The Extremist

I have made a definite effort to put away my soapbox so far this year. I realise that in the past I have said that ranting is good for the soul  - and it is. The only problem is that people begin to regard you as a moaning old git – well in my case anyway.

While I may be quite amusing, I fear that the image I want to portray isn’t the one I intended. As a result I have popped my soapbox into storage for a while.

Now, however, I want to dust it off and have a good rant, inspired by recent news items over the last few years.

The target of my rant is nutters and extremists.

I have views and beliefs and regular readers will know exactly what pushes my buttons. For example, on this very blog I urge people to listen to hard rock and heavy metal because, in my opinion, it is absolutely worth it.

But I draw a line and stand firmly behind it.

I do not force people to listen to my music or threaten to inflict physical harm on those who disagree with my tastes. I do not kidnap people, tie them up and blast them with Judas Priest songs in an attempt to brainwash them into accepting and embracing my musical taste.

Mrs PM might disagree with this because I do tend to put my music on quite loudly sometimes. Nevertheless she has the power to:

(a) Go into another room.

(b) Go out.

(c) Punch me repeatedly until I turn off my music or put on something more tasteful.

(d) Set Liquorice the hellcat on me.

(e) Put on her dreadful music and drive me into submission.

I would not walk up to a lover of boy band music, a personal hatred of mine, and physically assault them – or worse - because of their taste in music.

The reason is obvious.

I am not an extremist.

I am not a nutter.

When I see crimes committed in the name of religion, skin colour, political beliefs, your choice of football team, the colour of the shirt you're wearing or the location of your home, I am filled with anger and sadness.

What right have these people to try to inflict their views on normal everyday people like you and I?

In Britain today our society is being slowly poisoned by extreme views from all sides and each time I see people trying to justify their beliefs and force others into the same beliefs it makes me so mad.

The majority of people in the world are passive folks who just want to live their lives in peace and harmony. Despite this, nutters the world over explode bombs, commit murder or attack people just because their appearance, beliefs and general outlook on life simply do not match the extremists' warped ideals.

Why should I listen to a bunch of nutters who want to reinforce their views with violence? Will a gathering of psychopaths in London who invariably end up clashing violently with nutters from the other side of the fence with the police in between make me change my opinions to match extremist views?

In a word – NO!

So why should we all have to put up with it?

A comedian once suggested that we should round up all these extremist nutters, ship them to an island and let them fight it out among themselves, leaving the rest of us to live our lives in peace. And while it was a bit of a joke, I personally would love something like that to happen.

Just imagine for a second a bunch of football hooligans. Most football fans, myself included, enjoy a decent football match and all of the banter between fans of opposing clubs. Many years ago, I went to see my favourite team, Walsall, play Portsmouth. There were so many Portsmouth fans that a few of them had to mingle with the Walsall fans and I found myself standing next to a young Portsmouth fan about my age. I thoroughly enjoyed the game (it finished 1-1) because throughout the 90 minutes, we exchanged witty banter about the game and our respective teams. There was no malice and no threats of violence and we parted with a handshake and a jovial pat on the back.

That’s the way it should be.

You may have seen documentaries about football hooligans on TV where so-called “firms” arrange to meet and kick seven colours of shit out of each other simply because one side supports Chelsea and the other side supports Millwall.

The football fan analogy is fairly accurate. Most football fans are, like myself, peaceful lovers of the game who want to watch a good match and have a bit of fun at the expense of the opposition. I live and work in Manchester and the rivalry between Manchester City and Manchester United is legendary. Yet at work, fans of Manchester United and Manchester City exchange witty banter without the need to beat each other up. That's because they are normal and not extreme in any way.

Yet there is small minority of people who feel the need to attack fans of other teams and totally spoil it for the rest of us.

Why? What will it achieve?

These guys are extremist nutters and it is the same no matter which sections of society they belong to and they seem to thrive on violence even when it leads to war, which in some cases it does.

They spoil it for everybody else, inflicting violence on innocent people who just want to exist in peace and harmony and put lives at risk.

We can never have world peace and the passive lives most normal people crave with these idiots and psychopaths trying to destroy everything.

It is said that many a true word is spoken in jest and maybe the comedian’s idea of extracting extremists from our society and exiling them all on a large uninhabited island with the hope that they ruin each other’s lives isn’t such a bad one after all.

I shall now step down from my soapbox and pop it back in the cupboard to gather dust again.

In the meantime, while I may joke about not forcing my musical taste on you, dear reader, I suggest you have a listen to this little beautiful mellow piece of progressive rock from Steven Wilson. The video is very poignant and it is a lovely song – called The Raven That Refused To Sing:

Don’t worry – listening and watching is optional and I won’t come around your house with a large blunt instrument if you choose not to listen to it or, for reasons beyond my comprehension, actually don’t like it.

All it means is that I have better musical taste than you do.

Of course – I’m only kidding.

The Nutter Magnet

I have an affliction that has tormented me for most of my life: I am a complete nutter magnet.

I’ve asked myself why nutters are drawn to me but I simply cannot see what it is about me that sends them into a frenzy. I could be in a room full of people who are all completely different. When the nutter enters the room, he will invariably look around for a victim, spot me and then home in. As soon as he sees me, he will shift into the highest gear of weirdness, smile his crooked smile and, before I can blink, he will be there, inflicting his nuttiness on me.

It’s happened all of my life and continues to happen to this day.

Here are a couple of examples of my encounters with nutters.

In the eighties, I was sitting in a pub with a mate. He got up to buy a couple of beers and when I turned around a second later, the only nutter in the pub had taken his seat. It was as if he had been waiting for my friend to leave. This guy (they are always guys) stared at me with a very creepy grin. He didn’t say a word.

“Excuse me,” I said politely. “This seat is taken.”

His grin widened but he said nothing. I should have simply stood up and joined my mate at the bar, but being the idiot that I am I stayed there.

“I can read your conscience,” he claimed. “I KNOW your mind.”

Oh no, I thought – a bloody nutter. Instead of getting up and walking away, I tried to engage him in conversation.

“Look mate, my pal’s at the bar and will be back in a minute.”

“I knew you were going to say that,” he said, his grin becoming even weirder. “I can read your mind like a book.”

“No you can’t,” I said. “Nobody can read minds.”

What kind of idiot was I? What was I doing trying to engage the nutter in conversation? I knew that it would end in pain.

The nutter, buoyed by my stupidity, settled into his seat and started to explain why my thoughts were so easy to read. I can’t remember what he said exactly but his words were mad enough and loud enough to attract the attention of quite a few people in the pub. Instead of coming to my rescue, these people simply enjoyed the show and started laughing openly.

“What’s he saying now?” said one.

My mate returned from the bar and, being much more forceful than I am, said “Oy, mate! That’s my seat.”

The nutter got up and I breathed a sigh of relief. However, such is the strength of my nutter magnet that he wasn’t finished. He walked behind me and continued telling me, in increasingly bizarre terms, why my every thought was screaming at him. And then the final humiliation – he put his hands on shoulders and started massaging my neck. He lowered his lips to my ear and said “I think you can read my mind as well – we’re so alike.”

I have to thank my mate at this point because he intervened.

“I wouldn’t touch him, mate,” he said to the nutter. “He’s got AIDS.”

I have never seen a man fly out of the pub so quickly.

Perhaps I should have simply ignored the nutter. Unfortunately that doesn’t always work as my second tale will reveal.

I was on the London Underground. The train was full but I had been lucky enough to get a seat. When I say “lucky” I really mean “unlucky”. I was listening to music at a fairly high volume and was so engrossed in it that I was oblivious to my surroundings. I noticed that the woman opposite me was staring in my direction – I thought for a brief second that I may have attracted the welcome attention of a nice young lady. But then I noticed she wasn’t looking at me at all; her gaze was focussed slightly to my right. Her eyes briefly flitted back to mine and her brow furrowed as if she were puzzled. I turned my head to my right to see what was so fascinating.

That’s when the person to my right grabbed my headphones and ripped them off my head.

The man next to me was a complete nutter, one of the worst kinds – an angry nutter. He had apparently been yelling at me for a while but my music had been loud enough to cover his insane screaming; that’s why the lovely lady opposite had looked so puzzled. I had been sitting next to the nutter as he screamed at me but my music had been so loud that I was oblivious to his insane ranting.

He gripped my headphones in his dirty hands and shouted “WHY WON’T YOU LISTEN TO ME????? NOBODY LISTENS TO ME.”

The person on the other side of the nutter must have breathed a sigh of relief at this stage because, as usual, the nutter had focussed all of his attention on me.

“Can I have my headphones?” I asked calmly.

He threw them into my lap in indignation and shouted.

“LISTEN TO ME!!!”

Because he was angry, I agreed to listen to him. He spent the next ten minutes telling me about alien invasions, evil doppelgangers and peculiar conspiracy theories. He punctuated his ranting with “DO YOU BELIEVE ME????”

I nodded in the hope that he would leave me alone – he didn’t. I’m sure that if I said “No,” he would have carried on ranting.

Of course, the rest of the train found my experience highly amusing and again some people were openly laughing. It was as if the nutter and I had been surrounded by a bubble impervious to sound; he was oblivious to everybody else and the mocking laughter that echoed around the train.

When the train finally stopped, I waited for the doors to open and a few people to get off, before leaping up at the last minute. I managed to get off the train before the nutter could react and follow me.

These days I am more aggressive to nutters; if one were to sit next to me in a pub I would get up and leave rather than being subjected to a one way humiliating tirade of abuse.

All this has got me wondering whether I have any physical properties that draw nutters to me. Have I got a kind face? Can they really read my mind? Am I an alien?

Ah – I think I may have it. I think it is my mad bad hair. It must be an antenna that draws nutters in. Perhaps if I shave it all off the nutters will leave me alone. Perhaps I’m like Samson – except my hair doesn’t give me strength; it is the nutter magnet.

Maybe I’m wrong though – perhaps it’s just me. Whatever the reason, I fear that nutters will still be drawn to me. I have never done anything to encourage them at all. I wonder whether I have an invisible tattoo on my forehead saying “I LOVE NUTTERS” that only they can read.

Anyway, I’m not the only one who suffers:

Listen here for the Birmingham commedian Jasper Carrott's experience of nutters: Nutter On The Bus

I know exactly how he feels.