Wage To The Slave

This idea of white folks paying reparations to the ancestors of black slaves got me rather worried. I’ll be honest, I have never checked whether the ancient Walkers were slave owners, it’s not something that tends to come up at Family History coffee mornings. In an effort to investigate possible atrocities in my distant past I talked to my eldest relatives who couldn’t ever recall family pictures with Africans in chains, but did show a liking for a former Black Panther turned comedian by the name of Charlie Williams. Undeterred, I typed ‘Walker slaves’ into Google, whereupon I found the story of Quock Walker, who was bought as an infant by a Massachusetts landowner and sued him when he wasn’t set free at 25 as promised. Quock was given his freedom and fifty pounds, which to be truthful is all I’ve ever wanted out of life.

It got me to thinking about what reparations I might be due, and so, in the absence of any claim on my estate by previously owned people, I am launching my own reparations suit.

Stephen Volk (£500,000 in hurt feelings and a new Trev and Simon DVD)

You may not recognise the name, but this vicious bastard wrote the one-off BBC drama Ghostwatch, which starred lovable Going Live! presenter Sarah Greene. In this drama, staged as a spoof live feed from a supposedly haunted house in London, Sarah Greene played herself, reporting on the ground from the spook house, and eventually being shown crawling into an understairs cupboard where an evil, murdering ghost called Mr Pipes was waiting to kill her and allow her corpse to be slowly eaten by starving cats. Being an aficionado of Going Live! I was horrified and had nightmares for nearly five years. I now own possibly the only signed photo of Sarah Greene which includes the dedication ‘To Kirsty, See, I’m alive!’.

Also in this category :
Kerry Stevenson’s mum, who allowed me to watch Nightmare on Elm Street 3 at her 8th birthday party.

My Dad (A signed confession and 80% in the will)

For the following atrocities:

Telling me as a child that when the ice cream van played its chimes it meant it had run out of ice cream.

Not buying me a Poochie for Christmas 1990, believing instead that I would prefer a full size snooker table.

Insisting on us catching a local Spanish bus to visit ‘El Parc Dinosaurio’, which resulted in us riding right past said park and spending four hours in a backwater town trying to find the bus back to Palma Nova whilst being accosted by gypsies selling lucky herbs.

Telling me that the Easter Bunny turned evil if you were still awake when he came.

Massimo Taibi (£250,000 and a free shot at his groin with a medicine ball)

In May 1999 United finished off a glorious treble, so why, when I recall that footballing year can I only focus on the farcical efforts of Italy’s answer to Mr Bean. When Alex Ferguson assured us that Taibi would have no trouble filling Schmeichel’s shoes, we had no idea it was because he was used to wearing oversized clown clogs at the weekends. A snake would have done better against the marshmallow shots of Chelsea on that miserable Saturday in October, when they trounced us 5-0 and all of it down to the lunacy of Taibi. He let in 11 goals in four games before he was finally laid low by way of a tranquiliser dart and put in a crate stamped ‘Reggina’.

And in brief:

Suede – £12.99 back for ‘A New Morning’, that piece of shit masquerading as their fifth album.

My Mum - £1,000 for telling me that when she thought the Russians were going to drop the bomb in 1982 she planned to crush up on overdose of paracetamol into my Horlicks to spare me the horrors of fallout.

(By the way, I have done some further checks into the possibility of my family owning slaves, and in looking through my Dad’s record collection I found one by Kool and the Gang. Case closed, free of guilt!)