London Calling…Again!
It’s time once again for London Calling and an interview with our boys from the IMONTHEBANDWAGON blog.
So today my questions are a bit more cultural. My next door neighbor is from Ireland and his name is Baoithein (pronounced bool-yon). He’s in his late 70’s and is forever popping up with the strangest ideas and notions that I hope you might explain to me. For instance, if two people are from Scotland he’ll pit them against each other in imaginary fight situations such as, “That Gordon Ramsay thinks he’s the stuff. Sean Connery’d knock the smart off his arse, I can tell you that much.”
*** So question number 1 is: What does being a Scot have to do with fighting and number 2, who would win? Ramsay or Connery?
RYAN: They just like a fight don’t they?
MIKE: Well yeah. It is a bit grim up there. It makes people want to fight. I’d fight people if I lived in Scotland. Sat on my doorstep waiting for the milk man to arrive in the morning so I could drop him
JOWETT: Already offended A NATION
MIKE: Oh come on. They love violence, it cheers them up! I got a taxi in Scotland once, right, and my taxi driver ploughed through a pigeon, it exploded in a ball of feathers on his windscreen, he turned to me and goes (Scottish accent) “Waheeeeeeey! It’s gonna be a good day!”
Laughter
*** Number 2, who would win? Ramsay or Connery?
RYAN: Connery is getting on a bit isn’t he?
JOEL: He is ‘James Bond’ though
JOWETT: He’s not, he’s an actor
JOEL: But he might of learnt stuff from playing ‘James Bond’. More helpful than what Gordon Ramsay knows
JOWETT: which is just cooking? I suppose Connery would be a rubbish chef
MIKE: (Sean Connery impression) “Your resturaunt’s a fucking disgrace”
Laughter
MIKE: And Ramsay knows how to conduct an affair for like 10 years
Laughter
JOWETT: Allegedly. We don’t know that to be true
MIKE: I do, it was all over the news, not long back
JOWETT: Please answer the question
MIKE: Ramsay
*** Question 3: Baoithein is a HUGE fan of Talisker, and hounds me daily to get them to sponsor my blog so he can have free samples. What drink are you boys fans of?
RYAN: Anything really
JOWETT: Yeah you do all seem to drink a lot a varied drinks
JOEL: I like Kronenberg
MIKE: We like cider mostly though
RYAN: Yeah! We do like our cider
JOWETT: Mmm you do don’t you. Before they all discovered Cider they were nice young men, made the occasional joke and now, well…
MIKE: Joel told me last week that he thought ‘Rosa Parkes’ sounded like a Garden Centre
JOEL: Fuck off!
JOWETT: ……to the makers of ‘Magners Cider’ look what you’ve done
Laughter
*** Question 4: Baoithein calls my ex-husband a “wanker,” so…what is that?
MIKE: A very bed person
JOEL: Doesn’t ‘wanker’ date back to like Shakespeare times?
MIKE: (Laughs) No
JOWETT: No I don’t think so mate
JOEL: It was in ‘Shakespeare in love’ wasn’t it?
JOWETT: I haven’t seen it, but even that film isn’t 100% accurate
JOEL: Well I thought it was believable
MIKE: A film where Gwyneth Paltrow goes out with someone talented? Nah
Laughter
JOWETT: (Laughing) Look at his face! You’re happy with that joke aren’t you!
MIKE: I am ah!
*** Question 5: What signature song (not counting your own) do you boys play to get a lady “in the mood?” (This is my question, not Baoithein’s).
JOWETT: (Laughs) Look at you all! I can tell by your faces you are thinking of song title puns
MIKE: I’m not!
RYAN: ‘Could well be in’ by ‘The Streets’
Laughter
JOWETT: Ryan is straight in there first
MIKE: Joel’s parents used to fight? didn’t they?
JOEL: Why?
MIKE: ‘Sugar we’re going down swinging’ by ‘Fall Out Boy’?
Laughter
JOWETT: Harsh mate, harsh
JOEL: ‘Baby I love you’ by ‘The Ramones’
MIKE: That’s rubbish!
JOWETT: (Laughs) Aww Joel actually answered it properly!
MIKE: ‘Kiss with a fist’ Florence and the Machine’?
JOWETT: Can you please stop applying them all to Joel’s parents marriage?
MIKE: Sorry
***************************************
For more from the boys you can find their first London Calling post HERE and then head over to the RANDOMVILLE blog for another dose of British hilarity. Until next time…CHEERS!
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H.E. ELLIS 
Based on hanging out with various, colorful folks from the British Isles (England, Scotland, Ireland) I believe the best interpretation of ‘wanker’ in American is “jackoff,” as in, “I’m much drunker than you are, you jackoff!”
I’m wicked smaht.
September 28, 2011 at 7:10 am
You actually use Jackoff like that … I feel more American already 😛 “I’m much drunker than you are, you jackoff!” VS “I’m much drunker than you are, you wanker!”
September 28, 2011 at 8:37 am
I cannot wait to use this in a sentence!
September 28, 2011 at 10:28 am
@ BRAINRANTS: That makes soooo much sense now. My ex can be a wanker at times. So not only are you “wicked smaht,” but you’re a “pissa” too!
Depending on the context, “pissa” (piss-UH), can either be good or bad. It’s Bostonian for “Pisser” as is “someone who takes the piss out of something,” like a cool story, just for the sake of being a dick. When it’s good a pissa means someone who’s wicked funny.
BAD: “Hey BrainRants, stop being a fucking pissa ya’ prick ya.'”
GOOD: “That BrainRants prick (good here) is a wicked smaht pissa.”
Beware of anyone calling you a “friggin’ wombat,” though.
September 28, 2011 at 10:27 am
I blame the pipes and the kilt. I like to think of myself as a pacifist but I’ve only got to hear the bagpipes and see a bunch of men marching behind them, heads high, shoulders back, kilts swaying and I can feel the adrenalin rush and want to join with them.
My normal attire is joggers, and wearing them I’m mild-mannered, easy-going – but put my kilt on and I’m ready to take on the world if challenged (let’s face it, if you’re a man and you wear a
skirt</del? kilt you have to be 'tough') 😆September 28, 2011 at 7:24 am
This is awesome! Love the pic, by the way.
September 28, 2011 at 10:16 am
Ahahaha this is so beautiful I nearly cried, Wanker is someone pleasing themselves, basically if you call someone a wanker your insinuation they have nobody to do it for them 😉 Kronenberg = Beautiful … I would drink it all day if I wouldn’t be labeled an alcoholic!
September 28, 2011 at 8:35 am
All I can say about that is if my ex had a problem finding women to please him he wouldn’t be my ex. As for Kronenberg I’ve never had it. I’m barely able to drink as it is; one sip of anything and it’s lights out. Total lightweight.
September 28, 2011 at 10:31 am
I am so going to send you some! I don’t know how but I will!
September 28, 2011 at 10:54 am
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Also because you don’t think your Ex is a “Wanker” if your looking for British “Slagging off words” what about, Dick Head? F**k face? Twat? … I don’t mean to offend by the way … I just thought I could come up with some more fitting words if Wanker wasn’t one 😀
September 28, 2011 at 11:08 am
No offense taken. He is River, after all, so I forgive him his douche-baggery. How’s THAT for a word!
September 28, 2011 at 11:26 am
Douche-baggery ahaha if I don’t read that in one off your books I will be disappointed!
September 28, 2011 at 2:50 pm
I used to have my neighbors in England teach me how to cuss in Cockney English…. It was pretty cool…….. till I got back here and no one had an idea what I was saying…… and I would vote for Connery being the winner….no matter how old he is….. 🙂
September 28, 2011 at 12:21 pm
No matter how hard I try, whenever I hear a Cockney accent in my head all I hear are the chimney sweeps from Mary Poppins. My God…can you just imagine?
September 28, 2011 at 6:19 pm
I would love to see that fight. I gotta believe Ramsey would win by pulling out a shiv from a hiding place in his sock!!!
September 28, 2011 at 12:42 pm
I agree. I heard he started out as a Rugby player so I imagine he’s probably a little tougher than most.
September 28, 2011 at 6:20 pm
Laughing, crying, shaking my head…gawd, this is addictive stuff!
I then went thru my iTunes to find just the right romantic song…Got it! “Gary’s Got a Boner” by the Replacements!
September 28, 2011 at 3:56 pm
That’s a good one. My mind is a total blank right now. I’m sure I’ll sit bolt upright in bed around 3 a.m. and come up with something hilarious.
September 28, 2011 at 6:21 pm
Funny, entertaining. A great blog 🙂 Love a smile for the day…
September 28, 2011 at 9:21 pm
Haha- this is awesome… although I’ve gotta disagree and go with Sean Connery on this one.. Ramsay’s more bark than he is bite.. and let’s face it- 007 pulls trump card, everytime.
September 29, 2011 at 9:33 am
One thing to remember about Scotsmen: the Romans were so afraid of them, they built a wall to keep them out. 😉 Historically, for centuries, whenever the Scots didn’t have outsiders to fight, they fought each other. Actually, they kinda fought each other frequently even when they were fighting outsiders.
The Irish understand this, of course, because an Irishman loves to fight about as much as he loves to drink. Whenever there wasn’t a war in Ireland, the Irishmen would go and fight in someone else’s war. Sometimes on both sides. :>
September 29, 2011 at 7:27 pm
I’m half Irish, and that explains sooo much about my family!
September 29, 2011 at 7:31 pm
Indeed. For an example of my comment on Irish fighting in other people’s wars, from a “This Week in Irish History” page: Peter Lacy, member of the Irish Brigade of France and later a Russian field-marshal, is born in Killedy, County Limerick.
It also connects to the troubles in Northern Ireland, actually. The English forcibly settled Scotsmen in Northern Ireland to displace the Irish. Take two groups of people who don’t like each other or you and both love to fight, and force them to live together. Sure recipe for peace right there. 🙂 Those who emigrated from Northern Ireland to the colonies were often referred to as “Scots-Irish” and tended to make up a large proportion of those who settled the frontiers of the colonies in the southern states. While some landed on both sides of the American War of Independence, you generally saw the Scotsmen who’d emigrated direct from Scotland siding with the King, because of the unified royal house, and those Scots-Irish who’d emigrated from Northern Ireland tended to side with the patriots. Obviously some families reversed that, but as a generality it holds.
September 29, 2011 at 7:49 pm
I totally thought it was my imagination, but when I was a kid my grandfather (last name MacPherson) used to say that he was “Scots-Irish.” I always thought I remembered it wrong. My father’s half of my family, including all six of my siblings are huge red-heads with blue eyes. My mother’s half (Trujillo) are all typical curly haired, dark skinned Italians, but I look like neither side.
My grandfather said I look just like his mother’s family (Ellis) who was from Wales, the branch of the family that no one admits to being related to (I’m absurdly small and pale-ish, with very dark hair and freakishly huge green eyes). They used to call me “black Irish,” because of it, but I never knew what that meant.
September 29, 2011 at 8:05 pm
Sounds like your memory was right about Scots-Irish then. 🙂
According to Wikipedia, the term “black Irish” is mostly used outside of Ireland of particular combinations of physical features, but the list of features varies. However, you would seem to fall into the “dark hair, blue or green eyes, pale skin” group. 🙂
Blue eyes occur only if both parents have the gene for blue eyes, if memory serves, so your mother’s side of the family likely does not have the blue-eyed gene, and therefore left you with green instead. 🙂
September 30, 2011 at 2:00 pm
They were just being polite about “wanker’. Wanking is another term for masturbation and a really bad wanker would be one who does it in public. To call someone a wanker is probably harsher than “dickhead” or “asshole” because it also conveys a sense of the personal being a moral as well as a mental midget. Saying “He’s a fooking wanker!” is equivalent to calling him a leprous perv. i wouldn’t be happy about being called one. Thems fightin’ words!
October 2, 2011 at 1:29 pm
Wow…that’s about as harsh a word as you can get! I think I’ll use it sparingly.
October 2, 2011 at 1:31 pm
Thanks for giving me insight into the Boys in the Band. I have a much better grasp of how they clearly never answer any questions you ask. If “fag” means cigarette to these guys,, who on god’s earth could ever guess what wanker means.
Great blog as usual.
Les
October 3, 2011 at 5:08 pm
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