A Terribly Pink Business

Traffic was bad in Bangor town centre this morning so I’m running a little late. The roads were backed up for miles after a horse and carriage got clipped by a bus. There were guts everywhere and frightened pensioners as far as the eye could see.

I’ve been down to the gym to work myself out of the funk I found myself in yesterday. The emails I've had from you kind readers went a long way to bringing me back to my senese but it's sweat that seems to bring out the best in me. There's nothing like exercising in a sports thong for making you see all that's wonderful about the world. I can't recommend it enough.

Anyway, I’m feeling much better, though I’m slightly concerned by the looks I’ve been getting on account of my pink hair. When I said the other day that I was intending to let it grow out, that was only based on the reaction of the woman in the local off license. My visit to the gym suggests that I should rethink my plans.

I got there at nine o’clock, which is the quietest time of the day. The managerial types have finished their pre-workday workouts but it’s still to early for all the mothers who are only then finishing the school runs and wouldn’t arrive for another half hour or so. I had the machines to myself and I had worked up a good sweat by nine fifteen when the gym began to fill. And that’s when Belcher arrived.

Tony Belcher runs a dog grooming salon in town. He’s also a fanatical body builder, which makes him something of an icon in the gym. I can’t say I ever take much notice of him. I’m happy with my body as it is and don’t want the sort of muscles that take on personalities of their own, let alone require their own driving license. In turn, Belcher doesn’t often take much notice of me. He probably thinks of me as being too skinny and is perhaps a little put out by my stunning good looks. Despite his physique, the man’s got the face of a grandmother's elbow. Today, however, there was a marked change to his attitude towards me.

There’s only one word I know of that describes the moment that Belcher saw me. He ‘swooned’.

‘That’s it!’ he cried, coming over to where I was on the rowing machine. I tried to row faster but he quickly reached me. ‘That’s the colour we’ve been looking for!’

‘Is it?’ I asked.

‘It is. You’re coming with me, son,’ he said. ‘This is the most important thing you’ll ever do.’

And with that, he physically manhandled me from the rowing machine, tucked me under his arm, and carried me out in the car park. No abduction has been performed in so publicly, yet everybody stood around watching as I was strapped into the back seat of an Audi and driven away.

Five minutes later, we arrived at his grooming salon. There, the whole operation worked in reverse. I was dragged screaming from the car and into the building where he dropped me on a stool among a throng of shampoos and conditioners meant for dogs suffering bad hair days.

A minute later, he returned followed by a woman.

‘Meet Foo Foo Trixabelle Harmatidge Spandex Cherry Blossom the Third,’ he said.

I thought it all a bit much for such a hard frostbitten woman of some fifty years.

‘Do I just call you Foo Foo?’ I asked.

Belcher grumbled a laugh and lifted up the lead he was holding and directed my eyes down to his feet. That’s when I saw the stoat busily sniffing the hem of his trouser leg.

‘Is that a stoat?’ I asked.

‘A pedigree stoat,’ he replied. ‘A champion stoat. This is actually Wales's champion stoat. And your hair is the perfect match. Don’t you think so, Kathy?’

Kathy took hold a fistful of my scalp and held it up to the light.

‘Perfect,’ she said. ‘It’s just what we’ve been looking for.’

I had no say in what happened next. I was still looking at Kathy when I heard a loud ‘snip’ and felt my energy drain right away. Belcher held up a long tress of my hair which shone pink in the sunlight. I thought I could hear every beautiful strand screaming in terror.

‘You don’t know what a help you’ve been,’ Belcher said before he guided me out to the front of the shop. He paused a moment to open the till and withdrew a £20 note which he thrust into my hand. ‘A great help,’ he said and pushed me out of the shop.

It was a fifteen minute walk back to the gym, dressed in only my vest and a pair of loose exercise shorts that hid my sports thong. I was also missing a large portion of my hair, though that which remained was enough to encourage some witty remarks from the public.

The whole thing has been a horrible episode and I’ve booked into see my hairdresser this afternoon. Not only is my ponytail ruined but I fear that my hair is made a mockery by the knowledge that it’s the same shade of pink as Wales’ champion stoat.

All The Rest

The life of the exotic dancer is not an easy one. Many of us start the day with a stiff drink just to forget the indignity of the night before. It’s how I imagine the Prime Minister feels every time he wakes up. Or perhaps he doesn’t. Tony Blair will have ridden the spirit out of his demons. Dancers rope new demons every time we perform.

Though I try my best to hide it, I too find myself occasionally rinsing whisky over my gums in the belief that it will work as a tonic on my depressed nerves. These low days are days when I can’t find reasons within me to shave, to dress, to eat, or even to write. Only the last of these make me feel disappointed with myself. You might find it hard to believe but I write this blog only out of a deep sense of unworthiness. Life in north Wales is not easy. Money is hard to come by. Happiness is a brittle as the winter sunlight.

I first met Jane when I first started out working in the clubs. She worked the poles in Rhyl and I was then only working behind the bar. I was barely eighteen and Jane was much older, so we formed a happy platonic friendship. Eventually she would become my mentor and teach me my first dance moves, but over the course of those first few weeks working in the club, we’d meet up in our breaks and talk, telling each other our life stories. Jane told me about her fight with depression and make a bad joke about her being the only bipolar pole dancer. She also talked about how she coped with a life that bought her into daily contact with bad choices. I didn’t understand then how difficult it is to hold yourself above that world that lies below all of us. The professional dancer fights a daily struggle to remain above the lower world of drugs, prostitution, and pornography. We choose to live lives shunned by many but not without its own morality.

But Jane taught me one important lesson. She told me that I should never let the bad days pass by without doing at least one good thing; something that in the quiet hours of the night, I could look back on and say ‘well that was worth all the rest’.

Tonight, when I lie in bed, I’ll look back on this bad black day and I’m sure I’ll feel a small sense of delight in knowing that I remembered Jane and wrote something about her.

This was worth all the rest.

The MacDonald Brothers

Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse than Take That reforming, there’s news that the MacDonald Brothers have landed a double album deal. For those of you who don’t live with Romanian songbirds who insist on watching the X Factor each week, the MacDonald Brothers are singers in the tradition of The Proclaimers but without the spectacles, social commentary, melodies, sweaters, or even a hit record. What they lack in talent that make up for with kilts, so there’s no need to worry. They have plenty of kilts.

Call The Chipster a cynical old Welshman but I’ll not be linking to them sometime soon. The war against this form of terrorism has to start somewhere and I say it starts at my thong and ends with cruise missile strikes on Aberdeen or wherever else they come from. It is only a heightened sense of professionalism that stops me plunging a rusty knife into my genitals whenever I hear them begin to sing in close harmony.

And, of couse, Gabby says ‘men in dresses gorgeous you think’.

Well, I don’t think. The only way they possess the X factor is if the ‘X’ is found written on the label of a large bottle with a child-safe cap found beneath the kitchen sink. And safety cap or no safety cap, if that CD comes into this house I’ll be bleach my insides before I put my head in the microwave.

I don’t tell her this, of course. She dyed my hair pink because of something I said about Take That. My insulting The MacDonald Brothers might involve some rare form of Romanian torture.

Such as, in fact, listening to The MacDonald Brothers…

A Pink Shock

My hair’s turned pink.

I went to bed with my luxurious golden locks lay out on the pillow beside me and woke up to find them as pink as Graham Norton’s bathroom set. At first I didn’t know what to do or what to think and that’s when Gabby burst out of the wardrobe, giggling like a Romanian machine pistol. They have some odd ideas about humour in East Europe. Some funny ideas about revenge too.

It turns out it was all her doing. She got bored this morning and after our slight row last night when I happened to make some offhand remarks about Take That’s masculinity, she decided to teach me a lesson. How I managed to sleep through the whole dying process is the thing that worries me the most. I can taste something funny on my tongue and I’m not totally convinced it isn’t the last of some crushed sleeping tablets blown down my throat with a cocktail straw.

At the risk of you thinking I'm one of those Lib Dems who'd like to legalise drugs for lesbian goats, can I just say that pink hair isn’t that bad. In fact, it’s given me a totally different outlook on the world. People are already treating me quite differently. The woman at the off license this morning even knocked a pound of the bottle of vodka I bought as a peace offering for the Romanian. Pink hair has that effect on people. I think it’s the aura of excitement that they’re responding to. I’m suddenly a man who lives on the other side of the edge of normality which marks out most people’s lives.

I’ve decided not to dye it back to something more normal but to let it grow out. If it does nothing else, it reminds me not to cross a woman who also has some Slavic blood running through her veins and who sleeps with a knife strapped to her thigh.

When God Made Wogan

So it has emerged that Terry Wogan has been taking a fee for Children in Need. Gabby’s appalled and swears she won’t listen to Radio 2 again. I’m delighted. It gives me even more reasons to worship the man.

I mean how politically incorrect is it for someone to take a fee for a charity gig where they spend the whole night praising people who have lived a week in a bath of prunes to raise £15 for the little children? But why should he do it for free? Why should ‘talent’ give our services for nothing? Sod that for a wheelbarrow full of needy causes. Give me more selfishness.

The world is so full of charade, fakery, and old fashioned flummery, that Wogan and his fee stick are the perfect antidote to Al Gore and his carbon footprint the size of Texas. Wogan is the honesty missing when Prince Charles goes jetting across the world to pick up his environmental awards.

First thing tomorrow morning, I’m off to get a tshirt made with the slogan ‘Wogan does it for money’.

February Was A Month of Records

February was my best month ever with nearly 120 unique visitors over the four week period, which is 120 visitors up on January. Page impressions were also up with 121 impressions suggesting that one person clicked on two pages. I’m struck by the number of new sites linking to me. Zero is a very striking number, don’t you think?

I’d normally include a list of the top 40 sites linking to me but I don’t have that many so here’s the top 10 singles chart instead.

1. Kaiser Chiefs, Ruby; 2 Mika, Grace Kelly; 3 Kelis Ft Cee Lo, Lil Star; 4 Akon Ft Snoop Dogg, I Wanna Love You; 5 Fray, How To Save A Life; 6 Just Jack, Starz In Their Eyes; 7 Gwen Stefani Ft Akon, The Sweet Escape; 8 Sophie Ellis-Bextor, Catch You; 9 Fall Out Boy, This Ain't A Scene It's An Arms Race; 10 Take That, Shine

Take That 'Take That'

It’s a brief update tonight. If anybody asks, the jet lag finally caught up with me today and I slept away the good part of 24 hours. But before you say anything, I know there’s not much chance that anybody will ask you about my whereabouts but I’m just covering all possibilities. You see, Gabby’s been dropping bit hints all morning that I should buy tickets for the ‘Take That’ tour.

I only ask that you pity The Chipster. I’d rather have my manhood nailed to Dame Tanni Grey-Thompson’s wheelchair before pushing her down a sharp incline for the sake of Sports Relief than stay even a minute in the same auditorium as Take That. Only Gabby doesn’t seem to understand my feelings, which accounts for my keeping my head down and not leaving the bedroom.

Now it’s three o’clock in the morning and I can’t sleep. But at least I’m not pestered to listen to another track from ‘Beautiful World’.

The Injunction

It’s the early hours of Saturday morning and I’ve just had to slip on my legal thong to ensure that I’m very careful as to what I write. I can’t name every name and legal restrictions make it impossible for me to give you ‘the full monty’, as we call it in the trade, but the facts, as I can report them, are something like this: The Bangor Evening Chronicle tonight intended to run a story in which they claim that local thongman ‘Tiny’ Blair illegally wore pre-stuffed posing pouches throughout 2004 and 2005 stripping seasons. The local Labour union have managed to get an injunction to stop the full details of this news from going to press though the Chronicle is working hard to have the news printed by another paper not covered by the restriction.

I’m at least two miles away from the epicentre of all this intrigue but I’m willing to go out on a limb here based on the information I have at hand.

Sources close to Tiny have told me that his thongs were indeed stuffed with cotton wool but it was his manager and local pimp Lord Love who was in charge of the bag packing operation. Everybody who works with Tiny were aware of some unusual activities involving tubes of cream cheese and moles but the scale of this thong deceit has taken everybody by surprise. It was thought that investigators would soon announce that they could not prosecute anybody on charges relating to the moles, but this new investigation is rapidly gathering evidence. The authorities have already seized Tiny’s thongs and as secondary ‘secret’ thong collection has been found in his home. It’s believed that it’s in this second collection that the padded thongs were discovered.

Investigations are on going but if any of the accusations are proved, they might lead to Tiny being forced to resign his position as President the of Welsh Stripper’s Union.

I'll give you more information when I can but this is the best I can do without the risk of being thrown in prison.

The Bluetit

The grey skies have constantly reminded me that I’m no longer in America but it was the dead bluetit I found neck down in my bottle of milk this morning that probably soured my mood. It certainly put me off my cornflakes.

It’s only natural that I should feel a bit down after my adventure in Washington but I never expected the down to be so ‘down’. I don’t have any work for a few days so I have time to mope around the house and consider my future. Does anybody have any advice for a man with the odd qualification? At the moment, I feel quite like the bluetit. I’ve supped life’s cream and I’m not looking forward to a semi-skimmed future.

The way I see it, wherever you look in this world, somebody is out to treat us all like the dumbest rubes at the fairground. It’s ironic that stripping is probably one of the more honest ways of earning an honest buck these days. At least people know what to expect when they pay me to perform. Armies complain if they’re asked to fight, hospitals give you more terrible diseases than you went in with, and our children spend years in school in order to avoid learning anything useful. At least you know where you stand with a man in thong.

Gabby gave me a gift today. She wanted to cheer me up and, thinking I should find a hobby, she bought me the first instalment in the weekly magazine which lets you build a scale model of the Bismarck. Bless here heart naive Romanian heart. It cost her fifty pence and she thinks I’ll now happily spend £4.99 on each additional instalment. There are only another 139 issues which means in a just over two years time I’ll have built a scale model of the Bismarck for £700. I quickly persuaded her to scuttle the idea before I jump overboard. That's when she told me that the window cleaners have also put up their fares again. Did I mention that they drive Audi TTs and often take the afternoon off to go and play golf?

At lunchtime, I turned on the TV to catch the news and saw a new ad for mops. That’s right: mops. Three glamorous models dressed in futuristic white tight leather waving mops around. Only they weren’t just mops. There were mops with geometrically shaped ends. Mops with multi-coloured strands. Mops that have been designed by a computer. In the end, of course, they’re just mops.

It makes me wonder about the bluetit. Did it fall into that bottle or did it jump?

The Chipster's Theory About MyBlogLog

Pour me a stiff drink. I’ve had my first comment from a real world fan! Thank you Jane, wherever and whoever you are. I'm delighted that you enjoyed the show. You have to make yourself known to me the next time you come see me perform. I’ve a complimentary thong with your name on it.

Now I’m back in Bangor, I thought it about time to take stock of my life with my blog. Jane’s comment only brought into focus my disappointment with the reality of blogging. If I performed on stage to the silence I find of the blogosphere, I don’t think the Chipster could get his shoes off, never mind the rest. And then there's all the work it takes, coming up with something new to say each day. The whole thing is a worry to me...

You know, I’m not getting any younger and I have to think about a career after the thong when my perfectly formed buttocks begin to sag. I’d hate to be still stripping in ten years time. That's why I think of alternative occupations. I enjoy writing and would like to find work crafting words, which is why keep pestering the local newspapers to see if they want any pieces of thonglateering to put next to their ads for second hand motors.

Sadly, my appeals fall on deaf ears. And I can’t help but feel disappointed that there have been far too few invites to review the papers on Sky News. The same is true of the BBC who ignore me daily. And as to the newspapers: they don’t even seem to know me. I’ve not had a single offer to write a piece for The Telegraph, The Guardian, The Times… The list could go on and on.

Yet the one place where I feel like I’ve made some progress is with MyBlogLog. I subscribe to it a while ago and have found it lightens up my otherwise drab days. I enjoy nothing more than looking at the faces of some of you visitors and trying to gues what you’re all really like. I tell you that there’s a thrill to be had by looking at the picture on the Mybloglog profiles guessing what your blogs are going to be like before I see them. I’ve studied it for a few weeks now and I’m ready to reveal my conclusions.

The Seven Categories of MyBlogLog Visitor

1. The Beautiful People

Okay. We all know that I’m one of these. You can spot those of us who belong in this category because the picture on our profile shows you how bloody gorgeous we are. We’re the type of person who really knows how to communicate with our bodies and understand every commination sent out by our bodies in return. Webcams were created for those of us in this category. As were tropical beaches, which is where most of our pictures are taken. We’re also the sort of people who look straight into the camera. You’ll know too that we beautiful people usually have beautiful blogs where you can read all about our beautifully rich lives. Admit it, you hate us and love us and you want to be just like us. Bless...

2. The Charlatans

You can spot these people because they’re usually in some dynamic pose. They’ll probably be pointing at you in a ‘get off your arse’ way. These are the people who want to change you life for the better. The photo might have been taken an usual angle, full of Feng Shui. If you click on these people’s profiles, you’ll usually end up at a blog that’s promoting some sort of modern day quackery. These are the estate agents of the internet. The faith healers. The lifestyle gurus. The career consultants. The readers of the stars. In other words, these are the lowest of the low when it comes to blogging. Avoid them at all cost and never give them your credit card details. I hate to generalise but they all do strange things with animals and smell of feta cheese.

3. The Extrovert Shy

These are the people whose have their pictures taken but then go to great lengths to obscure their identity in some way. These are the people that hide behind their hands or they use Photoshop to obscure their features. Sometimes the pictures are taken in the semi darkness. These people are a mystery and their blogs are usually equally mysterious. Satanic rituals are usually involved and they don’t use any kind of blog template. Their websites are usually built from scratch, have a black background and yellow fonts and they’ve used javascript to play a tune and turn your cursor into a magician’s wand.

4. The Extrovert Extroverts

These are different to the ‘beautiful people’ in that they’re not actually beautiful. Yet in a way they are the people who are most a home with who they are. These are the people who put their passport photos on their profiles. Their blogs are usually very open about their lives but tend to get bogged down in detail about what their cat ate for breakfast. Ignore these people. They are extremely boring. Never under any circumstance give them your home address. They will visit you.

5. The Hidden

These are the freaks of the web. These are the people who hide their identities or prefer anonymity. Sometimes they create a false persona and blog from behind this veil of anonymity. You have to watch out for these people as they’ll often use a fake photograph. These are very odd people and you can’t believe a word they say on their blogs. They will lie about anything. You have been warned.

6. The Graphic Designers

These are the people who have designed their own logo. These people are creative bores with abnormally large egos. They seem to think they are so unique they need to corporate branding. Their blogs will be extremely well put together, with great visual style. Unfortunately their content shows why they are often accused of having style of substance. Usually that substance is weed which also makes for very long and dull ramblings about the nature of peace. They will often post about style sheets and tips on setting your website out in three or more columns. Don’t contact these people as they will definitely try to sell you some of their paintings.

7. The TV Bores

When you can’t think of anything else to use as a logo, steal something from the TV. That’s the mantra of these TV bores. They are very easy to spot because they’ll have stole a picture from The Simpsons and will be going around the web claiming to Police Chief Wiggum. These are the bloggers that usually bring nothing new or original to the blogosphere. They believe that to blog successfully you must rehash what they find on other blogs. Their sites usually contain nothing but the reposted scrapings of Youtube. Don’t visit their blogs unless you want to see videos of people getting injured, dogs attacking TVs, or long 'funny' clips of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings intercut with scenes from the original Star Trek.