Category Archives: Ceri Phillips

Oh, Big Ceri got ‘da Yuletide Blues…And he got it Baaaaad {Ceri’s Column}

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Bah Humbug

Yeah, to this day I have no idea what the hell that means. Sounds cool though…plus it’s a pretty apt opener. Predictable but…bollocks I’m deconstructing my work before I’ve even started. Right, onwards….

I am an adult. I know, shit isn’t it? I didn’t think I was one. I know now, I am. Why? Fucking Christmas. I never thought I would EVER take the lord (‘s days) name in vain. Just did though.

When one starts regarding jolly old Xmas as the season of seemingly pointless spending, you’re an adult. When tinsel starts looking cheap and flammable instead of pretty and magical, you’re an adult. When shopping centre Santas seem like paedophiles, you’re an adult…an awfully presumptuous and cynical adult, but still….

 ‘Tis the ball-aching-wallet-emptying-overdraft-raping season to be grumpy. Food costs too much. Gifts cost too much. Christmas crackers? Cardboard and toys made by Cambodian orphans, (I’m sure they tried their best) – Waaaay to pricey.

So many rituals we adhere to for the year’s final month just perplexes me. Why are gifts put under an Alpine/Scandinavian/East Anglian evergreen tree? Why do we tell kids a corporate figure invented by a popular soft drink brand (*Cough* Coca-Cola *Splutter*…that doesn’t work in writing…) visits them at night depositing these often numerous gifts? Why do these stupid fucking kids believe us? Why do we hang large socks in a frankly greed-frenzied plea for even MORE gifts? Why do we hang shit on the tree? Why do we hang plastic, or if you’re middle class like me, glass orbs from the tree? Why does the reindeer, an animal that is quite obviously inferior to most mammals you can eat, play any part at all? I like jaguars; where the hell are the big cats at Xmas? Why must Santa have an army of supernatural beings at his (probably huge) house/sweatshop, slaving away all year round making upwards of 20 gifts per child for every (Northern Hemisphere based) child in the world? Kids these days want stuff you can buy at Argos, why do these elves bother? Why is he called St. Nicholas? He isn’t St. Nicholas. That was some Turkish Christian who died before William the conqueror was born…uh….I think….Yeah, feel free to correct me on that one.

I remember that I used to really adore Christmas for the first 10 or so years of my life. Then it became OK…I mean, I still got a tonne of free stuff. Now, it’s hell.

 When I was a child I left out sherry and mince pies for “Siôn Corn” (Welsh for Santa Claus…it means “John Horn”…no idea why). I also left carrots on our worryingly accessible roof for the flying reindeer. Every morning, before even caring that I’d just hit the toy-jackpot, I’d check to see if my red coat wearing idol had eaten and enjoyed my offering. He always had. One Xmas, as a personal, “Mum and Dad can be oh so funny sometimes”, semi-child-hating prank, my dad ate the offering, (Yes, Santa doesn’t exist) and left a note. It read, in Welsh of course:

“Hello Kids,

Thank you for the Tesco mince pies and the glass of sherry. But, for future reference, I like scones and 7Up more. I still left you prezzies, but next year can you try and get it right.

Merry Xmas,

Santa”

I wept. A lot. The bike I opened 25 minutes later did help assuage my weeping, but my one seemingly gigantic cock up in trying to appease the only “real” supernatural being in the world haunted me…until I worked out he wasn’t real 2 months later.

Yes, I was a cynical little bugger at the age of 7 too.

But how I worked out he was fictitious is a good story. It isn’t a funny story – just an important one. A story every child should be told at the age of 7. My painful discovery would soon become a time honoured rite of passage if every child had the event described below forced upon them. I’d be a pioneer…in dream shattering…actually, just forget I said that. Ugh

Any-fecking-way, I was watched an episode of The Simpsons, (the only TV show I’ve loved and continue to be entertained by since my early childhood). Bart had tried to catch Santa, or something. I don’t really recall the plot that well, but that’s the gist. Yeah so it turns out that Santa was actually Homer or…some other character just dressed up as old St. Nic. The utter soul-crushing devastation washed over me and drowned my childish dreams. It happened to be that I was young enough to understand that he couldn’t possibly be real. I mean, I had a relatively advanced grasp of logic for a pre-teen, (I have been raised in a family of both real and cod philosophers sprinkled with a healthy dash of teachers, dentists and I’m sure there’s a lawyer or two…God, I’m so middle-class). But it also seems I wasn’t old enough for this fact not to hurt. I’d had an inkling he can’t have been real – I used to think, “He goes to every home in one night?”, “How does he only get most and not all the gifts on my list if he’s so awesome?” and, most logically of all, “Why did the standard and number of my presents sharply increase when my dad got promoted?” But it was the knowing he didn’t exist that nearly killed me.

Now if this event became the norm, kids could get saved from this ultimate trauma.

Is this how Dr. King felt when delivering the “I have a dream” speech?

Jeez, I overstep the mark faaaaar too often. Right, eggnog latte time.

Getting Baked {Ceri's Column}

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When we celebrate, we eat cakes. It’s pretty damn universal. Almost every culture on the planet stakes its claim for having the best cakey offerings. It can be quite competitive. I’m shocked there hasn’t been a war over it yet. The Great Fruitcake Wars. The Eccles cake incident. The Cupcake Rebellion of 2010. That’d be awesome. I’d fight.

Of course, being more Welsh than a wool hat full of leeks makes me thoroughly defensive of our baked, boiled and griddled offerings. Our goodies are far tastier, heartier and far worse for you than anyone else’s. The jewel in our crumbly crown is the amazingly addictive Welshcake, or Pice ar y man (Pick Arr Er Marn) as I call them. Stick your scones where the sun doesn’t shine, pics rule.

But other countries have good stuff too! Here are my personal faves…

1. Punschkrapfen (Austria) – This beauty is a concoction of chocolate nougat, apricot jam, crumbly cake and rum (yes RUM!) My lord it’s good.

2. Churos (Spain/Mexico) – Hispanicy/Americany Doughnuty heavenly thing…y. I had my first Churo in California about 10 years ago. If I ever go to live in the States, I’d write “Churos” as my “Primary reason for applying for your Green Card”

3. Puff Puff (Nigeria) – A rip off of the superior Churo. I just included it for the name really.

4. Twinkies (USA) – Guilty pleasures are always the best.

5. Opera Cake (France) – Oh France you opulent fucker. Layers of almond sponge soaked in coffee layered with ganache and butter cream and glazed in dark chocolate. Hasn’t really got much to do with Opera in my book, but who gives a crap when you’re eating ganache in such large quantities?

6. Mochi with red bean paste (Japan) – Nippon, you rule.

7. Jaffa Cakes (UK…well Scotland really) – Is it a cake? Is it a biscuit? It’s a fucking cake you idiot.

So there we have it. My list. What’d be on yours? Give me your faves and why below. I don’t get many comments. Do it. Now. Ta

by Ceri Phillips

The Sin of Envy…and Some Other Sins {Ceri's Column}

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Man alive, that green-eyed monster is an awfully selective beast. He lives just above my cerebellum, right next door to the gnomes that run my conscience and sense of shame. He occasionally feeds on the gnomes and wotsits but mostly on the painfully huge talents of others.

There’s many a person who turns me a grassy hue when I consider their ability or achievements. Seth “I created, voice and often write for my own selection of massively successful animated sitcoms that is watched by millions worldwide” MacFarlane is one. Matthew “So yeah my voice is kind of samey in my songs but I seem to shit innovative modern rock classics without any need for laxative AND play my axe better than anyone in the rockesphere right now” Bellamy is another. Rick “Holy shit I’m lucky that everyone is Rick Rolling each other or I’d have probably stuck my head in the oven a loooong time ago” Astley is not one.

There are a few people around who don’t stir the beast in my bonce. For some reason, Eddie Izzard and Robert DeNiro don’t. I admire them, I wish I possessed a trillionth of their respective talents but I don’t envy them. They’re…too good.

Robert Plant – Too good

Bill Hicks – (was) Too good

That bloke on E4…y’know, the voice-over dude – Too good

Richard Dawkins – a fundamentalist atheist and painfully over-exposed pop “philosopher” who’s stunning lack of logic, understanding of the basic tenets of Religious language and an annoyingly snappy dresser….shit I’m well off course here.

What the hell was my point?

Oh yes…uh…Usain Bolt – Too good. Yeah, that’ll do.

Smut {Ceri's Column}

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People-watching and eave’s dropping are things I should do more often. These border-line peeping-Tomish pastimes often yield little snippets of gold…hold on, what the fuck is a “snippet of gold”? Is that possible? Am I mixing my damn turns of phrase again… anyway; it’s a great tool for a comedy writer. I try not to look suspicious or blatant or paedophilic when engaging in this important activity. Just the other day I was inadvertently listening to a most wonderful moment.

I was busy loitering in the park, pretending to read a newspaper. I spied a gentleman speaking on his mobile phone. It was clamped so tightly to his ear hole that he must have booked a one way ticket to brain tumourville. He was deeply embroiled in a spat with his significant other. I think her name was Melanie…shit man, he said “Mel”…could’ve been Melville. That doesn’t matter.

“No. No. Look I…no, you’re twisting my words, Mel. Now you’re just lying, for Christ’s sake! Look, she doesn’t even come by anymore. She said her hours have changed and I just don’t see her. No, I do not have her number. So what if she’s pretty? Oh my god, YOU just said she was pretty! Don’t get fucked off just because I agreed you stupid idiot.”

There was a pause

“Did you come? Cool. See you after work.”

After I was done sniggering, I thought, “Hang on, he’s in a park. What is he a ranger?” As he got up to walk passed me, I saw a badge on his shirt confirming this. Shit.

by Ceri Phillips

The Whisky and The Unknown {Ceri's Column}

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Sceptical losers like me are amongst the most easily frightened of folk. I mean, when you don’t immediately “believe” in every little unexplained or unexplored phenomena that you hear about, it is horrifying when it comes and slaps you in the gob…basically, I’m a bit of a wuss. I mean, your mind can play tricks on you. Not nasty, put-a-turd-in-my-car’s-air-conditioner sort of a trick. Annoyingly scary tricks.

Right, let’s get on with it! Submitted for your approval, the case of Mr. C. Phillips and a slit in the fabric of time. I think.

I’m an avid reader of the Fortean Times (a top quality publication, read it!). I’m an enjoyer of all things macabre and outlandish.

I was getting rather drunk in one of my favourite haunts in Swansea. I’d just finished regaling a fellow Fortean with factoids regarding a spooky cluster of events that occurred prior to the 9/11 attacks, (nothing “paranormal”, just statistical anomalies), and listened to tales of his grandmother’s apparent sixth-sense. So the evening had already acquired an air of the bizarre. I departed the bar with thoughts of faces appearing in smoke clouds dramatic peaks in miscarriages of male babies and Mike’s gran whirling around in my impressionable young mind. Then, out of the corner of my now very bleary eye, I spied the strangest of events.

A young lady, ready for a classic night of debauchery on Wind Street, (Swansea’s famed, puke-washed drinking centre) sauntered past me in full French maid’s garb. “Got a light?” she asked. I obliged and she walked off into the distance. Thirty seconds later, an IDENTICAL girl (in the same clothing, same height, face etc), sauntered past. “Got a light?” she asked. “No fucking way!” I exclaimed. She gave me a decidedly disgruntled look, murmured an expletive and walked off.

SHITTING HELL! I was a bit scared. Had I just witnessed a case of inter-dimensional mingling or even seen a real-life doppelganger headed to assassinate the other…or something? I sat aghast in my cab home, wondering how exactly to word my letter to the “It happened to me…” column of the Fortean Times. Surely I could get it into the September Issue?!

Then a thought struck me…well, a one word thought struck me.

 Twins.

Fucking twins. Buggering bloody balls!

Eight glasses of Laphroaig and a few tall tales and I became a “believer”. Man, the human mind can be complex. 

Or I’m thicker than Chupacabra shit.

by Ceri Phillips

Ceri: Portrait of an Inadvertent Killer {Ceri's Column}

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I killed the most beautiful butterfly today. Wow, that sentence makes my look like a soon-to-be serial killer. I didn’t mean to. It was fluttering along, maybe trying to find a new home, maybe trying to find a mate. Probably just fluttering aimlessly. The problem was, it was fluttering 1.5 meters above the M4 motorway.

I wasn’t fluttering. I was moving at a positively super-sonic pace (late for some bollocks, again). I was also encased in my 2 tonnes of steel and fibreglass and whatever the hell they make the cup-holder from.

The colourful mass left on my windscreen really was horrific. I mean, it was like the aftermath of a clown’s suicide jump…I assume. Fragments of red and yellow wing were still visible through the dark gunk, (butterfly lung, ass and uvula).

My next action, on reflection, was quite sick when you think about it…and you have nothing else to do. I pulled a tiny lever and the corpse was washed away in an instance. The remnants of such a beautiful little creature treated as equal to fluff, stains and those bits of crap that get in the way of our otherwise squeaky clean world. I’m a killer. I’m a bastard.

I mean, I couldn’t avoid killing it. The insurance folk wouldn’t accept “I swerved into the tanker to avoid a butterfly” as a valid reason to write off my car and maybe write off a limb or two. But my reaction, or lack of, makes me a killer. And a bastard.

But that spider I Hoovered deserved it. I hope the fucker rots in spider hell…great, now I’ll dream of being in spider hell tonight.

Shitter.

by Ceri Phillips

The Great Welsh Summer {Ceri's Column}

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God damn, my country is beautiful in the Sun. It turns even more verdant than it usually is, (that’s pretty fucking green, man) the jaw-droppingly beautiful beaches shine like strips of pure gold dust and flocks of people are to be seen out and about, smiling. We have great ice cream in my neck of the…uh…seaside, and everyone seems to be licking at a scoop or tree. Happy, bright, summertime Wales.

However…

There are a lot of burnt-up people all of a sudden. One teeny chink of sunlight squeezes trough the gloomy haze above and the nation’s pallid, goblin-like inhabitants all emerge from their pits to bask and… Immediately get charred. Ha ha ha.

The amount of legs, arms, backs, shoulders, chests and noses shining crimson I’ve seen in the last couple of days has been staggering. I’ve also marvelled at the scores of clammy people sporting a fetching, ghost-coloured patch of face-skin where Ray-Bans were nearly fused to their face. Nice.

Ah, it’s only because I’m jealous y’know. Procul Harum may well have had me in mind when writing “Whiter Shade of Pale”…who am I kidding, it was the 60’s! They had purple Hindu deities dancing with kaleidoscopic rhinos in their minds after all the acid…plus I wasn’t born yet. Well whatever, I am very white. And I guarantee that, despite all my sun-dodging attempts, there’ll be at least one occasion that I’ll be transformed to a gnarled half-man, half-crackling creature by the end August.

Most of you think of the smell of cut-grass when you think of summer. Not me. The stink of burger vans is also filling my nostrils when I think of summer, and do you know what? I like it. I have absolutely no idea why the whiff of blackened Grade F beef/bread/god-knows and slimy onions smothered in unnaturally yellow mustard makes me exclaim “Ah! Summer!” But it does. And I will consume at least one ill-advised artery-clogger of a burger by the time I have transformed into the gnarled half-man, half-crackling creature.

Shit. I’ll be turning into Gollum.

Team Name Shame {Ceri's Column}

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Sports team’s nicknames are very funny, very rarely cool and totally unnecessary. I am a huge rugby fan but supporting my local team has become, since the change of system from domestic to regional rugby, very very difficult. I love our jerseys. I love our stadium. I love our branding. I hate our name.

The Ospreys.

What a shitty name. As far as seabirds go, they’re a bit dull. Quite pretty and live nowhere near Wales. And we named our team after them. Yawn. It doesn’t even have any historical reason. It’s just shite.

But we got off lightly. Stateside, where there is more of a tradition of calling your beloved team something shit, there are a 5 of the best names that just made me piss. With laughter. Not literally. Ugh. Here they are:

  1. Abilene Christian Wildcats – The notion of a wildcat worshipping Jesus and co really made me chuckle. Plus the good people who support this College football team have to endure this illogical beast as the emblem of their team. That also made me laugh a bit.
  1. San Francisco 49ers – This famous American football team’s name has a very curious derivation. Named for the thousands of prospectors who, in 1849, rushed for the gold supposedly lying about in the sandy ground of California. So, you could say, the San Francisco “Went 400 miles westwards to find nothing but dust, caught cholera and got my foot blown off by dynamite”ers.
  1. Brooklyn Bridegrooms (19th century baseball team)/Columbia College Fighting Koalas – Joint winners of Ceri’s Least threatening team name.
  1. Chicago Fire – Seems Ok? Pretty cool? Nope, because in 1871 there was a Chicago fire. The GREAT Chicago fire. Killed thousands. So way to go, Chicago Fire FC of the MLS. Let’s see if we ever see a London Blitz or Chernobyl Nuclear Disasters?
  1. Edmonton Oilers – This Canadian hockey team can only really keep this name for a few years. Soon they’ll be the Edmonton “Remember when there was oil?”-ers.