Our Heroes

Charlie wishes he was James Joyce

Look, he used language as precisely and playfully as an expert craftsman. He dedicated his entire life to producing a new type of literature. His books combined humour, prescience, and exhaustive detail. And he had an eyepatch.

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charlie wishes he was Stephen Fry

Frighteningly funny comedian, superbly gifted writer, great orator, film director, legend. Anyone who played both Jeeves and Oscar Wilde gets my vote. I fucking love Stephen Fry.

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GypsyBoy wishes he was Primo Levi

An artist through necessity not choice. Levi had to courage to 'bear witness' to the experience of the Death Camps. He told the story so that it could never be diluted by time, by relating it to, and using it as an exploration of the human condition.

A secular Saint, the writer of the gospel of mankind.

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GypsyBoy wishes he was Albert Camus

For services to Philosophy, Politics and Goalkeeping. Left the template for moody, overcoat-wearing, moody-looking, francophile philosophy students.
Cheers, Camus... You stole the best years of my life.

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GypsyBoy wishes he was Jack Kerouac

Broke, rhythm, heart, tired, an area, hit, defeat, be better, Takeshi, a pause for breath...

"I have nothing to offer but my own confusion"

beatitude.

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seffers wishes he was Muhammad Ali

Sport as the greatest form of Art. Exhibit A.

Norman Mailer wrote of him: "Women draw an audible breath. Men look down. They are reminded again and again of their lack of worth. If Ali never opened his mouth to quiver the jellies of public opinion, he would still inspire love and hate. For he is the Prince of Heaven – so says the silence around his body when he is luminous."

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seffers wishes he was Thierry Henry

Sport as the greatest form of Art. Exhibit B.

I'd chew off my right leg to be good enough to be even a semi-pro footballer. Jesus, Mary and all the saints in heaven are praying to be as good as Thierry Henry.

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GypsyBoy wishes he was Tommie Smith and John Carlos

Sport as Artistic Political Expression

Can one passive act define a hero?

Influenced by a young sociologist Harry Edwards, Tommie Smith and John Carlos created the image which defined an Olympic Games. Often referred to as the 'Black Power Salute', this was only part of the story.

Smith later told the media that he raised his right, black-glove-covered fist in the air to represent black power in America while Carlos' left, black-covered fist represented unity in black America. Together they formed an arch of unity and power. The black scarf around Smith's neck stood for black pride and their black socks (and no shoes) represented black poverty in racist America.

Both men subsequently received death threats, were banned from the Olympic Village. Many now believe this action effectively destroyed their careers.

An interesting side note to the protest was that the 200m silver medallist in 1968, Peter Norman of Australia (who is white), participated in the protest that evening by wearing a OPHR (Olympic Project for Human Rights) badge.

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BlackJesus wishes he was Annabel Chong

BlackJesus doesn't so much wish he was, but respectfully doffs his cap to Annabel Chong, who set the bar at 251 men in 10 hours. Just to slant the appalling gender bias of the other entries, and show that women too, can do significant things.

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BlackJesus wishes he was Captain Haddock

Used to be in the Merchant Navy? Yeah, right. Used to be a pirate more like. Everyone knew who the balls behind the whole Tin-Tin operation was and crew-cut boy still stole all the glory. Haddock epitomizes the iconic anti-hero, and swears a lot.

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seffers wishes he was Arthur Puckrin

He's a barrister. He's represented Britain at bridge in the European and World Championships. He is also insane athlete.

He was the British Ironman champion in 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001 and 2002. The ironman competitions are for those who can't bear the whinging nancy boys who do triathlons. And he's old. Damn old. So old running wasn't even invented when he started.

Bored of being Double Ironman champion and Triple Ironman champion he became the World Deca-Biathlon champion aged about 450 years old. This is a 1,120 mile cycle and 262 mile run. It took him a little under 13 days. I don't know how he stayed awake that long but as it was held in Mexico i can only guess he was wired off his nuts on Tequila and super-strong latino crack.

He's also defeated 50 horses over 44 miles. I don't know what he defeated them at, fighting probably. And eating sugar lumps. In fact he probably did another 100 ironman competitions immediately after beating the horses on the sugar rush he was on.

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BlackJesus wishes he was The 50 Foot Woman

Again, it's left for me to reassert feminist ideals and general good sense. Could James Joyce pick up cars with his hands? Can Thierry Henry pick up cars with his hands? I could go on...Can Primo Levi pick up cars with his hands? Can Muhammad Ali pick up cars with his hands? Could Jack Kerouac or Albert Camus pick up cars with their hands? Can Steven Fry pick up cars with his hands? Possibly Tommie Smith and John Carlos TOGETHER might be able to pick up cars with their hands, but probably not one in each hand.

You get my point...AND she was fit

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BlackJesus wishes he was Paul Krugman

OK, he may not be able to pick up cars with his hands, but he is the best example of why we shouldn't give up on economics. His analytical rigour and clarity of expression have made him the dominant voice in new trade theory but his humility about the subject matter is a stern repproach for any free trade zealots who make appeals to the academic economic establishment to support their vested interests. For example:
"When it comes to [Trade and Growth], there is no wisdom, and there are no wise men."

Would that ever slip from Robert Zoeliks lips?

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The Mighty Reptile wishes he was Osca Zeta Acosta

Oscar Acosta was born in 1935 in El Paso but was brought up in Southern California. After an leaving the USAF in 1956 he converted to Protestantism and became a Baptist missionary to a leper colony in Panama. He returned to America and qualified as a lawyer, became involved with the Barrio movement intended to set up a Chicano homeland in Southern California and won notariaty as a civil rights leader.

During his prosecution of the LAPD for the unlawful killing of journalist Caesar Chavez and fearing the possibility of “suicide by police officer” Acosta and his friend Hunter S Thompson hatched a scheme to lie low on a sporting assignment in Las Vegas. The result was Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, quite possibly the most useless piece of sporting journalism in history, which immortalised Acosta as the Samoan attorney Dr Gonzo.

During the sixties Acosta had been an influential spokes man for the Latino underclass of America but by 1974 his prodigious appetite for drugs and teenage girls and his insistence on writing about it in his books; Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo and Revolt of the Cockroach People had lost him most of his supporters among the respectable Mexican-American community and in 1974 he disappeared.

Many outlandish stories abound about Acosta’s whereabouts since his disappearance; Thompson speculates that he was killed in a shoot out with the US coastguard while smuggling Cocaine in the USA on a speedboat because one of the men on board was brandishing a silver plated Uzi (Acosta had a penchant for silver plated firearms), some say he was killed by the LAPD and still more (admittedly insane) sources believe he is alive and well and trafficking in slaves from a fortified compound deep in the Columbian jungle.

A hero he may or may not be but Oscar Acosta fitted more into 39 years than many people are capable of imagining, no he did not pick up cars with his hands but did the 50ft Woman get high on a chemical that can only be found in the adrenal gland of a living human being? I think not.

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seffers wishes he was Danny Baker

Cockerney man-mountain who, according to a straw poll of ckgters, everyone else hates. But they're all idiots who wear the wrong britches at Whitsun and think direct descent from the King of Winchester entitles them to more opinion than those in the collateral branches.

He's the sharpest, funniest, most inventive presenter working in British media. His genius is in inciting the best from his callers and even when that best is a lumpen sod of shite, he turns it in the shiniest of gold.

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charlie wishes he was Ainsley Harriott

Another one of the more controversial choices, as a lot of people in CKGT (Huggie, Peteee, Seffers, Rol, MANT etc.) think he's a dick. But he's not, he's a king amongst ordinary mortals. If anybody's a dick, then it's the losers who feel that because someone exudes charm, friendliness and cooking talent, that someone must be annoying. He's a legend, a fantastic cook (yes, I really mean that, Ainsley's Barbecue Bible is required reading for anyone planning summer cooking), and just such a nice person. I'm not trying to damn with faint praise, this is exactly what I mean, he's just the sort of person who I'd happily share a pint with and chat about different marinades for pork fillets (Ainsley's Special Jerk Sauce, or Charlie's Famous Barbecue Sauce would probably form the poles of the argument, but it would be a nice, civilised argument, not a spite-filled haranguing which always seems to be the case when I opine that Ainsley Harriott is easily the most watchable celebrity chef). There is the question of some people's blind insistence that Ainsley enjoys coprophilia, as yet unsubstantiated, and more centrally, utterly irrelevant. It makes no odds what the man likes to do in his spare time: I have absolutely no doubt that he scrubs himself down regularly, and to be honest, I admire him for it.

Ainsley is a cookery God, Delia me no Delias, and don't even think of mentioning Jamie Oliver, not only could Ainsley pound both of them into tiny pieces even if they were armed with electric rakes, but he can outcook them, and he's got a genuine personality rather than an artificially key-demographic-friendly advertising face (or in Delia's case, no personality at all).

You guys are all lame. Ainsley kicks ass.

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Pete wishes he was John Wilson

Anyone who can be as happy as John just because their holding a big fish (with big teeth and spines) deserves to be a hero - imagine how happy he would be with a nice tasty sandwich, or a fist full of gleaming coins. If happiness is not enough of a criteria for you capitalist pig-dogs take a look at the beard....the beard and sandles.....nay, the beard, snadles, chest hair and medallion - I for one woulg give my right ass for a beard like that. Otherwise I'd want Bob Nudd to be my hero - also holds lots of big fish, cooler name but no beard. John, I want to be you, I want to hold your fish, and I want to be that happy doing it.

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The Mighty Reptile wishes he was The Komodo Dragon

The komodo dragon is the absolute bad boy of the reptile world, growing up to ten feet long they can run as fast as a dog and can kill a bison with a single bite. They live on islands in Indonesia where they have managed to build a thriving tourist trade based on stupid western backpacker types paying money to watch them getting fed, which makes them shrewd business reptiles as well. They exemplify what all cold-blooded animals should aspire to be; greedy, vicious, pestilentially foul smelling, lazy, capable of killing a man with a single bite and the centre of a multimillion-dollar industry. Komodo dragons I salute you, you truly are kings among reptiles.

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charlie wishes he was Richard Feynman

Aside from Einstein, probably the most important physicist of the 20th Century. He won the Nobel Prize in 1965 for his work on Quantum Electrodynamics in 1965. His work on superfluidity and the Weak Decay is also legendary. However, it's not just for the science that I want to nominate him, otherwise I would have to nominate every other scientist who contributed to the extraordinary body of physics that we now have. I want to nominate him as one of the greatest physics eccentrics, and probably the greatest lecturer there has ever been (even if you don't know the first thing about QM, I strongly recommend getting the Feynman Lectures on Physics in tape form). As well as being the kind of lecturer who can cause you to think far more deeply about a subject you think you understand, he was also a brilliant safe-cracker, a regular customer of topless bars, drew decorations for a massage parlour, and played the bongos in a samba school in Brazil.

There are two types of genius. Ordinary geniuses do great things, but they leave you room to believe that you could do the same if only you worked hard enough. Then there are magicians, and you can have no idea how they do it. Feynman was a magician. —Hans Bethe

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Kenny wishes he was Joan Robinson

Contributed tirelessly to the development of Economics as a subject. Wrote "The Accumulation of Capital" which despite being 50 years old, still provides incomparable insight into finance, money and credit. Kept on working in the face of the sort of bigotted sexism (it took her 32 years to gain her professors position) in acadmemia and the West as a whole of which this page is symptomatic.

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charlie wishes he was P. G. Wodehouse

Right, just to countenance Kenny's implied criticism of our current list as being predominately white Western males, I'd like to propose a hero I can't believe I haven't already nominated. A man who in every word he wrote represents the interests of a truly multi-racial, gender-blind, egalitarian society.

Well, OK, I accept that his books were always about rich idiots tripping over doorsteps on their way to woo pretty ladies, but I really don't think that matters. Wodehouse created a perfect fantasy world which never really existed, but a world which it's still a joy to read about. On top of that, his astonishingly assured command of the English language and his acute ear for comic timing make him, I think, the greatest comic writer ever, and I really mean that without any shade of hyperbole, I genuinely can't think of a writer who mastered funny writing as well as Wodehouse. Wilde was witty and clever, Joyce was subtle, Beckett had a brutally dry humour, Twain's yarns entertain. The only other writer even vaguely close is Stella Gibbons, but that was only one work, and it still doesn't touch Right Ho Jeeves, not by a country mile. If I could have any talent in the world, I would choose to be able to write like Wodehouse. Incidentally, see George Orwell's Defence of Wodehouse for the full story of his being a Nazi collaborator / sympathiser.

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MANT wishes he was Rick Stein

This affable cornishman has done wonders for promoting the consumption of British fish. He has produced many a TV programme crammed full with tasty fish recipes all of which i think have inspired people to eat more fish. One of his best recipes is for fishcakes. He's also done a couple of series looking at organic and naturally produced traditional British food.
His hotels and restaurants in Padstow are all great and serve some of the best food i've ever had. He has also recently opened his own fish & chip shop which is a good idea, any fish & chip shop owning multi-millionaire has to be cool.
What else? Well he has a cute dog, and is a lovable rogue, recently having a torrid affair with a pretty Australian journalist and thus divorcing his wife of 30 years. However they continue to run the whole of Padstow on their own, and i believe are considering re-naming it Steinville.
If anyone would like to buy me the 5-day cooking course at his seafood school for my birthday, i'd die a happy man.
MANT

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MANT wishes he was Jim Broadbent

The northern Oscar winner is a fine character actor, a veteran of over 70 movies. Particularly fine appearances in "Brazil", "The Crying Game", "Bullets Over Broadway", "The Borrowers", "Little Voice", and of course "Moulin Rouge" and "The Gangs of New York". I really liked the Gangs of New York as you can tell.
He's a rounded individual with a great voice who sounds like a bumbling buffoon but he seems to be a nice chap. Would love to have a pint of ale with him in some country pub somewhere.

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MANT wishes he was Stanley Kubrick

Dead film Director, in case you were unaware. Absolutely crazy, odd recluse, but loved by everyone who knew him. Famously made an actress go temporarily blind when he refused to take an anti-blinking device off of her eye when she was filming a scen in order to make her pain appear more realistic, obviously it was. Lived in a big house and made some tremendous films of which "2001" has to be the most awe-inspiring. Spartacus rules. No one will ever make movies of his dedication ever again.

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charlie wishes he was Oscar Wilde

If anyone hasn't read A Portrait of Mr. W.H., I suggest they sprint down to a bookshop right away and buy a copy of it, it's only a short story, so shouldn't set you back too much, and if you buy it in a collection of short stories, you'll want to thank me. In this story, Wilde invents a completely new theory of who the Mr. W.H. is that Shakespeare dedicated the sonnets to. Wilde invented the theory merely in order to come up with a good framing device for a short story, he didn't try to market it as a new theory in itself, he just used it for the short story. This is also a man who gave us the French play version of Salome, which somebody should put on some time soon. The ethic of the aesthete has dated slightly now, but Wilde, for all his expressed dandyism and indifference was an immensely kind and talented man. His ignominious end at the hands of the odious Marquis of Queensbury remains an appalling tragedy to literature.

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GypsyBoy wishes he was Lance Armstrong

-It depends whether you want to win. I do-

Lance Armstrong



For the last six years one man has dominated arguably the most gruelling sporting event in existence. Lance Armstrong has torn the cycling world apart through his dogged commitment to stamping his authority on The Tour De France.

There is simply no one who can touch him. A true all rounder, he is a rare combination of the best time triallist, team leader and climber on the tour.

And three years before he won his first tour, he was diagnosed with testicular cancer which had spread to his brain and lungs - a situation where your chances of survival are usually placed at around 40%. Doctors agree his recovery alone was incredible, let alone what followed.

Lance has many detractors. Allegations of drug taking follow his every move, he is loathed by most francophone tour followers, and his arrogance is legendary. But part of the reason I admire him is how he abscribes his success to hard work alone.

Try as I might I cannot be cynical about the man or his acheivements.

At the end of the tour he was asked how he kept winning. He replied:

Hard work, man. Hard work. Ask yourself the question. Where were you on Christmas Day? What were you doing? New Years day?


Were you on your bike?

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Ross wishes he was Sage Francis

Jaw droppingly talented and admirably prolific MC, who up until recently paid his rent purely through distributing his bootleg albums (the stunning 'Sick Of...' series) to interested parties, so his press release says. Recorded last year's best hip hop album, 'Hope', under the Non Prophets moniker. Occasionally raps as Xaul Xan, his minisculally endowed redneck alter ego. I can't currently think of anyone in hip hop with the same level of lyrical diversity as Sage, and very few with comparable skills. I'll even forgive his very occasional lapses into 'drugs are bad, m'kay' straight edge tediousness, such is the brain-dancing joy his best stuff brings to the listener. AND he looks a bit like Rasputin in this picture. Hooray for Sage.

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Ross wishes he was Joe Strummer

A man with zeal. The world of music needs more men with zeal. Transcended all his limitations (rudimentary guitar playing and vocals, the latter hampered by the fact he had about three intact teeth in his head through years of dental neglect) through sheer, rabid devotion to his cause. The fact that half the time nobody, least of all himself, was sure of what that cause was is neither here nor there. If it wasn't for this rabid devotionalism the Clash wouldn't mean so much to so many. Listen to that first album, man. Has there ever been a more enervated, driven statement of intent in post-Sun Elvis rock 'n' roll than that? Listen to 'Sandinista!', a ridiculously sprawling carnvial of IDEAS. LOOK at the Clash, for fuck's sakes. Coolest looking rock band that ever got on a stage, with Strummer the flailing, foaming-at-the-mouth centrepiece. Zeal, baby.





Hooray for Joe.

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charlie wishes he was Douglas Adams

Surely one of the world's most brilliant people. When you look at the full body of his written and broadcast work, it hardly seems to amount to all that much in volume. But everything he wrote was so packed full of ideas, it's not difficult to see why he sparked off so many obsessions. His total unwillingness to really follow ideas through to their logical conclusion was what made reading him such a joy, as he just threw them out as he went, like brightly coloured sparks from some kind of crazy Japanese fire-animal, and what made his death all the more tragic, as it was then that everyone realised that the half-cooked ideas he'd left on his computer really never would be properly finished. A great champion of environmentalism, and a torch-bearer for the levelling effect of the internet. But still, mostly for those genius ideas: that cricket is an expression of a deeply repressed memory of a brutal interplanetary war, that Coleridge was possessed by aliens, the Electric Monk. Man I could go on...

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The Mighty Reptile wishes he was Nelson Algren

The first of the really great post-war American authors; Algren wrote about the world of the urban disposessed that the American literary elite had long ignored. His first published story was written while washing dishes in a highway diner and during the late forties Algrens star was in the ascendant; Somebody In Boots Was hailed As the debut of great American writer and in 1949 Algren wrote The Man With The Golden Arm, a novel achingly redolent of the dreams of a generation smashed first by war and then by a system so overpoweringly unfair in its nature that it is hard not to feel real heartfelt sympathy for Frankie Majinek, a character that in the hands of a lesser writer would be little more than a spineless junkie.

Sadly Algren's talent for writing was almost matched by his twin talents for making enemies and destroying himself; he was often in hospital suffering from depression and his stubborn adherrance to socialism meant he could rarely find work; he drank, whored and gambled, his two novels following The Man with the Golden Arm (He Swung and He Missed and A Walk On The Wild Side) were both condemned as pornographic and he went unpublished for almost thirty years while those he inspired, including Norman Mailer and Charles Buckowski went on to win crittical aclaim.

Nelson Algren was a truely great writer, capable of eliciting sympathy in the reader for a whole range of otherwise easily charecatured charecters, my favorite of all his charecters, Captain Bednar from The Man With The Golden Arm is a fine example of this complexity veering from shame to pity to indifference to anger while checking in the endless stream of condemned men slowly feeling his very humanity slipping away,his very existance puts the mindless cops of so much american literature to shame.

Nelson Algren you truely are the king of loser-geniuses and I salute you.

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Paul Hughes wishes he was Tommy Cooper

I can only recall one person who was able to make me laugh without really doing or saying anything.He was the only comedian who had a funny personality-as opposed to a funny act or a punchline.His stage act was more a distraction from the real humour than the focus of it.I found it impossible to watch him without feeling a tinge of genuine love towards him.Tommy Cooper seemed to stir this love in anybody who watched him.

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GypsyBoy wishes he was Charlotte Green

To help redress the gender balance on the heroes front, I celebrate the woman who sends me to sleep at night, who gently wakes me in the morning, and occasionally lightens my Saturday lunchtime.

For the uninitiated, Charlotte Green is the voice of the wireless. Her careful dulcet tones (the closest you will hear these days to Received Pronunciation) are alluring without being sexy, comforting without being intrusive.

As the shipping forecast turns from fair to moderate, I see her as a post-war siren, steering ships to their doom on the jagged rocks of broadcasting house.

(That Samantha off "I'm sorry I haven't a clue" sounds like a bit of a goer as well)

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Kenny wishes he was Jeffrey Sachs

Kofi Anand's special adviser on poverty and ass kicking, Jeffrey Sach's was ending hyper-inflation in Bolivia while he was a teenager, successfully managing the transition of Poland to a market economy while in his mid twenties, and now gently easing into his forties by attempting to end world poverty by 2025.

The world's poor do not have a more eloquent, passionate and intelligent spokesperson.

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The Mighty Reptile wishes he was Simone De Beauvoir

The influence that Simone de Beauvoir exerts on the modern world is incalculable, dismissed for much of her life as Sartre's girlfriend rather than a cutting edge thinker in her own right De Beauvoir was in her mid thirties before hitting her stride with the seminal The Blood of Others following that with The Second Sex and The Mandarins within five years. Its hard to over estimate the cultural significance of these three books, The Second Sex especially as it in essence founded the modern feminist movement by examining the way in which western culture identifys women in in relation to men (as mother, wife, lover etc) rather than as people in their own right, a trend that continues to this day (especially in condesending ASDA adverts). Lampooned by the American press a "The Mother of Abortion" de Beauvoir is often portrayed as a steely harridan but her fiction displays a great range of emotional sensitivity and her portrayals of people (especially the real figures of The Mandarins) are written withan astounding degree of empathy (she apparently also did a very funny John Wayne impersonation.)

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GypsyBoy wishes he was Robert Fisk

"After the allied victory of 1918, at the end of my father's war, the victors divided up the lands of their former enemies. In the space of just seventeen months, they created the borders of Northern Ireland, Yugoslavia and most of the Middle East.
And I have spent my entire career - in Belfast and Sarajevo, in Beirut and Baghdad - watching the people within those borders burn."

Robert Fisk has been a foreign correspondent covering events in the Middle East for the last thirty years.
His writing is brutally incisive, well informed, passionate, compassionate and often clearly opinionated. Not necessarily good qualities for a journalist, and Fisk has been criticised on many sides for his inaccuracies and bias. In the words of the Israeli journalist Amira Hass, "There is a misconception that journalists can be objective ... What journalism is really about is to monitor power and the centres of power."

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