway, I take it you're here for the Bergman obituary.

Death: Are you prepared?

AAD: For the obituary? Well, I've had a quick glance on Wikipedia.

Death: Well, there is no shame in that.

AAD: Cuh! Tell that to the readers. But I could do with a bit more time to tell the truth ... I wasn't expecting you right now.

Death: That's what they all say. I grant no reprieves.

AAD: Right ... better get on with it then. To sum up - Bergman will go down in cinematic history as one of the greatest stars in the Hollywood firmament, perhaps best known for her role as Ilsa Lund in Casablanca opposite Humphr ... oh, wait a sec, that's Ingrid isn't it? What I meant to say was that Ingmar Bergman was one of those who, alongside directors such as Godard, Truffaut and Fellini, helped to define modern European cinema. From early comedies like "Smiles on a Summer Night" to sombre masterpieces like "The Seventh Seal", "Winter Light" and "Persona" to reflective pieces such as "Wild Strawberries" and "Fanny and Alexander" he reflected on the really big issues - life, love, sex, death and God - and helped his audience to struggle with them even as he struggled himself. With his regular company of actors such as Max von Sydow, Ingrid Thulin, Bibi Andersson and Gunnar Björnstrand, his taut scripts spare of dialogue and his careful framing of beautifully realised images he created a truly unique oeuvre.

Death: How did you know that?

AAD: Er ... like I said, Wikipedia. Makes research a doddle - 5 minutes and you can have a slapdash and only haphazardly accurate article on anything you fancy. You must know about it! Haven't you even got a computer?

Death: Yes, in fact I'm quite a good chess player.

AAD: Ooh! I prefer Minesweeper or Spider Solitaire myself. But if you're online I'd be happy to give you a game some time.

Death: Why do you want to play chess with me?

AAD: Well, partly as a metaphor for the way humanity as a whole arrogantly struggles against Death even though it knows that Death must eventually win and that an ever-distant God will not intervene but mainly because it's not everyone who gets to play chess with Death - unless they're Max von Sydow.

Death: That is your privilege.

AAD: Nice one Mr D! I always thought you were decent sort - great turn of yours in Woody Allen's "Love and Death" by the way ... and that bit playing Battleships in "Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey" - genius! Great stuff! ... And now here we are with a board and here I am ending a piece about the passing of Ingmar Bergman by playing a game of chess with Death himself. Who'd've guessed?

Death: Very appropriate. Don't you think so?

* AS A DODO UPDATE - we are now advised that the above is not in fact a true record of a conversation between our correspondent and Death but is merely some of Death's lines from "The Seventh Seal" interspersed with a series of facetious remarks. We can only apologise to our readers ... again.

The Truth c. Time Immemorial-AD2007

The Truth, that nebulous concept that has exercised the minds of everyone from the greatest philosophers to the lowliest politicians⁽¹⁾, has passed away – crushed under an endless succession of fake phone-ins, cheating teachers, sexed-up dossiers, re-edited documentaries, alternative therapeutic nonsense, political spin, ridiculous advertising claims, dodgy journalism and wholly unreliable obituaries.

The Truth was a controversial concept from the moment it first cleared its throat and proclaimed itself a necessity of human interaction, an asseveration which was challenged in around 100,000BC by Ug the Estate Agent - who felt it could do real harm to his offers of centrally-heated caves with a wonderful view of the dormant (‘no, really’) volcano - and has been under continual challenge by his descendants ever since.

It was not long before the formerly-simple Truth came to be regarded as a complex and heavily-nuanced thing. Even as Aristotle stood up to announce that ‘To say of what is that it is not, or of what is not that it is, is false, while to say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is true’ other philosophers were gathering round him to "spin" his simple statement into something so complex it would require several hundred more years of reasonably-well-paid philosophising to explain.

Despite such difficulties, The Truth soon became extremely popular. Among its early fans were many religious groups, all of which claimed to have direct access to The Truth, which turned out to be available in manifold, mutually-incompatible forms. Indeed, so keen on The Truth were its religious devotees that many of them proved willing to die for The Truth or - even better - cause other people to die for The Truth, preferably by being roasted over a stake for witchcraft, stoned to death for adultery or blown into thousands of pieces thanks to a disturbed teenager's desire to become a martyr and cop off with 72 virgins.

Scientists, meanwhile, were also industrious in their pursuit of The Truth – happily disabusing us of the notion that the Sun revolved around the Earth or that apples floated upwards, and questioning religion’s view that the Big Bang was just God hitting himself on the thumb with a hammer and that the Earth and its creatures were created in both of the two mutually incompatible ways set out in the Bible at the same time. During the 20th Century the popularity of The Truth was to become even greater with some scientists after they discovered that if you came up with the right sort of Truth you could become extremely sought after... and very well paid. Soon several scientists were happily proclaiming all sorts of Truth, such as the non-existence of global warming to the existence of "Intelligent Design", via the remarkable rejuvenating powers of extremely expensive cold-cream to the validity of homoeopathy.

Followers of the Arts too had become enamoured of the truth, with the great poet Keats claiming that all one needs to know on earth is that ‘beauty is truth, and truth beauty’ (an argument which impressed many of his friends and followers but has still failed to fool even the most indulgent examiner come GCSE time). Great authors sought to illustrate profound Truths by their fictions, with writers such as Jeffrey Archer skilfully proving how much truer fiction can be than reality. Great composers sought to touch on truth in their music, with the works of such as JS Bach capable of uniting all humanity by their beauty ... and the work of such as James Blunt capable of uniting all humanity in a desire to tear their own ears off.

By the 20th Century the Truth, truth be told, was in a poor state. We were promised the war to end all wars, peace in our time and told that we had never had it so good - yet all turned out to be false. We were promised that chocolate bars would help us work rest and play but just got fat, we were promised mascara could make our lashes more beautiful by digitally enhanced actresses wearing falsies, we were promised endless channels of quality entertainment and got repeats of old Star Trek Voyager episodes on Sky One. Even our parents, it turned out, had been lying to us: Father Christmas smelled of dad’s whisky, the Tooth Fairy kept a surprisingly good eye on the level of inflation for an inhabitant of Fairieland and that man you saw mum kissing wasn't really your uncle after all.

The Truth became a mere commodity to be bought and sold on the open market, preferably as a completely made up kiss-and-tell story "ghosted" by a tabloid hack for a low-achieving teenager with bleached hair, a fake tan and artificial boobs.

Finally it could stagger on no longer. Attacked by everyone and everything from the Controller of BBC1 to the woman from Russia who emails you every day promising ‘sexy good time’, The Truth shrugged its shoulders, took a job in advertising and was no more.

The Truth will be A) buried at St Jeffrey Archer’s Church of the Blessed Perjuror; B) cremated at the National Rail Enquiries Cathedral of the 'No, That's The Cheapest Ticket I Can Find, Honest'; or C) terminated before the phone lines have closed at the Chapel of St Richard and St Judy. Calls will cost £1.50 a minute and your integrity may be at risk if the caller is a member of your own production team.

⁽¹⁾ not to mention builders preparing estimates and couples arguing about whose turn it was to put the cat out.

Harry Potter July 1997 - July 2007

The As A Dodo Team is pleased to announce that one of its junior staff members - fresh from his previous work editing a documentary on Her Majesty the Queen - has today provided us with what must be the greatest scoop of the decade, a sneak peak at what he assures us are the final few paragraphs of Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows (despite the fact that they seem to have been scrawled in his own hand on the back of a series of losing betting-slips made out in his name), paragraphs which reveal that Harry Potter is to die in tragic and unforeseen circumstances. Accordingly, we print the following paragraphs as the young wizard's obituary. Let them speak for themselves.

"So, Harry. We meet again", said Nosferatu Lord Voldemort, his long thin form gliding towards Harry.

"I'll kill you Ming the Merciless Voldemort", said Harry, angrily, in the first bit of direct speech he'd been granted in the last two hundred pages.

"Oh I doubt it, Harry Potter", hissed Saruman Voldemort, his red eyes gleaming.

Harry raised himself to his feet, preparing himself for the bout of sadistic cruelty that he always had to face at the end of one of his books. Fu Manchu Voldemort pointed his wand at the young wizard and muttered a word with just enough bad Latin in it to sound a bit magical. Harry struggled to stand but found himself frozen. The Dark Lord of the Sith slid towards him.

"No, Harry Potter, it is you who will die, though I will not be the one to kill you ... that task belongs to your true enemy", continued Lex Luthor Voldemort, the slits of his eyes widening. "But first I must give a long and involved recap of all that has happened so far in case any of the slower readers - not to forget all those people who have got so used to skipping turgid passages about Quidditch matches, magic lessons, O.W.L. examinations and your tedious and somehow strangely passionless 'passions' for a series of females lacking any deep characterisation that they've flipped straight to the final pages - have missed anything."

Harry was about to speak but remembered that if he did so he would break up Davros's Lord Voldemort's lengthy exposition. At last - several pages later - the red eyes turned once more to Harry.

"What a fool you are Harry!", Moriarty Voldemort cried. "You thought I was your enemy all along didn't you? Didn't you realise who was punishing you?"

"It was Snape! I knew it!" said Harry.

The Sheriff of Nottingham Voldemort sneered at him. "Snape! Don't be a fool - if he doesn't get a moment of Darth Vader-like redemption in the last book I'll eat my own horcrux! Your enemy, Harry Potter, is She Who Must Not Be Named!"

"She Who Must Not Be Named?" thought Harry, who was having one of those astonishingly thick periods he always got between making astonishing intuitive leaps when the author wanted to move the plot on. "Dolores Umbridge? Rita Skreeter? Not Professor McGonagall?"

Dr Doom Voldemort momentarily buried his head in his hands. "Dear Lord you're almost as stupid as Sam Gamgee C3PO Ron Weasley. Think boy! Think! I speak of the one who truly hates you. Who is it that has punished you for seven, ever longer, books? Who is it that has ensured that all around you ignored your warnings and called you a liar? Who has seen you pummelled and beaten, cruelly mocked and more cruelly tortured for thousands upon thousands of pages? Who has made you doubt your own sanity?"

Harry looked up at the man he had once thought was his greatest foe, who he had always feared - even after discovering his true name was, ridiculously, Tom Marvelo Riddle.

The Wicked Witch of the West Voldemort continued, "Oh she hates you, Potter. Don't doubt that. Think how she sent you away to the Dursleys ..."

Harry shivered. "They're awfully common aren't they?" he said, then brightened for a moment, "But I'm not like them - I go to boarding school and have friends called Hermione and live in a magical world that is exactly like a scene from a 1950s Ealing comedy."

"But without the warmth or humour" said Blofeld Lord Voldemort, stroking a Persian cat. Harry nodded to himself, he knew his enemy's words were true. The Hooded Claw Voldemort carried on, "She even killed off your uncle Boromir Sirius Black and your mentor Gandalf Dumbledore"

"You mean Obi-Wan Dumbledore won't 'unexpectedly' be making a reappearance in the final book?" Harry shouted, his knuckles whitening as he clenched his hands in anger and disappointment.

"I wouldn't put it past her", whispered Nogbad the Bad Voldemort. "Can you really be so stupid?", he continued, his rage mounting once more ... "Didn't you suspect anything even when you realised she'd made your best friend a ginger?!"

Harry just grabbed his wand and squeezed it tight, causing sniggers among any of his readers who'd ever laughed at a Carry On movie.

"It is your creator who detests you so! She Who Must Not Be Named is J.K. Rowling! And now she has chosen to kill you by creating a saga so long and so repetitive that you will be sucked into an endless sequence of quidditch matches and O.W.L. examinations, punctuated by the occasional death of a friend and several over-familiar plot-devices. You will die not by my wand, Harry Potter, but by the actions of ten fingers upon a keyboard!"

His speech finished, Abanazar Lord Voldemort looked down triumphantly at Harry but Harry could not see him for Harry was already dead.

Harry Potter will be buried at St Mickey Mouse's Church of the Marketing Wizardry, in a grave well set apart from Lewis Carroll's Alice Through the Looking Glass, Lloyd Alexander's The Chronicles of Prydain, Norton Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth, James Thurber's The Thirteen Clocks and The White Deer, Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising sequence, Alan Garner's Weirdstone of Brisingamen and the works of The Brothers Grimm. He is survived by a generation of young adults for whom thousands of years of myth and legend, wizardry and wild romance, fairy tales and gothic sagas, imagination and mystery have been distilled into a moderately-well written, deeply small "c" conservative, school story in which all the magic of "magic" has been rendered into a banal substitute for technology with all the eldritch mystery of a trip to McDonalds.

Live Earth 7/7/07-7/7/07

Eco-campaigners and celebrity publicists eager to get their charges some front page coverage⁽¹⁾ are today mourning the passing of Live Earth, which let slip the bonds of gravity and slipped past the ozone layer and beyond only 24 hours after its birth on 7th July 2007.

Live Earth was the consciousness-raising progeny of former Vice-President Al Gore - a man whose credentials are so green that he had his own charisma hand-crafted from solid wood - and a large number of pop stars eager to flog some 'Best of' albums save the planet from "that, like, global warming thing, yeah" in a way which didn't involve them giving up their private jets. From the outset its ecological bona fides were clear, having itself been recycled from 'Live 8' which had seen the gathering together of a large number of pop stars eager to flog some 'Best of 'albums "end like 'Third World' poverty, yeah" in a way which did not involve them putting a hand into their own pockets.

Yet, despite such good intentions a cloud hung over Live Earth almost from the moment of its birth. That the cloud consisted of the estimated 75,000 tonnes of CO₂ generated by producing and watching the series of Live Earth concerts around the globe was, perhaps, unfortunate, especially as Live Earth's parents had done so much to offset its carbon output by patronisingly paying a small tribe in the Amazon rainforest a tenner to install eco-friendly lightbulbs.

Even in the face of such difficulties, Live Earth's carers did their best to carry on, flying in from across the globe in their personal jets to wish it well and deliver two songs from their back catalogue and one from "the new album, available on iTunes right now". Band after band and singer after singer rose up to express the rock'n'roll spirit of the age, not by urging their fans to fight the power, rise up against big business and a capitalist system based on the acquisition of more and more planet-destroying consumer goods, but rather by turning off a few lights and remembering not to put their tellies on standby. Particular praise must go to bands such as Snow Patrol and Keane who have done so much to pick up and recycle discarded rubbish down the years, even if the discarded rubbish in question is the music of Coldplay.

Nonetheless, with the cloud continuing to hover over Live Earth, many experts were already warning that it might pose a threat to health, especially when combined with the output from its pop parents' massive egos. With Sting's arrival on stage at the Giant's Stadium in New York the cloud began to pulsate weirdly. It was Madonna's appearance at Wembley, however, that sent the cloud (not to mention several members of the audience) critical. The resulting explosion of noxious gases and even-more noxious egos sent Live Earth hurtling into space, leaving behind a Wembley Stadium so heavily irradiated that only those shielded by vast salaries, massive egos and motor cars with the carbon output of a small jet will be able to use it in future ... which at least makes it the perfect venue for football matches.

Live Earth is survived by increased music downloads for the artists involved, Al Gore's As-Yet-Unannounced-Presidential Campaign and a public still so thick that 50% of it doesn't believe in global warming despite the fact that the data have convinced just about every sane scientist on earth - bar a few professional members of the awkward squad, some professors who owe their shiny new laboratories to the generosity of the oil companies and a couple of guys who think a dodgy Channel 4 documentary is an even easier way to get on the telly than Big Brother - that the planet may well be on the way to Hell in a very hot handbasket.

⁽¹⁾ That is, front-page coverage unrelated to drug abuse, sexual infidelity or the adoption of yet another child from an impoverished country in the Southern Hemisphere.

Disney Animated Feature Films 1937-2007

Disney Animated Feature Films has sung its last saccharine ballad penned by Elton John and gone to join its maker in a cryogenic chamber following the publication of research that the negative portrayal of the elderly in films such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, 101 Dalmatians and The Hunchback of Notre Dame adversely affects children’s image of the older generation – even more so than when the older generation refuse to buy them the repackaged DVD of Lilo and Stitch, available for a limited time only, that they have already seen 237 times.

Disney Animated Feature Films - the child of animator Walt Disney and his beloved pet mouse - burst into the black and white world of the 1930s with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs – a brash and colourful brat that leapt into the face of Depression-era America and the smoggy world of staid Britain, injecting a much-needed dose of Technicolor with its innocent story of a sweet young princess who spends her time buffing the tools of seven aged midgets.

The success of Snow White, despite its portrayal of a wicked elderly royal intent on destroying a beautiful young princess (a portrayal understood - according to the representatives of Mr Mohamed Al Fayed - to have been based on Prince Philip), encouraged Disney to return to the drawing board for its next feature, Pinocchio – the heart-warming and innocent tale of an elderly carpenter who, to banish his loneliness, whittles away at his wood for hours on end until a magic fairy grants him a young boy all his own.

Despite the box-office failure of Fantasia (attributed by critics to the two-dimensional performance of Mr Disney's beloved protegé, one M Mouse) Disney Animated Feature Films continued to prosper during the war years with Dumbo, a young elephant who discovers an ability to fly following an alcoholic binge and a couple of sniffs of a magic feather, and Bambi, a young deer traumatised by the tragic death of his mother at the hands of a wicked hunter (again, we are advised by the representatives of Mr Al Fayed this part was based on The Duke of Edinburgh).

In the post-war years The Films continued to increase their hold on children’s imagination and their parents wallets with a string of all-singing, all-dancing anthropomorphic adventures including The Lady and the Tramp, The Jungle Book and The Anthropomorphist’s All-Singing All-Dancing Adventure.

By the 60s, however, the Films' grip on the public imagination began to loosen, thanks in part to lower budgets and production values but mainly to the fact the public's imagination was dancing naked round a maypole while whacked out on a mix of acid, peyote, hash and those groovy looking pink 'n' purple pills. Things worsened in the 1970s and 80s, with the films coming under attack from such attractions as Luke Skywalker's struggles against the wicked Darth Vader, a creature more machine than man (a character we are again advised was in fact based on Queen Elizabeth's husband).

Advancing years began to take their toll on the Films, with features such as Aladdin and Mulan relying more and more on a clinical formula of over-the-top performances from US stand-ups and soundtracks composed by cutting edge musicians such as Celine Dion. Ever more competition from digital animators, changing demographics and a disastrous decision to ask Slipknot to provide the love songs for the proposed, 101 Dead Dalmatians, bleached the colour from Disney’s upbeat vision of the world and slowly The Films became less animated.

The final blow was struck by researchers at the Brigham Young University in Utah who, after 70 years of smarting at Snow White’s satirical take-on Mormon polygamy, published a scathing attack on stereotypical images of the elderly in Disney Animated Feature Films – complaining that toothless and hunched characters were demeaning to senior citizens and severely cramped Peter Stringfellow’s style. The writing may not have been on the wall but the drawings were most certainly in the bin.

Disney Animated Feature Films will be buried next to Bambi’s mother. The service will be available for a limited time only on DVD and the congregation will sing from the Book of Phil Collins and Elton John. They are survived by the Duke of Edinburgh.

The Long Good Friday 1980-2007

Lovers of British films are today gathering to scatter soggy popcorn on the sticky floors of darkened independent cinemas up and down the country in memory of classic 1980s movie The Long Good Friday, which has passed away following news that it is to get a "Hollywood makeover" from director Paul W S Anderson.

The Long Good Friday was born in 1980, the gritty and resolutely unglamorous tale of gangster Harold Shand's attempts to give some legitimacy to his East End criminal empire by redeveloping London's Docklands in time for the 1988 Olympics, in the face of the threat from IRA terrorists⁽¹⁾. Starring Bob Hoskins, the man who stunned the world in BBC Adult Learning series "On the Move" and dumbfounded critics with his devastating performance in "Super Mario Bros", and Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II (or possibly Helen Mirren), The Long Good Friday was rightly hailed as one of the greatest ever gangster movies, able to stand shoulder-to-shoulder beside such legends as Mike Hodges's savage revenge tale "Get, Carter" and brilliant crime-caper "The Italian Job" in the pantheon of British cinema.

Together this triumvirate would inspire Britons throughout the 80s, 90s and noughties to believe that they could create movies capable of standing against Hollywood's best without always having to resort to long, slow pans across rolling countryside and Helena Bonham-Carter/Kate Winslet in a bosom-flattering Georgian frock or getting Richard Curtis to write yet another piece of heartwarming drivel about how a floppy-haired, repressed Brit living in a racially-segregated London where it always snows at Christmas can be saved from disaster by the presence of a moderately bankable Hollywood star name.

Yet the mere fact of greatness has never ensured proper recognition. Soon the British gangster movie was not merely inspiring the great and the good but also the not-so-great, the frankly-indifferent and the bloody awful. Where once giants like Harold Shand and Jack Carter had stalked Britain's grimy streets, now they were filled with British bratpackers, desperate to prove their serious acting credentials and get over the fact that daddy ran a drama school/was a former Doctor Who by dropping the odd aitch and "giving it large" ... and Guy Ritchie.

Such an end would be piteous enough but worse was to come. Concerned by the respect that was still being shown in some quarters to the ageing British threesome, the big boys over in Hollywood decided to send hitmen across the pond to sort the trio out. The first to fall was The Italian Job, knocked down by a BMW-owned Mini Cooper in a Los Angeles street far from its Milanese home. Next came Get Carter, mysteriously plunged into a river of bad notices, weighed down by a concrete-shoed performance from Sylvester Stallone.

Only The Long Good Friday was left. Hunted through the streets of London, it was eventually cornered in an East End abattoir, where it was hung from a meat-hook for days, its mangled corpse later being discovered dumped on a Miami Street by the director responsible for such luminous moments of cinema as "Mortal Kombat" and "Resident Evil".

The Long Good Friday will be buried alongside the rapidly-rotating coffins of Get Carter and The Italian Job. All three are survived by fond memories of the originals, dreadful remakes and, with any luck, a British version of Chinatown set in Somerset starring Justin Lee Collins, its final line "Forget it Jake, this is Nempnett Thrubwell"

⁽¹⁾ devotees of NORAID are requested to read "IRA terrorists" as craic-loving, happy-go-lucky freedom fighters, who never blew up an innocent person without a smile on their lips and song in their heart.

The Compilation Tape c.1970s-2007

The Compilation Tape, that marvel of magnetic sound recording that allowed a generation of men to woo women with a collection of their favourite tracks – and a generation of women to listen for two minutes before recording Abba's Greatest Hits over the lovingly-crafted tribute – has passed away following electrical retailer Currys decision to stop selling audio cassettes.

Though the audio cassette was born in the early 60s, it wasn’t until the 1970s that the male of the species hit upon the romantic potential of ham-fistedly hitting “Play” and “Record” just after Peter Powell stopped his intro and, psychically, hitting “Stop” before he started talking again – a technique which if completed successfully could result in a swoon-inducing 40-second version of 10cc’s “I’m Mandy (Fly Me)”.

For years men plugged on relentlessly at their task, despite the fact that thanks to Peter Powell and every other trans-Adlandically toned DJ, from Tony “Don’t leave me, Tessa” Blackburn, through Dave "The Hairy Arse" Lee Travis, Simon “You Won’t Feel A Thing” Bates and Bruno "Oh Dear God Please Make It Stop" Brookes – the chances of a lovestruck, hormonally-confused male recording anything other than a couple of bars of the latest smash from the Hit Parade were about as slim as the chances of the aforementioned male getting his leg over.

With the advent of separate cassette decks and turntables, the Compilation Tape found its popularity growing ever greater. Now men could spend hours, if not days, locked in the dank fug of their bedrooms, beavering away feverishly in order to demonstrate their encyclopaedic musical knowledge, cultural sophistication, emotional depth and desire to get their end away with prove their undying and noble love for the barmaid who had smiled at them… no really… whilst handing them a bag of pork scratchings with their pint of Double Diamond.

C-90s (sometimes, daringly, even C-120s) were painstakingly filled with lovingly sequenced music from Motown to Morrisey, from that criminally overlooked Bulgarian psychedelic B-side to obscure cover versions of unknown songs by even lesser known bands (only available on rare Japanese imported 45s… in pink vinyl) – and all punctuated by the seductive thump, hiss and crackle of the needle hitting the vinyl too hard.

With the advent of younger, more exciting recording technologies – such as the minidisc, the rewritable CD and mp3 – that could do it longer, more frequently (and oh-so-much-more quickly…) The Compilation Tape suddenly found itself out-performed and, soon thereafter, cruelly spurned. Crushed by the knowledge that the wow and flutter wasn’t the music of the inamorata’s quickening pulse but the mechanical failure of the cassette player as it chewed its way through the definitive live version of Bruce Springsteen’s “Hungry Heart”, it slurred slowly to an end as The Tape became caught in the mechanism, crinkling its last.

The Compilation Tape will be consigned to the dusty cardboard box in the attic or, worse, cruelly dumped. The service will be conducted by the Right Reverend Nick Hornby and the congregation will sing along with Dave’s “I Love You, Cheryl - 1987” C-90, wiping away a tear of joyous reminiscence to Human League’s “Love Action”, sniggering into the hand-written liner notes at Englebert Humperdinck’s “Lesbian Seagull”, guffawing uncontrollably to Salt ‘n Pepa’s “Push It” and thinking “Ooh, that’s a bit creepy” to The Police’s “Every Breath You Take (I’ll Be Watching You).

It is survived by the CD Compilation, the iMix and the continuing failure of men to understand that if they spent some time with their significant others rather than locking themselves up with their mp3's they might stand half a chance of getting somewhere.

As A Dodo Note: The Compilation Tape was predeceased by the Computer Tape, which itself had given millions of socially-alienated 1980s teens one more reason to consider suicide as Manic Miner/Chuckie Egg/Way of the Exploding Fist - their only escape from a cruel and uncomprehending world - failed to load for the thirteenth time.

Those Who Knew Them: Kurt Vonnegut 1922-2007

We regret the tardiness of the following personal tribute to the late science fiction writer. Unfortunately its author, a test pilot and native of the planet Tralfamadore who knew the author well, exists in all time periods at once and decided to submit his piece to us in 1892. Having now managed to unearth it from among a pile of discarded copies of Punch, a collection of top hats and several bottles of Josiah Ackerthwaite's patented balsam, we are pleased to publish it here.

Kurt Vonnegut was an author, more or less. He was one of those people who turn facts into something more than fiction and fiction into something a lot like fact. When we met he wasn't at all old, except for his eyes which had seen too much. He called himself Billy Pilgrim. He called himself Kilgore Trout. You can never trust authors. Once he said he ran a Saab dealership without telling Saab themselves. It made him bankrupt. He said it cost him the Nobel Prize. He said a lot of things like that.

In the war, the big war, the one where you Earthlings tried to blow Europe into nothingness and your society into nowhere, he was a soldier. He fought against the Germans, which was funny because his family was German-American. That's the sort of irony aliens who live in all times at once can appreciate. Kurt or Billy or whoever wasn't trained very well for war or for German snow. He was captured and locked up. That's when he got unstuck in time.

He spent some time with us in our zoo. He was about as happy there as he was on Earth. We locked him up with Montana Wildhack, a motion picture star. She had great breasts and Billy Pilgrim had a tremendous wang. Authors get to write things that way, it's part of the fun.

In Germany, Kurt Vonnegut saw the bombing of Dresden from the wrong side. He saw thousands upon thousands of people killed in just two nights by other people who thought they were fighting evil. It changed him. He wrote Slaughterhouse 5 about what happened and people liked it. Most every English student in the United States had to read it. Students liked Slaughterhouse 5 because it had lots of short sentences and was kind of like science fiction. Professors liked it because it told an important story and even Professors of English like short sentences now and again.

Kurt Vonnegut wrote other books too. Some were great, some not so good. For a time he was a humanist but then he changed his mind. For a while he went about defending Intelligent Design, which just goes to prove that even novelists can make mistakes. He became a kind of conscience for a certain type of American. After Dresden he didn't have much time for war, which just goes to prove that even novelists can get things right. Someone named an asteroid after him, which was nice.

Kurt Vonnegut is dead now. So it goes.

Digital Rights Management 1996-2007

Digital Rights Management for music files – the software locks that prevent you playing iTunes music on your Sony Walkman, using your iPod to store tracks from Windows Media Player and makes it much more annoying to make illegal backup copies for personal use of your favourite tunes – has been declared dead following the decision by Apple and EMI to abandon the copyright protection system. Now, for an extra 20p “audiophiles” will be able to download the “music” of Robbie Williams, Coldplay, Joss Stone and Lily Allen and make as many copies as they like for others, thus threatening to drown the globe in an unprecedented deluge of the musical equivalent of magnolia paint.

DRM was born in 1996, the youngest of a whole family of corporate killjoys including 'Home Taping Is Killing Music', 'I Say, Making Copies of Wax Cylinders Just Isn’t Cricket, You Know' and that bit at the beginning of old episodes of Mission Impossible, where Peter Graves only gets to listen to his tape once before it bursts into a puff of smoke.

Like most other music companies, Apple wholeheartedly embraced the use of DRM to prevent piracy, but the plan backfired when they found that once people had downloaded Robbie Williams, Coldplay, Joss Stone and Lily Allen, they didn’t want to make endless copies of the tracks but instead found themselves overwhelmed by a desire to smash their brand new iPod into a thousand pieces before running down Chris Martin with his own Toyota Prius and beating him about the head with a branch hewn from one of his own carbon-offset forests.

Further blows to DRM came when it was realised that they had absolutely no effect on professional pirates who - unimpaired by their peg legs and hook-hands - always managed to break any form of copy-protection in less time than it takes for Steve Jobs to pull on a black turtleneck, leaving only the humble consumer to suffer. And suffer they did, especially in 2005, when it was discovered that some Sony CDs were surreptitiously installing copyright protection on listener's computers, thus interfering with their privacy and affecting the smooth running of Microsoft Windows, even more than Microsoft Windows itself affected the smooth running of Microsoft Windows.

Soon, music-lovers were clamouring for the right to download their favourite tracks to listen to as they pleased – whether on their computer, iPod, MP3 player, burnt to CD, cut to vinyl, taped onto an old C-90 found in their shed or banged out by that spare symphony orchestra they'd left in the attic. As critics began to argue that DRM did less to thwart pirates and more to punish innocent consumers – but not quite as much punishment as being able to listen to Lily Allen’s ironically titled single, Smile over and over again – EMI made the decision to remove the software locks from its digital downloads and DRM was deleted for the last time.

DRM will be buried at the Jolly Pirate public house this weekend. The congregation will download Robbie Williams’ Angels for 99p … and then bury that as well. It is survived by Robbie Williams, Coldplay, Joss Stone and Lily Allen. This Dodo will self-destruct in five seconds.

Lord Reith's Legacy 1938-2007

The legacy of former Director General of the BBC John Reith, the belief that the purpose of the British Broadcasting Corporation was to "inform, educate and entertain" passed away this weekend after suffering an apoplectic fit while reading that the BBC considers itself "too upmarket".

Lord Reith's Legacy was born in 1938 when the Director General quit his former BBC home for pastures new¹ leaving behind him a broadcasting organisation imbued with the, perhaps naive, belief that sometimes people deserve more than they want and that, by producing a broad range of programming including material that might occasionally be in danger of stretching viewers' and listeners' minds and exposing them to new thoughts and ideas, the Corporation could perform a great service to the nation.

For decade after decade, Lord Reith's Legacy saw the BBC building its reputation as one of the world's most respected broadcasters, cleaving to such traditional values as tolerance and respect for others and to its belief that the communication of knowledge is a noble goal, while seeking to bind together the whole nation even in the face of the blight of war, national disaster and the birth of Noel Edmonds.

Year after year the BBC went about its business of informing, educating and entertaining the nation, showering it with the plays of John Osborne, David Hare, Willy Russell, Mike Leigh and Dennis Potter, ground-breaking series like Jacob Bronowski's Ascent of Man and Kenneth Clarke's Civilisation, the satire of That Was The Week That Was and Not the Nine O'Clock News, comedy like Hancock's Half Hour and and the genius of Morecambe and Wise, popular science programming like Tomorrow's World and QED, innovative and penetrating arts programming like Monitor and Arena, films by Ken Russell and Ken Loach, popular dramas from Troy Kennedy Martin, Nigel Kneale, Alan Bleasdale et al. And all this in the face of unending attack from left, right and middle, whether as a "slave of the establishment" or a "member of the politically correct subsidariat".

Despite threats from elected leaders as diverse as Harold Wilson and Margaret Thatcher (not to mention unelected ones like Alastair Campbell), John Reith's legacy soldiered on, willing to fight for some semblance of quality programming, encouraging ITV to follow suit with such excellent programmes as World in Action, Survival, The Jewel in the Crown and Brideshead Revisited and moving Channel 4 to heights of radical invention as it sought out new ways to speak to the less represented members of the nation.

As the years passed, however, the old lion of broadcasting began to age. As its mane became shaggier and its claws less sharp, so a young rival began to bare its teeth. Roaring out a cry of "Foul" at the BBC's license-fee funded programming (whilst making no mention of its own ability to cross-fund itself from the profits - barely taxed by any country - of News International) BSkyB leapt in to make its challenge. Bellowing its buzzwords of "choice" and "diversity" (and keeping absolutely schtum about "low quality" or "expensive subscriptions") it offered a new kind of leadership to the broadcasting pride, a leadership built on the desire to lay one's paws on the largest possible audience, whatever the price. Unhindered by any duty to public service broadcasting, proudly boasting a flagship channel built solely around repeats of The Simpsons and imported sci-fi and backed by the furious might of The Sun, The Times and The News of the World, Sky assaulted Lord Reith's Legacy again and again. Unchallenged by a spineless and spavined regulator, enslaved by an unthinking love for a market most free, or by an eternally prostrate government, desperate to be anointed by the blessed Murdoch, Sky's ascendancy was unstoppable. Soon the other channels fell into place, shuffling their documentaries off to the outer boundaries of the schedules, quietly murdering their arts programmes in their sleep, bludgeoning their science programming with voyeuristic tales of freaks masquerading as sensitive explorations of medical problems.

At last, even the BBC itself - Lord Reith's great gift to the nation - was to fall. Beaten into submission by the unceasing attacks of the press, the vindictiveness of a government unable to forget the BBC's temerity in questioning its desire for war in Iraq, a Chancellor eager to sit at Mr Murdoch's right hand and the cack-handedness of its leader, Mark "Bite Your Arms Off" Thompson, the ageing Corporation at last buckled at the knee and bowed its head. Its concession in an official report that it provided too much "Today" programme and too little Chris Moyles was too heavy a burden for Lord Reith's legacy to bear: on reading the news, the Legacy was stricken by both a heart attack and the massive electro-magnetic forces generated by Lord Reith himself revolving in his grave.

Lord Reith's Legacy will be buried at All Souls Church, Langham Place opposite Broadcasting House. It was predeceased by foreign language films on terrestrial TV, intelligent science programmes on TV, original plays on TV, high-quality arts programming on TV, probing celebrity interviews on TV, intelligent documentaries unrelated to the Nazis or Al Qaida on TV and any kind of programming which might - however briefly - force the viewer to do anything beyond sitting slack-jawed on their sofa and letting the last of their atrophied brain cells drool out onto the floor from their limp lips whilst watching Graham Norton scouring the internet for transsexual Alsatians and alfalfa farmers who dress up as Wonder Woman.

Lord Reith's Legacy is survived by an unmitigated diet of soap opera, cop shows and hospital shows, endless Big Brother, a half-hour Panorama, Horizon presented by Tinky-Winky, Fearne Cotton, Celebrity Fame Academy and Chris Moyles's jackboot stamping on the face of humanity - for ever.

¹ (and, admittedly, the chance to write extensive diary entries praising Adolf Hitler)