Free My Shit Life So Far by Frankie Boyle

the gates without going in, like a lunatic. Each time I would have some little stories and jokes and stuff that I’d go over in my head on the way to school. It wasn’t that I thought I could get anywhere with them—they were a couple of years older and one of them was dating a huge and disturbing Chinese guy who worked as a bouncer. It was more that making women laugh was pretty much all they’d let me do to them—so I really threw myself into it.
    I was always able to make people laugh. In fact I remember at school being able to make them laugh really hard. Imagine nowadays if you were only happy with your gig if you’d made someone spit their drink out, or made milk shoot out of their nose. If a joke worked with one girl I’d keep it and maybe add something for the next one—working a little bit like a real comedian and driven by horniness. Actually, exactly like a real comedian.
    I was really into The Comic Strip Presents when it was on Channel 4 and Saturday Night Live . I seemed to be the only person in school who watched any of that stuff. It’s easy to forget that while alternative comedy is now the mainstream, at the time it was a real minority interest.
    It was watching Ben Elton that first made me aware of green issues. People give him a lot of stick now because he wrotesome Queen musical that causes cancer, but I think he did a really good job of introducing green politics to a generation. Also, he wrote Blackadder , so he could write a musical about Ian Huntley and he’d still be alright by me. I’m always amazed that people aren’t more horrified by things like the ice caps melting.
    To me it feels like living in a nightmare. It’s just as well Scott of the Antarctic wasn’t setting off nowadays. It’d be a pretty boring journal. ‘Day 1. Got there. Day 2. Came home. Went to pub.’ Now if you get to the South Pole you can bring it home in a flask.
    As soon as the sun comes out we are faced with the usual tabloid headlines about scorching weather. Wouldn’t it be great for a tabloid front page to cover hot weather with a picture of a girl in a bikini with the headline ‘Global Warming Forces Desperate Polar Bears to Eat Each Other’? Changing weather patterns mean that animals are going to start to migrate differently. Personally I look forward to seeing Bill Oddie going to do some birdwatching in Norfolk and getting his head ripped off by a puma.
    I’m not sure I trust science to get us out of this mess. We tend to put all our faith in science these days. Scientists are planning to build a vault on the moon that contains details of crop growing and instructions for metal smelting so that survivors of a nuclear war or an asteroid collision could restart civilisation. There’s just one small problem I see with this plan—how are a ragtag band of survivors meant to access a vault on the fucking moon? I already have a detailed plan of action for coping withglobal warming when it really starts to affect Scotland. I’m going to remove a couple of jumpers.
    Actually, I think the most sensible thing to do to find out how the planet is going is to have a friend who’s a scientist. When he takes up smoking it’s time to worry. Or when he suddenly goes for a visit to the moon with all of his scientist friends.
    ‘Just going for the weekend, John? You seem to be taking a lot of canned goods…?’
    I’d say my overall outlook for the future is pessimistic. Here’s a theory of mine. You know how years ago David Bowie used to always be slightly ahead of the curve? He covered the Velvet Underground just before people heard of them, and seemed to be riding each new wave of the zeitgeist? Even Tin Machine could be seen as him trying to do grunge slightly too early. Well, my theory is the government captured Bowie and replaced him with a lookalike. They keep the real Bowie in a big glass prison room, like Hannibal Lecter, so they can observe him and predict future trends. I reckon everybody is shitting