...and here's the report.
The Dog On Tour To Jesmond
Throughout my entire adult life, I have taken great pride in the fact that I have never set foot on Osborne Road in the pursuit of drink. As of last night, that statistic no longer holds true. I now feel dirty and ashamed, and with good reason: what a fucking parcel of shite this turned out to be.
Even getting there from the Metro was a load of toil and heartbreak. (I’m leaving the Lonsdale out of this: we didn’t go in there, but I used to have a soft spot for it way back when, and I’d prefer to keep my memories intact. Nobody wants to find out that their ex- is now swallowing man-fat behind Tesco for smack money). Strolling through the weed-strewn wreck of this once-desirable area, we’re passed by misshapen, inbred cuntkins on their way back from the nearest megabrand sandwich shop – making their own is clearly too much of a chore – and eyed suspiciously by witless apes sitting atop their bay windows soaking up the early evening smog. Ironically, while the inhabitants of these streets all dress the bloody same, and all talk the bloody same, it seems that every fucking Dan or Chloë wants to retain just a crumb of individuality, displaying a hometown football scarf in the window to show allegiance to a team they’ve never seen, playing a game they don’t understand.
At every fourth property there’s a greedy buy-to-let landlord, supervising a squad of dusty poo-stripe arse-cracks as they “add value” to the investment. This, as any fucker can tell you, means gluing down the laminate, splashing around the “neutral” hue we used to call magnolia, and getting ready to sell up to the next fucking shyster a month and a half after buying it themselves.
“Well, yeah. This block cost five million from the guy before me; I spent another 750K carving it up into floorboard sized rooms, so I need to charge £1100 a week rent, with your sister as deposit. We’ll call it a straight grand if she does anal…”
Nobody needs to look too closely to see what’s being done to the partitioned partitions. It’s contemporary combined living and dining areas, as sure as eggs is eggs. And that’s a great idea, provided nobody wants to cook anything more aromatic than a cup of tea. Once they start getting out the wok and slicing up the five-a-day, however, they’ll sharp see the downfall of modern open plan living. Who the fuck wants garlic furniture?
So, we’re absolutely livid before we even get to the bars. This had better be good…
What the fucking hell is this, I ask the heavens on exiting Acorn Road. Why are all these bodies spread as far as the eye can see, like the Jonestown massacre sponsored by the Duffer of St George? Is this half-arsed collection of grim hotel bars really the mythical Osborne Road scene? Tragically, it would appear so.
Necking a few overpriced and head-tapped pints, it sharp becomes clear that there’s little point in reviewing the bars individually. It really doesn’t matter which was which, since they’re all variations on the same second-rate theme. One might have been brown, one more of a purple, and I think one has Astroturf on the terrace outside instead of real grass.
But they’ve all been caesarean sectioned from the same design palette, with tacky sauna cladding, jauntily angled pictures and dirty distempered walls. Brown leather seating is mandatory with no room for negotiation, and while it’s possible to see where there might once have been smartness here, the beer-splattered film on every surface puts each pub on a tatty par with a besuited wedding guest found asleep in his own spew under a trestle table. They're all burdened with the same humiliating happy hour machine, identically condemnable toilets, and every last one of them has Sport TV with the sound off wherever your eyes may roam. And fairy lights! Like, original touch, yeah? Cunts.
I can’t imagine you’ll be surprised to hear that the music, seemingly piped from a central source to every bar without exception, is uniformly terrible: call centre hold music when the lights go down, and Bob fucking Marley the rest of the time. And there’s not even any point in mentioning the food menus, beyond pointing out that the standard issue cuisine serves merely to mask the stink of decay and spilt drink. We must ask, though: is it compulsory to offer “lashings” of gravy? Is that what the chinlessly guffawing clientele demand?
I know I know I know: when it comes to a night on the pop, buildings themselves aren’t the be-all and end-all (with a deep, lengthways incision along the forearm). It’s perfectly possible to have a fantastic time in a rickety shed, just as long as the people are bearable. Isn’t it...?
It is, but I’m afraid you won’t find any of that here. Osborne Road is the place where the three-quarter-length trouser is king. On blokes. Where there is an unacceptably high level of sunglasses perched on heads. On blokes. And where mwah-mwah-kissy-kissy is a standard greeting. Between blokes.
Whether sporting a designer polo top or one of those oversized beanie hats that make the wearer look like he’s got his fucking underpants on his head, every single man we spot on this sorry foray into postcode NE2 ticks off a box on the arsehole checklist. And after every third blink, we see pitiful pastel t-shirts with the names of Japanese cities or American universities on. Everyone knows that few things denote a twat more than a Hard Rock Café t-shirt (aye, saw those too), but if you’ve taken the trouble to go one of them for a $35 burger and an XXL garment along with the other mongoloid sheep in your tour party, you at least get the life experience of the city break thrown in. You don’t just get a condescending sneer from the walking haircut in the High Street chain store as you cough up to publicise a never-been location, and an aura that says “cunt-spittle” hovering above your head. Or am I missing the point? Is there an irony I can’t quite grasp?
Spineless media students, braying rugby types, over-confident junior executives: each one clearly spoilt rotten, cosseted beyond repair by parents who believe in giving their progeny everything, except – judging by the clip of half the buck-toothed shites - access to a reputable dentist. Christ, it almost makes you happy to see a stag night; almost, in the way that you’d appreciate finding only a “mild” case of pubic lice. How come these fuckdogs have been allowed access to a supposedly exclusive scene? If I was involved in security round here, there’d be watchtowers, snipers, doormen with tasers and pots of pestilence; anything to keep the place free from Bermuda shorts and desperately enforced jollity.
There is not a single man drinking on this entire road that could ever be told – let alone understand – that he is a wanker. And I’d leave it up to people braver and more patient than I to try to hammer into their imbecility that Nathan Barley was satire, not a fucking lifestyle bulletin.
Speaking of which, the viewing choice of the average Jesmond drinker gives a fair idea of their character. I’m sure every Giles, every Tom, and every “Hi, I’m Will, yuh?” will cheerfully claim to have a love for the artier end of the 50 Films You Must See Before You Die (here’s hoping…). But I can’t help the suspicion that they’re all secretly conked out every weekend in front of the inane sub-MTV shite that clogs up daytime on Channels 4 and 5, piling wish upon futile wish that they could be the latest funny-as-cot-death dickhead helping Alexa “man-voice” Chung bark her way through her autocue script.
These spunkclowns (and their glakey birds: we'll be discussing them in a minute) are, in short, the target audience for this shit:
Aye, it’s not only the men who are worthy of nothing but scorn: I just put them in here first on the flip of a coin. The women need their faces grating, too.
Look, I don’t want to report this, but it’s unavoidably true: flirting with each razor-cut barman and giggling down every last cocktail straw is an endless parade of no-budget Peaches Geldofs. I don’t think I need explain what a waste of good carbon that amounts to. Clinging for dear life to a five-quid glass of pinot grigio, they’re not quite conversant in finishing school etiquette, or even in spitting their fucking chewa out before they start guzzling. In need of a few lessons before they can reach simpleton level, they are nonetheless laser-guided in their true purpose: to snare a passing millionaire and bleed the fucker dry, unaware that not a single loaded man with an ounce of gumption would be looking for a trophy wife in a place like this. They might get some cunt introducing himself as a footballer, but even the thickest Hartlepool reserve knows his wage packet won’t keep one of these grasping strumpets in Jimmy Choos – whatever the fuck they are – for very long.
The fucking burp-brained tanning advert behind me keeps howking the back of my seat with her foot. I’d like to believe that she's just a bit nervous because her friends are late, and is fidgeting clumsily. What I fear though – and judging by the unmistakeable smell from somewhere in this bar I could well be right – is that she’s taking some tips from the Agony Aunt pages of Closer or Grazia or fucking Eeeh! magazine, to "Glisten that gash, girls!". I fear she's repeatedly swinging one Ugg-booted leg over the other, working up a lather and trying to let the natural attraction of hormones work their magic on some poor bastard. It doesn’t.
(Incidentally, on a recent trip to the style mecca that is London, I counted exactly four pairs of Ugg boots, and one of those pairs was on some dopey bimbo crying into her map. I took the trouble to count them because they make me fantastically angry, enough and then some to push the wearer under the nearest double decker. London, at the forefront of world fashion: four pairs in a day and a half. Osborne Road, three years behind the fashion times and utterly oblivious to the fact: 27 pairs in the time it took to sink an alfresco Foster’s. Clueless, identikit whores.)
Curiously, within ten feet of each hopeful honey is a porcine fat lass, sprawled abusively on settee with her legs akimbo. It’s unclear at this point whether she’s trying far too hard with an open display of her wares or just indulging in mockery, pointing out to the slimmer girl’s prospective Mr Right exactly what the predatory minx will become once she gets her name on the joint credit card and has 24hr access to the fucking fridge and pie cupboard. But I’ll let you know when I find out.
Of course, they’re not all rapacious for men and moolah. Some – notably at the posher end of the scale – require only a G&T to take the edge off their transparent self-loathing. And I’m thinking, how the fuck do you get both an attitude so poor and an appetite so strong for something so vile? Probably from your mother trying abort your sorry foetus with a Peruvian Fairtrade knitting needle while knocking back Gordon’s after bathtime Gordon’s. And then telling you about it. Daily. For 18 years. But regardless of background or chip on the tattooed shoulder, there is one thing that unites all the females here tonight: they’ve all taken the first semester at the style supplement modelling school, and have gained the ability to look suicidal at the drop of a hat. Call that a sultry pout? Looks more like a rectal prolapse from where I’m sitting.
Where am I sitting? I’m outside on the patch of mud that was once the lawn, watching bored, pocket-sized dogs pissing up the power supply for the outside lighting: what sort of pissflapper takes a dog on a luxury night out, for fuck’s sake? I’m watching brand-new Beetles and Minis - with personalised number plates naturally - stalling and bunny-hopping along the only street on earth where the residents ask for MORE traffic lights to give them a better opportunity to flaunt their stupidity symbols in the faces of the passers-by.
Which reminds me…
