In Fleet Street, a journalist siphons strychnine into his fountain pen preparing to plunge it into the back of Andy Murray. Out in the countryside, carts laden with putrid fruit rumble towards stocks, flanked by pundits and former tennis players. In the suburbs, commuters shiver in the gloom sneering, “Told you so; just another Tim Henman”.  This is Schadenfreude on a grotesque national scale. All over Britain flying Hyenas are shitting on Andy Murray’s pedestal.

In the kingdom of insecurity, one man’s achievements are another man’s failures. The successful are shiny full-length mirrors that reflect a life of under achievement for the bitter and twisted. Felicity is eroded by years of regret, each day a callous reminder of faded ambition. The commute to work – a ride on the ghost train – pinstripe ghouls with eyes that glow like red light bulbs in Soho. The office – a civilised concentration camp – where the Starbucks’ Gestapo project-manage your coronary. The weekend…an empty grey caravan that sits in the rain. This is your Stygian world if you let a pique fester into a disorder.

So our advice for the jealous and resentful: instead of spewing pernicious bile, try to be positive and transform your own life. Don’t project your failings onto the dreams of others.

You have been reading a condescending excerpt from “Haggis McSpurter’s Self-Help Manual”, available in all good bookshops.

Louis Theroux: all limbs and glasses – a speccy orang-utan swinging through the alleyways of American culture. The late 1990s in his Gonzo pomp; fraternising with a gaggle of swingers, evangelists and neo-Nazis – subtly exposing the soiled cod piece of Middle America. Next stop the faded prom lights of Blackpool; sketching furtive portraits of showbiz casualties – Paul Daniels, Keith Harris, Jimmy Savile – brilliant award-winning voyeurism. Then whhhhoooosssshh…a deafening void of nothing for years. Before tip toeing back onto our screens with a handful of prosaic, “grown-up” documentaries, buried deep in BBC2’s autumn schedule – hardly the clarion call of a man on the comeback trail.

So following this television hiatus and an unconvincing return as a “serious” journo, where does Louis Theroux go from here?

Since Louis’ heyday, in the late 90s, the media and political landscape has changed dramatically. Now every polemic, red neck and religious zealot has their own private TV station: YouTube – a digital soapbox from which any garrulous amoeba can broadcast tripe. Societies casualties no longer need the middleman (Theroux) to funnel their lunacy onto the small screen. They have a bigger, unedited canvas that can be viewed by millions free of charge. Unfortunately technology has leap-frogged Theroux, and consigned his Freudian freak show to a dusty trunk in the attic of “Cool Britannia”.

Politically, the banking collapse and 9/11 has cast a dark shadow over the prairies of the Midwest. Since Louis’ last visit, the dust bowl has become dustier and the cattle leaner. America is no longer enjoying an economic and ideological bubble bath. Confidence and ledger shattered, Obama is bravely administering CPR on an ailing super power. Suddenly the antics of an Oxford graduate cavorting with a mud wrestler appear frivolous, and incongruous with the mood of a nation. There are grander more pertinent issues to tackle, and Louis knows it:

“I’m [Theroux] 35 years old, I’ve got a baby, I’ve got a house. When I started doing this I was 23, working for Michael Moore. I’m a different person from what I was. I’ve got different priorities. I need to keep myself interested, trying to take subjects that are a tiny bit more mature.“

The problem is he’s no Michael Moore, or even Nick Broomfield. He’s too emm… sensitive. In his recent crime specials, he tried to be intrepid and gutsy. But it had no verisimilitude – a bit like Ronnie Corbett playing Beowulf at the Old Vic. In Law and Disorder in Philadelphia he was cowering in a bulletproof bodice, visibly shaken by ghetto violence, lacking the sangfroid to pry any gold dust from Philly’s hoodlums. Louis is too humane to detach himself from the bloody syringes and spent cartridges that litter America’s slums. But you can’t fault him for being artistically cavalier and trying to reinvent himself as a frontline journalist.
 
So where does he go from here? Theroux’s forte is in-depth character studies. He excels when he uses his Freudian scalpel, some might say insidiously, to dissect the brain of life’s curve balls (another reason why his recent documentaries faltered is that they were choked with extras; his earlier films preyed on one or two unsuspecting lab rats). Unfortunately, after the success of  “When Louis Met…” celebs got wise to his mischievous charms, and are now reluctant to be shackled in the village stocks for an hour. Perhaps an intellectual chat show or an arts program on BBC2 might warrant an artistic resurrection. But then again, Auntie’s bloomers are tattered right now, and the seamstress General is skint.

Recently, the faint throbbing of jungle drums have been heard over Shepherd’s Bush; the air ripe with tales of a Heather Mill’s documentary. It’s the kind of high profile shupazz that could hurl Theroux back into the limelight. But does he want that? His 2010 book is titled “May Contain Traces of Nuts: A Year in the Life of a Minor TV Celebrity”. We get the feeling he’s weary of being part of the story, and is fumbling around in the artistic gloom searching for a sign post marked “Louis Theroux 2010 ->”.

Louis is intelligent and creative; he will find a way round this career roadblock. In February 2009, he signed a contract to produce another 10 documentaries for the BBC. Let’s hope his next batch of programs is as intriguing and amusing as his initial folly into the world of porn stars, UFO spotters and black supremacists. Louis, please march into new creative territory; but play to you’re strengths – because you’re no John Simpson.

I realised Susan Boyle’s fame had rocketed into the stratosphere after watching Jay Leno’s parody of her on The Tonight Show last year. It was demonstrative proof that her career would surpass the life expectancy of a house fly. One year on and her star is incandescent – leaving a posse of rappers, DJs and girl bands squinting in her wake. At present, Boyles’ debut album (I dreamed a dream) is number one in the US charts, having sold 3 million copies, and is receiving favourable reviews from even the most haughty of critics. It appears this pug-faced chanter’s 15 minutes of fame has been granted a reprieve.

Two years ago, Susan Boyle was slinking around the streets of Blackburn, fearful that a fusillade of stones and teenage insults would reign down on her. She was flirting with depression and anxiety, unemployed, and peering glumly at the embers of middle age. Yip; life was shit. Two years later, she is flirting with depression and anxiety, shackled to a stressful job and sheltering from a broadside of media intrusion. Yip, life is still shit; but now she’s rich and famous.

So is Susan Boyle happier now? Fame is not a cure for melancholy; it’s a psychological Lemsip that masks the symptoms of a perturbed mind. Once the red carpets are rolled up and the flash bulbs dim, Boyle will need a deeper, purer well of felicity. For most people, contentment is a salad of friends, family and monogamy. I suspect that conjugal bliss is the correct prescription for Boyle’s malady – a lengthy dose of unconditional love.

Many poltroons believe Boyle is content because she has realised her dream of becoming a professional singer. Singing is Boyle’s passion, but it’s not her panacea. Culture is littered with artists who have reached the zenith of their profession, only to be sabotaged by a fragile disposition – van Gogh, Slyvia Plath, Nick Drake. Fulfilling a dream does not include an extended warranty of mirth. Dreams are sub-conscious fantasies; bliss a tactile emotion. Artisans love to indulge in past times in which they excel; it massages their ego and coddles their id. But it is only one piece in the subtle mosaic that constitutes happiness.

Simon Cowell argues that the end justifies the means, i.e. Susan Boyle is happier now that she’s famous, despite enduring a mental implosion in the process. This is pure Tony Blair subterfuge. I suspect Cowell’s post-fame strategy is also vaporous – a leather-bound dossier of unreturned phone calls and faded premiers. Will he be around to comfort Boyle when the Tsunami of public affection evaporates – leaving her forlorn, clutching a roll and square sausage in Beverly Hills? I doubt it. His agenda is narcissistic. He will be predisposed with vanity; plotting his next campaign of prime time annexation; Boyle just another carriage return on his CV.

We love Susan Boyle the myth. We don’t really know Susan Boyle, but we crave her mythology. She’s the wee granny who huddled at the back of the church, sookin’ mint imperials, and then went on to conquer the pop world. Like many other maudlin saps I’m happy to accept a cameo in her saccharine fairy tale.

I just hope Miss Boyle finds true contentment. I believe regional theatre productions would have satisfied her thespian urges, and a carapace of anonymity. The lurid glitz of Mulholland Drive and the truculent hacks in Fleet Street may grapple with her sanity. Imagine in 10 years time the pot Boyler has a residency in Vegas: loafing in her Winnebago with a single fish and a bottle of Wild Turkey. She reaches for a rolled-up Clydesdale tenner and snorts a winding trail of Daz Ultra. Oh dear. As John Lennon lamented, on his first solo album following the dissolution of The Beatles, “the dream is over…”.

Europeans like to visit Switzerland when they feel like dying. Oh; and Phil Collins lives there too. I sincerely hope the baldy drummer hasn’t signed a record deal with Dignitas. Imagine your last moments on Earth were spent listening to the soundtrack for Buster. Thinking about that inspires me to stick my head in an oven.

In Australia, people don’t give much thought to Europe – never mind Switzerland. So as the Swiss discuss the impact of Islamic minarets on their society, Ozzys are enjoying a sausage sizzle and nurturing melanomas. They don’t really care about foreign affairs, especially in Western Australia (a.k.a. Wait Awhile). As long as the sun comes up, then everything’s fine. That mammoth apricot star, high in the powder blue sky, is their panacea – the rest of the world a distant mirage that toils in the haze.

The Sun is a soporific. It slows you down; pilfers your ambition; melts you into a listless pool of supine tomorrows. Its anodyne qualities are soothing, but lashing rain and frosty mornings engender bite, caustic wit – a spinning maelstrom of creativity. Sun drenched days gently drift and lilt, a mellifluous haze of artistic reverie. We need an edge.

Bloated space veteran William Shatner once mused, “You know that pain and guilt can’t be taken away with a wave of a magic wand. They’re the things we carry with us, the things that make us who we are. If we lose them, we lose ourselves. I don’t want my pain taken away! I need my pain!” Guess what? He was right; Spock was wrong; and Sulu likes suckin’ c*ck – who would have thought?

Forgive my ramble into the dunes of meteorological chicanery. But you need an edge in life – whither it’s mental, physical or spiritual. It drives us forward. Sometimes it’s manifestations are nefarious: Hitler, Stalin; sometimes wonderful: Martin Luther King, Ghandi. For every fetid wastrel, there is a selfless hero. This is the Faustian pact we make with human nature. But we need an edge. Otherwise we would loaf about all day – surfing, drinking and talking about sport. Nothing would get done. Hmm…sounds like somewhere I know.

For voyeurs and narcissists, Facebook is a digital Xanadu – the Internet equivalent of getting undressed in the bedroom with the curtains open. Except now your audience isn’t just the local peeping tom, but a bevy of discarded friends and workmates from yesteryear.

Deep within, our subconscious harbours an irresistible urge to be a conceited voyeur: it’s reassuring to discover that wee Jimmy from Primary 6 is still a fat loser, and that the once gorgeous Jenny is a now a frumpy hag. We sit smugly in front of our PC, exulting our school chums descent into middle-aged oblivion. Suddenly our mundane trudge through life feels slightly lighter under foot. Pathetic, eh?

For the narcissist, it’s a chance to assemble a mosaic of a fantasy life; all your flattering photos and favourite sound bites mixed into a pot pourri of happiness – nights out, holidays, gigs – look at me; my life is one non-stop Mardi Gras. Yet when you peer through the smoke and mirrors you’ll discover, more often than not, a facsimile of contentment. A vain digital urge to keep up with Joneses; where the privet hedges, white fences and BMWs have been replaced with the cold whirr of a spinning hard drive.

For those who require constant validation of there own self worth, the obligatory wall comment is a panacea: “Just back from a luxurious city break in Milan”. It also doubles as a dais for the opinionated; who delight in having a captive audience, of sycophants, who will humour their rants and massage their ego: “Aren’t women drivers just the worst!!! Today I was parking…”. Yawn.

Societies’ casualties, forsaken friends and ex-lovers all lurk in the shadows of cyberspace. Social networking sites are portals for these disenchanted souls, where they can reconnect with you under the guise of long lost amity. Beware! An innocent looking friend request, from teenage sweetheart Tanya, may open a wormhole into a past life you no longer care to remember. Father time can be scathing.

Then there’s Twitter: the retarded in-bred cousin of Facebook, who can only grunt in 250 words or less. Banality personified, do I really want to read that Chevy Chase has taken a dump? What’s next – Amoeba-babble: where you communicate by shutting your eyelid like the dude in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly? Call me traditional, but I believe the Internet was created so that man could surf porn and abuse himself, in the seclusion of his own bedroom, with the curtains tightly drawn. Now that’s the type of self-indulgent, narcissism that is permissible.

Once I owned a plastic fish; it was nice and orange. Then it went for a swim in the porcelain abattoir, swooshing through the pipes and U-bends of regret, rolling, turning, spinning, screaming before flopping onto a rotten pile of mulch on Saltcoats beach. Columns of rain drilled its glistening corpse, flying hyenas circled the ashen skies. Then it was gone – upwards, upwards, upwards, lost deep in the barren howls and caws of Western Scotland.

I dreamt that last night. My penchant for toasted cheese as a late night snack is now under review, as is my weakness for imbibing Lidl’s table wine just before beddy-baws. Organic alchemy somehow transmuted cheese and wine into LSD in my brain. Emancipating your subconscious can be a harrowing odyssey, or it can be rather pleasant. Maybe I need to buy more expensive vino or switch to Sainsbury’s Camembert; then I will REM of a Scottish Xanadu where I’m loafing on an exotic beach, being served a Mai Tai by Marilyn Monroe. Then again, the wrong cheese and, it could be Andy Cameron wearing hot pants on the turd-ridden sands of Ayr.

Perhaps abstinence is the most judicious course of action. But you see, I do love my cheese. Cheddar primarily; good old-fashioned mature cheddar, gouged from the cow pales of the Scottish Isles. Mull is a wee stoater, and Orkney has me salivating like Pavlov’s dog outside Westminster Abbey. My favourite concoction is the Mother’s Pride outsider, suffocated by an avalanche of Oban mature, grilled and then tsunamid with Lea & Perrins Worcestershire sauce. If I ever bludgeoned Joe Pasquale with a mace, it would be my last meal on death row. So let us hail the exalted patriarch of heart disease – cheese – the only food that’s worth dying for, and dreaming for.

It’s 7am, 19 January 2009: according to psychologists the most depressing day of the year.

Engulfed in darkness, I’m bent over my car windscreen chipping away at a shiny blanket of ice. The crystal shavings tumble downwards, stinging my hands into a milky numbness. I curse at misplacing my gloves and start to fantasise about returning to bed. “Mornin’”, grunts my next-door neighbour as he emerges from his concrete igloo. “Mornin’”, I reply. Silence follows… The perfunctory morning ritual is over and we can return to being strangers again.

20 miles later and I’m stationary on the A80 – part of a miserable procession of family saloon cars crawling to work. I peer out the passenger window in the hope of seeing something different from the previous 50 days. I don’t. It’s the same sulky patchwork of muddy fields, electric pylons and sheep. In front of me an ailing Mondeo splutters petrol and smoke onto the frosty asphalt. I sigh, lean back and rest my eyes. Slowly, a smile begins to creep across my face; pursued by a gentle laugh that reverberates around the car interior. A familiar and soothing voice is coaxing me out of the shadows:

 “Janet and John…”,

“Janet remarked…”,

“John protested…”,

I’m listening to Terry Wogan, aka The Togmeister, on his Wake up to Wogan breakfast show. By the time I reach work the storm clouds have abated and I’m ready to face the day; all courtesy of El Tel’s jovial banter. His whimsical musings have shepherded me through countless nuclear winters, and I will miss his companionship when he leaves morning radio at Yuletide. Wogars, in the interests of the UK publics’ mental health, please reconsider your abdication. Your departure may cause a swift increase in the number of prescriptions being dispensed for Prozac.

I’ve started writing a novel. It will explore 2 major themes:

1. The decline in moral values in post-Zeitgeist Western society and it’s implications for future generations
2. Chicks with big diddies

Imagine the creators of Ghandi collaborated with the team behind Porkys – a surreal juxtaposition that will appeal to readers’ minds and their crotches.

These are the kind of crazy ideas you come up with while you’re waiting for your VISA to be processed. You start to go a bit loopy. Working is forbidden and you slowly slide into the immigration Twilight Zone:

“A dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. The middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, that lies between the pit of man’s fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination.”

Whew, sounds a blast; so why in reality is it actually pretty dull?

Well it’s as stimulating as you want it to be. You can merrily skip along the path towards intellectual enlightenment, or trudge aimlessly through a mire of daytime television and happy hours. Being self-motivated and inventive is the key to survival; otherwise you will quickly nose-dive towards catatonic vegetable. Here’s what happens if you don’t get up before 11am:

TV Days
Using a Fluorescent marker pen you zig-zag you route to oblivion across the TV guide. Mexican soap operas and cooking shows play out the daily soundtrack of your life – an incessant hum of nothing. Slumped on the couch, cosy in your pizza stained tracksuit bottoms, the outside world plays out it’s game. You are a slave to the flat screen tyrant of mediocrity.

Happy Hours
Perched on a rickety bar stool you talk about very little to a complete stranger. The clock ticks…tocks…office workers drift by the windows munching Panninis. Little Creatures nibble on your liver, slowly gnawing away at the last vestiges of youth. Nodding bartenders, dirty glasses, bored shift workers – the landscape of loneliness. Finally, stumbling into the light, sweaty and blurred – an ode to endless summers.

OK, so I sound like Sylvia Plath on a wet bank holiday afternoon. But if you’re in VISA limbo, heed my dark tales of woe, and get your mind jogging on an intellectual treadmill. Otherwise, you may become an emissary for blamange.

My hands felt sticky, victims of too many sweets and sugary coffee, and I wondered if excessive farting was a symptom of type 2 diabetes. Several stinky pumps later and her indoors had cranked the air con up to “MAX” – in a bid to freeze my ass cheeks like Han Solo in The Empire Strikes Back. Yes folks; us Perth city slickers were driving northwards into the wilderness, in a mid-price compact, to see The Pinnacles.

After devouring a sack of gummi bears, my pituitary gland began to scream “WATER!!!! WATER!!!!”. My partner in crime had only packed girly juice – water flavoured with dandelion and other pressed flowers that Elton John likes. So I was faced with the prospect of having to sell one of my kidneys to afford “man water” from a service station. My other half, meanwhile, was getting hungry; so we agreed to stop at the next garage on route.

By then, the rain was hammering down like Thor playing the Xylophone and the roadside was a slur of red mud, punctuated with the carcasses of Jay walking kangaroos. I peered through the slosh and saw a knife and fork symbol on a road sign up ahead (images of pot-bellied truck drivers, ravishing meat pies and tepid coffee swirled around my cranium) then beside it the town name – Eneabba. I thought that’ll do and squelched off the highway at the next exit, heading for a town I couldn’t pronounce.

Eneabba: Population 250, Signs of Life 0. Imagine a one-horse town, then imagine a Shetland pony, then imagine a colt from Lilliput, then imagine Ronnie Corbett riding a horse embryo. Welcome to Eneabba. The local service station was a testament to financial neglect – a crumbling cacophony of tin and wrought iron. Outside it, the local DNA deprived urchins plopped around in the mud, seeing who could light a cow turd first. This was a redneck Galapagos – I half expected a woman with four tits and a moustache to walk round the corner.

After deciphering the cave drawings on the petrol pump I ventured inside to settle up with my abacus, a hat and a mirror. My other half was already in there, leaning over the Bain-marie, salivating at the local slop. I peered inside the green house of fat and my arteries began to tighten in anticipation. We both plumped for a sweaty sausage roll – a one-finger salute to Medicare.

Following lunch, my stomach was about to erupt like Vesuvius and I could put it off no longer – I splashed through the rain puddles heading for the stink hut pretentiously titled “W.C.”. I tentatively pushed back the wooden saloon door to reveal a chamber of horrors. Imagine you had to use a portaloo at a Slayer concert after John Candy had squeezed out a toffee coloured log. Some nights I still wake up in a cold sweat, pyjamas soiled, quaking at the thought of that little boy’s room.

Later that night and we’re back home; snug in our city centre apartment, sipping Merlot and watching “Farmer wants his nuts”. Ahh…the joys of cosy domesticism. The Pinnacles was memorable, but in a perverse way I will always cherish our brief sojourn to Eneabba. It was an honest little eye sore full of character and decrepit charm. A rural 2 fingers to a world of plastic surgery, global branding, late night shopping, day light savings, evolution and clean toilets.

My face ignited as I pounded the steering wheel with clenched fists, bellowing “YOU ARSEHOLE!!!” at the 4×4 in front. Roadside, smartly dressed office workers were pointing, shaking their heads, and giggling at my flailing limbs. I was behaving like the Incredible Hulk after 10 tarry Espressos, and my Monday morning commute was descending into a fairground freak show.

I’m blessed with a mellow disposition, but any encounter with a moronic driver goads my alter ego (road rage man) into meltdown – I transform into a pasty Ben Hur, hurtling through the streets of Perth in an air-conditioned chariot. So as part of my driving anger management therapy  (an American euphemism for how to stop being a dick head behind the wheel) I jotted down Perth’s most irritating asphalt junkies:

Bogans [aka Chavs/Neds]
Mullet-wearing simpletons that drive pimped-up Utes. There’s a minimum wage retard that lives downstairs from me. He drives a garish Ute – it’s Lilly-pink, tyres as thick as an elephant’s cock and boasts 4 dilated, rumbling exhaust pipes. Driving it, he looks like a gay Mad Max. This urban amoeba roars past my bedroom window at 5am…every morning. Sometimes I wish Ebay sold bazookas.

Pensioners
Senile dwarfs with skin that is somewhere between sun-dried tomato and leather rag. These urn-dodgers crawl along the highway with the speed of a crippled tortoise, leaving a trail of fish oil capsules in their wake. Stuck behind them, a 5-minute journey can become an arse-numbing odyssey. Wrinkly old timers should be in the house watching “Murder She Wrote”, guzzling industrial strength sherry.

The School Run
It’s 3.15pm, and you’re stuck behind a BMW that’s triple parked outside a private school. You reach for your wooden club. In front of the school gates, a gaggle of dolled-up hags pose and gossip in the sun. These well kept housewives are growing old ungracefully – man-made, rock-hard diddies; taut, Satsuma coloured faces; gaudy jewellery dangling from their skinny frames. It’s like living in a parallel universe where Joan Rivers is a fashion icon.

SUV owners
Male drivers who buy the biggest vehicle possible to compensate for their puny 2-incher. Try reversing out beside one, or turning across one at a junction – you have the visibility of a mole. Why don’t they just buy a second hand road train and be done with it. Guys get some therapy or a rubber stunt cock. But don’t use an SUV to banish the trauma of cowering in the showers, at high school, with a baldy chipolata between your legs.

OK, so I’m a grumpy ex-pat whose stress levels are disproportionate to my tranquil surroundings. Maybe some sunshine and Little Creatures (the local piss) will shepherd my angry alter ego into the shadows. Until then, you may witness a blaze of incandescent rage streaking across Perth as Road Rage man goes about his business…