That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore

The grass crunched under my feet as I sprinted across fields crusted with frost; through pools of fog and sliding on my arse across some ice as I lost my footing and shrieked when for one horrible moment I thought I might go over on an ankle and be left lying in the middle of the moors, bathed in moonlight, at the mercy of Jim Delahunt. 

I had known it was his time of the month to turn as it was nearing a full moon and he’d begun again to let dribbling Celtic Minded lunatics onto Radio Clyde to yabber uninterrupted about Craig Whyte and the Rangers tax case. Of course Keevins was in his element and beamed at Delahunt even although he’d lost a finger to him only last month, and occasionally droned on himself in an adenoidal perpetuation of all the exaggerations, lies and subterfuge surrounding the sworn enemies of the Radio Clyde Super Scoreboard. Then Delahunt sprouted hair from his nose and choked back a growl as his finger nails stretched into talons, his gums drew back to reveal yellowing fangs and his shirt split to reveal a Celtic training top underneath. By this time of course I was out of the studio and heading for Ayrshire in my Mini Cooper. I should thank Radio Clyde for throwing me a bone when I’m alone, miserable, out of work and unemployable but I’ll swim in blood first before I let them fool me into sitting through Jim Delahunt turning into a werewolf again.

I’d become more cautious since the nasty fright I got after a razor mouthed creature had burst out of Joan McAlpine’s belly at Parkhead and I spent a sleepless couple of days in the air ducts under Celtic Park, playing tig with a ginger haired xenomorph while Graeme Souness tried to toast it with a flame thrower before Lawwell could recapture it and use it for his own nefarious purpose. I might talk about it one day and tell how the face hugger had been meant for me but crashed into poor old Joan’s house by accident or how the alien ripped out of McAlpine and grew at a terrible rate into a slevvering monster with two mouths until eventually we couldn't tell it apart from Joan herself but it’ll have to wait because the way things turned out, there was nothing funny about it – the whole episode was too traumatic to recount just yet and if it hadn’t been for Catriona Shearer appearing in an industrial exo-skeleton and telling the acid drooling McAlpine beast to ‘get away from her, bitch’ before kicking her ginger arse out an air duct then I might not have been around to appear on Radio Clyde to lay into the Rangers and further expose myself as a narcissistic fantasist with a wobbly take on reality. At least I have a nice middle class accent which makes proles like Keevins believe I know what I’m talking about when I mince on about something I have no idea about: usually finance, football, social science and sex with women.

Back to the moors though, I shouldn’t have worried about Delahunt coming for me as the moors were full enough with sheep, wee Jim’s favourite snack and I won’t tell you what he liked to do with them before tearing them apart. Well, okay, I will. ‘Fuck them and eat them,’ is what he told me, shame faced after the last full moon had passed and we could all relax again in the studio.

Luck was on my side on the moors with the fog lying low on the ground, the cloudless sky letting the moon burn so bright the frozen grass glistened like silver and allowing the perfect view of Delahunt casting glittering shadows as he stumbled across a bus load of Aberdeen fans that had stopped on its way back from a game to let the boys try and pull some of the local talent. If I had all the luck then the Aberdonians had none as Delahunt shredded them until a police wildlife patrol came along and sedated him and noting his Celtic top, hushed it up and instructed the passing BBC Scotland camera crew not to show the footage and to report the violence as being ‘football supporters’ instead of a black nosed, hairy arsed Celtic fan. The BBC Scotland crew, led by Chris McLaughlin just looked in bewilderment at the cops as if to say, do you really think that’s not what we’d have done anyway? Then they left to find a decent filter as they had to film Chris Daly later on and couldn’t risk any more cracked camera lenses. ‘Lisping prick,’ I heard one of them say as they left. ‘The cunt’s costing us a fortune we could be spending on more arty shots of rain soaked social deprivation with Ibrox Stadium in the background’ and then they took off, leaving me watching from a fog bank and wondering how I was going to get back to Ayrshire from here.