Be Excellent To Each Other

If you were that depressed, why couldn't you have done us all a favour and just fucking killed yourself, you evil, duplicitous, democracy-killing, two-faced, lying cuntweasel.

If you want a program to engender empathy and sympathy in the viewer for the plight of those with mental illness, you don't get the modern day version of Goebbels to do it.

If he didn't exist, then we wouldn't have had Malcolm Tucker.

Come on Mr. Chris, tell us how you really feel.

Sorry, I can't sort everything out in the space of a week:

I've recorded it.

Is it worth a watch?

It was quite compelling, but very self indulgent. All those slow motion shots of him starting at the camera, wonky eyed while ominous music played were a bit nauseating because he was so obviously posing for them.

They should get the announcer to read that out after the programme.

He's a fellow Burnley fan. And he banned Tony Blair from attending Burnley games. So leave him alone.

Actually, don't. But, you know.

I have to say, the BBC really earned their license fee last night - Simon Schama, Stephen Fry, this Alistair Campbell thing and a fairly interesting documentary about Les Paul a bit later on.

Similarly, last week's Nevermind The Buzzcocks contained both Fry AND a bit on The Fall. God, it was like Xmas.

Just watching this now. The man really is an unlikeable, needlessly unpleasant oik, isn't he? A typical example of how just a little bit of power and success can turn a would-be belligerent into a total cunt (since he had more than just a little).

This whole 'I've got a mental illness' thing is a total fad anyway. It's "I'm bi-sexual!" for 2008.

Who remembers 'my mum and dad used to beat me'? That was big in the mid-90s.

Yes, quite. His little tantrum on Channel 4 news was a sight to behold. The megalomaniacal wankshaft.



Indeed. I wonder how linked this has been to the fashion for diagnosing badly-raised kids as having ADHD? Has this middle class co-opting of mental illness made it socially acceptable/fashionable?

Also: Welcome back, chap! Glad to hear things are better.

Jon Hare, if you're reading, could be something in that idea!


Interestingly - and I'm sure variously not surprising, I can take a joke on it, if anyone wants to - I was repeatedly told I was 'hyperactive'* and throughout pretty much my entire childhood, my parents were repeatedly told by the family GP, and some of my school teachers, that I needed to be put on drugs for it, to 'control my behaviour'. Story of my fucking life! They didn't, incidentally, partly owing to my Grandfather and some other family members dying as a direct result of prescribed medication, causing my family to be quite 'funny' about that sort of thing.

Anyway! I don't believe that it is socially acceptable yet. There's still the common perception that admitting to having a mental illness is an attention-seeking thing done by Americans who moan in loud, brash voices about 'OMG BY THERAPIST BILL!' and don't know world geography; or, that it's more simply a bad thing that only wrong people have.

Given the increasingly eugenics-oriented societal path of the western world over the past hundred-plus years (which has been increasingly revived lately, even in the mainstream, with the whole 'chav' phenomenon), I don't think it's quite there yet. Maybe in twenty years it will be acceptable for the middle-classes to proudly talk of how their child has been 'officially' declared free of mental illness, and how it was such a good idea to have the foetus genetically 'verified' before things 'got too far'.

You know, much like how it's considered a hideous and terrible thing by many to use aborted foetuses for their live-saving stem cells, but making sure that your baby boy won't be a fuckin' poofta is, according to surveys, perhaps okay. Since y'know... it's just making sure they get less trouble at school, and well I'm not gay so I'll be able to better raise them, and...

That's what I think will happen with recognizeable mental illnesses. Science will provide the means, religion and ignorance will provide the justification. Er, sorry to ramble on!


Thank-you, it's nice to be back (for me anyway, and I hope not too bad for others). Things aren't better. But, I'm trying and I'm hopeful, that they will get better. And that, is better. You know what I mean?

* for younger readers, this would be the old-fashioned word for ADHD, much like 'manic depressive' can refer to a wide glut of bipolarity-related illnesses, but still reads as 'mentalist'.
** Drill drill drill drill...

Right, regarding ADHD/hyperactivity still, in my own experience:

I personally believe it's because I was a very physically active child (never really watched TV except Postman Pat and Bertha), who was raise to eat a healthy meal and then run around until it was time for bed. I also read a lot, and could recite the alphabet backwards, in under 10 seconds, by the time I was 3, and read e.g. Enid Blyton*. So I was energetic and awake, but also aware that 'Joseph, Jesus' Father, took some of Jesus' blood in the Holy Grail...' was bollocks. Raising my hand and politely pointing out that it was actually Joseph of Aremathea (sic, I expect), got me suspended from school for 'Undermining teacher's authority' and a child psychologist was called in (again).

So I think it's not just the parents, but also the institutions through which a child goes. That's the point I was trying to reach in all of my rambling here!

* not 'bragging', just want to illustrate a point - when I got to pre-school, my parents were firmly told they had made a mistake and that 'a child's head doesn't need all that sort of stuff filling it up', and now can't do it at all.

Oh absolutely. I think it's just easier for people to medicalise certain sorts of behaviour than to just deal with it - not least those that are (a) due to a parent's crappy job at parenting ("it's not my fault he's like that, it's his condition!") or (b) a bit difficult for teachers to deal with ("Your son is too smart-arsed for me. I can't handle him, therefore there must be something wrong with him").

I absolutely agree. Reducing the symptom instead of trying to treat the disease. That isn't a long-term strategy solution in any other area of medical health, so I find it sad that it's still the case for mental health.

I was diagnosed with ADHD when I was about ten because I made anagrams of the Doctor's name while she was consulting me. They later wanted to sever both my achilles tendons then re-tie them "to see what would happen"; it was quite a Shipmanesque hospital.

What was your Doctor's name? Please tell me it was something that could be made into a rude anagram.

"Vegetables! Stop messing around and listen to what Dr Hsithead is asking you!"

See, this is why I (and when I was a child and it was their problem, my parents) refused to let me have any 'treatment' or 'see anyone'. Shit like that. The understanding of mental health issues in this country is shocking, and yet still among the best in the world. But the above would be a decent example of why it's still barbarism.

Trufax: the one period of my life where I did accept treatment and 'took meds', I resultingly couldn't get out of bed for more than a couple of hours a day, I just cried all the time, I lost all sense of empathy, and I ended up swallowing two boxes of amritryptyline and sitting on a hill for an hour with one of my wrists slit. Except the pain of that got through to me, and I suddenly imagined my Mother, my Sister, all my loved ones all variously weeping and saying 'He's dead!' And that was that, and it made me realise a) how selfish I was being, and b) I couldn't remember why I was even doing it.

Never been on meds since, always been able to take a few more 'level' perspective on the matter, even when I've had no friends but a lazy scrounging wannabe-teenage-son, and a girlfriend in another country, to call on for words of help and friendship.

The poiint of my rambling is not to make you go "Wow, that's really interesting CUS, you are great/weird", but to just hammer home this simple message:

DON'T DO DRUGS

Unless it's the *last* option you've got. Because it's still experimental tendon-severing really, it's just in a convenient pill form that you don't have to think about. *nod*

or

Well, electro-shock therapy was 'proven' to calm people down too.

You have a teenage son, CUS?

Metaphorically speaking, I had one. But nope, had a nasty injury as a child and can't have kids myself.

DON'T DO DRUGS.

I wish it had been Alistair McGowan's "Me and My Mental Illness".

"The doctors say I may be schizophrenic"
"No. Really? Wow."
"You don't seem surprised that I'm schizophrenic? Ahem... 'Not a lot of people know that!'"
"Yes Alistair"
"Call me Michael"
"Yes Michael"

My doctor and family were convinced I was depressed at one point, but I maintained I was just fed up and bored. I took their stupid little anti-depressants anyway, and ended up feeling fucking awful. If it wasn't keeping me up all night sweating buckets, it was completely destroying my sexual functioning.

I came off the pills, and haven't looked back since. I still get down from time to time, but fucking talk to me, not shove me on some pills and leave me alone, dicks.

Also, just because I like to be neat doesn't mean I have OCD. It hasn't stopped me doing anything, and I don't repeat tasks. Leave me alone!