The Leadership Test

What Famous Leader Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

‘You tend to see threats everywhere and always focus on worst case scenarios’!!!

Well, not normally, I don’t. Not unless I’ve just been compared to one of the most reviled figures of the twentieth century. I mean, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a bit upset at the outcome of this personality test.

I have to thank Steve at The Daily Referendum for bringing this little gem to my attention. I'm still as paranoid as ever, but now in a one-testicle kind of way. I honestly thought I'd emerge as a John Major figure, heavily into underpant usage and light on foreign policy. To say I'm a little disappointed is an understatement, though Gabby is telling me to take it as a omen of bigger things ahead.

‘Such as Poland?’ I asked.

She laughed. ‘You mustn’t always interpret these things as being negative. Try to see positive side of it.’

‘I’m trying,’ I said, looking down at my black leather thong and wondering if there was something more to my liking it than the comfort of feeling a fur lining against my loins. ‘You don’t think I look a little too Nazi in this?’

‘Thong good,' she replied, 'but I think boots don’t suit Chippy.'

I went and stood in front of the mirror. My knee high black leather boots were meant to keep my feet warm on these cold Bangor nights. ‘You do know that if I don’t wear these, I’ll have to bring out my big electric slipper?’ I explained.

She frowned at the idea. For those of you not in the know: my office is on the cold side of the flat and, after three hours writing, my feet can be like blocks of frozen anti-fungal cream. Gabby thinks my Scholl heated slipper is a bit too geriatric.

‘Look,’ I said. ‘I can look like Thora Hird or Adolf Hitler. It’s a hard decision but it’s one you have to make.’

She thought a moment or two longer than I expected given the moral equation she was trying to solve. ‘Thora Hird,’ she replied, finally. ‘Nice lady. Much missed by Gabby.’

I kicked off my jackboots as I went to search out the big slipper in the spare room.

‘Do you think I’m safe?’ I asked ten minutes later as I came hopping into the room in search of a spare plug socket. ‘You don’t suppose Steve at The Daily Referendum is going to tell me that Thora Hird was a war criminal and that the big slipper is a sign of my tacit approval of her zimmer frame policy of 1944? My feet couldn’t take another cold winter.’

Gabby helped plug me in. ‘Gabby sure Steve understands,’ she said. ‘In fact, I bet he has big Thora Hird slipper too.’

And do you know what, my kind readers: I bet he does. I bet he does...

A Question Nuance

Today I blatantly stole an idea from Dave Hill (and now a picture from The Spine).* I opened a blog over at The Telegraph.

Actually, I didn’t steal the idea as much as I went back and posted on the blog I’d registered earlier this year. I’m A. Aaron Esq, which as you’ll no doubt know is the name of my grandfather. I didn’t expect any replies to the small piece I wrote about Gordon Brown. Nor did I expect people to misunderstand me and actually accuse me of liking the man. So, in response, I wrote the following, which I’m also posting here so as to bore you all with yet more of my wise words about the great man himself: Mr. Bernie Clifton.

I opened a blog here at The Telegraph and people immediately misunderstood me. Did I really say I liked Gordon Brown? It seems that I did. Or I didn’t, depending on which comment you read in response to my original post. I don’t know where I went wrong. Things are never this difficult on my own blog. But there I’m usually writing about sling-backed thongs, stripping, and the North Wales exotic dance circuit. Do I really smell of pineapples and am I really the owner of the largest collection of thongs in Wales? Well, yes and yes. Do I like Gordon Brown? Of course I don’t. It’s a foolish thing to ask of a man who is often mistaken for Lembit Opik. It was a question of a nuance that some people just didn’t pick up.

Nuance. Can’t live with it. Can’t bash it on the back of a head with a spade.

Miscommunication has to be one of the less enjoyable novelties of trying to communicate on the internet. Irony doesn’t tend to work without a fat smiley at the end. Nor does sarcasm or anything that isn’t as blatant as: ‘I dislike Gordon Brown and wasn’t so hot on Blair.’ Yet out of it comes at least one interesting question. Who do I like? There’s so much negativity around, shouldn’t I begin by saying who and what I like? If we’re all going around castigating Brown, isn’t it good to know who we’d like to see in his place?

I don’t know if I have the answer to that question, but I do like Bernie Clifton.

I’ve been thinking a lot about him in recent days. Last week, I bumped into him in the local shopping centre where he was collecting money for charity. I’ve written about this elsewhere so I won’t go into too much length about him here, but things seemed simpler in the days of Crackerjack. Even now, people seemed to have so much faith in an old comedian with bad knees and dressed in a faded yellow ostrich suit. Yet it’s hardly surprising when we’re led by a man whose personality hasn’t been bypassed as much as it has had a ring road built around it.

It’s not that I want my politicians to act the buffoon, but I don’t seen buffoonery as being anathema to being serious. It’s a lesson that politicians simply fail to heed. Churchill recently came fifth in a poll of great wits. Does anybody think him a lesser politician because of it? The same is true of Einstein who once stuck out his tongue and it became one of the iconic pictures of the century. Groucho Marx’s aphorisms are routinely quoted as if wisdom and Chaplin is seen as a great artist making significant political films.

Gordon Brown would never countenance an ostrich outfit. I don’t imagine at any point in his life he’s ever donned a pair of yellow stockings and feathered shoes. But then, can we imagine him sticking out his tongue, saying anything witty, or even making a significant political point on anything? I don’t suppose it means I should dislike him any more than I already do but it certainly doesn’t make me trust him.

And that’s why I like Bernie Clifton. It’s all a question nuance and seeing the absurdities in ourselves. Life seems so much more healthy that way.

*Thanks to David at The Spine for letting me use the picture.

Opening Discussion

I’ve been lying in my hotel room all day, waiting to catch a taxi to the airport. For this reason, I’ve no great adventures to recount. I’ve done nothing but read the Jules Verne and browse the web. You might say I'm wasting time in one of the world's great capitals but I'm keeping my head down, fearing that an appearance outside might lead me into more trouble with ‘the Washington authorities’.

This seclusion did, however, give me plenty of chance to look at the website that Charles Clarke and Alan Milburn have launched today for their 2020 Vision campaign.

Now, the Chipster wants to make it known that he’s all for the future. He thinks the future will be big next thing. You just can’t ignore it or it will be on us before we know it… Whoops! There you go! Just as I was typing that sentence, a bit of the future was here and I missed it. Well, we’ll just have to be more careful the next time… Damn! Too late… A bit more slipped right through my fingers.

You see how easy it is to get slightly manic about the future? It gets only worse once you realise that the politicians are all for it too. This 2020 webside, for example, is full of happy thoughts about tomorrow and the day after. And is it any wonder when we’re so resolutely marching ‘towards a progressive century’?

To be honest, I don’t actually know what they mean by ‘a progressive century’. It sounds a bit too much like a ‘progressive skin disease’. And what is ‘progressive’ about a century exactly? Is it longer or shorter than a normal century? Does it come in different colours? I don’t know. I’m just a stripper with a large thong collection. Terms like ‘progressive century’ are less meaningful to me than the sound of a well snapped piece of gusset elastic. Yet I know it has to mean something. It has to mean something when the people are spending so much money advertising it. I suppose it’s just up to me to figure out what it means.

They mean, I suppose, that in the future we abandon whatever we’ve been doing in favour of something else. Out with the ‘old thinking’ and in the with new. That sort of thing. We’re still not quite sure what this other thinking we’ll be doing will be, except it will be a damn sight better than the things we’ve been doing so far. In fact, that is probably an example of progressive thinking right there. I feel illuminated just being in its presence.

So, ‘progressive’ means we get rid of all that conservative thought that’s been holding us back for too long. And I’m all for that. After all, what has the power of conservatism ever given us except for a bit of civilisation for the last few centuries? We’d be a damn sight better off with something else and I’m brimming with excitement at the thought of burning everything down before we even begin to think of an alternative. What’s more progressive than a short period of anarchy? The most important thing is to rid ourselves of that horrible conservative thinking. We want radical ideas for a nation where a man can be proud to wear underwear on his head and call himself the Archmage Skinflick the Third.

Charles Clarke and Alan Milburn clearly have a good handle on how we should move forward. This website of theirs already declares that their ‘recent speeches’ are ‘coming soon’, which is how it should be. While we’re looking forward to the future, we can also look forward to the past. Policies are also in the future pipeline but that’s good since too we’ll be giving the old policies well before we think up the new ones. And if you’re getting confused, the whole thing boils down to one line: ‘Politics is about the future not the past’.

Apropos of nothing: I hear that dementia is increasing in the nation at large. That can only be a good thing given that it's all about the future and not the past. Whether we suffer dementia or not, we’ll all soon be living in the future with no though of what’s gone before...

History is history, baby. The Chipster says so.

Hear Me Roar!

I have to be quick. I’ve just read that the key to blogging is brevity.

It's kind of hard concept for a man like me to understand. My whole career has been based around making the strip last as long as possible, which, were it blogging, would amount to me running on stage, quick wave to the crowd, whip off my thong, and once round the audience giving my white meat more rough treatment than you’d find in a Bernard Matthews rendering plant.

In, out, and off to rapturous applause in 37 seconds.

So, I have to be quick…

Okay, Chipster. Stay focussed.

Focussed on what I wanted to say, which is my report about Blogger TV on 18 Doughty Street.

I watched if for the first time tonight. Being new to this blogging world, I’m catching up on what we bloggers are supposed to do. I’ve been worried about my lack of readership. I still can’t get people to link to me and 75% of my audience still arrive from Mexico on the back of a search for ‘the chipendales’ (there are two ‘p’s in Chippendales, my Mexican friends). I had hoped that Blogger TV would address that type of issue for me. How to become widely read inside two weeks. That sort of thing.

Because I was still feeling a little physically drained after my bout of flu, I decided to get in bed before nine and listen to four eminent bloggers discuss the tools of the trade.

Only they weren’t discussing tips on blogging but whether we bloggers are really pub bores.

It was horrible moment. Lying there naked, derobed except for a slight covering of peppermint scented baby oil, I felt myself go limp with the realisation that… I don’t think I can bring myself to even type it.

That I'm a bore?

I’ve been accused of many things in my time: being an exhibitionist, a thrill seeker, a magician of the thong, and even the country’s sexiest Lib Dem (except for He Who Shall Not Be Named). But I’ve never been accused of boring anybody. Well, not in that sense of the word but we won’t go there.

Yet I see our problem. Political are about politics. Is there anything as pitiful? I mean look at it. Politics has a lower audience than crown green bowling. Which means that if I keep mentioning crown green bowling, my readership will probably skyrocket.

Crown green bowling. Crown green bowling. Nice shot there, Stan. Nestling up to the jack, you’ve played a blinder! Beautiful line Mrs. Green. How’s you cat? Oh, did you hear my knees crack… The trouble with young people today…National service. Hang em! Fancy another custard cream Mrs. Green?

Ah ha! Sorry. Got carried away pandering to my new audience. (No, not you, my hombres, you want 'chippendales' with two p's).

But as I was saying, political blogging is not an activity for the reader. Even the Chipster, with days left empty except keeping himself moist for his evening shows, doesn’t find the time to read that many political blogs. I don’t understand what they talk about and I’ve never heard of most of the people they quote. Then there’s the fact that I find them dull, except when there’s a bit of controversy at play. Which is why I’ve come up with my brilliant plan to liven things up around here.

I’ve decided to start a blog war.

I don’t know who I’ll rage my war against. Auditions will begin shortly but the nomination process is now open. To make this fair, I want my blog war to be a peaceable affair with a party who agrees to open hostilities with me. The terms and conditions will be mutually agreed upon. No personal insults about the quality of our blogging. I was thinking about choosing some arbitrary concept and arguing at great length about it. Topics to choose from should include:

The pros and cons of Pot Noodles.
The meaning of the word ‘quixotic’.
The literary career of Jeffrey Archer.
The cultural impact of vests.
Jimmy Saville: Creepy or Geeky?
Modern twentieth century poetry.
The pros and cons of Blog Wars.

These are just for starters, to get us thinking about how we might develop this plan. I might just change my mind about this in the morning but, at this point of time as I’m about roll over and go to sleep, it sounds a pretty sound idea to me.

Singing Profumo On A Bicycle

Some deathly silences this morning. Being exiled by a Romanian is like suffering an excess of wax in your ears. It alters your perceptions of the world. Everything becomes more apparent. Less real. Not that I regretted the silence. My post-Superbowl hangover has only just lifted after an hour spent at the gym where I tried to redeem myself with my body by burning the toxins out of my system.

As I was cycling my way to ten miles, getting nowhere but feeling better for it, I read the newspaper. It helps make the burn seem that much shorter, but unusually this morning, I only had a copy of The Telegraph with me. I found myself in a potentially perilous position. I did the only sensible thing in the circumstances and skipped the usual editorials singing the praises of David Cameron and his veritable ape house of Eton greybacks, jibbering tax monkeys, and Chelsea chimps. I settled on the arts section where I knew I’d be safe. That’s where I first read about this new musical based on the Profumo affair.

It’s called ‘A Modern Girl’ and gets a fairly average review. They note the ‘strange lacunae in this show – no Mandy Rice-Davies, no glimpse of the notorious "man in the mask"’ but conclude by saying that it ‘deserves to take its chance in the West End.’

Being in show business myself (and few cannot deny me the right to feel a special affinity towards that word ‘show’), this kind of revisionism is most welcome. ‘The Sound of Music’ might bring in the crowds, but we must do our best to encourage the original musicals. Yet even to my limited knowledge of musical theatre, I can see how the producers have missed out on a few tricks. I regret the lack of the ‘man in the mask’ more than most as I always like to hear a song where a skilful lyricist is able to find rhymes for ‘Prince’, ‘Greek’, and ‘Edinburgh’.

However, as my calves began to feel the heat of the ninth mile, I began to reflect on how much the Profumo scandal remains in the public mind. It seems to me to be a bit too old to be worth this kind of attention. Audiences want names and faces we recognise.

Which is why I’m proposing ‘John Prescott : The Musical’. Casting to begin shortly. Check press for details. Working title only.

The story, as I see it, begins in the small coastal town of Hull, where a lonely stowaway on a cruise ship decides to pay for his passage by working as a porter. I’m thinking of clever allusions to the high jinx of the Marx Brother’s ‘Monkey Business’ (1931) to begin with, as our working class hero finds himself trapped in a small cabin with men who, how shall we put this politely… ‘like to discuss shoes’.

Alienated from his fellow stewards, John (for that’s our hero’s name) goes out on the desk and sings a beautiful lament for his failing dreams and his discomfort in being around men attracted to his taught muscular body. Just as the song finishes its coda, the lights come up and from out of the water, a giant leviathan appears, clad only in fake leopard-skin. It’s that lovely dryad of the deep, Pauline, who has come to save John from the life he hates! She magics him away from that world and into the world of court intrigue where he soon rises to become the second most powerful man in the land.

I haven’t figured the rest out, but I think if I could find somebody to do the music, I could easily knock some lyrics together. I could also use my contacts in the business of exotic dancing to provide plenty of flesh to keep the punters happy.

I don’t know what you think but a man has to think about the future when his perfect body can no longer absorb baby oil.

And that was the thought I was left with when the exercise bike beeped and told me I’d done my ten miles.

The Wrong Team

I am a man of serious nocturnal habits when it’s the night of the Super Bowl.

The Bears are being turned over by the Colts and I’m getting progressively drunk. I’m not a heavy drinker but for big sporting occasions I buy myself a bottle. Tonight’s deal is a shot of whisky each time Chicago lose points. My Romanian conscience has gone to bed. She hates sport and doesn’t understand drinking. Some might say it’s one of her virtues. I say it’s an inconvenience.

So that’s why I find myself sitting here by the window overlooking Bangor, which sits below me, silent but for dogs who seem to share my insomnia. Their shadows pass through the sodium yellow glare of street lamps. The whole town is dosed in the glow like petrol. I have a feeling that a spark could set this place alight. I also feel like being that spark. Or maybe a dog will set it off. Dogs must get tired of the same routines. I know I do.

I made it as far as the fourth quarter before my mind began to unwind on its thread. It’s been a high scoring game and not for sober minds. It was never meant to be Chicago’s night but now I want them to defy the odds just to save me from myself and this bottle. The clock runs down. I get more drunk. More points go the Colts’ way and I look to the windows where I see myself cast onto the night. I’ve looked better but so has the night. In the morning, it will be a thing we will both work hard to should forget.

How could I have got it all wrong?

And how could half the country get it so wrong about Tony Blair?

Like a football statistic that helps you make a bad bet, 56% of the country think that Blair should leave government now. It’s not a figure worth quoting. Would any gambler take odds so close to even money? And why do the public think their opinion matters? Don’t they understand the rules of the game? Don’t they know about the rules of all games?

Blair loses like Chicago. There’s the same amazement of that something so bright could end so dismally. But that’s just part of the game, the old game. All politicians live by a clock which begins to count down the moment they arrive in office. It’s not for the public to say when it will end or whether he get overtime. You wouldn’t poll a crowd to see if a match should end at half time. So why think it significant to politicians? The game plays out, quarter by quarter. That’s the way it’s always been.

And now the Bears have lost…

I’ve turned off the TV and I am now gazing out over the harbour. Lights are strung out along the coast. Another day lies somewhere at their end. I would reach out and begin to reel it in but I know that’s not how this game is played.

Because there’s always a game and there's always another clock counting down somewhere.

A Stand Up Chipster

I had one of those life-changing moments last night and, oddly, it had nothing to do with my genitals.

For the first time in my life, I had to face a hostile audience; a rare occurrence in the life of a man with a reputation as a fine thonglateer. But I think you’ll understand what I mean when I’ve fully explained the circumstances of my little epiphany.

It was, in all other respects, a normal Monday night. Bangor town centre was simmering away on the gently heat of the packed nightclubs and busy taxi ranks. And there was certainly nothing out of the ordinary when, on the stroke of nine, I arrived at the Green Dragon Tavern, my kitbag packed from base to zip with a world-class selection of thongs.

As normal, I went straight to my changing room behind the stage. It’s there that I like to shower, limber up, and generally get myself centred for my act, which last night I was due to perform at ten.

It’s my custom to leave it until the last minute before I make my way around to the side of the stage, so by the time I got in place, the tavern was in semi darkness. I could dimly make out the crowd, chattering away as I moved to my usual spot, front and centre, where I proceeded to wait the few extra seconds before the spotlight would pick me out and my act would begin.

There’s always a buzz of excitement knowing you’re about to get seriously naked in front of a room of strangers. The adrenaline rush is like no other I know.

Except, it’s never quite as big as the rush you get when you realise that somebody has made one huge mistake.

I was standing there, holding my plumber’s wrench in my hand and balancing an old sink plunger on my head, ready to pout my way to the front of the stage, when the lights suddenly came up. I froze for a moment as I read the sign across the stage floor.

‘Comedy Club’

Instead of finding myself in front of my usual Monday night ladies, I was standing before two hundred sassy comedy lovers of both sexes ready for a night of stand-up.

I think I can be excused if my hand loitered on my zip for a moment longer than normal as I wondering how to get myself out of this embarrassing predicament.

Should I get snapping my thong or should I try to tell some jokes full of gentle observations about our shared social mores? The last time I made a mistake comparable to this one, I chose the wrong option. It had been at a wedding reception and I spent an uncomfortable night in jail until the whole matter was resolved the following morning when the bride’s mother dropped all charges and returned my thong intact.

And that’s why, tonight, I lowered my wrench and walked up to the microphone.

This is a fairly accurate transcript of what I said:

Good evening, Bangor!

[Polite applause]

So…. is there anybody from Wales in the audience tonight?

[Silence]

You… you won’t believe me when I tell you this, but I came out here to take off my clothes.

[A solitary whoop from the crowd]

Hey, I will if you will…

[A lonely cheer]

No, no, honestly. I’m not actually a plumber, if that’s what you were thinking. There wouldn’t be anything funny about my being a plumber, would there now?

[I was oblivious to the fact I was still balancing a sink plunger on my head]

No, I’m a stripper. I take off my clothes for a living. My name’s Chip Dale. You might have heard of me. I’m the Thongoleer Extraordinaire.

[More polite applause from the crowd. They must have indeed heard of me, but then again, who hasn’t?]

Well, it’s a living, I suppose, and it makes things interesting when I fill in my tax forms.

I always like to answer those questions they ask me about my supplemental income. ‘How did you earn this extra money?’ I usually include photographs wrapped in a thong. And ‘How was this money paid?’ I find this one harder to answer. How do I explain how a five pound note was pushed between my buttocks by a nurse in Wrexham high on Bacardi?

But the great thing about being a stripper is you get to have some really useful things lying around the house. I have all the plumbing equipment, which always comes in handy when there’s a leak. I’m can’t say I’m much use with a monkey wrench but I can do naked cartwheels while my girlfriend changes washers.

Well, now I’m here, I might as well talk about something that’s been bothering me for a while.

Do you ever wonder how we ended up with this government?

[Loud whoop…]

I know I didn’t vote for them. Which means it had to be one of you…

[Slightly guilty sniggering]

Okay, own up. What possessed you to put a cross next to the name of people that go about invading places? I don’t even put a cross next to those boxes on supermarket questionaries that ask me if I want to be entered into their prize draw. And invading places has to be a whole league bigger than winning a year’s free groceries.

Now we’ve got a Labour government, I’m not going to be like everybody else accusing them for invading our privacy. You don’t know if they’re listening…

And I wouldn’t say they’re corrupt, though I did see Gibraltar on eBay the other night.

And they’re so odd looking… It’s like all government posts were filled on a first come first served arrangement with the local job centre. If Gordon Brown hadn’t taken charge of the nation’s purse, he’d be the new caretaker down the town baths. Not so many warnings about an extra two pee in stealth taxes but extra warnings about stealth peeing in the deep end.

And what can I say about John Prescott? You know at school there was always a slow kid in the class? Teachers always made them milk monitor and they always won the awards at the end of the year for best kept locker? Doesn’t that explain why we have a Deputy Prime Minister? ‘Okay, John, could you collect the glasses now the cabinet meeting has finished? No John, put that away. Nice little boys don’t try to sharpen those like a pencil… John, please take you hand from up my skirt. No, it’s not a tent.’

Of course, I’m a Liberal Democrat myself.

[Laughter! The first of the evening!]

I get to take part in political debates yet I can never be held accountable for anything that ever happens. The only thing I worry about is a well hung parliament. We Lib Dems aren’t used to having real power. I worry it will go to our heads and we’ll make crazy demands. Menzies Campbell is already talking of asking for a rerun of the 1964 two hundred meters final.

Okay, I’m getting the signal that I’ve got to stop. I have people to go and flash. You’ve been a wonderful audience. My name’s Chip Dale.

Good night.

[Polite applause]

And with that, I made my way back to my dressing room where I changed back into my normal everyday suit and thong.

When I got home, Gabby greeted me at the door and was soon screeching with delight at my story. Only at the end did she confess that she forgotten to pass on a message about the cancellation of my act because of a comedy evening.

I couldn’t be angry with the poor poppet. Tonight has taught The Chipster a valuable lesson and I’ll never look on my plumber’s outfit the same. It’s a memory of the night when I realised that stripping is one of the easier art forms and that I should stick to what I’m good at.

I’ve been Chip Dale. You’ve been a wonderful audience.

Good night.

Stuck In Holyhead

I was in Holyhead last night, rubbing myself silly in one of my favourite little venues in North Wales, and all was going alarming well until halfway through my act when I began to think about the moral case for privacy.

It was an odd thing, to be sure. There I was, about to put my spuds and sausage on show yet again, but also considering the question of privacy from a rationalist perspective. I doubt if Spinoza could ever have found himself so thong tied, faced with such a strange conflict of interests. But there you go... It was more than enough to disturb a man, I can tell you, and not for one but two reasons.

First of all, it’s not at all like The Chipster to be so unprofessional when he’s snapping elastic for the ladies. I prefer to keep my mind on what I’m doing. But perhaps the crowd was too small for a Friday night or I felt uncomfortable wearing a particularly cheap poker dot thong. Whatever the reason, I soon found myself asking: does our right to privacy really mean that much?

And that’s when the second thing to disturb me came to mind. It was the thought that few people seem to care much about privacy these days, or if they care, they only care about those issues that catch the media headlines. Nobody considers championing those other moments of privacy that this government would so happily take from us.

You might suppose that a man given to taking his clothes off for money wouldn’t value his privacy all that highly but you’d be wrong. Being at home with my body in its natural state, albeit with a slight moistening of baby oil, is precisely what makes me understand what privacy means to us all. I think about it more often than the rest of you. I cherish a little more highly that which I give away so cheaply. Or perhaps its just that mine is one of those minds drawn to metaphysics whenever my thong gets too tight.

It was yesterday’s conviction of the News of the World reporter who tapped the royal phones that made me begin to realise how little we, as individuals, appear to care about our privacy. We hide our most personal telephone recordings behind four digit codes, easily hacked by anybody with the know-how. We install wireless routers in our homes but few of us bother to set up the security and passwords to prevent outsiders from getting access to our private network. We carry camera phones with us wherever we go, taking more and more reality from the private and into a public realm. And we’re so blasé about our right to space or to our private moments in the day that we’d happily submit to a identity card scheme and databases for our DNA.

Yet programmes such as Big Brother make it so evident that it is the little moments in our lives that actually make us all who we are. I'm now watching 'Face' from the A Team brushing his teeth and it's fascinating viewing. These are our simian moments, when we hunch our shoulders and drag our knuckles on the floor. They are the spaces in busy pretension-filled lives when we finally reveal to ourselves who we are, dripping with toothpaste and private doubts.

Privacy is like that. It is a place where we can each hide away the things that aren’t for public consumption. We all have big secrets we fear might be discovered but we also have another side to our private lives which is just as vital. Big Brother performs an important function by showing us a world where we are not allowed to be human without paying a consequence. It reminds us of a world where everybody knows when you’ve rearranged your underwear, picked your nose, or broken wind. It is a world where one person's petty animosity towards another becomes an international incident.

So we might all talk about the high and noble reasons for protecting our privacy. We might scorn those that bug telephones of the rich and famous. But let’s not forget those people who seek to take away our private time, who wish to see us on camera for an increasingly large portion of our lives, who wish to punish us for the petty, uneven, ugly sides to our natures.

Imagine a world when a man is but a scratch of an itching buttock away from public humiliation.

That’s the thought that struck me as I danced tonight in Holyhead.

And then all the ladies screamed with delight.

A Reaffirmation

My god! The Chipster nearly bust a thong when he heard that John Reid has said that the sentencing guidelines were ‘reaffirmed’ and ‘not changed’.

So what is he effectively saying? Not that the government have just started to let paedophiles out of prison but they’ve been doing it for years and, just in case anybody had forgotten that this is the government policy, they’ve just given everybody a heads up.

Tonight I’m going off to Holyhead where I’ll doing my prison warder routine. I let everything out…

Just thought I better ‘reaffirm’ that point.

Pit Shafts For Paedophiles

I’ve just spent my morning working myself into a sweat at my regular gym here in Bangor. But for once, it wasn’t the exercise that got The Chipster’s oils running. I’d gone about five miles on the treadmill when two of the gym’s regulars arrived and occupied the running machines on either side of me. That’s how I found myself wedged into a conversation about the current crisis in Britain’s prisons.

One of the runners, an ex-miner, began by suggesting that the country should convert many of the unused coal mines in Wales into secure units for sex offenders. He called it his ‘Pit Shafts For Paedophiles Plan’. Both his friend and I were a bit sceptical at first, until the miner carried on and described in great detail how it was cheaper than using the RAF base that John Reid currently proposes. These mines are unused, take up very little surface land, are out of the public gaze, and although they stretch for miles and miles they are already escape-proof. The only complication is that every offender would have to be given a canary but, other than this, he said that it is just about 'a perfect plan'.

Now as you know, the state of Britain’s prisons is something that leaves The Chipster lying awake in bed at night worrying. Not even Gabby’s soft singing is enough to lull me to sleep when my mind flits about considering the problem of incarceration. I don’t know... Perhaps, for some unknown reason, the poor girl’s singing makes me think I’m in prison. But whatever it is, I find myself wondering if we’re not locking up too many people for minor offences and leaving too many dangerous men at large. What even constitutes a minor offence in the eyes of the law?

Not so long ago, a pensioner went to prison for not paying her council tax. I thought it an outrage and volunteered to stage a nude protest outside the prison. Today, I hear a man convicted of downloading 200 images of child pornography has escaped a prison sentence because the judge, John Rogers, QC, said he had to consider instructions passed down to him from the Home Office. To make matters worse, this is a Welsh story. The offender in question is from Penygwdwn in Blaenau Ffestiniog. I think you’ll agree that it’s a terrible condemnation of the penal system and that's the reason I’m now offering to stage a nude protest outside the courthouse.

But The Chipster also wants to pose a hypothetical question.

A town has only one jail cell. A town meeting is called and the people have to vote as to which of the two local criminals is to be sent to prison. They can arrest the local thief, responsible for a spate of burglaries, or the man known to possess a large collection of child pornography. Which would the townsfolk collectively choose to imprison? Which would make the most people feel safe in their beds at night? The man who has committed property theft or the man who in a sense hasn’t committed a crime against a person but whose actions suggest he might well be capable of something far more serious in the future?

Which do the people choose? Where is the greater good served?

And be careful how you answer. Don’t make me stage a nude protest outside your place of work.

The Question of Iraq: A Stripper's Perspective

People are already coming up to me in the street and asking: Chippy, are you really just a one trick pony? And I have to tell them: yes, yes, I think I probably am only a one trick pony. My trick is to make ladies swoon and what a trick it is! And as for the bit about being like a pony, we’ll there are things that bless those of us born with the Dale genes…

But I think I see what you’re all getting around to wondering is whether Chip Dale will be a success in the world of blogging. What makes him tick? What’s his opinion on the big issues of the day? When will he be launching his own TV channel covering Westminster politics but from a nude angle? Well, all this will come in time. Funding has to be put in place. Baby oil ordered in bulk. Negotiations are already under way to bring Donal Blaney from 18 Doughty Street to my little studio above the ladies' hairdressers in Bangor. We’ll see what we can do. Watch this space…

Regarding the big issues of the day, I think you’ll find that I’m a man with strong opinions on most things. Take Iraq, for instance. You should know that The Chipster hates the idea of war. He’s a thongmonger not a warmonger. But he’s no quitter either, even if it does mean not living up to his Lib Dem roots. I watched the State of the Union last night and I found myself thinking about how the problems of Iraq resembles the life of the nightclub slick hipster. Many has been the time I’ve looked on a room full of drunk beauticians from Rhyl and thought to myself: I really don’t fancy getting naked in front of them! But what choice did I have? To run away would have made things much worse. Bangor or Baghdad: withdrawal might easily spark civil war.

‘But Chip,’ I head you cry, ‘can a Welsh stripper really support the idea of our keeping forces in Iraq?’ Well, I’ll tell you. Exotic dancing has taught me many things and the greatest is the lesson of ‘containment’. Keep everything in its own pouch and you can be sure things will be okay. There’s no use letting our forces go flopping about all over the place! It’s no good for anybody. The situation in Iraq may be bad at the moment, but to withdraw troops would leave those poor people to face even greater problems in the long term. That is not The Chipster’s way.

I Am Not Called Iain

The streets of Bangor are ominously quiet this evening. The stench of public humiliation mixes with the sweet fragrance of female hormones gone awry. In many a home tonight, the ladies of the town lament my non-appearance at the Green Dragon Tavern. I sit here, waiting for the phone to ring. I’m sure there are powerful forces watching me work.

It would appear that the Chipster may have offended his famous namesake, Mr. Iain Dale (no relation). Now the world of Welsh exotic dancing is in turmoil and Gabby is crying in the corner of the room. She thinks this will have a bearing on her application to stay in the country. I just fear that I'll have to flog my collection of valuable thongs on eBay to fight a court case. What am I to do? Are the any lawyers out there who could tell me if I have a leg to stand on? And no, madam, *that* is not a leg. I am only a man in a thong. A big loveable man in a thong who never meant to hurt anybody.

Gabby, bless her little East European heart, says she’ll help smuggle me into Romania next time she goes there on tour with his sister, but I don’t know if I want to leave my wonderful Wales. Have you seen the quality of Romanian thongs? I’d rather rot in an English prison.

Looking at the design of my blog and that of Mr. Dale’s famous site, I was shocked to see some similarities. Coincidence follows me around so much. First there was this bloody facial resemblance I have to He Who Must Not Be Named, and now this! I’ve spoken to the cheap little bastard who built my webpage and he now admits that he was inspired by Britain’s top blogger. Knowing that I’m the country’s top Lib Dem stripper, he thought it a good idea to pay homage to a Tory blogger. What did he call it? Cross pollination? I could smell whisky on his breath. And he calls himself a Welshman!

I’ll have to sleep on this tonight. In the words of Julie Andrews: tomorrow’s just a thong away. Thanks for the support from those that emailed me. I’d just like to assure everybody that I’m no Iain Dale. Nor am I a sock puppet. And I am most certainly not somebody called Glyn Davies.

You can guess as long as you like but I am the real Crispen ‘Chip’ Dale. I just don't know for how much longer...

Thong on!

Afghan Opium

My thong must be prophetic. This morning I posted a story about my horse tablets and then the Chipster spots this report in the Telegraph.

Doctors are suggesting we use the Afghan poppy harvest to produce painkillers for the NHS. Sounds like a very reasonable idea. What’s the point in invading a country unless you grab its best resources? And to be honest, from where this thong is sitting, we’ve had nothing out of Afghanistan. Where are all the camels we were promised if we liberated them from the Taliban? A bit of opium has to be worth all the pain, sacrifice, and trouble.

It seems to me that the government don’t know how to negotiate. When I’m on stage and a lovely lady pushes five pounds down my trunks, I don’t immediately whip them off for her gratification. I tell her that for five pounds the Thongmaster will only gyrate his slick hips for her. We’re talking serious cash for the ‘full liberation’ and the government should adopt the same policy. For the UK to give Afghanistan the Full Monty, they should hand over their whole poppy harvest and a fleet of camels. Anything less than that is an insult to Britain and hardly made it worth our getting oiled up.