THE Wirral Show was such a mega-bore (more about that later), so it was a relief to enter the relative sanity of Hell’s Waiting Room, New Brighton, on Sunday night.
For once, the place wasn’t full of drunken, boisterous migrant workers from Poland.
There was trouble at the bar, mind, because as I was ordering a round these small missiles kept hitting my head.
I hardly felt ‘em at first because I have thick Afro-style hair that protects me from projectiles.
But eventually I was hit in the eye by a soggy slice of lemon. Ow!

I saw my arse over that and turned round to find the culprit, who appeared to be Duncan Kindlyface, who had come in for last knockings after drinking down the road at The Orrible Orifice.
I remonstrated with him and demanded to enter the incident in the Waiting Room’s accident book, only to be told the log was full up, and had been full up since 1951.
Duncan was in there with his missus, Lady Di, and some other folk, including New Brighton’s resident psycho-therapist, Dr Gyggle.
Dr Gyggle is one of several local people who are helping compose backing tracks for future public performances of My Bloody Awful Poetry (as recommended by Mr Shankly, frankly).
The Gyggler also introduced me to a man he said was a drug-dealer. (Hope Elvira Bittergob and the bingo biddies aren’t reading this. We don’t want another turf war breaking out in the pub).
Turns out the fella I found myself shaking hands with was, in fact, someone who worked in the pharmaceutical industry, hence ‘drug-dealer’, see.
Actually, in terms of vile capitalist enterprises, I see those who work in the pharmaceutical business as pimps rather than pure drug-dealers.
And if the pharma-men are pimps then medical professionals are certainly their whores.
Most of Sunday night, I was content to sit chewing the fat and indulging in mildly spiteful chit-chat with Mini-Marvin, Vittoria and Dr Riccardo in the Waiting Room’s music area.
There was a rather rude interruption from a man wearing a super-sized Tranmere Rovers top who didn’t like the slagging I was busy giving to Wirral Council.
It appears that the North-West’s least glamorous football club have changed their shirt sponsors – from Wirral Council to Greggs pies. Can that really be so?
After a while, Popstar Paul came in and gave us some tunes. He even attempted, ‘She Moves In Her Own Way’, the hit song from my latest trendy flavour-of-the-month band, The Kooks.
Eventually Paul’s musical sidekick Biscuit came in. Why is he called Biscuit? Well, his real surname is Cook. So Cookie…Biscuit. See.
It’s called Scouse humour, apparently. Dee Doo Dat Round ‘Ere Don’t Dey?

I GOT so bored at the Wirral Show that I made a dilatory tour of the Wirral Council tent.
I know, it was the act of a desperate man, wilting in the humidity.
Inside the tent were, predictably, loads of barely literate logos and facile slogans, all designed to show that this woeful council is beneficial to the life of the peninsula.
What a big fat lie that is.
And no wonder it requires such a huge marketing exercise.
My eyes glazed over as I surveyed stalls for the Wirral Road Safety Unit, EnCams (what ever that might be), New Heartlands (ditto) and Doorstoppers (double ditto).
And I couldn’t help tittering at the Screetscene stall, where it was claimed in print that public servants are ever-busy “ensuring roads, pavements and coastal defences are well maintained and will encourage investment in Wirral�.
Has anyone taken a look at the filthy mounds of litter across the borough, lately? It is especially bad around Leasowe and Moreton but the rotting promenades and rusting bandstands of New Brighton are also pretty filthy.
As for inward investment, the council has to be kidding! Through naivety and incompetence, it has just let New Brighton’s best chance of regeneration in 50 years founder on the rocks of a few protests by ageing NIMBY campaigners.
The biggest slogan of all in the council-run tent screamed: “Wirral: a safe place to live, work and visit.� Eh?
In a loud stage whisper I commented that the slogan should be totally rewritten to reflect contemporary reality, particularly in the neglected wastelands of Wallasey.
The slogan ought to say, I opined … “Wirral: dying on its arse, thanks to its bloody useless council.�
Titters all round, except from the public sector harpy running that particular stall. If looks could kill …
Anyone who lives in Wallasey knows the truth of the situation. Those who don’t realise how bad things are should make the walk from Wallasey Town Hall (which under local government reorganisation in the early 1970s became the “Death Star� HQ of the ruinous Wirral Council) out along Brighton Street and King Street.
The scale of urban dereliction and business failure is massive.
This formerly lively shopping street now resembles a Third World refugee camp in its scruffiness.
The only newish developments are the mean, bug-hutch-sized social housing units.
As for the rest of the Wirral Show, it looked tired and lacking focus to me.
The so-called highlight of the show, Joseph’s Complacent Camels, was a condescending spectacle involving several white folk dressed as pantomime Arabs and having a camel race.
It wasn’t much of a race. The camels shambled along looking very unhappy to me.
Nothing could lift this depressing display. Certainly not the synthetic excitement belted out by a ringside commentator who looked and sounded like the BBC’s unsackable lesbian, Clare Balding.
I tried to get interested at the Wirral Show, I really did.
But family fun days always get me down.
All those screaming toddlers with snotty noses jumping about on bouncy castles, and fat teenagers stuffing their faces with burgers and bags of fudge. It’s my idea of hell.
Briefly, I was tempted by one stall to have my picture take with an owl for £3.50.
But then I decided I have enough pictures at home already featuring myself in the company of glassy-eyed, bored old birds.

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