An American Tragedy.

Here we have, above, the greatest ever (American) footballer; OJ Simpson – commonly known as the Juice – OJ = Orange Juice; geddit??

He is the real live Great American Tragedy – there was a novel called An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser but OJ was a real life one.

Look at him up there – a smiling handsome man with the world at his feet. If ever you watch snippets of American football and it keeps stopping then starting again and then look at OJ – he never stopped. He seemed to glide through the field as if he was slicing melted butter with a hot knife; he dodged and swayed, stopped and seemed to stumble and carried the ball for many a yard which is all written down somewhere and documented.

When I first went to live in Los Angeles in August 1994, OJ was up on a murder charge; he was charged with killing his wife, Nicole Brown-Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman – he was a waiter in a nearby restaurant and may not have been her friend at all but a waiter who had discovered that Nicole had left something at the restaurant and was merely returning it at the wrong time.

When he walked up the path to OJ and Nicole's house in Brentford, Los Angeles, all those years ago, she was in the process of being murdered with a large knife and he walked in to the situation and suffered the same fate.

The thing that I found hard to process was why there was no blood on OJ who was charged with the crime, the massacre, the orgy of a stabbing – but that was a fact. 

To this day no bundle of bloody clothes have been found.

There is a documentary series on BBC4 at the moment – 5 x 80 minute episodes and they are riveting.

OJ went on trial at the beginning of 1995 and right through to September it dominated the airwaves.

People I knew would go to the trial, there were bits on late night comedy on TV; there was a Marcia Clarke (chief prosecutor) lookalike, on The Jay Leno Show, they even had a Judge Ito and the singing Itos – it was fun for everyone, apart from the victims, and people would try to get home to listen to various aspects of the trial which was live on TV – one day a pal said I have get back to watch F. Lee Bailey, who was some kind of real life Perry Mason.

But at the end of the trial The Juice was found Not Guilty.

I was down by Grauman's Chinese Theatre, the day of the verdict, and people, mainly black people, were selling, The Juice is loose! souvenir T-Shirts. 

A year after the trial, the family of Ron Goldman took OJ to court in a Civil Case and he was found guilty of being responsible for his wife's murder – which is different.

The judge awarded the Goldman family $33 million which OJ would have to pay to them for the rest of his life; every time he got a job he would have to pay the fee to them but I don't think they received a penny.

Before the sheriffs arrives OJ had sent his belongings to various parts of the state.

To cut the story short, a few years later, OJ, who had been living the life of Riley, was informed that a lot of his memorabilia was in the room of a dealer in a Las Vegas hotel and he, and a few others, broke in to the room, one of them wielding a gun, told the inhabitant that they couldn't leave the room till they gave, what OJ reckoned, was his property.

They were put on trial and one of them made a deal for immunity and turned stool pigeon or snitch or whatever you want to call it and spilled the beans about the whole escapade.

OJ was sentenced to – now take note of the figure – a 33 year sentence; no coincidence as 33 million was the amount of dollars the Goldmans won.

Jury members, who found OJ not guilty, have since admitted that it was pay back for the way the black African Americans had been treated in America for all the years from slavery to Jim Crow to plain racial prejudice with lynchings and beatings and bullying.

A group of LA cops beat a small time crook, Rodney King, with sticks and kicks; they were filmed doing it and even though the footage is as clear as day, the cops were found not guilty. This verdict, and the death by shooting dead of a 15 year old African American started the LA riots of 1992.

So there he is above – a man who got away with murder – for it is 99% certain that he did it but he wouldn't be satisfied with that; he had to chance his arm again. Good looking, best at everything to do with sport, golf, weight lifting, godfather to the famous Kim Kardashian has ended up being the pathetic figure serving all that time in a Las Vegas gaol – and now look at him: 

Brexit.

There he is! Old Banksie! Chipping away at the flag of The European Union; no longer a union between Britain and the rest of Europe. There is his latest mural - in Dover. How does he get them there?

Oh well back to being a country of servitude.

I have a lot of friends in America, a lot of them who read this, and I am constantly being asked about Brexit so without showing too many of my colours or opinions I will try to explain.

First of all the word: a new word, certainly not a beautiful word; there are beautiful words and one of my favourite beautiful words doesn't exist – it's capiliary. I love it and if you split it up and say capil I ary you should see and feel the rhythm of it as the real word is capillary. Baldy old capillary – if it was Spanish it might stand a chance in the aesthetics of language as they would do something with the double L – or even Welsh as they do things with the double L too but you have to almost speak with a lisp to pronounce a lot of the Welsh words like Llandudno – a sideways lisp as opposed to the tongue on the hard palette one which is the less rarer of the two.

But Brexit: two words really Britain and Exit. Good job it wasn't Ireland leaving as it would sound like an eating disorder. - think about it!

Briefly the EU started off as a pact between a few of the European countries who were at war and victims of war so France, Luxembourg, Italy, Belgium, The Netherlands and West Germany formed a union. 

It had various titles, over the years, and in 1973 Great Britain joined through the then Conservative Government.

The Labour Party (Her Majesty's Opposition) were against it and when they were elected in to office, in 1974, they called for a referendum (a plebiscite) to see if the electorate wanted to stay in or not; the result was in favour of remaining and at that time the Brits called it The Common Market and to lots of people, including me, that is what it is still called.

But there were always moaners, people complaining about silly rules and which was what probably brought Britain's membership to an end.

That and immigration.

One of the things about living in Britain now, which I like, is that there is a variety of people living here from other countries. As well as people from the British Commonwealth there are people from the rest of the EU which numbers 28 countries.

So when we go out now, in the cities, we can meet a host of nationalities which, to me, is wonderful. There are beautiful women from all over the world, which I have noticed, and a lot of attractive men - which I haven't noticed that much. These inhabitants have introduced new food to the country. No longer do we have nothing to look forward to but a lamb chop with boiled potatoes and peas in the evenings, or some other kind of meat and two veg. Now we can, sample the delights of some of the most wonderful food in the world: Italian, Indian, Chinese, Spanish, Mexican . .oh you name it.

Today we will be eating Lebanese Food for dinner. Fifty years ago it was egg and chips.

So to Brexit: the right wing, since that first referendum, didn't like the EU. There were Euro Skeptics in the Conservative Party – the right wing – and they broke away and formed an extreme Right Wing Party called UKIP – the United Kingdom Independence Party – which called for Britain to withdraw from Europe.

Whilst they didn't win any seats in Parliament they nearly did; almost did - but they didn't. People usually complain about the British system of government with the first passed the post system but you know: sometimes it's useful if it stops certain people from being elected.

 But even though UKIP didn't win any seats in The House of Commons (apart from one they inherited) they were chipping away at Conservative Membership so after the election in 2015 the Coalition Government (Conservative and Lib-Dem) gave in and promised a referendum to see if the electorate wanted to remain or leave. 

This was to save The Conservative Party so last year we had the referendum and the vote – even though it should never have been for anything less that a 60/40 majority – resulted in a vote to leave.

It might seem strange to Americans that the Liberals would join up with the Conservatives but Liberals here are in between Conservative and Labour (middle of the road - no man's land) unlike in America where Liberals are almost communists and socialists – heaven forbid!!

But we were subjected to some of the nastiest people you can think of; one of them murdered a young woman politician who was singled out for attack as a "passionate defender" of the European Union and immigration. The murderer viewed his victim, a Labour MP, as one of the collaborators; a traitor to white people.

This was very hard to believe in this day and age in Britain.

So that's it – we, the royal we, are leaving. We will no longer have financial passporting, freedom of movement and some of us might not even be able to receive our pensions from abroad – we don't know.

In fact there's a lot we don't know - or didn't know - for instance leaving something that you have committed financially to might mean having to honour that commitment – like one hundred billion pounds (or even Euros) which is one of the things what we/they didn't know about before the referendum.

The number of British citizens registering to be citizens of other countries is at an all time high here – Ireland, Italy and Germany I have heard tale of, so that's the explanation.

I hope the people who voted to leave enjoy their lamb chops, new potatoes and peas.