» Bare cheek
Brian Mitchell & Joseph Nixon’s thoroughly scurrilous Brighton column
Last man in Brighton to become award-winning wins award
Last Thursday at 7.34pm, 42-year-old resident of Sunderland Road, Mr Bruce Greenaway, became officially the last person in the city to win an award, thereby making the entire population of Brighton and Hove fully, 100 per cent award-winning.
“We’d always felt a bit sorry for him, being left out,” said Greenaway’s wife, Louise, who won an award for ceramics in the mid ‘90s. “I think he felt a bit put out when our 12-year-old son Max won Silver in The Guardian Young Reader’s Essay-Writing Competition last year. “Even our West Highland Terrier, Hamish, was voted Best Newcomer on Chortle. But winning this award has made all the difference for Bruce. Now he’s got something he can be really proud of – just like the rest of us.”
Workmates were also quick to congratulate Greenaway. “It’s a been a long-time coming,” said fellow office-worker Norman Sutcliffe, who won a Fringe First in 1987. “I couldn’t agree more,” said secretary Imelda Parkinson, the recipient of a minor women’s-only poetry society prize in 1999. “Bruce fully deserves this level of recognition, as do we all.”
“Obviously I’m very pleased, but it doesn’t really mean anything, does it?” said Greenaway. “I’m still the same bloke inside – I’m not going to let it go to my head. It’s not like I’m going to put a big sign outside my house saying ‘Here lives the award-winning Bruce Greenaway’, or anything like that…” Greenaway joked, whilst hurriedly cramming a ‘How To Paint And Erect Large Signs’ pamphlet into his drawer.
Greenaway gained the Sir James Arrowsmith Memorial Award for Defecating Into An Eggcup From The Top Of A Cooling Tower. There were no other competitors.
Wicked Chinese Whispers
– Which diffident skeleton arouses potted meat finagling trumpets crumpets kerplunk?
– Which hot spoon finished a wide black waterfall in the bin with too many priests?
– Shhh! Looks like pernicious trifle licks palm print Tennyson eiderdown.
– Oops – Professional winter finally finding Nordic appeasement! Hope her magnet tailor-made!
– Which online basin ticketed Goering over at Neasden’s ice castle?
In & Out
SPECIAL FORMER ‘WILD CHILD’ TEENAGE PARTY GIRLS OF THE ’80S EDITION
In
• Emma Ridley
• Amanda de Cadenet
• Pearl Lowe
• Drew Barrymore
• Emily Lloyd
Out
• Mandy Smith
• Dani Behr
• Jane Goldman (Wossy’s missus)
• Maria Raymond
• Annabella Lwin
An occasional series in which we struggle to remember the original, simple, once common terms that have been abandoned in favour of ghastly, overblown, crass, managerial Americanisms.
What we used to say
WHAT WE SAY NOW: “Guru”
Once a religious term, particularly used in Sikhism, Hinduism, and Buddhism, and used to describe a teacher of great learning and wisdom. Now applied to anyone with an above-average knowledge of a subject. “Jenkins is our plastics guru”, “I’m putting you three under Watkiss – he’s a bit of a guru when it comes to social networking.”
WHAT WE USED TO SAY: “Expert”
