THE AAC BOOK OF PUBS TO AVOID IN SCOTLAND

AAC Publishing is an imprint that encourages motorists to celebrate the natural unspoilt beauty of the British countryside from the safety and comfort of their Peugeots. Among their forthcoming books are 'Penetrating Wales', 'The Illustrated Book of Discreet New Forest Car Parks', 'Britain's Best Coastal Hard Shoulders' and 'The AAC Book Of Pubs To Avoid In Scotland'. Among the unnecessarily hostile hostelries delineated within its 224 illuminating pages are the following:

THE CLOVEN HEAD, Dunwhool
A messy welcome awaits anyone with more than four teeth in this remorseless 19th Century boozer. They say the place is cursed by the souls of pagan virgins who were sacrificed by druids in the garden area, but that was in 1996 and this pub's been rough since it was built. The gents toilet was recently cobbled. Some say they actually eat dead babies.

THE MILKMAID IN LEGIRONS, Mungfurnock
THE WHITE HOLE, Bellow-on-the-Prank
THE SEVERED ARMS, Hoobles
THE BASTARD AND SHARP KNIFE, Deadburgh
THE RISING SHITE, Bollokin
THE CROSS LIMBS, John O'Guts
THE BLOODY HELL!, Manbroth
THE THUMPING COCKS, Splitkirk

A MIXTAPE I MADE FOR MYSELF circa 1997 AND FORGOT ALL ABOUT

1. SUPERGRASS Sun Hits The Sky
2. WILLIAM WALTON Crown Imperial Suite: The Battle Of Agincourt
3. IRON MAIDEN Phantom Of The Opera
4. SPICE GIRLS Last Time Lover
5. LED ZEPPELIN Custard Pie
6. ABBA Fernando
7. CRADLE OF FILTH The Forest Whispers My Name
8. TORI AMOS Father Lucifer
9. SLEEP Dragonaut
10. ALUMINIUM SERVANTZ Dave Tanton
11. THE RUTLES Nevertheless

12. BIKER SCOUT That Riff
13. ANATHEMA Read Between The Lies
14. TOM JONES What's New Pussycat?
15. DEEP PURPLE Maybe I'm A Leo
16. HELMET FBLA
17. AMAZING BLONDEL Pavan
18. QUEEN My Fairy King
19. FEAR FACTORY Genetic Blueprint (New Breed)
20. BRUCE DICKINSON Freak/Starchildren
21. CATHEDRAL Fire
22. TYPE O NEGATIVE My Girlfriend's Girlfriend
23. SPICE GIRLS The Power Of Five
24. MARK AYRES Ghost Light

CARRY ON MATRON (Rank 1972)

Critical reappraisal of the Carry On films has gone through many phases since they came to an undignified and sloppy ending with the ghastly Carry On Emmannuelle in 1978. Throughout the '80s they were either ignored or scorned as a bit of regrettable tat that kept the unsophisticated lower orders amused but didn't warrant any serious attention. Stuck-up ponce Leslie Halliwell's original Film Guides sum up the wearisome snobbery of the 'discerning' cineast, with his derisive sneering at their crude, "ragbag" populism. In his Diaries, Kenneth Williams himself fell into this line of thinking, the prick. By the '90s, we were told, they'd become a 'cult' - whatever that actually means other than "some people watch them on video" - with certain titles like Cleo (1965), Screaming (1966), Up The Khyber (1968) and maybe Nurse (1959) attaining a kind of semi-ironic respect. "Yeah, we all know they're shit, but they're alright when you get back from the boozer" etc.

Still though, like Hammer horror films, there exists a snobbish disdain for the Carry Ons of the 1970s. It's true that as the first half of the decade passed the Carry Ons lost many regular players - Charles Hawtrey being excommunicated after 1972, Sid James, Hattie Jacques, Barbara Windsor and writer Talbot Rothwell bowing out after 1973 - but the 1970-75 period contains some of the best films in the series, and ergo, some of the greatest comedy films ever made. Case in point: although invariably overlooked in favour of earlier medical Carry Ons, Carry On Matron is a fantastic farce, with a cracking extended cast giving a little more than their usual all. The entire Carry On team (minus Peter Butterworth and I suppose Jim Dale) is in this one, and they all wring floods of laughter out of Rothwell's audaciously-plotted script.

In fact, y'know, Talbot Rothwell deserves to be spoken of among the greatest British comedy writers. Plots as ludicrous as this can't be easy to co-ordinate, especially not with such a gigantic number of speaking characters, all of whom have their own crazy little stories going on. Of course, the Carry On team were just about the most talented concentration of British comedy performers that has ever been assembled, so they can get the best out of a string of admittedly hoary gags that probably pre-date Music Hall, but nobody ever gives him credit for building the team's personas, for recognising the performer's natural strengths and playing to them beautifully. Nobody ever mentions his winks to the audience, little lines that acknowledge and parody the absurdity of the weird fantasy Carry On world.

Sid James was used to playing small-time crooks - it's what made him famous - but here his character is boldly unlikeable. He emotionally blackmails his own son into helping him steal contraceptives from a maternity hospital by forcing him to dress up as a nurse, complete with black lace knickers. It's a fucking mental idea, and they all know it. One of those little nods to the audience comes just as Sid is trying to convince Cyril to put on the frilly undergarments:

CYRIL: Couldn't I go in dressed as a male orderly?
SID: Are you raving mad? Whoever heard of a male orderly wearing black lace knickers!

And with Sid cackling in the face of plain common sense, the Carry On world gets back on track.

In that world, Kenneth Williams plays a hypochondriac surgeon who feverishly consults himself for evidence of Asian flu and diseases of the bowels (incidentally, the face he pulls and the voice he uses while staring madly at his textbook and intoning "Diseeeases of the boooowels..." - that's what I'm talking about right there, that's why Carry On Matron is at least as good as any film you think you prefer). He begins to suspect that he might be turning into a woman, which is just a scream. He decides he has to prove himself as a man by having sex with Matron, so he bursts in on her while she's watching television with psychiatrist Charles Hawtrey (he hides in the cupboard, still smoking his cigar) and begs her for it. Matron has always really fancied Sir Bernard, so although she's concerned that Charles Hawtrey is in the cupboard, she visibly weakens and is torn between succumbing to this sudden outpouring of desire and getting Charles Hawtrey out of the fucking cupboard. Hattie is a revelation in this, playing a much gentler, more rounded (ho ho!) Matron than she was ever previously allowed. No fearsome battleaxe here, she plays a real, decent woman with authority and heart and she plays it with beautiful restraint. You feel for her when she tells Kenneth Williams "I am a simple woman with simple tastes and I want to be wooed!" You feel her disappointment when Kenneth snaps back "Ooh, you can be as wuuude as you like with me!"

It's just funny.

Then there's Sid's little gang - Bernard Bresslaw doing very little but getting massive laughs every time he's on screen (watch him when Sid's on the phone saying "You went to the GENTS to pin up your KNICKERS?") and the lovely, untroubled Bill Maynard with his infectious laugh. The argument they have about London bus routes is one of the greatest instances of being sidetracked by obsessive banality in the entire history of British comedy (another would be Python's Arthur 'Two Sheds' Jackson). Barbara Windsor's great too, again just playing a convincing pleasant young lady but a fearless Rothwell gives her the line "I don't fancy being a gangster's moll!" which is a hoot. Terry Scott is always great, but his entire character is more or less another nod to the audience - this podgy, pudding-bowl-haired middle-aged schoolboy has to play a predatory Lothario who beds all the student nurses. This makes his persistent pursuit of Cyril - the lad dressed as a nurse - even more disturbing. But his timing's spot on, especially the bit where he says "pinning up her knicker-er-no...". Brilliant.

Special mention must also go to the scene where Charles Hawtrey and Kenneth Williams are having a blazing row about Matron's affections and then they discover that they're both Newts - some frighteningly plausible arcane secret society that sounds like a cross betwen the Freemasons and the Cub Scouts. It's not every film that contains the line "I am a Grand Salamander Newt of the Watford Pond! Glub glub!"

And Sid's face when he walks in on Cyril, still dressed as a nurse, snogging Barbara Windsor. "Cor blimey" is technically what he says, but it undergoes so many convolutions and emerges as a genuinely breathless exhalation, his face a priceless blend of utter shock and confused excitement.

I mean, I could go on. Carry On Matron fucking rules.

REVEREND BIZARRE 'III: So Long Suckers' (Spinefarm 2007)

So the Reverend's mission is terminated, and concluding his journey through doom's strange horizons is this gargantuan double-disc coda featuring seven songs in over two hours. For a band who were always so candid about the essentially derivative and prescriptive nature of their craft, their singular personality is manifest, from the sarcastic, unorthodox title to the creep, potty atmospheric outro. Even weirder, the album begins with a series of unashamed stoner rock grooves the like of which haven't been heard since Man's Ruin folded; soon enough, of course, they sink deep into the melancholic mire, yet there's always a twinkle in these lads' eyes. Perhaps frontman Albert's self-professed depression is actually what makes this music sound so consistently life-affirming; there's no wallowing in misery here, just a liberating plunge into lurid, cathartic heaviosity with the same blend of eccentricity and conviction that characterises the best doom metal, be it Cathedral, Solstice, Corrupted or Thergothon.

The first disc is the weaker of the two - it seems the songs are only so long because they had so many ideas lying around that needed to be used up. However, though they have an element of the aimless jam about them, this 'everything must go!' approach doesn't make the songs seem uneven and meandering as much as it lends them a poignant-but-urgent vitality - all the more so because the recording doesn't seem to stop in the gaps between tunes. Disc two, however, is virtually flawless. 'One Last Time', 'Caesar Forever' and 'Anywhere Out Of This World' are brilliantly-structured, compelling epics with inter-band dynamics at maximum crackle, possibly the best songs the band ever recorded. Each member excels both individually and together; Peter Vicar's basswork is thunderous and imaginative, Earl Void's drumming punctuates and devastates with tight-but-loose precision, Albert's riffs slither and engorge with a much fatter and darker tone than previously and his vocals reach an all-time high, expressive and emotive but alien and deranged.

There is an air of cynical impermanence about most band splits these days, like they've already got the reunion tour booked three years in advance. It might be naivete, but it doesn't seem that way with Reverend Bizarre. They've made their point, and these monstrous, impassioned last rites ram it home more powerfully than ever before.