Mushrooms

If I was the President of the United States of America, not only would that be fucking weird (imagine, a generally reclusive quiet boy from just off the Wirral – very much English but flirting with the Welsh border – as Commander in Chief of a totally alien nation), but also I would probably decide to ban mushrooms. And not just like the freaky hallucinogenic kind, but all mushrooms. Every single last one of the fuckers.

How might I achieve that? How could I, in all seriousness, arbitrarily put a blanket ban on something I personally don’t like and expect to get away it? Simple. There’s just a few things I’d need to do first. Mostly PR driven. For starters, I’d probably characterise them in a negative light…

“How is it that these mushrooms can keep growing on our soil? Mushrooms are a fungus. A FUNGUS! A parasite! Sucking the life force out of our good, great country.”

Disregarding the fact that all fungi aren’t necessarily parasitic, there’s enough of a connection there to dupe simple-thinking people into believing I know what I’m talking about. I could probably convince enough people who actually don’t have a problem with mushrooms that mushrooms are the worst foodstuff in the world and that they’ve always hated mushrooms even if they didn’t realise it.

When the mushroom lovers get up in arms and call me out for my dictatorial attitude towards mushrooms, I’ll point towards cases where people have choked and died, or gotten food poisoning and died after consuming a dish that contained mushrooms. I can’t recall any cases from memory and, sure, there may have been other ingredients involved, but the mushrooms? They’re the source of this bad stuff going down. After one mushroom-related death in an invented string of mushroom-related deaths, I’ll take to my podium and read out my carefully prepared statement…

“The office of Jamie P Walsh is calling for a complete and total shutdown of mushrooms, until we can figure out… just what the hell is going on!”

At some point, chefs and restaurateurs will challenge my anti-mushroom stance, with evidence of dishes enhanced by the use of mushrooms. Mushroom soups, stuffed mushrooms, side orders of fried mushrooms on steaks or breakfast plates. They’ll show me incontrovertible evidence of how people enjoy mushrooms prepared in various ways, whilst acknowledging that personal taste means that mushrooms aren’t for everyone. They’ll be very accepting of my palette and my personal non-preference for the things and appeal to my better sense of decency and understanding that I can allow other people to continue eating mushrooms, in spite of my own views. But then I’ll just respond…

“These ‘so-called’ ‘professional’ chefs keep telling me that the mushrooms are okay. They call themselves professional foodies, I call them fake. FAKE CHEFS! You like that word, fake? I invented it, believe me it’s true. You own a restaurant and you want to feed me mushrooms. More like death-shrooms. Have you even tried one? Who the hell thinks they taste good? That’s the kind of quality of food you wanna serve in your FAKE restaurant. Sad.”

All of a sudden, it’ll be all anyone can talk about: my mushroom rants. Forget the bigger problems, the ongoing story will in the public narrative will continue to be ‘what’s he said about mushrooms today?’ as opposed to, you know, ‘when is this mushroom-fixated lunatic going to fuck off and how can we bring that date closer?’

But it won’t matter, because me in my almighty sense of entitlement to my god-like power will continue to plow forward, not caring about anyone else’s thoughts, views or feelings (unless, obviously, they hate mushrooms too), inflicting my one-track minded worldview upon my millions: “I am the President of the United States, the guy at the centre of my own universe and therefore all of yours too. And I fuckin’ hate mushrooms.”

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High profile gigs are a nice way to discover newer artists you may be unfamiliar with, by way of support acts before the main event. This might sound unbelievably obvious, but as someone who doesn’t go to a lot of live shows, this is still something I’m getting accustomed to. Last week, however, I was taken aback by a warm-up act for Jeff Lynne’s ELO… mainly because the style was far different to Jeff Lynne’s ELO.

I imagine it must be difficult for support acts since a large portion of the audience haven’t paid and specifically come to see you, so there’s the added pressure of getting them on side as well as providing a bit of warm up entertainment. Fortunately, this guy – falling somewhere in between the likes of London Grammar and Years & Years – was every bit as impressive as to convince the crowd (myself included) that he very much belongs on the stage. More from him in future I hope.

Billy Lockett – Feels So Good