Cartoon world

Typically brilliant storyline this month in Doonesbury. The best comic strip since Feiffer has Leo’s mum telling of her “best guess” that his dad was one of um-lout metal thrashers Mötley Crüe. (Did you know Mötley Crüe has sold 45 million albums? Me neither. I so didn’t know it I can’t be certain I know it now.) One positive aspect of the Doonesbury yarn is that it allows a retelling of the tale of Lois and KISS, as set out in the irreverent animated show Family Guy.

Lois and Peter had been brought together long ago by a shared devotion to the hard-rocking pantomime artistes. So when KISS-stock comes to Quahog, they have the face-paint and flamboyant leathers fetched from the attic in an instant. On the way home, they encounter the band in a diner, where it emerges that Lois had had it away at high school with at least one of the blood-boltered NY quartet. Peter susses immediately that this makes Lois the coolest woman in Quahog. He rushes to the Clam to announce to his mates that “My wife did KISS!”
Word spreads. Peter can’t walk 20 yards on Quahog Boulevard without being congratulated on his good fortune. The final scene has sudden celebrity Lois on big-time TV. “What advice do you have for young girls here tonight?” asks the presenter.
“All I can say,” replies Lois, “is that you never know who’s going to grow up famous, so just make yourself available.”
Now that’s what I call subversive.
Jules Feiffer you’ve probably never heard tell of. A typical Feiffer strip in The New Yorker from way back had two guys sipping cocktails at a Manhattan party and one asks the other, “Whaddya up to these days”. The answer comes: “I’m writing a novel.” To which the first guy responds, “Now there’s a coincidence, neither am I.”

George Galloway’s sensational result in Bradford West has prompted repeated suggestions that he recorded the biggest swing ever in a British election. Not so. The swing from Labour to Respect in Bradford was 36.59 percent.
Britain’s biggest swing ever came in Bermondsey in 1983 - 42.4 percent from Labour to the Liberals. And thereby hangs a dark and shameful tale.
Labour’s Bermondsey candidate was young gay rights pioneer Peter Tatchell. His prospects were damaged from the outset when Labour leaders called publicly on the local party to dump him for someone more electable. The problem was not just his sexuality but his campaigning activities with the Gay Liberation Front.
Families which displayed his posters had their windows smashed. A “Real Labour” candidate toured the constituency blasting out a song referring to Tatchell “wearing his trousers back to front.” On the eve of polling day, leaflets were pushed through letter boxes carrying pictures of Queen Elizabeth and Tatchell, headed “Which Queen will you vote for?” The leaflet gave Tatchell’s home address and telephone number.
The man who reaped the benefit was Simon Hughes, still MP for the area today. One of his 1983 leaflets urged voters to make “a straight choice.”
In 1996, Hughes admitted that he was bisexual and had had homosexual relationships.
When Hughes stood against Nick Clegg for the Lib Dem leadership in 2006, Tatchell, by now a member of the Green Party, asked what he thought of Hughes now, replied: “I don’t hold a grudge. It’s time to forgive and move on... If I were a Lib Dem member, I would vote for Simon Hughes.”
All of which shows how far we have moved on from the darkness, and who it is that’s brought the light.

I knew nothing of Túcan when somebody told me at the Picnic the year before last that I shouldn’t miss them, but I did. Then bass player Keith Kelly accosted me in Waterloo Place on Easter Saturday and told me not to miss them in Sandino’s the same night, which I didn’t.
Túcan are an instrumental acoustic four-piece - guitars, bass, drums - playing jazz-inflected funky blues in double-jig time. To be classified as uncategorisable. But when they hit full-tilt they soar above genre. They played a rock-solid set full of thumping chords and throbbing rhythms to a raucous assemblage, including a sinuous chap who signalled his approval with cries of “Yeez are shite! Yeez are shite!”, a compliment, possibly, where Túcan come from, which is mainly Sligo.
The band has been around for a few years as a guitar duo, Donal Gunne and Pearse Feeney, al fresco troubadours criss-crossing Europe, then, back home, being banned from busking on Grafton Street before adding drummer Paul Wehrly, bass player Kelly and an explosive percussive power on stage to earn themselves tour support slots with the likes of Alabama 3. At Sandino’s, Kelly looked like Jesus on a bad hair day which is apt for a bass-player and, considering the night that was in it, understandable.
Gunne is a genuine virtuoso guitarist with an utterly distinctive style, or styles, sitting serenely front and centre, incredibly nimble-fingered, plucking glittering notes in tumbling cascades, the vibe between and combining flamenco and ceilí. An unexpected evening of lovely pleasure.

Following the sensational success of Belfast’s Titanic Project, I understand that the government of West Bengal is shortly to launch a zillion-rupee hi-tech immersive experience facility to attract tourists from across the globe to sample the experience of The Black Hole of Calcutta.
This from one of the requisitely positive Titanic reviews: an “immersive experience.” Quite.