Ahmed Chalabi and the WMD

So what happened to Tony Blair? I read somewhere that the powers that be – the courts – are looking for a way to try him for going to war with Iraq as the lawyer for a former Iraqi general argues that the former PM should face trial due to legal precedent set during Nuremberg hearings – Nuremberg hearings? Where they tried the top Nazis – Hermann Göring, Rudolf Hess and the rest of them. Would you put Tony Blair in that company?

When I left this country to make my way in Los Angeles around August 1994 he was the bees' knees. On his way up with his super duper new Labour Party, the leader of the opposition and the scourge of the then Prime Minister, John Major. He had been a follower – a close follower - of the Labour leader John Smith and when Smith died of a heart attack Blair took over.

Rather like the time when Hugh (I will fight fight and fight again for the party that I love) Gaitskill died leaving the way open for Harold Wilson. When it was Wilson's Labour Party it was a different kettle of fish. No sooner had he taken over the party, won an election in 1964, when there was a big out-flux of investment money from Britain to anywhere else.

At one time, because of that, no one was allowed to take more than £50 out of the country when they went abroad. That's how bad it was.

Then the Chairman of the Mirror Group, Cecil King organized a coup – yes a real coup. They met in an office in Fleet Street – I remember it was a privileged place which was allowed to use a coal fire in a smokeless zone. King organised the coup and what they were going to do and . .. it didn't come off, of course. Among those at the meeting was the Chairman of the Bank of England, Sir Basil Smallpiece (aptly named), Lord Mountbatten and Tony Benn. You can judge a leader by the team he picks; Tony Benn leaked it to The Guardian and saved the day.

They didn't trust Labour then, so you can imagine the shenanigans if Jeremy Corbyn is ever Prime Minister.

With Blair, Labour did what Bill Clinton did in America by ruling from the centre – only they did it from the center as our computer spell checks keep reminding us.

He was the main actor behind the Northern Ireland Peace Process and, whilst it has not achieved everything, he is responsible, partly, for peace in that place.

Tony Blair was a million miles from Wilson and made a pact with Gordon Brown, over dinner in a London Restaurant, to decide which one of them was going to be the Premier.

As I mentioned before, you can judge a leader by the team he picks – also it tells a lot about a man if you look at what he eats. The restaurant was chosen by Blair and Brown didn't like the bill o' fare – he wanted steak and chips and Blair was an early cordon bleu aficionado possibly preferring houmus and bean sprouts.

The two agreed to have Blair as PM with Brown to take over after spending time as the Chancellor of the Exchequer – the money man. It might be said that he was the best Chancellor of the Exchequer of the century. Blair was the suit and Brown was the brains.

When Blair handed over to the reins of the party (and the PM) to Gordon (he gave away our gold) Brown, a very decent talented man, he had to succumb to the jibes of the nameless ignoramus who regularly introduced the BBC programme Top Gear for a while who, whilst being interviewed on Australian TV, said that Britain was being governed by a one eyed Scotsman – yes a nameless idiot. (Brown lost an eye playing rugby).

That one eyed Scotsman virtually saved Britain's bacon during the world 2008 financial crisis.

Since coming back to live in London, I have realised that a lot of people hate Tony Blair and blame the invasion of Iraq on to him and only him. How could this happen? One man cannot go to war without a vote in Parliament.

We lived in America during the Iraqi war; Blair never even came in to the equation on the news and neither did Ahmed Chalabi.

He was one of the main characters in the invasion of Iraq, one of the main characters in that terrible war which killed many civilians; one of the reasons they went to war was Chalibi and for Chalabi's ambition. And there he is above.

Ahmed Chalabi was an exile living in the United States when George H W Bush issued statements saying the best thing to happen would be the elimination of Saddam Hussein; the Iraqi rebels saw this as encouragement with promises of help but the Americans abandoned the Iraqis and left Saddam to murder any rebels that tried.

So between the Gulf War and the Iraqi invasion Saddam Huissan ruled the roost in Iraq with his policies of mass murder, telling all he had nuclear weapons and was about to use them. The people of Iraq and the world were looking for another leader, a Gandhi, a Mandela, a man of charisma and they came up with Ahmed Chalabi – a man who had embezzled money from a Jordanian Bank, a man who was exiled from Iraq and a man who wanted to be the Prime Minister, President or leader of Iraq – in fact all three.

He had the information that Saddam did, indeed, possess Weapons of Mass Destruction – WMD – (I won't put WMDs as it should be WsMD and that can't be right).

The information went from Chalabi to the secret powers, the spies, spooks or whatever, and this got back to the CIA.

Inspectors were sent to Iraq; Saddam had moved the weapons. 

More inspectors: Saddam was still pounding his chest, pretending to have what he didn't. The inspectors couldn't be sure and I'm not even going to go in to the fact that there was a mysterious death of one of them but . . . .

You can look all this up if you want to but when Colin Powell made the statement to the UN, stating that they had received reliable information, through the British, that Saddam had WMD he made that man – the man with him in the picture –

stand behind him. He was the leader of the CIA and that is where Powell got the information and the CIA, through the British, which was assured by embezzler Ahmed Chalabi that it was true. “Saddam was dangerous and needed removing.”

Chalabi assured the west that the weapons were dangerous, Saddam had purchased some kind of barrel, I seem to remember, and other stuff for his weapons.

At the time the vice-president, Dick Cheney, was facing impeachment threats. His company was going to be used during the war by supplying equipment as with the Eisenhower warning of the Industrial Military Complex and he with Bush, Rumsfeld and the other cronies decided to invade Iraq.

Tony Blair came along and gave them credence – they were going to do it anyway, with or without Blair; with or without Chalabi – who wanted to be Iraqi leader don't forget – and there is a time when you don't know when to go to war or not. I am not a pacifist but I don't ever want war because of that, I am against it but a few years ago there was another vote in parliament here and the Labour Party were successful in stopping the then Prime Minister David Cameron from going to war and the reason they voted against – which is what the result was – was the reaction and flack from the Iraqi war - which shouldn't be a reason.

Pantalones de orina

                                                      Dave Allen

I was watching a drama/documentary on TV the other night about one of my real favourite comedians; Dave Allen. He was a unique comedian and most of his material was to mock the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland. And who could blame him having being brought up in a catholic school in Ireland in the thirties and early forties.

There was one little scene in the film which reminded me of my time at school in Birmingham when I was learning to read; so how old would I be? Six or so.

My teacher was Miss Prime and she was a spinster of about forty; I have worked this out judging the time it was and what went on.

Now – I have told this story on stage in my one man show many times from the year 2000 to 2010 at theatres and colleges in Los Angeles and theatres in the UK.

I was sitting at the front of the class and at the other side of my tiny little desk, facing me, was Miss Prime. I can't remember if she had a book or was reading mine upside down and we shared leg space under my desk. How she made herself so tiny to do this task is beyond me but maybe she was sitting, for the only time in her life, spreadeagled? I don't think we knocked knees or anything like that but I was being tested on a page in a book; a simple book, I should imagine, and, as I have already told you I was about six.

The time was fifteen minutes before midday and the lunch break was at noon. So I had that fifteen minutes to go before I could go and empty my over filled and bursting bladder.

I have always been a bit of a pisser, never ever able to hold it. For example, when I was playing at The Hexagon Theatre, in Reading, I would travel along the motorway, after the show, to where I was staying with friends in Barnes, which is a suburb in London.

Each night we would have to stop whilst I had a pee on the hard shouder – we played there for a week so we stopped seven times – couldn't help it. (by the way I'm fine now; thanks for asking).

Back to the class room: I knew I needed a pee as the teacher sat down to test me.

If you were a casting director you would cast Miss Prime as a strict teacher; the character in The Singing Detective would have suited her. She had her hair pulled straight back from the forehead and in a very tight pony tail gripped up at the back. She wore no make up and wore very thick stockings and sensible shoes; I knew this because my mother never wore sensible shows – always high heels when out.

When Miss Prime sat down I was bursting. I had been to the loo at play time but the third of a pint of ice cold milk I drank at ten fifteen had gone through me.

At the same time as I started reading I started to fidget; I couldn't help it as my wee was nearly coming out; I was starting to leak. She told me to stop fidgeting and to read the page starting at the top line; this I did.

When she asked my why I was fidgeting I told her I needed to go to the lavatory.

'You need to go to the lavatory?'

'Yes miss.'

'Well you can go at twelve-o-clock and not until.'

So I started to read again. The words didn't come out too clear as I was really suffering.

'You can go if you want to – but you will come back and read the page instead of going to dinner.'

We all called lunch dinner in those days – I mean Dickens had only been dead a hundred years!!!

Judging from my age I was probably still speaking with a slight Irish accent, so I would be saying far instead of for, wark instead of walk and walk instead or work! So being corrected and not knowing what she was talking about made things worse; that and her stare!

I struggled on, reading and struggling and feeling the urine running in to my underpants and down my legs. I tried not to let it go and it started to hurt. She looked in to my eyes, she could see I was in pain, but she insisted on forcing me to read on.

Eventually the school bell went and I ran to the boys bogs and let it rip; so my relief so much happiness, so much steam and how cold the pee felt in my underpants.

I didn't stay to school dinner that day; I went home. I knew the way even though it was six hundred metres away which is a third of a mile or so.

I went along Hertford Street, turned left at Saint Paul's Road, right at Moseley Road and right into South View Terrace where we lived in a tiny house. There wasn't a tiny stream but there was a railway line.

My mother wondered what I was doing home and I showed her my little pair of short pants and my soaking underpants.

She took them from me, helped me get clean and fed me.

Then she walked me back to school; in her bag she carried my underpants; she came in to the class room and confronted Miss Prime.

She took the underpants out and held them up to the teacher; 'is that any way to send a child home from school' she said.

I was frightened that she was going to shove the pants into Miss Prime's face. Also I knew she had an Irish accent, which would let everybody know that I was Irish, as if they didn't know, and would say bloody a lot and I didn't want her to do that – but I can't remember much more about it.

Twenty five years later I was in a soap on television, which went out every evening at 6.35 so a lot of people saw it.

My mother was at the Alexandra Theatre, in Birmingham one evening and who should see with a load of kids? Yes – Miss Prime.

They recognised each other and Miss Prime came across and said 'we see Christopher on television a lot – we're very proud.'

And my mother said 'do you remember his pissy pants?'